VATICAN CITY—In a busy succession of Christmas events, Pope John Paul II urged the world to let the peace of Christ reign over nations, families, and individual hearts.
“How can we fail to notice the strident contrast between the serenity of the Christmas carols and the many problems of the present hour?” the Pope asked during his Christmas midday address.
Standing on the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, the only part of the facade not covered by scaffolding, the 78-year-old Pope gave his traditional blessing “urbi et orbi” (to the City and to the world).
Pope John Paul called for an end to the sale and production of weapons and an end to the use of the death penalty.
Several hundred members of an Italian group working against the death penalty around the world had walked through the streets of Rome, arriving in St. Peter's Square in time for Pope John Paul's blessing and speech.
The Pope spoke of “tragic situations” around the world, “which often involve human guilt and even malice, soaked in fratricidal hate and senseless violence.
“May the light coming from Bethlehem save us from the danger of becoming resigned to so tormented and distressing a scenario,” the Pope prayed.
He offered special prayers of encouragement to those working “to bring relief to the tormented situation in the Middle East by respecting international commitments,” most likely a reference meant to include both the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the situation in Iraq.
The Pope also prayed that Christians would help the world come to a consensus on the need “for urgent and adequate measures to halt the production and sale of arms (and) to defend human life.”
A commitment also is needed “to end the death penalty, to free children and adolescents from all forms of exploitation, (and) to restrain the bloodied hand of those responsible for genocide and crimes of war,” the Pope said.
Broadcast by 45 national television networks as well as on international satellite networks, Pope John Paul's Christmas message included greetings in 58 languages.
“May the joy of Christmas and the peace which the birth of the Savior brings into the world be in your hearts forever,” he said in English.
Thousands of visitors gathered around the larger-than-life-sized Nativity scene and the 86-foot-tall Christmas tree in St. Peter's Square for the annual appointment.
The night before, people from around the world crowded into a darkened St. Peter's Basilica awaiting the blaze of lights which would signal the arrival of Pope John Paul and the start of the Christmas midnight Mass.
Christmas night is a night of mystery, the Pope said in his homily.
“Jesus is born into a family poor by material standards, but rich in joy.
“He comes into the world completely helpless without anyone's knowledge, and yet he is welcomed and recognized first by the shepherds, who hear from the angel the news of his birth,” the Pope said.
When the shepherds see the baby lying in a manger, “thanks to the inner light of faith, they recognize the Messiah proclaimed by the prophets,” he said.
They recognize the God who came to fill the world with his grace and transform creation, the Pope said.
“He becomes a man among men, so that in him and through him every human being can be profoundly renewed.”
With the coming of Christ and the gift of eternal life that his birth and death gives to all who believe in him, human history has changed, Pope John Paul said.
The Pope said Christ's transformation of history will be celebrated in a special way at the Christmas midnight Mass in 1999, “when, God willing, I shall inaugurate the great jubilee with the opening of the Holy Door.”
After his long Christmas Eve and Christmas Day ceremonies, the Pope went to his summer villa south of Rome for a few days of rest, although he recited the midday Angelus prayer and greeted visitors at Castel Gandolfo.
Marking the Dec. 26 feast of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, the Pope prayed the saint's example “would particularly sustain those who, even today because of their faith, are placed under harsh trials, so that their courage in fully adhering to the Lord will never lessen.”
Turning his attention to the family Dec. 27, the feast of the Holy Family, the Pope said the Church itself must learn to be a family modeled after Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
“The more the Church is able to realize the pact of love which is shown in the Holy Family, the more it will be able to accomplish its mission of being a leaven so that all men and women will be one family” in Christ, the Pope said.
The Holy Family of Nazareth also is a model for every human family, he said.
“The mystery of Nazareth teaches every family to generate and educate their children, cooperating in the marvelous work of the Creator and giving the world a new smile through every child,” he said.
During his Angelus address, Pope John Paul praised a Milan-based program called “Add a Place at the Table” which encourages families to invite someone who is homeless or alone to share their family holiday meals.
The Pope prayed that the initiative would spread and that it would go beyond a one-time experience of warmth by leading to new friendships and solidarity.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: CINDY WOODEN ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: With Song, Nashville Singer Rebels Against A 'Self-Centered' Culture DATE: 01/03/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 3-9, 1999 ----- BODY:NASHVILLE, Tenn.—Nashville songwriter and singer Marie Bellet accepted an invitation to sing at St. Joseph's Church in Danville, Pa., last October. The small parish wasn't disappointed with this largely unknown 38-year-old mother of seven, who praises family and faith.
“I don't think there's another Catholic or Christian singer who touches on Catholic family life or the sacrificial nature of it the way Marie does,” said Joan Stromberg, an organizer of the event and the mother of six herself.
The previous month, Bellet performed two of her songs at the annual Crisis magazine dinner in Washington, D.C. She was commissioned by the influential Catholic publication to write a song for its dinner honoree, Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.).
The song, “The Man of the House,” left few in the room with a dry eye. She paid tribute to the venerable pro-life leader with a smooth voice and easy guitar accompaniment in a manner reminiscent of the best ballad singers.
But Bellet is different. What sets her apart are the lyrics which convey a sense of deep faith. They extol the joys of marriage, family, and the struggles which characterize everyday life. “If there is a common theme to my music,” she told the Register, “it's the day-to-day stuff that speaks to you. That's the real mark of the person.
“All I want to do is highlight what is redeeming. The struggle of being married and raising children is very redeeming,” she said.
Although she has had only a limited number of musical engagements, she recorded her first album, What I Wanted to Say, in December 1997. It's a collection of 11 of her songs that appears under her own label, Elm Street Records.
Bellet was raised on Elm Street in Champaign-Urbana, Ill., one of eight children. According to her biographical sketch, “she grew up loving the ‘warmth and confusion’ of life in a large family. The experience would come in handy.”
She attended Rice University and received an undergraduate degree from Swarthmore College. She then earned an MBA from Vanderbilt University, which is located in Nashville, the heart of country music.
She had a long-time interest in writing and performing, and saw Nashville as a perfect place to pursue her avocation while working full time in the health care field. By 1984 she was doing demo tapes, jingles, and even sang with Alan Jackson, who was not yet a country recording star.
But it was a trying time, a time when she was uncertain of her future. “When I was around music people,” she said, “my stomach was always in knots. I also found that I wanted to write, but I didn't yet have anything to say. I was told that I was not a star singer, but could communicate.”
Much of this began to change in 1987, when she married her husband. “I wanted to find a man to build a family,” she said, and that's what she found with Bill Bellet, who she describes as a “psychologist with sense.”
The following year they moved to Singapore, where they spent three years, and then went on to Spain for another year. These years would prove critical in building the foundation for her music.
A sense of isolation from family, friends, and home encouraged her to write songs. Often the words created an opportunity to talk to herself, to help resolve problems. This was especially important with the birth of her first three boys.
The time overseas also was important spiritually for her. She grew up a practicing Catholic and one of her brothers is a priest, now at the North American College in Rome. But, she notes, the isolation in Singapore allowed her time to study Catholicism in depth for the first time.
When the Bellets returned to the United States, they experienced a cultural shock. Unlike Singapore, the America of the early 1990s seemed a less welcome place for children.
This was antithetical to a young woman who says, “I always thought building a family is the most beautiful thing you could do. The ripple effect on society is amazing.”
Bit by bit, she began to develop a music career which addresses this feeling as well as the beauty of sharing marriage. And, throughout it all, she writes of the need to accept God and his will.
She adds, “My writing began mostly as an alternative to rearranging furniture. It has become my way to encourage those who want to rebel against the self-centered misery of our time.
“To make sacrifices for marriage and children is not stupidity or victimization. It's the noblest thing we do.”
Her songs are full of double meaning, in the purest way. The tribute to Congressman Hyde, for example, also is a paean to husbands and fathers for their sacrifices and strength.
In one stirring part of that song, for example, she writes, “And he fights the good fight ‘cause there's wrong and there's right; there are things worth losing for.
These ballads also are filled with emotion. “What I Wouldn't Give” was written for her sister after a family reunion. Another song was written for her dying grandmother.
“Sometimes when I'm singing my songs, I get choked up because of the suffering that went into them. That's everyday stuff,” she said.
Some of the songs also have a whimsical quality. In “What I Wanted to Say,” Bellet sings about bringing her seven children to the grocery store and the looks she receives. “I wrote that one on the way to the store,” she quips.
She also sings about the differences between men and women, and the opportunities for the misunderstanding they create. And she writes about God in an uplifting, not preachy, way.
“Thy Will Be Done,” for example, was written after she experienced a miscarriage. The song speaks of the need to accept God's will. In “Will You, Too, Go Away?” she sings of a man who has exhausted all excuses to accept Christ in his life.
Bellet says, “I'm not doing this for the sake of having an album out. I'm doing it to convey the truth.” Joan Stromberg said when the singer came to Danville, “it was obvious she wasn't into self promotion.
People around the country are starting to take notice of her message and her enchanting voice. Scepter Press, a Catholic book publisher in Princeton, N.J., carries her album. And on Feb. 4, she will perform on EWTN's “Life on the Rock.”
Still, Bellet remains a stay-at-home mom. She is likely to be the person who packages CDs or cassette tapes for those who place album orders.
“My witness is really just to show up with my kids at the grocery store,” she argues. “For me, that is where the culture war is fought, surrounded by glossy magazines that promise happiness if you shed pounds and obligations.”
She also sees a mission to her singing. She said, “My music is about the drama of everyday life — staying In love, going through the day's routine, ‘One more time, with feeling!’
“I want to tell other mothers that they are not crazy or alone. If my music can do that, it will all be worthwhile.”
Marie Bellet's album can be ordered from Elm Street Records, P.O. Box 50052, Nashville, TN 37205; telephone: (800) 611-7180. Her web site address is www.cathoIicity.com/market/marie bellet/
Joseph Esposito writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: Marie Bellett, mother of seven, sings the praises of family and faith ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Esposito ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Dublin's Millennium Monument Devoid of Christian Reference DATE: 01/03/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 3-9, 1999 ----- BODY:DUBLIN, Ireland—A new Millennium Monument scheduled to be built in the heart of the Irish capital has a striking omission: It makes no reference to the main reason for celebrating the event — the 2,000th anniversary of the birth of Christ.
The monument being built by Dublin Corp. on O'Connell Street, the capital's main artery, is a 364-foot-high narrow stainless steel structure costing 3 million pounds ($4.5 million). Its upper 45 feet will be illuminated so that the monument acts as a beacon, twice as high as Liberty Hall, Dublin's tallest building.
The monument will act as a replacement for Nelson's Pillar which once occupied the site. The pillar was a symbol of Dublin, but the outlawed Irish Republican Army blew it up in 1966 because it saw the statue of Admiral Nelson on its top as an outdated symbol of British rule.
The Lord Mayor of Dublin, Joe Doyle, a Catholic, said, “This monument will be a key feature of the newly refurbished O'Connell Street. It will be erected within the next 12 months and will, I hope, become a familiar and well-loved symbol of Dublin in the third millennium.”
Doyle, who was a member of the judging panel that chose the monument from 205 entries in a public competition, added: “The winning monument will be an important part of the new O'Connell Street. Finding a replacement for Nelson's Pillar was never going to be easy. Everyone has their own opinion on what kind of monument we should have.”
The chairman of the judging panel, Joan O'Connor, described the proposed structure as “elegant and dynamic simplicity — bridging art and technology. …
“The 120-meter-high cone responds well to the scale of the individual, the street, and the city. Tangible and enticing at its base, it leads the eye and the imagination upwards, tapering gracefully into an attractively illuminated tip. The jury felt this brave and uncompromising beacon reflects a confident Ireland in Europe and reaffirms O'Connell Street as Ireland's principal urban thoroughfare.”
But not everyone is happy with the description of the proposed artwork as a millennium statue.
Father Martin Tierney, director of the Irish hierarchy's Jubilee 2000 committee, said he likes the proposed monument's design, but maintained it has nothing to do with the millennium.
“This statue is about providing a decoration for O'Connell Street,” he said. “But it will be just as appropriate to the year 2005 as it would be to the year 2000. It is part of a project to upgrade that part of the city center. The government has money to redevelop O'Connell Street and are just using the millennium as an excuse to give the impression that they are distributing largesse. They are letting on that they are doing something for the millennium.”
Asked if “letting on” meant “lying,” Father Tierney replied: “All I will say is that they are creating an impression that something is happening to celebrate an occasion, but it isn't really.”
The group Millennium Ireland has been campaigning since 1996 for a fitting monument for the millennium or for St. Patrick, Ireland's patron saint, on O'Connell Street or on the Howth Head peninsula north of downtown. The group's organizer John O'Halloran said he was disappointed by the design chosen by Dublin Corp.
“When the idea of a statue for O'Connell Street was put out to tender by Dublin Corp. and the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland, there was no mention of the millennium in the competition application form,” O'Halloran said. Architects, urban designers, and artists were invited “to submit a design to reinstate a monument which would have a pivotal role in the composition of O'Connell Street. …
“That is why the committee of Millennium Ireland has written to John Fitzgerald, Dublin city manager, asking him to consider having a special monument erected in O'Connell Street to mark the millennium, which is of course the 2,000th anniversary of the birth of Christ and the moment when God came down into human history. A suitable monument should reflect the Christian nature of the millennium, such as a statue of Christ the King, or of St. Patrick, who brought Christianity to Ireland.”
So far, the proposed monument doesn't have an official name. Dublin Corp. will not even say whether it is a cone, a spike, or a needle.
National newspaper letters pages have been filled with suggestions for names for the structure, many of which make reference to Dublin's litter problem or its drug crisis. Others make reference to what they consider the waste of money involved.
Among the names suggested are “the pin in the bin,” “the spire in the mire,” “the syringe to make you cringe,” and “the pie in the sky.”
At least one writer, however, suggested that the monument may be linked with Christianity. In a letter to The Irish Times, Margaret Horne wrote: “For me, it will symbolize the words in St. John's Gospel Chapter 1, verses 1-5, especially verse 5. ‘A light that shines in the dark, a light that darkness could not overpower.’”
But not many people take her view. Already a favorite name for the monument is emerging: “the pinnacle for the cynical.”
Cian Molloy writes from Dublin, Ireland.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Cian Molloy ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: 'Vatican Spies' Book Chronicles DATE: 01/03/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 3-9, 1999 ----- BODY:WARSAW, Poland—Polish and Russian historians have published the first joint study of the Catholic Church's persecution in the Soviet Union.
The book's editor, a Catholic priest, said it marked a significant step toward closing historical “blank spots,” as well as recalling the shared sufferings of Catholic and Orthodox Christians.
Sentenced as Vatican Spies was issued in early December by Warsaw's Catholic Apostolicum publishers.
Co-written by Irina Osipova and Ida Zaikina, researchers from Russia's “Memorial” organization, it includes unique material from the Soviet Union's CHEKA, GPU, and NKVD police archives on the 1917-56 repression of the Soviet Union's Latin and Greek Catholic Churches, as well as documents from the notorious Solovetski Island prison camp.
The White Sea camp, which opened in 1920 on the site of a 16th century Russian Orthodox monastery, received mostly sick and elderly Catholic and Orthodox priests. It served as a prototype for other Soviet labor and extermination centers, and was the scene of numerous acts of cruelty and barbarism.
The fate of several prominent Catholic priests is revealed for the first time in the book.
One, the Belarusan Marian Father Fabian Abrantowicz, a Louvain University graduate and former St. Petersburg seminary lecturer, died in Moscow's Butyrka prison hospital in 1946, after serving as the apostolic administrator of the Catholic Church from Harbin.
The interrogation notes kept on another, Father Wendelin Jaworka, a former rector of Rome's Russicum college, show that he courageously refused to implicate fellow priests, despite physical and psychological pressure.
Father Jaworka was sent to labor camps for 10 years, after being “exposed” as a “Vatican agent” by the forced testimony of a Catholic colleague in 1945.
An Italian priest, Father Pietro Leoni, who headed parishes at Dniepropietrovsk and Odessa after serving as a wartime army chaplain, also showed exceptional courage under torture.
Though sentenced in 1947 to 25 years of hard labor, Father Leoni was freed in 1955. The “act of transfer” to the Italian authorities is the last document in his Soviet prison file.
The Catholic Church's Mohilev archdiocese, based at St. Petersburg, was home to 1.5 million mostly ethnic Polish Catholics in 1917, as well as 400 priests from the Latin, Greek, and Armenian Catholic rites.
All but two of its 1,240 churches and chapels were destroyed or closed during the Catholic Church's dispersal over the next two decades. At least 140 priests were shot in 1937-38 alone, leaving only a dozen still at large after World War II.
Among many Catholic women detailed in Sentenced as Vatican Spies, Anna Brilliantova was a first-year biology student at Moscow University when she was arrested in 1931. She was accused of involvement with Moscow's Greek Catholic lay Dominican community, whose leader, Anna Abrikosova, died in the Butyrka six years later, after being jailed with other female order members.
Brilliantova broke down under torture.
In her interrogation notes, a Catholic nun, Kamilla Kruszelnycka, describes how she notified the Church's Moscow-based administrator, Bishop Pius Neveu, of her first meeting with the gifted student at the capital's St. Ludwik church, and of their subsequent discussions about “atheism and God's existence.”
But in Brilliantova's testimony, the talks are turned into a denunciation of Soviet dictator Josif Stalin.
“Because of this, my terrorist mood increased,” Brilliantova tells her NKVD captors. “Kruszelnycka said she would fight Soviet power to the end even if she were an atheist and young, and would carry out a terrorist act against Stalin. … She also drew my attention to the need to act in the strictest secrecy.”
Brilliantova and Abrikosova were shot by NKVD orders in October 1937 — a month after Brilliantova had given birth to a son, at the age of 28. Their remains were discovered, with those of 32 Catholic priests, in a mass grave of Solovetski Island prisoners in autumn 1997.
In a Register interview, the book's Polish editor, Father Jan Dzwonkowski, said Sentenced as Vatican Spies confirmed the unparalleled scale and cruelty of the Soviet Union's 70-year religious persecution.
He added that, although the Russian Orthodox Church was now attempting to amass information on the hundreds of thousands of Orthodox Christians who died, the history of Stalin's anti-religious purges was still “hardly known.”
“We are only just beginning to retrace what happened,” said the priest, who teaches sociology at Poland's Catholic University of Lublin. “The persecution cut such a vast swath that our inquiries will never be exhausted. But if we can succeed in reducing some of the blank spots, that at least will have meaning.”
Father Dzwonkowski, whose chapter recounts two petitions sent to the Soviet regime by Catholic and Russian Orthodox inmates on Solovetski, published two separate volumes earlier this year with biographical and legal data on prewar Catholic purge victims.
He said he believed recollections of shared sufferings in Soviet prisons and camps could “bring the Churches closer,” en route to a planned ecumenical proclamation of 20th century “martyrs to the faith of Christ” in the year 2000.
“In some ways, the Catholic Church suffered a better fate than Russian Orthodoxy, since it was totally destroyed and forced underground, whereas the Orthodox Church was allowed to keep its institutions, but became a tool of Soviet policy,” Father Dzwonkowski told the Register.
“But at a time when Orthodox leaders are still criticizing us and keeping their distance, the memory of how Catholic and Orthodox met together in the camps must help rebuild links between us.”
A 1995 Russian government commission said more than 200,000 priests and nuns, mostly Orthodox, were killed, and half a million more were imprisoned or deported during the prewar Soviet purges. This constituted, in numerical terms, the greatest persecution in Christian history.
The same commission confirmed that many Christian clergy were crucified on church doors by communist “terror squads” in the years following the 1917 revolution, or doused in water and left to freeze to death in winter.
Sentenced as Vatican Spies contains new archival data from a number of sources, including the Polish Red Cross, whose Moscow office was directed in 1920-37 by Jekaterina Pieshkova, the first wife of writer Maxim Gorky.
Besides relaying information requests to the Soviet regime, Pieshkova arranged prisoner exchanges involving Polish priests and Russian communists jailed in Poland.
However, her efforts were often unsuccessful.
Among the documents contained in the book is a letter from the elderly mother of a Belarusan priest, Father Hieronim Cerpento, seeking information on his whereabouts five years after his arrest by the Soviet GPU in 1930.
“Write to us about yourself, so we can reply to your mother,” the Red Cross asked the priest through contacts.
The priest sent back a letter from Siberia confirming he'd been allowed, despite heart problems, to perform rites for local Catholics in Siberia. When he dispatched a second letter in 1936, he asked Pieshkova to pass news to his family that he'd been re-sentenced to an even longer camp term with a Catholic nun for “counterrevolutionary activity.”
There are no more letters in the file. Father Cerpento was tried secretly again for “political crimes” and shot on Jan. 18, 1938.
A 67-year-old Polish priest, Father Mateusz Brynczak, also writes to Pieshkova after being sent to Siberia for three years in 1931.
“I ask you, Jekaterina Pavlovna, to try to obtain permission from the central authorities only for me to say Mass (without a rector's functions) in the church at Tomsk,” the priest pleads. “In this way, you will lighten my cross, and this is my final ardent request.”
Father Brynczak's plea was not granted. In 1936, the Red Cross sent a brief message to Warsaw. “We notify that we have received information of the death of priest Mateusz Brynczak in exile at Tomsk. We learned of his death from a note attached to a money bill and a returned parcel. We do not know the date of his death.”
The Warsaw launching of Sentenced as Vatican Spies was attended by Walenty Woronowicz, the last known Solovetski camp survivor still living in Poland, and included a unique exhibition of photos from the island, collected by Russian researcher Juri Brodsky.
In his Register interview, Father Dzwonkowski said he believed the book was “one small contribution” toward correcting a “banal imbalance” in contemporary attitudes toward Nazi and Soviet crimes.
“Nazi crimes weren't only much shorter-lasting: they were also condemned and punished, whereas communist crimes have never been brought to justice, and are still widely defended today,” the priest said.
“This book is just one drop in the stream which will one day wear a hole through this stony indifference. It offers proof of the power of spirit which enabled people to preserve their faith and integrity, even in the most extreme conditions.”
Russian schoolbooks say 20 million Soviet and East European citizens died in communist-era labor camps, while 15 million more were killed in mass executions, deportations, and officially orchestrated “terror famines.”
Jonathan Luxmoore writes from Warsaw, Poland.
----- EXCERPT: Church's Suffering in Soviet Union ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jonathan Luxmoore ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Monthly Missal Is a Hit In Its American Debut DATE: 01/03/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 3-9, 1999 ----- BODY:One of the objectives of Vatican II was to extend the hours of the liturgical day to all Catholics, particularly lay people. This bore fruit in a special way in 1992, when Pierre-Marie Du-mont, of France, founded Magnificat, a monthly missal that aims to bring lay people closer to God when they pray and celebrate the liturgy.
Dumont chose the name from the Blessed Mother's Magnificat prayer in Luke's Gospel (1:46-48): “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden.” Dumont wanted the title to reflect the joining in Mary's canticle of praise and thanksgiving to God by all men and women.
Dumont's venture has been a big success in Europe. Because of lay interest and participation, he sought an American editor to produce an English version and spread the missal to churches across the United States.
In December, Magnificat made its debut in America, under the direction of Dominican Father Peter John Cameron, editor in chief. Father Cameron writes, edits, and produces the missal from his office at St. Joseph's Seminary — Dunwoodie, in Yonkers, New York.
“Magnificat is for everyone, lay and clergy,” Father Cameron said. “What it does is make the riches of the liturgy more accessible to everyone, and provides a way to guide and deepen their spiritual lives in a way that is very meaningful.”
Before Vatican II, many lay people carried missals to Mass.
One of the most popular was the St. Joseph's Daily Missal, which gave the daily readings and included wedding and other Mass liturgies, as well as prayers for special intentions and occasions. Magnificat is, in a way, a rebirth of this, but with added features.
For example, the monthly missal includes morning and evening prayers, the complete liturgy for the Mass of the day, meditations, and even inspirational real-life stories from people who have found God or who have overcome serious personal difficulties through prayer and faith.
Meditations of the day are chosen from the writings of the Fathers of the Church and the saints, among others. Father Cameron said he also uses current writers of religious topics and inspirational stories, to augment the content of Magnificat.
Many of the prayers and meditations included in the monthly editions are written by Father Cameron. They are tied to the liturgies of the month and are intended to enrich the prayer and spiritual life of the reader. He said Magnificat underscores that the Eucharist is the “source and summit of our life” and that the missal goes to the heart of making a person's spiritual devotion more meaningful.
Father Cameron, a full-time teacher of homelitics at Dunwoodie, added that the missal also has been a great help to him in preparing his Mass homilies.
“I choose the meditations of the day to relate directly or indirectly to the liturgy,” he said. “Magnificat isn't just a prayer book; it is a spiritual guide for a person's entire day.”
Magnificat's debut American edition stated that the missal is designed to help men and women follow and learn about the Mass, not only on Sundays, but also throughout the week. The missal already has a circulation of 17,000, and new subscribers are being added daily.
Endorsement of the missal came from Mother Angelica of the Eternal Word Television Network, and America magazine also praised it in an editorial. Magnificat is published with the approval of the Committee on the Liturgy, National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Father Cameron said some U.S. cardinals and bishops wrote letters to the publication, endorsing effort. This followed a mailing of the first edition to every cardinal, bishop, and priest in the United States.
Now, Magnificat staff members call pastors to let them know it is available, and Father Cameron said they send copies to those parishes who want to share it with parishioners. He said they send sufficient copies to accommodate the number of parishioners who attend daily Mass.
Father Cameron noted that many people are not only using Magnificat to enrich their own daily spiritual lives, but also are giving one-year subscriptions to family members and friends.
Father Cameron relies on sources outside Dunwoodie to help with the missal. Sister Genevieve Glen, for instance, is editor of prayers. She works from Colorado, and sends her material electronically.
“We do everything over the Internet,” Father Cameron said.
There also are contributing writers (mostly clergy and religious), and six staff members who assist Father Cameron with everything from editorial support to administrative tasks.
Lay response to Magnificat is positive. “The people love it,” Father Cameron said. He said those who receive Magnificat “say it is as if they have been reunited with a long-lost family member. They can now take their Faith into their daily life.”
One enthusiastic supporter is Helen Hull Hitchcock of St. Louis. Hitchcock is director of Women for Faith and Family and is one of three members of the Executive Committee of the Adoremus Society, which strives for the renewal of the sacred liturgy. She said she learned about Magnificat last summer, when Dumont visited St. Louis to talk about the missal.
“We're promoting it in every way we can, through Women for Faith and Family” she said. “When Mr. Dumont showed us the publication, I thought it was an excellent idea. Magnificat makes it easy for people to participate to a much greater extent in the liturgy, and gives them greatly expanded opportunities to enrich their prayer life. The prayers, rubrics, and the layout are wonderful.”
Women for Faith and Family, Hitchcock said, has a similar mission — to promote the liturgy throughout the year and make it more comprehensible for children. She added that Magnificat will do much to help people approach the liturgy in a more meaningful way and bring the Church and its messages to greater life. All members will receive copies of the missal.
Another enthusiast is Jesuit Father Joseph Fessio, editor of Ignatius Press in San Francisco, who said he learned of Magnificat when he was stationed in France. Everything about the missal impressed him.
“If you are going to produce a missal, you need one that is beautifully done; Magnificat is that, and more,” he said. “The meditations are good, and having an abbreviated form of the Divine Office is great. The missal helps people prepare for Sunday Mass and also helps them meditate on the readings beyond Mass. It's a wonderful, wonderful publication.” Father Fessio said his publishing house is planning to help distribute Magnificat, starting soon.
Father Cameron said he is planning a special Holy Week edition. It will include not only the Holy Week liturgies, but also an examination of conscience and other special prayer for the most sacred week in the Catholic Church. Father Cameron said he hopes to include a Tennebrae service next year, as well.
Enhancements also will be made to the monthly issues, Father Cameron said. “We'll be adding other devotions, including the Angelus, and a treasury of prayers. Our readers will be seeing this by May or June 1999.”
Jim Malerba writes from Hamden, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: JAMES MALERBA ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Tackling Issues Frankly DATE: 01/03/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 3-9, 1999 ----- BODY:Archbishop George Pell
Archbishop of Melbourne, the largest diocese in Australia, he is one of the most dynamic and outspoken bishops among the recent generation appointed by Pope John Paul II. Once a professional Australian Rules football player, as a priest, he participated in the founding of Australian Catholic University. He writes voluminously for journals and newspapers, religious and secular, and speaks regularly on TV and radio. He is a well-known public speaker, who has lectured throughout Australia, the United States, England, and New Zealand. Archbishop Pell spoke recently with Register correspondent Raymond de Souza.
De Souza: How would you assess the recent Synod for Oceania? What did the Holy Father have in mind when he called these regional synods?
Archbishop Pell: The synods are practical examples of collegiality. One of the best aspects is that it brings the bishops of a certain area together, to think about what they should be doing, and to have a dialogue with the heads of the curia and with the Holy Father. So after this synod and our ad limina visit, we are better informed about the thinking at the center of the Church, and the curia and the Holy Father are better informed about our thinking.
The Holy Father undoubtedly sees these synods as a preparation of the Jubilee, and he would like us to come away with a new enthusiasm, new insights and new energy to preach the Gospel in the third millennium. The extent to which that has been achieved remains to be seen.
Cardinal Ratzinger said that the Catholic Church, especially her bishops and priests, is called to be the “salt of the earth” — not the sugar of the earth, not an artificial sweetener. We are there to teach the “hard” teachings as well as the “soft” teachings — we have no mandate to “improve” the Gospel. In the long run, there is no way forward pastorally in making Christ's essential teachings easier, whether it is on divorce and re-marriage, the limitations of legitimate sexual activity, or the need for repentance and penance.
Many observers were struck by the inclusion in the papal synod liturgies of various cultural rituals of the Samoan people. Did the Synod Fathers, who made a positive reference to this in their Final Message, see this as a positive sign, or perhaps even a model, of how to inculturate the Roman Rite among the small island nations of Oceania?
Yes, I think that's true, it was a beautiful example of that. It was very interesting and supremely encouraging to the peoples from Samoa and the other Pacific islands. But it had almost nothing to do with the real problems that are facing us in Australia.
Inculturation is a very, very difficult problem in Oceania. There are seven hundred languages plus hundreds of dialects in Papua New Guinea. I have a secondary school in Melbourne where there are children from a hundred different national backgrounds. But the overwhelmingly powerful force is Anglo-Saxon, agnostic, permissive advertising. That's the most powerful cultural force at work in our region that we have to confront and dialogue with — that's what is sapping our strength. That is the challenge of inculturation.
In the introductory speech at the synod, the relator asked the question, ‘Which way is the Church going to go?’ We are faced with two directions. We can conform to the world, especially in our moral teachings, but also in underplaying the necessity of faith. Or, as I would recommend, we can reaffirm the centrality, the urgency, the beauty, and sometimes the difficulty of Christ's teaching. Sometimes that creates a little tension within the Catholic Church. But there is absolutely no way forward for the Church in having the bland leading the bland. There is no pearl in the oyster unless first there is a bit of grit there.
There is no virtue in having Christians publicly fighting one another — we have had too much of that scandal in Northern Ireland. But there is no virtue either in a bland united front, papering over difficulties or differences. The really crucial issue is whether more people are living the faith more deeply.
A notable aspect of the synod was the juxtaposition of Australia — a prosperous Western nation — with the small island nations of the Pacific: Samoa, Papua New Guinea, Tahiti, the Solomon Islands, etc. Did this bringing together of the Churches from those areas represent a reflection of what happens in Oceania now, or was it an exhortation for the wealthy Church of Australia to be more solicitous of its poorer brethren?
It works both ways. For example, most Catholics in Australia and New Zealand are not converts; they are born into Catholic families. A hundred years ago in most of Papua New Guinea and the islands there were almost no Catholics — so we have a lot to learn from the missionary expansion there; in some places they are still getting thousands of converts. They are deeply and profoundly aware of the beauty of Christ and his message. We seem less certain of that in Australia and New Zealand, and so we are less able to communicate our message to people outside the Church.
Another example is that we have few seminarians and quite a few well-trained priests and religious. Papua New Guinea and the islands have hundreds of seminarians and a critical absence of trained clergy and religious to educate them. I am certainly going to encourage our priests and religious to do more to help them with their lack of personnel.
This was a combined synod and
In Australia, over 30 or 40 years, the percentage of people who identify themselves in the census as having no religion has gone from 2-3% to about 17-18%. We have had what I describe as the rise of the “RCs” — what I used to call “retired Catholics,” but one mother told me that they are not “retired,” they are “resting, relaxed, or reluctant Catholics.” They don't practice. Most young Catholics in Australia have not abandoned calling themselves Catholics, but they practice much less regularly than they used to. In many ways it is like an older form of Italian Catholicism — Christmas, Easter, big family occasions, times of trouble — rather than the old Irish-Australian way — a bit Puritanical, strong families, regular worship.
You said in your installation homily two years ago that those who said the Church in Australia was in crisis were “mistaken.”
I don't think we are in a crisis situation. It's not Holland, Switzerland, Austria, or French-speaking Canada. But we are certainly under pressure and there is a steady decline of practice — I have never denied those things. Some people would say that I draw too much attention to them.
I think the Statement of Conclusions issued by the Australian bishops and the heads of the curia after our meeting is one of the most important joint statements in the history of the Church in Australia. Archbishop (Leonard) Faulkner of Adelaide said that this five-day meeting was the most wonderful example of collegiality in his 30 years as a bishop. I am quite certain that if we can gradually and peaceably implement the vision of that joint statement it will strengthen the Church in Australia.
That joint statement was very frank. It spoke of a “crisis of faith,” doubts about whether the truth can be known, and a tolerance that “can lead to indifference.” These problems mark the whole of the Western world — is there anything in Australia which gives rise to particular concern or hope on this front?
We are a much less religious society than the United States, but also a much less anti-religious one. The problem in Australia is more indifferentism than hostility. There is a mild, unchallenged agnosticism. There is very little anti-clericalism, even after the pedophilia scandals. Yet 70% of Australians are still nominally Christian, so the Church has an opportunity to present the message of Christ to people who are looking for something with which to hold their lives together.
The joint statement specifically identified certain strands of feminism as leading to a crisis in both Christology and Christian anthropology. Why did the bishops choose to single out feminism for particular mention?
This is a significant problem within the Catholic community. The problem is not that we spoke about it honestly and sensibly but that other countries, where it may even be a greater threat, have not publicly faced up to this issue quite as frankly as we have. As a fairly frequent visitor to the United States, I would think that, in some circles in the United States, a radical, un-Christian feminism is a much greater problem than in Australia.
Your joint statement spoke of bishops as “signs of contradiction.” Can you speak of your personal experience of this, perhaps in regard to your own pastoral letter affirming
The statement emphasizes the role of the bishops because we have a strong following. We have 20% of Catholics who practice every Sunday, and perhaps 45% at Christmas. Many, though not all, people are willing to listen to what we have to say. Sometimes when there is a controversy, almost half the letters of support I get are from Protestants.
I put out a letter on the 30th anniversary of Humanae Vitae. I did it for two reasons: to reaffirm the papal teaching and to draw public attention to the weakening, and weakened, state of the family. I was attacked, interestingly enough, by a number of prominent Anglican spokespersons, and also by a number of Catholics. But the largest newspaper in Melbourne gave great space to the ensuing controversy and editorialized that whatever you think about Archbishop Pell's views on artificial contraception, he is certainly right about the problems pressing on the family. Paul VI was prophetic when he said the advent of the pill would wreak havoc with the institution of marriage.
If you can provoke people to be thinking about what the Christian teachings are, that represents some kind of progress. And it reminds the young people in the schools and the universities that the Catholic Church has got something to say — a point of view, and a point of view that we believe helps human flourishing.
As part of the exercise of your teaching office, you are launching a complete overhaul of the catechetical program in Melbourne, a program directed by Msgr. Peter Elliott, whose liturgical books are well-known throughout the English-speaking world.
More that half of the Catholic children in Melbourne are in Catholic schools; there are 135,000 students in Catholic schools, which are supported by government money. My ambition, and I don't know to what extent we can realize it, is that (whether they come from practicing or non-practicing homes) when they leave school after 13 years they will have a good idea of the basic Catholic claims, and some clear idea of the argumentation for those claims. So I have said, perhaps a little provocatively, that I want them to know what they are drifting away from when they are young adults, because then they will be much better equipped to come back.
Surveys have told us that there is considerable ignorance of central Catholic claims and the argumentation for those claims. So many of the things that we took for granted in the past can no longer be taken for granted. We have to argue now for the existence of God and for the divinity of Christ. In sexual morality, the issue is no longer whether you are for or against artificial contraception and accept everything else, the moral challenge in marriage and family life is now right across the board.
You are planning, then, a catechesis that assumes nothing?
Yes, and please God, it will be systematic and comprehensive. But I don't suggest that it will solve everything. It's only one aspect. You need service, faithful witness, and community. But I do think that truth has a vitality of itself, and if these truths are presented accurately and adequately, in the long run it will make a difference.
In Melbourne, we previously did not have texts to put into the hands of the students. So we are now developing texts for the students, and the corresponding books for the teachers. We need to have a text that a majority of teachers are willing and able to use. There is no point in producing what we think is a great text if the teachers find it unusable. So the teachers are very much involved in the development and the trials. The texts will be a big help for the teachers too, who will not be forced to use any particular method of presentation. We will say that the content must be clear and orthodox and they can present that in the best way for the students that they are teaching.
Do you think this might serve as a model for other dioceses?
My responsibility is for Melbourne. If others wish to use our materials they will be welcome, but my responsibility is for Melbourne.
Why did you choose as your arch-episcopal motto:
I chose it very explicitly — I realize that it has been used by the Holy Father, but that was not the main reason. A lot of very good practicing Catholics are fearful that the best days of the Church are behind them. A number of parents have children who do not practice — occasionally, all their children do not practice. They are frightened about the future of the faith. I wanted to remind them that there are an extraordinary number of times in the Gospels where Christ tells his apostles to “be not afraid.” I wanted to remind them that it is in the person and teachings of Christ, as they come to us in the Catholic tradition, that we have our vitality and our strength. In a certain sense, whether we prosper or fail is secondary to doing what Christ wants us to do. So that's the primary reason I said, “be not afraid.”
I also wanted to, slightly wickedly, assure the minority of people who do not share my views that what I will be trying to do is what Christ would do, and that if I don't stray too far from that, I will not do any damage at all.
—Raymond de Souza
ARCHBISHOP GEORGE PELL
Personal: Born in Balarat, New South Wales, June 8, 1941; attended Loreto Convent and St. Patrick's College, Ballarat. Studied for the priest-hood at Corpus Christi College and Werribee; ordained in Rome in 1966.
Education: Awarded licentiate in theology from Urban University, Rome, a master's degree in education from Monash University, and a doctorate in philosophy from Oxford University. Fellow of the Australian College of Education; visiting scholar at Campion Hall, Oxford, in 1979 and at St. Edmund's College, Cambridge, in 1983.
Accomplishments: Principal of the Institute of Catholic Education from 1981-1984, taking part in amalgamating the institute into the newly formed Australian Catholic University in 1984. Rector of Corpus Christi College, the provincial seminary for Victoria and Tasmania, from 1985-1987. Auxiliary bishop of Melbourne from 1987; appointed as metropolitan archbishop of Melbourne by Pope John Paul II, July 16, 1996.
----- EXCERPT: Melbourne Archbishop's Game Plan ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond de Souza ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: The Pope's Trip DATE: 01/03/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 3-9, 1999 ----- BODY:to Mexico City and St. Louis
FRIDAY, Jan. 22
(Rome, Mexico City)
10:00 a.m. Central Standard Time (CST) / 3 a.m. Central European Standard Time (CET): Departure from Rome's Leonardo da Vinci International Airport for Mexico City.
4:15 p.m. CST — Arrival and welcoming ceremony at Benito Juárez International Airport in Mexico City. Speech by Pope.
6:30 p.m. CST — Signing of post-synodal apostolic exhortation for the Synod of Bishops for America, in a room at the apostolic nunciature in Mexico City.
SATURDAY, Jan. 23
(Mexico City)
11:00 a.m. CST — Mass marking the conclusion of the Synod of Bishops for America, in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Homily by Pope.
7:00 p.m. CST — Courtesy visit to Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo at presidential residence, Los Pinos. Meeting with diplomatic corps in presidential residence.
SUNDAY, Jan. 24 (Mexico City)
11:15 a.m. CST — Mass at Hermanos Rodríguez Racetrack. Homily by Pope.
6:45 p.m. CST — Visit to the sick at Adolfo López Mateos Hospital. Message from the Pope to all the sick of Mexico.
MONDAY, Jan. 25 (Mexico City)
10:00 a.m. CST — Mass in garden of the apostolic nunciature.
1:30 p.m. CST — Meeting with cardinals and presidents of bishops' conferences of the Americas, in garden of apostolic nunciature.
6:00 p.m. CST — Meeting with representatives from all 20th-century generations, in Azteca Stadium. Speech by Pope.
TUESDAY, Jan. 26 (Mexico City, St. Louis)
8:00 a.m. CST — Private Mass in chapel of apostolic nunciature.
10:00 a.m. CST — Departure ceremony at Benito Juárez International Airport.
10:30 a.m. CST — Departure for St. Louis.
2:00 p.m. CST — Arrival at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. Welcoming ceremony in the Air National Guard Hangar at the airport. Speech by Pope. Private meeting with U.S. President Clinton in a room of the Air National Guard Hangar.
6:45 p.m. CST — Meeting with youths at Kiel Center in St. Louis. Speech by Pope. Message from Pope for the sick children of Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital.
WEDNESDAY, Jan. 27 (St. Louis)
10:30 a.m. CST — Mass in Trans World Dome in St. Louis. Homily by Pope.
5:30 p.m. CST — Evening prayer service at Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis. Speech by Pope.
7:30 p.m. CST — Departure ceremony at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.
8:30 p.m. CST — Departure for Rome.
THURSDAY, Jan. 28 (Rome)
1:00 a.m. CST / 6.00 a.m. CET — Arrival at Rome's Ciampino Airport.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: U.S Notes & Quotes DATE: 01/03/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 3-9, 1999 ----- BODY:Natural Born Imitators
“Though other movies have prompted copycat crimes, Natural Born Killers is in a class by itself. The film has apparently played a role in more than a dozen murders,” he wrote.
“In 1994, a 14-year old boy accused of decapitating a 13-year-old girl in Texas reportedly told police he wanted to be famous like the Natural Born Killers. In Utah, a teenager became so obsessed with the movie he shaved his head and wore tinted granny glasses like Mickey (Woody Harrelson), the main character, and allegedly murdered his stepmother and half sister. A Georgia teenager accused of shooting to death an 82-year-old Florida man shouted at television cameras, ‘I'm a natural-born killer!’ Four other Georgians in their 20s were charged with killing a truck driver and fleeing in his vehicle after watching the movie 19 times. In Massachusetts, in 1995, three youths aged 18 to 20 were accused of killing an old man, stabbing him 27 times: ‘Haven't you seen Natural Born Killers before?’ one bragged to his girlfriend.”
Citizens, Lawmakers, Bishops — On Iraq Bombing
The article quoted lawmakers and citizens who believed the bombing was motivated by the President's desire to avoid impeachment — and Churchmen who used carefully chosen but strong words about the bombing, but did not ascribe motives to the President.
“Clinton's decision to bomb Iraq is a blatant and disgraceful use of military force for his own personal gain,” Colorado Springs Representative Joel Hefley told the paper. “That any American president would stoop to endangering the lives of our American military personnel to delay impeachment proceedings in the House is absolutely reprehensible.”
Continued the article, “Condemnation of the raids came quickly from the religious community.” It quoted Archbishop Charles Chaput, who said, “I'm astonished and disappointed. I'm disappointed that we didn't exercise more restraint.”
The Philadelphia Inquirer on Dec. 18 quoted Anthony Cardinal Bevilacqua, archbishop there, saying, “While I understand and share the frustration over the situation in Iraq, I am greatly saddened” by the bombings. He continued, “The taking of an innocent human life is always tragic and can never be accepted as unavoidable.”
School Aims to Produce Moral Lawyers
New York Times News Service, Dec. 13—A recent article about Pepperdine, an evangelical law school in Southern California, began by describing the huge cross that sits on a hill overlooking the campus. The school means to plant the cross in the hearts of students, as well, said the New York Times report.
The University's aim is to make moral lawyers. It quoted one third-year student saying, “We're not just here to learn to be attorneys but to learn to be virtuous attorneys both in our performance and in our hearts.”
It noted that the school received a lot of attention since Independent Counsel Ken Starr accepted, and then rejected under pressure, a job offer there shortly before meeting Linda Tripp and beginning the chapter in his investigation that ended with the impeachment of President Clinton for perjury.
“Often in conversations here, Starr was cited as an example of a moral lawyer, while Clinton's legalistic distinctions were used as examples of strategies that Christian lawyers should reject,” said the paper. It quoted one second-year student who said, “At Pepperdine they teach you: ‘Don't try and get off on your little technicalities.’”
One professor told the paper that a lawyer's morality is as important as his knowledge. It quoted Douglas Kmiec saying, “If you're going to hold yourself out as a counselor giving people advice, you can't give incomplete advice.” Kmiec teaches papal encyclicals in addition to court opinions, it said.
The paper quoted others at the University stressing that in order to teach morality they must also be a first-rate college. Its 650 students, the report noted, take the standard bar examinations and work in traditional legal jobs as the school “seeks to produce students who can compete with graduates of other law schools for jobs.”
----- EXCERPT: Excerpts from selected publications ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 01/03/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 3-9, 1999 ----- BODY:At the End of the Century of Martyrs
“That's at least half of all the Christians martyred since the beginning of the Church in about 33 A.D., according to an upcoming edition of the World Christian Encyclopedia.” Even now, said the article, “every year an estimated 163,000 Christians are still dying for their faith.”
“The largest single persecutor of Christians in this century was the Soviet Union. It is estimated that at least 18 million Eastern Orthodox and Catholic believers died between 1917 and 1980, most of them in the Soviet Union's prison camps.”
“Among them were hundreds of thousands of Russian Orthodox priests, monks, and nuns. Approximately 200,000 were slaughtered in the 1920s and 1930s. Another 500,000 Orthodox priests, monks, and nuns were imprisoned or deported to Siberia, where most of them died. Altogether, 15 million Christians are believed to have died in Soviet prison camps because of their faith.”
The article continued, “A team of research specialists told the U.S. Congress in 1964 it estimated 2.5 million Catholics, including 55 bishops, had been killed by the Soviets.”
It cited Paul Marshall, an expert on religious persecution, who said the slaughter of Christians has not been confined to the Soviets. According to the paper, relying on Marshall's data: “North Korea had 2,000 Christian churches and hundreds of thousands of Christians in 1948, when it became Communist. Today, three churches remain — but dubiously, under government control.
“Uganda saw the destruction of 100,000 to 300,000 people during the 1970s.” In Rwanda, up to 500,000 of the 700,000 people slaughtered in ethnic conflicts in 1994 were Christians and are considered martyrs. “In the Sudan, up to a million Christians have been slaughtered since 1970.”
The article concluded with this chilling statistic: “The Christian Encyclopedia team predicts that by the year 2025, the Christian population will rise to about 2.8 billion, and the number of martyrs per year will rise from the current 163,000 to 210,000.”
Men Will Vastly Outnumber Women in Asia's Future
“On average, women around the world give birth to 106 baby boys for every 100 girls; more boys than girls are then lost in childhood. In China, the sex ratio for first births matches that average… but for every subsequent birth, the surplus of boys increases. This imbalance has been growing rapidly since 1979. In 1982, there were 107 boys aged under 5 for every 100 girls; in 1990, 110; in 1995, 118,” the magazine reported.
“China is by no means the only Asian country where the ratio of boy to girl babies is on the rise; the same is true in South Korea and Taiwan.
… But in China, the dearth of daughters is a particular problem; it will help to create the world's biggest group of frustrated bachelors,” said the magazine.
“By 2002 … the surplus of Chinese males in their 20s will exceed the entire female population of Taiwan,” it said, noting two causes. “Female infanticide clearly continues in China, even though it is illegal and condemned by the government. … [But new] technology now offers Chinese parents an alternative to … infanticide as a way of dealing with unwanted girls: sex selective abortion,” it said.
“There is indeed an irony in the fact that, in this matter, the traditionally feminist ‘pro-choice’ position has meant encouraging discrimination against women.”
Oceania Synod Plagued by Misleading Reports
According to the Herald, Cardinal Clancy said that local commentators gave “far too much weight” to the speeches of individual bishops in a forum meant to address many issues. He also said the final list of propositions from the bishops to the Pope “was overwhelmingly supported by the synod participants.”
Cardinal Clancy said that the synod's official message will be a statement arising from many discussions, with “all the shortcomings of any document prepared in that manner. … However, its substance is quite clear and it is to be taken with the utmost seriousness. It has the character of ‘guidelines.’” he is quoted saying, but it “is expected that the Catholic Church in Australia will conform to those guidelines to the extent that it has not already done so.”
Cardinal Clancy also clarified comments he made to the London Catholic weekly The Tablet about priestly celibacy — comments he said were meant to speak to issues in small, isolated islands where priests can visit only once a year. “I said that the proposal to ordain selected married men [catechists] so that people might have the Eucharist regularly had some merit,” the paper quoted him saying.
“I went on to say, however, that there were significant counter arguments by reason of which I did not favor a married priesthood even in those circumstances.”
----- EXCERPT: Excerpts from selected publications ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Vaction Notes & Quotes DATE: 01/03/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 3-9, 1999 ----- BODY:John Paul Still Hopes to Visit Iraq
“We hope so,” Sodano told reporters at a press conference who asked him about the trip. “It's in our prayers.”
The biblical birthplace of Abraham is in modern-day Iraq, and the Holy Father has expressed his desire to visit this landmark of salvation history as part of the Jubilee Year 2000 celebrations.
Meanwhile, Reuters had reported Dec. 18 that the Pope had to cancel meetings the Friday before Christmas because of the flu — though he still registered his reaction to the bombing of Iraq by U.S. and British forces that had recently begun.
The slight bout with the flu was not expected to affect the Pope's schedule for many days, according to the report. But it did postpone a scheduled meeting with the head of the Arab League, a meeting where the Pope was expected to give a more detailed reaction to the bombing of Iraq.
Reuters reported that the Vatican's chief spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said the Pope was “saddened” by the bombing, and the report noted that the Vatican had described the bombing of Iraqi sites as “aggression.”
The Dec. 21 New York Post quoted comments the Pope made at an audience on Saturday, Dec. 19: “Not only do I feel profound sorrow for the Iraqi people, but I am also bitter to see how often the hopes invested in the power and validity of international law and in the organizations meant to guarantee its application are disappointed,” he was quoted saying.
He added that the proximity of the attacks to Christmas made the suffering of Iraqis even worse, according to the British Broadcasting Service in a Dec. 20 report.
Pope Outselling McGwire in St. Louis
ST. LOUIS BUSINESS JOURNAL, Dec. 21—In America respect is all too often best measured by merchandise. In many St. Louis stores, retailers focusing on Christmas sales have not yet stocked items featuring Pope John Paul II, said a report in the St. Louis Business Journal. But in those who have, the Pope, who has planned a visit to the city this January, is driving high sales.
“The Pope is so hot that Mark McGwire goods were moved from the front of Sportsprint stores to make room for papal items, including sweatshirts, T-shirts, polo shirts, jackets, caps, and tote bags,” said the report. It quoted a vice president of the chain saying that it expected to make more than half a million dollars from sales of Pope-related items.
Another store, Catholic Supply, is offering about a dozen items that it has found to be popular as well, according to a store spokeswoman.
All the money making will have a helpful side-effect in the Archdiocese, said its spokesman, Steve Mamanella. Merchandisers holding licenses will contribute an amount equal to 5% of production costs to the Church in St. Louis.
But the Archdiocese itself does not intend to join in the selling. “The archdiocese isn't using this as an opportunity to make money. We are not retailers,” said Mamanella.
The Pope's Week
Audiences
Thursday, Dec. 17:
• Bishop Javier Echevarria Rodriguez, Opus Dei prelate.
• Lech Walesa, accompanied by his wife and entourage.
• Archbishop Jorge Maria Mejia, archivist and librarian of the Holy Roman Church.
• Paul Cardinal Poupard, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture.
Monday, Dec. 21:
• Archbishop Angelo Acerbi, apostolic nuncio in the Netherlands.
• Archbishop Donato Squicciarini, apostolic nuncio in Austria.
Wednesday, Dec. 23:
• Archbishop Javier Lozano Barragan, president of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers, with his secretary and under-secretary.
Other Activities
Saturday, Dec. 19:
• Appointed Bishop Giulio Sanguineti as bishop of Brescia, Italy.
• Appointed Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, of Newark, N.J., Bishop Piotr Jarecki, auxiliary bishop of Warsaw, Poland, Dagoberto Valdes of Cuba, and Renata Livraghy of Italy as members of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
Tuesday, Dec. 22:
• Appointed Father Franz Dietl as auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese of Munich and Freising, Germany.
----- EXCERPT: Excerpts from selected publications ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: PERSPECTIVE DATE: 01/03/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 3-9, 1999 ----- BODY:Here in Gomorrah-on-the-Potomac, the common wisdom is that the new Congress will not do much of anything in 1999, being paralyzed by the razor-thin Republican margin in the House of Representatives. Strangely, the new House leadership seems content with this sense of lassitude. Here, though, are four issues fraught with moral significance. Each requires the most serious attention from our national legislators in the new year.
One hesitates to say that anything is the “ultimate example” of our cultural crisis these days. But turning reproduction into a technological process is a form of narcissism that's hard to imagine topping. It is also hard to imagine anything more degrading to the human project. My friend Charles Krauthammer is no enemy of science, being himself a doctor. But the distinguished columnist has gone so far as to propose making human cloning a capital offense. I cite his proposal, not necessarily to endorse it, but to drive home what a thoughtful man, who cannot be accused of being a toady to Catholic morality, deems the gravity of the issue.
Meanwhile, there is every indication that Yassir Arafat will declare an independent Palestinian state on May 4, 1999. With such a state established on the west bank of the Jordan River, Israel between the Jordan and the Mediterranean will be narrower than Derwood Merrill's strike zone in last year's baseball playoffs, and its security will shrink accordingly. Suppose Saddam Hussein's Iraq becomes Palestine's arms depot, and the arms in question are chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons? A ghastly, bloody war in the Holy Land would quickly ensue, and on the threshold of the Great Jubilee of 2000.
The Saddam Hussein regime is not safe for the world. Something must be done about it, and about reconstructing an Iraq fit to live in for the suffering people of the country.
Missile defense is not a moral option; it is a moral imperative, as a deterrent against rogue states and as a means of legitimate self-defense. And missile defense systems ought to be deployed in ways that demonstrate that the United States is not seeking to retreat beneath a space-based technological Astrodome, but will work with others to build a shield against preemptive missile attack against neighbors and democratic allies. The next time you hear someone dismiss missile defense as “Star Wars,” tell them to get morally, as well as politically, serious.
1999: Looks like a tough year at the end of a tough century.
George Weigel is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: George Weigel ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: The Smallest of Men Taints a Grand Office DATE: 01/03/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 3-9, 1999 ----- BODY:The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals
by William J. Bennett
(The Free Press, 160 pp., 1998, $20)
“Bill Clinton is a reproach. He has defiled the office of the presidency of the United States,” writes William J. Bennett in his latest best-selling book. As the Senate convenes to put a president on trial for the first time in more than a hundred years, we do well to revisit his words.
Bennett's slim volume is not really a book. It is a scorching, passionate, almost frantic closing argument before the jury of the American people, exhorting them to convict their president of being manifestly unworthy to serve. As courtroom veterans know, sometimes — after a long, wearisome, and disheartening trial — a scorching, passionate, and frantic summation is necessary lest a somnolent jury fail to do its duty.
The Death of Outrage details the impeached president's assault on marital fidelity, sexual propriety, the importance of character, truthfulness, and the law. If polls are accurate, most people agree with Bennett: President Clinton's behavior is widely held to be morally reprehensible and illegal. Those who have not been convinced by almost a full year of all-Monica, all-the-time network coverage will not be convinced by Bennett, who even takes on the less-than-pleasant task of defending Kenneth Starr's occasional unpleasant tactics.
As a closing argument before a jury, it seems like a winner. Bennett's frustration is that the American people seem to have accepted the facts but refuse to sentence the offender. The November election results only confirm Bennett's worst fears, namely, that “the widespread loss of outrage against this President's misconduct tells us something fundamentally important about our condition. Our commitment to long-standing American ideals has been enervated.”
Bennett rushed this book into print last summer to sound the alarm that America must not let itself become the sort of society for which Clinton would be a fitting leader. He worries that a prosperous, secure America which tolerates moral turpitude in high places might no longer possess the virtue requisite for greatness. He may be right — after all, a nation that re-elects defenders of partial-birth abortion has much to answer for. The death of outrage may well mark the death of America as the cshining city on the hill” so fondly evoked by President Reagan, in whose cabinet Bennett served.
But there is an alternative explanation. Perhaps the American people, utterly disgusted by the president's behavior, have turned also on his prosecutors, hoping that a “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” approach may obscure Clinton's deep venality and mendacity. Judge Starr was not thanked when he reported that Clinton is the kind of man who commits adultery after returning to the Oval Office from Easter Sunday services.
If such an explanation is true, it is not the case that outrage has died, but that this president is so outrageous that polite people just avert their eyes and pretend not to see. Those who cannot avert their eyes due to professional obligations — congressmen and journalists — grow markedly less sympathetic when they are asked to become accomplices in the ethical gymnastics of a president who is, in the words of Senator Bob Kerrey, “an unusually good liar.” For now, at least among the political class, outrage is back.
Bennett is the quintessential “big picture” author, usually writing about the grand sweep of law, literature, politics, and culture, who normally would have evaluated such an alternative explanation. But here he goes after Clinton with such righteous ferocity that the reflective Bennett, a man of nuance, context, and distinctions, takes a very secondary role. Like so much else, Bennett — though owed a debt of gratitude for this summons to action — comes out the worse for having engaged Bill Clinton.
He is not the only one. The overarching point that Bennett fails to make in his book is that Clinton corrupts whatever has the misfortune of coming in contact with him. His narcissism — that everything, everywhere, is always to be seen through the prism of his own self-interest — is so enormous that he has managed to do what Bennett frets about in this book: corrupt the American people.
The New Republic, which opposes Clinton's removal, wrote that Clinton is “a moral and cultural disaster” who is “shockingly capable of degrading just about anything he touches.” Two days before the House of Representatives voted to impeach Clinton, the Washington Post, in an editorial arguing against impeachment, expressed its concern in the form of a question: “What will he drag down with him?”
The very next day, Clinton bombed Iraq. It is a terrible thing to be ordered to kill another man — soldier or civilian. More terrible still for American servicemen to kill Iraqis, knowing that their commander in chief is the sort of man who might engage the machinery of death in an attempt to change the newspaper headlines in Washington. Their surely tortured consciences are only the latest things to be dragged down by Bill Clinton.
The Post's question is not quite right. The question that will echo long after the Clintons slither out of the White House for Georgetown or Hollywood is: What did he not drag down with him?
He cannot even go to Mass, as he did in South Africa, without causing scandal. He turned the Lincoln Bedroom into a fund-raising trinket. He exposed his most devoted followers — prominent feminists — as cynics and hypocrites who will hide sexual malfeasance behind their skirts if politics demands it. He replaced freedom and security as the pillars of American foreign policy with peddling American popular culture and pimping for Planned Parenthood. He reduced Kenneth Starr, a one-time prospective Supreme Court nominee, to taking DNA samples from a stained dress. He made fools out of his closest collaborators, who repeated his lies and subsequently chose to keep their jobs by sacrificing their dignity. He has made his allies embarrassed to defend him and his critics defensive about embarrassing the nation.
He has left the language richer in circumlocutions and obfuscations, but poorer in conveying the truth. He has rendered his presidency a laughingstock and his own name a shorthand expression for lying — clever lying to be sure, but lying nonetheless. He ascended to a grand office and conducted himself as the smallest of men. And finally, he has forced his wife to do what a modern woman is never supposed to do, namely, to swallow her pride, forget his betrayals and, in order to consummate their joint lust for power, to stand, stand, stand by her man.
William Bennett is right. Bill Clinton is a reproach. That this book is not as good as we have come to expect from Bennett is not a surprise; concerning Clinton, nothing is ever as good as it ought to be.
Raymond de Souza is a seminarian in the Diocese of Kingston, Ontario.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond de Souza ----- KEYWORDS: Books -------- TITLE: The Holocaust Document: Reading Between the Lines DATE: 01/03/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 3-9, 1999 ----- BODY:“Jews and Catholics: Beyond Apologetics,”
by David Novak
(First Things, January 1999)
Scholar David Novak contributes a generally sympathetic Jewish view on the Vatican's recent statement about the Holocaust:
“When a Catholic speaks of ‘the Church,’… he can mean one of two things. On the one hand, the Church is undoubtedly a collection of fallible human beings. … At this level, it is certainly recognized that these fallible members of the Church can do either good or evil, as is their free human choice. On the other hand, when the Pope speaks of the Church ‘as such,’ … he is speaking about what the Church understands as her Magisterium, her teaching authority, which Catholics see as expressing God's will beginning with Scripture and extending into the ongoing development of Church doctrine.
“Let us first take the Church as a group of human beings. … Now just who would apologize [for complicity in the Holocaust] to whom? … How do you apologize to someone in whose murder you were a participant? In order to apologize, you have to make your apology to someone who is capable of accepting your apology. … On the other hand, if an apology is made by people who did not commit any such crimes, directly or indirectly, and who do not even sympathize with the murderers, then what would they be apologizing for?
“The Jewish tradition on this point is quite clear: We do not believe in inherited guilt. … Justice, whether human or divine, must recognize with the prophet Ezekiel that only ‘the person who sins shall die’(Ezekiel 18:20).
“But what about the second notion of the Church, namely, ‘the Church as such’? … [T]he Pope, when he spoke in the synagogue in Rome (by his own unprecedented invitation), condemned anti-Semitism: ‘at any time from any source,’ which means that when antiSemitism has come out of Church teaching, those who so taught it are to be considered in error by the internal criteria of the teaching authority of the Church itself.
“When one sees how moral logic within religious traditions like Judaism and Catholicism operates, then it is possible to understand why it is not an apology that is called for. Apologies are cheap. … [Instead,] the statement says it is ‘an act of repentance.’And then, mirabile dictu, in parenthesis we see the Hebrew word for repentance: teshuvah. Here the Church has quite consciously and deliberately chosen a central term straight out of the Jewish theological tradition. … [T]he statement goes on to say, ‘as members of the Church, we are linked to the sins as well as the merits of all her children.’ … Of course, in a literal moral sense, I am not responsible for somebody else's sins. … However, both Judaism and Catholicism are ‘covenantal’; for each, the relationship with God is primarily a communal affair, not merely a relationship between an individual person and God. … In a covenanted community, even though one is not morally responsible for the sins of fellow members of the community, there is still an existential sense of collective sorrow and shame when other members of the community — even those as estranged from the community as the Nazis were — commit sins.…
“As regards the Holocaust, the Church feels sorrow and shame about those of her faithful who did not respond properly to Nazism, or who did nothing more than sympathize with what was being done to the victims of Nazi persecution. … The Church learns from her mistakes, and she seems to be doing this by an ongoing process of introspection more prolonged and more painful than any mere apology.
“To be a member of a covenanted community means to acknowledge the sins of all one's fellow members. This is an awesome covenantal responsibility, beyond the demands of ordinary morality. Indeed, one can only bear such responsibility when one believes that the community has been elected by God and is the object of God's special, supernatural concern.
“On one point in particular, I think the [Vatican's] statement tries to say too much. … We can hope that in time historians will be able to allow us to decide whether Pius XII was blameworthy, praiseworthy, or somewhere in-between. That cannot be done now.
“This statement of the Catholic Church [We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah] recognizes the chosenness of the Jewish people.… Jews have to see this document as making a positive contribution to the always complex relationship between the Jewish people and the Catholic Church.”
Ellen Wilson Fielding writes from Davidsonville, Maryland.
The Definite Article is a digest of the Register's choice from the nation's top journals.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding ----- KEYWORDS: Books -------- TITLE: LETTERS DATE: 01/03/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 3-9, 1999 ----- BODY:Defending Luther
Iprotest, in the strongest possible manner, the article “Do-it-Yourself Churches Won't Get You the Truth,” from the pen of Karl Keating.
First, Martin Luther had no intention of starting a church and, to this day, the churches that bear his name regard themselves as (and indeed are) part of the “one holy, catholic, and apostolic church,” only too eager to discuss what is correct doctrine with anyone. It was Leo X who sent Luther and those who agreed with him “packing,” shattering Catholic unity.
Second, regarding “purgatory,” Lutheran churches affirm that the entire universe must be “purged” before the Kingdom of God comes. What is denied is the “intermediate state.” The question has to do with the word “temporal” when applied to the eschaton. What can the word temporary [or temporal] possibly mean in this context?
The Lutheran churches do have a place for good works in the order of salvation. They are the fruits of justification, upon which God's judgment of us all will be based, but Christ is our justification. Misinformation is of no help in relationships among churches! For example, I have constantly opposed those who say Roman Catholics have no Gospel, the Roman Catholics worship Mary and save themselves, etc. I expect members of the Roman Catholic church to oppose inaccuracies, too. That the polemics persist in 1998 is tragic.
Rev. Jerry Myers
Ecumenical Representative
Allegheny Synod—ELCA
Pastor, Trinity & St. Thomas Lutheran Churches
Hooversville, Pennsylvania
Karl Keating writes in response:
I noted that “Martin Luther determined that there is no purgatory (good-bye Maccabees!) and that works play no role in salvation.”
Purgatory is precisely an “intermediate state,” and Rev. Myers notes that today's Lutherans (as did Luther) reject such a belief. The term “purgatory” never has meant merely that “the entire universe must be ‘purged’ before the Kingdon of God comes.”
By saying that good works “are the fruits of justification” — and apparently nothing more than that — Rev. Myers confirms my comment that, according to Luther, “works play no role in salvation.” For Luther, good works were signs that justification had been achieved, but they did not assist in maintaining that justification.
Few men who ended up starting churches of their own intended at first to do so. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, never thought of himself as splitting off from the Anglican Church. In Luther's case, Pope Leo X merely ratified what already had been accomplished by Luther, who had severed himself from the Catholic Church and had become the head of a new ecclesial body.
—KK
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Signs of a Decline In Abortions Rates Are All Round Us DATE: 01/03/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 3-9, 1999 ----- BODY:There is an awful lot of welcome news these days about the decline and fall of the sexual revolution. To be sure, it is wedged in between a fair amount of other news chronicling continuing casualties of this revolution. But it's definitely there. Abortion rates are dropping. Abortion providers are closing shop at record rates. Rates of teen sexual intercourse and pregnancy are dropping.
If you are even a moderate consumer of news, you have probably heard reports of this progress which are not very instructive. Some are even misleading. The people who brought you the sexual revolution — who are now ensconced at research institutes and “family planning” organizations nationwide — are publicly “interpreting” the most recent findings in a light which will allow them to continue to promote their same tired messages.
But the times, they are really changing. And all the interpretation and spin in the world can't mask this.
Take the decline in abortion rates, for example. Rates for the most recently measured year — 1996 — are the lowest they've been since 1975. In 1975, for every 1,000 women of childbearing age (roughly ages 15-44), there were 22 abortions. That rate increased steadily until 1990. In 1996, the rate is 23 abortions per 1,000 women. And the numbers of abortions per year in the United States have declined from their high of 1.6 million per year in the late 1980s, to 1.4 million per year in 1996. That's a full 200,000 abortions every year that aren't happening anymore!
Abortion providers, too, are on the decline. The number of abortion facilities in the United States is now at its lowest level since 1975, two years after abortion on demand was legalized. Between 1992 and 1996, there was a 14% decline in the number of facilities providing abortion in the United States. Since 1982, the total decline in the number of abortion facilities in the U.S. is a whopping 30%!
There is also good news on one of the most troublesome fronts — teen sexual activity. The Centers for Disease Control Youth Risk Behavior Study reports that for the first time in decades, a majority of the 16,000 teens surveyed reported that they were not sexually active. Over the 1990s, there has been an 11% decline in the number of sexually active teens.
Not surprisingly, given these figures, numbers of teen pregnancies and abortions are down, too. The 1995 teen pregnancy rate was the lowest in two decades — 101 per 1,000 girls, down from 117 in 1975. And the 1995 teen abortion rate dropped 25% from its 1990 levels.
Abortion proponents are chalking all of this up to improved use of contraception. And clamoring for more and more promotion of contraception — particularly to teen-agers, and without parental involvement — to continue the trends. But while there is no definitive accounting for these promising trends, this explanation raises more questions than it answers. It also ignores other possible explanations which comport better with common sense.
Since the early '70s and the massive campaigns to put contraception into the hands of minors — without parental consent but with parents' tax dollars — increased public spending on contraception has occurred simultaneously with increased rates of sexual activity and increased abortion rates.
In fact, leaders of major pro-abortion and pro-contraception groups have publicly acknowledged that there is such a cause and effect relationship. Today, Planned Parenthood's Alan Guttmacher Institute reports that the most likely abortion patient is in fact a woman who uses contraception. A reminder, if ever there was, of the unreliability of contraception, not proof of its effectiveness.
The more likely explanation for America's improved sexual health is that we are, collectively, wising up to the weighty implications of sex. Decades of disastrous statistics — and human fallout in the form of single motherhood, abortion, repeat abortion, welfare dependency, and poverty — are preying on our minds, and on our lives. The actual relationships between sex and babies, single parenting and poverty, poverty and abortion, and so on, are clear as day. The epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases — including the most deadly, AIDS — is frightening us. Just this month, the American Social Health Association reported that one in three Americans will have a sexually transmitted disease by the age of 24!
So young people are actually abstaining from sex more often. Abstinence programs are getting significant federal money for the first time. Churches are speaking boldly and creatively about chastity to their young people.
So we've got people's attention now. The message seems to be sinking in about where we've gone off track. There is a “gut” understanding that some sexual behaviors lead to freedom and happiness and life. And others lead literally to death, or figuratively to the death of the spirit or future dreams. The challenge now is to use this time to teach what's right in the arena of human sexuality. To move away from fear-based motivations to those more worthy of the human spirit. The Catholic Church and others have a treasure of this information. Let's get it out and share it.
Helen Alvaré is director of planning and information at the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Helen Alvaré ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: The Allure of Communities Filled 'With Joy and the Holy Spirit' DATE: 01/03/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 3-9, 1999 ----- BODY:Following is the second in a series of excerpts from the Statement of Conclusions issued regarding four days of recent meetings between the bishops of Australia and the Cardinal Prefects of the Congregations in Rome:
Consecrated life, as evidenced by its universal presence and evangelical witness, is not isolated and marginal, but a reality which affects the whole Church. Because consecrated life manifests the inner nature of the Christian calling and has contributed significantly to the vitality of the Church in Australia, she is committed to supporting it. Elsewhere in this document, the great contributions of religious, oftentimes as pioneering innovators and at great personal and community sacrifice, have been recognized.
VOCATIONS: ‘AUTHENTICITY AND TRANSPARENCY’
The Church in Australia is undergoing a difficult period due to the decline of vocations to the consecrated life. In light of this challenge, the Church must pray for vocations. The Lord always heeds the prayer which issues from the Church and, in responding, always far exceeds our expectations. In addition to prayer (cf. Matthew 9:37-38), and to heeding the invitation of Jesus to “Come and see” (John 1:39), a primary responsibility of all consecrated men and women is to propose the ideal of the following of Christ, and then to support the response to the Spirit's action in the heart of those who are called.
Consecrated persons need to show forth a life which is recognized for its transparency and authenticity, and this in regard to their spirituality, their ministry and their community living.
All must be able to recognize in them the fact that they are distinguished by an intense spiritual life sustained by prayer, especially by the Eucharist, by fidelity to the evangelical counsels and by ascesis. Consecrated persons are to be “experts in God,” and in his ways. Their whole being ought to be suffused with the divine presence. When people approach religious, they should find men and women whose lives bespeak union with God, and whose lives invite others into that union.
Consecrated persons express the person of Christ — Christ saving and redeeming, Christ forgiving, Christ healing, Christ teaching, Christ in every gesture of compassion toward those in need, Christ loving his people. But there is still more to the apostolate. As the apostolic exhortation Vita Consecrata puts it: “More than in any activity, the apostolate consists in the witness of one's own complete dedication to the Lord's saving will, a dedication nourished by the practice of prayer and of penance” (n. 44). “The very purpose of consecrated life is conformity to the Lord Jesus in his total self-giving” (Vita Consecrata 65).
The authenticity and transparency of community life are a striking expression in our time of the fact that living together in grace, with one mind and one heart, is not merely a possibility, but a reality. The whole Church greatly depends on the witness of communities filled “with joy and with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 13:52). Such authentic common living, where each one supports and forgives the other, witnesses to the presence of Jesus and speaks directly to the deep yearnings of the heart. For members of Institutes of consecrated life, community life is of the essence of their vocation.
When consecrated persons live their vocation with authenticity and transparency, they are an example of total commitment to the Gospel lived in the spirit of their Founders. This example, joined with constant prayer, is a very effective vocational promotion program. As Pope Paul VI reminded us, people of our age, especially the young, have become skeptical of mere words, and are convinced by words only when these are accompanied by example (cf. apostolic exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi 41). The example of consecrated persons evidently rooted in Christ is the best way to convince and inspire young people, inviting them to follow Christ in religious Institutes.
PROBLEMS: FORMATION
Formation, both initial and ongoing, is aimed at showing in the various moments of life that religious belong totally and joyfully to the Lord. Both formators and those being formed need clarity regarding the charism of the Institute. For this purpose, the establishment of structures to train those responsible for formation would be helpful. The whole person needs to be formed, in every aspect of one's being, human, cultural, spiritual, and pastoral.
Ongoing formation for every member is an intrinsic requirement of consecrated life. Institutes have made great efforts in this area. As a result, religious are often found in solidarity with the most marginal elements of society and in new ministries. In some instances, however, problems have arisen because the selection of formators or of centers for ongoing formation was not made in view of full communion with the Magisterium of the Church.
PROBLEMS: FRAGMENTATION
Because of a changing world and changing expectations, of a desire to be closer to the people or to one's work, or because of the cost of maintaining large buildings, a number of religious have, with permission of their superiors, opted to leave communities in order to live in apartments or privately. Such an option, however, fragments the life and witness of an Institute.
It is not enough that individual members of Institutes engage in employment in the secular sphere and find living accommodations singly. It is not enough that religious engage in any work whatsoever, even if they do this “in the spirit of the Founder.” Such general dispersal of members and of energies prejudices the corporate witness of an Institute which was founded with a specific charism for a specific purpose. Such charisms are given by the Holy Spirit for the good of the entire Church, and religious need to be faithful to them.
The fragmentation of Institutes is often accompanied by a practical redefinition of members. Various Institutes now have associate members or collaborators, who share for a period of time the Institute's community life and its dedication to prayer and the apostolate.
This needs to be arranged in such a way, however, that the identity of the Institute in its internal life is not harmed. Though the collaboration of associates allows works conducted by the Institutes to continue, it needs to be recognized that lay associates are not members of the Institute in the way that professed members are. Associate members are not an alternative to the vocations decline.
LIVING IN COMMUNION
Vita Consecrata expresses a rich mystery in simple terms: “The Church is essentially a mystery of communion, ‘a people made one with the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit’” (n. 41). This communion is expressed at every level of her life. It is communion that distinguishes her as a body from all other bodies, for communion is not mere regulation, but is an ordering of relationships, in charity, within the Body of Christ. Each member of the Body has a specific importance and role. The Church does not create her own ordering and structuring, but receives them from Christ himself.
In light of the Council's strong teaching about communion, “consecrated persons are asked to be true experts of communion and to practice the spirituality of communion. … The sense of ecclesial communion, developing into a spirituality of communion, promotes a way of thinking, speaking and acting which enables the Church to grow in depth and extension” (Vita Consecrata 46). Indeed, “the Church was not established to be an organization for activity, but rather to give witness as the living Body of Christ” (Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes and Sacred Congregation for Bishops, Directive Note Mutuae Relationes, 20). In the Founders and Foundresses we see a constant and lively sense of the Church, which they manifest by their full participation in all aspects of the Church's life and in their great cooperation with and ready obedience to the bishops, especially to the Roman Pontiff.
CONSECRATED PERSONS IN THE CHURCH COMMUNITY
Consecrated persons must be in communion with their pastors, and this at the level of both the particular Church and the universal Church. Consecrated persons are called to be mindful of the ancient dictum: sentire cum Ecclesia, to live and think and love with the Church. In this regard, Vita Consecrata is very explicit. “A distinctive aspect of ecclesial communion is allegiance of mind and heart to the Magisterium of the bishops, an allegiance which must be lived honestly and clearly testified to before the People of God by all consecrated persons, especially those involved in theological research, teaching, publishing, catechesis and the use of the means of social communication. Because consecrated persons have a special place in the Church, their attitude in this regard is of immense importance for the whole People of God” (Vita Consecrata 46).
The special place of consecrated persons in the Body is recognized by the Church when she erects the Institutes, confirms their Constitutions, entrusts an apostolate to the community and recognizes the profession of each member. Because the one Faith underlies the Church's life, all members must be in union with the teaching of the Church. In matters of the Faith, communion rules out such concepts as “loyal opposition,” or “faithful subversion.” The faithful strive to deepen their understanding of the Faith, not to oppose it or to subvert it. Institutions, especially in the field of education, which are under the authority of consecrated persons should assure that lecturers, both those who are on staff and those who are invited, serve, in union with the Church, to deepen the understanding of Faith.
LOYALTY TO THE CHURCH
While relations between the bishops and the major superiors have been, generally, good, with most problems resolved by dialogue and understanding, still several difficulties have emerged with importance for the Church.
Religious, by reason of their public state in the Church, are prominent in the eyes of the faithful and of the secular media. This prominence requires a more evident fidelity to the Magisterium than is required of ordinary faithful. What is true of all religious is even more true of major superiors, by reason of their office. What is true of major superiors is still more true of a conference of major superiors erected by the Holy See.
The Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and for Societies of Apostolic Life has shared with the bishops several concerns about situations in Australia, and asks them to dialogue with the major superiors regarding such points as promoting prayer for ecclesial vocations, including those of consecrated life, and deepening both communion within the Church and assent to the Magisterium regarding such areas as the non-ordination of women to the priesthood, the theology of the Church and of the sacraments of faith, the theology of communion and moral problems.
----- EXCERPT: When consecrated persons live with authenticity and transparency, they help promote future vocations ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sects DATE: 01/03/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 3-9, 1999 ----- BODY:How would you like to go to bed one night as a Catholic in good standing and wake the following morning to find you belong to a dangerous sect? In some circles of German-speaking countries, notorious for a widespread “anti-Rome complex,” holding orthodox positions on abortion, extramarital sex, divorce, or faithfulness to the Pope and bishops, is now sufficient to have one branded as sectarian.
The latest issue of the Swiss newspaper Zeit-Fragen devotes front-page coverage to a new series of junior high school textbooks offered by Klett Publishers, one of the largest producers of textbooks in the German-speaking world. One of the texts bears the provocative title “Sects: New Ways to Salvation,” and offers preventive medicine to keep students from being duped by peddlers of religious snake oil, while alerting parents to the perils of cults that pose as authentic religion. Chapter by chapter the text launches surgical strikes to take out all the usual targets: Jehovah's Witnesses, the Unification Church (Moonies), the Church of Scientology, and so forth. Up to here, all is well. But Klett reserves its heavy firepower for Chapter 7, where it carpet bombs a new breed of sect: those within the Church.
In this chapter, entitled “Fundamentalism: Sectarian Tendencies in Christianity,” the authors broaden their definition of sect to include practically anyone outside the liberal Christian mainstream. Among “typical characteristics of Catholic and Evangelical Fundamentalism,” we find the following:
• conservative politics
• radical anti-Communism
• adherence to outmoded moral positions
• opposition to the liberalization of abortion laws
• rejection of modern Biblical exegesis such as the symbolic interpretation of miracle stories
• belief in the personal existence and power of Satan
• clear differentiation between good and evil
Going into still greater detail, the text describes traits of fundamentalist Christians within the Catholic Church, beginning with a “traditional interpretation of the Bible and Church doctrine.” These closet fundamentalists, the text informs readers, can be spotted by their “uncritical relationship” to the Church hierarchy (the worst possible insult to free-thinking German intellectuals), as well as their “unquestioning acceptance of outdated moral principles such as the rejection of premarital sex and contraception.” The Klett text lumps together these fundamentalists with “sectarian tendencies” under the classification “traditionalists.”
To make sure that students have caught on, the next section of the textbook provides an exercise, where one must place an “F” (fundamentalists—the bad guys) or an “L” (liberal Christians— the good guys) after a series of phrases. For example, every good student will immediately recognize that the first statement: “Abortion is murder and should always be severely punished” reflects a narrow-minded, fundamentalist attitude. On the other hand, statement 5, “The Church nowadays must become more democratic since God's spirit is at work in all Christians,” merits an approving “L.” Questions of divorce, respect for authority, and the role of women in the Church receive similar treatment. Thus all possible opinions fit perfectly into these two tidy categories (remember, however, that “fundamental-ists” are the ones who see everything as black or white).
Language is one of the key battlefields where culture wars are fought, and words constitute fair game for those who seek to influence society's course. As a recent essay in the Economist put it, “what persuades is not the facts & but the emotive resonance of the words they're dressed up in.”
Even so, labeling orthodox Catholics as sectarian borders on the surreal. Vienna's Cardinal Christoph Schönborn takes up this question in a recently published article where he explores a “theological understanding of sects.”
According to Schönborn, the term “infra-ecclesial sects” is inherently contradictory. By definition, a “sect” refers to a group that has broken communion with the body, deviating from a particular religious tradition. Sects, therefore, exist only outside the Church, as isolated groups that admit no examination by Church authorities. Groups approved by ecclesial authority can never fall into this category. Schönborn sees the intentional abuse of terms like “sects” and “fundamentalism” as an attempt to marginalize conservative groups within the Church and limit their influence—much as the expression “radical Christian right” is used in the U.S.
In Germany, bad-mouthing orthodox Catholics can have more serious consequences than alienating young people and capturing the moral high ground in the public eye, as grave as these ills may be. Sects are illegal in Germany — recall the heavily publicized case of Scientology two years ago. To reposition orthodoxy as sectarian casts doubt on loyal Catholics' civic standing and could jeopardize their freedom of activity. The Kulturkampf presses on.
Fr. Thomas Williams is rector of the general directorate of the Legionaries of Christ in Rome.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Thomas Williams LC ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: The Fire Behind St. Ignatius Institute DATE: 01/03/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 3-9, 1999 ----- BODY:The story of today's St. Ignatius Institute, a Catholic “Great Books” program at the University of San Francisco, began in the late 1970s with a Cuban-born graduate student in Atlanta, a Swiss theologian, and an American editor.
While many are familiar with the editor — Father Joseph Fessio SJ, founder of Ignatius Press — and still others know of the theologian — Hans Urs von Balthasar — few have heard of that graduate student, now marking 21 years as St. Ignatius Institute's principal professor.
He is Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, author of biblical commentary, translator of multiple works by von Balthasar and Catholic writers, and a translator of the definitive English text of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Leiva was studying comparative literature and theology at Emory University when he began studying the writings of von Balthasar — whom he describes without hestitation as “the greatest theologian of the 20th century.” Leiva accepted a fellowship to study German language and literature in order to better read and translate von Balthasar. When Leiva expressed his interest in translating the priest's works into English, von Balthasar introduced him by letter to Father Fessio, who had founded Ignatius Press with the intent of introducing von Balthasar to this continent.
Father Fessio soon recruited Leiva not only to do the translation but to teach for St. Ignatius Institute (SII), which Fessio had helped open the previous year. “He got on a bus in Atlanta, Georgia, drove out, and was here for morning prayer,” Father Fessio recalled.
Leiva, 52, son of a Cuban father and Greek mother, has been the teacher at the heart of SII from its second year. SII enrolls 130 to 140 undergraduate students a year. As the closest person the school has to a full-time professor — the remaining 20 are hand-picked from the university's faculty — he is “simply indispensable,” according to John Galten, SII director. “He's not only what I consider a genius, if that's not going too far, but he's a human being with boundless energy. He's just an extraordinary teacher.
“He sets the fire going for the love of learning so that it just never dies.”
SII is the brainchild of a group of Jesuits and lay people who wanted to resurrect the plan of studies begun by Jesuit founder St. Ignatius, a plan which had fallen into disuse. Like many liberal arts programs across the country, SII guides a cohort of students through a classical, literature-based curriculum. Unlike many such programs, the institute itself does not fulfill a major; rather, its students choose from the full range of majors at the University of San Francisco, and SII provides 71 of the minimum required 128 units for graduation by way of one seminar course and two supporting lectures each semester.
One of SII's better known graduates is chastity spokeswoman and author Mary Beth Bonacci. Director Galten also points with pride to a number of conversions, religious vocations, “good marriages,” and pro-life apostolates among SII's graduates.
“Precisely because of the kind of program we are … I usually say to (my students), ‘You may consider this useless, in the sense that it doesn't translate into something other than itself,’” said Leiva. “ ‘But it can transform your vision of things so deeply in your soul, so that whatever you do, from raising a family to how you treat your friends, will be transformed. Everything is going to be different because you're different. If we can affect what you are, it will affect everything you do.’ ”
Leiva's own education includes a bachelor's degree in French from the University of St. Thomas in Houston, a master's in comparative literature, and a doctorate in comparative literature and theology from Emory University. A language expert, Leiva is fluent in German, Spanish, English, French, and Italian, as well as ancient Greek, Latin, and Hebrew.
At the institute, Leiva directs seminars in Greek literature and culture, the figure of Jesus in the New Testament, ancient literature through the Middle Ages, and 20th century Catholic literary revival, which covers American writers such as Flannery O'Connor and Annie Dillard, but also a range of international writers, including Charles Peguy, Shusaku Endo, and George McKay Brown.
“I always work with texts. I tell my students, ‘I'm not really your teacher … but this text is our teacher,’” Leiva said.
However, he added, “I've never believed that the student knows as much as the teacher…. I'm not a facilitator. (But also) I'm not a guru or a high priest. What I want to do is help the student admire and understand what I admire and understand.
“There's a treasure here that's inexhaustible. I want to take the students to that watering hole, as it were.”
Leiva helps the students encounter the books on their own terms rather than with theological criticism or strict moral categories.
“We have to distinguish between great imaginative literature on the one hand, and any other kind, such as the Catechism, where the objective is to define the exact content of faith,” he said. “The first concern is not, ‘Is it Catholic?’ or ‘Is it true?’ It is, ‘Is it great literature and why?’ One thing is speaking the truth, and the other is doing it so that it captivates the intellect.
“The function of great literature is to show us the reality of human experience without sparing us the messy details.”
Even his course on the New Testament focuses not on points of belief but on Jesus as the hero of an exciting story. Surprisingly, it is his students from a non-religious background (about 20% of SII students are non-Catholic) who have the most refreshing and original responses to the Gospel texts, Leiva said.
“Some of these kids come at the text of the Gospels with a completely unprejudiced view,” he said, while many of the Catholic students are almost “immunized” against the text, and are bored.
“It's a very odd situation, in which I'm trying to do something to break these kids out of their apathy (and) a lack of courage in the imagination,” said Leiva, suggesting that the religious education of Catholic children may be too intent on dogma and not enough on the level of affection and emotion.
“(Parents should) still teach the full boldness of the faith, (but) go back to the Scriptures always, to the living figure of Jesus in the Gospels,” said Leiva, author of Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel of St. Matthew (Ignatius Press).
Despite numerous homilies that begin with “The message of today's Gospel …,” Leiva insists: “It's not a message, it's an encounter. The ‘message’ is to get into the story and encounter this man and live with this man.”
As a special translator of the Catechism from the French to the English — working particularly on the first and fourth sections — Leiva said the final version contains a good balance of intellectual coherence and that “fascination of the heart” that marks good literature.
“I love the Catechism that we have,” he said. “It's very complete and it's very precise, and it's also very beautiful.”
Leiva has translated numerous other books, including the memoirs of Joseph Ratzinger, from the German, and German mystic Adrienne von Speyr's They Followed His Call. But his singular contribution has been the translation of several works of the prolific theologian von Balthasar, who once called Leiva his most faithful translator because he best understood his thought.
“(Von Balthasar) brings the whole category of contemplative beauty into theological reflection more than any other theologian today,” said Leiva, who had the opportunity to meet the priest twice before his death in 1988. “We ought to approach the whole form of revelation … as one approaches a great mural painting, examining each part within the context of the whole, except that this work of art is by the Creator himself.”
This concept of the importance of admiration spills over into Leiva's role as a teacher of literature to college students. As he wrote in a speech given last summer: “Clarity of reason, right choice of will, will then be a result, a byproduct, an indirect fruit of the soul's having been transformed by the contemplation of the beautiful.”
Ellen Rossini writes from Richardson, Texas.
----- EXCERPT: Founding professor touts 'Great Books'program that transforms lives ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Rossini ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Miraculous Portrait In a Lithuanian Chapel DATE: 01/03/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 3-9, 1999 ----- BODY:With more than half a million visitors each year, the sanctuary of Our Lady of the Dawn is one of Lithuania's most celebrated pilgrimage sites. The shrine, situated in the capital city of Vilnius and known in the country's language as Ausros Vartu (Lithuanian for “Gate of the Dawn”), draws many pilgrims each year to venerate the miraculous portrait of the Blessed Virgin Mary that lies within its walls.
The history of the image dates from the 16th century. At that time, city officials had built a great stone wall around the city with nine gates. One of these, on the southeastern side of Vilnius, came to be known as the Gate of the Dawn. It was there that two religious paintings had been placed in the niches of the wall. One, on the inside of the gate, depicted the Virgin Mary; the other, on the outside, showed Christ imparting a blessing.
According to the historian and Carmelite priest Hilary, the local friars of Vilnius were so devoted to the painting of the Blessed Virgin that they built a monastery near the gate in 1620. A year later, they began building a monastery church (later dedicated to St. Teresa) at the site.
In 1671, the friars continued their expansion and built a wooden chapel over the gate. As soon as the portrait was placed inside the new sanctuary, a number of miracles were reported by those who prayed there. In total, Friar Hilary recorded 17 miracles that took place between 1671 and 1761. Although the Church refused to pass judgment on the cases, word of the painting and of the favors received through Our Lady's intercession became widespread. The portrait's fame grew as, in 1688, the newly consecrated bishops of Vilnius marched in procession to the Gate of Dawn and prayed before the image for guidance.
Yet disaster struck in 1715: a fire destroyed the wooden chapel housing the miraculous painting. Fortunately, a few Carmelites were able to rescue the image from the burning sanctuary just in time; they housed the portrait in the monastery church until a new brick chapel was built in 1726 on the original site. In 1773, the picture received its first official recognition by the Church — Pope Clement XIV granted an indulgence to all who visited the shrine.
The painting had another close call in 1795, when the Russians occupied Lithuania and destroyed the walls surrounding Vilnius. Although everything was essentially reduced to rubble, the Gate of Dawn shrine remained standing and untouched. When Friar Hilary's book on the shrine was republished in 1823, the miraculous painting became even more famous. In response to this, the Carmelites began producing and distributing holy cards bearing the image of Our Lady of Dawn.
One of the defining moments for the shrine occurred in 1927. In that year, Pope Pius XI solemnly crowned the cherished image of Our Lady of the Dawn.
Up to World War II, the shrine remained a busy place. Every morning, the faithful filled the chapel for Mass; every evening, they sang Marian hymns. The greatest number of pilgrims flocked to the shrine on Nov. 16, the feast of Our Lady of Mercy.
The Russian occupation of Lithuania in 1944 put an end to religious services at the shrine. Convents, monasteries, and Catholic schools also felt the effects, as their buildings were confiscated or closed. Lithuanians were forbidden to practice Christianity openly. Yet the image was never forgotten and, in 1954, the Vatican honored Our Lady of Dawn with a stamp that bore the likeness of the miraculous painting.
After 45 years of persecution, the tide turned. In 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Lithuania declared its independence from the Soviet Union. With the collapse of communism, religious celebrations and activities at the shrine resumed. Thousands of pilgrims visited the shrine once more and, in 1993, Pope John Paul II himself came, to pray before the miraculous image of Our Lady of the Dawn.
The Gate of the Dawn shrine is located at the southeastern edge of the Lithuanian capital city of Vilnius, at Ausros Vartu 12. To arrive at the sanctuary, which stands atop the gate of Ausros Vartu, enter through the door on the east side of the street, shortly before the gate. The door leads to a staircase, by which one ascends to the small chapel containing the icon of the Virgin. Pilgrims visiting the little shrine can usually come and go as they please.
Other sites to visit in Vilnius include the Cathedral (Arkikatedra Bazilika) and the Church of the Holy Spirit (located at Dominikonu 2). Pope John Paul visited both of these shrines during his historic 1993 trip to Lithuania. And once more, major religious celebrations and activities take place at the sanctuary in November, during the week of the feast of Our Lady, Mother of Mercy.
Kevin Wright writes from Bellevue, Washington.
----- EXCERPT: What attracts 500,000 pilgrims a year to the humble sanctuary of Our Lady of the Dawn? ----- EXTENDED BODY: Kevin Wright ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: Notre Dame de Paris to Be Restored for Grand Jubilee DATE: 01/03/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 3-9, 1999 ----- BODY:The cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris, which has stood since the 14th century on the banks of the Seine in Paris, is soon to be fully restored to its former glory, just in time for the Grand Jubilee.
Some time next year, Parisians and pilgrims will see the full results of a program of general maintenance and restoration which has been under way since 1991.
This is not the first restoration for the great Gothic cathedral. Two hundred years ago, during the Frence Revolution, many of the treasures of Notre Dame were destroyed or plundered. The great bells, known to the world through Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, just barely avoided being melted down, and the cathedral itself was dedicated first to the cult of Reason, and then, later, to the cult of the “Supreme Being.” Finally, the church interior was used as a food storage warehouse.
The severe disrepair this occasioned in the cathedral necessitated the restoration program of Lassus and Viollet-le-Duc, which was carried out between 1845 and 1858, and included the addition of a spire and a sacristy. Not long after, during the Commune of 1871, the cathedral was nearly burned by the Communards — indeed, some accounts suggest that a huge mound of chairs was set on fire in the interior of the cathedral. While it is still not entirely clear what exactly happened, Notre Dame survived essentially unscathed.
Much of the structure has been shrouded in canvas and scaffolding in the past 10 years. Cleaning, sandblasting, and the reconstruction of broken masonry have been but a few of the projects undertaken in this time. Within the next year, reports from the diocese suggest, the work of the project will be completed and the cathedral will once more be open to the public eye and restored to its accustomed glory.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: Arab-Americans in the Dock DATE: 01/03/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 3-9, 1999 ----- BODY:Once again American missiles have been raining down on Baghdad and our servicemen and women placed in harm's way. The Israelis and the Palestinians are squabbling, as usual, over land and sovereignty, and both sides are mad at the United States even though we brokered their most recent steps forward toward peace.
The Middle East is far away, and yet we seem perpetually entangled in its problems. Most Americans probably wish the whole thing would go away. But on Feb. 26, 1993, the conflict there was brought home, and it became clear that we will remain inextricably involved for a long time. The bomb that exploded that day in the World Trade Center's underground garage indicated that American blood was going to be shed on American soil for reasons that most of us will never quite understand.
The Siege aspires to be a thinking man's action picture, using the conventions of that big-budget genre to go beyond the usual cliché of making Arab fanatics the villains and reflecting on some of the larger issues involved. Director Edward Zwick (Courage Under Fire) and co-screenwriters Lawrence Wright and Menno Meyjes are interested primarily in the civil liberties aspect of the problem, and they explore a what-if scenario in which the U.S. Army occupies a section of Brooklyn populated mainly by Arab-Americans and temporarily suspends the Constitution while conducting a house-to-house search for terrorist bombers.
The filmmakers' narrow focus is fair enough. A movie can only examine so many issues on a particular topic with any depth. Viewers should be warned that the complicated economic and geopolitical reasons behind our Middle East policies are glossed over, and it's never adequately explained why a tiny group of Islamic fundamentalists hate us so much they're willing to commit suicide in order to take American lives. But that's not the main problem.
Unfortunately, the inherent drama of the story is muddled because the movie begins with a well-paced, thrill-packed hunt for the terrorists and then changes gears to become a talky examination of the U.S. government's civil rights violations of Arab-Americans. In the process, the audience gets confused.
The film opens with TV news clips about Middle East terrorism which include a sound-bite of President Clinton during an incursion against Iraq a few years back. It reminds us that whatever we think of the latest Baghdad bombings there's always the possibility of a direct or indirect terrorist response.
The movie then invents a scene in which a fundamentalist Shiite sheik, who directs anti-American bombings, is secretly and illegally kidnapped in Libya by U.S. forces. Back in New York City, Anthony “Hub” Hubbard (Denzel Washington), the head of the FBI/NYPD counterterrorist task force, is hot on the trail of a suspicious-looking Palestinian immigrant. While under FBI surveillance, the prey is snatched by an undercover CIA operative, Elise Kraft (Annette Benning), who refuses to share with Hub what she knows about the Palestinian.
While the rival American intelligence agencies wrangle over jurisdiction and expertise, a public bus is hijacked by Islamic fanatics. Despite Hub's heroic efforts at negotiation, it's blown up, and both the terrorists and the innocent hostages inside are killed. The audience is led to believe that this incident is probably a response to the kidnapping of the fundamentalist sheik, but national security operatives don't let Hub and the FBI know he was ever taken.
The movie's message is that American government secrecy, illegal overreaction to terrorism, and interagency conflicts are as much a part of the problem as the bombers' ideology. The truth of this point of view is highly debatable, but it sets up all the action that follows.
To prevent the movie from degenerating into an anti-Islamic diatribe, the filmmakers have created an Arab good guy, FBI agent Frank Haddad (Tony Shaloub), who's Hub's sidekick in cracking the case. A Shiite originally from Lebanon, he proves as brave and as patriotic as any other law-enforcement movie hero.
Hub and Elise hammer out a way to work together, but it's too late. More savage terrorist actions follow. The public outcry persuades the president to declare a state of emergency and ask the military for help. General William Devereaux (Bruce Willis) initially opposes Army involvement, but once given the order to command the operation, he clamps down with bone-chilling efficiency.
Using Hub as its main mouthpiece, the movie asks all the right questions: At what stage does the safety of our citizens conflict with the protection of their rights? Is it ever worth ignoring the Constitution to preserve public order?
The filmmakers make a strong plea for respect for Arab-American civil liberties even in a terrorist situation. As one character points out, the overwhelming majority of them “love their country as much as we do.” The movie also has the young son of the dedicated FBI agent Frank Haddad illegally imprisoned.
But that wasn't good enough for many Arab-Americans, who organized demonstrations against the film across the country. The vivid images of Arab-Americans being herded behind barbed wire and detained in a huge stadium were deeply offensive to them despite the movie's strong condemnation of those actions. The protests seem to me unfair. In fact, they reinforce the value of airing these issues in a blockbuster like The Siege, which will reach a mass audience.
Ironically, it is the filmmakers' dramatic choices in underlining the violations of the Arab-Americans' civil rights that weakens their movie. They switch villains in the middle of the story in such a way as to confuse the viewer. A fanatic Arab sheik is replaced by an authoritarian American general as the ultimate bad guy. This diffuses the audience's rooting interest. It also presents U.S. military behavior during the siege as an evil equivalent to terrorist bombings — an interesting discussion point, perhaps, but it doesn't ring true, even within the framework of the movie's own action.
The result is a missed opportunity. The Siege could have raised its audience's consciousness on an important subject while entertaining it with a compelling story. Sadly, it does neither.
John Prizer is currently based in Paris.
The Siege is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America.
----- EXCERPT: The Siege, an ambitious action film for thinking people, misfires ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Videos on Release DATE: 01/03/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 3-9, 1999 ----- BODY:Will Hunting (Matt Damon), a highly intelligent 20-year-old, can solve the most complex mathematical problems. Despite his intelligence, his troubled background and street-smart ways continually get him into trouble with the law. While on parole he spends his days working as a cleaner in a school and his nights drinking and hanging out with his buddies Chuckie (Ben Affleck), Morgan (Casey Affleck), and Billy (Cole Hauser). He tries to impress Skylar (Minnie Driver), a fourth-year Harvard student. Professor Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgard) at the college and therapist Sean McGuire (Robin Williams) who see the troubled young man's potential try to help him after he anonymously solves a math problem that stumped other university students. Sean works hard to get inside the young genius' head, and Skylar tries to get inside his heart. They both hope the young man will come to his full senses and realize his capabilities. An excellent movie but includes strong language, including some sex-related dialogue. (MPAA — R)
Joe Ross (Campbell Scott) develops a top-secret formula that will help his company forge years ahead of any competition. He seeks the advice of lawyer friend George Lang (Ricky Jay) after he becomes afraid that his company will not properly compensate him for his efforts. Joe then meets with his boss, Klein (Ben Gazzara), while on a business trip to the Caribbean and is assured that he will be compensated. On the same trip he meets up with Jimmy Dell (Steve Martin), a wealthy businessman. The two become friends. Joe agrees to deliver a book to Jimmy's sister upon his return to New York. Joe is still worried about being compensated and talks to Jimmy who tells him that the company will probably try to take advantage of him. Sure enough, Klein and his associates then try to renegotiate his contract and Joe begins to follow Jimmy's directions on how to solve this problem. A slow-moving and at times confusing movie. (MPAA — PG)
During a massive flood, armored-car guards Tom (Christian Slater) and his uncle Charlie (Ed Asner) battle a gang of robbers led by Jim (Morgan Freeman). When the gang unintentionally open fire on them, Charlie is killed. Wanting to protect the money, Tom wades through flood waters with $3 million in cash and hides it in a flooded cemetery. He then tries to hide from the bandits in a local church, but Karen (Minnie Driver), a restoration artist, thinks he's a looter and knocks him unconscious. She hands him over to the local sheriff (Randy Quaid), who becomes greedy for the money and goes after it. Meanwhile, Tom finds himself in a flooding jail cell. Karen eventually comes to his rescue and the two try to stop both sets of bad guys while also battling the rising floodwaters. A predictable but watchable movie. Contains violence. (MPAA — R)
A group of students celebrates their high school graduation at a party that becomes a get-even session. Aspiring writer Preston Meyers (Ethan Embry) is madly in love with Amanda Beckett (Jennifer Love Hewitt), the nicest looking girl in school. That very day Amanda's macho boyfriend, Mike Dexter (Peter Facinellili), dumps her. Preston's close but shy friend, Denise Fleming (Lauren Ambrose), finds it hard to believe that he has never told Amanda about his feelings for her and encourages him to give Amanda the letter which has taken him the past four years to write. Meanwhile, Denise has own problems with her childhood friend, Kenny Fisher (Seth Green).
William Lichter (Charlie Korsmo), the school's bright spark, also attends the party and wants to get final revenge on Mike for years of social downgrading. Not suitable viewing for children due to crude language, teen drinking, and sexuality. (MPAA — PG-13)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Arizona Couple Can't Afford Unaborted Child DATE: 01/03/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 3-9, 1999 ----- BODY:TUSCON, Ariz.—An unsuccessful abortion has left an Arizona couple with a son they claim they can't afford. That's according to the lawsuit filed by Mary Long and her husband against an abortion practitioner and Planned Parenthood. The couple's lawyer, William Wilkinson, says they already have a daughter and didn't want a son, but adds, quote, “once they had him, they loved him.” He says they just can't afford him. Wilkinson says Long was told the abortion was completed in November of 1996, but she felt the baby kicking two months later. By then, she was correctly afraid an abortion would be too risky. Media reports contained no information as to whether the unaborted child had any lasting problems due to the botched abortion. (Pro-Life Infonet)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of life -------- TITLE: South Korea bans funding for human cloning research DATE: 01/03/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 3-9, 1999 ----- BODY:SEOUL, South Korea—South Korea banned funding last week for research into human cloning but acknowledged that it cannot stop “maverick doctors” from forging ahead with the controversial procedure.
The move came after a medical team at Seoul's Kyonghee University announced earlier last week that it had successfully cloned a human embryo in its initial stage of development.
The announcement caught the government off guard and sparked protest rallies by South Koreans, whose deep-rooted Confucian beliefs were shaken by the news.
In downtown Seoul today, 20 civic activists shook signs demanding a ban on human cloning research. One sign carried a row of identical mug shots and asked: “Which one is the real Me?”
The Science and Technology Ministry was not given any prior information about the experiment by the Kyonghee University doctors, said Kim Ho-sung, a ministry official. “Our position is firm and clear: There will be no funding for any such research,” he said.
But Kim added that the government planned no legal action against the scientists. “There will always be maverick scientists. We cannot do anything to stop them,” he said. “They will be few in number, and you do not burn down the whole house to kill a few fleas.”
At the National Assembly, legislators prepared to pass a new law next month banning research on human cloning except for research on cancer or other diseases.
“The law will not punish anybody but will have a strong warning effect on the few scientists who are interested in cloning research,” said Rep. Rhee Shang-hi, who spearheaded the legislation.
But civic organizations charged that the legislation would do nothing to stop human cloning research because it does not call for penalties and provides no clear distinction between cloning research and similar scientific work.
“We must stop scientists seeking commercial benefits and cheap heroism, like those at Kyonghee University,” 20 civic groups said in a joint statement.
Dr. Lee Bo-yeon, a professor at the fertility clinic of Kyonghee University Hospital, said he conducted the experiment to help infertile patients and said cloning human embryos should be encouraged to create replacement organs. But he said he would conduct no further experiments until legal and ethical disputes were resolved.
Many Koreans, influenced by Confucian mores, believe that their bodies are inherited from ancestors. They prize their family lineage and keep detailed documents about their fore-bears. Human cloning will disrupt that tradition.
Lee's team replaced the nucleus of a woman's egg with the nucleus of one of her body cells, transferring her DNA to the egg. The team then cultivated the egg until it grew into four cells, an early embryonic stage.
American cloning experts said it was the first time they knew of that human DNA had been transferred from a body cell into a human egg, with the egg then developing into embryonic cells. Body cells, as opposed to eggs or sperm, contain the full complement of a person's DNA. But the Americans added that the experiment was stopped too early to determine whether it would grow into a viable embryo, much less a human fetus.
Others, including the Scottish scientists who created Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned animal, even doubted Lee's claims, noting the South Korean team has yet to present its evidence to scientific journals. (Pro-Life Infonet)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Republicans for Life PAC Supportive of Hastert for Speaker DATE: 01/03/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 3-9, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—House Republicans reportedly are coalescing around pro-life Congressman Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) to replace Bob Livingston as the nominee to serve as the next Speaker of the House.
“Dennis Hastert has advocated the pro-life position for many years as a member of the House,” indicated Republicans for Life PAC director Steven Ertelt. “If selected as the GOP nominee and eventual Speaker, the pro-life community can be assured that one of their own will lead the House.”
Hastert, first elected in 1986, has compiled a 98% pro-life voting record while in Congress.
He has co-sponsored the Human Life Amendment three times and has signed a pro-life friend-of-the-court brief for the Webster case.
Hastert also co-sponsored the President's Pro-Life Bill during the Reagan years to repudiate Roe v. Wade and permanently prohibit federal funding of abortions.
Republicans for Life PAC director Mark White said, “Hastert has not only voted pro-life but has gone above and beyond the call of duty to support the Human Life Amendment and to urge the Supreme Court to uphold pro-life legislation.”
Should Hastert be elected to the Speaker's post in January, he will join pro-life Reps. Dick Armey (R-Texas), Tom Delay (R-Texas), and J.C. Watts (R-Okla.) in giving pro-life Republicans the top four GOP leadership positions in the House. (Pro-Life Infonet)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Annual March is Pro-lifers' 'Family Reunion' DATE: 01/03/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 3-9, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—If there is one event symbolic of the pro-life movement, it's the March for Life. This annual pilgrimage to the nation's capital calls attention to abortion, which has now claimed more than 37 million unborn children in the United States since 1973.
For a quarter century, throngs of men, women, and children have shown political leaders a unique example of peaceful protest. But, few of its early organizers realized the role this expression of conscience would have in the battle against abortion.
The history of the March can be traced to October 1973, when 30 activists attended a meeting in Washington, D.C., to plan an event at the U.S. Capitol. The goal was to decry the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion.
This landmark ruling was handed down Jan. 22, 1973, and the small group wanted to ensure that its first anniversary would not go unnoticed in the nation. They met at the home of Nellie Gray, who wasn't even a member of the planning committee.
Organizers came from several states, but an important component was from New York. Among those were the late Jack Short, Bill Devlin, and John Mawn. They and other New Yorkers had sharpened their pro-life skills by protesting against New York's abortion law, championed by then Gov. Nelson Rockefeller.
The first March was held three months later, on Jan. 22. It was an unseasonable day with a temperature of 70 degrees. About 20,000 people created a “circle of life” around the Capitol.
“The whole idea was for us, as Americans, to recognize our right of assembly and to present our petitions to Congress,” Gray said. “We called it the March for Life, and the name stuck.”
In addition to the March, the group held a rally in which pro-life legislation, including a Human Life Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, was promoted. Prayer was offered by four clergymen, and petitions were given to Congress.
Gray added, “We really thought our message had been heard. We were going to disband, but then we realized that maybe Congress hadn't heard. But, still, none of us thought of 26 marches — maybe one or two.” None could have envisioned that 200,000 people would participate in 1998.
The March for Life was incorporated and a statement of Life Principles was adopted. These nine principles recognized the sanctity of all human life and the responsibility of society to protect it. Abortion was categorically opposed and a Human Life Amendment was endorsed.
The organization noted that “the Life Principles provide guidance and purpose for the task of the grassroots pro-life volunteers in their efforts through an effective education and lobbying program.”
An implementing statement accompanied the Life Principles. This statement specified seven “considerations,” including the concept that life begins at fertilization.
‘It's very encouraging for me to see people pulling in from all over the country at great sacrifice,” he said. “It shows the determination we have. And I've been especially impressed by the number of young people the last few years.’
Gray, an attorney who had worked for the federal government, became president of the March for Life. Volunteers from around the country began to plan year-round for the Jan. 22 event, which attracted 50,000 people in 1975 and 65,000 in 1976.
In the beginning, the program was located on the west steps of the Capitol and the ring of people encircling that building became a tradition. But, Gray said, “we realized we had to bring attention to all government officialdom.”
Starting during the Carter administration, the march as it is known today took shape. Pro-lifers walked for about one mile from near the White House to the Capitol and then on to the Supreme Court Building. By 1986, 100,000 activists were attending.
In 1983, in recognition of the pro-life efforts of Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., the first Rose Dinner was held. Helms was specifically honored for challenging the Hatch Amendment. Although billed as pro-life legislation, the amendment would have permitted states to accept or reject abortion.
The tribute to Helms was so well received that an annual tradition of the Red Rose dinner on the evening of the March continued; the 17th will be held this month. In 1997, Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., and his wife, Marie, were honored with the Life Award.
A short convention consisting of pro-life speakers at the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill Hotel was added in the 1990s. Last year, among the speakers was Dr. Bernard Nathanson, the former abortionist who is now a pro-life advocate and a convert to Catholicism.
The March for Life has now become an institution. It has literally spawned a new generation of pro-life leaders. Father Frank Pavone, the international director of the Priests for Life, told the Register, “It was by attending the March for Life as a high school senior that I was propelled into the pro-life movement.”
Rev. Benjamin Sheldon, a Presbyterian minister now living in Pennsylvania, has been attending the march since 1980. He first participated as president of Presbyterians Pro-Life and now is executive director of the interfaith National Pro-Life Religious Council.
“The March provides a rallying point for people who otherwise get tired or weary of the fight,” Rev. Sheldon said. “It brings many, many groups together, and is another example of where Catholics and Protestants are united in upholding this cause.
“I'm committed to the pro-life effort for two reasons. First, it's a Christian cause. Second, it's a cause that all humanity can and should take up. It isn't limited to Christians.”
A prime example of the minister's last comment is Rabbi Yehuda Levin of Brooklyn, New York. He has attended 19 marches as a representative of the Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada as well as the Rabbinical Alliance of America. He jokes that he went from being a “svelte” young man to a “not-so-svelte” 44-year-old father of nine in the course of his participation in the marches.
The rabbi has become a fixture at the marches for his blowing of the shophar, or ram's horn. For more than a decade he has used this horn, symbolic of Jewish tradition, to “remind people that they are called upon to sacrifice their all for the glory of God.”
While emphasizing the importance of the biblical teachings on life, the rabbi also strongly believes in the importance of all religious leaders in supporting the March and other pro-life activities: “Religious leaders need to draw a line in the sand and say you can't come to church on Sunday if on the other days of the week you an antithetical to religion.” He said he believes the Catholic Bishops have helped draw that line with the recent adoption of their document, “Living the Gospel of Life: A Challenge to American Catholics.”
‘The March provides a rallying point for people who otherwise get tired or weary of the fight … It brings many, many groups together, and is another example of where Catholics and Protestants are united in upholding this cause.
Catholic leaders have long been prominent in the March for Life. John Cardinal O'Connor of New York, Bernard Cardinal Law of Boston, and Anthony Cardinal Bevilacqua of Philadelphia are only a few of the prominent prelates who have participated in recent years.
Nellie Gray, a devout Catholic herself, also points to the Catholic organizations which have added so much to the March's history. The Knights of Columbus have been marshals since the beginning. The Catholic Daughters of the Americas and the Ancient Order of Hibernians are among the many others.
Many pro-life congressmen also attend the March and address the crowd. Among the stalwarts over the years have been Helms, Smith, former Rep. Robert Dornan of California, and Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland.
Others include Sen. Mike DeWine of Ohio, Mike Forbes of New York, Todd Tiahrt of Kansas, Steve Largent of Oklahoma, Ron Lewis and Jim Bunning of Kentucky, and Steve Chabot of Ohio; all are Republicans.
Many of these leaders and thousands of ordinary people come by plane, car, and bus to Washington year after year. Pro-life leader Joseph Scheidler calls it “an annual family reunion.”
“It's very encouraging for me to see people pulling in from all over the country at great sacrifice,” he said. “It shows the determination we have. And I've been especially impressed by the number of young people the last few years.”
Over these years, important converts have been embraced. In addition to Nathanson, last year the Rose Dinner heard from two other former abortion advocates: Norma McCorvey (“Jane Roe” in Roe v. Wade) and Sandra Cano (“Mary Doe” in Doe v. Bolton, another landmark Supreme Court case).
McCorvey has become a pro-life warrior and Catholic. She told the 1998 March crowd that she was sorry for signing the affidavit to become part of the Roe v. Wade legacy.
Now, she says, “I love the pro-life movement so much — everyone really has welcomed me.” And, of the March for Life, she adds, “It's an electric charge for anyone whose faith is down about abortion being legal. It gives you a shot in the arm. It gives you hope.”
Those interested in the 26th annual March for Life, to be held Friday, Jan. 22, 1999, can contact (202) 543-3377.
Joseph Esposito writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Esposito ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 01/03/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 3-9, 1999 ----- BODY:Speaking about the Church's mission and human freedom, Pope John Paul II says in Redemptor Hominis:
Jesus Christ meets the man of every age, including our own, with the same words: “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
These words contain both a fundamental requirement and a warning: the requirement of an honest relationship with regard to truth as a condition for authentic freedom, and the warning to avoid every kind of illusory freedom, every superficial unilateral freedom, every freedom that fails to enter into the whole truth about man and the world. Today also, even after two thousand years, we see Christ as the one who brings man freedom based on truth, frees man from what curtail, diminishes and as it were breaks off this freedom at its root, in man's soul, his heart and his conscience. What a stupendous confirmation of this has been given and is still being given by those who, thanks to Christ and in Christ, have reached true freedom and have manifested it even in situations of external constraint. (12.3)
When Jesus himself appeared as a prisoner before Pilate's tribunal and was interrogated by him about the accusation made against him by the representatives of the Sanhedrin, did he not answer: “For this I was born, an for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth?” It was as if with these words spoken before the judge at the decisive moment he was once more confirming what he had said earlier: “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” In the course of so many centuries, of so many generations, form the time of the Apostles on, is it not often Jesus Christ himself that has made an appearance at the side of People judged for the sake of truth? Does he ever cease to be the continuous spokesman an advocate for the person who lives “in the spirit of truth?” Just as he does not cease to be it before the Father, he is it also with regard to the history of man. And in her turn the Church, in spite of all the weaknesses that are part of her human history, does not cease to follow him who said: “The hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (12.4)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: 'Stem Cell' research Opens Door to Human Cloning DATE: 01/03/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 3-9, 1999 ----- BODY:Just when is a human being really a human being?
While this question has been at the center of the abortion debate for decades, a new development in Great Britain and an intensifying debate in the United States may force policy-makers, finally, to address the question.
On Dec. 9, Britain's Human Genetic Advisory Commission (HGAC) officially recommended that the government permit research on the cloning of human embryos, in order to create genetic “spare parts” for those suffering from various illnesses. The advisory panel claimed that the “stem cells” of developing human embryos might lead to effective medical interventions such as new skin cells for burn victims, new brain cells for people living with Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease, or new cells to replace the bone marrow of cancer patients.
The stem cells of human embryos, removed from the embryo after it has been mutilated to prevent further development, can grow into any kind of human tissue. Some American researchers hope to be able eventually to grow heart, muscle, nerve, and other cells in lab dishes, to treat a variety of illnesses and, perhaps, to avoid the need for organ transplants.
According to The Universe, a British Catholic weekly, the procedure supported by the British advisory commission involves creating a cloned embryo, which would be kept alive for approximately six days before the stem's cells are extracted.
While the HGAC recommendation acknowledged that many people may express concern over the “commoditization” of human life by growing human embryos to be used for the medical treatment of other humans, the commission felt the potential medical results were too promising.
“We believe it would not be right at this stage to rule out limited research using cloning techniques, which could be of great benefit to seriously ill people,” the four-member commission wrote.
The dignity and human rights of these preborn children should not be disregarded because their parents have rejected them.
The commission's decision drew immediate criticism from pro-life organizations.
“Therapeutic cloning is not therapeutic for the cloned individual,” said Brendan Gerard, spokesman for the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child in Britain. “It is completely abhorrent that one individual should be created to serve the ends of another.”
Father Paul Murray, secretary to Britain's Bishops Bioethics Committee, was even more stinging in his criticism, calling the proposal “intrinsically evil.”
While the HGAC recommended that the government support research using the stem cells of human embryos, it is up to Parliament whether it will do so.
The developments in Britain have sparked renewed debate in the United States, where human embryo research has been banned since 1994. The ban is coming under assault from some researchers and scientists, who claim the law is stifling potentially life-saving research.
The 1994 law, sponsored by Rep. Jay Dickey (R-Ariz.), prohibits federal funds from being used for any research on human embryos. While research using the stem cells of human embryos is being conducted in the United States, it is reportedly being funded by private sources.
In October, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison announced they were the first in the world to isolate and grow stem cells from donated human embryos. The main Wisconsin researcher, Dr. James Thomson, testified before a Senate subcommittee Dec. 2, asking for government support of stem cell research. Thomson testified that cultured stem cells from human embryos could produce new heart cells and neurons within the next five years — but only if the government funds the research.
“It is in the public interest for the government to support this research,” he told the committee.
His testimony, and a recent public campaign for such research, drew a passionate response from officials with Pro-Life Wisconsin, one of the state's major pro-life organizations. Bridget Fogarty, director of public affairs for Pro-Life Wisconsin, immediately responded to Thomson's claims in a Dec. 9 guest editorial in the Wisconsin State Journal.
“It has been stated that the embryos used in this research could not develop into ‘entire humans,’” Fogarty wrote. “The reason these embryos cannot continue to develop, is that the researchers mutilate the embryos so that they cannot receive nutrition. After mutilating the embryos, the researchers then harvest the embryonic stem cells.
“We know that the embryos involved in this research are human subjects, and it is obvious that a pre-born child cannot give voluntary consent. The dignity and human rights of these preborn children should not be disregarded because their parents have rejected them and donated them to science.”
Fogarty told the Register that Thomson and other researchers are clouding the real issue — that human beings are involved in the research.
“For their own inhumane research, they want to redefine what a human being is,” she said. “To them, these newly formed persons, with unique genetic codes and souls, are nothing more than organisms. By dehumanizing these embryos they hope to receive government funding for a variety of macabre research.”
Fogarty said Pro-Life Wisconsin is already lobbying state legislators to ensure that no state funding be used to support research using the stem cells of human embryos.
The eventual fate of the federal ban on human embryo research is uncertain. Pro-life forces lost votes in the House after the November elections, and some stem cell research supporters are optimistic that the votes exist to repeal the ban. President Clinton has also expressed a willingness to support the research.
‘Human beings are not ‘material’.’
In a letter to the chair of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission in November, Clinton said there was a difference between stem cell research and human embryo research writing, “Although the ethical issues have not diminished, it now appears that this (stem cell) research may have real potential for treating such devastating diseases as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and Parkinson's disease.”
Pro-life forces say they expect a fight over the ban. Rep. Dickey has publicly pledged to defend the ban, citing the humanity of human embryos at every stage of development. Judie Brown, president of American Life League, said pro-life forces must be vigilant in defending the ban.
“In view of the recent decision in the United Kingdom, the news out of South Korea that a human being may have been cloned, and the ‘progress’ being made in the U.S., it is my view that we must not only work to sustain the ban, but we must press Congress to pass a ban on any such research, regardless of the source of funding involved,” she told the Register. “Human beings are not ‘material.’”
While the debate in Congress may be imminent, a report on stem cell research is expected from the National Bioethics Advisory Commission in the first half of 1999. The commission, filled with Clinton appointees, has not been friendly to pro-life concerns in the past. Pro-life supporters are not expecting a favorable report.
“This debate over research using the stem cells of preborn babies is going to intensify greatly in 1999,” said Pro-Life Wisconsin's Fogarty. “It's time to refocus our efforts on defending the tiniest and most defenseless preborn babies from this lethal research.”
Greg Chesmore writes from Bloomington, Indiana.
----- EXCERPT: U.S. and British pro-lifers warn against 'intrinsic evil' of act ----- EXTENDED BODY: Greg Chesmore ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of life -------- TITLE: Texas Octuplets Stir Debate Over Use of Fertility Drugs DATE: 01/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:As she awaited the arrival of her eight children, Nkem Chukwu was determined.
Fed intravenously and placed in a near upside down position for three weeks to relieve pressure on her uterus and so avoid early birth as long as possible, she knew that each day she persevered the octuplets chances for survival increased.
Seven of the babies were delivered by Caesarean section on Dec. 20, about 10 weeks premature. The other baby had been born naturally on Dec. 8. When the last baby arrived on Dec. 20, the 27-year-old Houston woman captured the international spotlight as the mother of the first known set of living octuplets.
Weighing as much as 25.7 ounces to as little as 10.3 ounces, the babies fought for survival at Texas Children's Hospital. Within the first week, the tiniest baby, nicknamed Odera, had died from heart and lung failure. Her brothers and sisters are expected to remain in the hospital for at least two months. Chukwu was discharged on Dec. 20.
While many hailed the courage and faith of Chukwu, some medical ethicists have used the octuplets' birth to highlight the complexity of fertility drugs. After miscarrying triplets earlier in the year, Chukwu began using fertility drugs to stimulate her ovaries. Use of fertility drugs, such as Pergonal, can lead to “multiple pregnancies,” meaning more than one baby may develop in the uterus.
Immediately after the birth, Dr. Randle Corfman, director of the Midwest Center for Reproductive Health in Minneapolis, called the octuplet’ birth a “disaster” from an infertility standpoint. Others questioned whether the amount of money spent on caring for Chukwu during the pregnancy and the premature babies was justifiable. Although the Chukwus have health insurance, it is estimated that caring for the babies in the hospital for the next two months will cost at least $250,000 per child.
Catholic Concerns
Secular medical ethicists aren't the only ones questioning the use of fertility drugs. Catholic bioethicists are also expressing concern regarding their misuse. While pointing out that there is nothing immoral or unethical about fertility drugs per se, they underscore the fact that hyperstimulation of a woman's ovaries can lead to increased risks for the woman and her babies.
“Human beings are meant to reproduce one at a time,” Msgr. William Smith of St. Joseph's Seminary in Dunwoodie, N.Y., told the Register. “One cannot be indifferent to the risks involved in administering fertility drugs.”
Msgr. Smith said the key to safe and effective use of the fertility drugs in aiding infertile couples rests in the monitoring of women once the drugs are administered.
Sister Renee Mirkes PhD, director of the Pope Paul VI Institute Center for NaProEthics (Natural Procreative Ethics), agrees that close monitoring of women using fertility drugs is the critical element. She said while there is no objection per se to the use of fertility drugs, the risks involved can be substantial.
“Fertility drugs in and of themselves are not immoral—it's the dosage at which they are given and how the woman is monitored after she's given these drugs,” said Sister Mirkes.
Sister Mirkes said responsible physicians should closely monitor women to determine how many eggs are produced and counsel couples about the option of delaying intercourse during that cycle to avoid the creation of multiple unborn children. While she acknowledges that it is impossible to predict exactly what will happen with the use of the drugs, the risk that women will conceive multiple children is always present—potentially putting the lives of the mother and her children at risk.
One particular concern of both Msgr. Smith and Sister Mirkes is the link between the use of fertility drugs and abortion. Referred to as “selective reduction” or “selective termination,” this procedure is sometimes recommended to mothers who conceive more than one child through the use of fertility drugs or in vitro fertilization.
Both Chukwu and Bobbie McCaughey, the Iowa mother who gave birth to septuplets in 1997, were offered the option of aborting some of the children, to increase the chances of survival for the remaining children. Both immediately refused, citing their religious convictions about the sanctity of human life.
In the wake of the octuplet’ births, some ethicists suggested doctors should become more aggressive in promoting “selective reduction” to parents who conceive multiple children. This suggestion was immediately criticized by Msgr. Smith.
“Physicians should be more aggressive in telling their patients the truth,” he said. “And the truth is that selective reduction is just a euphemism for abortion.”
‘Selective Termination'
Sister Mirkes said her uneasiness with the manner in which some physicians are administering fertility drugs stems partly from the acceptance of abortion as an option if more than one child is conceived. She fears that as more couples use fertility drugs more physicians may see selective reduction as a solution.
“Women will still be desperate enough to have children that they will go to physicians to hyperstimulate pregnancy, and the backup for many of these physicians will be selective termination,” she said.
This anti-life mentality in treating infertile couples stems from society's acceptance of abortion in general, she said.
“If going from one child to none, as in abortion, is acceptable, some will say, ‘What's wrong with going from three children to two?” said Sister Mirkes.
The acceptance of selective reduction is evidenced in the literature produced by fertility centers. For example, Pacific Fertility Medical Centers recommend abortion as an option on the center’ web site where it advertises its services to infertile couples.
The web site defines “selective pregnancy reduction” as a “procedure where a needle is passed under the ultrasound guidance directly into the sac of one or more of the pregnancies. A chemical solution is injected, and this results in the absorption of the particular gestation(s), reducing the total number proportionately.”
While Pacific Fertility Medical Centers claim they do not advocate abortion, they clearly support it as a viable option:
“We do, however, remain advocates of free choice in such issueas and when it comes to the circumstances where either the mother's life or the bab(ies) within the uterus are threatened through the continuation of a multiple gestation, we feel Selective Pregnancy Reduction to be a choice which can be vindicated on the basis that it will save the life or lives of the remaining fetus(es), enabling them to survive and grow to full viability.”
This support for the use of fertility drugs with the backup of abortion is cause for grave concern, according to Sister Mirkes: “This is a manifestation and a facet of the utilitarian way we look at life, reducing the person to an object or thing.”
In Donum Vitae, the document released by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1987, specific guidelines were issued concerning biomedical techniques involved in “assisted reproduction.” These teachings, reiterated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, state: “Research aimed at reducing human sterility is to be encouraged, on condition that it is placed ‘at the service of the human person, of his inalienable rights, and his true and integral good according to the design and will of God’” (DV,introduction).
The difference between the use of fertility drugs and procedures such as in vitro fertilization (IVF) is the separation of the conjugal act of a husband and wife from procreation. In Donum Vitae, techniques which “dissociate the sexual act from the procreative act” are deemed “morally unacceptable” (DV II, 4). While actions such as IVF separate the sexual act from the procreative act, fertility drugs do not.
While the use of fertility drugs is not deemed immoral, Catholic bioethicists caution improper use of the drugs can lead to not only serious health risks for women and children, but also abortion.
“The use of fertility drugs can put mothers and babies at risk,” said Sister Mirkes. “Hopefully this [the octuplets case] will call the medical community back to the canons of good medicine.”
Greg Chesmore writes from Bloomington, Indiana.
----- EXCERPT: Catholic bioethicists urge caution ----- EXTENDED BODY: Greg Chesmore ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Suffering for Christian Faith Is Not Just a History Lesson DATE: 01/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:PROVIDENCE, R.I.—When he angered the Sanhedrin and was stoned to death for bearing witness to the Risen Christ, St. Stephen became the first Christian martyr. And to this day, men and women—clerics, religious and lay people—are still being killed around the world, their only “crime” being their devotion to the Church and to the people they are trying to help. In 1998 alone, 40 Catholic missionaries lost their lives in the service of the Church.
One, Auxiliary Bishop Juan Gerardi Conedera of Guatemala, was leading an investigation into human rights abuses committed during Guatemala's civil war when he was murdered by a “death squad.” Jaguar Justiciero, the group responsible for Bishop Gerardi's murder, has vowed to kill other clerics, and has sent death threats to priests working in Guatemala.
In Haiti, Father Jean Pierre-Louis was shot and killed, most likely because he was promoting better conditions for those living in poverty in that country. In Algiers, Bishop Pierre Claverie was killed by the Armed Islamic Group for trying to negotiate peace between Christians and Muslims. On Christmas Eve, 1998, a Sardinian priest was shot to death on his way to celebrate Mass.
In addition to those murders, clerics, religious, and lay people are being kidnapped, raped and held hostage in various countries. Just before New Year's, mobs in western India attacked 18 churches, prayer halls and Christian schools and burned down a chapel. The Hindu extremist groups responsible for the attacks are said to be violently opposed to the attempts of Christian missionaries to convert poor and low-caste Indians.
Earlier in December, a mob dragged into a field and assaulted four nuns stationed as medical aid workers in village in India. During the 1990s, 15 nuns and priests have been murdered in that country.
Other episodes around the world have had more positive endings. A Canadian missionary kidnapped in Rwanda was released unharmed after being held for two days. China released a native priest after several days of imprisonment for participating in “illegal” religious activities.
Pope John Paul II, in his Christmas message for 1998, said that the lives of the 40 missionaries killed during the year were a gift for the world. And Bernardo Cervellera, director of the Vatican news agency, Fides, noted that more than 200 million Christians are being actively persecuted, with more than 400 million suffering discrimination because of their faith.
Paul Witte, director of Public Relations for the Pontifical Institute of Foreign Missions (PIME), a congregation of missionary priests, said the priests in the order go into the most difficult areas of the world to perform their work. “In a sense, this is inviting consequences, and it is very much a part of the congregation's spirituality,” he said.
One PIME priest, Father Clement Dismara, worked in Burma for 65 years, including during World War II, when conditions in the country were at their worst. While Father Dismara did not personally suffer physical harm, he worked and lived heroically in extreme poverty and the most difficult conditions. Today, Witte said, his cause for beatification has gone through the first phase, and his legacy continues.
Another PIME priest, Father Luciano Benedetti, was kidnapped in the Philippines in September 1998 and held for nearly 10 weeks, before finally being released unharmed.
While most of the clerics, religious and lay people murdered, Kidnapped, or ill-treated have been full-time workers in foreign missions, even American diocesan priests have died working for human rights and the betterment of the lives of the poor.
One such priest was Father Stanley Rother, a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, who was killed in Guatemala on July 28, 1981. He was sent to Guatemala as part of the mission the archdiocese has sponsored for nearly two decades.
Father Robert Weisenberger, currently pastor of Holy Trinity Church in Oklahoma City and a friend of Father Rother, recalled how Father Rother served in Guatemala in a time of great social upheaval.
“He received notice that he was on a group's death list, and was recalled to the archdiocese,” Father Weisenberger said. “But Easter was approaching, and Father Rother wanted to return to Guatemala. He said, ‘The shepherd cannot run.’ He was murdered four months later, because he cared for poor children and their families.”
One of the greatest tragedies, Father Weisenberger said, was that anyone of stature was marked for death, including prominent businessmen and parish council members. “They [the death squads] would even kill someone who took in the widow and children of a murdered man,” Father Weisenberger said.
Such persecution continues. In the Sudan, two Sudanese priests are on trial in a military court, accused of involvement in bombings in June 1998 in the capital city of Khartoum.
President Omar Hassan Ahmad alBashir said those convicted for the bombings “would be sentenced to death by hanging and then be crucified.” The trial has been vigorously protested by Amnesty International.
The trial was delayed on Dec. 10, so the Sudanese Constitutional Circle of the Supreme Court could consider a petition to hold the trial in a civilian court.
Even in the Information Age, the personal presence, the witness, and even the blood of missionaries fosters the way to faith throughout the developing world. But are we, in the developed world, witnessing more persecution of Christians today, or have the information outlets of our time magnified the issue by the reporting of more episodes?
Dr. James Hitchcock, professor of history at St. Louis University, says that, statistically, the 20th century has indeed seen more persecution and more martyrs than any other time in history. Even more, he says, despite the unprecedented availability of information on the martyrdom of missionaries and their flocks, Christians in the developed world have done little to show concern for their persecuted brethren.
“It's rather shocking we have Christians undergoing horrendous suffering, and there is almost no awareness,” Hitchcock said. “People might read about incidents in India and the Sudan, but rather than make them feel outraged, it makes them feel uncomfortable. They put such incidents right out of their minds.”
Hitchcock noted that nationally syndicated columnist A.M. Rosenthal has written editorials asking why Christians are not protesting the persecutions, especially in the Sudan, where Christian children are being sold into slavery and forced to renounce their faith.
“People in Western societies have bought into the idea that the purpose of religion is to make you feel good. They cannot even conceive the idea of suffering or dying for their religion.”
Yet there is an optimistic note; vocations to the priesthood are on the rise in certain parts of the country. Father Marcel Taillon, vocations recruiter for the Diocese of Providence, Rhode Island, said there were five ordinations in June 1998, and eight young men have entered the seminary there.
“They know the work is demanding, and they must make great personal sacrifices,” Father Taillon said. “They are idealistic, but also realistic. The eight new seminarians are all joyful and spiritually healthy.”
Father Taillon also noted that at Bishop Hendricksen High School in Warwick, many of the students are attracted to the example of St. Maximillian Kolbe, who sacrificed his life in a German concentration camp during World War II.
“I'm encouraged by the students. All are respectful of the Church and the Faith. We had one student with leukemia who spoke to the student body about how his faith helped get him through the ordeal. He inspired everyone who heard him.”
While the seminarians and students with whom Father Taillon works may never face the suffering of missionaries in other countries, he said they still make great sacrifices. “Their formation is deeper and faster,” he said. “They are willing to reject the bad things of society, and focus on Christ and his Church in a society that is not doing so.”
James Malerba writes from Hamden, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: Modern-day persecution continues around globe ----- EXTENDED BODY: James Malerba ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Steering a Daughter to God DATE: 01/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:Renowned theologian, author of 25 books, nationally syndicated columnist, many years professor at Stanford, Syracuse, and Notre Dame, U.S. ambassador, and recipient of the 24th Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, Michael Novak recently faced a new challenge: bringing the truths of the faith to his own adult daughter Jana. The result of their dialogue is Tell Me Why(see review, Page 10), one of the most compelling religious books of the past year. Novak recently discussed the experience with Registercorrespondent Raymond de Souza.
Renowned theologian, author of 25 books, nationally syndicated columnist, many years professor at Stanford, Syracuse, and Notre Dame, U.S. ambassador, and recipient of the 24th Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, Michael Novak recently faced a new challenge: bringing the truths of the faith to his own adult daughter Jana. The result of their dialogue is Tell Me Why(see review, Page 10), one of the most compelling religious books of the past year. Novak recently discussed the experience with Register correspondent Raymond de Souza.
De Souza: Your most recent book,Tell Me Why, written with your daughter Jana, is a deeply personal exchange in which you try to answer her questions about the faith. How did the exchange begin?
Novak: Jana, in her mid-20s, thinking about her future life, possibly getting married, possibly having children, began asking me for the first time questions about religion. She had been resistant to conversations in that area earlier in her life. At first I handed her some books that I thought would be helpful: Chesterton, de Lubac, even the Catechism. But she found these unhelpful—whether she even opened them I am not sure.
But she pursued me with a long fax, listing 15 or 16 different questions that came tumbling out one after another. This reached me when I was in Krakow, Poland, for a summer program. I was delighted to receive this and sat down immediately to answer her. I began to answer the questions one at a time, and then she said that she had more questions. I would send her what I wrote, and she would begin to criticize it, or in some cases, reject it.
She would ask me to reformulate my answers because I was not answering the parts of the questions that she thought were most important. In some cases, that was because I thought before I could answer the question I had to deal with some presuppositions. I said that this was a bit like climbing a mountain: You do have to go back and forth a few times; you don't go straight to the top.
But she kept after me that I was not really on the right track. She kept saying that the places where she was and where her questions were coming from were different than what I was expecting. She felt confident in her questions because she was discussing these matters with her friends. She felt she was speaking for more than just herself,
In every generation there are those who leave the faith. The Scripture itself tells us that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness grasps it not. Every single person has to meet the challenge of the faith. God addresses himself to every soul, and every one has to reply for himself or herself, and no one else can do it for you.
although she was speaking for herself—the questions have her accent, and she took responsibility for what she wrote.
When did you decide to publish this exchange as a book?
I realized that I was going to have to invest a lot of time in this, and that I would have to take time away from other projects. After a couple of exchanges I asked her whether she would like to think of this project as a book. She said yes. So we had that in mind from early on, although the basic questions were already set at the beginning. We found ourselves in a long process—over a year to the finished product—and it was a joint product throughout. In fact, after we had reached about 400 manuscript pages, Jana went through and cut about 100 pages, feeling that those pages were wasted effort that did not address exactly her questions.
This book is about a daughter who does not consider herself Catholic, despite being raised in a Catholic home and having a father who has devoted his life to the study of the faith as a theologian. In this sense you have experienced the pain of many parents whose children no longer practice the faith.
That's true. But in every generation there are those who leave the faith. The Scripture itself tells us that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness grasps it not. Every single person has to meet the challenge of the faith. God addresses himself to every soul, and every one has to reply for himself or herself, and no one else can do it for you.
I used to teach my students—and I said it to my children—that they had to go into a kind of darkness and find the faith on their own. They might be led into that at a time they didn't choose and in a way that they didn't see. They could learn about the faith from their parents and their schools, but then they would have to make it their own.
Now one point that I didn't understand was how bad Catholic education and Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD) classes had become. It surprised me to discover how little my children learned about theology and what we would call catechism. I assumed that they were getting pretty much what we had when we were young. They didn't. And it was foolish of me to assume that.
They didn't learn the difference between Catholics and Anglicans, or Catholics and Lutherans or Baptists.
They didn't learn what Catholics believe about the Pope, or the Eucharist, or the Trinity, or any of the basics that we had to memorize cold when I was young. They didn't learn that. They learned about the homeless and Central America, or psychology and identity—things that they could have learned from The New York Times.
Did you find in Jana's questions any echoes of your own path over the last 40 years? What you are writing now differs from what you were writing in the 1960s, though you were never outside the embrace of the faith.
I don't think that's true, though I see how you could say that. I was no less serious a Catholic in those years than I am now. But there are different things to criticize now. When I began writing it was in the pre-Vatican II Church, where there needed to be more freshness of thinking, more taking up of worldly responsibilities, a greater sense of openness beyond the Church walls narrowly construed—beyond the ghetto even. In all those criticisms my friends and I felt completely vindicated by the Second Vatican Council. We were in favor of the Council before anybody ever dreamed of it. We knew there was a Catholic renaissance coming, and it was in the name of that that we spoke.
That's the way we were educated; to be prepared for that sort of change in the Church. We were taught to be critical about the Church, and to think for ourselves about the Church. Now it may be true that as a younger man my manner was more abrupt and more arrogant and more knowing than I really was. There may well have been something in my tone that was abrasive to others.
Is there anything from that era that helped you in writing this book with Jana?
The writing of Belief and Unbeliefin 1965 was an expression of my own difficulties with belief. Most people do go through a crisis of belief, in which they have to set aside what they have been told by their parents or their teachers. Whether they actually believe it or not is something they have to decide. Reflecting on my own struggles in writing Belief and Unbeliefhelped me in my teaching later at Stanford and Harvard when my students were going through those struggles. I tried to draw on that now when my daughter almost 30 years later is going through a similar struggle.
Was that experience applicable today?
I made some mistakes in talking with Jana because her struggle in the 1990s is somewhat different from our struggle in the 1960s. In the 1960s, our parents had come through the Depression and the Second World War in which their souls had been grievously tested. But their faith was very strong; their faith was in a certain sense almost unquestioning. That's not exact, but it seemed that way to us. The faith has been a great source of strength to them, and they had great confidence in it, because it had been tested, and not found wanting.
It is different now. Many of the students in university with Jana have grown up in atheist or agnostic families. Jana didn't, but in her own rebellion, she found herself agnostic—she didn't want to, but she found herself an agnostic and she didn't know how to answer the questions that surrounded her.
There is so much atheism in the schools now. So many of her friends took atheism for granted. She did not find it attractive—she found it morally confusing and intellectually incoherent. How could people believe so much in reason in their professional work and then think that everything happened by chance or in an absurd way? It didn't make any sense to her.
She described her state very well—it opened my eyes. She didn't find it so hard to believe in God, but she didn't see what difference that makes. How does God connect to my life?
In an earlier generation of apologetics, if the intellectual argument was provided, that was considered sufficient. But you would offer those arguments, and Jana would ask how that made a difference in her daily life. Is this a new challenge for apologetics?
Yes, there was a strong sense 30 years ago that if there is a God, then obviously he is concerned about morals. But there is a disconnect today. Supposing there is a God, what does that have to do with Christianity? Maybe he is not the Christian God—in fact, Jana did not want to capitalize “God.” She did not want the existence of God to be confused with the Christian God; maybe God was only the maker of the sun and the moon and the stars. Or perhaps not even a creator; maybe there was only a presence there and maybe he was totally indifferent to human beings.
So the challenge is to assure yourself that there is a God, or gods even. Second, how do you connect that with the Jewish and Christian God? Third, how do you connect that with the churches that you see today? And running through all those: What does that have to do with my life? What if I don't want to be part of that? What's the difference?
And so what used to be knitted together is all disconnected. That's not a matter of the psychology of one person—it's very widespread.
How then do you present the faith to that mind-set? That is the purpose of the book, is it not?
The book dramatizes the passing on of a tradition from one generation to another. That's what we say we should do, and this book enacts it. This is the handing on from one father to one daughter. In the handing on, there's slippage. You can try to deliver the package and it can drop just before her hands take hold of it. Or you can try to deliver it at a moment when she is just not ready to receive it. It is a very delicate operation and we see how miraculous it is that the tradition should have gone on so long; there are so many gaps between the outstretched hands.
The faith then is truly a gift; it cannot be handed on in a purely human way.
There is nothing automatic that can be done. There is no hose that I could use to pour water into an empty bucket. You can't do that. It remains a free act of the will and it is Jana's own act of understanding that is important. She has to have the insight or not, to have the good will to allow the insight or not.
Your book uses tradition by employing probably more than a hundred texts from spiritual writers—not all of them Christian.
St. Augustine teaches, in his essay on the art of catechizing, that each soul is different, and you must discern what each soul is asking of you. I wanted to convey to Jana that one advantage of belonging to a tradition like that Catholic tradition is that there are so many witnesses, and that you don't have to find out everything for yourself. You can look among these witnesses for the ones who have shared your experiences. You don't have to be a prisoner of the late 20th century. You don't have to look at things the way your friends do. The advantage of having a tradition is that you have all these other ways of looking at things available to you.
Were you surprised that the tougher questioning was on the nature of God and Church rather than the “hot-button” moral questions?
It would normally be a surprise, but Jana has had a lot of suffering as a young woman. She has undergone a lot, and so has a great moral strength. She has had to learn to deepen the moral side of her nature in order to endure many of the things that she has endured. As a consequence she has a strong moral sense. In addition, she has always been passionately pro-life, for reasons not wholly obvious to me. She has a great love for children; she volunteered one summer to work with severely retarded children, with whom she had infinite patience.
She did have all the moral questions of her generation. For example, it really did bother her that we say that homosexuality is wrong. Why do we say that? This generation simply does not take for granted the traditional truths of Judaism and Christianity on these matters.
But the really difficult questions were the connection between God and Church, not so much the moral questions.
At the end of the book, she pronounces herself still searching.
God is unseen. We can't touch him, we can't feel him, we can't hear him. So the odd thing about God is that our senses, our imagination, our memory, and our intelligence are inadequate for him. So we find ourselves stripped of our own faculties and our own equipment when we try to address him. Therefore we come to him in silence and no one appears, as St. Theresa of Lisieux puts it, quoting from a poem of St. John of the Cross.
I tried to suggest to Jana the kind of darkness or emptiness in which God often is. I was encouraging her to go to First Friday or something like that. It's enough to spend an hour or two in the darkness, even if there are no thoughts or feelings, in the presence of God. God acts in those moments in ways that you cannot perceive. The silence is important. Emptying oneself in God's presence is good for the soul. It's the normal atmosphere of the soul, but life keeps us so busy today that we don't allow these moments to occur.
Not long after we finished the book Jana surprised us by offering to go to Easter Vigil Mass with my wife and myself. It was a beautiful Mass—at least I thought so, though Jana was less pleased with it. The next morning it turned out that she slipped up to the early morning Easter Mass too. She then joined the parish next to us, returned to the sacraments, and has become quite a devout young lady.
That is very satisfying to me, but I would have been quite content if, in God's way, it had taken much longer. She says that she found it very annoying that I would say, when she was about 14, that it was quite OK for her to be in a kind of rebellion or darkness and that she would come through it all right. But I always believed it, about her, and about my students and in my own life.
This voyage through the darkness is something that St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and St. Thérése of Lisieux keep telling us about. I wouldn't say that everybody has to go through it, but most people do.
—Raymond de Souza
----- EXCERPT: When an Adult Child Turns From the Faith ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond de Souza ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: Pope Calls for Justice On World Day of Peace DATE: 01/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—“When we turn our gaze to the events of the century about to end, the two world wars pass before our eyes: the cemeteries, the graves of those who died, the destroyed families, the crying and desperation, the misery and suffering. … How can we forget the death camps, the children of Israel cruelly exterminated, and the holy martyrs, Father Maximilian Kolbe, Sister Edith Stein and others?”
While looking back in sorrow on the lessons of the past century, Pope John Paul II began the new year by issuing a passionate call for peace throughout the globe. At a Peace Mass, celebrated in the Vatican Jan. 1, the pope pinpointed respect for the rights and dignity of the human person as the key to enduring peace—the theme of his own message for the World Day of Peace, which the church celebrates on New Year's Day.
At the conclusion of the the traditional two-hour liturgy in St. Peter's Basilica, the Pope, looking rested after nearly a week at his villa outside Rome, asked for prayers so that “the representatives of states show a generous willingness and an active commitment at the hour of welcoming and carrying to fulfillment humanity's irrepressible and fruitful desire for understanding and peace.”
In reviewing the events of the last 100 years, the pope said Christians should look at the world situation with hope and realism—hope founded in the belief that the world has been liberated from sin by Christ crucified, and realism based on the recognition that, all too often, “humanity gives in to the influence of evil.”
“However, aided by grace, humanity continually gets up again and, guided by the strength of redemption, proceeds toward good,” he added.
As the Pope went on to say, “The world is not only marked by the terrible heritage of sin, but is above all a world saved by the Son of God, crucified and risen from the dead … Therefore, we believe that, upon entering the third millennium with Christ, we cooperate in transforming the world he redeemed.”
The pontiff called on the international community to surmount the “great and difficult” problems that give birth to conflict in our time, and called attention to the continuing moral failure on a global scale that has marked the the 20th century: “Before our eyes we have the results of ideologies such as Marxism, Nazism and Fascism, and also of myths like racial superiority, nationalism, and ethnic exclusionism.”
Further, the Holy Father warned against a complacency which would confine these moral failures to the dustbin of history or to pockets of unrest in the contemporary world. In pointed reference to prosperous, developed lands, the Pope continued: “No less pernicious, though not always as obvious, are the effects of materialistic consumerism, in which the negative effects on others are considered completely irrelevant?”
At the same time, the pontiff emphasized that “[o]ur century is also the century of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which recently celebrated its 50th anniversary,” adding that “the desire for peace, which motivated the United Nations Assembly to proclaim the rights of man, continues today to invigorate the efforts of all people of good will who desire to construct a world ever more just and united.” He continued by explaining his motive in centering his Peace Day message around respect for human rights: “Recognizing the innate dignity of all members of the human family … is the foundation of liberty, justice and peace in the world.”
One central point in the Pope's message regarded the indivisibility of human rights: “No affront to human dignity can be ignored, whatever its source, whatever actual form it takes and wherever it occurs.” Thus, the Pope took the opportunity to address a number of issues key to the propagation of human rights and dignity in today's worldm listing some rights which appear “particularly exposed to more or less open violation today.”
First among these is the right to life, with the Holy Father stressing that this right, which “guarantees to the unborn the right to come into the world, in the same way protects newborns, especially girls, from the crime of infanticide. Equally, it assures the handicapped that they can fully develop their capacities, and ensures adequate care for the sick and the elderly.”
The right to life also implicates the necessity of ethical criteria in genetic engineering, and the urgent need to reject “all forms of violence … poverty
… hunger… armed conflict … criminal trafficking in drugs and arms [and] … mindless damage to the natural environment.”
The Pope called on all peace movements, along with disarmament, anti-drug, and environmental advocates, to transcend their own “specialization,” and to promote and protect the right to life in totality.
Another fundamental right under threat is religious freedom—“the heart of human rights,” inasmuch as religion “shapes people's ‘vision of the world’” and “affects relationships with others.” In addition to every believer's right to live and express his or her faith, in public and in private, the Pope stressed the right of persons to change their religion. He cited countries which fail to recognize “the right to gather for worship,” and others which privilege one religion to the detriment of others, creating discrimination and marginalization.
Thus, the Pope expressed his concern with religious liberty, both in atheist countries such as China and Vietnam, and in certain theocratic religious nations, such as the fundamentalist Islamic states of the Middle East. Recalling the tension which prevails among “peoples of diverse religious convictions and cultures,” the pontiff joined other world religious leaders, including the Dalai Lama, in maintaining that “the use of violence can never claim true religious justification, nor can it foster the growth of true religious feeling.”
A third focus for the Pope was civil rights, including the right of the persons and nations to participate in the process in the larger community or in the community of nations, The Pope highlighted “certain economic problems,” discussed only by “limited circles,” which lead to the trend that “political and financial power is concentrated in a small number of governments or interest groups.” The Vatican information service FIDES explained the Pope's statements in reference to such institutions and events as the G8 group, the World Bank's development policies, and the International Monetary Fund's mistakes in policy regarding the Asian crisis.
Even more, the Holy Father cited “one of the most tragic forms of discrimination [as] the denial to ethnic groups and national minorities of the fundamental right to exist as such.” The Pope described “ethnic cleansing” as “a grave crime against humanity … [and a] violation of human dignity.” The recently instituted International Criminal Court “could gradually contribute to ensuring the effective protection of human rights on a world scale.”
Finally, the Pope called for a correction of the absolute criteria of the free market. He repeated his plea that the Grand Jubilee of 2000 be honored by the elimination or reduction of poor countrie’ international debt. He called, also, for responsibility for the environment, recalling that “placing human well-being at the center of concern for the environment is actually the surest way of safeguarding creation.”
The final paragraphs of the Pope's statement suggested an outline for furthering a “culture of human rights.” Reaffirming the indivisibility and universality of human rights, the Pope called on each individual and every nation to be concerned for the global situation. The duty to safeguard “the dignity of the poorest and the marginalized and to recognize in a practical way the rights of those who have no rights,” falls in particular to Christians. We are to keep in mind those who suffer from hunger or persecution, and “raise our voices on their behalf.” In the year before the Great Jubilee, the Pope says, this is the path to become imitators of the Father: “Does a woman forget the baby at her breast … even if these forget, I will never forget you.”
This article was compiled by Register staff from CNS and Zenit reports.
----- EXCERPT: John Paul II demands respect for human rights ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Irish Bishop Warns Euro Is a 'Huge Risk' DATE: 01/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:DUBLIN, Ireland—The greatest step in the process of European unification, the introduction of a common currency, the euro, has been described as a “huge political risk” by an Irish bishop specializing in European affairs.
The first stage of the euro's introduction started on New Year's Day when the values of 11 European currencies became fixed in relation to one another and the new euro currency.
Most Europeans will not notice an immediate difference, despite the fact that some international banking transactions will be carried out in the new currency.
There won't be any real sign of a pan-European currency until January 2002. For now Europeans will continue to use their national currencies like the German mark, the Italian lira, the French franc, and the Irish punt. The only European Union country not participating in the euro is Great Britain as sterling does not belong to the European Monetary System (EMS).
Bishop Joseph Duffy of Clogher, who is a member of the European bishops conference COMMECE, said the introduction of the euro was a logical part of the move toward European unity and “inevitable” following the Maastricht Treaty.
“There is a huge political risk involved,” he admitted. “But a risk doesn't mean a disaster. People will have to work hard and responsibly. The euro is not a miracle solution.”
Bishop Duffy said the role of the Church in the new Europe is, through its social teaching, to promote agreement, respect for the person, and the idea of solidarity. He believes that the euro is part of a greater effort to progress through agreement, rather than disagreement; working on consensus, rather than difference. Indeed, Bishop Duffy said the use of illustrations of bridges to decorate the new bank notes was a symbol of this: “The imagery is positive. A bridge is something that brings people together, rather than something that separates them.”
Bishop Duffy wishes Britain was participating in the introduction of the euro—and not for purely idealistic reasons. His diocese is one of four cross-border dioceses in Ireland, where Church workers have to cope with the additional difficulty of having one currency, the punt, in the Republic of Ireland, and another currency, sterling, in Northern Ireland. He said: “It is a great pity that Britain isn't joining the rest of Europe in the euro, but we have been living with that since 1979 when we joined the EMS and they didn't.”
“We have to keep two sets of currency in our pockets when we are traveling about the diocese and you have to keep two separate accounts for all your pastoral services, otherwise you lose money in exchange charges all the time.”
George Mitchell, an accountant working for the Dublin Archdiocesan Finance Department, says the new currency will impact little on Church affairs at first, but that an education effort is needed before the Euro comes into full use in 2002. This is because the euro is worth about 75% of an Irish Punt. Mitchell said: “If people who have been donating five punts a week start donating five euros a week, that will mean a reduction of about 25%.”
The Dublin Archdiocese is Ireland's largest contributor to the “Peter's Pence” collection taken in churches across the world in July to support pontifical charities. Mitchell says that with the introduction of the new currency, he does not recommend changing the collection's name to “Peter's Eurocents,” when Eurocents replace pennies.
But he added: “I think its time to set the ‘Peter's Pence’ name aside—it comes from a particular consciousness at a particular time. A much more suitable name would be ‘the Collection for Pontifical Charities.’”
Cian Molloy writes from Dublin, Ireland.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Cian Molloy ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: U.S Notes & Quotes DATE: 01/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:Excerpts from selected publications
Democratic Ethicists, Theologians Fault Clinton
“Talk about partisanship,” theologian Gabriel Fackre told the Washington Times. Fackre, a two-time Clinton voter, describes himself as “a good Democrat,” said the paper. “What shocked me most was there wasn't a single Democrat” on the House Judiciary Committee who supported impeachment, he is quoted saying.
Another two-time Clinton voter, Robert Jewett of Garrett-Evangelical Seminary, took issue with the way some defenders of the president have framed their arguments in religious terms. He told the paper, “The public has been given a counterfeit argument about morality and forgiveness,” and added, “We're not after perfection. We're only after minimal standards. … If
you don't defend even [minimal] moral standards, then the whole system goes out.”
Belief in Miracles Is Growing
Sixty-one percent of Americans “absolutely” believe that “Jesus was born to a virgin mother,” according to the Oregon daily, citing Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University. Furthermore, “A survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press shows that the percentage of people who ‘completely agree' that ‘even today miracles are performed by the power of God’ has increased 14 points between 1987 and 1997, to 61%.”
The report noted that popular culture is investing in this new belief in miracles, with books about angels and saints and movies such as The Prince of Egypt and television shows such as a recent ERepisode that discussed miracles.
In the midst of a culture becoming more open to the miraculous, one body has become stricter in its view of miracles, said the report. “Perhaps no institution investigates miracles like the Roman Catholic Church,” it said, adding that “[i]n 1974, the Vatican issued new guidelines, distinguishing between the truly “miraculous”—physical happenings without a natural cause—and the “supernatural,” which meets a less stringent standard.
‘personal Biblical Interpretation Led to Clinton Crisis’
A Scripps Howard News Service report suggests that this difference may have led, by a roundabout way, to President Clinton's impeachment. It refers to past “pivotal talks” Clinton had with Rev. W.O. Vaught in Little Rock, before and after Clinton became governor.
The report said, “The young Clinton claimed the feisty Southern Baptist as his spiritual father and constantly sought his wisdom about complex moral issues. Vaught died just as Clinton rose to national prominence.”
“It was Vaught who told Clinton that the Bible didn't forbid the death penalty. He also said that personhood begins with the first breath, because the Bible says life was literally breathed into man at creation.” Vaught's theory, it should be noted, fails to account for other parts of Scripture, e.g., the visitation story, where an unborn John the Baptist responds to the presence of the unborn Jesus.
The report concluded, “It's impossible to know if the future president ever asked his pastor what the Bible does or doesn't say about adultery and the moral status of sexual acts other than intercourse. But somewhere along the line, according to Monica Lewinsky and others, Clinton became convinced this was another complex issue on which he was going to have to read the Bible and, claiming his doctrinal freedom as a Baptist, make up his own mind. The rest is history.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Stephen Vincent ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 01/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:Excerpts from selected publications
Anthony Hopkins Quits with a Warning
It quoted a Dec. 20 press conference in Rome where Anthony Hopkins, the Academy Award winning actor who has starred in many movies, from Remains of the Day to Silence of the Lambs, announced he was giving up his acting career.
The group quoted the actor saying, “I can't take it anymore. I have wasted my life. To hell with this stupid show business, this ridiculous show business, this futile wasteful life. I look back and see a desert wasteland.”
“After 35 years I look back and cringe with embarrassment and have say to myself. ‘How… could you have done that?’ I've done one or two good films and some bad films. It was a complete waste of time.”
The View from Bethlehem
“The bells of the sixth-century Church of the Nativity summoned several hundred Palestinian Christians and pilgrims from abroad to Christmas Day Mass in the town revered as the birthplace of Jesus,” said the report.
But locals were unhappy that the U.S. and British air strikes of Iraq had kept this year's number of visitors down, said the report.
It also noted this Christmas news from elsewhere: “Christians across Asia heard calls for peace after a year of bloodshed and economic crisis in some countries.
“In Communist China and Vietnam, thousands of worshipers packed churches for Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, while Christian communities in Indonesia and India put aside fears triggered by recent religious clashes and gathered to celebrate the festive season.”
“Thousands of miles away, in a war- and famine-ravaged region in southern Sudan, 17 African-American college students from the United States were handing out food to children,” it said.
“Only a few months ago, the children in Turalei were in danger of starving to death, because of famines aggravated by a 15-year civil war,” the report added.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Pope's Week DATE: 01/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:Wednesday, Dec. 23:
Appointed as consultors of the Pontifical Council of Culture for a five-year period:
•Archbishop Giuseppe Pittau, secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education.
•Bishop Maurice Gaidon of Cahors, France, president of the Comite Episcopal Art, Culture et Foi.
•Msgr. Michal Heller, rector of the Theological Institute of Tarnow, Poland, and member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
•Msgr. Bruno Forte, member of the International Theological Commission, Italy.
•Msgr. Werner Freistetter, director of the Institut für Religion und Frieden beim Militärbischofsamt of Vienna, Austria.
•Msgr. Pierre Gaudette, member of the International Theological Commission, Canada.
•Msgr. Sergio Lanza, dean of the Pastoral Institute of the Pontifical Lateran University.
•Judith Frances Champs, lecturer in Church History at Oscott College, diocesan seminary of Birmingham, Great Britain.
•Gilles Deliance, director of the Centre Catholique International pour l'UNESCO, France.
•Manuel Díaz Cid, lecturer in History at the Catholic University of Puebla, Mexico.
•Father Jean Mbarga, rector of the Seminary of Yaounde, Cameroon.
•Yoshio Oyanagi, lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Tokyo, Japan.
•Father Marko Rupnik SJ, lecturer at the Pontifical Oriental Institute, director of the Ezio Aletti Studies and Research Center, Rome.
Thursday, Dec. 24:
•Appointed Father Giuseppe Carnevale OMI as head official of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.
Tuesday, Dec. 29:
•Elevated the territorial prelature of Tibu, Colombia, to the rank of diocese; nominated as the first Bishop of Tibu, Bishop Jose de Jesus Quintero Diaz.
•Elevated the territorial prelature Alto Sinu, Colombia, to the rank of diocese, with the new name of Montelibano; named as first Bishop of Montelibano, Bishop Julio Cesar Vidal Ortiz.
Wednesday, Dec. 30:
•Erected the diocese of Ourinhos, Brazil. Nominated as first Bishop of the diocese of Ourinhos, Father Salvatore Paruzzo, a priest of the diocese of Caltanissetta, Italy.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quots DATE: 01/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:Excerpts from selected publications
John Paul: 1998's Top Religious News Maker
“It was a hectic year for the Pope, who celebrated his 20th anniversary as leader of the Catholic world, named 22 new cardinals, issued a slew of letters and directives, visited four more countries, and in one homily, urged Catholics to rely more on God and less on horoscopes.”
A Detroit News article on the same subject referred to the Holy Father's affirmation of the Magisterium's role in defining doctrine. “Pope John Paul II told his bishops that the Catholic Church is not a society of free thinkers,” it said.
The Daily News noted that the Holy Father was also featured in the news when he canonized St. Edith Stein, a Jewish-born Carmelite nun who died at Auschwitz.
Furthermore, the Vatican “reported its first murders in centuries—of its Swiss Guard commander and his wife, and the apparent suicide of their assailant, another Swiss Guard,” said the paper.
Visit with Pope to Cap Teen's Spiritual Journey
For her, the meeting “will be the high point of a cathartic journey that began with her grandfather's death, producing a spiritual awakening that has helped Blair define her place in the Catholic Church.”
The report noted that, when Friday's grandfather died in 1994, she “wrestled with the void left by the loss of a gentle friend and mentor…. her grades fell from A's to D's. And this once-polite preteen began to develop a reputation for talking back to most everyone.”
But then a fellow parishioner at St. Louis Catholic Church helped Blair deepen her faith—and improve her character—by introducing her to the Knights of Peter Claver.
Blair was elected at its last convention as a youth leader of the Ladies Auxiliary of the Knights group. Now, she speaks frequently to teens and reminds parents of the importance of faith to good character.
“It will be amazing to see how much of an effect [the Holy Father] has on everyone,” Blair told the paper. “I hope people [can] see me as a role model for other young people. I try to be there for other people, like he is.”
“Sometimes adults say, ‘Oh, they're just children.’ Just because we're children doesn't mean that we can't be nice young ladies and men,” Blair added.
“People should remember that we're the future of the Church.”
----- EXCERPT: John Paul: 1998's Top Religious News Maker ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Prayer: Path to Vocation DATE: 01/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:Taking Authority In Answering God's Call (Luke 11:1-13, Isaiah 6:1-9)
Sad to say, but in real life it seems that we do not often experience the fruits of prayer as Jesus explained them to us—that everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks the door will be opened (Luke 11:10). How long have I searched,we at times feel like saying, and have not yet found the answer to my vocational questions?
And still they tell us to pray about a vocation!
How come? And, how?
Prayer
Prayer is at the core of our relationship with Christ, and in some way it sums up and reflects the type of Christian life we are living. I mean, that by looking at the quality of our prayer we can tell what kind of Christians we are. We can also take from the ideals we have in the Christian life an example of how to pray.
That may sound abstract, so let us see an example, the best example possible. Let us take a look at how our Lord told us to pray, in order to learn once more some important things. You will find the Lord's prayer in Luke's gospel, at the beginning of chapter 11, and in Matthew's a little into chapter 6.
The Law of the Kingdom and the Law of the Prayer
But, just to confuse you, let us start somewhere else!—by stitching together several things Christ said and which you will recognize: if you try to save your own life you will lose it, but if you lose your life for the Kingdom you will find it; the first shall be last and the last first; he who humbles himself will be exalted and he who exalts himself will be humbled; seek first the Kingdom of Heaven and all the rest will be given you.
There is an unusual lawat work in the Kingdom o{ Christ, a law that is diametrically opposed to the world and its ways, and which is incomprehensible to the world. It is the law that was summarized by Christ when he said that he came not to be served but to serve.
The Lord's Prayer
When the disciples wanted to pray but didn't know how,they asked Christ, and he gave them the Our Fatheras the model of all prayer. So, what answer does the Lord's Prayergive to our question as regards praying about a vocation?
In it Christ teaches that our first thoughts in prayer should be not for ourselves but for God himself and his things. So he opens with an invocation, Our Father who artin heaven, and a desire/petition in which the “beneficiary” is God himself, hallowed be thy name;followed by another, thy Kingdom come,and yet another, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,which are all centered on the Father.
Only then does he move on to things to ask for ourselves, give us this day our daily bread—note that it is something basic that is asked for, something simple, straightforward and necessary to life—which is followed by, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us— which commits us to behaving as we wish to be treated—and finally, lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil ---which again is directed towards us doing God's will in our lives.
From our Lord's example and instruction we see that real prayer is truly a God-centered endeavor. It cannot be self-centered, any more than our faith can be self-centered rather than God-centered.
It is worth pausing and comparing how we pray with how Christ wishes and teaches us to pray The comparison may lead us to some very helpful discoveries about ourselves and our priorities. No doubt it will also shed some light on the reasons for the fruit or lack there of in our prayer.
Vocation and Prayer
I believe there are fundamentally two ways to pray about a vocation. One is good, the other is much better.
The first way is to ask God for light. Lord, show me what my vocation is.And then we go looking for signs. We do not want to make a mistake. And so there is also some worry as we pray Is this right? Is this the best for me?,etc. What we want to know, and basically what we search for through our prayer, is what God wants of and for us. There is a lot of merit to this. But while through this process, yes, we are going to God, there is still a lot of thought there for ourselves. To a great degree we are still the center of our thought and concerns.
The second way is to take the Our Father,Jesus’ advice for prayer, and make it our model even as we seek our vocation. The radical difference here is that the focus is no longer on ourselves. The center of consideration is entirely God, and entirely his Kingdom.
The Our Fatheris a tremendously committing prayer, and if we prayed it with utter sincerity it would unleash a spiritual power and fill our lives with God in such a way that the face of the earth would certainly he changed and renewed. The gospel would sweep through the world.
Following the Lord's Prayerand what we called the laws of the Kingdomabove, let us see how we can improve (and thus make more effective) our prayer regarding a vocation.
Real Prayer
Firstly let us not seek ourselves in prayer. Hallowed bethy name,Thy Kingdom come.But these are not passive petitions. We cannot pray them and then sit back waiting to see what happens.
So, secondly, we must pray withour loins girt,and ready to work. We cannot expect to say the words and then in some mysterious way think that the fruits are going to come down from heaven. Not everyone who says Lord, Lord, but those who do my Father's will … To pray those petitions of the Our Fatheris the same as to pledge to God, I am going to praise and honor your name. I am going to do all I can to make your Kingdom come.
St. James says something in his letter about works of charity that is applicable here. He was writing to some Christians who thought they had faith but who did not have works, and he said to them … “if a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to him, ‘go in peace, keep warm and eat your fill’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself (fit has no works, is dead.”(James 2:15-17)
We could say that similarly, prayer without action is dead. Dead trees don't bear fruit. Neither does dead prayer.
Prayer without willingness to act is not much better than hypocrisy. There could be nothing emptier.
Willingness for action is the willingness to pay the price for the Kingdom to come. As someone has said, the only way to pray that part of the Our Fatheris with your sleeves-rolled up.
This means we must to be willing to share in Christ's cross, because it was through the cross that he inaugurated the Kingdom. Thomas the apostle sounds a little fatalistic to us when he says Let's go up to Jerusalem and die with him —that was when Jesus was not heeding their warnings and made it obvious he intended to go there despite the danger signs. However, his and the other apostles’ attitude towards the Cross changed with the experience of Christ's resurrection. Cur acceptance of the cross should not be fatalistic and mere resignation as St. Thomas’ first reaction was. It should be full of hope and enthusiasm. “Hail, oh Cross, our only hope.”
Our prayer should also be a pledge not to leave Christ alone in his love for humanity and in his work of salvation. This is not presumption. It is Christ himself who has asked for workers for the harvest, Christ himself who sent the apostles to preach and baptize. We do not go insteadof him, but with him and ashim, Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the One who sent me.Perhaps the ultimate mystery of Christ is his unselfishness in making us partakers of his work, of having us take part in the redemption of our brothers and sisters, making up for the part we often play in leading them astray. Christ's pardon not only forgives us this, but allows us humans to rebuild through him, with him and in him what we have destroyed.
Praying About a Vocation
The above leads us to see that while we should pray about a vocation we should make sure we do it well, by praying with the proper attitudes. We should seek the silence of prayer in order to sort out our impressions, to let them sink in, to give God a chance to really speak to our soul.
To pray about a vocation is not merely to think about it in the silence we associate with prayer. To pray about a vocation is to ask for light and to ask for understanding, certainly. But it is most important to pay attention to the attitude with which we pray, and we should also ask God to improve our attitude, so as to acquire complete willingness to accept whatever answer he gives us.
When we are ready to accept the answer we are most likely to see it when it comes. When we are still struggling with our attitudes we are inclined to ask God for more proofs than those he is already giving us.
Praying For a Vocation—Isaiah
This takes us one step further than praying about a vocation. Is it right to do this?
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? Who shall be our messenger?” I answered, “Here I am, send me.”(Isaiah 6:8)
You have to take this passage in its context in order to understand it:
Isaiah is in prayer. He isfavored with a vision of the Lord Yahweh seated on a throne in all his majesty, attended by angels. In the face of this majesty and power he experiences his own smallness and above all his own wretchedness and sinfulness, and when he cries out his confession an angel approaches and purifies him of his sin and iniquity. Thereupon he hears the Lord speaking, asking who could be his messenger. And Isaiah volunteers.
Several things you should note. Firstly, the prophet was in prayer. Secondly, his prayer was an extraordinary experience of God. Thirdly, his experience of God gave him a new, humbling experience of himself—he realized what a sinner he was and how unworthy he was to be in God's presence. Fourthly, this realization made him cry out, and God takes the initiative to purify him by sending him his angel to do so. Finally, once he is purified, he enters into a whole new dimension in his relationship with God.
In this new relationship he no longer feels the need to run away and hide from God. He is drawn into God's reflections and plan. He sees and hears what God wants. And he volunteers. Blindly. Note that is only afterhe has volunteered that he is told what God wants him to do and say. He had signed a blank check over to God.
He offered himself. He asked God to send him. This was much more than asking God if he was being called. It is very different to say, Lord, are you thinking of sending me?,than to say simply, Lord, send me.
Praying for Others
It is a good thing to pray for others. But sometimes we do a good thing badly,
There is the danger of praying with the spirit of the Pharisee who gave thanks to God because he was not like other men. We can pray for the needs of others with the detachment of someone who is asking for others what he does not need himself (in other words with a sense of superiority, forgetting that even the good attitudes we have are a gift from God). So we should pray with humility, recognizing that the first person to need what we are asking for others is ourself.
There is also the danger of praying without commitment—as if we had nothing to do with what we are praying for coming about. We ask God to help someone, and that's it. Contrast this with St. Francis’ prayer. Instead of praying just for peace to come he said:
“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is darkness let me bringyour light; where there is despair let me bringyour hope…”
We should pray with this same attitude. When a brother or sister has a need we should pray for them, but we should also pray that we will have the generosity to be part of the answer to that prayer if possible. There will, of course, still be things that it seems you can do nothing about beyond asking God to grant them. Nevertheless you should always say “If there is anything I can do, any sacrifice I can make to help this come about …”
Suggestions
Maybe you could shift the emphasis of your prayer.
Maybe what your prayer needs in order to be more generous is the purification that confession gives.
Maybe in your prayer you should take to God the needs and miseries you see in the world around you.
Maybe then in your soul you will hear him asking, Yes, they need to hear the gospel preached, they need to have their sins forgiven, they need to be nourished on the Eucharist, they need to have someone show them my love and charity, but how? Whom shall I send?
Maybe then the Holy Spirit will move you from a prayer of intercession to a prayer of offering, and you will find yourself saying Lord, send me.
Write by Anthony Bannon LC
Reprinted fromPeter on The Shore, Circle Media.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Anthony Bannon LC ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Charities Carve Out Niche in Cyberspace DATE: 01/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:Religion News Service
NEW YORK—In search of books, sweaters, toys, and a nearly infinite variety of miscellaneous whatevers, Americans are spending billions of dollars out there in the Internet universe. Online shoppers spent some $3.5 billion in the last quarter of 1998 alone.
With all that money surging around the electronic ether, a few do-gooders got the bright idea of carving off a slice for worthy charities. So now, a small number of venture capitalists, a few recent business school graduates and two idealistic young electricians have set up Web sites aimed at doing good. So far only a trickle of money has made its way through the sites to charities, but the idea is catching on.
Here's how these shop-to-give ventures work: The online shopper visits the charity site, chooses a nonprofit organization to support and makes a purchase through one of the retailers linked to the site. At some of the sites a percentage of the purchase price, set by the retailer, goes to the designated charity. At others, part of the sales commission the retailer might normally pay to a site that sends shoppers its way goes to the charity. Or sometimes charities get money both ways.
A recent search turned up these five charity shopping Web sites: iGive.com; 4Charity.com; charitymall.com; Shop2-Give.com; and Socialgoods.com.
Number one on the list of charities at Charitymall.com is America's Promise, the national organization headed by retired Gen. Colin Powell aimed at mobilizing volunteers to help at-risk young people. Powell, who grew up in the Bronx, has long been a hero to Earl and Karl Thomas, brothers who launched the site in November. The brothers were raised in suburban New York but now live and work in the Bronx.
The brother’ experience illustrates how easy it is to create a Web site and establish links with well-known retailers and prestigious charities. The two used their savings to set up the site and Karl, who went to Westchester Community College and was an apprentice electrician, was the designer. Most of the shop-to-give sites have eight or so employees. Charitymall.com is run by the two brothers alone.
Their experience also is typical of how things go on the Web—the site became active before all the kinks had been worked out. The brothers are still working on the links to document for the vendor where the buyer came from, and, for the charity, from whom the contribution came. They won't know till February how many transactions there have been and how much has gone to charity.
In contrast to other shop-to-give Web site operators, the Thomas brothers donate 100% of their referral fee to the designated charity. Their 22 affiliated retailers send the commission, which runs from 5% to 25% of the money the consumer spends, directly to the charity.
“We don't even see any of the money, and get a lot of positive response because of that,” Karl said.
“Our friends say, ‘What's wrong with you guys?t‘he Internet professionals say, ‘Why not take 50%?‘When you say you're giving it all away they look at you confused.”
The spokesman for America's Promise, Jeff Wender, says of the Thomas brothers, “We love them. It's a fantastic idea, and their enthusiasm is catching.”
The brothers hope that advertising will support the Web site, but not much has turned up so far.
What made it easy for Charity-mall.com and the other sites to open up with impressive lists of big name vendors like J. Crew or Music Blvd. or Avon or Amazon.com, is that the infrastructure has been set up so anyone with a Web page can sign up with retailers to participate in a referral program. The charity Web site creator simply goes to a retail-er's site and fills out a form linking their small Web to the retailer's big one. The shop-to-give Web sites get a commission on each transaction.
The charities, for the most part, were also eager to lend their names. Three of the sites provide short, but growing, lists of charities that have given permission for their names to be used.
Two of the sites, Shop2Give.com and iGive.com, let you pick your own charity, no matter how small or obscure. Shop2Give.com requires that your charity be a tax-exempt organization officially registered with the Internal Revenue Service. At iGive.com, venture capitalist and chief executive Robert Grosshandler says you could give to your brother Bob if you wanted, but not to an organization that advocates violence or breaking the law, or is involved in electoral politics.
These five sites join a crowd of 3 million Web sites out there, according to Network Solutions, a research firm tracking applications. Eighty-five percent of Web sites are commercial; 10% are nonprofit. In these enterprises, .com, for commercial, meets .org., for nonprofit. Though they see themselves as charitable in intent, all in the .com category do intend to make a profit. Except for Earl and Karl Thomas, who would like to make just enough to keep the site going. With 654,000 tax-exempt charities in the United States, there is no shortage of causes looking for money. The smaller charities, without big budgets for fund raising, are especially enthusiastic about getting their names up in computer lights at no cost to them, even if it's on someone else's site.
One of the biggest nonprofits is markedly unenthusiastic, though. The American Cancer Society was approached by several of the charity shopping Web sites and chose not to participate.
The society's communications director, Joann Schellenbach, said, “We have a very sophisticated fund-raising department, which chooses where to put its resources.” She added that the group is leery of the Internet in general; they've been burned by bogus Internet chain letters and scams using the American Cancer Society name without permission.
Another giant charity, the American Red Cross, however, signed up with Los Angeles-based Shop2Give.com as soon as that site opened Dec. 1, in order to raise money for Hurricane Mitch relief. There's no way to see yet how much was raised, said site creator Ami Kassar, since most retailers record transactions quarterly.
These enterprises are very young. All of them except iGive.com, a venerable one-year-old, sprang up this fall in time to catch a wave of Christmas shoppers.
Only iGive.com has sent a chunk to charity so far. Grosshandler said that 40,000 members supported 4,500 causes with a total of $180,000 given over the last year.
Though the shop-to-give sites are at an awkward early stage, and no charity reports a big pay-off, the Web site entrepreneurs all describe the set-up as “a win-win-win situation.” The shopper-donors lose nothing; they just buy what they were going to anyway. The donation comes at no cost to the charities, and the vendors attract customers they probably might not get otherwise.
Neutral observers in the charity world, like Todd Cohen of Philanthropy Journal, say anything that makes it easier for charities and would-be donors to find each other is a good thing.
Write by Constance Casey
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Constance Casey ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: PERSPECTIVE DATE: 01/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:This week, the Church invites us all to think in a focused way about the grace of vocation. The occasion provides once again an opportunity to ponder the call to holiness that Christ extends to every member of the Church. We call this invitation the universal call to holiness, because no human being is excluded from the divine purpose realized in Christ. The Savior, then, calls everyone to imitate his perfection of charity. We rejoice in this vocation not only because it ensures that, when lived out in truth, we will inherit heaven but also because it constitutes here and now the fulfillment of our human destiny and nature.
The word “vocation” comes from the Latin verb, vocare, which means “to call.” What is interesting to observe, the word also carries the connotation: to call someone by name. For example, in the Gospel of Matthew, we read that Jesus “saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them” (Matthew 4:21). In the Latin version of the Bible, the last phrase reads, “et vocavit eos.” Since that call came from the same God who first called light out of darkness and created form out of chaos, we are not surprised to learn that these two brothers left their boats and followed him, as the Evangelist pointedly remarks, “immediately” (Matthew 4: 22). James and John, along with those other brothers, Peter and Andrew, received what, today, the Church calls the grace of a special vocation within the Church.
The Savior continues to call men and woman to follow him by building upon their original baptismal consecration through the more intimate consecration of the evangelical counsels. The kind of life that Jesus himself lived provides the model. The Incarnate Son of God choose not only to dwell among us as a man but also to observe a particular manner of life.
First, Christ chose to remain a poor man. He was born in a stable, lived in what is still the small town of Nazareth, worked as a carpenter in the house of Joseph, and during the course of his public life, maintained a poor life style. Saint Thomas Aquinas tells us that Christ's voluntary renunciation of material goods allowed him to devote all his time to preaching God's truth.
Second, Christ remained a virgin, and so revealed that the celibate state when consecrated to God gives glory to God. Just as he realized the perfection of every virtue, Christ lived his entire life in perfect chastity. By not taking a wife, moreover, Christ demonstrated that he had come to join to himself one spotless Bride, which is the Church.
Third and what most distinguishes the life of Christ is that he fulfilled perfectly the will of his Heavenly Father. Christ manifests the power of obedience on the cross. When he utters his final words, “It is finished,” Christ announces that the world has once again been opened up to divine love. Sin did not prevail, for God “did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all” (Romans 8: 31).
Those who promise to observe the evangelical counsels are called consecrated persons, and they come in many different forms and shapes. The Catechism compares the variety of those who live out the counsels, whether in community or in solitude, to a “wonderful and wide-spreading tree.” What is most important to remember, however, consecrated life remains a grace in the Church.
Vocation also points to the sacrament of apostolic ministry, especially that of the diaconate and of the priesthood. Deacons and priests also imitate the life that Christ himself lived. They promise obedience to the local bishop and are bound to observe evangelical poverty, though not to hold all their goods in common. In the Latin Church, priests and some permanent deacons promise to remain celibate, whereas those deacons who are married recommit themselves to the practice of conjugal chastity. Like the call to consecrated life, the vocation to the priesthood comes only as a gift of grace.
Any person who today asked about a vocation would soon hear the word “discernment. They would be encouraged to scrutinize themselves about whether or not to embrace consecrated life or to prepare for priestly ordination. This kind of self-questioning is important, but it only accounts for a small part of what makes up a vocation. Above all, every vocation is a gift from God, a call to live out one's Christian life in a special way. Who could imitate Christ's own form of life unless Christ himself made it possible? Which man could fulfill Christ's own ministry unless Christ himself gave him the grace? What is our response? Pray for vocations!
Dominican Father Romanus Cessario is a senior writer at the Register.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Romanus Cessario, OP ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Apologetics for a Skeptical Daughter DATE: 01/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:(Pocket Books, 1998, 321 pp., $24)
Atheologian is never accepted in his own home.
Prominent theologian Michael Novak is now moving into the pleasant evening of his career, in which accolades and honors come frequently. He is the sort of author whose books are adorned, as this one is, with the glowing endorsements of cardinals (John o'Connor), archbishops (Rembert Weakland), Harvard professors (Mary Ann Glendon) and (top this!) papal press secretaries (Joaquin Navarro-Valls).
But his daughter can bring him up short, telling him that his well-crafted answers to her questions about God are “pretty abstract” and lack a “practical conclusion.” It can be safely wagered that the winner of the 1994 Templeton Prize in Religion does not often hear that.
It is an occasion for gratitude that Michael Novak is, aside from many other things, Jana Novak's father. He is a father who earnestly wants to hand on the faith of his fathers to his daughter, a bright, twentysomething Duke graduate who no longer considers herself Catholic.
This fascinating book gets started when Jana, resistant to conversations about religion in the past, faxes her dad some questions about religion and morality. Michael answers, Jana objects, Michael tries a different approach, Jana's questions become at once deeper and more precise, and the exchange continues until it becomes a book.
Tell Me Why is the result: a father who has mastered the Catholic tradition writes apologetics for his daughter, who despite her Duke education (or perhaps because of it) knows precious little about what Catholicism is all about.
“I want to do the best thinking and writing I can, because as far as I'm concerned this is your inheritance, or the most important part of it,” begins Michael. “I received nothing more valuable from my mother and father—and their mothers and fathers, and so on back to the twelfth century—than the life of God through the sacraments of Jesus Christ.”
Jana asks penetrating questions, and persists until they are answered in a manner she finds satisfying. To be honest, her initial list of questions, wherein the various controversies of sexual morality played too large a role, was disappointing. Such questions, while important, are really rather boring compared to more fundamental questions about why religion is important, how to choose a Church in which to belong, the link between faith in God and practicing that faith, and what demands the Christian vocation makes in terms of family life, professional life, and the pursuit of sanctity. Though still a young woman, Jana manifests her maturity in her decision to devote most of the book to taking up these compelling questions before turning to the contemporary excitations about sex.
Michael's task of handing on the faith faces obstacles that are as new as the faith is old. As is fitting for an exchange that began with a fax, Jana represents quite well the religious temperament of her generation. It is marked by a sort of mild atheism, or at least agnosticism, which is open to supernatural claims—as long as they do not claim the status of ultimate truths, or worse, make moral claims upon their adherents. The contemporary separation of morals from faith is evident as a theme through Jana's questions and means that Michael faces the difficult challenge of doing, to coin a phrase, “so what” apologetics.
An earlier generation of apologists—Chesterton, Knox, Lewis—assumed that if the intellectual argument was won, then everything else follows. In this, we found traditional apologetics along the following line: God exists, God creates all things with a purpose, God creates man for beatitude, God wishes to save man in a social way because he is a social creature—ergo, you must belong to the Church which God established, and follow its teachings, in order to be saved.
To which Jana's generation says: “So what?” Jana has little problem believing that God exists. But what does that have to do with the Church? And even if one should belong to the Church, what does that have to do with homosexuality or women's ordination or whether I should have children?
“So what” apologetics is not for those lacking in perseverance. Readers are therefore lucky to have as their guide a father who is not going to give up on his daughter. It is endearing that the different sections of the text are introduced as either “Jana” or “Dad,” not “Michael.”
Dad does not go to work unaided. He calls upon the tradition, liberally sprinkling the text with quotations, long and short, Christian and otherwise, that speak to the problem at hand. We hear Dante on hell, Newman on heaven, plenty of Scripture, and perhaps the most beautiful quotation in the tradition on tradition itself: Charles Péguy likening the handing on of the faith to the holy water, passed from fingertip to fingertip, by which we bless ourselves, our babies, and our dead. Michael presents the arguments in modern language, but does justice to what we would find in Augustine or Aquinas or John Paul II (the chapters on Christian sexual love and womanhood are marvelous).
There are also original twists. In the discussion of women's ordination, Michael highlights the importance of Christ's maleness by arguing that the Sermon on the Mount would have been unre-markable in the culture of the day if delivered by a woman.
While he adapts himself to the newness of his daughter's questions, Michael does not flinch from making demands that underscore the urgency of the task. “Why, you ask, is religion, any religion, important?” he writes. “My simple answer is: Because it is true. If it isn't true you shouldn't accept it. You wouldn't want to turn to religion merely for comfort, security, or peace of mind.”
The book allows us no happy ending, no dramatic return to the faith—though life generously provides one (see InPerson, Page 1). As such, many parents who find themselves in the same situation as Michael Novak will see echoes of their unfulfilled hopes here.
It is hard to think of a more important book published this past year for Catholic families. The great Catholic tradition, the Novaks tell us, is there precisely to help us do what tradition means, i.e., to hand on the faith. That tradition is not static. It is being enriched all the time, even as a theologian takes the time to answer the questions of a daughter clever enough, and courageous enough, to ask her father to tell her why.
Raymond de Souza is a seminarian of the Diocese of Kingston, Ontario.
----- EXCERPT: Book Review ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond De Souza ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Cloning and the Culture of Death DATE: 01/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:“Is There a Clone in Your Future?” by Mark S. Latkovic(The Catholic Faith, November-December 1998)
Mark Latkovic writes:
“[F]or the Christian, the technological engendering of new human life must raise the theological question of whether these techniques lead to an appreciation of the ‘fragility of the human being,’ to an awareness of our total ‘dependence on God,’ and to an attitude of concern for the ‘essential,’ i.e., concern for communion with God and neighbor.”
“Thus, at the heart of the debate over the new reproductive technologies, are not just technical questions (e.g., will it work?), but spiritual ones (e.g., who is man?). … There may not be a clone in your future, but the issues that science in general, and cloning in particular, raise for belief are ones that each and every one of us must grapple with.
“Unfortunately, many have simply resigned themselves to a life of unending scientific ‘progress’ unimpeded by any notion that our science needs to be subject to moral as well as technical criteria. … But as people of faith who believe that we are created in God's image, with intelligence and freedom, in order to be his stewards of the visible world, we must not forget our status as creatures.”
“For what reasons is cloning being proposed? Everything from: duplicating individuals with exceptional intelligence and beauty; reproducing the likeness of a dead loved one; the possibility of choosing a baby's sex; creating selected frozen embryos to be transferred in utero at a later time to supply spare organs, etc. … Even if all of this were possible, the cloning of a human being would not mean, obviously, that we have an ‘exact duplicate,’ as in the story line of Boys from Brazil, where Hitler was cloned. There is, we note, the influence of upbringing, environment, and culture. Still more significant is the spiritual soul, which as the Pontifical Academy of Life reminds us, ‘is created directly by God, [and] cannot be generated by the parents, produced by artificial fertilization or cloned.’
“What all these reproductive technologies have in common is their separation of the intimate bonds which exist between sex, marriage, and parenthood. Just as the Church teaches that it is never right to use contraception because it severs ‘love-making’ from ‘baby-making,’ it teaches that cloning, in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, and other methods which substitute a technological process for the deeply personal act of marital sexual intercourse, are wrong, because they sever ‘baby-making’ from ‘love-making.’
“[C]loning and other reproductive technologies … distort (or totally dispense with!) the natural ‘language of the body’ inherent in the marital act by which the couple simultaneously exchange the gift of themselves, while remaining open to the gift of the child. Moreover, cloning mocks the fact that God has created us male and female. Although we are gendered beings, cloning says that at least one sex is dispensable.
“[S]cience and technology are great goods …[b]ut left to their own devices, they cannot give us the moral norms needed for us to choose wisely in accord with integral human fulfillment. … [W]e must emphasize that our morality cannot be derived from science itself, or from what ‘works,’ or from the ethical system of the surrounding culture. … Hence, while the Church views with compassion the deeply rooted desires of infertile married couples to have children, and considers infertility research a good thing, she also teaches that efforts to help couples achieve pregnancy must respect the child's need to be conceived as the fruit of his parent’ personal act of marital intercourse.
“Unfortunately, cloning does not help us to see that we are to be cooperators with God, but rather makes us ‘conspirator’ against God's plan for human life. It is, therefore, one more lethal weapon in the arsenal of those who want to expand the ‘culture of death' against the ‘culture of life.’”
Ellen Wilson Fielding writes from David-sonville, Maryland.
The Definite Article is a digest of theRegister's choice from the nation's top journals.
----- EXCERPT: The Definite Article ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Power of Prayer DATE: 01/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:Concerning your article (“Power of Prayer Helps Irish Nun Rescue Addicts,” Dec. 27-Jan. 2 issue): Having completed 13 years in prison ministry (the last seven in alcohol-and-drug rehabilitation treatment), I can relate to Sister Consillio when she states that “young people have no faith, and the faith is not being passed on.”
I can also give testimony to the power of prayer, not only in recovery but also for those affected by AIDS. Because of the healing needed in addiction, AIDS, and other inmate-related psychological and physical problems, I celebrate the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick every month, [here] at Mt. McGregor Correctional Facility. It is a powerful sacrament that cannot only bring physical [healing], but spiritual healing as well.
My experience also tells me that Sister Consillio is so correct in that, if our prison inmates of today had parents that helped them talk the talk with God at an early age, walked them to Church, and set the example for them to follow, so that they one day could walk their own walk with God, then I believe our prisons would not be so bulging, especially with Catholic inmates. I firmly believe that if I had some of these young men in the confessional at an early age, they might never have seen the inside of prison walls. We not only need parents who will take the time to show their children the power of prayer, but we need priests who will take the time in the confessional to listen to the pain of young people and recognize the red flags that signal the causes of incarceration. These include mental, physical, or sexual abuse, as well as drinking or drug [experimentation] at an early age. The center of the power of prayer needs to be the Eucharist, where we can open our heart to the heart of Christ and share with him any joy or happiness, as well as fear, anxiety, frustration or even anger. There is where the Peace of Christ really is, and once an addict can find this peace, no matter how many times one might trip or fall, anyone can pick oneself up again and move on. We need to help more of our young people, through the Rosary, shared prayer or healing services, and, most especially, the Mass, to be able to find this peace.
Father Richard Severson
Catholic Chaplain Mt. McGregor Correctional Facility Wilton, New York
----- EXCERPT: Letters ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Guadalupe Pilgrimage Brings Out the Spirit Of Mexico's Faithful DATE: 01/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:The great shrines of Christendom where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared make some Catholics uneasy.
Writer Flannery o'Connor, for example, went to Lourdes entirely against her inclination. Being anywhere near a hymn-singing, rosary-bearing procession was for her a kind of penance. She claimed that such shrines did little for her devotional life.
She ended up liking the place more than she expected, but many Catholics share her aloofness from this side of Catholic devotion. Aren't pilgrimages a thing of the past? In an age of television, why go to the expense and hassle of traveling to Mexico or Portugal in order to say prayers that we can say anywhere at any time?
Well, I have just returned from Mexico, where I was present for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and can report that a pilgrimage is still what it was in the early days of the Church, when western Europe was a veritable grid of pilgrimage routes. It is a way of deepening one's interior life.
The story that Mary appeared to the peasant Juan Diego (now Blessed) in 1531 will provoke in many the reaction of the hero of a Walker Percy novel when someone in the room starts talking about Marian apparitions: “Ah … er … well … I have to be going.”
But no Catholic is required to believe in any supernatural occurrence since the death of the last apostle. Lourdes, Fatima, Guadalupe and the other handful of apparitions approved by the Church are not part of the deposit of faith. Belief in them is in no way necessary for salvation.
At the same time, there is ample reason to give credence to the Church's finding that these apparitions are authentic. At Guadalupe, when asked for a sign that she had truly appeared on the hillside where she asked that a church be built, Mary left her image on the cloak (called a tilma) which Juan Diego was wearing. The tilma still hangs in the Basilica near where the apparition occurred.
No scientist has ever been able to explain how that image managed to get on the tilma (it is not paint) or how the tilma, made of organic cactus fibers which easily disintegrate, is in perfect condition after four centuries. Nor can they explain the miracles which occur now and then. Five years ago, one of the members of my pilgrimage was cured there of terminal bone cancer and has been returning annually since in thanksgiving, bringing other pilgrims with her.
Miracles aside, no reproduction does the image on the tilma justice. I went back and forth on the people mover which takes you past it and could not get enough of it. The Virgin's smile, for one thing, is as enigmatic as that of the Mona Lisa.
Literally millions of Mexicans come to Mexico City, where the shrine is located, for the feast day on Dec. 12. For days, you can see them walking, bicycling, and even jogging from all points down the main roads of Mexico. Many of them are poor, and whole families were huddled in sleep in the open squares around the Basilica. It is a sight to startle those U.S. Catholics who grumble if the Sunday Mass schedule does not precisely fit their schedule of recreations.
Despite their manifest discomforts, all these pilgrims were happy. Observing them, I recalled an insightful remark of the Mexican writer Richard Rodríguez: “Mexico is Catholic and tragic, and everyone there is cheerful. America is Protestant and comic, and everyone seems depressed.”
There are many things that U.S. Catholics can learn from the Mexicans. One is a deeper Marian devotion. The only note of caution is that one not go overboard; there are Catholics who spend more intellectual energy speculating about the so-called third secret of Fatima than they do meditating on the life of Christ.
Another thing we can learn is that Catholicism is a family affair. Many of the pilgrims to the shrine of Guadalupe came as families: grandparents, parents, children. In the United States, we do many things better than the Mexicans, but one thing we do not do well is family life. As a result, many Americans don't know who they are. They have wonderful technological toys and a government that works (more or less), but they don't, as a whole, enjoy the rich family bonds of the Mexicans, and so are impoverished in a way that their southern neighbors are not.
Finally, we can learn from Mexicans the deep spiritual rewards of a pilgrimage. Like any mother, the Virgin of Guadalupe delights in visits from her children. Having just returned from such a visit, I can only offer the words of Robert Hugh Benson, who wrote a beautiful little book about his pilgrimage to Lourdes in 1908: despite all the tourists and shops peddling garish madonnas, these shrines are “soaked, saturated and kindled by the all but sensible presence of the Mother of God.”
New York-based writer George Sim Johnston is author ofDid Darwin Get It Right?
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: George Sim Johnston ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Mining the Depths of the Our Father DATE: 01/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:Drawing on the Lord's Prayer, the Pope's 1999 message for vocations delivers potent words for all the faithful
Following is Pope John Paul II's message for the 1999 World Day of Prayer for Vocations, which will be on April 25.
Venerable brothers in the episcopate, dearest brothers and sisters throughout the world!
The celebration of the World Day of Prayer for Vocations on April 25, the fourth Sunday of Easter, constitutes a recurring reminder to consider with attention a fundamental aspect of the life of the church: the call to the ordained ministry and to the consecrated life.
In the journey of preparation for the great jubilee, the year 1999 opens “the horizons of believers, so that they will see things in the perspective of Christ: in the perspective of the Father who is in heaven (cf. Matthew 5:45)” (Tertio Millennio Adveniente, 49) and invites them to reflect on the vocation that constitutes the true horizon of every human heart: eternal life. It is precisely in this light that the full importance is revealed of the vocations to the priesthood and the consecrated life with which the heavenly Father, from whom come “every good endowment and every perfect gift” (James 1:17), continues to enrich his church.
A hymn of praise erupts spontaneously from the heart: “Blessed be God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 1:3) for the gift, even in this century which is drawing to a close, of innumerable vocations to the priestly ministry and the consecrated life in its different forms.
God continues to show himself as Father by means of men and women who, urged by the strength of the Spirit, give witness by their word and deeds, and sometimes even by martyrdom, to their unlimited dedication to serving their brothers and sisters. Through the ordained ministry of bishops, priests and deacons, he provides the permanent guarantee of the sacramental presence of Christ the Redeemer (cf. Christifideles Laici, 22), making the church grow, thanks to their dedicated service, in the unity of one body and in the variety of vocations, ministries and charisms.
The Father has poured out his Spirit in abundance on his adoptive children, manifesting in the various forms of consecrated life his fatherly love, which he wishes to extend to the whole of humanity. His love is a love that awaits with patience and welcomes with rejoicing the person who has been far away; which educates and corrects; which satisfies every person's hunger for love. He continues to point out the expectations of eternal life which open the heart to hope, even in the midst of difficulties, pain and death, especially by means of those who leave everything to follow Christ, dedicating themselves totally to the establishment of his kingdom.
In 1999, dedicated to the heavenly Father, I wish to invite all the faithful to reflect on vocations to the ordained ministry and consecrated life, following the outline of the prayer that Jesus himself taught us, the “Our Father.”
The Second Vatican Council recalls that “Christ … in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, fully reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling” (Gaudium et Spes,22). For the human person, fidelity to God is the guarantee of fidelity to his own being and, in this way, of the full realization of his own project of life.
Every vocation has its roots in baptism, when the Christian “is born of water and the Spirit” (John 3:5) and becomes a participant in the event of grace that revealed Jesus, on the banks of the river Jordan, as the “beloved son” in whom the Father was well pleased (Luke 3:22). Baptism is the source of true fruitfulness for every Christian vocation. Therefore, it is necessary to take particular care to introduce catechumens and children to the rediscovery of baptism and the establishment of an authentic filial relationship with God.
Holiness, a gift to be constantly requested, constitutes the most precious and effective response to the modern world's hunger for hope and life. Humanity needs holy priests and consecrated souls who live out daily the total gift of self to God and neighbor; of fathers and mothers who can give witness within the home to the grace of the sacrament of matrimony, reawakening in all those with whom they come into contact the wish to carry out the Creator's plan for the family; of young people who have personally discovered Christ and have been so attracted by him as to move their contemporaries to the cause of the Gospel.
The invocation “thy kingdom come” encourages conversion and reminds us that man's earthly day must be marked by the daily search for the Kingdom of God before and above all other things. This invocation invites us to leave the world of fleeting words to take on generously, in spite of every difficulty and opposition, the commitments to which the Lord calls us.
Asking “thy kingdom come” of the Lord brings with it, among other things, choosing the house of the Father as one's own dwelling, living and working in the style of the Gospel and loving in the Spirit of Jesus; at the same time, it means discovering that the kingdom is a “little seed” endowed with an unexpected fullness of life, but exposed constantly to the risk of being rejected or trampled down.
Those who are called to the priesthood or consecrated life can welcome the seed of vocation that God has placed in their hearts with a generous openness. Drawing them to follow Christ with an undivided heart, the Father invites them to be joyful and free apostles of the kingdom. In the generous response to the invitation they will find that true happiness for which their heart is longing.
Following the example of Mary, we must learn to educate the heart to hope, opening it to the “infinite love” of God, who makes us exult with joy and gratitude. For those who respond generously to the Lord's invitation, the happy and sad events of life become, in such a way, the topic for confidential discussion with the Father, and the occasion for unceasing rediscovery of their own identity of beloved children called to participate with a specific and personal role in the great work of the salvation of the world, which was begun by Christ and entrusted now to his church.
Knowing human fragility, God prepared for man the path of mercy and forgiveness as an experience to share—one is forgiven and one forgives—so that the authentic traits of true children of the one heavenly Father might be seen in the renewed life of grace.
The struggle against evil, which Christ strenuously fought, is today entrusted to the church and to every Christian, according to the vocation, charism and ministry of each one. A fundamental role is reserved to those who have been elected to the ordained ministry: bishops, priests and deacons. But an irreplaceable and specific support is offered, among others, by the institutes of consecrated life, whose members “make visible, in their consecration and total dedication, the loving and saving presence of Christ, the one consecrated by the Father, sent in mission” (Vita Consecrata, 76).
How can we fail to stress that the promotion of vocations to the ordained ministry and the consecrated life must become the harmonious commitment of the whole church and of individual believers? The Lord commanded them to “pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Matthew 9:38).
Aware of this, we turn in prayer to the heavenly Father, the giver of every good thing:
Good Father, in Christ your Son you reveal to us your love, you embrace us as your children and you offer us the possibility of discovering in your will the lines of our true face.
Holy Father, you call us to be holy as you are holy.
We pray you, never allow your church to lack holy ministers and apostles who, with the word and the sacraments, may open the way to the encounter with you.
Merciful Father, give to lost humanity men and women who, through the witness of a life transfigured to the image of your Son, may walk joyfully with their other brothers and sisters toward our heavenly homeland.
Our Father, with the voice of your Holy Spirit, and trusting in the maternal inter-cession of Mary, we earnestly beseech you: Send to your church priests who will be courageous witnesses to your infinite bounty.
Amen!
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: For Religious, Diligence and God's Grace Lead To a Holy Life DATE: 01/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:If you wish peace and concord with others, you must learn to break your will in many things. To live in monasteries or religious communities, to remain there without complaint, and to persevere faithfully till death is no small matter. Blessed indeed is he who there lives a good life and there ends his days in happiness.
If you would persevere in seeking perfection, you must consider yourself a pilgrim, an exile on earth. If you would become a religious, you must be content to seem a fool for the sake of Christ. Habit and tonsure change a man but little; it is the change of life, the complete mortification of passions that endow a true religious.
He who seeks anything but God alone and the salvation of his soul will find only trouble and grief, and he who does not try to become the least, the servant of all, cannot remain at peace for long.
You have come to serve, not to rule. You must understand, too, that you have been called to suffer and to work, not to idle and gossip away your time. Here men are tried as gold in a furnace. Here no man can remain unless he desires with all his heart to humble himself before God. …
The life of a good religious ought to abound in every virtue so that he is interi-orly what to others he appears to be. With good reason there ought to be much more within than appears on the outside, for he who sees within is God, whom we ought to reverence most highly wherever we are and in whose sight we ought to walk pure as the angels.
Each day we ought to renew our resolutions and arouse ourselves to fervor as though it were the first day of our religious life. We ought to say: “Help me, O Lord God, in my good resolution and in your holy service. Grant me now, this very day, to begin perfectly, for thus far I have done nothing.”
As our intention is, so will be our progress; and he who desires perfection must be very diligent. If the strong-willed man fails frequently, what of the man who makes up his mind seldom or half-heartedly? Many are the ways of failing in our resolutions; even a slight omission of religious practice entails a loss of some kind.
Just men depend on the grace of God rather than on their own wisdom in keeping their resolutions. In him they confide every undertaking, for man, indeed, proposes but God disposes, and God's way is not man's. If a habitual exercise is sometimes omitted out of piety or in the interests of another, it can easily be resumed later. But if it be abandoned carelessly, through weariness or neglect, then the fault is great and will prove hurtful. Much as we try, we still fail too easily in many things. Yet we must always have some fixed purpose, especially against things which beset us the most. Our outward and inward lives alike must be closely watched and well ordered, for both are important to perfection.
If you cannot recollect yourself continuously, do so once a day at least, in the morning or in the evening. In the morning make a resolution and in the evening examine yourself on what you have said this day, what you have done and thought, for in these things perhaps you have often offended God and those about you.
Arm yourself like a man against the devil's assaults. Curb your appetite and you will more easily curb every inclination of the flesh. Never be completely unoccupied, but read or write or pray or meditate or do something for the common good. Bodily discipline, however, must be undertaken with discretion and is not to be practiced indiscriminately by everyone.
Devotions not common to all are not to be displayed in public, for such personal things are better performed in private. Furthermore, beware of indifference to community prayer through love of your own devotions. If, however, after doing completely and faithfully all you are bound and commanded to do, you then have leisure, use it as personal piety suggests.
Not everyone can have the same devotion. One exactly suits this person, another that. Different exercises, likewise, are suitable for different times, some for feast days and some again for weekdays. In time of temptation we need certain devotions. For days of rest and peace we need others. Some are suitable when we are sad, others when we are joyful in the Lord.
About the time of the principal feasts good devotions ought to be renewed and the intercession of the saints more fervently implored. From one feast day to the next we ought to fix our purpose as though we were then to pass from this world and come to the eternal holy day.
During holy seasons, finally, we ought to prepare ourselves carefully, to live holier lives, and to observe each rule more strictly, as though we were soon to receive from God the reward of our labors. If this end be deferred, let us believe that we are not well prepared and that we are not yet worthy of the great glory that shall in due time be revealed to us. Let us try, meanwhile, to prepare ourselves better for death.
“Blessed is the servant,” says Christ, “whom his master, when he cometh, shall find watching. Amen I say to you: he shall make him ruler over all his goods.”
Thomas à Kempis, a 15th century priest, was born Thomas Hemerkin of Kempen. The above passage was drawn from theImitation of Christ, which he coauthored with at least three unknown religious brethren, whose words he translated into Latin from the original Dutch.
Write by Thomas À Kempis
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Thomas À Kempis ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Michael Novak DATE: 01/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:Personal: Born 1933, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Graduate of Stonehill College; studied at Catholic University, the Gregorian University in Rome, and Harvard.
Professor at Stanford, Syracuse, and Notre Dame; currently holds the George Frederick Jewett Chair in Religion and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute. Married to Karen Laub-Novak. Father of three (Richard, Tanya, Jana) and grandfather of two.
Writings: Author of some 25 books, including The Open Church(1964), Belief and Unbelief (1965), The Experience of Nothingness (1970), and Free Persons and the Common Good(1989); nationally distributed columnist for nearly 20 years; published over 500 articles and reviews.
Awards and accomplishments: 24th winner of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion; won 1994 International Award from the Institution for World Capitalism; won 1992 Anthony Fisher Book Prize (for The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism); received Ellis Island Medal of Honor. Awarded over a dozen honorary degrees, in the United States and abroad.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Greg Chesmore ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: One Mother's 'Minority Report' DATE: 01/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:Even when it is outnumbered, the truth will eventually carry the day
The mother was incredibly confused. She had been invited to join a school committee to evaluate a new, controversial program. She had assumed that other parents would be joining her, but when she arrived she discovered that she was the “token parent” in a group of s c h o o l administrators, counselors, and teachers.
Analysis
When she asked after the other parents, she was informed that she alone was representing their interests in these deliberations.
She swallowed her misgivings and decided to stay and do her best. The meetings were frustrating. Her questions went unanswered and her research was ignored. It seemed that the outcome of the effort had been decided before she had ever stepped foot into the room; that the endless series of meetings was just a window-dressing of community input covering a pre-arranged administrative decision.
She began to take copious notes: of her questions and their silent response, of the research ignored, of the discussions held, and of the decisions made. At the final working meeting, she wondered what to do with her “scribblings.” The chairman described how the results of the meetings would be written up and presented to the community as the Final Committee Report.
She remembered looking through a Congressional document that listed committee reports on various topics. In each case, there was a Majority and a Minority Report. An idea began to form in her mind.
That night she began to formalize her notes. She worked feverishly to complete her hastily conceived project. When the committee met to sign the final report, she presented her own document—the Minority Report of the Committee, signed by a single member. She sat quietly through the outburst of surprise and anger, and then opened her copy of the Congressional document. She insisted that they change the name of their document from “Report of the Committee” to “Majority Report.”
Both reports were made public. And in the end, the Minority Report was adopted by the school authorities.
In the conflicts currently raging in the schools, many parents and many teachers find themselves in the position of that mother. They are each “the only one.” They are each frustrated by the restructuring juggernaut that ignores research, evades questions, and considers their children the school’ resource instead of the school’ charge. They are each wondering if their constant efforts are making any difference at all.
But the whisper of truth will finally conquer the loudest shouts of falsehood. Every time truth is spoken, someone responds. Sometimes the truth leads a parent to change the educational setting of his own children. Sometimes it inspires a citizen to run for school board or join a committee. Sometimes truth convinces a legislator to change a vote. Whatever the effect, truth is never meaningless.
Even a cursory study of history reveals two interesting patterns. The first is the amazing power of single individuals to change society radically for good or evil. In our own century, Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, and FDR each singly, and through their interactions, remade the political climate of our world. Science had the Wrights, Salk, Bell, Edison, who each made individual discoveries or inventions that fundamentally altered our lives. In fact, in every area of endeavor or interest, it is the single individual who exerts the greatest influence.
The second is that eventually the truth prevails. Witness the spread of the Gospel throughout the world. With nothing but the truth spoken in love, the Gospel message has proven stronger than any political, economic, or military force arrayed against it. The same holds true in the realm of government and its policies. The human spirit craves freedom, and those who speak in its name eventually succeed.
Sometimes the actions of the bureaucracy are instructive. They have gone to great lengths to rewrite history, denying our children the knowledge of their American heritage. They also preach what they have termed the “theology of collectivism”—the religion of group-think. They appear to be desperately attempting to protect their agenda from the two most powerful forces in history—the appeal of the truth, and the irresistible power of one individual who speaks it.
Peg Luksik, a mother of six, is president of the National Parent’ Commission. This article is reprinted with permission fromCrisis in Education.
----- EXCERPT: Education ----- EXTENDED BODY: Peg Luksik ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Game Simulation Helps University Students Experience Lives of Working Poor DATE: 01/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:Catholic News Service
MINNEAPOLIS—Being part of Minnesota's working poor is not a game—but a new interactive game simulation helps players understand the daily struggles faced by the poor.
The game, developed by Congregations in Community, which is part of the Greater Minneapolis Council of Churches, is called “Face the Facts: Understanding Urban Poverty.”
Vicki Wunsch, Congregation in Community program coordinator, facilitated a recent game simulation whose players were University of St. Thomas students.
The students had to figure out how a family of five could make it through a month in Minneapolis living on a limited income. The father worked full time and the mother worked three-quarter time.
The after-tax pay, and the only income, for this mythical family, turned out to be $2,100 per month.
The game destroys preconceived myths about poverty, and points out some startling realities, Wunsch said, including the following:
• The largest growing number of homeless in Minnesota is children.
• Historically, Churches have tried to help the poor, but many Churches are finding that their resources are all used up.
• When you are poor you pay more for commodities. Inner-city residents in both Minneapolis and St. Paul often must rely on convenience stores, where bread and milk cost more than in suburban supermarkets.
• Minnesota has a very low unemployment rate—less than 2%—but that is only part of the picture. There are many low-wage jobs and there is a lack of affordable housing.
• Welfare-to-work laws provide the motivation to get people working—but child care expenses eat up paychecks and destroy that motivation.
In the game, Wunsch played the role of a social worker. Her job was to help game players by answering questions about housing, child care, transportation, health care, job opportunities, and living expenses.
But as game players soon found, Wunsch answered only those questions that were asked. Just as a real-life social services employee would, she did not supply information that was not specifically requested.
Participant Mary Van Heel found this out when her family elected not to purchase health insurance and complained at the game's completion that she worried about the children not being insured.
During the game she had talked to “social worker” Wunsch, but Wunsch had not told her about Minnesota Care, a program that insures all children in a family for $105 per month.
People who qualify do not necessarily know about Minnesota Care, Wunsch said. But in order to get the insurance they have to go to a state social services department and specifically ask for Minnesota Care, she said.
Participant Mavis Gomez said that after playing the game she realized that the most frustrating problems for the working poor center on health and child care.
“There's always something that comes up,” she said. “We managed to get by, but the father worked 12 hours a day.”
Write by Terry Kolb
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Terry Kolb ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Riches Atop a Holy Mountain DATE: 01/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:World-class art and a miraculous statue of Mary await pilgrims to Our Lady of Svat´ Hora near Prague
One of the oldest and most sought-after Christian destinations in the Czech Republic is the hilltop sanctuary called Svat´ Hora, overlooking the ancient mining town of Prbram. The holy shrine features a renowned miraculous image of the Virgin Mary, and is also home to world-class artworks and architecture. The place of pilgrimage has become so popular that it has received the nickname Svat´ Hora, or Holy Mountain.
The origin of the shrine dates back seven centuries. According to tradition, the first chapel resided at the site in the 13th century. The knight Malovec had built it on the mountaintop in honor of the Mother of God. The story relates that he constructed the chapel in 1260 as a sign of thanksgiving to the Virgin Mary for hearing his prayers and delivering him from robbers. By the early part of the 15th or 16th century, a little sanctuary with a tower and bells had also been erected at the spot.
Shortly after the second chapel's establishment, the small church received the first of its major prize possessions. A statue, believed to have been the handiwork of the first archbishop of Prague, was transferred to the mountaintop sanctuary. The sculpture, modeled after the famous Klodzka Madonna, depicted the Virgin Mary and the Child Jesus. Later referred to as the Svat´ Hora Madonna, the artwork had previously served as an altarpiece at the prelate's private chapel.
Some hermits who lived in nearby huts began to look after the church. In time, the sanctuary began to attract a great number of pilgrims, who had heard of the many favors received by those who visited the holy statue. The person who helped most of all to spread the statue's fame was the blind Prague beggar, Jan Prochazka, who went there on June 10, 1632 to pray for the return of his sight. After three days of fervent prayers, his sight was miraculously restored. As word spread throughout the village and the rest of the country about the extraordinary event, the faithful began flocking to the shrine in droves. Many processions and events began taking place at the sanctuary. Jan Prochazka himself made it his work to care for the chapel, a mission he continued until his death.
In 1647 the Jesuits in the nearby town of Brenice took over the administration of the chapel. In one of their first moves, they connected their house to the shrine—first with a series of sixteen crosses, later with wayside shrines, made of stone. To cope with the growing multitudes, the community quickly embarked on a major project. They built a larger shrine, and placed the Svat´ Hora chapel inside the main church. The premises were constructed with the idea of the entire sanctuary being a Marian castle.
With the completion of the church in the latter half of the 17th century, the shrine became the most famous one in the country. Not only did the faithful continue to come in greater numbers; droves of artists came as well. Prominent painters and sculptors were entrusted with the decoration of the new church.
Svat´ Hora then became not just the most famous place of pilgrimage in Bohemia, but also a virtual treasure chest of superb artworks. Along with adorning itself with spectacular architecture, the shrine also built up its wealth of several hundred sensational religious statues and pictures. Everyone from goldsmiths to metal workers, from stonemasons to carpenters, contributed to the extraordinary work.
In 1773, the Archdiocese of Prague took over the administration of the sanctuary for the next seventy years. Then, in 1861, the archbishop of Prague placed the care of the shrine in the hands of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (Redemptorists). The new religious order remained here until April 13, 1950, when they were violently removed during the suppression of monasteries in the country. After forty years, they returned to Svat´ Hora by decree of the local cardinal.
With its inspiring architecture, the Svat´ Hora sanctuary continues to attract visitors from all over the world and has since set the pattern for other places of pilgrimage. In 1905 Pope Pius X conferred on it the title of “Basilica”—designating it symbolically as a royal palace of the Queen of Heaven. Today, Svat´ Hora has become one of the most popular places of pilgrimage in central Europe.
Situated at the top of a hill, the holy shrine of Svat´ Hora is within short walking distance of the small city of Príbram . To arrive by car from Prague, head south on Highway 4, then turn and head west on highway 18 to Príbram (located about thirty miles south of Prague). Although Príbram is not accessible by train, the city is easily accessible by bus from Prague and other nearby cities and towns. The main “Coronation” pilgrimage takes place every year on the third Sunday after Pentecost, and a second large pilgrimage occurs on the Sunday after the Feast of the Assumption (Aug. 15).
Kevin Wright is based in Bellevue, Washington.
----- EXCERPT: Catholic Traveler ----- EXTENDED BODY: Greg Chesmore ----- KEYWORDS: Kevin Wright -------- TITLE: Friars Offer a Respite from Toronto's Mean Streets DATE: 01/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:TORONTO—The red brick frontage on St. Francis Table restaurant in downtown Toronto gives little hint of the wealth and diversity of charitable activity going on inside.
It's a small storefront, with no more than 50 people squeezing into its cramped confines at any one time. But what it may lack in glamour is more than compensated for in compassion.
Located in the heart of Parkdale, one of Toronto's most desolate inner-city locales, St. Francis Table is making a bold if humble statement about care and service to the less fortunate.
Founded in March 1988 by the Capuchin Franciscan Friars in Toronto, St. Francis Table offers full-course meals, companionship, and a quiet respite from the city's mean streets for the homeless, the unemployed, refugees, ex-convicts, street people, and single-parent families. The restaurant is named for St. Francis of Assisi, and the adjoining St. Clare Center takes its name from one of his most famous followers.
The restaurant and drop-in center are located just a few blocks west of one of the city's largest mental health institutions, and many of their patrons are ex-psychiatric patients. In fact, restaurant officials estimate that up to one half the restaurant's regular customers are recovering mental patients. While this may present special challenges to St. Francis Table staff and volunteers, it remains firmly a part of the restaurant's special charism.
According to Capuchin Brother Alan Gaebel, St. Francis Table is more than a traditional soup kitchen. The restaurant strives to preserve client’ sense of self-worth by charging $1 for each meal. “The charge is aimed at helping people retain their dignity,” Brother Gaebel said, “but no one is turned away for lack of a dollar. We might ask these people a few questions up front to make sure the service we offer is not abused, or that we're not being taken advantage of.”
Brother Gaebel took over as director of St. Francis Table in June 1998. In his seven months in the new role, Brother Gaebel has noted an increase in the number of clients visiting St. Francis Table.
“In the period June to October 1998, we served just over 18,000 meals, which works out to in excess of 3,600 meals per month,” he said. “It can be a challenge to continue meeting our needs, but with the help of our volunteers and supporters, we always find a way.”
Brother Gaebel emphasized that St.Francis Table does not cut corners when it comes to the quality and nutritional value of its meals. “We don't serve anything we wouldn't eat ourselves,” he said.
St. Francis Table can serve up to 44 people at a time, and more than 300 meals are provided each day. Brother Gaebel estimated that the restaurant has served more than 100,000 customers.
Government cutbacks in Canada have meant less money for various social problems and more strain on Church and charitable groups that care for the poor and marginalized.
But if the challenges have become greater, so has the motivation. “I find the motivation is always there because we are dealing with people,” Brother Gaebel said. “We have a chapel on the premises, but we don't necessarily push religion on our clients. … Instead we find God in the face and the suffering of the poor.”
Meals are available six days a week at St. Francis Table. In addition to regular brunch and dinner, the adjoining St. Clare Center provides a living room atmosphere where guests can socialize after meals. The center also provides a much-needed foot-care program, a community bingo, Alcoholics’ Anonymous gatherings, and weekly video nights.
The Capuchin Friars and St. Francis Table volunteers operate under a vision statement which in part calls for “a commitment to creating a faith community with the poor through direct services that enhance human dignity.”
Their restaurant project has spawned imitators throughout Ontario. Its success has led to the establishment of a similar operation, The Knights Table, in Brampton, northwest of Toronto. Susan Groat, manager of the establishment begun in 1990, just three years after St. Francis Table got started, says that the Knights Table “learned from the experience of St. Francis Table in setting up our successful operation. St. Francis was a wonderful model for us to follow here in Brampton.” Other communities are considering plans to set up their own restaurants modeled on St. Francis Table
“We've been asked to share our experience with some of the newer operators,” Brother Gaebel said. “But
… I don't know of other groups which match exactly our operation.”
St. Francis Table receives no government or institutional funding. It relies almost entirely on donations from individuals and groups for its survival. On several occasions, however, the Toronto archdiocese has provided a financial boost to St. Francis Table by allocating a portion of the funds raised through its annual Cardinal's Dinner. The dinner, usually held each November, generates much needed revenue for a number of archdiocesan charities.
Michael Fullen, Executive Director of Catholic Charities for the Archdiocese of Toronto, told the Register that St. Francis Table “is a strong and positive presence, here on the west end of Toronto. They've been providing a valuable service to the community, and one which especially promotes the dignity of individuals and families.”
Operating funds may present an ongoing challenge, but Brother Gaebel reported that volunteers have always been abundant at St. Francis Table. “We can get by with about a dozen volunteers for each meal we serve,” he said, “but there has always been enough help to go around. We have help from high school students, community groups, and regular supporters, and we're often fielding requests from others who want to lend a hand.”
George Chester of Toronto is one such supporter who drifted into St.Francis Table and has made it a part of his life. A volunteer since 1990, Chester wanted a way to keep busy in his retirement years. He found a willing partner in St. Francis Table. Despite declining health and mobility, Chester travels to the restaurant five times a week to collect the $1 meal charge from St. Francis Table patrons.
“It has been a truly rewarding time for me,” Chester told the Register. “It may sound like a cliché, but I get far more out of working here than I give. There's a true sense of community here and it helps me in working on a sense of spirituality, of giving something to the less fortunate.”
Chester's community spirit is well founded. In addition to his work at St. Francis Table, Chester is co-founder of Toronto's unique Out of the Cold program, a campaign which provides for church basements to be left open on winter nights to provide shelter to the city's growing number of homeless and unemployed.
“I've continually been encouraged by people's willingness to help out at St. Francis,” Brother Gaebel said. “I'm hoping that it's a response to the sense of community we've attempted to establish around here since 1988.”
Mike Mastromatteo writes from Toronto.
----- EXCERPT: St. Francis Table isn't your average soup kitchen ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mike Mastromatteo ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: An Odd Couple in Brazil DATE: 01/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:Central Station breathes new life into the ‘curmudgeon meets kid'movie cliché
We've all seen the movie before:
A nasty, middle-aged curmudgeon is forced into close contact with a young child and undergoes a change of heart, becoming a more lovable human being in the process. Beginning with Charlie Chaplin's The Kid in 1921, filmmakers and television programmers around the world have milked this formula from every possible angle. So why sit through it again?
Central Station uses this hackneyed subject matter to take a fresh, documentary-style look at a Third World country, Brazil, that struggles with rapid economic development and to show how the accompanying changes affect ordinary citizens. Winner of the top prize at this year's Berlin Film Festival and a front-runner for next year's Oscar for best foreign film, the movie also chronicles some of the different forms of religious experience popular in that culture and dramatizes the ways in which they change its main characters.
Dora (Fernanda Montenegro) is a retired schoolteacher who now makes a living writing letters for illiterates in Rio de Janeiro's central station, through which 300,000 people pass each day. These missives contain heartfelt messages—declarations of love, pleas for family reunification, urgent requests for money, etc.
Cynical and misanthropic, Dora abuses her client’ trust.
She often neglects to mail their letters without telling them, sometimes for no other reason than that she's in a bad mood. Even though the damage inflicted by her inaction might be enormous, she doesn't care.
A client, who is a single mother with a 7-year-old son named Josué (Vinicius de Oliveira), dictates a letter to the boy's father, pleading that they get back together. Dora tells her not to send it. “That man is a drunk,” she advises. “You don't need him in your life.”
Soon thereafter the young woman is run over by a truck and dies. Josué, who has no one to turn to, hangs out at the station where there are dozens of similar homeless boys. Director Walter Salles and coscreenwriters Emanuel Carneiro and Marcos Bernstein deftly evoke the savagery of this vagabond world. A kid who steals from one of the stores at the station is caught by another shopkeeper and executed, vigilante style. Josué has been thrown into a violent, anarchic urban jungle even worse than our own inner cities, and he doesn't know how to cope.
Dora exploits his situation to her own benefit. Pretending to be his friend, she sells him to what she believes is an illegal adoption agency and uses the proceeds to buy herself a big-screen television set.
When she learns that Josué is, in fact, going to be murdered and his organs sold on the black market in the United States, whatever conscience she has left is pricked into action. At considerable risk she kidnaps him from the agency. As a price has now been put on her head by the underworld, she must leave town quickly. Having no place to go, she agrees to help Josué find his absent father, who's living in one of the recently developed settlements way out in the boondocks.
Dora hasn't suddenly been transformed into a saint. She and the young boy don't get along, and she tries unsuccessfully to abandon him in the middle of nowhere. A kindly truck driver (Othos Baston) takes this quarreling odd couple under wing. An evangelical Protestant, he doesn't smoke or drink. Through him, the filmmakers show there's a network of working-class Protestant converts in recently developed areas who do business with each other and are mutually supportive. Dora is attracted to the truck driver, but when he perceives this, he runs away, leaving the pair once again on their own.
They hook up with some pilgrims to a religious festival centering on the Virgin Mary. To American eyes, its fevered celebrations might appear superstitious and exploitive. There's non-stop chanting, praying, and wailing for miracles fueled by an uncontrolled herd mentality.
Dora, who's never shown a glimmer of spiritual sensibility before, places a handkerchief which used to belong to Josué's mother at the foot of a picture of Our Lady and Jesus. Their fate then takes some radical turns which could be considered divine intervention.
Director Salles has said in interviews he isn't religious. But when he discovered the importance of faith to the marginalized people he was filming, he decided to incorporate its effects into his story and change his character’ motivations accordingly.
The movie shouldn't be interpreted as a carefully thought-out religious allegory despite several significant plot twists that might suggest otherwise. Neither Dora nor Josué ever talk about God. But the profound interior changes each undergoes is obviously influenced by the intense religious atmosphere around them.
Central Station is both a kind of Latin American road movie and a psychological study of two people whose values are put to the test. Its main character’ personal odysseys are linked to the vast economic and cultural changes which capitalism brings to a developing nation like Brazil. The movie is different from other examples of this genre because the filmmakers never forget to engage our intellects and moral sensibilities while tugging on our heart strings.
John Prizer is currently based in Paris.
Central Station is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America.
----- EXCERPT: Arts & Culture ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Videos on Release DATE: 01/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:Will Hunting (Matt Damon), a highly intelligent 20-year-old, can solve the most complex mathematical problems. Despite his intelligence, his troubled background and street-smart ways continually get him into trouble with the law. While on parole he spends his days working as a cleaner in a school and his nights drinking and hanging out with his buddies Chuckie (Ben Affleck), Morgan (Casey Affleck), and Billy (Cole Hauser). He tries to impress Skylar (Minnie Driver), a fourth-year Harvard student. Professor Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgard) at the college and therapist Sean McGuire (Robin Williams) who see the troubled young man's potential try to help him after he anonymously solves a math problem that stumped other university students. Sean works hard to get inside the young geniu’ head, and Skylar tries to get inside his heart. They both hope the young man will come to his full senses and realize his capabilities. An excellent movie but includes strong language, including some sex-related dialogue. (MPAA—R)
During a massive flood, armored-car guards Tom (Christian Slater) and his uncle Charlie (Ed Asner) battle a gang of robbers led by Jim (Morgan Freeman). When the gang unintentionally open fire on them, Charlie is killed. Wanting to protect the money, Tom wades through flood waters with $3 million in cash and hides it in a flooded cemetery. He then tries to hide from the bandits in a local church, but Karen (Minnie Driver), a restoration artist, thinks he's a looter and knocks him unconscious. She hands him over him to the local sheriff (Randy Quaid), who becomes greedy for the money and goes after it. Meanwhile, Tom finds himself in a flooding jail cell. Karen eventually comes to his rescue and the two try to stop both sets of bad guys while also battling the rising floodwaters. A predictable but watchable movie. Contains violence. (MPAA—R)
Robin Monroe (Anne Heche) is an assistant editor of a magazine in New York. In order to break from work and get away from the cold of the city, boyfriend Frank Martin (David Schwimmer) takes her on vacation to a tropical island. Boarding a tiny plane owned by cargo pilot Quinn Harris (Harrison Ford), the two lovebirds arrive at their tropical destination and immediately get engaged. However, an urgent work deadline then forces Robin to hire Quinn to fly her to Tahiti for a photo shoot. On the way to Tahiti they run into a lighting storm and are forced to crash-land their plane on a remote island. Hearing that the plane never arrived at its destination, Frank is concerned and takes comfort in the company of Quinn's girlfriend, Angelica (Jacqueline Obradors). Meanwhile, realizing that they may be stranded for a long time, Robin and Quinn try to make the best of their situation. At first they get on each other's nerves. But the two slowly begin to fall for each other as they deal with the dangers they encounter on the island. Contains strong language, suggestive sexuality, and some violence. (MPAA—PG-13)
Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow), a public relations specialist, has just been fired from her job. Racing to catch the subway home, she just misses it as the sliding doors close in front of her. In an unexplained sequence, another version of her does make it onto the train. From that moment on, the two different Helens continue with their parallel but different lives. The Helen who makes it onto the subway meets James (John Hannah), and then gets home in time to find her live-in boyfriend and aspiring novelist, Gerry (John Lynch), with his former girlfriend, Lydia (Jeanne Tripplehorn). The Helen who didn't make it onto the train nearly gets mugged on the way home, and thus is delayed long enough to miss Lydia leaving their place. As each of the Helens and their lives continue in different directions—the first falling for James whom she later meets again, and the second becoming suspicious of Gerry—they must decide what is best for each of them. Not suitable viewing for children because of sexual content and language. (MPAA RATING—PG-13)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Greg Chesmore ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Pro-Life Leader Launches Billboard Campaign DATE: 01/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:Scheidler tries a cost-effective way to reach women in crises
Washington Bureau Chief
Washington Bureau Chief
WASHINGTON—Participants in the March for Life this month in the nation's capital will be greeted by a new pro-life billboard campaign urging people to “See the World through the Eyes of a Child … Choose Life.”
The campaign, organized by the Pro-Life Action League of Chicago, began Dec. 28 and will continue through Jan. 24, two days after the annual March for Life. Twenty-five billboards will be placed in and around Washington, D.C.
A three-month campaign also began Jan. 4 in the Chicago area. This effort will involve rotating 120 billboards. Promoters hope to expand the program to other cities and to begin what they call the “From Sea to Shining Sea” campaign.
League executive director Joseph Scheidler said, “The Pro-Life Action League asks Americans to take another look at the terrible choice of abortion. It's our prayer that everyone who sees the billboards, especially pregnant women, will consider the viewpoint of a child who only wants a chance to live.”
The 12-by-24-foot billboards feature Scheidler's grandson, Aaron, who is stooping’ to pick up stones. The sign’ message reads: “Pregnant? Need Help?” Perhaps the key part of the advertisement is the inclusion of a toll-free number, 800-395-HELP, which routes women to a local center for help.
The telephone number is that of CareNET, a national network of about 450 crisis pregnancy centers.
CareNET, based in Sterling, Va., is part of the Christian Action Council founded in 1975 by pro-life Protestant leader Dr. Francis Schaeffer and others.
The billboards are strategically placed, often near abortion clinics. Ninety percent are illuminated. According to the League's communications director, Jerry Horn, “They're very positive and upbeat, and done in an extremely upbeat way.”
The billboard was designed by Cheryl St. Marie, a graphic artist who also works at Priests for Life. “We decided we wanted to focus on a child and something which offers a message of hope,” St. Marie told the Register. “We wanted something less graphic than some of the billboards of the past.”
The billboards are done in sepia tone, with yellow, brown, and orange type. “We chose warm colors because we wanted it to blend in with an urban environment,” St. Marie said.
Scheidler's wife, Ann, who is deputy director of the Pro-Life Action League, said, “The baby's eyes are really the center of the picture.” The expression of her 18-month-old grandson “is very captivating; it really grabs you.”
In designing the program, the Scheidlers consulted with Mary Ann Kuharski, a founder and the director of Prolife Minnesota, based in Minneapolis. This organization is the world's largest pro-life practitioner of billboard campaigns.
In 1998, for example, they placed 800 billboards throughout the state. They have seasonal and year-round displays which emphasize various themes. Eighty clinics, both pro-life and pro-chastity, are affiliated with the program.
Kuharski told the Register, “We use real positive messages in ways no one can get mad at us.” In one campaign, for example, they advertised: “Two million couples are waiting to adopt.”
“There's something about a billboard,” Kuharski said. One pregnant woman who was considering abortion told Kuharski she reconsidered after seeing the billboard because, “‘I felt it was God coming down to earth to talk to me.’”
Prolife Minnesota's success has spawned similar efforts in Washington state, Indiana, Kentucky, and Canada. In many cases, they use billboards designed by Kuharski and her colleagues.
“We had heard about what Mary Ann did in Minnesota and Washington state,” Ann Scheidler said. “The idea of reaching people with that quick message was very appealing to us.” Contributors to the project have been generous. A fund-raising letter brought in $58,000, about two-thirds of the money needed to run the project. They expect little difficulty in covering all the costs of the campaign.
Joseph Scheidler, who has been one of the most visible leaders of the pro-life movement for two decades, is known for his sidewalk counseling in Chicago and elsewhere. His peaceful protests and witnessing at abortion clinics led to his indictment under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.
Although found guilty last April 20 in the lawsuit brought by the National Organization for Women, Scheidler remains undaunted. This billboard campaign, he believes, allows his organization to present a positive message to women.
“We've been criticized by some women who ask, ‘Where were you pro-lifers when I had my abortion?’ There are women who are looking for help, and these billboards will provide it,” he said. “They will stand as a nonjudgmental sentry.
Horn, the communications director, added, “It tells the pro-abortion community that despite all their efforts to maim Joe and keep him down, they've failed. He's reaching women with a pro-life message, and he's reaching them through the media.”
While the Washington campaign coincides with the March for Life, the Chicago area effort will tie in to the annual Speak Out Illinois conference. The interfaith program of pro-life organizations in northern Illinois will take place Jan. 16. Chicago's Francis Cardinal George will officiate at this year's memorial service for unborn children, one of the day's events.
Some pro-life organizations, such as The Caring Foundation, have focused more on television spots or even radio advertising. Prolife Minnesota uses both television and radio. In the case of radio, for example, they have run 64 spots which cover all 87 of Minnesota's counties.
Still, Kuharski remains committed to the concept of billboard advertising. “There's something very powerful about a visible sign that's going to be there for a number of days,” she said.
These efforts are enhanced when the signs are placed at strategic locations; for example, near abortion clinics, high schools, and fast-food restaurants. A spokeswoman for the Outdoor Advertising Association of America Inc., Sheila Hayes, notes that the signs round-the-clock exposure.
Joseph Scheidler sees the campaign as a compassionate effort to help both women and unborn children. “Today, as innocents are sacrificed on the altar of ‘choice,’ we hope that love again will prevail over death and that many lives will be saved.”
Joseph Esposito writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Esposito ----- KEYWORDS: CULTURE OF LIFE -------- TITLE: Republican Pro-Lifers Reach Top Spots DATE: 01/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:Washington Bureau Chief
House leadership sees strong gains, but will past rifts return?
Washington Bureau Chief
WASHINGTON—It may seem that the Republican Party is far from falling prey to the forces that have practically banished pro-life advocates from the Democratic Party.
After all, the House of Representatives has before it the prospect of a pro-life Speaker Dennis Hastert and Majority Leader Dick Armey, and a pro-life--and newly powerful--party whip, Tom Delay. Judiciary Chairman Henry Hyde, long considered the House's pro-life leader, saw his profile raised considerably as Democrats and Republicans alike praised his fair handling of the Impeachment Hearings.
But pro-life and abortion advocates worry that a new battle for the soul of the Republican party is brewing, and will be in full force in the 2000 election.
According to Coleen Parro, executive director of the Republican National Coalition for Life, “We're headed toward a knock down, drag out fight.”
Pro-family activist Morton Blackwell disagrees, saying, “The Republican Party is the pro-life party, and it will stay the pro-life party. It will not nominate a candidate who is not pro-life.”
Historically, the Republican party has been pro-life. It has had a pro-life plank in its national platform since 1976. The platform adopted in 1996 promoted a human life amendment to the Constitution, endorsed a child's right to life, supported the appointment of pro-life judges, opposed federal funds for abortions, and urged expansion of the 14th Amendment to include unborn children.
But this last platform was adopted with considerable rancor. A significant, but unsuccessful, assault on the party's position was launched by more liberal members of the party, including several Republican governors. These include Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey, George Pataki of New York and Pete Wilson of California, who is set to retire.
Among the most prominent players in pressuring the party to adhere to its Reagan-era position has been the republican National Coalition for Life. During 1991-1992, for example, they secured 100,000 pledges of support from party members in favor of the pro-life position.
Although pro-life forces were successful in 1996, the battle continues. Perhaps the opening salvo of the 2000 debate took place last January when the Republican National Committee met in California.
The party's governing body, which consists of a party chairman and two state committee members from each state, were presented with a hotly-debated proposal. Tim Lambert, the national committeeman from Texas, introduced a resolution which would cut off campaign funds and in-kind contributions to Republican candidates who support partial-birth abortion.
Lambert, who serves as president of the Texas Home School Coalition, told the Register that life issues are part of a“discussion about humanity itself.
“The reason I introduced the resolution was that I believe it was the right thing to do. The Republican party should be consistent with its platform, its verbiage. Our platform is very strong on that issue.”
Indeed, party office holders have been overwhelmingly opposed to partial-birth abortions. Few Republican members of either house of Congress support it, and Gov. Whitman is one of the few governors who do.
Yet, Lambert's proposal gained only 43 votes or little more than one-quarter of the membership of the party's national committee. Whitman helped lead the fight against it, but even several pro-life advocates opposed the resolution.
Among these were Gov. George W. Bush of Texas and Gov. John Engler of Michigan. Rep. Hyde was also opposed.
Opponents expressed concerns about establishing “litmus tests” or adopting policies which would further divide the party. Others worried that a power to withhold funds, once granted, could be misused in the future.
Some important Republican leaders did, however, endorsed the effort. Among them were family activist Gary Bauer, who directs the Family Research Council, the policy wing of Focus on the Family, and magazine publisher and former Presidential primary candidate Steve Forbes; both are expected to seek the Republican presidential nomination. Also supportive was Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, a popular Catholic with some national visibility.
One of the few members of Congress who championed the resolution was Senator John Ashcroft of Missouri. Also a potential presidential candidate, Ashcroft said at the time, “I support the proposed RNC resolution to withhold aid to those who support this barbarism. In the Party of Lincoln, there can be no place for ‘infanticide.’” The Christian coalition also favored the resolution. Randy Tate, its executive director, recently told the Register, “the great parties--whether Republican or Democrat--need to have certain basic values. Great parties should stand up against infanticide.”
Parro believes the reason for the resolution's failure is simple: “It was money, it was Whitman, and it was power politics.” She characterized pro-life supporters who voted against the Lambert resolution as “people who have a history of placing party loyalties over their pro-life convictions.“
Blackwell, a national committee member from Virginia for the past 10 years and a solid pro-life advocate, believes the defeat was due to a failure by pro-lifers to properly build support. “No groundwork was laid, no national pro-life organizations were involved. If there had been a major effort from the pro-life groups,” he argues, “I'm not sure what would have happened.”
But Lambert forecasts an internal battle in the party. A tension continues to exist among the old-guard “country club” economic conservatives and the religious conservatives who are relatively new to the GOP. This tension is likely to intensify as Republicans seek to gain the White House and retain their Congressional majority in 2000.
A member of the national committee for only two years, Lambert believes it's time for pro-life newcomers like himself to practice power politics within the party. “Our opponents were glad to give us the platform, but not the rules, We're going to be reasonable, but we're going to play hard-ball,” he said.
A version of the proposal has now been adopted in about ten states, including California, Texas, South Carolina and Alabama. Lambert said, “The resolution has helped our pro-life folks focus on the issue and why it's important. It's galvanized us at the grass roots.
On the other side, however, there is increased activity by “pro-choice” Republicans, somewhat bolstered by the easy reelections of Pataki, Gov. Tom Ridge, a Catholic, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, another Catholic, and others.
Whitman, who has become an anathema to social conservatives campaigned for candidates in 27 states in last fall's congressional elections. It's assumed that the wealthy second-term governor has national aspirations and, at the least, hopes to have a role in selecting the next Republican ticket.
While continuing to oppose the efforts of Whitman and other liberal Republicans on the pro-life issue, Colleen Parro raises a cautionary note: “There has been a lot of criticism that the pro-life movement has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Republican party.”
“But the pro-life movement has caused the growth of the Republican party since the 1970s. Should the party turn its back on us, it would be a great loss to the party. The pro-life movement would continue to grow,” she emphasized.
So the battle has been joined. Keith Fournier, the president of the Catholic Alliance, said, “The struggle within the Republican party can best be described as a contest between libertarians and those with a moral compass for the future.”
“It's not a matter of big government, but rather what kind of government. Government is good only when it is moral,” he said.
Lambert told the Register, “What you're going to see over the next 22 months is a debate on life, family, and authentic human freedom--on what kind of life we will have in the 21st century.”
Joseph Esposito writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Esposito ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 01/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:The Gospel Of Life
Lawmakers have a special duty to vote for laws that promote the culture of life--even laws that do not perfectly express it, writes John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae.
A particular problem of conscience can arise in cases where a legislative vote would be decisive for the passage of a more restrictive law, aimed at limiting the number of authorized abortions, in place of a more permissive law already passed or ready to be voted on. Such cases are not infrequent. It is a fact that while in some parts of the world there continue to be campaigns to introduce laws favouring abortion, often supported by powerful international organizations, in other nations—particularly those which have already experienced the bitter fruits of such permissive legislation—there are growing signs of a rethinking in this matter. In a case like the one just mentioned, when it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harmdone by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality. This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects.
The passing of unjust laws often raises difficult problems of conscience for morally upright people with regard to the issue of cooperation, since they have a right to demand not to be forced to take part in morally evil actions. Sometimes the choices which have to be made are difficult; they may require the sacrifice of prestigious professional positions or the relinquishing of reasonable hopes of career advancement. In other cases, it can happen that carrying out certain actions, which are provided for by legislation that overall is unjust, but which in themselves are indifferent, or even positive, can serve to protect human lives under threat. There may be reason to fear, however, that willingness to carry out such actions will not only cause scandal and weaken the necessary opposition to attacks on life, but will gradually lead to further capitulation to a mentality of permissiveness. (73,74)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: CULTURE OF LIFE -------- TITLE: Death Penalty Disappearing From Europe as Codes Change DATE: 01/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:Catholic News Service
ROME—The death penalty is disappearing from Europe as former members of the Communist bloc, now trying to gain acceptance in other international groups, change their penal codes.
In 1997 and 1998, several Central and Eastern European countries reduced or eliminated their use of capital punishment.
The changes coincided with an adaptation of the Catholic Church's position on the death penalty, starting with the 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), in which Pope John Paul II stated stronger-than-ever reservations about capital punishment.
The definitive Latin edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, published in 1997, included revisions which echoed the pope's statement that cases in which execution is necessary are “very rare” and “practically nonexistent.”
On Christmas Day 1998, after about 5,000 people completed an anti-death-penalty march to St. Peter's Square, Pope John Paul attracted global attention by calling for a worldwide commitment to end capital punishment.
The pope lauded Bulgaria in mid-December for scrapping capital punishment. In a speech to the new Bulgarian ambassador to the Holy See, the pope said he rejoiced “at the decision taken recently by your leaders to abolish the death penalty.”
Lithuania's parliament on Dec. 22 also abolished capital punishment, even though opinion polls show that more than 80 percent of Lithuanians favor it.
The parliament based its action on a ruling in early December by Lithuania's highest court, which declared the death penalty unconstitutional.
Recent public opinion polls in Poland also reflect wide popular support for capital punishment. Nevertheless, a law abolishing it came into effect in 1998. The use of capital punishment in Poland was suspended with the fall of its Communist government.
The London-based human rights group Amnesty International noted in a December 1998 report that opinion polls in a number of countries without capital punishment showed broad support for its use. But the agency cautions that such polls can be misleading.
“Although a majority of the public favors the death penalty in a given country, it is also the case that a majority of the public is willing to accept abolition,” Amnesty reported.
“This is a feature of public opinion which is not usually revealed by polls asking respondents to state their position on the death penalty. If the questions were more sophisticated, the polls would probably give a better sense of the complexities of public opinion.”
Amnesty reported that 104 countries no longer practice the death penalty: 65 have abolished it, 15 employ capital punishment only in exceptional cases such as crimes committed during wartime, and 24 have eliminated its use in practice, because they have had no executions for 10 or more years.
Ninety-one countries in the world retain the death penalty, the agency said.
One of them, the Russian Federation, has declared its intention to eliminate the death penalty in 1999. Russia's justice ministry issued a statement in August saying the country would abolish capital punishment by next April.
This statement is in keeping with a commitment Russia made upon joining the Council of Europe in 1996. The council, which includes non-European Union states and is considered one of the stepping-stones to EU membership, has established a European Convention on Human Rights which binds signatories not to use capital punishment in peacetime.
After Russia and Ukraine -- which also signed the convention -- executed a number of prisoners in 1997, council members threatened to withdraw the accreditation of their delegations, a move which could eventually lead to expulsion.
One reported execution occurred each in Russia and Ukraine in 1998.
The Council of Europe also monitors other former Warsaw Pact nations’ steps toward eliminating capital punishment. Among them are Georgia, which abolished the death penalty in November 1997; BosniaHerzegovina, where crimes committed in peacetime no longer merit execution; and Kazakhstan, which in 1998 passed a law limiting to three the number of offenses which could be punished with death.
Recently the European Union has taken steps to eliminate the death penalty outside its membership of 15 countries. In June 1998 the EU general affairs council adopted a policy to promote abolition of capital punishment worldwide. And in 1997 the European Parliament passed a resolution affirming its strong opposition to capital punishment, calling on all countries to adopt a moratorium on executions.
The pope also applauded the formation of an Italian group, Parliamentarians Against the Death Penalty, of 120 national legislators who formed a multiparty group in July 1998 to fight capital punishment.
The Holy Father told the group he was “happy” that “a moratorium on executions is supported by people who have high office and can, therefore, contribute effectively to its reception.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Lynne Weil ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Where Eagles Fly on Christmas Day DATE: 01/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 17, 1999 ----- BODY:A Personal Account
Register senior writer Gabriel Meyer traveled to the Nuba Mountains in central Sudan last month with exiled Sudanese Catholic bishop Macram Max Gassis of ElObeid diocese, in whose territory the mountains fall. The area in southern Kordofan province boasts a large African Catholic population, as well as large numbers of Muslims and Africans of traditional belief; it has been a particular target of Sudanese government reprisals since the mid-1980s, when the Nuba people joined the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLA/SPLM) in their armed struggle against Khartoum's policy of forced Arabization and Islamization.
Isolated, subject to government-manufactured famine, and herded into government-operated “peace” villages, the ancient Nuba people face nothing less than the threat of extermination. Up to now, only the Church has been able to break through the government blockade of the Nuba to provide a measure of hope in their struggle. Along with Bishop Gassis, members of his pastoral staff, and a number of American human rights activists, Mr. Meyer spent the Christmas holidays in a Nuba village under the control of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). To protect the lives and safety of its people, the name of this village has been withheld.
The Nuba Mountains, Sudan—I woke early on Christmas morning, at first light, to the sound of distant drumming.
For days now, the small hamlets of haystack-shaped huts that cluster on these hilltops had been abandoned, in favor of the clearings in the bush where the Nuba prepare their festivals.
An ancient agrarian civilization that has lived in these beehive-shaped foothills since Neolithic times, the tall, muscular Nuba, with their legendary 99 mountains and 99 tribes, remain a people with a gift for celebration. Their love of music, dancing, mime, and the wrestling that is their traditional sport has survived more than a decade of war, famine, enslavement, and persecution—and, according to some estimates, the deaths and disappearances of nearly a million Nuba since the mid-1980s.
Precise numbers are hard to come by. In Nairobi, Kenya, Neroun Phillip is himself a Nuba and executive director of the Nuba Relief, Rehabilitation, and Development Society (NRRDS), which represents the wartime civil administration back in the Nuba Mountains. Phillip told the Register that, out of a prewar population of nearly three million, not more than 500,000 Nuba still cling to a precarious life in these hills. The rest have either perished or been internally displaced by the grueling civil war between the north and the south—this a cruel irony for a people that the Austrian anthropologist F.S. Nadel, who traveled through Nuba territory in the 1930s, once hailed as “the most peace-loving people in Africa.”
Christmas in the Nuba Mountains: for a Westerner, a scene of gentle dislocations—no “bleak midwinter,” here so close to the Equator, but the dry season, with temperatures in the upper 80s, the semi-arid grassland made even more tropical to the eye by the fiery bursts of the wild pink roses that dot the scene.
“They're beautiful, but be sure not to pick them,” our guide said, during the long initial trek to our wilderness compound. “The sap's loaded with strychnine.”
Contradictions mark the plight of the Nuba, too, on this Christmas morning. The 1998 harvests were poor, leaving more and more Nuba vulnerable to famine and to the lure of the “peace” camps set up in the area of the Nuba Mountains controlled by the National Islamic Front (NIF)-led government in Khartoum. For years now the regime has refused to allow the United Nations and other relief organizations, particularly the U.S.-led Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) to deliver food in so-called “rebel-held” areas of southern Kordofan, but has operated its own “relief” centers there, where food is used as a weapon of war. According to many reliable accounts, including the latest report of Gaspar Biro, the special rapporteur of the U.N.'s Commission on Human Rights, in these government-controlled “peace” villages, Khartoum's agents offer assistance only to those willing to convert to Islam.
“The people have no choice,” said Phillip. “They're already past the point of desperation by the time they reach these camps. Perhaps they've already watched a child or two starve to death. They'll do anything to save their children.”
Biro's 1997 report also charges that Nuba women are frequently raped in these camps and used as soldiers’ concubines, that children are sold into slavery, and that the able-bodied are forcibly conscripted into Khartoum's militias to fight against their own people—charges confirmed at every point, even by Nuba Muslims, in the areas we visited.
But if the perils the Nuba face are growing, so, too, is Western interest in the Nubas’ plight, particularly among international human rights and religious persecution activists. The one man uniquely responsible for that development is a 60-year-old Catholic bishop who, after his recovery from cancer eight years ago, dedicated himself full time to the “forgotten” people of his diocese, and time and time again, has managed to defy Khartoum's blockade to bring a measure of hope to the Nuba.
Despite a December upsurge in fighting in the area between government and SPLA troops, this Christmas was no exception.
For Nuba Catholics, Muslims, and followers of traditional African religions alike, “the bishop had come”—Bishop Macram Max Gassis, ordinary of the ElObeid diocese in central Sudan, now living in exile in Nairobi, Kenya. For the past decade, the indefatigable churchman has spoken out against the NIF regime's human rights abuses—which, not surprisingly, has made him persona non grata in the north, where his diocese is located. Even more, he has braved Sudan's chaotic civil war to charter flights, several times a year, into a remote corner of the Nuba Mountains. These bear sorghum, salt, agricultural implements—and above all the personnel who serve this outpost Church on the fault lines of one of the world's deepest cultural and religious divides, where Arabia and Africa converge.
Morning breezes swept over our compound, as the starkly beautiful hillscapes flushed with rose light. The air was tinged with the smell of grass fires and distant snatches of the songs Nuba sing as they work—religious songs taught them by the Comboni missionaries who came to these mountains a century ago, traditional Nuba romances to the vigor of bulls or the baobab tree, or the songs they make up on the spur of the moment, on everything from the soldiers who protect them to the story of the Three Wise Men.
The bishop, I noted, was up and about even at this early hour—probably searching up raw materials for something that might pass for a cup of coffee. The young seminarians—Dominic and Francis, with Brother Isaac, a Nuba—were already at their chores. As Bishop Macram proudly observed, “It's not an easy life out here for my priests. They work from morning to night, on everything from construction projects to the training of catechists. Few comforts, no vacations. Isolation. Danger. I tell you, they're my heroes.”
And well they might be. Virtually all of the pastoral staff in this part of the Nuba Mountains—Father Solomon, the priest in charge who hails from the Sudanese state of Western Equatoria; young Father Abraham, ordained just last year; Father Sylvester, the Ugandan, along with the seminarians—volunteered for these hardship posts. Many are or were associated with such dynamic new African religious orders as the Apostles of Jesus, founded in the mid-1960s to aid in the evangelization of the continent. Earnest, hardworking, and prayerful as they are, these priests have had to come to terms with the unique challenges of serving in a remote and difficult land, where life is hard, where help is far away, and where malaria, disease, and the perils of war are very, very close.
“I could have chosen a different life,” the 25-year-old Father Abraham told me one night, “but I chose this one. I want to be with these people.”
When asked what it is that he prays for, he said simply, “That my health holds up. You can be in a place like this if you're strong.”
This sentiment is worthy of Blessed Daniel Comboni himself, the late 19th century Italian missionary often called the founder of the modern Catholic Church in Sudan. Blessed Daniel revered the Nuba, and issued this stern admonition to his collaborators: “No one is to leave the Sudan—ever!”
A Christmas Eve Mass under the stars the night before brought to the compound representatives of more than 70 full- and part-time catechists, or Catholic lay leaders, whom the bishop has trained to help nourish the faith of Catholic Nuba. Many had traveled up to six days on foot to celebrate Christmas with the bishop.
These, too, are Bishop Macram's heroes.
Some, like the veteran catechist Musa (Moses), have labored among the Nuba for decades, at a time when the dioceses could not spare priests for such isolated parishes.
Attached to more than 70 “chapels” set up over a large area—some as simple as a grove of sycamores—the bishop's catechists teach the fundamentals of Catholic faith, and lead non-Eucharistic prayer services in far-flung Nuba villages, few of which have ever seen a priest.
They also mediate disputes, survey needs, solve practical problems, and share of the privations of their people.
Full-time catechists earn about $100 a year, although costs are compensated in more precious commodities, such as blankets, soap, and salt. Increasingly, they are the “shock troops” of the bishop's ambitious plans for emergency aid, food storage, agricultural development, and water conservation in the Nuba Mountains—efforts in the hope that thousands of Nuba will, in the coming years, be able to avoid starvation and build a viable, if lean, life for themselves and their families in the midst of war.
“The Church could not have survived in this part of the world without these catechists,” says Bishop Macram. This point has not been lost on the mujahadeen, the “Islamic” paramilitary groups who have tortured and killed many catechists in the course of the past 15 years.
One evening before Christmas, the bishop told a story that captures something of the poignancy of their situation.
“I once went to visit a catechist in his village,” Bishop Macram related, “and discovered pieces of kishrik, the Nuba sorghum bread, in the tabernacle.”
“‘What's this?’ I demanded angrily, fearing that I'd stumbled upon evidence that a poorly formed catechist has been conducting some sort of ersatz (and invalid) Communion service.”
“‘Please, your lordship,’ said the catechist, shamefacedly.” ‘We understand that the kishrik is not the Eucharist. Please don't be angry. It's just been so long since we've had Communion, and people begged me to put “something” in the tabernacle, to be reminded that the Eucharist was possible.’”
“I had to set the people straight, of course,” said the bishop, “but how could I not be moved as well?”
He told another story, over tea one balmy evening, of a catechist who once tried to discourage the bishop from paying him a visit.
“He was naked, you see. He had no clothes, and was ashamed to have the bishop see him in his poverty,” Bishop Macram said. (The man was sent a package of used clothing.)
The Nuba drumming had started up again, louder this time, laced with the sound of women trilling with their tongues—the characteristic ululation that women make in times of victory or happiness throughout North Africa and the Middle East. Not Hark the Herald Angels, surely—something much closer to the real world of Bethlehem than that, the world of mangers and shepherds, the world of the biblical poor, for whom religious faith is not a matter of sentiment, but a prayer for the birth of justice. “He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts, he has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree, he has filled the hungry with good things” (Luke 1:51-53).
I smiled. Did the Virgin make that unforgettable sound, too, that exultant cry when she greeted her cousin Elizabeth, or when, as an ancient antiphon says, “at midnight, the Child leapt down”?
As I looked beyond the compound toward the tree-shaded clearing some half a mile away, from whence the sound of drumming came, and where Christmas Day Mass would be celebrated later on that morning, I notice for the first time that there were eagles circling low over the grassland. I had no idea what role the eagle might play in Nuba folklore, whether such a sight would be considered a good or evil omen, but I knew that, in the midst of that joyful morning, the circling eagles made me uneasy.
Only a few miles away and but a week before, a hilltop village had been hit by a Sudanese air force bombing raid on the Nuba Mountains. That had only been the latest in a series of civilian bombardments that had started last August, the local people said. And, despite the festivities, people were jumpy about the growing and unpredictable threat from the skies.
[This is the end of part one; Mr. Meyer's report will continue next week]
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Gabriel Meyer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Inspired by Gospel of Life, Physician Helps Africa's Mothers and Children DATE: 01/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 17, 1999 ----- BODY:MaterCare International combats vast problem of maternal and infant mortality
When Dr. Robert Walley, a Catholic and pro-life advocate, completed his medical studies at Westminster Hospital of London University in his native England in 1970, he was told by the medical board there that if he wouldn't perform abortions, “there's no place for you here.”
This blow to the young doctor's hopes was to lead, indirectly, to an organization called MaterCare International, which today provides life-saving medical care to thousands of women in developing countries.
On receiving the board's decision, Walley emigrated with his family to Canada. “I found myself unemployed, with a wife and three children,” he said. (Walley and his wife, Susan, were to have seven children.)
The family settled in St. John's, Newfoundland, after Walley completed a residency in obstetrics/gynecology in Toronto. He became a member of the teaching staff in ob/gyn at Memorial University of Newfoundland, a position he held for more than 25 years.
In the early 1970s, Walley went to Harvard University, to earn a master's degree in public health. The courses piqued his interest in the plight of women in Africa and other Third World regions.
“What I studied prompted me to take a sabbatical from my teaching position and travel to Nigeria in 1981,” he said. “I was shocked by the deaths of so many mothers during pregnancy.”
One of the major causes was unsafe, illicit abortions, which continues today in Africa, Walley said. “Mothers turn to the abortionist, in despair and desperation, when help is not forthcoming. But once she has had her baby destroyed, she returns to the awful poverty and ignorance from where she came.”
Walley said he wanted to start a pro-life organization to serve the needs of women in developing nations. This led to the founding of MaterCare in 1996, though he began working to reduce deaths among poor women immediately after his experiences in Nigeria.
“I saw, firsthand, that the world didn't give a damn about the plight of women in Third World countries,” he said. “Pro-abortion and birth control, which were, and are, the mind-set of many international health organizations, mean absolutely nothing when women giving birth are bleeding to death. You must focus on the curative, not just on so-called ‘reproductive health.’”
I saw, firsthand, that the world didn't give a damn about the plight of women in Third World countries.
Walley said the World Health Organization estimates that between 585,000 and 1 million mothers in developing countries die each year from causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. Also, infant mortality rates are 10 times higher in those countries than in developed nations.
Other women, Walley said, suffer serious, but non-fatal, childbirth injuries, the most common being obstetric fistulae. That condition occurs because of unrelieved, obstructed labor. This leads to abnormal connections to the birth canal, and, as a consequence, the mother becomes incontinent. Often she is rejected by her husband, family, and society.
Walley teamed with other physicians who worked directly with poor women in Africa. One, Dr. John Wilson, has been in Ghana for more than 25 years. The other, Dr. John Kelly, is a consultant in a large teaching hospital in Birmingham, England, but has gone to Africa every year, for the past 30 years, to help women there.
“Since 1988, I have been involved in research, trying to reduce the unacceptable level of maternal mortality in Ghana,” Wilson said. “I met Dr. Walley in Rome and discovered we shared a mutual concern with maternal health and morbidity. This led to a partnership of faith in the spirit of Pope John Paul II's encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, and eventually to the formation of MaterCare International.”
Kelly called Walley “a dedicated doctor who for years has been trying and working to help these modern-day lepers. I could fill pages with good words about him and his works.”
Kelly, who heads MaterCare/UK, said he provides the clinical experience input for the organization. “I am privileged to give freely of my expertise to help my poor sisters in Christ,” he said.
Walley received attention from the Vatican in 1985, when he was appointed to the Pontifical Council for the Apostolate of Healthcare Workers for a five-year term. He has since been reap-pointed twice.
Just two years later, in Nairobi, Kenya, the Safe Motherhood Conference first drew wide attention to the alarming death rate among pregnant women and their infants. It issued an urgent call to action.
In 1990, at the World Summit for Children, a second call to action was issued to the international health community, to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality by 50%. A conference document said previous inaction to help save women and children in developing countries was a worldwide “conspiracy of silence.”
Even before the 1990 conference, Walley continued to campaign tirelessly on behalf of women in Nigeria and Ghana, seeking funds to improve the quality of prenatal and other medical care for them.
In 1989, he received a grant from the Canadian International Development Agency for his Safe Motherhood Initiative and teamed with Sister Ann Ward of the Medical Missionaries of Mary, who also is a doctor and an expert in fistula surgery.
Walley helped her start a medical center in Nigeria, where the maternal morbidity and mortality rates are among the highest in the world. (A second center is planned for Ghana, where the Ghanian Conference of Bishops gave MaterCare land on which its $3 million facility.)
Other funds have come from the Bishops’ Conference in Canada and from Canada's Catholic Women's League, as a millennium project. The Sisters of Mercy have also made a substantial donation
Bishop Peter K.A. Turkson, bishop of the Archdiocese of Cape Coast, Ghana, issued a letter praising Walley and his associates for their life-saving efforts. “[W]e highly commend the efforts of Dr. Walley and his collaborators in Canada and Ghana, and recommend their proposal of the Fistulae Project to all who can help make this millennium gift possible,” Bishop Turkson said.
Because of Walley's decades-long efforts, more and more emphasis is shifting to the curative, not just preventive aspects of maternal care. In African villages, traditional birth attendants have been trained to recognize and refer high-risk mothers to district hospitals and to centers founded by MaterCare.
A new research program is also in the planning stages, to train birth attendants to manage life-threatening post-partum hemorrhaging. Also being established is an advocacy program to bring international attention to the suffering of so many mothers in developing countries and even some European countries.
MaterCare's main objective is to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality rates by 75% in the next 10 years. It also seeks to eliminate abortions through new initiatives of maternal service, training, and research, in accordance with the teaching of Evangelium Vitae.
The spiritual director of MaterCare, Father Kevin Malloy, of St. John's, called Walley “a driving force in the pro-life movement. Bob is a most dynamic and energetic physician who is very concerned about women's issues in medicine.”
That concern continues unabated. “We can get government money if we do our job properly and become bigger and more influential,” Walley said. “But the Church and the bishops must stand by us and support us. We're dealing with a world life issue here.”
At an international conference on women's health issues in Rome last February, Walley said, “In a small way, all mothers share in a special and intimate way in the Incarnation. They share intimately in (Christ's) suffering and death on the cross, and also share his mother's suffering at the foot of the cross, when they suffer the loss of a child.”
He added, “The millennium offers us all a golden opportunity to show our love and concern for mothers, wherever they are.”
James Malerba writes from Hamden, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: James Malerba ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Pro-lifers Re-energize With Annual March DATE: 01/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 17, 1999 ----- BODY:Jan. 22 event marks 26 years of Roe v. Wade
WASHINGTON—As many as 200,000 pro-lifers will be flowing to the nation's capital to participate in the 26th annual March for Life on Jan 22. A broad cross section of people will be coming by plane, car, and, in the greatest number, by bus, to take part in what pro-life activist Joseph Scheidler calls a “family reunion.”
The peaceful protest against the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion decision will include speeches near the White House and a walk past the Capitol, and will end at the Supreme Court Building. All three branches of the federal government are thus confronted by the marchers.
But while this unique event seeks to overturn abortion laws, it also provides a bond that stiffens the pro-life resolve of those who attend. In fact, a second generation is now enduring personal sacrifice to bear witness for the movement.
Perhaps one of the most inspiring stories about the March involves the efforts of the late Ruth Pakaluk of Worcester, Mass. A dedicated pro-life advocate and one-time president of the Massachusetts Citizens for Life, Pakaluk battled cancer while rallying young people to the cause.
A devout Catholic, she was named associate director of the Diocese of Worcester's pro-life office in 1997. Although she was undergoing chemotherapy, Pakaluk made a vigorous effort to recruit high school students to attend last year's March for Life.
According to her husband, Michael, she “believed you have to connect the March with young people. She felt this could be a decisive element in his or her life.”
Her recruitment paid off—five busloads went to the March from Worcester, and a majority of them were students. No more than three buses had ever gone from the area before.
But it came at great cost to her. “When the March was over and she helped put everyone on the buses in Washington, she came down with pneumonia. Within minutes, she was almost unable to breathe,” her husband said.
Pakaluk recovered enough to return home, but she died eight months later. Her successor at the diocesan office, Catherine Kelleher, said Pakaluk still inspires them. On Jan. 10, Kelleher held a two-hour session with students at St. Mary's Church in Uxbridge, encouraging their participation in the upcoming March.
Five hundred miles away, in the Pittsburgh suburb of Aspinwall, Mary Catherine Scanlon prepared for her annual trip to the March, which first began in 1974. Encouraging and accompanying her then was her 17-year-old daughter, Ann, who has been wheelchair-bound by cerebral palsy since birth.
Ann Scanlon is now 41, and the pilgrimage to Washington has become an important part of her life. Her mother says, “She goes every year and at great inconvenience and cost.” Some years Mary Catherine carried her daughter on and off the bus. Other years one or more of the other ten Scanlon children assisted.
Thanks to Anderson Bus Lines of Greenville, Pa., the eight-hour ride will be a little more comfortable for Ann Scanlon this year; the bus is wheelchair accessible. Her mother said, “This is the first such charter bus we've heard of.”
Another Scanlon daughter, Mary, was arrested for rescuing outside an abortion clinic several years ago. The sheriff offered her the option to start the five-day jail sentence the following Monday, but she couldn't do that because on Monday she was going to the March for Life.
Mary Catherine Scanlon is a bus captain, a volunteer who handles the logistics of the trip for 40 or so pro-lifers. She annually runs a bus from St. Scholastica Church, and six other churches join them. They have formed an Our Lady of Guadalupe “cluster.”
This bus is one of 110 which come from southwestern Pennsylvania. The effort—which involves Catholic and Protestant churches, schools, and colleges—is coordinated by People Concerned for the Unborn Child (PCUC). Fifteen bus companies are involved in a journey which begins at midnight; marchers have to endure at least a 24-hour day.
PCUC's political action director, Mary Lou Gartner, said the trip is long and often scary. “You're never sure what the weather will be like. We've had to endure slow rides over the turn-pike when the windshields were snowed up.”
But these concerns don't deter the 5,000 people who come. “We're basically witnessing to the world and to ourselves that this atrocity has to stop,” Gartner said. “I don't think we're asked by the Lord to accomplish anything. We're asked to be faithful.”
PCUC also holds a prayer breakfast the Saturday before the March. Farther up the state in Erie, the People for Life, hold an ecumenical prayer breakfast, too. This year Dr. Bernard Nathanson, the former-abortionist turned pro-life-advocate, will be the guest speaker on Jan. 16.
After the breakfast, which attracts more than 600 people, there is the annual Greater Erie March and Motorcade for Life and a brief memorial service for unborn children. The event has been held for 21 years.
Jean Hammer, the treasurer of the organization, says these events help energize people for the journey to Washington. A veteran of every March for Life, Hammer eagerly looks forward to the grueling but rewarding trip. “You get to the top of the [Capitol] Hill, and you see all the people coming behind you. It renews your spirit.”
Some veteran marchers have come by bus from different cities over the years. Jennifer Swope of Derry, N.H., came as a high school student and teenager from Cincinnati; as a college student from Bloomington, Ind.; and as a wife and mother from New Hampshire.
She said, “Whenever I've gone, I've been impressed by the unity of the pro-life movement. There were old people and young people. There were Atheists for Life and those carrying Rosaries. There were Catholics, Protestants, and non-Christians.”
Often these witness bearers come to the March by plane. Diane Trombley of the Right to Life-Lifespan of Metro Detroit, a National Right to Life Committee affiliate, is one of 25 or 30 who annually attend from southeastern Michigan.
Trombley has attended about 15 marches, and she vividly remembers the 28-hour marathon which begins with a 4:30 a.m. trip to the airport. “It's the winter, of course, and I can remember the juice containers in our lunch being frozen solid,” she said.
“But it's a renewal of purpose. It's an ever-present display that the issue the Supreme Court thought it solved 26 years ago, is alive. They thought they had us packaged and put on a shelf. It hasn't happened.”
As many as 35 people from Washington state fly to the March each year. But not before they have their own event. The Washington State March for Life is the only organization affiliated with the national March for Life, and each year between 5,000 to 8,000 take to the streets of Olympia, the state capital.
The group's president, Kathy McEntee of Tacoma, said, “Every member of the legislature is invited to speak. But the House Democrat leadership has removed committee assignments from their members who do so. Some have changed parties.”
The state march will observe its 21st anniversary on Jan. 19, and McEntee says, “We're not going away. We can change local laws. But we also have to make our presence felt in D.C.”
While people are converging on the nation's capital, pro-lifers in the Washington, D.C., area are serving as hosts to their fellow marchers. Some local churches lodge those who come in early by bus and spend the night. This has become a tradition in Memorial Hall at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.
Hundreds of members of Knights of Columbus councils in Virginia serve as marshals for the March. They direct buses at the downtown Mall area in Washington, as well as at parking sites outside RFK Stadium; they establish a control center; they work with various police agencies. “We're involved in every aspect,” according to state Deputy Skip Rogers.
About 5% of Knights in Virginia will attend the event, many with their families. “Our organization has been part of this because we are pro-life. It's an integral part of who we are. We feel very strongly about that,” Rogers said.
The assistant director for the office of family life in the Diocese of Arlington, Va., Robert Laird, said that about three-quarters of the diocese's parishes participate in the March. Some parishioners go by bus, subway, car, or merely show up during their lunch break from work in the city.
To Laird, who lives only a few minutes from downtown Washington, and to those who travel from around the country, the attraction of the March for Life is the same. “It re-energizes so many Catholics and others every year,” he said. “And each year, we're winning over more and more souls.”
Joseph Esposito writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Esposito ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: 'What Is It That Is Being Aborted?' DATE: 01/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 17, 1999 ----- BODY:Symposium teaches students to make a compelling case for the pro-life position
TORONTO—Canada's pro-life university students enjoyed a crash course in right-to-life “persuasion” during the annual National Campus Life Network (NCLN) symposium Jan. 8-10 in Toronto.
To prepare student pro-lifers to respond to the many distortions and rationalizations used to justify abortion, NCLN officials invited noted U.S. pro-life educator Scott Klusendorf to lead this year's symposium. Klusendorf, director of bioethics for the Los Angeles-based Stand to Reason organization, has quickly gained a reputation as a leading pro-life authority.
Klusendorf believes the pro-life movement is in dire need of more apologists who can articulate pro-life objectives in a confident, thorough manner. Too often, he said, pro-life workers fall victim to the rhetorical and emotion-based traps designed by pro-abortion supporters to hide their true intentions and make the killing of the unborn more palatable.
He is especially eager to address student pro-lifers as the future leaders of the movement. He challenged students to make a radical commitment to pro-life work to overcome the tremendous head start enjoyed by those promoting the abortion-contraception mentality.
“Let's reinvent the pro-life movement in Canada (and in the United States) with people who can bring a well-reasoned argument to the public square,” he said.
Klusendorf's presentation, “Making Abortion Unthinkable: The Art of Pro-Life Persuasion,” is a vigorous defense of traditional right-to-life ideals. He makes use of a 280-page manual to shed light on such areas as pro-abortion rhetoric, exposing pro-abortion distortions, and the difficulties faced by pro-life people in bringing their message to a mass audience. Part of the problem, he said, stems from a “postmodern culture” that prefers stories and pictures to facts.
In his research, Klusendorf has uncovered a number of articles and quotations from pro-abortion supporters which confirm many of the claims long held by pro-lifers. His discussion of fetal pain and the abortion-breast cancer link, for example, cites articles from neutral and pro-choice sources affirming pro-life claims.
Klusendorf told students that any argument favoring abortion can be overcome by a consistent appeal to the humanity of the unborn child. “The answer to the question, ‘what is it that is being aborted’ trumps every other issue in this debate,” he said. “Abortion isn't about economic hardship, a woman's right to privacy, or forcing morality on others. It all boils down to the one central issue.”
Throughout the symposium, Klusendorf offered students a number of formulas and debating techniques designed to help them respond to pro-choice arguments. He called on young pro-lifers to do their homework prior to engaging in any public debate with a pro-abortion supporter.
“The public is confusing the complexity of the right-to-life issue,” Klusendorf told his student audience. “Abortion is not a complex issue, especially if we keep in mind that it's a human being that is threatened by abortion, and not some blob of tissue.”
More than 50 of the country's university-based pro-life workers converged at St. Augustine's Seminary to take in Klusendorf's presentation. Representatives from universities in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and Prince Edward Island participated in this year's symposium.
The 1999 NCLN symposium also featured an address by University of Toronto professor Janine Langan on “the Christian approach to pro-life activity.” The symposium opened with a workshop led by British Columbia students on starting and maintaining a university pro-life club.
The Klusendorf “persuasion” presentation was in keeping with NCLN's objective of acting as an information exchange and support organization for Canada's pro-life university students. The network now represents 17 post-secondary institutions in Canada, with more than 70 individual members.
NCLN is part of a growing network of students working to spread the word about right-to-life on universities and colleges in North America. Many veteran pro-life activists in the United States and Canada are enthusiastic about the dedication and energy of today's student pro-lifers.
Students attending this year's symposium were highly impressed with Klusendorf's presentation and his challenge to the next generation.
Theresa Picard, 20, a nursing student at the University of Western Ontario (London), is president of the undergraduate students’ pro-life club. She said Klusendorf's information is extremely useful in helping establish a pro-life ethic in a “values-neutral” university environment.
“I'm hoping to back to my local (pro-life) group with practical ways to present the right-to-life view on campus and continue making it an issue,” Picard said.
Meanwhile, Amrita Moore, head of the pro-life group at Simon Fraser University in Surrey, British Columbia, said the information disseminated during the symposium would benefit any pro-life work.
“This symposium helped me understand that all of the basic pro-choice arguments can be shot down with a straightforward appeal to fact and reason,” said Moore, a second-year psychology major. “I think a simple reliance on fact and the truth of our position can inspire more students to get involved in local pro-life groups.”
Shendah O‘Neill, an education student at the University of Toronto, is coordinating director of the National Campus Life Network. In an interview with the Register, O‘Neill said Klusendorf's invitation to speak at this year's symposium represents a change for the organization. Previous conferences featured a wider variety of speakers and several workshop activities. This year, however, the NCLN decided that Klusendorf's information-packed approach would be more effective with a student audience.
“We thought it more beneficial to bring all our representatives together to hear Scott and take advantage of his knowledge in this sensitive area,” O‘Neill said. “It's our hope that our members will take the ideas and information offered by Scott during the symposium and share it with their peers back on their individual campuses.”
O‘Neill, who became coordinating director last summer, says students can become effective pro-life leaders through continuing education and by staying abreast of the latest issues in the right-to-life debate.
O‘Neill revealed that the NCLN is now considering a plan to change its mission statement to read, “the National Campus Life Network is a Canadian organization that assists in the formation, collaboration, and overall effectiveness of campus pro-life groups.”
The network is also considering changes to its organization structure which will increase its financial health and add a degree permanence and stability to the organization. These changes include a beefed-up executive and the maintenance of an “adult anchor board” consisting of former students who are well-versed in pro-life work in North America.
Mike Mastromatteo writes from Toronto.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mike Mastromatteo ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Persecution of Christians Becomes Violent in India DATE: 01/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 17, 1999 ----- BODY:Government-supported Hindu fundamentalists terrorize minority
NEW DELHI, India—Western Gujarat, the homeland of India's prophet of non-violence, Mohandas Gandhi, has ironically become the center of violence against Christians in India. More than two dozen churches in Gujarat were burnt or damaged during the last week of 1998.
The spate of anti-Christian violence begun on Christmas Day by Hindu fundamentalist gangs was the grand finale to an unprecedented year of terror for Indian Christians. More than 110 attacks on Church targets were reported last year—more than the total number of incidents which had taken place in the previous 50 years. Gujarat recorded more than half of the atrocities committed against Christians in India in 1998.
The violence which has been carried out on the tiny Christian minority—about 300,000 of Gujarat's 47 million people—troubles local Church leaders, as does the response of the Hindu fundamentalist BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party—Indian People's Party) toward the problem, at both the state and federal level.
For instance, the head of the BJPled federal coalition, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, vowed to protect the beleaguered Christians at a public meeting on Jan. 4, declaring that the upsurge of violence against Christians in Gujarat was “a conspiracy to destabilize” the BJP-led coalition he heads. With these words, Vajpayee absolved himself, his party, and its supporting Hindu cadre groups of any responsibility for the anti-Christian violence.
Bishop Godfrey de Rozario of Baroda, whose diocese includes south Gujarat, dismissed Vajpayee's assurances and conspiracy theories as patently absurd. Bishop Rozario told the Register on Jan. 5 that he was resolved “not to mince words” in denouncing the BJP government at both state and federal levels. “The sad part is that the (BJP) government is not concerned at all about what is happening. They are all in collusion with what's happening.”
Had the government wished to curb the violence, the Jesuit bishop said, “they could have done so long back,” referring to the Gujarat government's refusal last summer to arrest agitators who burnt Bibles, attacked evangelical conventions, dug up a body from a Christian cemetery, and even tore down a church in the presence of police.
“The government is camouflaging everything by denying the gravity of the situation,” said Bishop Rozario, who spent the first days of New Year in the Dang district of Gujarat. Dang, a poor area populated largely by members of the tribal ethnic minority, has been the scene of numerous attacks on Christians. In many parts of Dang, Bishop Rozario said, “our people are threatened by Hindu fanatic groups. Christians are absolutely afraid.”
Carmelite of Charity Sister Carmen Borges, principal of Deep Darshan school in Ahwa, is more graphic about the campaign of terror in Dang, whose 200,000 inhabitants are 10% to 15% Christian. For now, the burning of churches, initiated by Hindu Jagran Manch (Forum to Waken Hindus) activists at Ahwa in Dang on Christmas Day, has stopped. But still “terror fills the air” Sister Borges told the Register on Jan. 5.
“This morning, two jeeps full of Christians were forcibly taken (to a stream), thrown in the water, and told that their Christianity has been ‘washed off,’” said Sister Borges.
Scores of poor tribal Christians have been threatened, deprived of their rations and other government benefits, and antagonized by fellow members of their tribal minority. Sister Borges and others assert that the tactics of intimidation are fomented by the government.
Some Christians have succumbed to the pressure, Sister Borges said, largely “because they cannot bear this kind of harassment and want to live in peace with other tribals.” On the other hand, many Catholics have defied the threats, and are now prepared to risk losing the rations and other government benefits they would otherwise enjoy as members of the tribal minority.
Local Christians have also complained of social ostracism, with Christian women being forbidden to draw water from village wells. “They are poor tribals. How long can they face these pressures?” asked Sister Borges.
Sister Borges, who has worked in Dang for eight years, was one of the first to experience the ire of the Hindu Jagran Manch after its Christmas rally during which its leaders called for direct action to “throw the Christian missionaries out of Dang, Gujarat, and the country.”
Recalling her own “terrifying experience” on Christmas night, Sister Borges said that a gang of 100 to 150 youths attacked her Deep Darshan school. Before the assailants could enter the hostel, police arrived and held them back.
A dozen members of the police force are now on round-the-clock vigilance at the school. “Right now, we are safe, because the police are there to protect us and our churches. But once they go, we hear rumors that they will have their tantrums (attacks on Christians) again,” the nun said.
Jesuit Father Cedric Prakash, founder of the Gujarat chapter of the United Christian Forum for Human Rights (UCFHR), added: “The situation is very tense. What we have is a restless peace. People are frightened. They do not know if their houses will be torched. The poor (Christian) tribals are afraid of mob violence.”
Bishop Stanislaus Fernandes of Ahmedabad, the capital of Gujrath, has tried to meet with the inquiry commission sent by the federal Home Ministry at the end of December, after the burning of churches began making headlines throughout the world. Bishop Fernandes went so far as to join the UCFHR delegation in waiting outside the state guest house where two members of the commission were staying—yet the commissioners refused to meet with the bishop and the Christian delegation. The bishop said he decided to take this stance “as Christians in Dang and neighboring areas were under great pressure. People are even asked to reveal their identity as non-Christians by putting up Hindu (flags) in front of their houses.”
Father Prakash, while dismissing Vajpayee's claim that the attacks on Christians were a conspiracy to discredit the BJP government, said that it was readily evident who was “roughing up minorities, burning churches, and terrorizing Christians.” Beyond the wall of words, he insisted, lies a “terror campaign against Christians,” conducted by Hindu fanatics under the protection of the ruling BJP.
Pamphlets distributed in Ahwa prior to the Christmas rally contained wild allegations against nuns and priests, and called for removing Christians from the area. UCFHR has collected several examples of such anti-Christian propaganda printed by Hindu organizations such as the VHP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad, or World Council of Hindus) and the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or National Volunteer Corps). Yet those groups have been absolved by the BJP of any wrongdoing in the recent violence.
The Indian media have blamed the Hindutva family of organizations, including the BJP, VHP, and RSS, for the violence on Christians. Ardent advocates of Hindutva, however, including several federal ministers, have continued to promise safety to Christians, while denying that the BJP and its cadre groups have played any role in the violence. At the same time, these leaders have accused Christians of engaging in “forced conversion” of tribals.
Though BJP leaders have disowned the violence against Christians, John Dayal, the head of the Indian Catholic Bishops’ Conference investigation team in Gujarat, noted that “the forces behind the attacks are the same” as those behind the BJP. Groups like the Hindu Jagran Manch, which is active in Dang, are effectively associated with the BJP.
As for the Hindutva charge of “forced conversion” by Christians of tribals, O.P. Mathur, the chief of police in Gujarat, went on record in early January saying that not a single charge of forced conversion had been brought against Christians in the region.
The hate campaign against Christians is not confined to the tribal region in south Gujarat. Recently, a senior VHP leader told a panel discussion on state television that Christians need to be wiped out from the whole state and the country, just as the Nazis did to the Jews.
Anto Akkara writes from India.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ANTO AKKARA ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Pursuit of Good Liturgies DATE: 01/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 17, 1999 ----- BODY:What's at stake? Nothing less than preserving the fountainhead from which all the Church's strength flows
Following is the third in a series of excerpts from the Statement of Conclusions issued regarding four days of meetings between the bishops of Australia and the Cardinal Prefects of the Congregations in Rome:
In Australia, as elsewhere, experience bears out the Holy Father's observation that the vast majority of “the pastors and the Christian people have accepted the liturgical reform in a spirit of obedience and indeed joyful fervor. For this we should give thanks to God for that passage of the Holy Spirit through the Church which the liturgical renewal has been” (Apostolic Letter Vigesimus Quintus Annus 12).
It is a pressing need that these positive results be built upon. The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference has already planned to set aside significant resources to produce educational materials on the Mass which can be used at a diocesan or parish level. Other concrete initiatives will also be devised to ensure the quality and authentic fidelity of liturgical celebration and sacramental practice as the third Christian millennium dawns.
Liturgy: The Life of the Church
It is important that the sacred Liturgy as a whole be appreciated in all its profundity and mystery. The Liturgy is more than a recollection of past events, a means of imparting knowledge or a vehicle for expressing the faith and life of the celebrating community. It is fundamentally the manifestation of God's initiative and his loving will to save, expressed in the Paschal Mystery of our Lord Jesus Christ, made present and efficacious by the Holy Spirit. In the Liturgy, Christ's work is carried forward by the Church until the end of time.
The Council spoke therefore of the Liturgy as the summit or high-point toward which the activity of the Church tends and the fountainhead from which all her strength flows (cf. Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium 10; cf. Apostolic Letter Dies Domini 32). By their participation in the earthly Liturgy all the faithful are formed in right conduct and prepared for that Liturgy in the heavenly city to which we journey as pilgrims (cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium 8; Dies Domini 37).
The celebration of the Liturgy is therefore never a private action of the celebrant or of the community gathered in a particular place, but an act of the Church as such (cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium 26), in intimate union with Christ her Head. Accordingly, an insistence on “good liturgy” is right and useful as long as the expression is not misunderstood as meaning a human virtuoso, external performance or “choreography.” Rather, all participants should accommodate and subordinate themselves and their manner of thinking, acting, and speaking to the great gift and mystery of God's Redemption, and to the person of Christ, our sole Savior, with a special reverence for the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist at the Mass and reserved in the tabernacle.
Since it lies at the center of the Church's life, the Liturgy manifests the Church's very nature and directs it consciously and explicitly toward its ultimate goal. The Church is seen most perfectly in the celebration of the Eucharist, presided over by the bishop of the diocese, surrounded by his priests, deacons and the community of the faithful (cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium 26, 41; Dies Domini 34).
This ideal phenomenon is realized in varying degrees in circumstances where the bishop is not able to be present and where he is represented ordinarily by a priest. Even in such circumstances, the bishop remains the essential point of reference and the celebration necessarily reflects the nature of the Church as a “structured communion” whose nature is reflected in an “ordered exercise of liturgical action” (On Certain Questions Regarding the Collaboration of the Non-Ordained Faithful in the Sacred Ministry of Priests, n. 6, ß 1-2; cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 26; Lumen Gentium, nn. 10-11).
It is when each takes part in the Liturgy according to his or her specific role in the Body of Christ that the whole Body is built up most effectively.
In today's rapidly changing world it is all the more necessary to return constantly to the authentic teaching of the Church on the Liturgy, as found in the liturgical texts themselves and, among many other authoritative sources, as reaffirmed and explained in a lucid and accessible manner in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Many people today call for a more “transcendental” Liturgy, and indeed liturgical celebrations must be permeated with a proper religious sense born of faith in unseen realities (cf. Dies Domini 43). Care must be given to the beauty and elegance of the vestments, sacred vessels, surroundings, furnishings, and to the eloquence of the words and actions themselves, to factors which will encourage the participation of the faithful, and to catechesis concerning the meaning of the liturgical signs (cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium 11, 14; Sacred Congregation for the Sacraments and Divine Worship, Inaestimabile Donum 16-17; Dies Domini 35).
At the same time the Liturgy must be a living event, accessible to the people. There is a need in catechesis, in all pastoral care, and in liturgical celebration itself to involve all Catholics, above all the young, more fully in the Liturgy and help them to understand and live out its meaning. The Church in Australia, as in other countries, faces a notable decline in recent years in the numbers of Catholics attending Sunday Mass, a situation which calls for a pastoral response (cf. Dies Domini 36, 46-49).
Weaknesses and Correctives
A weakness in parish liturgical celebrations in Australia is the tendency on the part of some priests and parishes to make their own changes to liturgical texts and structures, whether by omissions, by additions or by substitutions, occasionally even in central texts such as the Eucharistic Prayer. Practices foreign to the tradition of the Roman Rite are not to be introduced on the private initiative of priests, who are ministers and servants, rather than masters of the sacred Rites (Sacrosanctum Concilium 22, ß 3; Instruction Inaestimabile Donum 5). Any unauthorized changes, while perhaps well-intentioned, are nevertheless seriously misguided. The bishops of Australia, then, will continue to put their energy above all into education, while correcting these abuses individually. Such education and corrective action are also the effective means for the pastoral care of those at the parish level who criticize and report the efforts of others, sometimes justly, but sometimes in a judgmental, selective, ill-informed and unproductive manner. A return to a real sense of the Church and of Liturgy is the most effective path to overcoming obstinacy in personal tastes and to setting aside arbitrary action, fault-finding, conflict and division. Both in regard to the Liturgy and other questions in the life of the Church, there is a need for fidelity to the mind of the Church and willingness to dialogue with others, above all the pastors and bishops.
For authenticity in the Liturgy, it is essential that the translation of the texts not be so much a work of “creativity” as of a faithful and exact vernacular rendering of the original text, which itself is the fruit of the liturgical renewal and draws upon centuries of cultural and ecclesial experience.
While fully respecting the genius of each language and avoiding a rigid literalism, an appropriate translation also carefully avoids paraphrase, gloss or interpretation. The explanation of the riches contained within the liturgical texts is the concern not of liturgical translation, but of the homily and of sustained catechesis.
The substantial unity of the Roman Rite is an expression of the theological realities of communion and of ecclesial unity and contributes to the rich plurality of the Church. Within their respective historical and cultural contexts, of course, the same may be said for the other Catholic liturgical families of venerable antiquity. To this end, the practice of the recognitio of the Holy See as desired by the Second Vatican Council (cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium 36; cf. Sacred Congregation. of Rites, Instruction Inter Oecumenici, 20-31; canon 838) stands as a guarantee of the authenticity of the translations and their fidelity to the original texts. By means of this practice, a concrete sign of the bond of communion between the successor of Peter and the successors of the other Apostles, translations become truly the expression in the local Churches of the heritage of the universal Church. The Holy See may not divest itself of this responsibility, and the bishops, who bear the responsibility of overseeing and approving the translations, likewise regard their own role as a direct and solemn trust. In this delicate work, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference will continue to cooperate in English-language questions in so far as possible with other English-speaking Episcopal Conferences.
Sacramental Confession and the Sense of Sin
Many bishops in Australia and elsewhere have noted a decline in the sense of sin, stemming from the deeper reality of a crisis of faith, and having grave repercussions for the sacrament of Penance. The situation calls for a renewed and energetic catechesis on the very nature of sin as opposed to salvation, and thus for a focus in sacramental praxis not only on the consolation and encouragement of the faithful, but also on instilling a true sense of contrition, of authentic sorrow for their own sins.
Catholics should come to understand more deeply Jesus’ death as a redeeming sacrifice and an act of perfect worship of the Father effecting the remission of sins. A failure to appreciate this supreme grace would undermine the whole of Christian life. They should be made fully aware, too, of the indispensable role in the reconciliation of sinners which Christ has entrusted to His Church.
Individual confession and absolution remains the “sole ordinary means by which one of the faithful who is conscious of grave sin is reconciled with God and with the Church” (canon 960; cf. Rituale Romanum, Ordo Paenitentiae, n. 31; canon 960; Catechism of the Catholic Church 1484). Energetic efforts are to be made to avoid any risk that this traditional practice of the sacrament of Penance fall into disuse.
The communal celebration of Penance with individual confessions and absolution should be encouraged especially in Advent and Lent, but it cannot be allowed to prevent regular, ready access to the traditional form for all who desire it. Unfortunately, communal celebrations have not infrequently occasioned an illegitimate use of general absolution. This illegitimate use, like other abuses in the administration of the sacrament of Penance, is to be eliminated.
The teaching of the Church is reflected in precise terms in the requirements of the Code of Canon Law (cf. esp. canons 959-964). In particular it is clear that “A sufficient necessity is not … considered to exist when confessors cannot be available merely because of a great gathering of penitents, such as can occur on some major feast day or pilgrimage” (canon 961, ß1).
The bishops will exercise renewed vigilance on these matters for the future, aware that departures from the authentic tradition do great wrong to the Church and to individual Catholics.
Liturgical Formation
So that the faithful may be sure to receive from their priests an authentic and informed ministry and teaching, insistence will continue to be placed upon the stipulation of the Council's Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium (n. 16), that the sacred Liturgy be regarded as one of the principal subjects in major seminaries, a requirement that is the subject of further guidelines offered by the Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education's Instruction, In Ecclesiasticam (June 3, 1979).
Such liturgical formation needs to be followed through in all the different sections of the Catholic community and at the various levels in a consistent and permanent fashion. Only in this way will communities and individuals be brought to a deeper understanding of the Liturgy. Likewise, only by sustained programs of this kind can the Church in Australia be assured of a sufficient pool of resource persons to sustain the different areas of liturgical development.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: American Catholics' Pit Bull DATE: 01/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 17, 1999 ----- BODY:A confrontational pugilist who believes that, in this fight, dialogue doesn't work
President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. Always out-spoken. Early in 1998 ABCTV canceled the show Nothing Sacred. The League led a boycott that caused dozens of advertisers to drop the show. Last fall, Donohue went after the off-Broadway play Corpus Christi, which closed after a short run. He spoke recently in New York with Register national affairs correspondent Brian Caulfield.
Caulfield: What direction do you see our culture taking in relation to the Catholic Church?
Donohue: I say the culture is up for grabs. It can be won either by those who think that the answer to greater liberty is the secularization of society, on a mostly hedonistic bent, or by those who are of a more traditional persuasion, such as myself, who think that a healthy public display of Catholicism is in the best interest of the United States. Not that I expect all people to become Catholic or follow the teachings of the Church, but what the Catholic Church teaches in terms of morals, particularly in terms of restraint and self-denial, is something that once was imbedded in our culture and no longer is. I think many of the social pathologies we see today are a direct result of the abandonment of these Catholic teachings.
Many people see the Church as opposed to individual freedom. How do you address that?
Much of my educational and professional background has been focused on the question, What makes for a free society? I believe you must have civil liberties, and in this I agree with the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), but I part company with them in asserting that there must be a modicum of civility and community. Radical advocates of civil liberties stress the individual as triumphant over the group, whereas civility and community are predicated on the idea that the individual will be subordinate to the group, that there's such a thing as the common good to which all must contribute. There's a tension here, and it's a healthy one. Our society, however, has veered off too far in the direction of radical individualism.
What Catholicism teaches is that you've got to be is responsible before you can exercise rights, that you have to have certain communitarian values imbedded in you—such as duty, honor, responsibility, and commitment. But the Church also places a great emphasis on human rights. Pope John Paul II has stressed the absolute dignity of each man and woman, and says that freedom is the right to do what we ought to do, not simply what we want to do. I think this teaching needs to be spread as far as we can take it. The Pope's teaching, particularly in Veritatis Splendor, is a manifesto for human liberty.
I say the culture is up for grabs. It can be won either by those who think that the answer to greater liberty is the secularization of society, on a mostly hedonistic bent, or by those who are of a more traditional persuasion, such as myself, who think that a healthy public display of Catholicism is in the best interest of the United States.
Is the Church, as an institution, under attack?
I have been president of the Catholic League for five years and in my tenure I have not seen a significant increase in attacks on the rights of individual Catholics. I have seen an increase in hostility against the institutional Church, particularly in its teachings in the area of sexual ethics, and I think that it's most viciously exhibited by the artistic community. I disagree with those who say the main culprit is the media. True, in terms of mere volume, the media clearly dwarfs any other vehicle of anti-Catholicism. But in terms of pure viciousness, there is a hatred against the Church and its teachings in the arts which is rivaled perhaps only by those in higher education. The premium that educators put on moral relativism has led in part to our moral collapse, to the point that many young people in college today do not have the moral grounding to declare that something as horrible as the Holocaust is absolutely wrong. They have been taught that morality is personal and that good is whatever the lone individual decides.
What do you see as the motive behind anti-Catholicism?
Every day tracts and books pass my desk which say that Protestants should have no association with Catholics and that Satan has guided the Catholic Church since the dawn of Christianity. However, that element of Protestantism, while it's important to monitor, does not occupy most of my time. I'm more interested in what is happening in the publishing world, the world of broadcasting and academia, the real centers of opinion, where ideas are disseminated from the top, so to speak. There is a definite animus coming from those sources, from these very well-educated, very well-heeled men and women who would die to think that they were in any way a bigot, but who can say with such great aplomb that the Catholic Church does not deserve the same respect as other institutions. I've gone on radio and I'm shocked to hear very educated people say that the reason we have a degree of anti-Catholicism in this country is because this is payback time. You had your chance at influencing the culture, they say, and we didn't like it.
What really gets to me is the control non-Catholic institutions seek to have over the teachings and policies of the Church. For example, the Ford Foundation has been over the past several decades the No. 1 funder of the notoriously anti-Catholic group called Catholics for A Free Choice, which has been denounced by the bishops. By its funding the Ford Foundation is trying to subvert public opinion on what the Church teaches and to give the impression that there are multiple positions on the killing of innocent children.
Some Catholics have said that your methods are too confrontational.
I have often been described as too pugilistic, too controversial, and I have an answer. No. 1, we are not a pastoral organization, we are a civil rights organization. Two, we are not located in the hinterlands, we are in New York City, the media capital of the United States. Three, to those who prefer a more nuanced, more compromising approach, in which dialogue is their God, I can only say that they've had their chance and their method has proven to be an utter failure. We get results. Once you step into the arena with the ACLU, the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, Planned Parenthood, and others, you have to play on their turf. We are here to win, and when we lose, we want the respect of our adversaries. I think we've achieved that.
Critics have said the Catholic League is a right-wing organization and point out that you're a scholar for the conservative Heritage Foundation.
The Catholic League defends the Church and its members from defamation and discrimination. If the attacks come disproportionately from the left, as they have been recently, then we are going to appear to be a right-wing organization. I won't be intimidated by that label. Many times I have been told, “Bill, don't rock the boat.” My answer is, “I didn't start the rocking, you people stirred up the waters.” I'm trying to return things to normalcy, so the Church and the people can practice the faith in tranquillity.
Your offices are in the Catholic Center, where you share the top floor with John Cardinal O‘Connor. How close is your association?
Do I meet with the cardinal on occasion? Of course. Do I do it on a regular basis? No. If the cardinal were to ask me to do a favor me, of course I would do what I could do help him. But the cardinal does not have many requests, and I do not have many of him. People on the outside would have a tough time understanding this. I think I have his support in general, as I think I have the support in general of Cardinal Mahony (of Los Angeles), whose name appears on one of our brochures, and Cardinal Bevilacqua (of Philadelphia).
You say the League does not enter issues within the Church, yet you have stirred up some controversies in those quarters.
We don't address internal affairs directly, but sometimes it is unavoidable that we do so indirectly. When we took the stand that we did on Nothing Sacred we were drawn into all the tensions that exist within the Church over the issues the show dealt with [abortion, women's ordination, sexual morality]. Here you have a dissident priest (Father William Cain SJ) who was a writer for the show, who teamed up with Hollywood people who very openly said back in July of 1997 that their goal was to create dialogue on certain issues where it is needed in the Church. I think it was outrageous propaganda from the beginning.
We never did label Nothing Sacred anti-Catholic. Why object, then? It fed anti-Catholicism by presenting dissenting Catholics in a good light and those who are loyal to the Magisterium in a negative light. The goal was to manipulate public opinion, and that's what was so offensive.
Who have been inspirational figures for you?
One of my intellectual heroes clearly was Sidney Hook, the philosopher, who taught me at NYU. I remained close to him up to the time of his death and he supported my work on the ACLU. As far as more well-known people, clearly it's Mother Teresa, Ronald Reagan, and Pope John Paul II. Also, (Marist) Father Philip Eichner, chairman of the board of the Catholic League. He's not just a fantastic priest. He's a fantastic intellect, and a fantastic human being. He is a source of great counsel and inspiration to me.
What will it take for the Catholic League to declare it mission accomplished?
I could pare back a bit if a year went by without any movie, play, or television show that was cause for grave concern. Or if on the campuses throughout the country, no major cases of anti-Catholicism came to our attention in a given academic year. If we saw that debates regarding school vouchers and choice in education could be conducted without the taint of anti-Catholicism by those who are opposed to vouchers, that would be a signal to me that we have made tremendous progress. If everywhere we had a menorah on public property, we had a créche also and not simply a Christmas tree. If these things began to happen, we at the Catholic League could begin to pack our bags. But I don't see that happening. The fact that this anti-Catholicism comes so much from the affluent and educated segment of society shows me that our work is far from over.
—Brian Caulfield
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian Caulfield ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: From a homily delivered by John Cardinal O'Connor of New York on Memorial Day, May 25, 1997: DATE: 01/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 17, 1999 ----- BODY:“It is ironic that the most fundamental of all human rights, as our holy Father himself calls it, the right to religious freedom, is being attacked today from hundreds of thousands, even millions of people, in many countries of the world. This has been brought to our attention by Jewish writers like Abe Rosenthal in the New York Times and by a number of others, largely non-Catholic, while our voice has hardly been heard. I think we have been unaware of what has been happening in many parts of the world.
On Friday, for example, Bishop Macram Max Gassis from Sudan visited me. The bishop is now in exile, but he goes back secretly to Sudan, to where his people are, in the Nuba Mountains. He told me about the horrifying brutalities in the name of Islamic fundamentalism.
We have many fine Muslims here in New York. There are many fine Muslims throughout the world. I have met and spoken with many of them here, in Lebanon and Jordan and elsewhere. I have worked side by side with them in the cause of peace. But militant Islamic fundamentalism in certain countries of the world is engaged in the most ferocious barbarities. The women, for instance, from the Nuba Mountains are raped. Little boys are reported sold into slavery and little girls into prostitution because they are Christian. We Catholics [must] make our voices heard …”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: William A. Donohue DATE: 01/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 17, 1999 ----- BODY:Personal: Born July 18, 1947, in New York. Grew up on Long Island, where he attended Catholic elementary and high school. Vietnam War era veteran; one-time inner-city schoolteacher who first taught at St. Lucy's School in Spanish Harlem; later a professor of sociology, at La Roche College in Pittsburgh. PhD in sociology from New York University. Father of two daughters (Karyn, 14; Caitlin, 11); civilly divorced. Returned to New York in 1993 to take over the Catholic League.
Publications: Three books: The Politics of the American Civil Liberties Union (1985); The New Freedom: Individualism and Collectivism in the Social Lives of Americans (1990); Twilight of Liberty: The Legacy of the ACLU (1994). Countless articles, public statements, and conference papers related to the work of the Catholic League.
Current Position: President and CEO of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights; publisher of the Catholic League's journal, Catalyst; serves on the board of directors of the National Association of Scholars and the New York State chapter of NAS.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Catholic League on the Web DATE: 01/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 17, 1999 ----- BODY:www.catholicleague.org
The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights provides Internet users many of its publications and press releases on its web page. It also provides this summary of the organization's purpose.
What Does the Catholic League Do?
• When slanderous assaults are made against the Catholic Church, the Catholic League hits the newspapers, television, and radio talk shows defending the right of the Church to promote its teachings with as much verve as any other institution in society.
• When Catholics are the victims of a bigoted portrayal by the media, the Catholic League issues news releases bringing the matter to the attention of the public. It may also encourage a boycott of the program's sponsors.
• When Catholic students or employees are denied their rights in school or on the job, the Catholic League makes a formal response to the guilty parties; the league response may include litigation.
• When the religious freedom rights of any American are threatened, the Catholic League stands ready to fight for justice in the courts.
• When Catholics are slighted by public officials, the Catholic League calls press conferences alerting the public to the unacceptable behavior of their servants.
• When Catholic interests are unfairly represented by public policy initiatives, the Catholic League offers testimony before legislative bodies to set the record straight.
• When officials in government, the media and education need an informed perspective on Catholic civil rights issues, the Catholic League provides a quick and effective response.
The above list is hardly inclusive of all Catholic League activities, but it does provide some idea of what we do. In essence, the Catholic League monitors the culture, acting as a watchdog agency and defender of the civil rights of all Catholics. Much of what we do is reported in our monthly journal.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Human Life International: Who We Are and Why We Exist DATE: 01/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 17, 1999 ----- BODY:Sometimes it seems we live in a world gone mad. One doesn't have to look far to see that the world we live in today is a dramatically different place than it was only 25 years ago.
The abandonment of moral values has brought devastating problems: skyrocketing divorce rates, drugs, gangs and rampant crime, a lowering of educational standards, domestic violence and child abuse, the elderly at risk through euthanasia, governmental interference with parental rights, gross materialism, and pornography and violence prevalent even on prime time television.
What was easily recognized as wrong only a generation ago is now considered socially acceptable. Adultery, contraception, abortion, and teen promiscuity have become commonplace. Perhaps the world has become inured to evil because it is so pervasive.
The contraceptive mentality that flourishes today has given rise to a Godless narcissism. At the same time, society has lost respect for the sanctity of life and the dignity of the family. What else could explain the millions of out-of-wedlock pregnancies, the epidemic of sexually transmitted disease, the killer AIDS virus, the 1.6 million surgical abortions annually, combined with an incalculable number of chemical abortions through abortifacient contraceptives? Who could imagine that our national leaders would even debate the ethics of piercing the skull of a nearly born baby, ripping it from its mother's womb, and calling it “choice?”
Sadly, the misuse of God's remarkable gift of human sexuality is the root cause of so much of the misery in the world today. It is at the heart of the heartache experienced by millions of teenagers who allowed a few moments of false passion to change their lives forever, by the millions of women who contracepted in their teens and twenties and find themselves unable to conceive in their thirties and forties, and by the women, men and even children who are suffering from post-abortion syndrome.
Human Life International exists to fight these evils-to restore respect for the sanctity of life from the moment of conception through natural death, and to restore the preeminence of the traditional family as paramount in God's plan. We work to save babies from abortion, to tell women the truth about contraception, to teach chastity to teens, and to fight the insidious onslaught of the population control movement that promotes euthanasia initiatives and worldwide “family planning.”
Human Life International (HLI) was founded in 1972 by Fr. Paul Marx, OSB, PhD, and today is the world's largest pro-life and pro-family apostolate with 56 U.S. Chapters and a network of international branches and affiliates serving 88 countries. HLI is totally loyal to the Holy Father and the Magisterium, and fulfills its mission to promote and defend the sanctity of life and the dignity of the family around the world through prayer, education and service.
With our 60-person staff at the world headquarters in Front Royal, Virginia, HLI conducts ground-breaking research, publishes a wealth of materials on life and family issues, and offers a selection of more than 500 audio tapes on a wide range of topics.
HLI sponsors programs providing direct assistance to those in need. Two of the most prominent among them are: the “China Orphanage Campaign” to help alleviate the misery of thousands of babies abandoned as a result of China's one-child policy; and the “Living Rosary Program” which to date has provided tuition assistance to more than 200 seminarians worldwide to expand the pro-life movement for decades to come.
As an educational apostolate, HLI holds regional, national and international conferences. Our annual world conferences are attended by more than 2000 people, who come together for five days to hear talks by leading experts on the most critical issues of our time. Our guests leave these conferences strengthened in their faith, and better equipped to combat the Culture of Death in their communities.
Specialized conferences are also held, such as Humanae Vitae symposiums to help priests preach and teach the essential truths of that historic encyclical. HLI is also hosting a national Marian Pro-Life Conference, to infuse the pro-life movement with the spiritual power of the Marian movement, while also providing Marian apostles with a wealth of practical tools to help the pro-life cause at the local level.
In promoting what Pope John Paul II calls the Culture of Life, HLI also opposes the Culture of Death by exposing organizations and movements which undermine Catholic teaching and threaten life and family, such as: radical feminism, the New Age movement, homosexuality, Planned Parenthood, the United Nations Population Fund, and the liberal dissent groups opposing Church teaching such as Call to Action, ‘Catholics’ for a Free Choice and others.
What makes Human Life International unique among pro-life groups is that we take the total approach, dealing with all of the life issues: abortion, population control, euthanasia, sex education, and importantly-contraception.
Frankly, it is futile to try to fight abortion while ignoring the facts about contraception. Contraception is the precursor of abortion. Here is the tragic reality: most contraceptive drugs and devices don't work to prevent pregnancy-what they prevent is implantation of the newly formed human being in the uterus, by altering the lining to make it a hostile environment to the new life. Thus, contraception acts as an abortifacient. Sadly, many women who would say they oppose abortion are in fact aborting through the use of “contraceptives”—and they don't even know it!
Another unique attribute of HLI is that the organization is led by five priests. Fr. Marx, who has traveled to 91 countries in his 51 years as a priest, was told by our Holy Father that pro-life work “is the most important work on earth.” In addition to Fr. Marx and myself, we have Fr. Matthew Habiger, OSB, PhD, our advocate for developing countries, who undertakes rigorous pro-life missionary journeys to Africa—a continent targeted by the population controllers. Fr. George Parker made headlines in 1996 as the parish priest who returned a U.S. Senator's contribution to the parish school's building fund because of the Senator's pro-abortion voting record, and Fr. Ignacio Barreiro, STD, who heads up our new office in Rome, Italy.
With HLI's 1996 relocation to a 57,000 square foot world headquarters building on 85 acres, we are uniquely positioned to dramatically expand our work around the world. In the year ahead we'll be taking the pro-life message to millions more through radio and television.
A Survey offers insight into thinking of those favoring abortion ‘rights’
If you think the vast majority of adoptive parents make any connection between adoption and abortion—even if out of enlightened self-interest—you may be wrong.
Following a late December survey conducted through the Internet and over the telephone, this reporter found that a group of 16 adoptive parents were split evenly between abortion rights and pro-life convictions. The survey, posted on two Internet list servers and a bulletin board devoted to adoption issues, also involved interviews with two members of an adoption class run by Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Washington. The archdiocese stipulates that parents adopting through Catholic Charities be involved in a Christian church, but does not require that they be Catholic.
Although this inquiry bears more resemblance to a focus group than a broad-based, scientifically conducted survey, it may indicate the difficulties that pro-life advocates have in effecting change in U.S. society.
“Many of the same people who demand the right to abortion up to the ninth month of pregnancy are the same women who show up at adoption agencies desperate to adopt a child,” said Maureen Hogan, director of the National Adoption Advocacy Network in Washington, D.C. She called this phenomenon the “nuttiest part of the whole dialogue,” between pro-lifers and pro-choice advocates.
But another adoption professional has found that pro-life adoptive parents are in the majority. “I would guess if there were a vote taken, over 75% would say that they are pro-life and not pro-choice,” said Bill Betzen, a 26-year veteran of Church-affiliated adoption agencies in Dallas. “It is important how you word the question,” added Betzen, who is now the Children's Services Director at Catholic Community Services in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
‘Many of the same people who demand the right to abortion up to the ninth month of pregnancy are the same women who show up at adoption agencies desperate to adopt a child.’
Respondents to the survey hail from 10 different states; 14 of the 16 who responded are women. The survey did not inquire about the religious affiliations or income levels of potential adoptive parents, although Americans with Internet access tend to have higher income levels than the national average.
“I am very happy that abortion was not common or legal back in the ‘50s when I was adopted,” wrote Lori Altnether, an adoptee and adoptive parent in Columbia, Illinois. “I would hope my birth mom would not have aborted me, but if it was legal, who knows?”
Altnether is involved in Right to Life and has pro-life bumper stickers.
At the Catholic Charities adoption class which this reporter has attended for the last few months, one might presume that the adoptive parents, adult adoptees, and adoption professionals involved in the process would be more pro-life than average Americans. Yet even an adult adoptee who spoke before the group declared her pro-abortion rights convictions, even though she admitted that she would have only a 50-50 chance of being born if conceived today in a crisis pregnancy.
Indeed, almost half of unplanned pregnancies result in abortion, while almost an equal number of women choose to carry the pregnancy through and keep the child. Only 3% of crisis pregnancies result in adoptions, according to the National Adoption Advocacy Network.
Carole Klement Huxel, an adoptive parent and adoption advocate in Manchester, N.H., likewise supports legal abortion; she herself had an abortion nearly 20 years ago. “There have been times where I strongly regretted that decision. There have also been times where I was deeply thankful I had made that decision,” she wrote.
Huxel wrote that if she had carried the pregnancy to term and raised the child, she would not have adopted three special needs children from the foster care system: “Had I not adopted them, it's highly likely that no one else would have adopted them, either.” The three children spent from two to six years in foster care.
Although two of the survey respondents conceded that they believe that life begins at conception, they espoused pro-abortion rights views. “I don't think it's my place to tell others what they should or should not do unless I am willing to adopt the child myself,” wrote Nancy Pasha, an adoptive mother in Alexandria, Virginia.
On the other hand, a member of this reporter's adoption class made a connection between abortion and her mother's decision to carry her pregnancy to term. “I thank God every day that she didn't abort me,” during her crisis pregnancy, said Clo Harvey of Largo, Maryland.
For her adoption home study, Harvey wrote a poem from an adopted baby's perspective, thanking his birthmother for giving him life and his adoptive parents for choosing to adopt him. The birth-mother “would have forever heard the cry of the baby,” if she'd had the abortion, Harvey said. When she recently received a call from a pregnant friend who had two small children and was considering abortion, she urged the woman to call Catholic Charities to discuss an adoption class, Harvey recalled.
A would-be adoptive mother from Austin, Texas, admitted to being “angry” that women choose to abort their children when there are thousands of couples who want to adopt. “When another life is involved, the time for choice is over,” said Kim Barber, who wrote that she believes that couples need to take responsibility before they have sexual intercourse.
Catholic teaching considers sterilization to be a grave sin because it severs the link between sexual intercourse and procreation. In some cases, Catholics who had sterilization operations when they were younger are later having those operations reversed. One More Soul, a Dayton, Ohio-based apostolate, operates a sterilization reversal hot line.
“It doesn't surprise me at all” that many adoptive parents would have pro-choice sentiments, said Edel Finnegan, the director of A Woman's Choice, a crisis pregnancy center in Falls Church, Virginia. “For many years, some adoptive parents probably abused their fertility,” through contraception primarily. “When some of them decide to have a child, they'll do anything to have a child. The converse is true; they believe that if you don't want the child, you can do anything possible to get rid of it.”
Steve Koob, One More Soul's director, is an adoptive and foster care father who also founded a crisis pregnancy center with his wife, Vivian. “I'm not surprised that adoptive parents are not necessarily pro-life or anti-abortion,” he told the Register. Koob described adoptive parents as tending to be “very liberal people and therefore in favor of abortion.”
Three survey respondents indicated that they have become more pro-life after beginning the adoption process.
“The best way of putting it is that my ‘senses’ have been heightened to the abused child. The idea of literally throwing a child away leaves me frightened for who ‘we’ have evolved into,” explained Jill Hopster, a prospective adoptive parent in Redmond, Washington.
There were 1.3 million abortions in 1997, according to the Alan Guttmacher Foundation.
By contrast, the number of adoptions has been flat at around “60,000 to 70,000 (each year) for the last 20-30 years,” Hogan said. She estimated that there are 1 million families who want to adopt but many cannot due to the complexity of the process and costs.
William Murray writes from Kensington, Maryland.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: William Murray ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Young ‘Steel Magnolia’ Can Inspire Others To Act DATE: 01/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 17, 1999 ----- BODY:Sheila Moloney, 25, now directs a key Washington lobbying group
WASHINGTON—Sheila Moloney is one of a new breed of young Catholic women who are bringing their faith and their pro-life convictions to the public square.
Although just 25, Moloney has already made a mark in Washington power circles. She has moved from two prominent conservative think tanks to serve as executive director of the Eagle Forum, the grass-roots lobby effort founded by Phyllis Schlafly.
Friends and colleagues say the contributions she has made in two and a half years is due to hard work and passion, particularly for the pro-life cause. According to Colleen Parro, the director of the National Republican Coalition for Life, “She's been passionate about everything she has ever been interested in since childhood. That makes her very effective.”
Perhaps she learned some of that fire from her mother, who resigned from a Junior League chapter after it took a pro-abortion stand.
Some of Moloney's religious conviction may have been fueled by an uncle only 10 years older who gave up a lucrative career as a Wall Street bond trader to become a Franciscan Friar of the Primitive Observance.
But it was as a student at the University of Notre Dame that Moloney developed the faith-based activism that she's brought to the nation's capital. There she learned more about the Catholic faith, started attending daily Mass, and began reciting the rosary outside abortion clinics.
She and her brother founded a conservative Catholic publication on campus because, she says, “There wasn't a whole lot of discussion of Catholicism in the student press.” They put out six issues of Right Reason, and it's still published today.
In the first issue, Moloney did an investigative piece on an offer extended to a pro-abortion professor to join the Notre Dame faculty. The philosophy teacher eventually remained where she was, at the University of Arizona.
She also wrote a story on the medical and political implications of partial-birth abortion. Her research on this issue was later valuable when she lobbied Congress against partial-birth abortion while at the Family Research Council (FRC).
She came by her intellectual formation at Notre Dame as well. A single woman who often speaks about chastity, Moloney was introduced to Evangelium Vitae soon after it was released. In addition, Peter Kreeft's book The Unaborted Socrates, she says, “made me pro-life without exception.”
With a degree in government, Moloney came to Washington in 1996 as an assistant editor of The Heritage Foundation's flagship publication, Policy Review. She tackled issues such as federal day care and the effect of government regulation on businesswomen. But she found the work unfulfilling.
After watching a partial-birth abortion vote on C-SPAN while at Heritage, she said, “This is what I want to work on.” The opportunity soon came to do so as a congressional lobbyist at the FRC.
“The FRC was a perfect fit,” she says. “It got me rolling on conservative issues.” For a year and half, she was the key player on partial-birth abortion legislation and other initiatives such as the effort by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) to curb overseas population control.
It was a happy experience for her, one in which she learned and contributed. The Family Research Council has strong religious overtones to its public policy efforts, and Moloney says, “It was really inspiring when people ended their telephone conversation with you by saying, ‘God Bless You.’”
Dan Moloney calls his sister a “steel magnolia,” both personable and persuasive—an ideal combination for the lobbyist. “She's articulate, and she out-works and out-prepares other people,” he said.
Her former FRC colleagues agree. Robert Morrison, senior director of public policy, say, “She was a major presence here. She's the definition of sincerity and of doing.” A Lutheran, Morrison jokes that Moloney often challenged his religious beliefs and had him running to books and ministers for ammunition.
Another former colleague and fellow Catholic, writer-analyst Steven Schwaim said, “She's very strongly devoted to the teaching of the magisterium.
“The maturity of her knowledge of the policy implications of our work is due to an understanding of the culture of death and a commitment to the Gospel of Life.”
Moloney has a broader range of responsibilities at the Eagle Forum and has taken a more public role in the pro-life, pro-family movement. One of her recent media appearances, for instance, was on the late-night show “Politically Incorrect” hosted by Bill Maher. The show dealt with the indiscretions of President Clinton.
Parro, the Coalition for Life director, says the young woman was the perfect choice to lead the organization's Washington office. Parro, in fact, recommended her to Phyllis Schlafly early last year. Moloney calls Parro a pro-life mentor.
One of the most astute Capitol Hill observers, Michael Schwartz, offered an outsider's perspective. A longtime Catholic leader and now administrative director for Rep. Tom Coburn (ROkla.), Schwartz said, “She's very effective at what she does. She's a good activist and a very outstanding Catholic.”
Perhaps equally notable is Moloney's faith-filled witness amid the hubbub of the cultural wars. A daily communicant, she is also devoted to the Virgin Mary. “She has played a huge role in my life. It's hard to be pro-life and not feel that way. She's definitely my hero,” Moloney says.
Last fall she began Saturday sidewalk counseling outside a Washington, D.C., abortion clinic. “Through the grace of the Holy Spirit,” Moloney says, one day she convinced a confused woman—in Spanish—to reconsider having an abortion.
She drove the woman, who was three-and-a-half months pregnant, to a crisis pregnancy center in Falls Church, Virginia. As part of the happy ending, Moloney will be the child's godmother when she's born next month.
The successful rescuer said, “We definitely felt it was God's doing. This is one of the highlights of my life.” Another euphoric moment came two weeks later when the abortion clinic shut down.
In a city where the search for power sometimes consumes people, she says, “I'm here for a temporary time doing the work God's chosen for me now. I'm hoping that motherhood is the vocation he has chosen for me next.
“I want to get married and have 10 babies. I want to be a stay-at-home mom who fights the population control movement by increasing the population.”
As Sheila Moloney looks toward this future, she offers advice to people, particularly young women, who want to support the pro-life effort. She said, “The foot soldiers are the chastity teachers, those who fight sexed in the schools, those who volunteer at local crisis pregnancy centers.
“Pro-lifers often think abortion will change in Washington. But we need troops in Des Moines and cities and towns across America. The important thing to remember is to ‘act locally.’”
Joseph Esposito writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Esposito ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 01/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 17, 1999 ----- BODY:God the Father is the origin and model of all generation, and all human life and human parenthood is a reflection of the life given to us in Christ by God, the Father of Mercy. In Mulieris Dignitatem, Pope John Paul II speaks of how all human fathers—and mothers—can find in their roles a reflection of the fatherhood of God.
This characteristic of biblical language—its anthropomorphic way of speaking about God—points indirectly to the mystery of the eternal “generating” which belongs to the inner life of God. Nevertheless, in itself this “generating” has neither “masculine” nor “feminine” qualities. It is by nature totally divine. It is spiritual in the most perfect way, since “God is spirit” (John 4:24) and possesses no property typical of the body, neither “feminine” nor “masculine.” Thus even “fatherhood” in God is completely divine and free of the “masculine” bodily characteristics proper to human fatherhood. In this sense the Old Testament spoke of God as a Father and turned to him as a Father. Jesus Christ—who called God “Abba-Father” (Mark 14:36), and who as the only-begotten and consubstantial Son placed this truth at the very center of his Gospel, thus establishing the norm of Christian prayer—referred to fatherhood in this ultra-corporeal, superhuman and completely divine sense. He spoke as the Son, joined to the Father by the eternal mystery of divine generation, and he did so while being at the same time the truly human Son of his Virgin Mother.
Although it is not possible to attribute human qualities to the eternal generation of the Word of God, and although the divine fatherhood does not possess “masculine” characteristics in a physical sense, we must nevertheless seek in God the absolute model of all “generation” among human beings. This would seem to be the sense of the Letter to the Ephesians: “I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named” (Ephesians 3:14-15). All “generating” among creatures finds its primary model in that generating which in God is completely divine, that is, spiritual. All “generating” in the created world is to be likened to this absolute and uncreated model. Thus every element of human generation which is proper to man, and every element which is proper to woman, namely human “fatherhood” and “motherhood,” bears within itself a likeness to, or analogy with the divine “generating” and with that “fatherhood” which in God is “totally different”—that is, completely spiritual and divine in essence; whereas in the human order, generation is proper to the “unity of the two”: both are “parents,” the man and the woman alike.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Irish Bishops’ Overseas Aid Agency Is Rocked By Abortion Controversy DATE: 01/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 17, 1999 ----- BODY:DUBLIN, Ireland—A row has broken out in Ireland about the role of Catholic overseas aid agencies and the promotion of the Gospel of Life. The row began before Christmas at the launch of TrÛcaire's 1998 Development Review. The event should have been an uncontroversial, even celebratory occasion, as the occasion was one of a series of events marking the 25th anniversary of TrÛcaire, the Irish hierarchy's overseas aid agency and a strategic partner of the American organization Cathaid.
But the politician chosen to launch the review, Gay Mitchell, foreign affairs spokesman for Fine Gael, the main opposition party, used the occasion to declare that he was pro-life and to call on his party to become “unapologetically pro-life.”
Abortion was illegal in Ireland under Article 40 of the Irish Constitution until the Supreme Court made a ruling in the ‘X’ case which involved a schoolgirl who became pregnant after being raped. The Supreme Court ruled that the article which reads ‘The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right’, allowed for abortion when a pregnant woman threatened to commit suicide if the pregnancy continued. Since that ruling in March 1992, pro-lifers have been calling for a new constitutional referendum on abortion, but the present government is proposing to deal with the matter through legislation—raising the fear that they may allow limited abortion in the state for the first time.
At the TrÛcaire launch, Mitchell said: “As a Christian Democrat, I believe that the hallmark of a successful Christian Democratic Party should be that it must be unapologetically pro-life. In the new party alignments now taking place, this is where Fine Gael, my own party should renew its credentials.” Fine Gael have refused to comment on Mitchell's call .
However, more controversially, Mitchell said at the launch: “It is time that direct abortion was confronted as an issue which runs counter to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“I hope that organizations like TrÛcaire, which are much respected and are calm and constructive in their deliberations, will not leave the ownership of this issue to extreme organizations on either side. It is time that organizations like TrÛcaire, which are informed by Gospel values, deliberated on this important human rights issue.” In response, TrÛcaire said it was committed to the teachings of the Catholic Church and re-issued its policy statement on population and development.
That policy statement concludes: “In line with the norms of the Catholic Church, TrÛcaire does not support programs which promote the use of artificial contraceptives. A fortiori, we do not support the use of abortion as an instrument of family planning. This does not imply any opposition to the notion of family planning. As we have indicated above, TrÛcaire works with the poorest people of the world, irrespective of color, culture, and creed. At all times, our work is based on the notion of partnership with these peoples and never includes any attempt to impose our views, religious or otherwise, on those with whom we work.”
A TrÛcaire spokesman added: “We are not involved in campaigns against abortion and have no plans to become involved at present.” In response, Dr. Mary Lucey, founder of the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child, one of the most respected pro-life organizations in Ireland, said she believes that TrÛcaire's policy of not campaigning against abortion was “reprehensible.”
She added: “Material poverty is bad, poverty of the soul is unspeakable.”
Lucey was particularly critical of TrÛcaire's lack of action against abortion at U.N. conferences on population in Istanbul, Cairo, and Rome, where SPUC Ireland also had delegates present. She said, “We had considerable success in preventing further destruction of the unborn by aligning with the papal delegates, the Muslim delegates, and the South American delegates who were opposed to abortion, but TrÛcaire would not go near us.
“Instead, they remained with DÛchas, the group made up of 19 Irish aid agencies. DÛchas follows the government line and therefore the U.N. line on population control.”
Lucey quoted from the aid agency's entry in The Irish Catholic Directory which states, ‘TrÛcaire works to raise awareness about development issues and the principles of social justice involved’ and commented: “The crime of abortion—the killing of unborn life—is an issue of social justice. It is the greatest sin against justice in existence. The Holy Father never misses an opportunity to state that abortion is the greatest crime of our century; and he has exhorted us to speak out against us. Why don't the Irish bishops teach TrÛcaire its priorities?”
But Bishop John Kirby of Clonfert, the chairman of TrÛcaire, said those who call on TrÛcaire to campaign actively against abortion, don't understand the overseas development agency's mandate. “Within each individual country, I can assure you that TrÛcaire is very careful, not only in regard to abortion, which is much more serious, but also in regard to issues of family planning, because we are a Catholic organization,” he said.
“Just because we don't open up publicly on abortion, doesn't mean to say we haven't a view on it. We share the view of the Church, that abortion is wrong. When the issue comes up, we address it. We contributed to the Cairo conference on population and abortion issues. We had representatives there and we tried to make sure the Catholic Church's point of view was expressed.
“But we see ourselves primarily as a development agency. We didn't comment on the recent One Body, One Bread document [which addresses Church intercommunion], because we have a specific mandate.” Noting that Mitchell had also called TrÛcaire to take part in efforts to create a NATO-style European security force, Bishop Kirby added: “I thought he was stretching what our mandate should be. That said, I certainly fully support Gay Mitchell in his comment to his own particular party about abortion.”
Cian Molloy writes from Dublin, Ireland.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Cian Molloy ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: U.S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 01/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 17, 1999 ----- BODY:Excerpts from selected publications
Boys Town USA Director on Clinton
The letter caught the attention of the Weekly Standard, a public policy journal, which called it “a remarkable distillation of what is, and always has been, at stake in the Lewinsky scandal.”
The magazine quoted the letter as follows: “The main lesson is about lying. Everybody—and I mean everybody—can see that the President lied over and over again, and then lied to cover up the lying. Lying did not help him. It made things worse for him … much worse. If you lie, it will make things worse for you, too. …
“How is lying made worse? The bigger the role model, the worse the lie. If someone I hardly know lies to me, it is bad. But it is much worse if my mother lies to me. She is a much bigger role model in my life. That makes the lie worse.
“That's why the President falls off a mountain when he lies. Yes, he falls a great distance. And if he lies over and over again, he falls an even greater distance. You may say if we raise the bar too high, no one will run for public office. Then all we will get is the biggest bully or the guy with the most money. That's really not our problem. The problem is just the opposite.
“We need to raise the bar high enough so that better people will run for office. We need to restore the expectation that includes honest behavior. The solution is not to take the bar away. To put it another way, if many people are lying, the solution is not to approve of lying, but rather to rekindle the fires of devotion. Otherwise, human flourishing is diminished.”
Happy Families, According to TV
Gregory Beabout briefly traced the history of families on television and came to this conclusion: only non-traditional families are happy on TV.
“As television developed, so did the projection of television families on the small screen. Many of the television characters of the ‘60s and ‘70s were either cut free from their families or trapped within dysfunctional families. …
“Following the Brady Bunch, television paraded a long series of less than traditional families where everything is happy and peachy. These endless series of families with missing or reconstituted parents offered the escape of thinking that the promise of individualism would come true, that everyone can have what he wants, and we can all get along.
“Starting in the late ‘80s, a long string of television families showed the inverse. Roseanne, The Simpsons, and Married With Children all featured nuclear families with mom, dad, and the kids, and in each case the whole family is mildly dysfunctional, with no one quite happy. The comic relief is for the viewer who is in on the secret: they think they can be happy in a nuclear family, but they can't. In the next half-hour, I'll see a family with three dads and no mom, and there everyone is sunny and cheerful.”
Signs of Hope After Years of Decline in America
“About 30 years ago, America had a national nervous breakdown. … We endured a crime wave, an illegitimacy surge, a welfare explosion, a drug abuse crisis, a deluge of abortions, a boom in divorce, a suicide spike. Cultural radicals took over many of the nation's institutions. … Families collapsed. In many cities, social order evaporated. Worried Americans looked on in horror as multiple forms of social breakdown accumulated into a self-reinforcing spiral.
“The 1960s opened an era of dangerous social regression in our nation. Both the breadth and the speed of our decline were breathtaking: violent crime quadrupled in just 30 years; illegitimate births, single parent households, and teen suicides tripled; the rate of marriage was almost cut in half. In Washington, D.C. there were more abortions than live births. In many cities a majority of children were being reared in fatherless homes.
“But over the last decade, something remarkable has happened. The alarm bells rung by cultural conservatives seem to have been heeded by many Americans, and a new pattern of recovery and even reversal has emerged. This positive pattern is beginning to look every bit as broad and interlinked as our social collapse was when it showed up in the late ‘60s.”
Among its articles about canonization and saints is one tagged, “Worship of saints evolved over the ages,” suggesting that Catholics consider saints somehow divine. Another article is about groups dedicated to debunking legends and other saint stories; and another is called, “Saints: All they need are two miracles, connections in Rome, and plenty of cash.”
The “saint worship” article recasts the history of the veneration of saints as a struggle between excesses and “abuses” on the part of the people and a hierarchy struggling to assert itself but managing to have “little control” over the choice of saints.
The article claims that “nowhere does the Bible speak explicitly about praying to or venerating departed saints,” despite the honor given to the Patriarchs in many references throughout the New Testament, and despite the reverential descriptions of saints in heaven in the book of Revelation.
The article mentions only two saints by name, a Viking who according to the magazine participated in raids, and St. Augustine, detailing his pre-conversion sins without referring to his extraordinary career as a Christian—except to say disapprovingly that he had “stern views about sin and sex.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Constitutional Scholar William Bentley Ball, 82, Dies DATE: 01/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 17, 1999 ----- BODY:HARRISBURG, Pa.—William Bentley Ball, a noted Catholic constitutional expert, died Jan. 10. He was especially known for his views on religious freedom and the separation of Church and state.
According to Dr. Stephen Krason, president of the Catholic Society of Social Scientists, “He was the preeminent practicing Catholic constitutional lawyer in the country of the last 30 years.
“His passing on certainly takes away a major spokesman and leading promoter of accommodation between Church and state,” Krason said.
Ball, 82, served as counsel in 25 constitutional litigations before the U.S. Supreme Court. Among his most important cases were Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), Meek v. Pittenger (1975), and Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School District (1993).
He also served as the first executive director of the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference (PCC) and was its legal counsel. He practiced law with the Harrisburg, Pa., law firm of Ball, Skelly, Murren & Connell, which has represented the PCC since 1968.
The PCC executive director, Robert O‘Hara, Jr., said, “I'm sure everyone who knew Mr. Ball and his work would agree that not only is this a great personal loss to his family, co-workers, and friends, but also a significant loss for the Church, the legal profession, and all who defend and promote religious freedom.”
Ball was a widely-respected writer. His most recent books were Mere Creatures of the State? and Education, Religion, and the Courts. He also published in a number of influential journals, including Crisis and First Things.
Justin Torres, managing editor of Crisis, told the Register, “His loss is a great tragedy for Catholics interested in the public sphere. He was incomparable. He was a Thomas More of our time.”
His last published column in Crisis, which appears in the January 1999 issue, dealt with the Clinton scandal. Shortly before the impeachment, Ball wrote, “should a decision have ensued not to convict Clinton, or worse, a failure even to impeach him, our people will have judged themselves by that inaction.”
In the winter issue of National Lawyers Association Review, Ball took aim at the perversion of language practiced by lawyers and others. He said, “Today since Roe V. Wade, Supreme Court opinions have given birth to a whole national vocabulary of double entendre.
“Universally, we hear of a woman's ‘right to choose.’ But choose what?” Creative use of language, he said, was reminiscent of George Orwell's totalitarian states and “their manipulation of language to serve as instruments of power.”
For many, Ball was an inspiration. Deacon Keith Fournier, president of the Catholic Alliance and a lawyer, said, “There were few who could tower over Bill Ball. He was a wonderful, deep Catholic in love with the Lord. Bill Ball was my hero.”
A former law clerk, Kevin Bagatta, said simply, “He was a man of faith, a man of courage, and a man of action.” Bagatta is president of Real Alternatives, a network of pro-life crisis pregnancy centers in Pennsylvania.
Ball was a graduate of the University of Notre Dame Law School. He was a retired Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve.
He also was a board member of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, and active in many organizations, including the Society of Catholic Social Scientists. He was made a Knight Commander, Order of St. Gregory the Great, in 1976.
Ball and his wife, Caroline, lived in Camp Hill, Pa.; they had been married 55 years. They had one daughter. (Joseph Esposito)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Pope's Trip DATE: 01/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 17, 1999 ----- BODY:to Mexico City and St. Louis
FRIDAY, Jan. 22 (Rome, Mexico City) 10:00 a.m. Central Standard Time (CST) / 3 a.m. Central European Standard Time (CET): Departure from Rome's Leonardo da Vinci International Airport for Mexico City.
4:15 p.m. CST—Arrival and welcoming ceremony at Benito Juárez International Airport in Mexico City. Speech by Pope.
6:30 p.m. CST—Signing of post-synodal apostolic exhortation for the Synod of Bishops for America, in a room at the apostolic nunciature in Mexico City.
SATURDAY, Jan. 23 (Mexico City) 11:00 a.m. CST—Mass marking the conclusion of the Synod of Bishops for America, in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Homily by Pope.
7:00 p.m. CST—Courtesy visit to Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo at presidential residence, Los Pinos. Meeting with diplomatic corps in presidential residence.
SUNDAY, Jan. 24 (Mexico City) 11:15 a.m. CST—Mass at Hermanos RodrÌguez Racetrack. Homily by Pope.
6:45 p.m. CST—Visit to the sick at Adolfo LÛpez Mateos Hospital. Message from the Pope to all the sick of Mexico.
MONDAY, Jan. 25 (Mexico City) 10:00 a.m. CST—Mass in garden of the apostolic nunciature.
1:30 p.m. CST—Meeting with cardinals and presidents of bishops’ conferences of the Americas, in garden of apostolic nunciature.
6:00 p.m. CST—Meeting with representatives from all 20th-century generations, in Azteca Stadium. Speech by Pope.
TUESDAY, Jan. 26 (Mexico City, St. Louis)
8:00 a.m. CST—Private Mass in chapel of apostolic nunciature.
10:00 a.m. CST—Departure ceremony at Benito Juárez International Airport.
10:30 a.m. CST—Departure for St. Louis.
2:00 p.m. CST—Arrival at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. Welcoming ceremony in the Air National Guard Hangar at the airport. Speech by Pope. Private meeting with U.S. President Clinton in a room of the Air National Guard Hangar.
6:45 p.m. CST—Meeting with youths at Kiel Center in St. Louis. Speech by Pope. Message from Pope for the sick children of Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital.
WEDNESDAY, Jan. 27 (St. Louis)
10:30 a.m. CST—Mass in Trans World Dome in St. Louis. Homily by Pope.
5:30 p.m. CST—Evening prayer service at Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis. Speech by Pope.
7:30 p.m. CST—Departure ceremony at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.
8:30 p.m. CST—Departure for Rome.
THURSDAY, Jan. 28 (Rome)
1:00 a.m. CST / 6.00 a.m. CET—Arrival at Rome's Ciampino Airport.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 01/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 17, 1999 ----- BODY:Excerpts from selected publications
Rabbi Speaks of Abortion ‘Holocaust’
“My heart is broken. Just now, my wife's brother called from Jerusalem. He reported that his son's estranged wife the day before had aborted the baby they conceived two months earlier, on the very eve of the couple's final separation leading to divorce. …
“The state of Israel rightly invokes the Holocaust as a primary cause in the creation of the state itself; a refuge and a hope for the victims of the Holocaust. But its liberal abortion laws, the prevalence of abortion as a medium of contraception, the routine character of decisions to abort as a perfectly ordinary medical procedure—these political facts of public policy constitute the counterpart to the race laws and the state-organized offices and institutions of mass murder that shame Germany through all eternity.
“The difference is, Germany has acknowledged its shame. But, for the annual annihilation of tens of thousands of Jewish children, the state of Israel acknowledges nothing. And, here at home, American Jewry's consensus is one-sidedly pro-choice. In desperation, I try to tell myself abortion is not a Jewish issue. But the Torah intervenes, teaching that human life comes from God.”
Out of South Africa
Paton is the widow of Alan Paton, who wrote Cry, The Beloved Country, a book that brought world-wide attention to suffering under apartheid. Mr. Paton became an activist, campaigning for the release of Nelson Mandela and looking forward to a new South Africa after his ascendency.
Wrote Mrs. Paton, “I am glad [Alan] is not alive now. He would have been so distressed to see what has happened to his beloved country. … I love this country with a passion, but I cannot live here any more. …
“Among my friends and the friends of my friends I know of nine people who have been murdered in the past four years. … I have been hijacked, mugged, and terrorized. …
“There is now more racial tension in this country than I have ever known. But it is not just about black-on-white crime. It is about general lawlessness. Black people suffer more than the whites. …They are the victims of most of the hijackings, rapes, and murders. They cannot run away like the whites, who are streaming out of this country in the thousands.”
She concluded the essay, called “Why I'm Fleeing South Africa,” this way: “President Mandela has referred to us who leave as ‘cowards’ and says the country can do without us. So be it. … We are leaving because crime is rampaging through the land.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Pope's Week DATE: 01/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 17, 1999 ----- BODY:Audiences
Saturday, Jan. 2:
• Lucas Cardinal Moreira Neves, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops.
• Archbishop Marcello Zago, secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.
Monday, Jan.4:
• William Cardinal Baum, Penitentiary Major.
• Archbishop Renato Martino, Holy See permanent observer to the United Nations in New York.
• Bishop Jan Hirka of Presov, Slovak Republic (Byzantine rite).
• Bishop Jozef Zlatnansky, secretary of the permanent inter-dicasterial Commission for the Church in Eastern Europe.
• Fr. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, superior general of the Society of Jesus.
• Eduardo Cardinal Martinez Somalo, prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, with his secretary and under-secretaries.
Tuesday, Jan. 5:
• Archbishop Agostino Cacciavillan, president of the Administration for the Patrimony of the Apostolic See and former nuncio in the United States.
• Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, apostolic nuncio in the United States of America and permanent observer at the Organization of American States.
• Archbishop Francesco Marchisano, president of the Pontifical Commission for the Cultural Patrimony of the Church and of the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archeology.
Thursday, Jan. 7:
• In separate audiences, the bishops ordained the previous day, with their families. (See story, this page.)
• Alfonso Cardinal Lopez Trujillo, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, with his secretary and under-secretary.
Friday, Jan. 8:
• Massimo D‘Alema, president of the Council of Ministers of Italy, with his wife and entourage.
• Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 01/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 17, 1999 ----- BODY:Excerpts from selected publications
Bogus Tickets Pushed for Mexico Visit
Noting that Pope John Paul II arrives Jan. 22 for a four day visit, Fox News said, “unidentified individuals have been doing a brisk trade in ‘tickets’ for several large-scale events over which the Pope will preside, but the Church insisted Tuesday that any such sales were totally illegal.”
It cited the Mexican media as its source. “The visit will end on Jan. 26, when the Pope returns to the Vatican after a brief stop in the U.S. city of Saint Louis, Missouri,” it reminded viewers.
News Reports Praise Pope's Call for Peace
The Pope “has seen much of the suffering he described” in his remarks, wrote Associated Press reporter Ellen Knickmeyer.
“The smoke from the chimneys of Auschwitz was visible from the foothills around his boyhood home in Poland. Father [Maximillian] Kolbe and Sister [Edith] Stein, a Jewish-born convert, were Auschwitz victims. The Roman Catholic Church elevated them to sainthood” during Pope John Paul II's pontificate.
She said that the Pope saw hope for the next 100 years in the lessons of the century that is all but past. Reuters, in its account, added that “the globe trotting Pope” has been a “tireless crusader for human rights and the poor during his reign.”
The report also recalled that the Holy Father, “began last year by visiting communist Cuba on a ground-breaking trip that led to the release of hundreds of political prisoners.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Language of the New Lectionary DATE: 01/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 17, 1999 ----- BODY:Translating the Hebrew or Greek of the Sacred Scriptures and the Latin of the Roman Missal (the lectionary and sacramentary) into modern English which is suited to public prayer and proclamation is no easy task. This is what we bishops asked our English translators to do in producing a new lectionary for Sundays and solemnities, with final approval from the Holy See. As of the first Sunday of Advent, this official text is (with the completion of another volume of Scripture readings for weekdays and saints’ days), gradually replacing the 1970 lectionary. In time, a sacramentary with Mass prayers newly translated from the Latin will also be available, after review and approval by the Holy See.
I think there has been considerable improvement in the English translation of the new Sunday lectionary. Greater effort has been made to follow the original Scripture texts more closely which results in a more faithful translation. The 1970 lectionary contained more folksy English, with more attention to English idiom than fidelity to the original texts; the new edition remedies this deficiency to a great extent.
Following the meeting of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, D.C., in mid-November, I spent two days with a group of bishops and scholars discussing the principles which should govern the translation of Scripture used in the lectionary and in the Mass prayers of the sacramentary. We recognize the struggle of translators to be faithful to the original texts, while at the same time providing a text in English which can be read with meaning and ease.
We were in general agreement that a literal word-for-word translation ordinarily does not make for a readable or reciteable text in English. At the same time, we expect our translations to be faithful to the rich and carefully honed expressions of doctrine conveyed in the original languages.
Our modern translators must be aware of the context in which the sacred writers produced the books of the Bible. They also must be aware of the controversies and dialogues and major councils which led to the selection of precise Latin phrases which formed the texts of the Mass prayers in the sacramentary. Otherwise, translators can fail to transmit parts of our tradition with their choice of English words in new translations.
This means that translators must listen for the inner voice of the original texts which is heard in the delicate interplay among content, tone, and vocabulary used by individual writers. They must be aware of the theological nuances which were operative in the development of New Testament texts and the Roman Missal. For example, the early struggles in the life of the Church which defined the Trinitarian nature of God in our Catholic faith (the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three Persons in one God) must be understood fully by translators so that imprecise English words are not used in reference to the Trinity. The same is true regarding the Incarnation (the Person of Jesus as the eternal Son of God made flesh). Translators must employ English words which convey the exact theological meaning of the ancient texts regarding the Person and mission of Jesus.
This means that translating the lectionary (Scripture readings) and sacramentary (Latin Mass prayers) is not merely a matter of developing new prayers in English which sound good to modern ears. It also means that translators must retain the tradition of faith contained in our liturgical books which are rooted in the Deposit of Faith (the written and lived experience of the Church, the channels of God's revelation to us). We cannot afford to lose this tradition of faith because of imprecise or inadequate translations.
There are layers of meaning and significance in the Latin texts which are normative for the sacramentary—they need to be preserved in our modern English translations. These ancient texts express deep theological insights gleaned from our Catholic tradition, which must remain part of our religious patrimony. Modern translations must clearly reflect these doctrinal roots, or they will be lost to modern people who often are unaware of the underlying Tradition. This is the reason that historical scholars are as important as modern linguists in rendering faithful translations of Latin texts which keep our tradition intact.
Consequently, we need translations of the lectionary and sacramentary which capture and express in modern English much of the same meaning and tone found in the original texts so that we can remain faithful to our Catholic Tradition. We cannot afford, through inadequate translations, a cumulative erosion of the original texts which accurately transmit God's revelation to us.
In the lectionary and sacramentary used in our liturgical celebrations, it is important to remember that we are not only dealing with words and ideas but with God's revelation to us through His Son. Consequently, there must always be a sacred element clearly manifested in our liturgical books. We must use language which not only touches deeply the human condition but leads us into the paschal mystery of Christ, into His suffering and death for us which He bids us enter, and into an experience of His resurrected life which we share with Him. We must use language which expresses the mystery of the Trinity which is basic to our worship and our lives as Christians. We must use language which leads us into a celebration of God's presence and life that gives meaning to everything else that we do.
Archbishop Elden Curtiss is ordinary of the Archdiocese of Omaha in Nebraska.
----- EXCERPT: Perspective ----- EXTENDED BODY: Archbishop Elden Curtiss ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Making of Cardinal Ratzinger DATE: 01/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 17, 1999 ----- BODY:Milestones, an endearing autobiographical narrative of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's first fifty years, is an intimate portrait of the man who has been the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith since November 1981. His life story is a beautiful melding of faith and reason, and shows itself as a gift preserved from the darkness and evils of Hitler's Germany.
Joseph Ratzinger was born the youngest of three children. His birth, on Holy Saturday in 1927, is seen by the Cardinal as a powerful portent in the realm of Divine Providence. He writes, “The fact that my day of birth was the last day of Holy Week and the eve of Easter has always been noted in our family history.” His baptism was performed on the very day of his birth, with the newly blessed holy water adding to the significance of the factors surrounding his birth.
Cardinal Ratzinger was born into the turbulent times of an unstable republic. The Nazi Party, or the brownshirts, were gathering support behind Adolf Hitler, who would soon gain control of Germany. The Cardinal's father, a rural policeman who was transferred often because of his job, stands out in these early years as a man who publicly opposed the violence and tyranny of Hitler's regime. As the Cardinal recalls, “Time and again, in public meetings, Father had to take a position against the violence of the Nazis. We could very clearly sense the immense anxiety weighing him down, which he could not manage to shake even during ordinary activities.”
The ominous shadow of Nazism darkened the young Joseph Ratzinger's life. It took time for National Socialism to affect the daily lives of the Ratzinger family, but changes began to occur within even the most stable of civic and social institutions. The ideologies of Hitler were fast becoming the yardstick by which national loyalty would be measured.
In 1937, at age 10, Joseph moved to Traunstein, where the Ratzingers had purchased a small farmhouse four years earlier, in expectation of his father's retirement. These days spent in the “slightly dilapidated house that Father had fixed up,” stand out as some of the fondest memories of the Cardinal's youth. He writes, “After all our wanderings, this is where my memory always returns with gratitude.”
There is a real humanness about the Cardinal's dependence on his family, that helps to convey the genuine warmth of the man.
Not long after the move to Traunstein, Joseph Ratzinger was asked by his pastor to enter the minor seminary, “in order to be initiated systematically into the spiritual life.” His entrance into the seminary took place at Easter of 1939—once more, the mystery of the Resurrection being intimately woven into the fabric of the Cardinal's life.
Cardinal Ratzinger's memoirs provide the reader with insight into his theological and spiritual formation. His studies in the major seminary in Freising after the war provided solid underpinnings for a life of erudition that would ready him for his task as defender of the faith. (The Cardinal Prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, responsible for the preservation and promotion of the Catholic faith, is considered the most important curial office in the Vatican.) Cardinal Ratzinger's spiritual formation in the seminary went beyond his studies; his life witnesses the indelible mark of “the great liturgical celebrations in the cathedral, and the hours of silent prayer in the house chapel.”
The Cardinal's theological studies in Munich are presented with clarity and candor. This section of the book shows the Cardinal as an analytical and progressive scholar. He writes passionately about his preconciliar theological studies. “All of us lived with the feeling of radical change that had already arisen in the 1920s, the sense of a theology that had the courage to ask new questions and a spirituality that was doing away with what was dusty and obsolete and leading to a new joy in the redemption,” he writes.
Thirty-six pages of photographs stand as a bridge between the first six chapters and the last seven. The second half of the work is thoroughly engaging, with its focus on the Cardinal's advanced studies, his ordination, and his priest-hood. The clarity of his prose pushes the narrative forward, with little effort required by the reader.
Throughout the story, the importance of family is sounded as a constant theme. The Cardinal's life decisions always take into account the other members of his family—how his parents and siblings fit in. His relationship with his family stands in stark contrast to the modern quagmire of the fractured and fragmented familial unit. There is a real humanness about the Cardinal's dependence on his family, that helps to convey the genuine warmth of the man.
Cardinal Ratzinger's participation in Vatican II as the theological advisor to Josef Cardinal Frings, the archbishop of Cologne, allows the Cardinal to comment with authority on certain aspects of the Council. He goes into some depth on the questions of liturgical reform and the sources of revelation. His clear, forceful discourse captures the significance and drama of the early 1960s in Vatican City.
The Cardinal's autobiography is an accessible sketch of some of the most prominent factors that helped to form his intellect and spirit. His honest analysis of these factors leaves a deep impression that dissuades the reader from categorizing or pigeonholing the Cardinal as a distant Church administrator, divorced from the problems and struggles of the Catholic in the pew.
Robert Nerney writes from Providence, R.I.
----- EXCERPT: Book Review ----- EXTENDED BODY: Robert Nerney ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A Philosophical Adventure for Everyone DATE: 01/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 17, 1999 ----- BODY:“The Reason for Reason: Fides et Ratio “ by Father Romanus Cessario (Crisis, January 1999)”
Father Cessario writes on Pope John Paul II's defense of reason in Fides et Ratio:
“At the end of the last century, the popes had to defend the legitimacy of supernatural faith against the pretensions of secular rationalism; now, at the end of the 20th century, it takes a pope to defend reason against unreason.”
“Fides et Ratio exhorts us to search passionately for the truth. … [H]e proclaims a truth that is meant to encompass the whole world. This explains his insistence that the power of the Cross can never be compromised, even when the Gospel encounters unfamiliar cultural circumstances.
“Because no one can embrace the divine mysteries of our redemption without first having discovered them, John Paul II clearly affirms that philosophy is a form of human adventure that lies open to every person. Just as all are called to believe, so all are invited to think about what they do, or should, believe. … [T]he Pope declares that all humans engage in philosophical enquiry, even if only by posing the simplest questions about our human origins and destiny.
“In Fides et Ratio John Paul II pleads for a philosophy that is also a true wisdom, so that people will come to realize that their humanity is all the more affirmed when they entrust themselves to the Gospel and open themselves to Christ. Such a self-donation leads to the first and indispensable reconciliation required of all human beings, the one that occurs between God and man. … The encyclical affirms that whenever the Church insists on the importance and true range of philosophical thought, she promotes both the defense of human dignity and the proclamation of the Gospel message.”
“The encyclical is meant for everyone, but it would be naive not to recognize that the Pope clearly has professional philosophers and theologians in mind when he sets down guidelines for pursuing their sciences well. Like a good father in Christ, the Pope wants to explain to us Ê not just tell us Ê what he finds wrong with some directions in modern philosophy and theology. In the little syllabus of errors embedded in Fides et Ratio (86-91), the Pope points out the hazards of, among other things, ‘eclecticism.’”
Just as all are called to believe, so all are invited to think about what they do, or should, believe. …
“… Fides et Ratio … closes with the invocation to the Blessed Virgin Mary -- a hallmark of John Paul II's pastoral writings and addresses. In this peroration, the Pope recalls that the holy monks of Christian antiquity referred to Mary as ‘the table at which faith sits in thought.’ In the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Pope continues, ‘they saw a lucid image of true philosophy, and they were convinced of the need to ‘philosophari in Maria’ (108). John Paul II himself is persuaded that ‘to philosophize in Mary’ alone ensures that a thinking person will come to a full knowledge of the truth. … The attainment of this ultimate goal, affirms Fides et Ratio, lies open only to the person who like Mary assents in faith to divine revelation.
“One of John Paul II's greatest achievements is putting dialogue in the service of the Gospel.”
… For dialogue to achieve the reconciliation that Fides et Ratio desires, at least one of the partners in dialogue must understand that the Church already possesses in its fullness the truth which she still strives as a body to attain. This consideration returns us to the Blessed Virgin Mary, who stands at the center of the Church because she already possesses all that we hope to become.
“So dire are our present circumstances that in Evangelium Vitae, [John Paul II] made the bold assertion that, today, God must shore up reason, because the eclipse of God has impaired the human.”
“St. Edith Stein makes an appearance in Fides et Ratio as a paradigm of faithful philosophical enquiry. Edith Stein offers a challenge to women and men to pass beyond the constraints imposed on our created and sin-affected human reason, and to welcome the full truth of the Gospel. … After all, ‘only in Christ is it possible to know the fullness of the truth which saves’ (98).”
Ellen Wilson Fielding writes from Davidson-ville, Maryland.
The Definite Article is a digest of the Register's choice from the nation's top journals.
----- EXCERPT: The Definite Article ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Letters DATE: 01/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 17, 1999 ----- BODY:Graphic Abortion Images: For?
In response to Maria Clare's letter (Register, Dec. 2026, 1998, regarding the article “Graphic Abortion Images,” in the Nov. 29-Dec. 5 issue): I admire her deep concern and compassion for the poor women who have had abortions and the effect which gruesome pictures have on their healing and reconciliation. I do remind Ms. Clare that the pictures, graphic as they may be, are, in reality, the results of this horrible evil! Since 1973, more than 35 million legal abortions have taken place in this “Christian” nation.
I respect Ms. Clare's sound reasoning and concern for those who have been traumatized by abortion, but I pray she shows the same kind of concern for the unborn, for whom the burden of guilt, shame, and despair is not an option—but for whom death is a reality.
Barry Kiernan Fort Lee, New Jersey
Or Against?
I support Maria Clare's letter on “Graphic Abortion Images” (Dec. 20-26) for its compassion and care for human dignity, but I would like to add something.
No one in human history ever saw so many gruesome images of death as we can see today at the dinner table: Holocaust footage, TV war reports, slasher movies, Dr. Kevorkian killing someone on 60 Minutes. Do we have more respect for life, because of this?
The only way to change this is to respect everyone's dignity—including those poor, dismembered, mutilated infants in the “prolife” images. Those babies deserve our prayers, our love, even our tears. They do not deserve to be put on public display to make a point, no matter how valid that point may be.
Far from healing the wounds of abortion, these pictures are just another offense against the dignity of the unborn.
Think of it this way: if you had a friend or a loved one who died, would you want their picture used to make a point?
My mother died of lung cancer last year; I spent my whole life trying to get her to quit smoking. Would I want a picture of her body on an anti-smoking poster? Not on your life.
John Williams Baton Rouge, Louisiana
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Vatican's Instructions ForLiturgy Too Often Fall on Deaf Ears DATE: 01/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 17, 1999 ----- BODY:Each Tuesday I field questions on a live, nationally syndicated call-in radio program. I've been doing this for more than a year. Nearly every show, someone calls in with a question about proper liturgical practices. I halfway hoped that the 1997 Instruction on Collaboration Between Laity and Priests would have resolved many liturgical aberrations, and maybe it has, on the whole—but I can't notice any diminution in the number of callers concerned about odd goings-on in the sanctuary.
The Instruction was the first document ever to be signed by officials from eight different curial offices (including the Congregations for the Clergy, the Doctrine of the Faith, and Divine Worship). In it, the Vatican has clarified the proper roles of clergy and laity. The latter may “collaborate with,” but may not “substitute for,” the former. In many parishes the roles have become confused, with lay people (and religious) performing tasks that only the ordained (bishops, priests, deacons) should perform. Among the points that caught my eye:
• The Vatican said it is “unlawful” for those who aren't ordained to use such titles as “pastor” and “chaplain.” This means Sister So-andSo, who ministers at the local hospital, may not be termed a hospital “chaplain.” Yet I'm still hearing about non-ordained “chaplains,” including not a few (men and women) who dress in alb and stole, which gives the false impression that they are clergy.
• The homily “must be reserved to the sacred minister, priest, or deacon, to the exclusion of the non-ordained faithful.” This means no lay person, no nun, and no seminarian who hasn't been ordained as a transitional deacon may give the homily. There are to be no run-arounds, such as “reflections” given by a layman in place of the homily. Granted, many of us, listening to a soporific homily, think to ourselves, “Hey, I could do better than that!” And we're probably right, but that's no reason to condone a violation of the rubrics. We shouldn't be too hard on our priests. Few of them have had the kind of formation in preaching that Protestant ministers usually get. What's worse, there is an unfortunate tendency for priests to speak extemporaneously is a serious mistake for all but the very best speakers. Even Fulton Sheen spent hours preparing his “off-the-cuff” remarks. I don't think I've run across ten priests who can pull off an extemporaneous speech. (As a public speaker myself, I know that I can't.)
The Vatican has clarified the proper roles of clergy and laity. The latter may “collaborate with,” but may not “substitute for,” the former
• The congregation may not say the Eucharistic prayer or any other prayer that is reserved for the priest during Mass. In some parishes, the people have been told they are “co-consecrators,” which is false (even heretical)—at least, many have fallen into the bad habit of acting like “co-consecrators,” mouthing the words of consecration, which indicates how little they know about what's going on. Parishioners need to be instructed regularly on what occurs at Mass, which is a kind of drama: one actor should not read another actor's lines.
• Vestments may not be worn by anyone other than the ordained. (This does not refer to choir robes or to altar servers’ albs.) Ours has become so much a visual society, because of television and movies, that the visual cues are more important now than ever.
• Extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist may not receive Communion “apart from the other faithful as though concelebrants.” Another example of giving the wrong visual signals.
• Parishes are to avoid “the habitual use of extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion at Mass.” They may be used only when there is a serious need—which, in some parishes, may never occur. We all have visited parishes in which three extraordinary ministers help the priest distribute Communion to a hundred people, for an average of twenty-five communicants apiece. Even if the priest were infirm, there hardly could be a reason for so many helpers, but in nearly all these cases there is no need for any extraordinary ministers at all. It won't wash to say that the extraordinary ministers are needed “to save time.” Pull out a stopwatch and see how long Communion really takes. In the situation mentioned, dispensing with the three extraordinary ministers would extend Communion time by less than three minutes, presuming people come up to the priest in two lines.
• In the care of the sick, no one other than a priest may anoint with sacred oil. A layman certainly may visit and minister to the sick, but may not usurp a priestly role. The anointing of the sick is a sacrament, and, given the often tender mental and emotional situation of the ill, it would be improper for a layman to perform any action that might be interpreted by the ill as a sacrament.
Although the Instruction on Collaboration Between Laity and Priests breaks no new ground, it is a further reminder of the liturgical disarray around us. Its directives will surprise no one except those who, deliberately or innocently, haven't been following the regulations. I just wish that more people would attend to the Instruction's instructions.
Karl Keating is founding director of Catholic Answers.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: KARL KEATING ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: In Princeton Professor's World, Human Life Isn't Precious DATE: 01/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 17, 1999 ----- BODY:Why should any of us care who teaches at Princeton University? Most of us will never sit in classes in its ivy-covered stone buildings in New Jersey. But ideas have consequences which reverberate far beyond the confines of a small classroom. Princeton is one of our country's most renowned universities preparing many of our future leaders in government, academia, science, and business. Faculty appointments matter.
The German poet Heinrich Heine more than a century ago said “not to underestimate the power of ideas: philosophical concepts nurtured in the stillness of a professor's study could destroy a civilization.”
Last summer Princeton University announced that an Australian professor of philosophy named Peter Singer had been appointed the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at its Center for Human Values.
There is a certain irony in the appointment because Singer gained his reputation in large part by arguing that there are no specifically human values. He wrote an early book called Animal Liberation claiming that human beings ought not to be getting preferential treatment.
Singer is guided by a philosophical approach called utilitarianism. Basically it says nothing is wrong in and of itself. Whatever maximizes pleasure for the greatest number is good and whatever does not is bad. But according to Singer you have to be aware of the fact that you are experiencing pleasure to be entitled to it. In his assessment, infants do not qualify. Somehow a newborn nestled in a moth-er's arms and nursing at her breast is not “aware” that this is pleasurable. Apparently unborn children cannot know pleasure either, while grown animals can. Singer wrote in his book Practical Ethics: “If the fetus does not have the same claim to life as a person, it appears that the newborn baby does not either, and the life of a newborn baby is of less value than the life of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee. … If we can put aside … emotionally moving but strictly irrelevant aspects of the killing of a baby we can see that the grounds for not killing persons do not apply to newborn infants.”
Newborn infants are not persons?
Apparently not to Singer. But then it is already U.S. policy that unborn infants and in-the-process-of-being-born infants are not persons protected by law. We just haven't removed legal protection quite yet from newborns. As a nation, we haven't quite caught up with Singer. In principle, however, we are already with him.
Singer does not deny that some people have a “right to life.” But if newborn children do not have it, when do they acquire it? He seems a bit irritated when this question is put to him, but since it is not without legal significance in a civilized country, Singer ventures an answer. “If we must have a point at which the developing human being has the same right to life as you or me … this right, I would suggest, emerges gradually during the first few months after birth.” It is a little hard to base laws or to formulate public policy on the basis of “rights” which “emerge gradually.”
Of course these “rights” also disappear. People who no longer have self-awareness, who are old and senile, those who are miserable, relinquish their “right” to life since the purpose of life (insofar as it has a purpose for an atheist) is to maximize pleasure. Those who cannot experience pleasure have no business living.
Truth be told, in such a world there are no rights. People are free of assault only at the pleasure of those in power. It is also a world free of God. It is Singer's world. God forbid it should become our world. Singer writes: “When we reject belief in a god we must give up the idea that life on this planet has some preordained meaning. Life as a whole has no meaning.” Also, individual human lives have no inherent meaning either, and, indeed, as Singer tells us, may not have the value of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee.
The Christian has another vision of man—a vision of man which led Presbyterians to found Princeton in the first place. This vision is found in the words of the great St. John Chrysostom. “What is it that is about to be created, that enjoys such honor? It is man—that great and wonderful living creature, more precious in the eyes of God than all other creatures! For him the heavens and the earth, the sea and all the rest of creation exist. God attached so much importance to his salvation that he did not spare his own Son for the sake of man. Nor does he ever cease to work, trying every possible means, until he has raised man up to himself and made him sit at his right hand.”
Dr. John Haas is director of the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Boston.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Haas ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A U.S. Cathedral in the Grand Tradition DATE: 01/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 17, 1999 ----- BODY:Newark is home to a basilica that holds its own with the world's most magnificent churches
Illustrious figures, from Pope John Paul II to Mother Teresa to Duke Ellington, have graced the Cathedral-Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark, New Jersey. At a Mass celebrated in October 1995, the Pope designated the church a basilica of the Sacred Heart. Another time, Mother Teresa received the profession of 14 Missionaries of Charity there. As for Duke Ellington, he came years earlier, to perform the jazz vespers which he had composed.
Though it lies just 25 miles from Manhattan, the Cathedral-Basilica of the Sacred Heart is a little known treasur, often overlooked, even in its home state of New Jersey. Built this century as a late example of the Neo-Gothic style, the magnificent edifice ranks with the greatest medieval churches including the monumental cathedrals at Chartres and Rheims. The cathedral, fifth largest in the United States, has been declared a national historic site.
Until taller buildings intervened, the twin towers of the cathedral were visible across the river from New York, providentially situated at the highest point in the city of Newark. The land was bought in 1871 by the first prelate of the new diocese, Bishop James Bayley. A convert and the nephew of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, Bishop Bayley put his vision into motion, encouraging the eventual first architect, Jeremiah O‘Rourke, to travel abroad and study the cathedrals of England, France, and Germany. Yet when Bishop Bayley was elevated to Baltimore, the project was put on hold.
Twenty years later, in 1899, the cornerstone, flanked by blocks from the Holy Land carved with “Jerusalem” and “Bethlehem,” was laid, as 10,000 Catholics from every parish in the diocese passed by in procession and 50,000 more stood on the hill and in the adjoining Branch Brook Park.
The cathedral is in one respect unlike medieval structures of old. It was built in a mere 55 years, including a period from 1928 to 1950 when work was suspended on the interior. But even during that time, nine major events were held in the unfinished structure.
Once the Gesu and Mater Dolorosa towers rose to their full height—232 feet of white Massachusetts granite, which still gleams in the sunlight—the cathedral assumed its unique appearance. Rather than being flush with the facade as is usual, the towers are rotated 45 degrees, on a diagonal with the facade. The idea first appeared at the Abbey Church in Rouen—yet Newark's towers are unique today; during 19th century restorations, the incomplete towers of Rouen were rebuilt flush.
The 45-degree set of the towers reaches outward, like hands opening to welcome and gather people toward the doors and into the interior. This architectural touch adds extra warmth to the French Gothic design. Only one detail reaches higher than these towers, to 260 feet: the copper fleche, a spire that rises where the nave and transcept cross.
It's difficult not to linger before the massive bronze doors, with their figures of evangelists and Old Testament heroes. Sitting above them, at the main entrance, are Christ the King and Mary as Queen. These doors were designed by Professor Gonippo Raggi & Sons, who did most of the interior decoration, and modeled in Rome by Aurelio Mistruzzi, prolific sculptor, medalist, and engraver under four popes.
Further above, a granite medallion depicts the apparition of the Sacred Heart to St. Margaret Mary. Inside, the Sacred Heart also appears atop the 39-foot marble baldachino over the main altar. Closer up, this canopy's figures of Mary and the Apostles, with its other marble statues, angels, and intricate detailing, become apparent.
But even from the first steps inside the 365-foot-long cathedral—approximately the size of Westminster Abbey—the burnished bronze crucifix, hanging above the main altar from the blue Venetian mosaic ceiling of the baldachino, commands a visitor's attention. The life-size figure of Christ is carved from one solid block of Portuguese marble of an almost flesh-tone color. The main altar itself is handcarved of Italian Botticino marble, the material used for all but one of the cathedral-basilica's 25 altars.
That one, the Lady Chapel altar, is carved of pure white Carrara with light blue and gold mosiac inlays, colors symbolic of the Blessed Mother. This stunning masterpiece, dedicated to Our Lady of Grace, is the reverential place of reposition for the Blessed Sacrament.
Located in the apse behind the main altar, the Lady Chapel beautifully exemplifies the symbolism permeating the cathedral-basilica's art and architecture, and boasts a number of the exquisite stained glass windows that encircle the church. The art and symbolism joins seamlessly as one garment, one story of Christ and the Church. For instance, just outside the Lady Chapel, and facing into it, is the St. Luke altar, which depicts 17 saints associated with healing. Along the ambulatory, chapels radiate to honor saints associated with the ethnic heritage of New Jersey's people—Italian, Irish, English, German, Polish-Slovak, mixed nationalities and races. Finally, the cathedral's 129 fine-carved marble statues are carefully grouped, as are the limestone statues in the narthex depicting martyr-popes, and the hand-carved wooden statues of confessor-saints.
Everywhere, hand-carved limestone medallions and extensive wood screening, marble statues, and stained glass present the figures, stories, and lessons and symbols of Old and New Testaments. In the sanctuary screens alone—like all the woodwork, carved in Appalachian white oak—there are 25 hand-cut medallions of the virtues, 17 of symbols of Jesus, and eight of symbols of the Church.
The massive Indiana limestone narthex screen is a study in delicate intricacy, designed by Paul Reilly, the third and last of the church's architects, who completed the work in the 1950s. Above this screen, a 35-foot rose window, the second largest in America, depicts the Last Judgment.
Nearly as large are the east transcept rose window symbolizing the Incarnation, and the west trancept window symbolizing the Redemption. These examples also mark the first time in the United States the glass was put in terra cotta tracery.
The cathedral boasts more than 200 of the finest stained glass windows in the world from F.X. Zettler Studios of Munich, based on firsthand study of the windows at Chartres and crafted of antique pot glass made according to medieval methods. Zettler later estimated that nearly 50,000 pieces of cut glass were used in each rose window alone.
The Gustavino tile used for the vault ceilings guarantees superior acoustics. Regular musical programs, series, and recitals have attracted exceptonal musicians and organists from around the world. The 14 bronze bells in the towers, cast in Padua, play a full range of notes.
For all its size, the majestic cathedral-basilica is neither cavernous nor overwhelming, but rather inviting and lightsome in its aspect. It's a comfortable place to pray quietly, as the medieval and the modern day melt together into a single meditative experience.
To drive to the cathedral, use New Jersey Turnpike to I-280W, to Exit 14 Clifton Avenue, turn right at the light, drive two blocks to the cathedral. From the Garden State Parkway, take I-280E, to Exit 13, left to 2nd light (Park Ave.), and right to the cathedral. Tours are given the first Sunday of the month after noon Mass, or by group. For details, phone 973-484-4600.
Joseph Pronechen writes from Trumbull, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: CATHOLIC TRAVELER ----- EXTENDED BODY: JOSEPH PRONECHEN ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Catholic Higher Education Comes to Southwest Texas DATE: 01/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 17, 1999 ----- BODY:Founders of new four-year college are big on faith and reason
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas—The first spring registration has begun at Our Lady of Corpus Christi, a new four-year Catholic liberal arts college and the product of a match between a religious order with a vision for higher education and a diocese looking to lower its overhead by divesting a 21-acre piece of property.
The gift deed of the campus, originally a Benedictine boys high school and more recently a diocesan retreat center valued at about $2 million, was signed last summer by Bishop Robert Gonzalez of the Corpus Christi Diocese. The complete campus, which includes residence halls among its eight buildings, has been one of many signs of favor from Our Lady on the new institution, said co-founder and college President Father James Kelleher, 45, a priest of the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity (SOLT).
Another heavenly favor, he said, is the academic talent helping to start the college, including renowned scholar and spiritual writer Dr. Ronda Chervin, who will be teaching ethics, logic, epistemology, medieval philosophy, and English composition this spring. Also on faculty will be Father Herman Reith CSC, former chairman of philosophy at Notre Dame and a major Thomistic philosopher; and Dr. Michael Meaney, also a former Notre Dame professor, and a graduate of the Institute Catolique in Paris.
“I think you could say the hand of God has been on this project, and the intercession of Our Lady has been very powerful,” said Father Kelleher, who began developing the idea several years ago under the inspiration of SOLT founder Father James Flanagan, who heads the order from Robstown, near Corpus Christi.
Father Kelleher also credits the successful launching to the college's six special patrons: Our Lady of Guadalupe, St. Maximilian Kolbe, St. Therese of Lisieux, St. Francis Xavier, Mother Cabrini, and Blessed Juan Diego.
Our Lady of Corpus Christi co-founder Father Anthony Anderson SOLT, who serves as academic dean, recalled a conversation with Father Flanagan years ago about the need for a revival of orthodox Catholic higher education. In that discussion, Father Flanagan shared his vision of “a litany of universities named after Our Lady.”
“I thought to myself, ‘That's beautiful. I wonder what generation that's going to happen in,’” said the 35-year-old Father Anderson. “It's actually happening in this generation.”
The core curriculum of the school will be similar to that of other Catholic “Great Books” programs—offering majors in theology, philosophy, English, Spanish, and history, said the priests. In addition, the school will seek to fully integrate the academic and spiritual lives of the students through such means as daily Mass, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, frequent confession, and the rosary.
“We want to form the whole person, the will and the heart as well as the intellect,” said Father Anderson. “We are excited about the faith, and we want our students to be excited about the faith. We want students praying on campus.”
He said the goal of the school will be to respond to the opening words in Pope John Paul II's recent encyclical, Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason): “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.”
The missionary spirit of the Society of Our Lady will also be lived out at the college, as students partake in summer trips to one of 10 missions operated by the order throughout Latin America, Thailand, the Philippines, England, and Papua New Guinea.
“It's a school by missionaries for missionaries,” said Father Anderson, but at the same time, “it's a liberal arts college, not a school of catechism.”
Another component will be 10 hours of work study for students, who will then be able to apply $2,000 “credit” against their school expenses, according to Father Kelleher.
“Father Flanagan wants every student at the college working. He thinks it's good for them,” he said. “And I agree. I think it really gives people a sense of ownership.”
For lay people with an interest in business, the college will also feature a special five-course program that will consist of teams of two to six people who will form a business plan, develop an accounting system, obtain funding, and then actually launch a business after their junior or senior year, said Father Kelleher.
Father Anderson said ultimately he believes the school will flourish because of its “founding mother,” the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity, established by Father Flanagan of Boston in 1958. Its mission, to evangelize all the world's people and their nations, is lived out by “ecclesial teams” consisting of missionary priests, sisters, and lay people under the discipleship of Jesus and Mary who seek to help those with the deepest apostolic need.
The order has formation centers in the United States and the Philippines and consists of about 100 priests, 55 sisters, 80 seminarians, and 600 or more lay people, said Father Kelleher. About 10 new priests are being ordained each year, he said.
Because of the suddenness of the gift-deed last summer, the school's first students last semester consisted of 10 seminarians and candidates from the Society of Our Lady who came to study philosophy, as well as to prepare the facility for its opening to lay men and women this month.
Brother Mark Ropel, who had just completed two years of the novitiate with the Society in New Mexico, said he appreciated the small classes and individual attention of the teachers. A former high school teacher with a master's degree in theology from the Franciscan University of Steubenville, Brother Ropel said he has come to see the importance of the study of philosophy for his vocation. “(The classes) really opened me up to the need for philosophy. With a lot of people, you can't argue with religion. You have to approach them with reason.”
Our Lady of Corpus Christi has enrolled at least more 10 students this spring, and hopes to add 30 to 50 new students each year over the next five years until the student body is up to 200 to 250, said Father Kelleher. Once it reaches 500, it will be time “for Father Flanagan's second college,” he said.
While the college works toward full accreditation, degrees will be granted from the Franciscan University of Steubenville. Other colleges have also agreed to accept transfer credits from Our Lady of Corpus Christi.
The students who will come to the college will be expected to be serious about their studies and about their faith, but will not necessarily need the academic credentials required by a Harvard or a Notre Dame, Father Anderson said.
“We're just going to deal with people very personally,” he said. “Notre Dame started in a log cabin, and they just took anybody in the neighborhood.
“We are about changing civilization and changing the culture. You can do that with the anawim, the little folks,” he said.
The founders want to make financial assistance available for most students, and they hope people will step forward with contributions to make that possible.
“At the college of Our Lady of Corpus Christi we walk in the providence of God,” said Father Kelleher. “The Lord inspires people to send us money. That's how we keep going.”
Anderson said he has been encouraged by Bishop Gonzalez’ support for the fledgling college.
“He's impressed. The other thing is he's really trusting (us), and trusting our Lord,” he said. “He sees the importance of this for South Texas.”
But in addition to being a school for the region, the college—like the order that founded it—has an “international vision,” said Father Anderson. Next fall the college hopes to enroll students from the Society's mission high school in Belize.
Ellen Rossini writes from Richardson, Texas.
----- EXCERPT: EDUCATION ----- EXTENDED BODY: ELLEN ROSSINI ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Myth of the Irish General DATE: 01/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 17, 1999 ----- BODY:An internationally celebrated film is strangely hollow at its core
A handful of criminals in every culture see themselves as heroes rather than thieves or murderers, and they work hard at building up their personal myths while breaking the law. Bonnie and Clyde, Al Capone, and John Gotti are examples of American outlaws whose obsession with image was equaled by their desire to make a big score and their willingness to knock off anyone who got in their way.
Ireland isn't immune to this virus. In the 1980s and early ‘90s, Dublin gangster Martin Cahill captured the public imagination through a series of daring capers and skillful self-promotion. The General is internationally acclaimed British writer-director John Boorman's loose adaptation of Paul Williams’ book about this phenomenon. The movie has received rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic without anyone seeming to notice its amoral message.
Shot in a black-and-white, semi-documentary style, it isn't a simplistic glorification of Cahill and his adventures. His cruelty and narcissism are presented along with his much-admired and often humorous defiance of authorities. But the filmmaker has fashioned a dog-eat-dog universe in which no person or group seems to have a moral center. As a result, Cahill, with all his deviant flaws, looks good when compared to his adversaries—the police, the IRA, and the Ulster Defense Force. The gangster's self-centered, anarchistic response to the world is made to seem more natural and honest than the hypocritical conduct of those who are encumbered with any kind of belief system.
In order to make this worldview convincing, The General must show the Church, which is still a moral force in Ireland, in as unflattering a light as possible. So all the priests are depicted as either child molesters or mouthpieces for the propertied classes, and faith is presented as an interior burden which leads to guilt but is helpless against a person's darker impulses.
This vicious anti-Catholicism is only a tiny portion of the film. It almost seems like a throwaway. But without it, Boorman's nuanced, sympathetic portrait of a criminal mastermind wouldn't work, and Cahill would be revealed as an evil, destructive force who drags down most of those around him.
The action begins with the assassination of Cahill (Brendan Gleeson) outside his home in 1994. The movie implies it's the work of the IRA and that the Dublin police looked the other way. The rest of his life is told in flashback. This technique helps create audience sympathy for the gangster as his story unfolds. For, whatever bad deeds he commits, we know he's going to pay for it in the end.
Boorman offers no psychological explanations for Cahill's criminal behavior. His relationship to his parents is barely touched on. Instead the filmmaker buys into a variation of Cahill's mythic re-creation of himself. We see him briefly as a young boy (Eamonn Owens) stealing cigarettes and potatoes for his mother, outrunning the police in the process. It's all presented as a lark. This picture of the youthful Cahill as an unrepentant, smiling thief on the run haunts the gangster at the instant of his death, a moment which Boorman repeatedly cuts back to throughout the movie. The filmmaker wants us to accept this mythic image as the core of the gangster's being.
Apart from his criminal activities, Cahill is depicted as a populist kind of everyman with many likable qualities. His birthplace is Hollyfield, a poor section of Dublin, to which he remains loyal even after he moves to a posh neighborhood. Hardly handsome, he's overweight and suffers from diabetes. He doesn't smoke or drink, loves his three kids, and refuses to profit from drug dealing. When not pulling a job, he lives in middle-class tranquillity with his wife Frances (Maria Doyle Kennedy) and her younger sister Tina (Angeline Bell), carrying on with both of them, which the movie treats with rib-nudging sympathy.
Cahill also tries to cast himself as a Dublin Robin Hood, distributing food to the poor from his illegal gains. The movie wisely doesn't accept this gesture at face value, hinting at the calculations behind his generosity.
The dark side of Cahill's character isn't ignored. Nicknamed “the General” because of his tight control over his gang, he's portrayed as ruthlessly intimidating both traitors within his own ranks and witnesses against him in court. A particularly chilling moment is his crucifixion of a gang member on a billiard table, who later turns out to be innocent of the allegations made against him.
Cahill's nemesis is Dublin police inspector Ned Kenny (Jon Voight), who recognizes the gangster's natural gifts and encourages him to go straight. But Cahill can't resist publicly humiliating the police every chance he gets, and Kenny is driven to break the rules to try and bring him down—actions for which he feels remorse. In a key scene, the gangster mocks the cop for his Catholic conscience and his guilt about his tactics. “You've had to come down to my level,” he gloats, adding he feels no similar qualms about his own misconduct.
The movie neither praises nor condemns Cahill's moral nihilism. Instead Boorman uses the gangster's destructive attitudes as a means of critiquing Irish society, gleefully recording how the General's combativeness lays bare every institution with which he comes into contact.
The IRA is depicted as just another criminal gang, trying to muscle its way into collecting on a percentage of Cahill's capers. When the gangster thumbs his nose at them in the same way he does at everyone else, they try to frame one of his top lieutenants (Adrian Dunbar) on phony drug charges.
One of Cahill's more spectacular jobs is the theft of 18 classic paintings from the Beit collection, including a Vermeer, a Goya, and two Rubens. This heist is justified because the Beit fortune was supposedly derived from the unjustified exploitation of its workers.
The General is, in many ways, an artistic tour de force. But cinematic boldness is ultimately less important than moral intelligence, and the absence of this quality makes the movie's cool irony seem hollow and reduces its exploration of contemporary mythmaking to nothing more than an intellectual exercise.
Arts & Culture correspondent John Prizer currently writes from Paris.
The General is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America.
----- EXCERPT: ARTS & CULTURE ----- EXTENDED BODY: JOHN PRIZER ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Videos on Release DATE: 01/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 17, 1999 ----- BODY:Wallace Ritchie (Bill Murray) makes a surprise visit to his brother James (Peter Gallagher), a banker in England who's about to close an important business deal. James doesn't want Wallace to be around so he arranges for his brother to act in a performance of the “theater of life.” Wallace waits outside a phone box to get the supposed instructions for the plot. But when he answers the phone, little does he know that the call is actually for a real-life hitman. Instead of entering an acting scene he becomes involved in a deadly game of espionage. He thinks the events are part of the play and begins to disrupt the others’ plans. They believe that he's some sort of superspy and send Boris “The Butcher” (Alfred Molina) and others to stop him. A good, Pink Panther stle spoof, but contains strong language, innuendo, and sensuality. (MPAA—PG)
Written by Academy Award winning screenwriter Horton Foote (Tender Mercies), the movie tells of a Texas oilman who offers farmer and recent widower John Webb (Hume Cronyn) mineral rights to his land. The film brilliantly portrays the conflicts and tensions that arise as Webb's family becomes divided over the prospect of easy money when they pin their hopes on striking oil and try to lease the land to the highest bidder. Excellent family viewing with a very deep message to be learned. (MPAA—PG)
The movie is based on The Westing Game, a children's book by Ellen Raskin. Turtle Wexler's family has just moved to a new neighborhood, next to the haunted Westing Mansion. On a dare from her newfound friends, she enters the mansion and finds that someone has been murdered. The crime becomes the biggest mystery in the city's history. With a handful of clues and a houseful of suspects, Turtle and her clever partner decide to gather the evidence. The stakes are high, with a reward of $20 million that Wexler desperately wants to help her divided and confused family, raises some interesting questions for a young audience. (MPAA—PG)
Forest Service firefighter and smoke jumper Jesse Graves (Howie Long) parachutes into forest fires to put them out. He faces a new adventure when Earl Shaye (William Forsythe), a convict imprisoned for a deadly train heist, uses a forest fire to plot his escape and take an ornithologist, Jennifer (Suzy Amis), hostage. Jesse finds himself battling not only the blaze, but Shaye and his men as he tries to save Jennifer before a deadly firestorm overtakes them all. The action-packed movie keeps the viewer's interest. It contains strong language. (MPAA—R)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Papal Visits Shaped The Church in America DATE: 01/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:As the Archdiocese of St. Louis makes its last minute preparations to welcome Pope John Paul II, the Register asked several prominent Catholic thinkers to reflect on the effect the Pope has had on the United States in his several visits during his 20-year pontificate.
Historian and Church commentator James Hitchcock of St. Louis University sees very positive results of the Pope's visits among the young, notably in terms of Church vocations.
He says, “I think it's a very interesting question, although you couldn't prove it empirically, that the frequent visits of the Holy Father to the United States had a lot to do with the modest but very noticeable emergence of religious vocations.
“If you talk to young men in seminaries today, most of whom seem to be strong orthodox Catholics … to a person, they express enormous admiration for John Paul II. They will probably mention him as the one person in the world they admire above all others. I think he has fired the imagination of a lot of younger Catholics, in ways that we may not even be able to fully comprehend for another generation or so until these people are grown up and in solid positions.”
New York's Msgr. George A. Kelly, founding officer and past president of The Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, commented on what he sees as the Pope's greatest challenge in the United States, one that has concerned him since the first day of his pontificate.
Msgr. Kelly remembered that first day in 1978 when the new Pope told the cardinals who elected him that “wavering obedience” to Church teaching and discipline was a top problem.
“A generation later,” Msgr. Kelly said, “the situation is worse. The disobedience of faith is everywhere on Catholic campuses.”
The Pope has a profound understanding of American political theory, said Patrick B. McGuigan, editorial page editor of The Daily Oklahoman, of Oklahoma City, and a frequent commentator on national politics. He was so impressed by the Pope's ad limina talk to the bishops of Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas that he wrote two columns in his paper about the Pope and America's moral character.
McGuigan said that, in his remarks to bishops, “John Paul II at times sounded like Thomas Jefferson, the principle author of the Declaration of Independence, or perhaps James Madison, the key framer of the U.S. Constitution,” mirroring their hope for humanity and human government.
He quoted the “Polish philosopher” saying, “The future of democracy … depends on a culture capable of forming men and women who are prepared to defend certain truths and values. It is imperiled when politics and law are sundered from any connection to the moral law written on the human heart.”
McGuigan told the Register, “It is absolutely crystal clear that John Paul recognizes the deficiencies of democracy, as well as its wondrous energies.
“John Paul does not articulate distinctions between republics and democracies — but neither do many other observers these days. What we actually have is a republic with a good many democratic features. But he sees the limits have to be there when a popular democratic frenzy violates fundamental human rights or the limits of law.”
Robert Moynihan, veteran Vatican watcher and editor of the international monthly Inside the Vatican, reviewed two decades of papal visits with the Register, starting with John Paul's 1979 stop at Boston Common.
In those days, Moynihand said, the Pope was a “young man of 59 … a radiant white figure in the rain to students in that university town. Here was this man from Rome, this man from the tradition of the Church, coming to America — it was remarkable thing. People had a sense of him being extraordinary and almost unearthly, a holy man entering into our secular society. And we were still a little more innocent back then, than we are now.”
As America changed through the 1980s, the Pope remained steady, said Moynihan.
“We've gone through a period now, where, although we've got a booming economy, we've had a tremendous decline in all sorts of other areas of our communal national life,” Moynihan commented. “There has been a coarsening in our discourse in many ways and when he came back in 1987, we were still caught in the great conflict with the Soviet Union, and we were in the middle of the whole thrust of the debate over the role of women in the Church. But he was a maturing figure, we knew him better.”
The biggest surprise from the Pope has come in the 1990s, Moynihan said. “In 1993, in Denver, with the young people, that was another landmark moment when everyone expected he would already be passé, forgotten, no longer of importance, but hundreds of thousands of young people — not just from the United States, but from abroad and particularly Latin America, visited Denver, and he was rejuvenated by that.
“While people were already talking about his pontificate being at an end, in '92 and '93 … he really relaunched the agenda of the culture of life and we entered a period right after '93 when the Catechism appeared, and Evangelium Vitae, the Gospel of Life, came out. The next year, the third millennium preparations began. In 1995, in New York, it was a regathering moment which seemed to recapitulate everything, and it was a longer trip than this one coming up in St. Louis.”
Of the new visit, Moynihan said, “This visit in '99 is a very brief one. The weight of the trip is on Mexico, and on that burgeoning and very troubled country, and less so in the U.S. In a way it's sort of a courtesy visit. But the fact that he takes the time to come back, not only out of respect for his old friend [Archbishop] Justin Rigali … also out of his affection for America and the fact that he wants to make an appearance here at least one more time shows that affection. It recapitulates what we've already said, but now what we have is a man who will be quite different than the one we saw in 1979.
“He's now a man who's been through 20 years of struggles and challenges. What we will see is a much older man, still radiant, but with a different type of radiance. When he was 59 he was radiant with youth and holiness, vitality, promise, and hope. Now he's still radiant with holiness, but also with wisdom, age, suffering, and mortality. I think the end result will be that he will still call upon people — not just in what he says, but by who he is — in his office, but also in his person, which in this particular case seem to merge in such a special way.”
The February issue of Inside the Vatican carries an interview with Archbishop Rigali, in which he says he looks forward to the Pope's visit as “as special movement of grace, a special outpouring of Pentecostal fullness. God is purifying the Church … and he is doing this by converting [hearts] through his grace. It's a very special moment … it's the hour of hope!”
— John Mallon writes from Oklahoma City.
----- EXCERPT: SCHOLARS, CLERGY, AND JOURNALISTS COMMENT ON TRIPS AND CONSEQUENCES ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Mallon ----- KEYWORDS: News ----- TITLE: Young People Embrace The 'Clinton Defense' DATE: 01/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—What happens to a nation's morality, particularly in its young, when a president commits crimes, apologizes, then refuses to accept accountability? The Register asked those who work with young people and morality — and the White House — what to expect.
Clinton adviser Paul Begala, a Catholic, told the Register, “What Clinton did was wrong, no doubt it was wrong. But he stood up before the whole world and said, ‘there is no fancy way to tell you that I have sinned.’
“There are two lessons [for young people]. First, if you do wrong, you don't get away with it. Second, when you own up to something, it should be done with candor and contrition. Some people in this city mock him for being too contrite, for apologizing too many times.”
But young people just up the Potomac River gleaned a very different lesson from the president's conduct. There, a Maryland high schoool principal removed several students from the student council after they were cited for underage drinking at a party, according to the Jan. 7 Washington Post.
They compared themselves to President Clinton and portrayed themselves as “victims of a principal's overzealous attempt to stamp out immorality,” said the report.
It quoted one saying, “We didn't even have a policy that we broke, like, the Constitution.”
The problem is potentially greater where at-risk children are concerned. Fr. Val Peters, director of Boys Town USA, told the Register that when the president goes to elaborate lengths to avoid the consequences of his lies, even at one point questioning the meaning of the word “is,” he “communicates to the children of America that getting yourself off the hook is much more important than telling the truth or doing the truth, at the highest level.”
Sister Mary McGeady, director of Covenant House, a shelter for runaway and homeless youth, agreed. “My kids need to know what ‘good’ is, not what ‘is’ is.”
The young, still in the formative years, are especially vulnerable to such “assaults on any truth or morality,” theologian Msgr. William Smith told the Register.
He said that, from an ethical point of view, “the most devastating statement to young people was Clinton's initial denial that there was anything ‘improper’ about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. … In Clinton's mind, what is ‘proper’ or ‘improper’ is not what he did, but how he did it. Thus, adultery is irrelevant, sexual harassment is irrelevant, what you do doesn't matter — it is how you do it that is important. It is all a matter of choice.”
He added, “If anyone wondered where ‘anything goes between consenting adults’ was leading, he can see it now in technicolor … on a blue dress.”
Sister McGeady said that while the troubled youths who make up her flock have lost interest in the Clinton scandal, “the whole sexual revolution is constantly working against us, and Clinton hasn't helped any.” She said the teen culture makes sexual activity “like a glass of water. If you want it, you have it,” and the media, by sifting through the details of the Lewinsky affair, amplify such a culture.
Critics of the president that the Register spoke with targeted what Book of Virtues author William Bennett has dubbed the “Clinton defense” as particularly harmful.
Bennett, in his recent book Death of Outrage, explained, “On every scandal, what he says or intimates always amounts to one of the following: ‘It doesn't matter. I wasn't involved. My political enemies are to blame. I have nothing more to say. The rules don't apply to me. There are no consequences to my actions. It's irrelevant. My only responsibility is to do the people's business.’ This is moral bankruptcy, and it is damaging our country, its standards, and our self-respect.”
Begala explained the White House's thinking on the question. He said that, as far as moral responsibility is concerned, Clinton has confessed. But legally, he still has a right like any citizen of this country to offer a defense in court.
Dee Dee Meyers, speaking Jan. 11 on CNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews had a different take on the same matter: “There is a part of the president that doesn't want to take responsibility for his actions. Where there's tough political decisions … or reckless personal behavior … somehow he's unable to take responsibility and the law is one way he's been able to sort of split hairs.”
Dr. Janet Smith of the University of Dallas explained how a president who pits personal responsibility against legal responsibility, countenances lying in general.
“The message here is that lying about something embarrassing to you is OK,” Smith said. “We get a bye, even under oath, about those things. But, since what we do wrong always embarrasses us, a universal category is created. You can lie about anything.”
Smith's colleague at the university, Rich Dougherty, who runs the Center for Christianity and the Common Good, commented that students who want to say something with double or triple meanings to get out of a tough situation call it “Clintonese.”
The worst consequence for young people, according to this professor of politics, “is that students seem to think that all government is corrupt and that if they enter into such a path they will end up thinking and acting in that way. … Even the political humor students see has suffered. Chevy Chase falling down as President Ford is a far cry from Alec Baldwin shouting out that Henry Hyde's family should be stoned to death.”
Recalling his own student days during Watergate, Dougherty added, “there was something of a loss of innocence when we saw that the president used bad language, that in the transcripts it said ‘expletives omitted,’ but that is nothing compared to this.”
Msgr. Smith agreed, and said that this loss of innocence has wider consequences. “The '60s mentality is all coming back to roost. Politics should be about character. The gospel logic is that if you cannot trust someone in small things, he should not be entrusted with great matters.
“In this whole affair, right and wrong is the first casualty. We are being told, our young people are being told, that this is not important. What moral theology calls the ‘moral object’ has been eliminated. Thus we speak of ‘reluctant’ abortion and ‘compassionate’ euthanasia.”
And, as Fr. Peters stressed in a letter to students, and in an interview with the Register, public dishonesty is at the root of the matter.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (2476) includes this treatment about false witness and perjury.“When it is made publicly, a statement contrary to the truth takes on a particular gravity. In court it becomes false witness. When it is under oath, it is perjury. Acts such as these contribute to the condemnation of the innocent, exoneration of the guilty, or the increased punishment of the accused. They gravely compromise the exercise of justice and fairness of judicial decisions.”
Fr. Peters commented, “There is no real freedom without truth. How can our kids take the road to freedom by being told lies?”
Edward Mulholland writes from New York.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Edward Mulholland ----- KEYWORDS: News ----- TITLE: Death in Central Sudan DATE: 01/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:Editor's note: Register senior writer Gabriel Meyer traveled to the Nuba Mountains in central Sudan last month with exiled Sudanese Catholic Bishop Macram Max Gassis of El Obeid Diocese. Along with several American human rights activists, Meyer spent the Christmas holidays in a Nuba village (for security reasons, it will not be named) under the control of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) with Bishop Gassis and members of his pastoral staff.
THE NUBA MOUNTAINS, Sudan— Until very recently, the words “aerial bombardment” and “Christmas Day” had never been associated in my mind. Chalk it up to a sheltered life, but they hadn't.
Even in the Bosnian war, which I covered as a journalist, one could, most times, count on the warring parties to entertain a certain grudging respect for the religious calendars of their opponents. But the events of Dec. 25, 1998, changed that perception.
Even the fact that I found myself in the Nuba Mountains in central Sudan, one of the principal “killing fields” in the historic conflict between Arab/Islamic north and African/Christian and animist south, didn't automatically alert me to the possible connection between bombs and the birth of the Prince of Peace. One could be forgiven for assuming that a major religious holiday centered on a figure revered, in quite different ways, by Christians and Muslims alike, would warrant a pause in hostilities.
But that, apparently, was not the thinking of the National Islamic Front government in Khartoum late last month when they dispersed the religious festivities of an impoverished Nuba remnant, clinging to life in their ancestral hills, by dropping bombs on their villages on Christmas Day.
It was not an isolated incident. Since last August, the regime has dumped dozens of bombs, even daily, on Nuba settlements in this part of the country. Indiscriminate attacks with “barrel” bombs — thick, iron casings filled with railway spikes and metal scraps, rolled out of the back of old Antonovs, Russianmade transport aircraft, flying at high altitudes. Such home-made explosive devices have few military uses; they're too crude, too imprecise. But they are the perfect instruments of terror; sending shrapnel flying in all directions, and in the tinderbox grassland of the dry season, igniting bushfires that can blacken acres in minutes.
Other, deadlier devices are also used. There's more than ample evidence on the ground that the regime employs the cluster bomb, with its devastating, multiple impact, in its anti-Nuba arsenal. The few crude airstrips the Nuba have cleared in the bush to permit relief supplies to reach them are also frequent targets.
Such attacks serve to level Nuba hamlets and kill the cattle and goats which constitute one of the population's only sources of revenue and sustenance. But others have more final consequences. One such attack a week before Christmas left six dead on a hillside not far from the compound where our team stayed. Remnants of shrapnel and spent cluster bombs, even a week later, littered the hilltop.
Secret Atrocities
Doubtless, Khartoum hadn't anticipated that there would be an American journalist, two American human rights activists, a cameraman, and, most importantly, the exiled Sudanese Bishop Macram Max Gassis of El Obeid Diocese, the tireless defender of the civil war's “forgotten” victims, on hand to record the event.
After all, the Nuba Mountains are one of the most remote and inaccessible areas in the world, a Scotland-sized region without all-weather roads or electricity, located in the southern Kordofan province, on the border between northern and southern Sudan, where the indigenous Nuba have lived their traditional agrarian way of life, largely undisturbed, for thousands of years.
For more than a decade, that isolation, coupled with the refusal of United Nations food programs and non-government organizations to intervene in what the government calls “rebel-held” areas of southern Korodofan, has given the current regime a free hand in its systematic campaign to destroy the Nuba.
Neglected by previous Sudanese governments, the Nuba, fatefully, joined the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), and its military arm, the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) in the mid-1980s after then Sudanese President Jaafar Nimeiri passed the infamous “September Laws,” imposing aspects of shari'a (Islamic law) on all Sudanese, regardless of religion — an act that paved the way for the seizure of power in 1989 by the more radical National Islamic Front under Hassan al-Turabi and Omar el-Bashir.
Nuba culture, and its remarkable historical record of religious tolerance and accommodation — Nuba Christians, Muslims, and practitioners of traditional African religions have long lived peacefully together — is particularly resistant to the brand of militant Islamic revivalism that is at the heart of the National Islamic Front regime, and one of the major causes for the current civil war. That is made clear by the fact that Khartoum's “Islamic” ideologues persecute Nuba Muslims as vigorously as they do Nuba Christians or animists. The irenic stance of the Nuba, along with their vital geographical position in the conflict, has made them, along with the southern Dinka, favored targets of the government's war of attrition — a war which includes food embargoes, politically induced famine, land seizures, aerial bombardment, the planting of land and anti-personnel mines in civilian areas, forcible conversion to Islam, and slavery.
A Policy of Genocide
The government's aims are clear: to drive the Nuba out of the fertile valleys they have traditionally farmed into the highlands where food and water are scarce. The farmland is then sold to Arabs loyal to Khartoum, leaving the Nuba to starve in the mountains. Most experts think that the short-term goal is to keep the Nuba, whose sense of order and discipline has long made them Sudan's finest soldiers, from effectively fighting the regime. (Malnourished Nuba soldiers are often forced to suspend campaigns in order to forage for food.)
But, long-term, the government's Nuba policy, whether by design or effect, is a policy of extermination. (The U.S. Committee on Refugees 1998 report on conditions in southern Sudan and the Nuba Mountains, released last month, doesn't mince words; It calls Khartoum's Nuba campaign “genocide.”)
According to an article in the London-based Guardian, the United Nations, under pressure to act, eked out an agreement with the government last May that would have allowed an Operation Lifeline Sudan mission into SPLA-controlled Nuba territory to do a humanitarian assessment. However, the government withdrew support for even that modest project in July, despite personal assurances given to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Anan by foreign minister Mohammed Osman Ismail. Meanwhile, the World Food Program and other agencies have been able to distribute supplies to some Nuba settlements and so-called peace villages in the government zone.
The Nubas’ dilemma is stark: Stay in their mountains and risk starvation and death, or move to government “peace” camps in the region and be stripped of their religion, identity, and culture. Currently, more than 300,000 Nuba have opted for freedom; but, given poor harvests and the threat of famine later this year, their prospects are grim. (Recent U.N. figures for the number at risk of malnutrition in Sudan this year as a result of poor harvests and socalled political famine has been climbing steadily. It currently stands at 1.2 million.) As Peter Moszinski wrote in the June 30 Guardian, “Unless something is done internationally to help the Nuba, one of Africa's oldest and most intriguing cultures may disappear forever.”
Word of the impending attack came during an outdoor Mass Bishop Gassis was celebrating with several thousand Nuba Catholics assembled in a grove of giant sycamores that the bishop quaintly calls “the cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul.”
(SPLM authorities have ceded a large tract of land near the clearing for possible future development by the Catholic Church. Should funds and personnel materialize, the bishop plans to create a compound here that includes a church, medical clinic, convent and school facilities.)
An Episcopal Legend
Bishop Gassis is a near-legendary figure in Sudan since he first spoke out against human rights abuses in the country before a committee of the U.S. Congress in 1988.
Born in Khartoum in 1938, he did his seminary studies in Verona, Italy, and in England, returning to the Sudan as a parish priest in 1964. By 1968, he was chancellor of the Khartoum Archdiocese, and five years later began a long stint as secretary-general of the Sudanese Bishops’ Conference.
Father Gassis was already involved in relief work as chairman of Caritas Sudan in the early 1980s, and after five years as apostolic administrator of the El Obeid Diocese in central Sudan — an area the size of Italy — he was consecrated as its bishop in 1988. The new bishop acted as liaison between the Catholic bishops and the government until he was placed under criminal indictment by the authorities for criticizing Sudan's human rights record abroad.
In 1990, Bishop Gassis was diagnosed with cancer and went to the United States for treatment. There he learned that the Sudanese government had forbidden him to return to El Obeid. This proved to be a major turning point in the bishop's life. Realizing that he was in a unique position to alert the world to the sufferings of Christians in his war-torn country, Bishop Gassis briefed bishops’ conferences, government representatives, non-governmental agencies, and the media about conditions in Sudan. By the early 1990s he had testified before Congress, addressed the European Parliament in Brussels, and met with then U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros Ghali.
On his return to full-time pastoral work, the bishop decided that with his diocese now effectively split in two — the northern sector under government control (and an apostolic administrator), and the southern part, which included the Nuba Mountains, under the SPLA — he would focus his apostolate on the rebel-held territories to which he still had access, and to building up the Church among the long-suffering Nuba. As the bishop never fails to tell the Nuba when he pays them his periodic pastoral visits: “You are the reconcilers, unknown to the world; your suffering the hidden gift raining down graces on the Church, the Bethlehem into which Christ always chooses to be born.”
But, as for the Christmas liturgy — hymn books and pews, this wasn't. The “entrance rite,” so to speak, included the bishop and his party jumping over a bull with its throat cut, to the trills of Nuba women. A youth group, trained by some of the bishop's younger catechists, or lay leaders, greeted us with characteristic Nuba songs set to Christian texts in Arabic, the Nuba's lingua franca, to the accompaniment of drums made out of leather stretched over every conceivable size and sort of container, from milk cans to gourds.
It's part of the Nuba character: a hard life in a hard land has made them masters of improvisation. Everything is recycled; remnants of truck tires become perfectly serviceable sandals, empty vegetable oil tins make fine percussion instruments. The Nuba even convert the weapons used against them into useful objects: Anti-tank shells are converted into classroom bells, and the bomb casings dropped in air raids are refashioned as agricultural tools.
Children took up positions in the sycamore branches as the bishop made his way to the altar set up at the far end of a nave of trees. Jubilation was in the air, a fact not lost on Bishop Gassis himself, who lifted his crosier rhythmically in the air before the crowd, like the older Nuba do with their spears on days of joy. In the singing and the drumming, the Nuba, if only for a moment, had forgotten about the war that has claimed more than a third of their number in a decade.
Only a few yards away, young Nuba soldiers of the local defense forces stood guard like a kind of ragtag nobility, with their ancient Kalashnikovs, their hunting rifles. Here and there were old bazookas, probably captured from a government garrison, that one couldn't imagine anyone being so foolhardy as to fire. The barefoot warriors had no uniforms to speak of, just a note of quiet, stoic pride in their demeanor.
Air Raid on Christmas Day
The news came in the midst of the homily, SPLA radio operators had intercepted a coded message from military authorities in Khartoum, ordering a Christmas bombing raid on the Nuba Mountains.
By now, it was already midmorning, the time when bombing raids were most frequent. The plane, or planes, might already be in the air. The thousands of Nuba assembled in the clearing for Mass were a clear target for the Antonovs. What's more, time was of the essence: In case of attack, it would take more than a few minutes for such a large crowd to beat an orderly retreat to the relative safety of the bush. A decision had to be made at once. When the bishop sat down, a message was passed to him. His face dark with anxiety, he contemplated his choices.
“Please pray,” he told one of the Americans sitting closest to him. “Ask God to help us. This could be a disaster.” The commanders’ eyes were riveted on the bishop as he stood up to face the people once more.
In a voice that was halting with emotion at first, but growing steadier, the bishop told the people about the impending attack. No panic, no outcry, not even a hint of surprise greeted the bishop's words.
The discipline, the courage, the serenity for which the Nuba are famous, marked every face as the people, on the bishop's orders, prepared for the worst. Those wearing white were moved to the shadiest areas under the trees with the children, before whom lines of adults ranged themselves as human shields.
As in a well-practiced drill, the crowd shifted itself into its new positions without a word.
“Don't be afraid,” the bishop told them. “We are all together. The Mass will continue.”
(Next week: Part three of the Register's exclusive series on the Nuba people of central Sudan.)
Gabriel Meyer writes from Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: Backed by legendary bishop, Sudan's indigenous Nuba resist a genocidal plan ----- EXTENDED BODY: Gabriel Meyer ----- KEYWORDS: News ----- TITLE: 18 Top American Retailers Sued by Overseas Workers DATE: 01/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—Eighteen of America's largest retailers — including Wal-Mart, Sears, The Limited, Tommy Hilfiger, The Gap, Nordstrom, and J. Crew — must defend themselves against three class-action lawsuits alleging that they exploited apparel workers.
Activists warn that at least some of the toys, clothing, sporting goods, and electronics that Americans gave and received this past Christmas were likely made by people — in some cases, children — working very long hours for low wages in miserable conditions.
Kim Bobo, director of the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice, said, “Most of the toys for the world market are manufactured in the provinces around Hong Kong, where young girls work in the factories that may even follow China labor laws, which aren't that great. And there's a reason why so many clothes are made in China, India, Guatemala, and Honduras — there are traditionally low wages paid there.”
Human rights activists and apparel workers filed the three class-action lawsuits this month alleging that garment workers in the Northern Mariana Islands, especially on the largest isle, Saipan, endure some of the worst of sweatshop conditions, including 12-hour workdays and seven-day workweeks; crowded and dehumanizing housing; and, in some cases, loss of all pay for failure to meet quotas. The litigation seeks more than $1 billion in damages.
The islands, a U.S. commonwealth located near the Philippines, have become a popular site for producing apparel that is shipped duty-free to the United States. Their minimum wage is more than $2 per hour lower than in the United States.
Wal-Mart and The Gap have issued statements denying their involvement with any factories that operate under these conditions.
Allegations about exploited workers overseas are not new. According to the National Labor Committee, a human rights organization, children and adults working in the garment industry in Haiti, Guatemala, China, Burma, Vietnam, and Indonesia make between 6 and 37 cents an hour. Often there are no breaks in the long workday, no clean drinking water, no restroom facilities, and no ventilation.
UNICEF estimates that 250 million children aged 5 to 14 who lose their chance for an education while working in substandard conditions. The U.N. agency also reports that in India, 12-years-olds have been chained to carpet looms for 12 hours a day, while children as young as 5 make sporting equipment in factories in Pakistan.
The Catholic Church has long recognized its obligation to protest such conditions.
“The Church has 100 years of history saying what fair labor conditions should be,” according to Tom Shellebarger, policy adviser on urban and economic issues for the U.S. Catholic Conference. “Child labor has been condemned by every pope since Leo XIII, and John Paul II has condemned it very strongly. We have to remember that when it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. You can't buy a blouse for $4 without knowing that the laborer was probably paid a nickel.”
In his encyclical Rerum Novarum (On the Condition of Labor), Pope Leo XIII in 1891 spoke to the issues of his day that are still relevant to today's workplaces:
“Workers are not to be treated as slaves; justice demands that the dignity of human personality be respected in them. (31) … Among the most important duties of the employers … is to give every worker what is justly due him. … No laws, either human or divine, permit them for the sake of their own profit to oppress the needy and the wretched or to seek gain from another's want” (32).
On the 90th anniversary of Rerum Novarum in 1981, John Paul II issued Laborem Exercens (On Human Work), underscoring the Church's role in upholding the “specific dignity” of human work to the rest of society:
“But the Church considers it her task always to call attention to the dignity and rights of those who work, to condemn situations in which that dignity and those rights are violated, and to help to guide the above mentioned changes so as to ensure authentic progress by man and society. (5) … The human rights that flow from work are part of the broader context of those fundamental rights of the person. (72) … Among these rights there should never be overlooked the right to a working environment and to manufacturing processes which are not harmful to the workers’ physical health or to their moral integrity” (93).
Many U.S. dioceses and parishes have acted as consumers with a conscience on the issue of unfair labor practices. After it was revealed that hundreds of sweatshops staffed with mostly immigrant workers were operating in northern New Jersey, Newark Archbishop Theodore McCarrick in 1997 joined with the U.S. Department of Labor, the New Jersey Department of Labor, and the Garment Worker's Union to start a program to highlight the problem of sweatshop and child labor.
“We decided it was impossible for us to take on the world, so the first year, we concentrated just on school uniforms,” said Msgr. John Gilchrist, architect of this program for the Newark Archdiocese. The first step was to identify the manufacturers of all of the school uniforms purchased for use in the archdiocese.
“Then, we forced them to disclose where they made their garments, and the wage and hour people at the department of labor were able to trace them,” Msgr. Gilchrist explained. Only a small number of the uniform companies were found in violation of labor laws. Each school principal was then informed of the status of the uniform companies to assist them in their buying decisions. Msgr. Gilchrist said that many of their schoolchildren are now asking questions about where the products are made before they buy clothes and toys.
“Our children don't want to wear clothing made by other children,” said Msgr. Gilchrist.
Catholics who feel helpless as consumers to identify the manufacturers who exploit their workers should take heart — the experts say that even small efforts can help the problem.
“We cannot, as individuals, be completely sweat-free,” said Bobo of the committee on worker justice. “But there are some things we can do”:
• Ask store managers if they know under what conditions the products which they sell are made. Over the long term, if lots of customers are asking those questions, it will be a factor in stores’ buying decisions.
• Participate in some organized efforts that challenge abusive working conditions. (The interfaith committee can send a list: nicwj@ige.org or (773) 728-8400.)
• Do your best to support alternative vendors where we know the workers are treated better. Many state departments of labor and fair trade organizations have lists of such vendors.
Molly Mulqueen writes from Colorado Springs, Colorado.
----- EXCERPT: Dioceses and parishes urge consumers to buy 'sweat-free' ----- EXTENDED BODY: Molly Mulqueen ----- KEYWORDS: News ----- TITLE: Catholic Education Group Becomes a Force on Campus DATE: 01/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—It isn't every day that the ideas of a college student launch a national organization. But that's what happened when Patrick Reilly raised questions about the direction of Catholic higher education.
What began as an effort to address certain issues at Fordham University developed into the Cardinal Newman Society. Within five years, the society has become a major force in helping to show that Catholic colleges can be academically strong and faithful to Church teachings.
After serving as founder and board chairman, Reilly will take over as executive director of the organization on Feb. 1. His new full-time duties will return him directly to the arena he entered in 1990.
A 1987 graduate of Malvern Preparatory School in Pennsylvania, Reilly said, “I went to Fordham coming out of a Catholic high school expecting certain things. I was anticipating a strong Catholic presence, but I didn't find it.”
He became active in Fordham Students for Life and later was named editor of The Ram, the student newspaper. As editor he began to confront several campus developments which concerned him.
He says that a homosexual and a pro-abortion group had been formed. The freshman orientation program was giving contraception information. And a student-run counseling service was providing referrals for abortion.
Reilly engaged school administrators and recruited John Cardinal O'Connor of New York and organizations such as the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights to help intervene. Although they met with limited success, the seeds were formed for the Cardinal Newman Society.
“I felt then and afterwards that I needed some sort of advice and support as a student not experienced in dealing with such issues. We needed help in working with administrators and bishops,” he said.
Reilly graduated in 1991 and came to Washington, D.C., to begin graduate work at American University. His activism also helped propel him to the board chairmanship of American Collegians for Life.
Meanwhile, two other developments took place. A controversy erupted at Georgetown University about whether a campus pro-abortion group should be allowed to operate. At the same time, the apostolic constitution on Catholic universities, Ex Corde Ecclesiae, was being disseminated, and it attracted Reilly's attention.
His idea of a national organization seeking to help return Catholic institutions to their roots now seemed even more necessary. In September 1993, seven recent graduates of Catholic colleges founded the Cardinal Newman Society.
“Cardinal Newman was the obvious patron,” Reilly explained, “because he argued that a university can only be Catholic if it is informed by the faith. And to teach all disciplines and to be a good university, he believed, it must be Catholic.”
The society was organized to promote the ideas the Holy Father presented in Ex Corde Ecclesiae. It sought to do so by beginning dialogues with everyone associated with Catholic universities: students, faculty, administrators, boards of trustees, and bishops.
One of the society's early supporters, Father Richard John Neuhaus, told the Register, “The Cardinal Newman Society is one of many, many indications of young Catholics who have thoroughly internalized the vision of the Second Vatican Council, but who were unscarred by the frequently acrimonious battles that took place.”
The organization was on the front line of engaging a secular culture about the role religious beliefs should play in education. Another adviser, Father Paul Scalia of Springfield, Va., said, “Basically, the issue is this: What is Catholic scholarship and what is Catholic education?”
Reilly took control of the society as a volunteer executive director. Meanwhile, his knowledge of the many issues he dealt with grew through his work at the U.S. Department of Education, the Citizens for Educational Freedom, and the Capitol Research Center.
In 1996, Mo Fung, a graduate of Christendom College, became the society's first full-time executive director, and helped to make it a major force in American Catholic higher education.
Reilly credits Fung with “achieving a level of success that we didn't imagine when we formed the society.” New board president Manuel Miranda notes that the U.S. Catholic bishops now regularly consult the society on implementation of Ex Corde Ecclesiae.
Fung worked tirelessly with Catholic institutions and their representatives and held three national conferences. But perhaps his major accomplishment was work on amplifying Ex Corde Ecclesiae.
Fung twice traveled to Rome to discuss the 1990 document. The society worked closely with Anthony Cardinal Bevilacqua, head of a bishops'committee on implementation, and others on various provisions. Miranda says the society's participation helped make the guidelines much stronger.
The focus on Ex Corde Ecclesiae is now shifting from drafting guidelines to actually implementing its provisions. It will be Reilly's responsibility to help do this as Fung returns to graduate school full time at the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage & Family in Washington, D.C.
“My challenge,” Reilly said, “will be to move into a new direction with the Cardinal Newman Society and Catholic higher education.” Board member Samuel Casey Carter added, “Pat will make the society known to philanthropic organizations as a target for their dollars when they want to have a serious impact on Catholic identity.”
But clearly the ongoing work of Ex Corde Ecclesiae will occupy much of Reilly's time. According to Miranda, as efforts are being made to implement the document, a wall of criticism has developed. “There is a concerted effort to fight against implementation of it,” he said.
Among the concerns expressed by critics are that the goal of reaching 50% Catholic faculty members at Catholic institutions is difficult and troublesome. Miranda notes that some say that rigorous efforts to return Catholic universities to their roots will result in lawsuits and loss of federal funding.
Also at issue, he points out, is the level of control exercised by ecclesiastical authorities at Catholic universities. Yet, Miranda, a Washington, D.C. attorney and Carter, former executive editor of Crisis magazine, dismiss these criticisms.
“There is no meaningful autonomy for a Catholic organization apart from a careful adherence to the profession of the Faith. That's the big point. It's just a false hope that some have to be a Catholic organization independent of Catholic authority,” Carter said.
This will be one of Reilly's big challenges. Undaunted, he sees such work as essential. He contends that “the renewal for Catholic higher education is integral for the renewal of American society.”
Carter, who is now a Bradley Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, added, “The Cardinal Newman Society is going to be the definitive voice for orthodox Catholic teaching. It's going to show that the real gift that Catholic colleges can give the world is research with the Magisterium as the prism through which it seeks and performs that research.”
The accomplishments and impressive goals of the Cardinal Newman Society are the outcome of the activism of one young man and a group of like-minded friends. Nearly a decade after Patrick Reilly conceived of such an organization, he is set to lead it on a day-to-day basis.
“The source of Patrick's commitment is his Catholic faith,” says Father Scalia, a long-time friend of Reilly. “He believes that what the Church teaches is true. This truth cannot be compromised.”
Joseph Esposito writes from Washington.
----- EXCERPT: Cardinal Newman Society's idealistic founder returns to helm ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Esposito ----- KEYWORDS: News ----- TITLE: Beating the Education Odds DATE: 01/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:Richard Burke
Burke is president of Catholic School Management Inc. and founder of a firm that has provided direct consultative guidance, publications, and training programs for parochial, private, and diocesan Catholic elementary and secondary schools and parishes throughout the United States since 1973. Recently he spoke with Register assistant editor Geraldine Hemmings.
Hemmings: What goes into the making of a Catholic school?
Burke: This is what I feel personally but it is also the philosophy behind the business. I look for a school which genuinely integrates faith with the learning process, not just with a religion program — they all have that. And that is what we do as part of our mission statement. There are a lot of subtle ways that that shows up, (some programmatic), some retreat programs, some service programs, some campus ministry programs, all of those kinds of things. The other thing that we expect is that administrators, teachers, those involved with school, including staff, act as role models and ask what Jesus would do in a particular situation. And if we can do that and go back to the bishops’ pastoral very often To Teach As Jesus Did, the pastoral on education and whether it's a counseling or administrative issue: How would we encourage the school to act as Jesus would in that situation? Philosophically that's important to us.
Does your research bear this out?
All of the research that's available starting from 1976 when Father Andrew Greeley published Catholic Schools in a Declining Church. Parents, the survey says, choose Catholic schools for several reasons: a perception of better academic quality, religious values infused with the curriculum, safety, structure, and discipline.
That research has been replicated many times since then but the same answers come up all the time. They are pretty much coequal depending where in the country you ask the question.
In south central Los Angeles for example, you have an urban and sometimes violent community. If you ask a parent there, “Why is your child at Queen of Angels?” or “Why is your child at Verbum Dei?” they will cite, safety, structure, discipline, and then they will say, “Well, we want them to get a better education and we like the fact that it's Catholic,” or some might say if they are Muslim, for example, “It has a good religious influence — but safety and structure are first. If you ask the same question in Indiana — The Bible Belt — you will hear religious values first. Safety is not an issue.
How do you set about your work then?
We tailor what we do based on where we are working at the particular time. But those answers still recur and we look to satisfy the need that parents have because we recognize that parents are the primary educators of their children and then we want to put in systems that not only allow these schools to survive but to thrive.
What was your family background and what impact did it have on you and your faith as a Catholic?
First of all, I lived in New Haven, Connecticut, a city that was very heavily Irish and very heavily Catholic and I grew up in a very Catholic family. My father was a fireman in the city and was at Pearl Harbor when it was bombed in 1941. My mother was part of a Parish Mother's Circle that was fairly typical in the 1950s. So, that part of my life was like everyone else's.
But in junior high school I had an opportunity to go to Notre Dame High School which was run by the Holy Cross brothers and that proved to be a good experience for me. It not only broadened my horizons academically but it gave me a different perspective on religious life. I was also the oldest of four children and had a sister, a year younger, who entered the religious life and was a Dominican for ten years. So there was lots of that religious influence initially.
What did you do after school with all this influence? Were you tempted to enter religious life yourself?
No, following high school I went to the naval academy and stayed there for three days before I got thrown out. You had to have 20/20 uncorrected vision at that time. I didn't and I was just devastated. I then enlisted and did two tours in Vietnam. When I returned I went to college at the University of Bridgeport and did an undergraduate degree in business with an emphasis on finance and economics. While I was in graduate school I worked for the Olin corporation which is located in New Haven behind Albertus Magnus college.
What did you do at Olin?
I worked as a financial analyst and then as manager of marketing and research. I was there for five years.
What changed your course?
While I was there I played tennis regularly with an attorney in New Haven, who had children in a Catholic School in 1969. The school was ordered closed by the Archdiocese of Hartford for financial problems that they felt could not be overcome. In my arrogance I told him that I suspected the real problem to be that priests don't know how to run schools financially. That was without a doubt arrogant and I had no basis for it whatsoever.
So that was a changing point?
Yes, some days later my friend called and reminded me of that comment and said he shared it with Father Cooney, the pastor, the following Sunday. I told him what a dumb thing that was and asked him why he did it. He said he was concerned about the school closing and said that Father Cooney would like to meet me. I asked if he was offering dinner and he said yes — I was living in a house with four other guys and none of us could cook so I accepted every dinner invitation. I met Father Cooney who was in his 60s at the time and instantly took a liking to him.
What did he say to you especially after the remarks you had made? Was he angry?
No, he told me the story of the school and what his hopes were. He told me why the archdiocese had recommended that the school be closed: accumulating deficits, declining enrollment, drain on parish resources — fairly typical things although I didn't know that at the time.
I told Father Cooney that night (after wine and dinner) that if he could get an extension — not to ask the archdiocese for any money but just an extension of time — that I would commit myself to work with him, provided that he would give me dinner a couple of times a week. I went there every day when I'd leave Olin and I did that for a year.
But how did you think you of all people could change things? This wasn't exactly your full-time job.
I looked at the books, began to experiment with the school, and created a board — the first school board in the Archdiocese of Hartford. That board created a long-range plan for the school. They began a development program. More of the sisters who were there left the following year but at the end of the year the school broke even. The subsidy from the parish had been reduced by $12,000, the parish was more stable, and the enrollment went up by about six or seven kids. Not great but it was going in the right direction and the school stayed open and is still open today. It is lay staffed, lay administered, and endowed, not fully, but endowed. It's St. Bernadette's in New Haven.
How did that develop into a full-time career for you?
I was very intrigued by the process and Father Cooney had become my friend and mentor in many different ways. I literally spent every day at that place. But I was more intrigued by the faith of the people who were there teaching, the commitment of the parents, and the sacrifices the parents would make to have their children at the school.
I asked Father Cooney to let me meet the man that recommended that it be closed. His name was Father Charles Daly who was then the diocesan fiscal officer for the Archdiocese of Hartford. A very brilliant man, a Harvard MBA, and great priest. He thanked me for what I did but told me in no uncertain terms that it was probably a fluke and probably couldn't happen again.
How did you feel when he said this?
I took that as a personal challenge and asked how many schools he was going to close the following year. He said three and I said that I would take all three of those as a volunteer. I was determined to see if there was something to this. There was Sacred Heart in New Haven, St. Martin de Porres, and St. Stanislaus — they all stayed open.
It was the same process — formation of a board, the development of a long-range plan, institution of an advancement program, and a few other things like management controls, finances, etc., that we developed over time. St. Stanislaus, was the most difficult because those running it were absolutely determined that the school had to be closed. It was our biggest challenge but we significantly raised the tuition by following the long-range plan that year and the enrollment went up by about 20 students.
You said earlier that you were impressed by the sacrifices that parents were willing to make. What were they looking for in all of this?
Yes, what parents were saying to us was, We want stability. We want the school and we are willing to sacrifice for it.” So, while I finished that year, stayed at Olin, I took six schools from the archdiocese the following year. Three that were going to be closed and three that were a representative sample of suburban schools. Those also remained open. We were beginning to see the systems in action and I liked the people that I was working with, the priests, and the environment of the schools.
How did you end up working with the schools on a full-time basis?
I was in graduate school at the time doing marketing but I was genuinely having more fun working with the schools than at my job in Olin. So, I took a leave of absence in the summer of '73 under the company's community involvement policy. They gave me a leave of absence and I told them that I wanted to work with the Catholic schools in New Haven and what I also wanted to do was to see if there was a business potential in this area.
So, I took several schools that year and we formed the parochial advisory committee under Father Richard Newman who is now the pastor of St. Gabriel in Windsor. We began to create some structure around what we were doing. It proved to be a very positive experience and by the end of the year I gave up my leave of absence and went to work for Catholic schools on a full-time basis. I joined the staff of the diocesan school office in Hartford at the invitation of Msgr. Connelly and Father Fannelli. The business moved into the Knights of Columbus Tower in New Haven at the invitation of the head of the Knights and we remained there for 13 years before we moved to Madison.
What initially began as financial planning now encompasses everything that goes into the making of a Catholic school, whether it's curriculum, guidance, legal, or financial — whatever makes the school operate.
How do you market your services?
I don't believe in hooks. I don't believe in marketing gimmicks. I have a solid background in marketing, but I look at these schools as absolute necessities to the Church and to the communities that they serve, and to parents who desperately need this kind of education. We never advertise.
As president of Catholic School Management do you see every Catholic school being faithful to what the Church teaches?
That is a very difficult question to answer because there are some underlying considerations to that question. Do all 8,233 Catholic schools in this country teach the same thing and teach it exactly as the Magisterium would prefer? No, they don't. Is that necessarily bad or wrong? That's questionable.
Let me give you two contrasts:
Take a school in Connecticut in contrast to a school operating in a densely urban environment such as the Bronx in New York. The latter draws students from Catholic families, Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians, and Muslims. You're going to have a much different approach to what Jesus would do in a particular situation than at a suburban Connecticut Catholic school serving an all Catholic population which would be very doctrinaire and teach exactly the way the Church would prefer.
That having been said though, do both operate under the canons of the Church? Yes. Canon 806 says that diocesan superintendents under the Ordinary of the diocese have the responsibility to ensure that schools within their jurisdiction, even those owned by religious institutes, are equally as good as any of the other secular schools in the area. That's a charge, a canonical responsibility on the academic side. In addition, they are expected to teach according to the social teachings of the Church, the religious teachings, and so on. I think they have a responsibility to do that but if you ask do they all do it in the same? They answer is no.
Are you happy with the way the system of religious education is in this country? As a parent, are you happy with the values your children are being taught?
In public or Catholic schools?
Both.
You have to separate them. I think as an individual who has been deeply involved professionally in Catholic education for 25 years that there are problems with the public education system in that it does not allow for parents choice. It specifically and constitutionally excludes the introduction of religion into the program. I, like many others, prefer to have my own children educated within Catholic schools.
So would you be against the public schools?
My work here is never involved in downgrading the public schools. They operate within a different sphere. I know very little about them. I read the newspapers like everybody else but my first responsibility is to the Catholic schools, to ensure that they operate well from several different perspectives and I'll try and outline those for you.
It's important for us to see that these schools do academically what they should be doing, that they encourage children to first know and then to model Gospel values, and then to be able to integrate elements of the faith into their lives. That's very difficult to do in this society everyday. It's difficult for us as adults — there's no doubt about that.
I think all of us have to look at that every day [and ask]: “How well did we do? Yesterday I failed more than I succeeded.” My hope is that through the schools [we work with] and the modeling that takes place from teachers, administrators, and board members to kids, whether at elementary or secondary level, we provide a basis for them to go out and become good engineers or good finance people or nurses. But whatever they're going to be, they live out their faith, even while recognizing that a lot of times they're going to fail. That's human — that's reality. But that doesn't mean you stop trying. That's what we want kids to see and that's what so many of these schools do so very, very well.
—Geraldine Hemmings
Current Position: President of Catholic School Management, Inc.
Personal: Age 53.
Background: Attended New Haven public elementary schools and Notre Dame High School. B.Sc. in Business Economics and Finance from the University of Bridgeport. Member of the National Association of Business Economists and the Hartford Association of Business Economists. From 1973-1976, served as Business Planning Coordinator for Catholic Schools in the Archdiocese of Hartford, from 1973-74, served as a consultant to the Archbishop's Study Committee on Parish Councils.
----- EXCERPT: Former financial analyst does business saving schools ----- EXTENDED BODY: Richard Burke ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson ----- TITLE: Suit Against Pro-Lifers Will Test Free-Speech Limits DATE: 01/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:PORTLAND, Ore.—A trial under way in federal district court here will likely have far-reaching effects on the pro-life movement.
Attorneys for Planned Parenthood in Oregon, four doctors, and several women's clinics are attempting to portray leaders of a national coalition of pro-life activists as conspirators in threats and mayhem.
The civil suit, which claims violation of federal racketeering and clinic access laws, is significant because it focuses on the words used by abortion foes. Other suits by abortion-rights groups have centered on actions, such as blockades of clinics.
Plaintiffs filed the suit in late 1995 claiming a “campaign of terror and intimidation.” The filing came less than a year after the American Coalition of Life Activists published and distributed a series of posters. One, under the heading “Guilty of Crimes Against Humanity,” lists names and addresses of 12 doctors from across the country who perform abortions. Reminiscent in design of wanted posters from the old west, it calls the physicians “The Deadly Dozen” and offers $5,000 for information that would lead to revocation of medical licenses.
Another poster used a photograph of an abortion doctor from Kansas City, Missouri. It urges activists to picket Dr. Robert Crist's neighborhood and encourage him to offer medical care to the needy in lieu of abortions.
Also mentioned in the suit is an affiliated Internet web site called the “Nuremberg Files,” which publicizes information about hundreds of abortion doctors and compares their work to Nazi war crimes.
Plaintiffs seek $200 million in damages. By the end of the month, an eightmember jury is expected to hand down a verdict and possibly decide on a penalty.
The charges of violence gall Monica Migliorino Miller, one of the 14 original defendants. The American Coalition of Life Activists, which draws together hundreds of pro-life advocates from across the country, has a pledge of non-violence in its constitution, a pledge Miller says she took seriously.
“Here you have an organization being sued for supposed threats of violence when it has a very clear policy of non-violence,” she said. “This whole talk of fear is disingenuous. What is really behind this lawsuit is a desire to take advantage of some of the philosophical beliefs of some of the defendants in order to stifle the free speech of all pro-lifers.”
Miller, a theologian who teaches at Marquette University in Milwaukee, was dropped from the list of defendants this month. She guesses plaintiffs dismissed her because of her long stand against violence.
Because of the dismissal, Miller can answer inquiries from the press, while the 12 defendants who remain in court are under a gag order from Judge Robert Jones.
Miller, who was also dismissed from a 1989 case over the blocking a clinic entrance, contended that pro-lifers in general have been falsely portrayed by abortion rights groups.
“We are not saying that abortionists are going to like our posters,” she said. “They might have even been afraid that people are going to picket their houses. But that is constitutionally protected activity. Things will be very bad for the pro-life movement as a whole if the abortion providers prevail in this case. But if we are exonerated, we'll have new strength.”
Some of the defendants have refused to condemn the killing of abortion providers, a stand that attorneys for the plaintiffs have made the center of their case. Such beliefs make the posters and web site more ominous, the lawyers said.
During testimony Jan. 12, defendant Andrew Burnett of Portland began sobbing while wrestling with the question of justifiable killing. “I believe abortion kills a human being,” said Burnett, publisher of Life Advocate magazine. “I also believe, as most Americans do, that there's such a thing as justifiable homicide.”
Attorneys for the plaintiffs must show that a reasonable person would interpret the posters and web site as a true menace.
The court has already noted that there is no explicit threat in either communication, but is allowing the plaintiffs’ attorneys to try to convince the jury that the writings constitute an implied and genuine threat.
“I have never intended to threaten anyone with any poster I have put out,” coalition president David Crane said from the witness stand.
A 40-year-old with a short-trimmed beard and a tie designed as an American flag, Crane often looked to the jurors during testimony. He maintained composure under intense questioning by an attorney for the plaintiffs.
“We are committed to peaceful nonviolence,” Crane said. “We had people sign pledges.”
Despite his avowals, Crane and his coalition have been criticized by other pro-life groups for being too close to violence. Around the time the posters were published, one Colorado organizer began a campaign to discourage attendance at the coalition's protests.
Crane, Burnett, and others have signed petitions urging acquittal for those who have slain abortion doctors. But lawyers for the defendants argue that such acts of ideology do not create a threat in posters that mention only non-violent protest.
Plaintiffs also have testified, saying they feel like captives of fear.
Dr. Elizabeth Newhall, who appears on the “Deadly Dozen” list, told jurors she felt the risk to her life increased when the poster appeared. She began wearing a bullet- proof vest and wore wigs to disguise herself, she told the court.
“Suddenly, I feel real visible to individuals who might not be quite balanced,” said the doctor, who performs as many as 20 abortions each week at a clinic in Portland.
Others scheduled to testify include Crist and perhaps a physician who halted his abortion practice after his name appeared on a poster.
“This thing could punch a big hole in the First Amendment,” says Robert Destro, a professor of law at the Catholic University of America. “The trouble with cases like this is that any time you deal with unpopular speech, everybody always hates to side with people like that. Who likes to side with Larry Flynt? If you do, everybody says ‘You must be into pornography.’”
The First Amendment, Destro said, clearly prevents federal laws from “shutting off people's speech” no matter how disagreeable. Should the plaintiffs prevail, Destro predicted an overturning of the decision by a higher court.
“As a comparison, what you have now are pro-lifers getting characterized as crazed survivalists,” Destro said. “What are they going to do? Turn around and sue abortion-rights folks?”
The American Civil Liberties Union, which has usually rushed to the aid of those saying controversial things, is walking the line in this case.
“We are right in the middle on this one,” said David Fidanque, executive director of the ACLU in Oregon. “We are very concerned about the possible chilling effect this case could have on protected speech. But we're also concerned if the First Amendment is being used as a shield by people carrying out violence or making threats of violence.”
Fidanque filed a brief with the district court arguing that the plaintiffs should be held to a greater burden of proof. Instead of simply showing a reasonable appearance of threat, the brief says, attorneys should be required to prove that the prolife group intended to create harm.
“I think this case is pretty profound,” said Melody Rose, a political science professor at Portland State University and an expert in the politics of abortion. “We have fought for long on the abortion question over the physical presence of protesters at abortion clinics, but really this case is about the language of a social movement and the power of words and potential of physical violence.”
Rose argued that the call to violence is clear in the forms of communication the defendants chose to use.
“A wanted poster, in the context of American history, implies violence,” she said. “Those of us who watched westerns on TVas kids knew what the posters meant — wanted: dead or alive.”
Rose said she believed the case may progress to the Supreme Court. That will be good, she maintained, because the justices have long-needed to revisit the issue of words and their connection to violence.
Mainline pro-life organizations have found it hard to support the defendants because of the perceived connection to condoning violence. Oregon Right to Life refuses to comment, as does the Catholic Archdiocese of Portland.
In a related case, the owner of a Florida abortion clinic has sued CompuServe, claiming that abortion opponents used the Internet service to pursue and harass doctors and patients. The suit was filed Jan. 4 in federal court. Planned Parenthood in Oregon has been at the center of controversy lately mostly because of its urge to expand.
In Portland, the pro-choice organization for years referred its clients to other area abortion clinics. But in 1997, officials announced that abortions would be done in-house at one of Planned Parenthood's five Portland-area clinics.
That decision came less than a year after the chapter had experienced its first financial loss since 1991. Abortion foes, and even some competing abortion clinics, charged Planned Parenthood with making the change in order to boost revenue and gain a monopoly in the local abortion market. The organization also opened a clinic recently in the central Oregon town of Bend, prompting protest from many of the rural region's residents.
Ed Langlois writes from Portland, Oregon.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ed Langlois ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life ----- TITLE: Life Issues a Priority for Florida's Health Chief DATE: 01/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:TALLAHASEE, Fla.—The state's new health chief is making quality of life a top priority.
Newly elected Governor Jeb Bush appointed Robert Brooks MD as secretary of the state's Department of Health, knowing that Brooks’ top priority was improving the quality of health, safety, and life for citizens. To that end Brooks has already set an ambitious agenda for that goal.
“Some of the programs we want to see put into place are access to health care for all children, more preventive services, and more abstinence-based programs for children and adolescents,” he said. “Title V and funding for certain health care services have provided funds for those abstinence-based programs. It's a matter of educating children and adolescents, and I want to assure we cannot only make those programs effective, but also be able to expand them.”
Brooks said he was honored by Bush's appointment. “I'm excited to be working with Gov. Bush, who has already begun to turn his attention to issues of empowering the family,” he said.
Brooks, a Presbyterian, said he considers all life sacred.
“I have always voiced the opinion that all human life is very special, and that many ills in our society relate directly to the low self-esteem some people hold for the family and life itself,” he observed. “Human dignity transcends all stages of life.”
The secretary, a specialist in infectious diseases, was elected to the state House in 1994 and re-elected in 1996. In the House he sponsored a bill that would require all physicians seen by women considering an abortion to explain all the risks of the procedure to them.
The law was challenged immediately in a lower Florida court after its passage on April 29, 1997. The challenge was upheld in the 4th District Appeals Court, which ruled the law unconstitutional. It is now before the state Supreme Court.
In challenging the law, Barry Silver, a Boca Raton attorney and former legislator from that city, said, “I believe this law was a paternalistic, patronizing effort to force women to submit to state-sponsored, taxpayer-financed religious propaganda.”
But Brooks contended the law was a result of his desire “to respect human life and help protect all human life in Florida.”
Another area of his concern is end-oflife care. Brooks worked with Dr. Michael McCarron, head of the Respect Life office of the Florida Catholic Conference. They are preparing a book on life issues that would be available in doctors’ offices statewide to women and others.
Brooks served on a panel with McCarron on adequate care and living wills for the elderly. “What we want to see is an improvement in the existing statutes and to provide more Floridians with greater dignity and compassion at the end of their life,” he said.
All this was underscored by Bush in his inaugural speech when he stressed the dignity of the family and of all life.
One enthusiastic supporter of Brooks is Lauran Stroffolino, respect life coordinator for the Florida Catholic Conference. She pointed out Brooks’ sponsorship of the Women's Right to Know act (the one being challenged in the courts), as well as other important legislation dealing with women's health.
Stroffolino called Brooks “a highly intelligent man, one who is extremely principled and possesses the highest integrity.” She said she is confident the Women's Right to Know act will survive the court challenges, but added, “It seems the pro-abortion people don't want girls and women to know the facts and the risks about what abortion really is.
“Without [Brooks’] leadership, the bill might not have even been heard. Thanks to him, it became law.”
In the state House, Brooks served as chairman of the Elder Affairs and Long-Term Care Committee, the Health Care Committee, and others relating to the quality of life. He was honored by the Florida Hospices as the 1998 Hospice Hero and received the Legislation Appreciation Award from the Florida Life Care Resident's Association, also in 1998. Two years ago, he received the Friend of the Family Award from the Christian Coalition of Florida.
Jim Malerba writes from Hamden, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: James Malerba ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life ----- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 01/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:When opponents clash over abotion worldviews are at stake. qaIn his most recent encylical; Faith and Reason (46), Pope John Paul II traces the philosophical origins of the culture of death.
In the field of scientific research, a positivistic mentality took hold which not only abandoned the Christian vision of the world, but more especially rejected every appeal to a metaphysical or moral vision. It follows that certain scientists, lacking any ethical point of reference, are in danger of putting at the center of their concerns something other than the human person and the entirety of the person's life. Further still, some of these, sensing the opportunities of technological progress, seem to succumb not only to a marketbased logic, but also to the temptation of a quasi-divine power over nature and even over the human being.
As a result of the crisis of rationalism, what has appeared finally is nihilism. As a philosophy of nothingness it has a certain attraction for people of our time. Its adherents claim that the search is an end in itself, without any hope or possibility of ever attaining the goal of truth. In the nihilist interpretation, life is no more than an occasion for sensations and experiences in which the ephemeral has pride of place. Nihilism is at the root of the widespread mentality which claims that a definitive commitment would no longer be made because everything is fleeting and provisional.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life ----- TITLE: FACTS of LIFE DATE: 01/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:Though media, government, and popular culture forces increasingly treat homosexuality as a “normal” condition, the data suggest that the condition is psychologically devastating to teens. A recent study of public-school students cited by Family Research Council found that self-identified “gay” teens were:
• nine times more likely to have reported using alcohol on a daily basis;
• six times more likely to report having recently used cocaine than their heterosexual counterparts;
• 19 times more likely to report having used cocaine on 10 or more occasions per month;
• five times more likely to report having used other illegal drugs, including cocaine, 20 or more times in their lives;
• nearly seven times more likely to report ever having injected an illegal drug;
• 50% more likely than their heterosexual counterparts to have considered committing suicide.
(Family Research Council noted that Joseph Nicolosi, a licensed psychologist who specializes in gender identity research, distinguishes between homosexual and gay. Homosexual, says Nicolosi, is a psychological condition, nothing more. The word gay, he says, is a chosen sociopolitical identity of those who consider themselves part of an activist movement to normalize homosexuality in society.)
—Statistics from Anne H. Faulkner and Kevin Cranston, “Correlates of Same-Sex Sexual Behavior in a Random Sample of Massachusetts High School Students,” American Journal of Public Health (February 1998), page 264.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life ----- TITLE: U.S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 01/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:Truth in the “Age of Whatever”
“Whom can you trust? What is really real? These are religious questions for all of us and, according to … pop culture observers, the popularity of some television shows indicates they've struck a nerve.”
The report quoted Tom Beaudoin, author of a book on this subject, saying, “pop culture is the venue where spiritual questions are worked out. USA Today cited the quasi-spirituality in lyrics by Jewel and Alanis Morissette — as well as the ritualistic devotion of teens to celebrities — as evidence, but the article focused on two television shows.
It attributes the unexpected popularity of the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, to the fact that the show's title character, “really cares about her clothes and nails, but she accepts her social responsibility — even if it means being slimed by monsters.”
It says that Buffy, and TV's X-Files, “turn everyday issues into epic stories. Protagonists take charge of their lives, confront (mind-boggling) problems and deal. … The only thing that isn't negotiable is capital ‘T’ Truth. In the age of whatever, people seek something beyond themselves.”
False Attitude Hurts Vocations
The report said, “The Second Vatican Council, called to revitalize the Catholic Church, ended in 1965, the very year the priestly exodus began. It is more than coincidence. Until then, the Catholic priesthood possessed an almost magical quality, offering a young man the power to turn bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, to forgive sins, dispense the sacraments, and be the master of his parish. Priests wore distinctive clerical garb befitting their dignity.”
The article blamed a change in attitudes after the Council — attitudes, it should be noted, that the Council documents do not share — for a diminished view of religious life. Too often, these attitudes, “downplayed priesthood in favor of [service] and brought democracy into parish life. Increasingly, many Catholics politely disregard priestly counsel on birth control and avoid confession. Priests accustomed to offer Mass daily now celebrate only on Sundays, often in conjunction with others, and dress like laymen the rest of the week. In short, the magic has gone out of the profession. For many potential priests the benefits no longer seem worth the sacrifices.”
Efforts to increase vocations should seek to rekindle the “magic” of a robust faith, it suggested.
Star Quarterback Credits Faith
USA Today quoted him crediting his faith for his comeback on and off the field.
“I know that I am awake,” he is quoted saying. “Once in my life, I was spiritually dead, but now I'm alive. I have woken up. Although it's not hitting me, what's happening, I know God's hand is in it, so I'm thankful. And when the time comes to see the whole thing happening, it's awesome. But I am alive and know what's going on. I'm aware. I've been there, where I haven't been awake, where I was focused on the wrong thing. But now I'm focused on the right thing.”
His new focus? “I can be the worst or the best or stink up the place, but the Bible tells me I can do all things through Christ, not outside of him,” he told the paper.
He said that he has left behind the things that once filled his life: “pretty girls, cars, nice watches … all that stuff is going to pass away. The words in the Bible will never pass away.”
----- EXCERPT: Excerpts from selected publications ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ----- TITLE: Israel Gives High Honor to Catholic for Aiding Jews DATE: 01/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:BUDAPEST, Hungary—A Hungarian abbot is to become the highestranking Catholic Church leader honored by Israel for saving Jewish lives in World War II.
A Church spokesman welcomed the posthumous award as signaling a “new Catholic relationship” with Jews in the post-communist country, which would contribute to “international healing.”
The Israeli ambassador to Budapest, Joel Alom, said the Yad Vashem Memorial Institute had decided to give its Righteous Among Nations medal to Bishop Chrysostom Kelemen, the archabbot of Pannonhalma, for saving fugitive Jews during Hungary's wartime Nazi occupation.
He added that the medal would be handed over to the monastery's current archabbot, Bishop Asztrik Varseghi, at a Jan. 25 ceremony in Budapest's Academy of Sciences.
A still-living member of Pannonhalma's Benedictine community, Father Lajos Torba OSB is to be given the award at the same time.
“This honor is bestowed on gentiles who saved Jewish lives in the Holocaust at risk of their own,” the ambassador told the Register.
“Kelemen was in charge of Eastern Europe's most important Catholic monastery, built by Hungary's first Christian king; so this is clearly important for ties between our religions.”
Archabbot Kelemen, who headed the monastery in 1933-1957, was one of several Hungarian bishops who took steps to save Jews under the Nazi-allied Arrow Cross regime, although some Church leaders were also criticized for failing to speak out.
Half a million Hungarian Jews were deported to concentration camps under three wartime “Anti-Jewish Laws,” although the largest community in Budapest was spared mass round-ups.
In a Register interview, Pannonhalma's vicar-general, Father Gellert Bekes OSB said the award to Archabbot Kelemen was especially significant, since East European governments and Churches had been “particularly pressured” to accept Nazi anti-Jewish measures.
“Hungarian Catholics have made special efforts to create a new relationship with Jews,” Father Bekes continued.
“This honor is an important step forward in the latest worldwide move to build closer inter-faith ties.”
Archabbot Kelemen will be the most senior Catholic clergyman among 13,500 people from 33 nationalities honored by Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Institute, which was established to commemorate Holocaust victims by the Israeli Knesset in 1953. Pannonhalma's archabbot is traditionally considered second in the Hungarian Church hierarchy after the Archbishop of Esztergom.
In 1994, a retired Polish auxiliary, Bishop Albin Malysiak, was also awarded the “Righteous among Nations” medal, which is held posthumously by 17 Polish nuns and two priests, as well as by a Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest, Father Klemens Sheptycky.
Besides Archabbot Kelemen and Father Torba, the medal is also held by Margit Slachta, mother superior of the Hungarian Church's Social Mission Society, who was posthumously honored for defending Jews in Transylvania and informing the Vatican of anti-Jewish measures in neighboring countries.
Several Catholic priests from Western Europe have similarly been honored for saving Jews, including two Italian Salesians, Fathers Francesco Antonioli and Armando Alessandrini, who were given medals posthumously in 1997.
Speaking to the Register, Ambassador Alom said Pannonhalma, founded by Prince Geza in 996, was a “significant location” for improving Christian-Jewish ties, especially since the monastery was visited by the Pope during his 1996 Hungarian pilgrimage.
The monastery, whose main church was built by St. Stephen I in 1001, contains the birthplace of St. Martin of Tours, and has the status of a “territorial abbey,” directly linked to the Vatican. (Jonathan Luxmoore)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ----- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 01/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:Clinton's Foreign Policy Linked to African Wars
Said editorial page editor Mark Mitchell: “The U.S. didn't cause the war [between Congo and Rwanda], but a case can be made that the fighting has worsened partly because of President Clinton's incoherent foreign policy.”
He traced a brief history of troubles between the two nations, suggesting that signs of hope there were quashed when Clinton made intrusive remarks about the situation.
Despite a top administration official's claim that Clinton was not party to any talk of “recasting of borders in Rwanda,” Mitchell observed that, “Rwanda couldn't have asked for a clearer green light for its adventure in Congo.”
He concludes: “If peace is to be achieved in Central Africa, the U.S. should correct the errors of the Clinton visit last March and call greater attention to Rwanda's cupability in the conflict, pressure [aggressors] to clean up [their] act at home,” and hold the opposing parties accountable. (Staff)
End of Religious Schools Leads to Religious Revival
MONTREAL
Religious school boards were abolished July 1 by the new Parti Quebecois government and replaced with linguistic boards, the report said. Catholic schools, like all others, now function under the oversight of the linguistic boards, and have been guaranteed that they will continue in existence for only the next three years. No one knows what will happen after that.
When the change of school boards was made, the Quebec government required schools to provide three types of religious and moral instruction. “Each school must offer three choices, even if only one parent demands it: Catholic moral and religious instruction, Protestant moral and religious instruction, and moral instruction,” the report said.
Among the English speaking, 39.9% chose Catholic instruction, 42.6% chose Protestant instruction, and 15.2% chose moral instruction. Among the French speaking, 74% chose Catholic instruction.
One unexpected result: “There is a sudden backlog of children who have never been baptized or received first communion … who are now seeking it because they are enrolled in the new Catholic classes.” According to the Gazette, the previous neglect of the sacraments was a result of the fact that “80% of the parents who have chosen Catholic instruction for their children don't go to church themselves.”
The report also said that because many people ask whether “the state [should] be funding such a religious revival” it is likely that a government commission on education will recommend the removal of religion from schools altogether.
Another question the article raises is “how Quebec schools [can] accommodate the divergent religious practices of Jews, Sikhs, and other religious minorities.” (Staff)
----- EXCERPT: Excerpts from selected publications ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ----- TITLE: Family Advocates Convene Policy Conference for U.N. Diplomats DATE: 01/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:PROVO, Utah—International policy makers met this week for a four-day conference on family policy at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Diplomats and scholars from 25 nations convened at the World Family Policy Forum hosted by NGO Family Voice, a joint project of Brigham Young's J. Reuben Clark School of Law and the David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies.
Participants came from all regions of the world, and included Svein Ludvigsen of the Norwegian Parliament, Osman El-Hajje of the League of Arab States, Amany Fahmy of the Egyptian Mission to the U.N., Long Jiangwen of the All-China Women's Federation, Stefan Maier of the Romanian Embassy, and sixty others.
During the conference, which ended Jan. 15, 19 speakers addressed various aspects of the impact of national and international policies on families. The purpose of the conference was to provide policy makers with assistance in rebutting what many see as anti-family policies coming out of national governments, but most especially out of the United Nations.
In his address, Allan Carlson, president of the Howard Center for Family, Religion, and Society, said that in academe the assault on family may be slowing. Carlson reported on a 17-nation study published by the Journal on Marriage and the Family that demonstrates “perhaps the most sweeping and strongest evidence to date in support of the relationship between marital status and happiness.”
Making the case against samesex marriage, a hotly debated topic in the industrialized west, Hadley Arkes, Ney Professor of American Institutions at Amherst College, explained that if citizens forget the natural-law reasoning against samesex marriage, society is left defenseless against the arguments of homosexual lobbyists. Arkes said homosexual activists insist that “everything in the law is dependent merely on local opinion, and so even the laws of marriage are not grounded in anything in our nature.” Arkes, coauthor of the Defense of Marriage Act, a U.S. Congressional effort to defend traditional marriage, warned that homosexual activists have turned to the court system because they “cannot depend on legislatures, or on voters acting in referenda, to change the laws on marriage.”
Richard Wilkins, executive director of NGO Family Voice, said the purpose of the conference was “to gather together leading pro-family advocates and policymakers in one place where they can learn that the traditional family is not antique, not out of touch, unnatural or irrelevant.” Wilkins added that “we have spent three years going to U.N. meetings trying to stop anti-family policy. Instead of trying to plug up the old dike, pro-family advocates now intend to build a new one.” (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ----- TITLE: The Pope's Week DATE: 01/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:Audiences
Saturday, Jan. 9:
• Keizo Obuchi, prime minister of Japan, accompanied by his wife and entourage.
• Lucas Cardinal Moreira Neves and Bishop Cipriano Calderon Polo, president and vice-president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, respectively.
Monday, Jan. 11:
• Archbishop John Foley, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, with his secretary and undersecretary.
• Prelates from the Episcopal Conference of Bosnia-Herzegovina in individual audiences on their ad limina visits:
• Vinko Cardinal Puljic, archbishop of Sarajevo, accompanied by his auxiliary, Bishop Pero Sudar.
• Bishop Franjo Komarica of Banja Luka.
• Bishop Ratno Peric of Mostar-Duvno, apostolic administrator of Trebinje-Mrkan.
Thursday, Jan. 14:
• Archbishop Louis-Marie Bille, of Lyon, president of the Conference of Bishops of France, with his vice president, and secretary-general.
• Archbishop Giuseppe Lazzarotto, apostolic nuncio in Jordan and Iraq.
Friday, Jan. 15:
• Archbishop Julian Barrio Barrio of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, with his entourage.
• Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, archbishop of Vienna, Austria.
• Archbishop Jozef Miroslaw Zycinski of Lublin, Poland.
Other activities
Saturday, Jan. 9:
• Appointed Archbishop Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne of Ayacucho, as metropolitan archbishop of Lima, Peru.
• Appointed Msgr. Raffaello Martinelli, Father Antonio Manna SSP, and Father Giancarlo Parenti SDB, as heads of office at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Wednesday, Jan. 13:
• Appointed Bishop Jose Antonio Aparecido Tosi Marques as metropolitan archbishop of Fortaleza, Brazil.
• Appointed Archbishop Geraldo Majella Agnelo as metropolitan archbishop of Sao Salvador da Bahia, Brazil.
• Appointed Bishop Jose Palma as bishop of Calbayog, the Philippines.
• Appointed Bishop Gerard-Joseph Deschamps as bishop of Bereina, Papua New Guinea.
• Appointed Bishop Gilles Cote as bishop of Daru-Kiunga, Papua New Guinea.
• Appointed Father Buti Joseph Tlhagale OMI as metropolitan archbishop of Bloemfontein, South Africa.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ----- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 01/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:A Four-Time Pilgrim to Our Lady of Guadalupe
A recent AP report noted that the Holy Father's planned visit to Mexico this week will be his fourth, and perhaps most significant, pilgrimage there.
The report said that some hope the Pope will canonize Blessed Juan Diego, on whose cloak an image of the Blessed Mother mysteriously appeared in 1531. The same cloak, with no signs of serious deterioration, is still on display at the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Tepeyac. But the AP also noted that the Vatican has not yet ruled on a last necessary miracle attributed to Juan Diego.
The report included these facts about the image and the Pope:
• John Paul II became the first pope to visit the shrine in 1979.
• He beatified Juan Diego in 1990, when he visited the shrine a second time.
• In 1992, the Holy Father dedicated a shrine in St. Peter's Basilica to Our Lady of Guadalupe, “placing her image next to the tomb of the first Pope.”
Chinese Invited to Rome's Jubilee Celebrations
The mayor of Rome says he hopes that his invitation to Chinese Catholics to participate in Rome's Jubilee celebrations might change that, according to French news reports.
If China were to allow its Catholics to participate, it could “open some doors that today are closed,” Francesco Rutelli told reporters at a recent news conference, according to the report. He said that the Vatican is in favor of the visit, also.
“My city and the Holy See would appreciate very much the possibility of some people coming to the millennium and Jubilee celebrations from the Catholic community in China,” he said.
The report noted that the mayor has met with Beijing Mayor Jia Ginglin, and that he is scheduled to meet with China's Deputy Prime Minister Quian Qichen.
----- EXCERPT: Excerpts from selected publications ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ----- TITLE: PERSPECTIVE DATE: 01/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:Pope John Paul II, who meets briefly with President Clinton this week in a St. Louis airport, has made no public comment on the impeachment and Senate trial of the president. Nor should he be expected to. However, he has made detailed comments on the moral underpinnings of the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, and these teach two relevant lessons.
First, they are a warning. If Americans choose to reject, or reformulate, the fundamental codes of morality, the Pope says, then its democratic system is doomed. But second, they are words of praise: The Pope's words teach us to take great pride in being Americans. He tells us why our founding documents have proven themselves strong enough — two and a quarter centuries after being written — to compel leaders to follow them.
First, the warning. In October 1995 remarks in Baltimore, the Holy Father said, “If an attitude of skepticism were to succeed in calling into question even the fundamental principles of the moral law, the democratic system itself would be shaken in its foundations.”
He could be describing America today. Just such an attitude of moral relativism, already rampant, has been made worse by the spectacle of the highest law enforcement officer in the land twisting and dodging laws for his own benefit. From student council members to at-risk children, the president has become a model to young people eager to hide from the consequences of their actions (see story, Page 1).
But the Holy Father immediately followed his warning with words of praise. “The United States possesses a great bulwark against this happening. I speak of your founding documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. These documents are grounded in and embody unchanging principles of the natural law whose permanent truth and validity can be known by reason, for it is the law written by God in human hearts.”
Indeed, from this perspective, we can be proud of what this “great bulwark” has done in Washington. The U.S. Constitution is the one and only reason Bill Clinton finds himself where he is today: an impeached president facing a Senate sworn to administer “impartial justice” in a trial over his removal from office.
Shortly after November's election, when the poor showing of Republicans caused the speaker of the House to resign, when the president's poll ratings waxed and Congress’ waned, the conventional wisdom was that the last thing anybody would want to do was impeach Clinton.
But Chairman Henry Hyde of the House Judiciary Committee insisted that, on his watch, the Constitution would be respected. And so began a process that dragged a majority in the House to the inevitable conclusion that, despite his popularity, a president's perjury and obstruction of justice were impeachable. Now, senators, too, are caught by the irresistible force of the Constitution compelling them, despite themselves, to apply justice.
The Pope, as always, saw the heart of the matter: The moral principles of our founding documents have been a formidable, decisive force for justice.
But let us return to his warning. As the Holy Father pointed out, the “rule of law” — to use the buzzword popular on both sides of the impeachment debate — has a second, deeper, meaning for Americans. He spoke to this topic more explicitly at the 1993 Denver World Youth Day: “When the founding fathers of this great nation enshrined certain inalienable rights in the Constitution … they did so because they recognized the existence of a ‘law’ — a series of rights and duties — engraved by the Creator in each person's heart and conscience.”
For Americans, the “rule of law” is important not because we must protect the integrity of the Constitution, but because the Constitution was meant to protect the integrity of the natural law, the “laws of nature and of nature's God,” to quote the Declaration of Independence.
It is this — America's acceptance of its fundamental moral character — that is in jeopardy if our senators allow our president to escape the consequences of his actions while the world watches.
For, in the end, if our constitutional order is nothing more than an expedient in the pursuit of prosperity, than it is probably foolish to remove a popular president in a time of record stock market highs. But if our constitutional order is meant to protect the moral integrity of the rights and responsibilities with which we were each “endowed by our Creator,” then that president must resign or be removed.
This is the only way to make the lesson of the scandalous conduct of Clinton bear good fruit for our children: by using it to teach them what they must never do.
After all, in Denver, the Holy Father also said: “Only by instilling a high moral vision can a society ensure that its young people are given the possibility to mature as free and intelligent human beings, endowed with a robust sense of responsibility to the common good, capable of working with others to create a community and a nation with a strong moral fiber.”
The Holy Father's remarks, apparently, were not heeded at the time they were given. They were addressed to the president in Denver as part of a brief airport meeting. For the sake of our nation, let them be heeded now.
Tom Hoopes writes from Falls Church, Virginia.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Tom Hoopes ----- KEYWORDS: News ----- TITLE: A New Take on JFK and Vietnam DATE: 01/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:New material has emerged over the last two years that provides us with a clearer picture of America's disastrous intervention in Southeast Asia. Recently declassified documents reveal that just six weeks prior to his assassination, President John F. Kennedy had directed General Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to draft an order which reads, “All planning will be directed towards preparing Republic of Vietnam forces for the withdrawal of all U.S. special forces units and personnel by the end of the calendar year 1965.”
Kennedy had apparently been convinced not to widen the scope of the war using American troops and was waiting until his expected re-election in 1964 before making the plan public. The president also expressed his remorse over his untimely decision to approve the U.S.-backed coup in 1963 which led to the death of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem.
In The Year of the Hare, Francis Winters provides crucial evidence that a small working group assumed control of Asia policy and launched the operation for the overthrow and brutal assassination of Diem. The book argues that this decision unfolded into a type of Shakespearean tragedy for both countries. Most policy analysts and historians are now convinced the ouster of Diem was a disastrous mistake which facilitated the communist takeover. In the words of historian Ellen Hammer, “the Vietnamese will to fight seems to have died with Diem.”
The Vietnamese turned out to be a fiercely nationalistic people with strong cultural traditions and a history of resistance to colonialism. Diem was a member of the Catholic minority of approximately 20% of the population with the rest predominantly Buddhists. Diem's nationalism and moral conservatism created a cultural clash with the American foreign service bureaucrats and professional journalists. The latter had contempt for Diem who they characterized as a backward “mandarin” illiterate in the ways of democracy and pluralism. Winters comments, “for South Vietnam in the midst of a raging civil war and communist- backed insurgency, Western-style political institutions were as yet nowhere on the horizon.”
Using the protests of a handful of anti-Diem radical Buddhists, the American media helped to create the popular impression that South Vietnam was undergoing a massive anti-government upsurge. The New York Times defined the issue as “religious discrimination, a Catholic Government repressing an overwhelmingly Buddhist population.”
By August 1963 a Times editorial was forecasting certain doom:
“The crisis in South Vietnam is rooted in the oppressively dictatorial character of the Ngo family government and its widespread unpopularity. … If stiff-necked President Diem and the power-intoxicated members of his family had acted promptly to redress justified Buddhist grievances and carry out long-needed general reforms, dangerous repercussions might have been avoided.”
Those types of assertions were both misinformed and prejudiced. The Saigon administration was widely supported in Vietnam's villages and hamlets while its opponents were the urban elites who had backed French colonialism. The conflict was set to explode. Professor Winters points to JFK's vanity and suggests he was unprepared for the incredible pressures and demands of his job as chief executive. His foreign policy “experts” only made the situation worse. An inner circle led by U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Averell Harriman, McGeorge Bundy, and George Ball believed that Diem was the chief obstacle to a successful war effort and they suppressed opposition from the CIA, the Army, and even Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.
Upon his arrival in Vietnam, Winters reports, Lodge ignored explicit instructions from Kennedy to engage in a dialogue with Diem. Instead, he “sought to escape control by Kennedy in this crisis.” The ambassador displayed his insubordination in a cable to the White House:
“We are launched on a course from which there is no respectable turning back: The overthrow of the Diem government … there is no possibility, in my view, that the war can be won under a Diem administration, still less that Diem or any member of the family can govern the country in a way to gain the support of the people who count.”
Lodge's neo-colonialism is conveyed in this statement over the Voice of America radio:
“The question clearly arises as to whether the United States will not have to move into a position of actual control. This time has clearly not arrived yet, but it may be approaching. Whether it means that we will have a High Commissioner or a Commissioner General, or a man who really gives the orders under the title of ambassador, will have to be determined in the light of circumstances as they develop.”
Kennedy, whose indecisiveness had led to the murder of Diem that he lamented, was himself gunned down in Dallas only three weeks after the coup. Lyndon Johnson, to his credit, had voiced strident opposition to Diem's overthrow. Soon after assuming the presidency, he reversed Kennedy's orders and authorized a major buildup of American troops—thus the dreadful saga that shaped the 1960s was under way.
In his 1,000-page study of the war, Joseph Buttinger concedes that the Saigon government enjoyed wide popular support. Although a critic of Diem, he concludes that Diem “was the only outstanding leader in the anti-communist camp.” Much of the present day Anglo-American leadership agrees with Buttinger, a chorus which includes McNamara as well as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Writing in Robert Kennedy and His Times, historian Arthur Schlesinger disclosed that Diem had opened up a back channel to North Vietnam's communist chief Ho Chi Minh. Kennedy believed a negotiated peace was also the best way out of his Asian quandary. He was unable or unwilling, however, to take charge of his subordinates and therefore could not encourage Diem to pursue peace. A neutral and non-communist South Vietnam was seen as a threat rather than a blessing.
While Winter's analysis of the Vietnam episode is not the best known nor the most widely promoted, it adds new and interesting information to a muchdebated period of American history.
David Peterson writes from Chicago.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: David Peterson ----- KEYWORDS: Books ----- TITLE: The Jordan River Revisited DATE: 01/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:Edward Sri, professor of theology at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kan., writes: “The Jordan River valley was much more than a desolate wilderness. It was the very place where they expected God to do great things again for Israel. And this makes all the difference for understanding the mission of John the Baptist and his fateful encounter with Jesus at that river.
“The Jews knew that great things happened at the Jordan River. This is the place where the prophet Elisha cured the Syrian King Naaman of his leprosy (2 Kings 6:1-10). This is where the prophet Elijah was taken up into heaven in a fiery chariot (2 Kings 2:1-10). But most of all, this river would bring to mind the most important event in Israel's history—the Exodus.… The climax of this drama comes when Joshua led the Israelites across the Jordan River and into the land God had promised them. It was then that Israel began its life anew as a nation in the land of Canaan.
“This is why John the Baptist called the people out into the wilderness to be baptized in the Jordan. Such an action would signal the beginning of all that the Jews had been hoping for.… Just like their ancestors, the Jews following John the Baptist went out into the wilderness, passed through the Jordan and reentered the Promised Land. And they came out on the other side with all their hopes for a fresh start—hopes for freedom, this time not from the Egyptians but from their current oppressors, the Romans.
“It might seem odd that Matthew uses more words telling us about the type of clothes John the Baptist was wearing than he does telling us about the content of John's message. However, anyone familiar with the Old Testament would find great significance in John's being garbed in camel's hair and a leather girdle around his waist—for this is exactly what the great prophet Elijah was known for wearing (cf. 2 Kings 1:8).
“This was significant because the Jews had been waiting for Elijah's return … consider the very last prophetic words addressed to Israel in the Old Testament. Malachi was the last prophet sent to Israel, and in his final prophetic utterance, he said Elijah would in some way return to Israel before the time of the Messiah (cf. 1 Mal. 4:5).
“Thus, when John began his ministry dressed with Elijah-styled camel's hair and leather girdle, this signaled to the Jews that he was playing the part of the returned Elijah. Indeed, Jesus Himself later recognized this, saying ‘For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John; and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come’ (Mt. 11:13-14).
“The most striking parallel is the fact that both John and Elijah prepared the way for prophets with even greater ministries than their own. Before Elijah was taken up to heaven, he gave his successor, Elisha, a double portion of his spirit (2 Kings 2:9, 15). … Elisha then went on to do even greater things than his predecessor Elijah had done. For example, Elisha miraculously cleansed a leper (2 Kings 5:1-19), raised a child from the dead (2 Kings 4:32-38), and multiplied barley loaves to feed a crowd (2 Kings 4:42-44).
“All this, of course, prefigures John the Baptist and Jesus. … What is most significant is the place where Elijah passed on his prophetic mission to Elisha: the Jordan River (2 Kings 2:6-14).
“The word messiah (“anointed one” in Hebrew) was often used in the Old Testament to describe the Davidic king who was anointed with oil as he assumed his royal office. The Jews also used the word ‘messiah’ to designate the future anointed king who would carry out the new exodus and restore the Davidic kingdom.
“The Spirit's descending on Jesus calls to mind how the Spirit fell upon the Jewish kings of the Old Testament when they were anointed. … In fact, the prophet Isaiah foretold how the messianic son of David would receive the Spirit upon him as a source of wisdom, understanding, counsel, and might (Is. 11:2). So the Spirit's coming upon Jesus at the Jordan could be seen as a royal event recalling the anointing of Israel's great kings, including the Messiah. … What is significant for us is to see that this coming of the Spirit upon Jesus is Jesus’ anointing. Isaiah himself specifically described the Servant's reception of the Spirit as an anointing: ‘The Spirit of the LORD God is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me’ (Is. 61:1). And this is how Peter eventually interpreted Jesus’ baptism, saying ‘God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power’ (Acts 10:38).”
Ellen Wilson Fielding writes from Davidsonville, Maryland.
A condensed version, in the words of the original author, of an article selected by the Register from the nation's top journals.
----- EXCERPT: Precursors to Christ as Jubilee Approaches ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding ----- KEYWORDS: News ----- TITLE: LETTERS DATE: 01/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:In Defense of Dartmouth College
I have no idea what area of expertise is enjoyed by the “rector of the general directorate of the Legionaries of Christ in Rome.” Clearly, however, it does not include the ability to leap across oceans and bound over small hills to discern what is going on at Dartmouth College in little old Hanover, New Hampshire, USA. Unfortunately, this did not deter the rector from demonstrating his ignorance in his “Perspective” piece, “C.S. Lewis Falls Prey to Dartmouth's PC Police,” which you chose to publish (Register, Dec. 20-26).
Although the rector of the general directorate seems quite pleased with his cleverness in slaying straw dragons of his own creation, he fails the reality test. Would it be too much to ask that, next time, he (and you) make an attempt to ascertain the facts before huffing and puffing in your publication? Meanwhile, this time, the rector of the general directorate of the Legionaries of Christ in Rome should review number 2477 of The Catechism of the Catholic Church, and then issue a public apology to Dartmouth College and to Dean Scott Brown.
Although Pope John Paul II has apologized for the actions of the Crusaders of old, the Campus Crusaders of today (and the Gideons) may take comfort that they have little to fear while the redoubtable rector of the general directorate of the Legionaries of Christ in Rome is on duty. Roman Catholics, however, would be well advised to be vigilant.
(Rev.) John P. McHugh OFM Cap, PhD Chaplain/Director Catholic Student Center at Dartmouth
Fr. Williams responds
I was delighted to learn that one of Dartmouth's chaplains, Rev. John P. McHugh, had replied to my editorial piece. I had heard that Rev. McHugh was in agreement with Dartmouth's actions regarding Mere Christianity, and I looked forward to a thoughtful, reasoned explanation of his position. My hopes were dashed, however, when I finally read his letter to the editor.
I scoured his letter for evidence of how my multiple information sources had all betrayed me, but in vain. Rev. McHugh neglects to mention a single example of how my essay fails the reality test. It would seem that he is vexed, not because my piece contained any factual errors, but simply because he concurs with Dartmouth's decision.
Rev. McHugh's comparison between the Crusaders of the Middle Ages and today's Campus Crusaders for Christ seems inappropriate. As Dartmouth's chaplain is surely aware, Pope John Paul apologized for the Crusaders’ recourse to violence as a means of spreading the Gospel. To place book-giving in the same category as Moor-slaying requires a prodigious stretch of the imagination.
To Rev. McHugh's one substantive argument — that I am unable to leap across oceans and bound over hills — I can only plead guilty as charged.
Fr. Thomas D. Williams LC Rome
Letters to the Editor National Catholic Register 33 Rossotto Drive Hamden, 33 06514
Fax: (203) 288-5157; e-mail: editor@ncregister.com
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion ----- TITLE: A Political Predicament About a Moral Question DATE: 01/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:As the Senate trial of the president begins, a number of senators give the impression they wish this case would vanish into thin air. On the one hand, polls show a popular president, an indifferent public, and presidential pretenders for 2000 sniffing the political air. On the other hand, the House has handed the Senate an impeachment case against the president that they must address. That means one thing: They will have to vote and have that vote recorded for history. Voters will remember what they do. One gets the feeling that many senators have little gusto for the task at hand.
Both parties are in a political predicament a little out of the ordinary. Both are vying to define the issues and stake out the moral high ground. They know what “high ground” looks like but are having difficulty with the “moral” part. In business and in the military, dealing with the moral question of lying about sex is much clearer. CEOs and generals are dismissed. With this case even agreement on definitions of sex and lying is hard to find. Political spin and artful dodging are clouding the interpretation of the facts of President Clinton lying about sex. Each party tells a different story and claims it is the truth. And so another episode in the culture war begins.
The cultural divide this time is not easily described as just liberal or conservative. The apparent dilemma for senators is deciding the political and legal punishment for actions taken by a president that are morally wrong and evade any political fallout for their position. The real problem they face is not political. It is discerning an obvious moral truth: that lying under oath is morally wrong and under the law requires an appropriate response. Lying by a president cannot be condoned because it undermines his authority and credibility at home and abroad. We all have an obligation to seek moral truth and then to adhere to it. To pretend lying has no consequences would make us moral relativists.
The Democrats are in the awkward position of almost unanimously defending a president who has broken the law, was impeached in the House, and refuses to admit that he has committed perjury. They claim Republicans will pay a price for their partisan action that goes against the wishes of the people. Republicans do not support Clinton's actions, want to see a trial with witnesses in the Senate, and, with some difference of opinion, think his crimes deserve removal from office.
It seems to me that the Democrats are in the more uncomfortable position of hoping to acquit a man who has deceived the country. As Irving Kristol put it, “The Republicans are committing political suicide. The Democrats are committing moral suicide.”
Kristol has a good point. In the end, and with the passage of time, the moral dimension of defending a corrupt president will not help the Democrats. Their main argument seems to avoid the moral dimension of the president's actions. They argue that the economy is doing well, the people like him, and his mistakes were private. He is doing the professional work of being president and the unsavory part of his private life is unfortunate. What's your problem? They have decided that hanging in with a popular president will have more political benefits than making a decision against him. They are redefining moral truth by saying lying under oath is merely a question of private sex for which he has asked forgiveness. This is moral suicide with far-reaching consequences.
The problem of character has plagued this president from the beginning of his first term. Now he wants to inflict this problem on his own party. The nine-month lie that caused the impeachment case against him, about his sexual relationship with a young intern, has revealed his breezy attitude toward the truth. His deportment since impeachment shows a remarkable lack of gravitas. He is a liability as president. Diplomats and nations cannot trust his word. Democrats make a mistake ignoring the weight of the moral question at the heart of the impeachment decision, whining about the impasse the Republicans have imposed on them. Clinton's actions are the source of all this trouble. Dismissing the moral question instead of facing up to it is hurting the country, especially the young. It is in the interest of both parties to pursue a fair and honest airing of the facts.
As the trial goes forward we can hope that senators will overcome their faintheartedness and at the very least try to find the truth and act on it.
Mary Ellen Bork, a board member for the Catholic Campaign for America and the Institute for Religion in Democracy, writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mary Ellen Bork ----- KEYWORDS: News ----- TITLE: A Free Society With Liberty And Justice For All DATE: 01/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:Pope John Paul II offered these remarks Dec. 16, 1997, when he received the credentials of Lindy Boggs as U.S. ambassador to the Holy See. He spoke about the moral underpinnings that exist at the very core of America's founding. As the Senate trial of the president begins, the remarks bear re-reading. The complete text follows:
It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to the Vatican for presentation of the Letters of Credence by which you are appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Holy See. I am grateful for the greetings which you convey from President Clinton, and I reciprocate with good wishes to him and the American people.
You represent a nation that plays a crucial role in world events today. The United States carries a weighty and far-reaching responsibility, not only for the well-being of its own people, but for the development and destiny of peoples throughout the world. With a deep sense of participation in the joys and hopes, the sorrows, anxieties, and aspirations of the entire human family, the Holy See is a willing partner in every effort to build a world of genuine peace and justice for all, I am certain that, following upon the good work of your predecessors, you will apply your many personal talents and your long experience of public life to strengthening understanding and cooperation between us.
The Founding Fathers of the United Sates asserted their claim to freedom and independence on the basis of certain “self-evident” truths about the human person: truths which could be discerned in human nature, built into it by “nature's God.” Thus they meant to bring into being, not just an independent territory, but a great experiment in what George Washington called “ordered liberty:” an experiment in which men and women would enjoy equality of rights and opportunities in the pursuit of happiness and in service to the common good. Reading the founding documents of the United Sates, one has to be impressed by the concept of freedom they enshrine: a freedom designed to enable people to fulfill their duties and responsibilities toward the family and toward the common good of the community. Their authors clearly understood that there could be no true freedom without moral responsibility and accountability, and no happiness without respect and support for the natural units or groupings through which people exist, develop, and seek the higher purposes of life in concert with others.
The American democratic experiment has been successful in many ways. Millions of people around the world look to the United States as a model in their search for freedom, dignity, and prosperity. But the continuing success of American democracy depends on the degree to which each new generation, native-born and immigrant, makes its own the moral truths on which the Founding Fathers staked the future of your republic. Their commitment to build a free society with liberty and justice for all must be constantly renewed if the United States is to fulfill the destiny to which the Founders pledged their “lives … fortunes … and sacred honor.”
I am happy to take note of your words confirming the importance that your government attaches, in its relations with countries around the world, to the promotion of human rights and particularly to the fundamental human right of religious freedom, which is the guarantee of every other human right. Respect for religious conviction played no small part in the birth and early development of the United States. Thus John Dickinson, chairman of the Committee for the Declaration of Independence, said in 1776: “Our liberties do not come from charters; for these are only the declaration of pre-existing rights. They do not depend on parchments or seals; but come from the King of Kings and the Lord of all the earth.” Indeed it may be asked whether the American democratic experiment would have been possible, or how well it will succeed in the future, without a deeply rooted vision of divine providence over the individual and over the fate of nations.
As the year 2000 draws near and Christians prepare to celebrate the bi-millennium of the birth of Christ, I have appealed for a serious examination of conscience regarding the shadows that darken our times. Nations and states too can make this a time of reflection on the spiritual and moral conditions of their success in promoting the integral good of their people. It would truly be a sad thing if the religious and moral convictions upon which the American experiment was founded could now somehow be considered a danger to free society, such that those who would bring these convictions to bear upon your nation's public life would be denied a voice in debating and resolving issues of public policy. The original separation of church and state in the United States was certainly not an effort to ban all religious conviction from the public sphere, a kind of banishment of God from civil society. Indeed, the vast majority of Americans, regardless of their religious persuasion, are convinced that religious conviction and religiously informed moral argument have a vital role in public life.
No expression of today's commitment to liberty and justice for all can be more basic than the protection afforded to those in society who are most vulnerable. The United States of America was founded on the conviction that an inalienable right to life was a self-evident moral truth, fidelity to which was a primary criterion of social justice. The moral history of your country is the story of your people's efforts to widen the circle of inclusion in society, so that all Americans might enjoy the protection of law, participate in the responsibilities of citizenship, and have the opportunity to make a contribution to the common good.
Whenever a certain category of people — the unborn or the sick and old — are excluded from that protection, a deadly anarchy subverts the original understanding of justice. The credibility of the United States will depend more and more on its promotion of a genuine culture of life, and on a renewed commitment to building a world in which the weakest and most vulnerable are welcomed and protected.
As they have done throughout your country's history, the Catholic people in the United States will continue to make an important contribution to the development of American culture and society. The recently completed Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for America has highlighted the range and variety of activity which Catholics, out of commitment to Christ, undertake for the betterment of society. May this transforming and elevating work continue to flourish for the good of individuals, the strengthening of families, and the benefit of the American people as a whole.
Your Excellency, these are some of the thoughts prompted by your presence here as your country's diplomatic representative. These reflections evoke a prayer: that your country will experience a new birth of freedom, freedom grounded in truth and ordered to goodness. Thus will the American people be able to harness their boundless spiritual energy in service of the genuine good of all humanity. Be assured that the various Offices of the Holy See will be ready to assist you in the fulfillment of your mission. Upon you and upon the people of the United Sates of America I cordially invoke abundant divine blessings.
----- EXCERPT: The Pope Prays that American will experience a new birth of freedom ordered to goodness ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ----- TITLE: An Open Letter to the American Media DATE: 01/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:This week the faithful — and the media — will be on hand to greet Pope John Paul II in St. Louis.
One year ago the U.S. media, including the major TV network anchors, were set up in Havana awaiting the arrival of the Holy Father in Cuba to meet the last —save China — of the Communist dictators in what promised to be yet another story of the decade. The philosophical/political/spiritual genius Pope was to meet Fidel Castro, whose island nation was showing the squalor of almost 40 years of the failed ideology, and a desperate flock a generation away from its Catholic roots. The Pope stood triumphant over the ashes of Communism and the ghost of Stalin who sneered 50 years previously, “The Pope! How many divisions does he have?” But the media had its priorities. Another brand of squalor beckoned.
In the West, elites had tried desperately to prove the Church “irrelevant” while promoting more “enlightened” views that always seemed to come back to sex. This doomed ideology was reaching its zenith (or nadir) in a sexual scandal involving the President of the United States and a staff intern in her early twenties. The U.S. media giants were summoned en masse back to Washington. Even they seemed disappointed, but again, there were priorities.
In the last three decades, conflict in the Church has become the sole criterion for secular news coverage of the Catholic Church. There is a story there, but it gets blown out of proportion almost to the exclusion of any other news about the Church. “Expert commentators” are almost invariably drawn from the ranks of theological dissenters. This is insulting to Catholics, and has become a clichéd, stock response. It is unjust, contrived, hackneyed, and dull.
Having been a diocesan spokesman, I have been repeatedly interviewed and asked about the usual “hot button” issues of Catholicism. I gave clear, concise responses on the Church's reasoning. Frequently, the interviewer and crew raised their eyebrows and said off camera, “I never thought of it that way. That makes sense.” Yet, when the final product aired on the evening news, the clarifying points were nowhere to be found. Comments were selected out of context and placed into the context of the reporter's agenda. Not to inform or clarify, but to strengthen the reporter's bias on the Church.
This effort to enforce negative stereotypes of Catholics has grown into a form of bigotry. It avoids the higher responsibility (and harder work) of journalism to educate and inform, and opts instead to fan the flames of conflict, because conflict sells.
The endlessly repeated “divided flock” angle, at every papal visit, is tiresome and inaccurate. World Youth Day in Denver, in 1993, for example, was an outpouring not only of love for the pope personally, but also an outpouring of fidelity to the Church and her teachings and especially to the controversial teachings.
The media went with the preconceived notion that young people automatically “disagree” with the pope's message, when in fact they hunger for it. Time and again interviewers were framing questions to young people to get them to say what they wanted (and expected) them to say. To find young people who “disagreed” with the pope, reporters finally turned to dissident theology professors to produce students coached in the party line.
Frances Kissling and her tiny but well-publicized organization, “Catholics for a Free Choice” — repudiated by the U.S. bishops are offered as a reasonable counter-balance to the hundreds of thousands of loyal Catholics who flock to see the pope despite rain, wind, considerable discomfort — and who wouldn't miss it for the world.
This pope survived the Nazis (while risking his life to save Jews), then as priest and bishop witnessed tyranny and injustice suffered by his people as he led them in nonviolent resistance, and then, as pope, smiled and stared down Communism until it blinked and fell apart. To hear him called “oppressive” by bourgeois American Catholic academics and religious on a media soapbox insults the intelligence.
The story seldom heard is that of millions of Americans who have shipwrecked their lives by buying into the cult of self and the Culture of Death, but who have come to recognize the truth the pope speaks, and love him for it. These Catholics have fallen in love with Christ, the Church, and the pope and seen that even the socalled “hard teachings” are part of a coherent vision of love and life that heals and feeds the wounded soul. They have been touched by a love that overcomes the angry demand for “my rights” and “what I want” and respond with, “Let it be done to me according to thy Word.”
The Church cannot change this Word to fit political, social, or intellectual trends. As a result, she has outlasted every system that has come against her. Opinion polls are irrelevant. But the happy fact is that the truth does draw hungry crowds. The greatest danger for the Church is infidelity to her Lord, not the myriad “disasters” threatened if the Church does not “change.” It all started with a manger and a cross. The Church will only grow stronger.
John Paul II is the only clear voice of moral authority on the world stage. He is a prophet. Those who recognize truth and integrity recognize his authenticity. Prophets do not tell us what we want to hear, but still, something in us must respond to them — either with the anger, resentment and hatred that flows from a repressed conscience, or the respect, gratitude and love that issues from the soul who knows that the word that pricks the conscience is the word of love — the Word of God. In John Paul II the man and the message are one. That he remains so attractive in this culture despite his counter-cultural message is indicative of a deep hunger for truth and integrity abroad in the land today.
So there is hope. In the ensuing year since the American media moguls called their top talent out of Cuba, where the Moral Giant met the lonely tyrant, to cover the tawdry sex scandal emerging in Washington, D.C. (pushing the city's solemn January 22 commemoration of 25 years of legal abortion even further off the page), the scandal has grown to where even the most seasoned media professionals hang their heads in embarrassment and shame at what they are reporting. Perhaps now, when Pope John Paul II visits St. Louis they will be ready — even longing — to hear and report Good News.
John Mallon is Contributing Editor to Inside the Vatican magazine.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Mallon ----- KEYWORDS: News ----- TITLE: A Gem in Poland DATE: 01/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:Lying between two beautiful lakes in the deeply forested area of northern Poland is the renowned sanctuary of Swieta Lipka, one of the country's most prominent places of pilgrimage. It is home to world-famous art and an illustrious organ that features angels who sway with the instrumentís powerful tones.
The legendary origin of the shrine dates back several centuries. According to the story, a falsely accused prisoner from the nearby village of Ketrzyn had been sentenced to death. With little hope left, the inmate began praying fervently for a miracle that would prove his innocence. Suddenly, the Virgin Mary appeared and presented the prisoner with a tree trunk out of which to carve her image.
The next day, as the guards presented the incarcerated man before a panel of judges, the inmate presented the resulting sculpture. The officials were so awestruck by the image that they took it to be a sign from heaven and gave the condemned man his freedom. On his way home, the newly liberated man followed the Virgin's instructions and placed the miraculous statue on the first lime tree he encountered. The result: the first wayside shrine in Swieta Lipka.
Miracles immediately began to be reported by the villagers who stopped by the tree and prayed before the image. The first chapel at the site was erected in the early part of the 14th century. With the shrine's growing fame, the Society of Jesus arrived in 1631 to take responsibility for the spiritual care of pilgrims.
The original chapel was replaced in 1693 with a large shrine attached to the Jesuits’ cloister. The best artists from the area were hired and the result was a fantastic interior of frescoes and paintings — many of which included trompe l'oeil images. At the center of the church they placed a stone sculpture of the Holy Lime Tree with a statue of the Virgin Mary above it. The sculpture is said to rest on the spot where the legendary tree once stood. The shrine's most famous possession is its lavishly ornate 5,000- pipe organ that is topped by moving statuary.
Today, Swieta Lipka continues to attract visitors from around the world for its art, architecture, and tradition. In this century the shrine received one of its most glorious honors when on Aug. 11, 1968, the future Pope John Paul II with Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski ceremoniously crowned the image of Our Lady of Swieta Lipka inside the sanctuary.
Short organ presentations are held at the shrine every day throughout the year. For a guided tour, ask at the religious souvenir stand, located just inside the cloister entrance to your right. However, only one or two English-speaking priests are normally available.
The Pilgrim's House, operated by the shrine, provides simple, basic accommodations for visitors. While in Swieta Lipka, you might also take some time to do leisure activities such as renting a canoe or walking around one of the beautiful lakes.
Kevin Wright writes from Bellevue, Washington.
By Train: As Swieta Lipka is not accessible by train, the nearest railway stations are at Gizycko and Olsztyn.
By Bus: Regular service is provided to Swieta Lipka from Gizycko, Olsztyn and other nearby towns. Swieta Lipka is about 40 miles northeast of Olsztyn and eight miles west of Ketrzyn.
By Car: Take 16 east to Mragowo, then continue north to Swieta Lipka via Pilec.
For more information on making a pilgrimage, contact one of the many Catholic travel organizations or contact the shrine's pilgrimage office at: Sanktuarium Swietolipskie 11-407 Swieta Lipka 29 Woj. olsztynskie Tel: (089) 755-14-81 Fax: (089) 755-14-60
Dom Pielgrzyma 11-407 Swieta Lipka 29 Woj. olsztynskie Tel: (089) 755-14-81 Fax: (089) 755-14-60
----- EXCERPT: Pilgrims find rest and inspiration at popular shrine ----- EXTENDED BODY: Kevin Wright ----- KEYWORDS: Travel ----- TITLE: Bringing Back St. Thomas Aquinas DATE: 01/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:TORONTO—Like several popes before him, John Paul II in his latest encyclical, Fides et Ratio, praised the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. In 1879, when Pope Leo XIII did the same thing in the encyclical Aeterni Patris, there was an enthusiastic worldwide revival of Thomism in Catholic universities. It is not at all clear that Catholic philosophers will respond the same way this time.
One institution already eager to answer the Pope's call, however, is the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies (PIMS) in Toronto.
The Institute was founded in 1929 as the Institute of Medieval Studies by Étienne Gilson, the renowned medieval historian and philosopher, and by the Congregation of St. Basil of St. Michael's College, a college that is now part of the University of Toronto.
Gilson, whose work in Thomistic philosophy was a vital component in the Thomistic revival following Aeterni Patris, and who merits special mention in Fides et Ratio, attracted many brilliant young scholars to the institute, and they soon established its reputation for medieval scholarship, particularly its signal contribution in Thomistic philosophy. In fact, the Institute progressed so rapidly that it was granted pontifical status in 1939.
Generations of Thomistic scholars have undergone the institute's rigorous training in languages and textual analysis. While the interdisciplinary program at PIMS is dedicated to the study of every aspect of life in the Middle Ages, the list of those who have taught there reads like a Who's Who of Thomistic scholarship. Besides Gilson, there were Jacques Maritain, Anton Pegis, Father Armand Maurer CSB, Joseph Owens, James Weisheipl, and Leonard Boyle. Mark Johnson, assistant professor of theology at Marquette University, remembers reading the Summa Theologiae cover to cover, in Latin, encouraged by Weisheipl to “know the whole of St. Thomas in order to know the part.”
Unfortunately, due to a change in its relationship with the University of Toronto and a consequent interruption in funding, the institute was forced to suspend training young scholars through its pontifical license program two years ago. However, with a substantial grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, PIMS currently offers four post-doctoral research Fellowships each year.
Is the change at PIMS a sign of the times, evidence of a permanent decline in interest in the work of Thomas Aquinas? Father James McConica CSB, president of PIMS, doesn't think so. While Thomistic philosophy had long dominated the institute, following Gilson's death the center of gravity at the institute shifted to history, mirroring a diminished interest in St. Thomas throughout North America. At PIMS, the shift reflected “an unconscious appropriation of other priorities than those which would have been honored in the early years of the institute,” Father McConica noted.
Now, however, the Institute is recruiting scholars in an effort to reemphasize both its confessional nature and its tradition of Thomistic studies, bucking a trend toward secularization evident in many Catholic universities, and Father McConica hopes to resume its license program when the institute's finances are more secure.
Can a Thomistic revival, in fact, take root today? After all, one doesn't hear a lot of conversation on being, essence, or existence — and these are the themes of St. Thomas. In fact, though modern philosophy has rightly focused attention upon the human person, Pope John Paul writes, its “one-sided concern to investigate human subjectivity” has hindered it from rising to “the truth of being,” accentuating instead the limits and conditions on the human capacity to know the truth. This development, in turn, has encouraged various forms of agnosticism and relativism. Thus, the notions of “being” and “essence,” the philosophical foundation for saying that something exists and what that thing is, thereby providing a foundation for objective truth, have been seriously weakened.
Father Maurer, fellow emeritus at PIMS, believes these notions have a continuing power to find an audience, ensuring that Thomistic thought will always hold an interest in future generations. Being, or existence, is something “highly valued” by everyone, he said. “People can't bother with thinking about being or existence, but just try to take it away from them.” The little we can know about these matters, he ventured, gives more joy than a lot of knowledge of other things.
Father Maurer, as one would expect, enthusiastically supported the Pope's attempt to rehabilitate reason and philosophy. Theologians need philosophy to interpret what they're doing, he said. And modern philosophy can't help them. “Take the divine name from Exodus,” he offered. “‘I Am Who Am.’ What does that mean? Can semantics be the only avenue to interpret that tremendous statement? That's very shortsighted.” In looking ahead, Maurer hopes for a “living Thomism,” to use Gilson's phrase, that will addresses modern problems, rather than a philosophy that only restates what has been taught in the past.
Kenneth Schmitz, professor of philosophy and director of the doctor of Sacred Theology program at the Pope John Paul II Institute in Washington, D.C., is a graduate of PIMS and a former student of Gilson and Father Maurer. He applauded the Pope's effort in Fides et Ratio to restore confidence in reason and give “courage” to current philosophy, but he didn't foresee a revival of the study of St. Thomas as it was 30 or 40 years ago. There isn't the need for that today, he believes, because we now possess an “enormous fund of knowledge” on the historical conditions of the Middle Ages and St. Thomas’ role in it.
He hopes instead that we learn from how the Pope addresses Thomism. Echoing Father Maurer, Schmitz said that for Pope John Paul, “Thomism isn't something frozen in time; it's a living tradition, incorporated into his own thought.”
In considering the prevalence of the notion of being in Fides et Ratio, Schmitz said the Pope understands that “St. Thomas sees into the core of being — actual, existential insight into being — and sees the relationship between being and truth, beauty, and the good.” Schmitz believes that insight can be made relevant again, although he concedes that philosophers will need some help from poets, playwrights, and artists. Thomism, eclipsed a generation ago, Schmitz feels, after being “big kid on the block” for too long, will be revived by Fides et Ratio and, having caught up to the contemporary situation, will be able to “speak intelligently” in the current environment. He sees this trend already developing at places like The Catholic University of America and Boston College.
Others share Schmitz's view that a new Thomistic revival will have a different look than it did earlier this century. Thomas Langan, professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Toronto, is pleased that the Pope's latest encyclical reminds us that St. Thomas is vitally important. Concerning the re-examination of a philosophy of being, Langan emphatically concurred. “Without question,” he said, “it is the center of everything.”
Nonetheless, he was less sanguine about the prospect of a full-blown Thomistic revival. Langan, who recently published Being and Truth, the second of a projected six-volume series entitled Truth and Tradition, thinks a revival is “feasible, but difficult.” He adds: “The big challenge in philosophy is to bring together the ‘reality-initself’ of persons and things, independently of what anyone might think of them, with the reality of subjectivity, interpretation, historicity, and culture — and to do it in a way that doesn't slip into a kind of relativism — yet which brings out the importance of human creativity through which the Holy Spirit works in history.”
Nor is he satisfied with neatly categorizing faith and reason. “Faith accompanies every act of reason,” he noted, “and every fact of faith merits critical examination by reason.” Still, Langan anticipates an exciting new dialogue between a renewed Thomism and contemporary philosophy. He believes PIMS will contribute to that debate. He also expects places like the Center for Thomistic Studies at the University of St. Thomas in Houston and the University of Dallas to play important parts.
And lest we think being and reason concern only philosophers, Pope John Paul reminds us in Fides et Ratio that the exercise of reason is crucial to the assent required of all Christians. Quoting St. Augustine, he notes: “To believe is nothing other than to think with assent. … If faith does not think, it is nothing.”
Philip Kelly Jr. writes from Toronto.
----- EXCERPT: Papal encyclical provides new life for an academic institute in Toronto ----- EXTENDED BODY: Philip Kelly Jr. ----- KEYWORDS: Education ----- TITLE: Education Notebook DATE: 01/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:Voucher Bill Introduced in Nebraska
LINCOLN
The Lincoln Star Journal said that parents could qualify for the vouchers if they earn up to twice the federal poverty level. Those who earn between twice and four times the poverty level could receive vouchers worth half as much.
The proposed bill mandates that private and parochial schools do the same things “the public schools are required to do,” said Bohlke — including accepting all students who apply, meeting state accreditation standards, complying with laws on disabilities and asbestos, following state requirements on testing. The schools would also have to provide alternatives for those students who do not want to participate in religious classes or activities.
The senator said, “the public schools are very able to compete as long as they can do it on a level playing field.”
A spokesman for the Nebraska Catholic Conference was quoted saying that he needed to examine whether the requirements proposed in the bill were reasonable.
Meanwhile, in Texas, a story in the San Antonio Express-News said that debate over vouchers was likely to be “the fiercest fight in the [state's] Capitol this spring.”
National Newsweekly Recognizes Catholic Education
According to the report, the all-girls school “has a crucial but often neglected ingredient of educational excellence — a strong sense of shared purpose and community.” The magazine says research indicates that “the more students feel they are embarked on a mission to which they are integral” the more successful their education will be. “It's a sisterhood,” Latasha Green, a junior, is quoted saying.
The elements of “community and connectedness” at Aquinas include: clear signals of the school's Catholic identity through prayer and religious services, and a requirement that all students follow the example of community service given by the Dominican Sisters of Sparkhill, who run the school. Each student is asked to give 10 hours of service a year, but 60% exceed that requirement. Fifteen percent “perform more than 100 hours of service … while meeting the school's tough academic standards.”
Attendance averages 96% each day; 89% participate in extracurricular activities. “Despite the toughness of the South Bronx streets, discipline problems … are negligible,” the report said. Fewer than 1% drop out, and 43% take courses for advanced college credit. An incredible 98% go on to higher education.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education ----- TITLE: Big Brother Is Watching DATE: 01/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:Now that the Cold War is long gone, terrorism has become the main threat to national security. The secretive, cell-like structure of most terrorist operations makes them difficult to penetrate. Electronic surveillance has proven the most effective method of collecting information about these groups. Government agencies like the National Security Agency (NSA), the FBI, and the CIA have saved many American lives with their advanced eavesdropping devices, but some fear that our constitutional right to privacy and the sanctity of our homes are being violated in the process.
Enemy of the State is the second big-budget action film in recent months to try to dramatize the conflict between the needs of national security and individual civil liberties. The earlier movie, The Siege, focuses on a specific Islamic terrorist group and the efforts of different U.S. government agencies to apprehend it. In their zeal, some of the feds go too far, and another group of operatives must defeat them to see that justice is done.
In contrast, Enemy of the State zeroes in on an innocent American citizen, Robert Dean (Will Smith), with no involvement in either side of the terrorist wars, whose civil rights are massively violated. This is a more promising approach than the muddled point of view of The Siege which concentrates on the differing motivations of professional law enforcement officers.
Enemy of the State gives the members of the audience someone just like themselves with whom they can identify. The wrongs Dean endures hit home. The audience suffers with him and enthusiastically roots for him to find a way out of his difficulties. The movie cleverly borrows from the plot structure of similar innocent-on-the-run classics such as the Three Days of the Condor starring Robert Redford and Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest.
The movie opens with the murder of a powerful congressional committee chairman (Jason Robards Jr.) by a rogue NSA department head, Thomas Reynolds (Jon Voigt), who believes “we are at war 24 hours a day.” A bill the lawmaker supports, Reynolds claims, would endanger national security by limiting the government's ability to use electronic surveillance to monitor terrorists. The bureaucrat has become so fanatically committed to his mission that he's willing to kill to protect what he perceives to be the national interest. The congressman's murder is made to look like a suicide.
Director Tony Scott (Top Gun) and screenwriter David Marconi have wisely chosen to depict Reynolds as an idealist gone wrong rather than a two-dimensional villain. His arguments in support of his positions have a kind of logic to them even if he himself goes too far.
“Privacy's been dead for 30 years because we can't risk it,” Reynolds maintains. “The only privacy left is the inside of your head. You think we're the end of democracy. I think we're democracy's last hope.” With his wireless glasses, slicked-back hair, and humorless determination, Reynolds is consciously modeled on former secretary of defense Robert McNamara, and the theory that his belief in the superiority of American technology led to the escalation of our involvement in the Vietnam War.
The innocent Dean is a successful Washington, D.C.-labor lawyer with a loving wife (Regina King) and young son (Jamie Kennedy). The filmmakers make sure we understand he's one of the good guys by showing his efforts to keep an honest union out of the mob's hands. We also see he's willing to play hardball and cut corners — qualities he'll need once the U.S. government turns against him.
An environmental group has been videotaping geese migration in the lakeside area where the congressman is murdered. Unintentionally, it finds itself with a record of the crime. One of their members, Daniel Zavitz (Jason Lee), wants to get a copy of it to the press. Reynolds illegally orders some of his NSA subordinates to retrieve the tape. In the ensuing chase, Zavitz is killed in an auto accident, but not before he drops the incriminating evidence in the shopping bag of the unsuspecting Dean, with whom he's acquainted.
Reynolds incorrectly assumes that Dean may be part of a conspiracy to expose his rogue operations. In an impressive display of contemporary technology, spy satellites, electronic surveillance cameras, microscopic listening devices, wiretaps, and instant computer searches are manipulated to pry into every aspect of the lawyer's life. When Dean, in his ignorance of the tape's existence, appears uncooperative, his credit cards are canceled and a false story planted in the press. He then loses his job and gets framed for murder.
Dean's wife, a civil liberties lawyer, has long yammered about the potential for government violation of individual privacy, but she never imagined any of these abuses would be directed at her and her family. In a cruel twist, Reynolds involves her in yet another deception.
Dean is forced to go underground alone, on the run from the law for reasons he doesn't understand. His only hope is to connect with a former CIA agent named Brill (Gene Hackman) whom he has never met but whose product he's used to aid his law-office clients. Brill himself has been underground for almost 20 years, living in an abandoned Baltimore warehouse with his own state-of-the-art eavesdropping equipment. He supports himself as a surveillance expert-forhire. The filmmakers make him and his operation resemble that of the hero of Francis Ford Coppola's 25- year-old masterpiece The Conversation, which features Hackman in a similar role and explores many of the same themes.
Some might call the world created by Enemy of the State paranoid and overdrawn. But there's no question that the U.S. government currently has the capability to do everything dramatized in the movie. The filmmakers are careful to make their bad guy a rogue federal agent, not the government itself. Their message is meant to be a wake-up call, reminding us that nowadays, in addition to our physical identity, each of us has an electronic one, which can be manipulated for evil purposes. So we'd better be sure someone is watching the watchdogs.
Except for a few gratuitous outbursts of profanity, Enemy of the State is a perfectly constructed piece of machinery, successfully using the conventions of the bigbudget action film to examine an important issue. It's a rare combination of cinematic intelligence and suspense-filled excitement.
Arts & Culture correspondent John Prizer currently writes from Paris.
Enemy of the State is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America.
----- EXCERPT: Hollywood explores the ramifications of technology in Enemy of the State ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts and Culture ----- TITLE: Video on Release DATE: 01/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: January 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:After having squandered most of earth's resources, people need another planet to live on. The government begins building one of two hypergates that will allow instantaneous space travel to the other side of the universe. In the meantime, John (William Hurt) and Maureen Robinson (Mimi Rogers) along with their children Judy (Heather Graham), Penny (Lacey Chabert), and Will (Jack Johnson) are sent on an expedition to Alpha Prime, the closest planet, to begin research there. Military pilot Major Don West (Matt LeBlanc) is assigned to their flight at the last moment. Earthbased physician Zachary Smith (Gary Oldman) has been paid by a group of seditionist terrorists to destroy the crew and the mission. To fight back, the crew is forced to use their hyperdrive which takes them off course. Now lost in space, the crew have to work out how to return to earth. Often confusing and contains violence. Too intense for the very young. (MPAA — PG-13)
Cameron Poe (Nicolas Cage) is on parole after serving time for accidentally killing a man in selfdefense. He can't wait to see his wife and daughter, born while he was in prison. He's sent home on a prisoner transport plane. When the plane is taken hostage by the convicts, Cameron works with Agent Larkin, who is on the ground, to end the drama. The ringleader of the convicts is Cyrus “The Virus” Grissom (John Malkovich). When the plane lands they pick up more criminals such as serial killer Garland Greene (Steve Buscemi). Not only must Cameron deal with Cyrus and the other prisoners, but he also must find insulin for his prison buddy, Baby-O (Mykelti Williamson), whose time is running out. Larkin, on the other hand, must deal with Duncan Malloy (Colm Meaney), a quick-triggered DEA agent who wants to blow the plane from the sky. An action-packed movie where good finally triumphs. Strong language and violence make it unsuitable for children. (MPAA — R)
An action-packed thriller about a professional hit woman Claire (Kyra Sedgwick) and her close friend Buddy (Robbie Coltrane) — dying of cancer. They are both targeted by their organization after she falls out of favor with her boss. To make matters worse, Claire's boss gives her the task of tracking down his runaway girlfriend Kitty (Robin Tunney) who kills his son while he is in her custody. Claire is now forced to hide out while Buddy's experiences and illness drive him into a nihilistic killing frenzy of the organization's members. The movie doesn't have a particularly interesting storyline and contains strong language, sexuality, and violence. (MPAA — R)
Based on the famous Madeline books by Ludwig Bemelmans. A mischievous young girl Madeline (Hatty Jones) and 11 other girls attend a boarding school in Paris run by Miss Clavel (Frances McDormand). Madeline appears to be the most fragile of the girls but makes up for it by her daring and adventurous nature. When their patron Lady Covington (Stephane Audran) dies, her husband, Lord Covington (Nigel Hawthorne), decides to sell the house and close the school. With no family to return to, Madeline sets out to deter any prospective buyers of the school. She has many adventures along the way including almost drowning in the Seine river, and being kidnapped with Pepito (Kristian de la Osa), the son of their Spanish ambassador neighbors. Good, clean, and enjoyable family entertainment. (MPAA — PG)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Arts and Culture ----- TITLE: Pope John Paul Rallies Flock in St. Louis DATE: 02/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:ST. LOUIS—They used to call St. Louis the “Rome of the West” and that's exactly what it appeared to be for two days when Pope John Paul II visited the Gateway City on Jan. 26-27.
Public schools closed during the papal visit and many downtown workers got at least a day off. Local television and radio were filled with coverage of the visit, with nationally known Catholic figures such as Father Richard John Neuhaus and George Weigel adding their voices to local commentators. For two days St. Louis was “pope country,” while Catholics and non-Catholics alike offered the Holy Father a warm and enthusiastic welcome.
What brought the Holy Father to St. Louis? A request of a friend, St. Louis Archbishop Justin Rigali, longtime Vatican prelate who came to the archdiocese six years ago. Though the Pope has been to America many times, his itinerary hadn't included St. Louis until now.
The St. Louis visit was really only a detour from the Holy Father's return trip to the Vatican from Mexico City, where he signed the apostolic exhortation marking the official close of the 1997 Synod for America. Moreover, the visit reinforced a central part of the Pope's message to the synod: the unity of the Americas.
Although Pope John Paul II spent a mere 31 hours in St. Louis, he accomplished a great deal. Arriving at St. Louis International Airport, Jan. 26, he was greeted by President Clinton, still in the midst of his Senate impeachment trial.
The Holy Father made no public reference to Clinton's problems, but he did speak of another trial that he believes America faces — the conflict between a “culture that affirms, cherishes, and celebrates the gift of life,” and one that does not.
Recalling the 1857 Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court, which was heard in St. Louis and which denied freedom to a runaway slave, John Paul II warned against “a culture that seeks to declare entire groups of human beings — the unborn, the terminally ill, the handicapped, and others considered ‘unuseful’ — to be outside the boundaries of legal protection.” (See In Depth, page 9.) In contrast to the Pope's defense of the rights of the unborn, the Clinton administration has militantly promoted abortion rights.
‘The Pope Belongs to You’
On Day 1, a motorcade trip through St. Louis in the popemobile brought John Paul II to the Archbishop's Residence and then on to downtown St. Louis’ Kiel Center for a youth rally attended by 21,000 enthusiastic young people from throughout the Midwest.
In the hallway, John Paul had a brief, “high-powered” meeting with one Cardinal not in holy orders — Mark McGwire, the record-breaking home run hitter for the St. Louis Cardinals, who kissed the Holy Father's ring.
Addressing the youth, the Pope told them, “The Pope belongs to you” and took as his theme Paul's words to his young co-worker Timothy: “Train yourself for devotion” (1 Timothy 4:7). The Holy Father played up the fact that the Kiel Center in which he spoke usually hosted sporting events to press an analogy between sports and spiritual training: “Today, this impressive stadium has become another kind of training ground, not for hockey or soccer or baseball or basketball” — then, departing from his text: “it says nothing here about football — but for that training that will help you to live your faith in Jesus more decisively.”
Then Holy Father encouraged young people to follow Christ and not to be misled.
“Do not listen to those who encourage you to lie, to shirk responsibility, to put yourselves first,” he said. “Do not listen to those who tell you that chastity is passé. … Do not be taken in by false values and deceptive slogans, especially about your freedom. … Let no one mislead you or prevent you from seeing what really matters.”
“Turn to Jesus, listen to him, and discover the true meaning and direction of your lives,” he told the crowd, which roared as though they were greeting a rock star. “Remember: Christ is calling you; the Church needs you; the Pope believes in you, and he expects great things of you!”
Toward the conclusion of his 90-minute appearance, the Pope blessed children from Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital, including 3-year-old Cory Appleton, a quadriplegic suffering from cerebral palsy, who brought the Holy Father to his feet.
On his way out of the auditorium, the Pope was given a hockey stick and St. Louis Blues hockey jersey, with “John Paul II” and the number “1” on back. To which the Pope replied, “So, I'm prepared to return once more to play hockey.” Then he pretended to make wrist shots with his cane, driving the youth wild with excitement.
Mass Draws 130,000
Day 2 of the papal visit started with the Papal Mass at the Trans World Dome and the adjoining Cervantes Center. More than 130,000 people got up in the middle of the night and boarded buses which took them to downtown St. Louis, where they waited for hours to take part in the Mass.
About 250 cardinals, archbishops, and bishops, as well as a 1,000 priests concelebrated the liturgy in which John Paul II struck a number of familiar themes, beginning with a summary of the Gospel message itself.
“In Jesus Christ, it is God who comes in person to speak to us and to show us the way to himself,” he declared. “The love and compassion of Jesus is the door through which the eternal love of the Father is poured out in the world.”
The Holy Father then drew on St. Luke's parable of the good shepherd and the lost sheep. “This parable highlights the joy of Christ and of our heavenly Father at every sinner who repents. God's love is a love that searches us out. It is a love that saves. This is the love that we find in the heart of Jesus.”
Another persistent John Paul II theme: the third millennium offers an opportunity for a “new springtime of faith.” The way to this “new springtime of faith” is the new evangelization, which the Holy Father said “must include a special emphasis on the family and the renewal of Christian marriage.”
John Paul II elicited one of the most enthusiastic of the ample responses from the crowd that punctuated his messages when he declared, “As the family goes, so goes the nation!”
Other elements of the new evangelization include the truth about God's love for man and the dignity of the human person the Gospel of Life, as John Paul II has dubbed it.
“As believers, how can we fail to see that abortion, euthanasia, and assisted suicide are a terrible rejection of God's gift of life and love?” he asked. “As believers, how can we fail to feel the duty to surround the sick and those in distress with the warmth of our affection and the support that will help them always to embrace life?”
The Holy Father also reiterated his recent Christmas appeal to eliminate the death penalty, declaring it both “cruel and unnecessary” in modern society, which he said, “has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform.”
The execution of convicted murder Darrell Mease that had originally been scheduled during the papal visit was at first only postponed. But following a 20-minute meeting with Vatican Secretary of State Angelo Cardinal Sodano at Archbishop Rigali's residence, Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan indicated he would reconsider the execution as an act of clemency. Later, leaving St. Louis Cathedral, the Pope himself thanked Carnahan for considering clemency and asked him to “have mercy on Mease.” The following day the governor granted the Pope's request.
God's Mercy Emphasized
John Paul II concluded his homily by drawing his listeners back to God's merciful love expressed in the Incarnation, which he tied to both the Eucharist and the Great Jubilee in the year 2000. He invited Catholics back to the Eucharist and back to the community of faith. While “in some cases there may be obstacles to Eucharistic participation; in some cases there may be memories to be healed …” the Pope said, “in all cases there is the assurance of God's love and mercy.”
And he challenged Catholics to see the opening of the Holy Door in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, which will mark the start of the Jubilee Year, as a symbol of the Church “open to everyone who feels a need for the love and mercy of the heart of Christ.” The Christian life he likened to a pilgrimage to the Father's house, the door of which is Jesus Christ himself and the key to the door, repentance, and conversion.
Catholics leaving the Mass at the Trans World Dome were greeted by anti-Catholic groups, some of whom passed out literature designed to look like Catholic devotional material but which were really anti-Catholic propaganda.
However, Catholic organizations such as the San Diego-based apostolate Catholic Answers were also present during the papal visit and counteracted anti-Catholic materials with tracts of their own explaining common misconceptions about the Catholic faith and answering anti-Catholic objections.
Wednesday evening the Holy Father led vespers and an ecumenicalinterfaith service at St. Louis Cathedral. More than 2,000 people attended, including representatives from other Christian churches and ecclesial communities, as well as non-Christians. Also present were Vice President Al Gore, baseball legend Stan Musial, and civil-rights heroine Rosa Parks, a Methodist, to whom the Pope gave a rosary.
During the service, the Pope told of a group from St. Louis he met in Rome who sang “Meet Me in St. Louis” to him. “With God's help, we have done it,” he said, amid laughter and applause.
The Pope began by stressing praise of God as “the language of heaven.” Then, after greeting the various groups represented at the service, the Holy Father addresses America's global responsibilities.
“From salvation history we learn that power is responsibility,” he said; “it is service, not privilege. Its exercise is morally justifiable when it is used for the good of all, when it is sensitive to the needs of the poor and defenseless.”
The Pope also emphasized the Ten Commandments as “the charter of true freedom, for individuals as well as for society as a whole.”
He recalled that American independence rest on self-evident moral truths and insisted that “American will remain a beacon of freedom for the world as long as it stands by those moral truths.”
Then he tied up his message: “And so America: If you want peace, work for justice. If you want justice, defend life. If you want life, embrace the truth the truth revealed by God. In this way the praise of God, the language of heaven, will ever be on this people's lips: The Lord is God, the mighty. … Come, then, let us bow down and worship. Amen.”
Reaction to the papal visit was overwhelmingly positive. “This has been a tremendous boast to our faith,” says Jimmy Mack of St. Mary Magdalene Parish in St. Louis. “The Pope tirelessly preaches the Gospel and addresses the issues vital to humanity, especially pro-life issues.”
Tony Holman, general manager of St. Louis’ Catholic radio station WRYT-AM, agreed: “Everyone I've talked to loved it, Catholic and non-Catholic alike.” He said that during a two-hour call-in show the day after the visit the lines were full of papal well-wishers and fans.
For “re-vert” Jenny Emmons of the Belleville, Ill., diocese across the Mississippi River, the papal visit was “a great spiritual awakening for the city.” She said of John Paul II, “Whatever he says, I want to follow!”
“The papal visit emphasized the unity we Catholics have in fact and which we probably don't pay much attention to,” says Father Gregory Lockwood, administrator Our Lady of Mercy parish, and a professor of dogma at Kenrick Seminary in St. Louis. “And it showed some of us older folks in the diocese how much young people really connect with this man and not just with his 'superstar status’ but with what he says, with the challenges he gives them. They think he's an ‘authentic dude.’”
During the papal visit some in the media made much of the 78-year-old pontiff's frail appearance and his repeated cough while delivering his addresses. Given his packed agenda for a two-day visit, it's not surprising John Paul II occasionally seemed tired. But as momentum built at each event, the Holy Father became energized, especially during the youth rally. If his St. Louis visit is any indication, the Holy Father seems to be saying that challenges of age and health notwithstanding, he has every intention of leading the Catholic Church into the next millennium.
Mark Brumley writes from San Francisco.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mark Brumley ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: In Same-Sex 'Marriage' Fight, Courts Try an End Run DATE: 02/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—The fate of legal marriage lies in the hands of five judges, and they aren't on the U.S. Supreme Court.
They are from humble Montpelier, Vermont.
Vermont's largest city has 40,000 people, and the entire state has only about 500,000 inhabitants. Yet the five justices who sit on the Vermont Supreme Court may shortly detonate a cultural H-bomb. They may decide that the state's Constitution mandates same-sex “marriage.”
How did this development come about? Where did it start? This is the first of a series of articles that will describe how the battle began, how citizens have responded, and where the action may go from here.
Where It Started: Hawaii
The campaign for same-sex “marriage” started in Honolulu with a local homosexual activist named Bill Woods. Woods had been researching Hawaiian law for 10 years, and was convinced that if he found some same-sex couples and filed suit in the Hawaii courts, he might succeed in getting the courts to go over the heads of the people and legalize same-sex “marriage.”
In 1990 this idea sounded farfetched. In fact, the national gay and lesbian legal groups and the American Civil Liberties Union wouldn't even support him. But Woods’ idea was surprisingly simple: “Gay and lesbian people are loving and committed just like heterosexuals. They are only denied marriage licenses because of discrimination. They have a constitutional right to get married.”
This idea had three parts:
• Homosexuals are an oppressed minority who cannot get justice from the legislature (like African-Americans, for example).
• Homosexuals therefore deserve special protection from the courts.
• Same-sex couples who claim a love commitment should petition the courts to recognize (that is, impose) their “constitutional right” to marry.
In 1990 Woods recruited three same-sex couples in Honolulu to launch his campaign. They applied for marriage licenses, were turned down, and filed suit. For more than two years their lawsuits went nowhere, until one day in May 1993, everything changed.
On that day, the state Supreme Court announced that these couples were victims of “sex dis crimination” under the Hawaii Constitution, and that the state would now have to “justify” why it “discriminated” by limiting marriage to male-female couples.
No court had ever done this. For 25 years, homosexual activists had tried, but failed, to find a court that would tip the balance against the government. Until now. Now the state was going to have to “prove” that its marriage law was constitutional, even though it had been the law of Hawaii since before it was a state.
The state attorney general put off a trial for three years, then tried it in 1996 and lost. The attorney general then appealed that verdict back to the Hawaii Supreme Court, which still has the case today. But in the meantime, citizens chose to resist the court on constitutional grounds.
Hawaii: the People Respond Enter Father Marc Alexander
He had been away studying in Rome while these events unfolded. He finished his doctorate in systematic theology and returned to the islands in time for then Auxiliary Bishop Francis DiLorenzo of Honolulu to hand him a specific task: The campaign to save traditional marriage would become Father Alexander's job.
The newly issued Catechism of the Catholic Church proved to be timely. It taught that “A man and a woman, united in marriage, together with their children, form a family. This institution is prior to any recognition by public authority, which has an obligation to recognize it. It should be considered the normal reference point by which the different forms of family relationship are evaluated” (No. 2202).
The Catechism also stated: “The family is the original cell of social life. It is the natural society in which husband and wife are called to give themselves in love and in the gift of life. Authority, stability, and a life of relationships within the family constitute the foundations for freedom, security, and fraternity within society. The family is the community in which, from childhood, one can learn moral values, begin to honor God, and make good use of freedom. Family life is an initiation into life in society” (No. 2207).
For this reason, “The family must be helped and defended by appropriate social measures” (No. 2209). Resisting this attack by the courts qualified as one of those “social measures.”
Bishop DiLorenzo, Father Alexander, and the Hawaii Catholic Conference became involved in the fight to defend marriage on two fronts.
The first was internal: Amassive educational effort was necessary to explain to ordinary people what the court was doing and why it should be fought. The second was external: A massive lobbying effort, in concert with others, would be needed in order to convince hesitant public officials that they had to amend the constitution.
The internal educational dimension of the campaign drew heavily on the efforts of Filipino Catholic clubs, members of the Knights of Columbus, and groups of concerned lay Catholics in parishes throughout the islands. Although Catholics only represent 25% of Hawaii's citizens, they were a crucial part of the 70% that supported traditional marriage. As they became educated and active, their persuasive impact was huge.
The extensive lobbying dimension of the campaign was carried out both through the Hawaii Catholic Conference and through citizen coalitions such as Hawaii's Future Today and Save Traditional Marriage ‘98. Over a period of four years, countless one-on-one conversations were held with citizens and public officials, public testimony was offered before legislative committees, three amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs were filed with the courts, and every effort was made to convince citizens and legislators that only an amendment could resolve the issue.
Things came to a head in late 1996 and early 1997, when some legislators were voted out of office because they refused to support the Marriage Amendment. The new Legislature voted almost unanimously to support an amendment, and put it on the ballot for Nov. 3, 1998. The original case sat on appeal before the Hawaii Supreme Court for 18 months, with everyone holding their breath, wondering if the court would pre-empt the upcoming vote. The court waited.
A fierce battle ensued, with millions of dollars spent on both sides and hundreds of newspaper, radio, and TV ads. Father Alexander himself appeared in the two televised debates over the amendment. On Nov. 3, voters in Hawaii went 69% to 31% in favor of the Marriage Amendment. The Supreme Court, however, still has the original case on appeal.
Alaska: Eight Months Instead of Eight Years
In 1995 two homosexual men were inspired by the Hawaii case to launch a similar lawsuit in Alaska.
Although Alaska's politicians are generally moderate to conservative, and its citizens are known for their live-andlet-live attitudes, the state Supreme Court is notorious for its activism. In the name of freedom and privacy, it has frequently crippled the ability of the Legislature to pass laws.
Lawyers traded paper for almost three years, and hardly anyone noticed. Then suddenly, last Feb. 27, the trial court judge announced that the pair of homosexuals had a “fundamental right to choose their life partner” under the privacy clause of the Alaska Constitution. This meant the Legislature might have no right to define marriage as requiring a man and a woman, because this would infringe on “privacy.”
This time, the Legislature's reaction was swift and decisive. State Senator Loren Leman introduced a Marriage Amendment, and within eight weeks it had passed the Legislature. On Nov. 3, the same day as the vote in Hawaii, it passed by 68% to 32%.
The supporters of the Marriage Amendment organized the Alaska Family Coalition, and many lay Catholics became involved in this effort, including attorney Robert Flint of Anchorage. Flint points out that Anchorage Archbishop Francis Hurley used his considerable popularity among Alaskans by speaking out sparingly but forcefully in favor of the passage of the amendment.
The archbishop and his fellow bishops issued a pastoral letter on marriage which garnered widespread press attention, and they refused to be intimidated by cries of “Church interference.” Within parishes, intensive efforts were made to educate lay Catholics about the amendment.
Vermont: Will the People Even Have a Chance?
When it became clear that efforts to legalize same-sex “marriage” in Hawaii had hit a wall, homosexual litigators in New York and Boston came up with a fallback strategy: Hit Vermont.
A state whose congressman calls himself a socialist, Vermont often considers itself progressive. Some public officials are openly homosexual, and lesbian communities across the state are organized and politically effective. Like Hawaii and Alaska, it has a Supreme Court generally considered very activist.
So a new lawsuit was launched in July 1997, with three same-sex couples — just like Hawaii, except that this time one of the homosexual law firms signed on openly at the outset. After receiving motions from the plaintiffs and the attorney general's office, the trial judge dismissed the case, just as the original court had in Hawaii. The plaintiffs appealed directly to the Vermont Supreme Court, which heard arguments last November and will decide it this year.
This time, however, things are different. In Hawaii in 1992, the homosexual groups had the courts virtually to themselves. Only one very conservative group filed an amicus brief. By 1998, the terrain had shifted.
In Vermont, homosexual and lesbian groups filed eight amicus briefs, while the defenders of marriage filed 12 briefs, including one signed by 13 state legislators, a majority of them Democrats. Each brief anticipated and responded to the likely attacks and arguments of the other side.
Take It to the People (TIP) is the grass-roots group in Vermont supporting the marriage law. Catholic involvement in TIP has been substantial.
Ruth Charlesworth, director of the Family Life Office of the Diocese of Burlington, is strongly against “gay-bashing” and strongly in favor of traditional marriage. Charlesworth notes that Bishop Kenneth Angell, whose diocese covers the entire state, has spoken out strongly in favor of marriage and will continue to speak out.
She points out that the Church has a positive message: It is against same-sex “marriage” because it is for real marriage. She notes that the Church spoke out strongly in favor of interracial marriage 30 years ago because it supported marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Today, for the same reason, it opposes same-sex “marriage.” The issue is not “discrimination”; it is marriage. The Church's teaching in consistent.
Next week: a look at how other states have responded to the prospect of same-sex “marriage.”
David Coolidge writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: David Coolidge ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: Slavery a Staple Of Sudanese Oppression DATE: 02/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:TURALEI, Sudan—It's difficult for most Americans to imagine that slavery is still a growth industry anywhere in the world.
But if you're black, Christian, a moderate Muslim, or a follower of traditional African religions and live in the Nuba Mountains of central Sudan, or in the southern province of Bahr al-Ghazal and others in this war-torn country, slavery is just not something you read about in books.
Ask 8-year-old Bol Kir, a Dinka boy from Abyei county, whose cattle-herding Arab “master” left a brand mark on his cheek. Or Akwich Malak, 19, who was savagely beaten and raped by her abductors until, months later, she managed to escape them through a hail of bullets. Or 18-year-old Chol, who was taken from his family at age 3, during a raid, and sold to an Arab household to look after livestock for 15 years.
Until very recently, the National Islamic Front government in Khartoum, the capital, which has been fighting what one Sudan expert calls “total war” against the vast majority of its ethnic African population for a decade, has had the upper hand in the public relations battle to keep the slavery issue off the front pages of Western newspapers. This happened despite warnings from Church leaders, aid workers, and human rights and anti-slavery activists since the late 1980s about government use of Sudanese murahileen, or slave “raiders,” as a weapon of war.
But there are signs that Khartoum is starting to lose the media battle. Despite its well-financed efforts, the story is getting out.
That increased visibility was, perhaps, best demonstrated in William Finnegan's long essay on Sudan in a recent issue of The New Yorker entitled “The Invisible War.” The article portrays slavery as a central issue of the Sudanese conflict — a war responsible, according to some estimates, for killing more people than any other conflict since World War II.
“The Sudanese Arab belief that blacks belong to a lower order of being is very deep and very widespread,” concluded Finnegan.
‘Terror Weapon of Choice’
A recent Los Angeles Times editorial pulled even fewer punches: “for more than a decade, the Islamic fundamentalist government in Sudan has been using slave raids as the terror weapon of choice in its self-declared ‘holy war’ on the African population in the south.”
The silence was caused by a number of factors in the west: lack of information, the phenomenon of so-called compassion fatigue (especially after the failed U.S. relief campaign in Somalia in 1992), Nation of Islam minister Louis Farrakhan's public advocacy for the Sudan government — all coupled with legitimate concerns about scapegoating Muslims.
But the upsurge in slavery in Sudan has been well-documented, and for a long time.
Northern Sudanese intellectuals such as Ushari Mahmoud, who was repeatedly jailed for his efforts, reported on government support for the slave trade as early as the 1980s. Documentation provided by journalists, Church leaders, and county officials in so-called rebel-held territories in the south mounted in the ‘90s.
Most importantly, U.N. special rapporteur Gaspar Biro conducted on-site investigations during the past decade, and concluded in his 1997 report to the U.N. Human Rights Commission that “the abduction of persons, mainly women and children, belonging to racial, ethnic, and religious minorities from southern Sudan, the Nuba Mountains, and the Ingassema Hills area, their subjection to the slave trade, including traffic in and sale of children and women, slavery, servitude, forced labor, and similar practices, are taking place with the knowledge of the government of Sudan.”
A recent report from the U.S. Committee for Refugees placed the tragedy in its full context.
It stated: “The mass displacement of the population of the South and the Nuba Mountains, by means of aerial and ground attacks on civilians, slavery, and the manipulation of humanitarian aid are major features of a policy of genocide, which has already resulted in the deaths of more than 1.5 million and the displacement of over five million people out of a population of no more than eight million in the war zone.”
Among the areas hit hardest by the slave trade is northern Bahr al-Ghazal, according to local commissioners, a largely Catholic area. Abweil, Abyei, and Twic counties, explained Abyei's acting commissioner, John Deng Biong, “these are the front lines of the slave trade, the first places they go looking for slaves.”
The region sits on the border between Dinka and Baggara Arab land, just south of Darfur, on a tributary of the White Nile that local Arabs call the “Arab River” and which Dinka call the River Kir.
Not that slavery is anything new to the largely Dinka population of the region. For centuries, northern nomadic tribesmen, the Baggara — a generic designation for two nomadic cattle-herding tribes, the Missiriya of southern Kordofan and the Rizayqat of Darfur — have raided Dinka villages for slaves.
A History of Slavery
Even today, the normal colloquial Arabic word for African blacks in Sudan is abed, “slave.” (Efforts by Sudan's propagandists in the West to explain the term away as an allusion to the submission all Muslims owe to God is disingenuous.)
British attempts to eradicate the slave trade during their 60-year administration of the Sudan were frequently undermined by bribery and corruption, and, even after the country's independence in 1956, Arab slavers were never entirely absent from the scene.
What is new in today's resurgence of the slave trade, local Dinka officials say, is Khartoum's policy of providing arms, direction,and military cover to Baggara tribesmen to abduct and enslave Dinka women and children on a scale unseen in more than a century. And, according to county officials, it's not only the Baggara: Indigenous People's Defense Forces, the so-called Islamic militias, and even regular Sudanese army units are in on the trade.
“They all do it, they're all involved,” said Biong.
If slave raiders once descended on villages on camelback, today they arrive in jeeps and armored vehicles, with military backup, and armed with automatic weapons.
According to local officials, more than 10,000 women and children have been taken into slavery from Twic county alone since 1989 — 6,000 in the past two years.
“The main thing,” said Biong, “is that they want the land. They [the nomadic Arabs] have always wanted our pasture land. They have tried every way they know to get us to surrender.”
And if the Dinka did surrender? “They would make us slaves on our own land,” he said.
The full impact of Sudan's return to one of its deadliest cultural habits doesn't hit you until you talk to the children. In Turalei, a scattered settlement for “internally displaced persons” at the edge of swampland, they are easy to find.
Here, among thousands of other refugees displaced from Abyei and towns around the Kir, there are 69 children and young adults who've experienced slavery firsthand. Most were abducted by raiders as children. Many have lost whole families, some during the raids in which they were seized. Some escaped; some were “purchased” back by relatives after long searches for their whereabouts; a few were rescued by international agencies like Christian Solidarity International, based in Britain, that “ransom” children from the principal northern slave centers.
The going rate, by the way, for adolescents and young adults in Sudan is $100, half that amount for children.
While each account had horrors unique to itself, there were certain common patterns in the children's experiences.
‘Processing Centers’
First, they were taken to certain villages or towns, principally in Darfur province, where they were placed in discreet locations known as “slave houses.” The New Yorker piece pinpoints the town of Abu Mataariq, between Nyamlell and El Da'ein, as the hub of the slave trade in southern Darfur. But the Turalei children mentioned Siteb as a major “processing” center, along with towns like El Muglad, En Nahud, Tabul, Tabloya, Farra, Nyala and Shendi. Local commissioners also indicated that there were slave houses around major urban centers like El Obeid, and, according to eyewitnesses, further north in Omdurman and the suburbs of Khartoum itself.
Several of the children also named their Baggara abductors: ‘Isa Mohammed from Siteb, Musa Awwad from Abyei, Bushr'a from Niyala. The methods of capture were varied: raiding villages, scouting for children herding cattle or fishing on river banks, luring children in towns with money or sweets.
Some of the boys had been branded by their abductors. One 11-year-old named Dol, captured in 1996, showed us an Arabic numeral “7” clearly burned into the skin of his right arm. Bol Kir, aged 8, seized on the banks of the River Kir with his younger sister, still missing, had an “11” carved into his right cheek.
Showcased in such locales, slaves are then sold internally, within Sudan, for everything from farm labor to chain gangs to domestic work. Local officials said some are even exported to Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, and the Persian Gulf states.
(Evidence for the export of slaves from Sudan, commissioners said, comes principally from Sudanese students, opposition politicians, and businessmen stationed abroad.)
In most cases, the children were given Arabic, that is Islamic, names and taught to pray as Muslims. Severe beatings often accompanied refusals to participate in Muslim rituals. Some of the younger boys were circumcised.
According to many reports, including Charles Jacobs’ in the Los Angeles Times, marriageable African girls, especially those destined as concubines, are often circumcised by their masters as well, despite the fact that the custom, widely practiced in the Islamic world, is abhorrent to Sudanese Africans.
“We are your new family,” 10-year-old Teresa was told by the “masters” who bought her from her nomadic captors. (Her father had been killed trying to save her from the raiders.) “You have lost your people,” they said. “Either you accept living with us, or we'll kill you.”
Her new “family” insisted that she adopt the Arabic name Zaara.
Teresa cried out to God, she told us. Later that night, she had a dream in which she saw a cross. “A voice came from the cross: ‘Why are you crying? Aren't you called Teresa? You are still who you are.’”
After that, she said, her determination to resist captivity hardened. Luckily, relatives eventually located her, and, after repeated attempts to buy her back, Teresa's “owners” were persuaded to release her.
As Finnegan quotes Sudanese slavery researcher Mahmoud: “Army officers, when they return from the south, often bring black children back with them. They hand them out to relatives, for work around the house. People don't see this as slavery. But that's what it is.”
Mahmoud calls northern Sudanese attitudes toward slavery, even among political liberals, “total denial.”
Stephen Manyang Bol is acting commissioner for Twic county, where Turalei is located, a region not only hit hard by the slave trade but by last year's devastating floods and by recurrent famine. (According to the U.S. refugee-committee report, Twic county has a population of nearly 800,000, nearly half of whom are war refugees. Last May, Operation Lifeline Sudan coordinators reported up to 60% malnutrition rates in the county.) Bol told the Register that, for all the economic and political factors that lay behind the last decade's slavery resurgence, finally, it's the religious and ethnic motivations that run deepest.
“The Arabs call black Africans ‘fit for firewood,’” he said. “This whole war is based on ethnic hatred. For them, Africans are infidels, devoid of religion, godless, headed for hell. That's what's behind [Hassan al] Turabi's ‘holy war’.”
For the regime, Bol added, “African Christians are the thorn in their flesh. They hate us because we're Christians, because we stand in the way of their plans. Our minds have been twisted by a ‘foreign’influence, you see? They particularly hate the Catholic Church because it's responsible for most of the aid coming in” — relief supplies that, ultimately, help slow the flood of refugees and strengthen the population's will to resist the regime.
Beyond that, the commissioner continued, there's the issue of political domination. “If we Africans are busy struggling just to survive, just to manage to feed ourselves; if the South's infrastructure is destroyed, obviously, we won't have time to press for power-sharing in Khartoum, will we? They'll always be calling the shots.
“But, I ask you, what sort of confidence do you expect Africans to have in a government that sells its own citizens into slavery?
“No, no. This is not a government for us.”
Gabriel Meyer writes from Los Angeles..
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Gabriel Meyer ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: Living 'Life on the Rock' DATE: 02/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:A journey back to the Church led to TV ministry
Jeff Cavins is host of Life on the Rock on the Eternal Word Television Network. Though baptized Catholic at birth, he was a Protestant minister for more than 12 years, but an intense internal hunger led him back to Catholicism. Now he works to bring others to live the faith to the fullest. He spoke recently with Register correspondent Jim Malerba.
Malerba: How did your journey to the Catholic Church begin?
Cavins: It really began at birth. I was baptized and raised Catholic, but by the time I was 16 I really didn't have any grasp of Catholicism or who Jesus Christ was anymore, but I had a tremendous hunger to know who God was. This was reflected by a reaching out to Eastern religions, reading books on Zen Buddhism and others. My hunger to know the Lord really sent me on a search for him. In my first year in Christ for the Nations in Dallas, a Bible college, I met this young lady who told me about her personal relationship with Christ. No one had ever talked to me about that before and it was so attractive. She talked to me like God was her friend, and that's what I wanted. After several months of talking with her I ended up giving my life to Christ, praying, and I asked him to come into my heart.
So that months-long encounter was the turning point?
In a way. I made a commitment to Christ, to serve him for the rest of my life, but I ended up leaving the Catholic Church. I left the Church in a rather dramatic fashion, yelling at a bishop in North Dakota. I ended up becoming a Protestant pastor in an interdenominational church in Minneapolis for seven years. I also was a pastor for five years in Dayton, Ohio. Before my ministry, I did a Christian radio talk show for two years.
What happened after your 12 years of ministry?
During those years, I had a great ministry. But I began studying the Jewish background of Jesus. The more I studied that and the Old Testament, the more I studied the early Church, the more I began to realize liturgy was really important, the sacraments were really important, Church tradition was really important. I began to see that Jewish concept of the word of God never constituted Scripture alone. It also included tradition, and the two together made up the word of God, with a body of elders guiding interpretation of Scripture to the community. I realized that the independent churches in America did not fit that mold. They were autonomous, were very personality-led, and said revelation came through Scripture alone. Tradition was, in effect, a bad word. I realized the model in America today really looked nothing like the early Church. I studied the early Church Fathers and looked into the Jewish roots more, and I began to see the Catholic Church looked an awful lot like this. And that scared me, because I had left the Catholic Church. I had to find some theological way to stay out of the Catholic Church, but really it was a rebellion against my parents.
What led to your return to the Church?
What happened was a series of events. Rather than look into the Catholic Church, I started to look at the Episcopal church, for the tradition, sacraments, and so forth. Also, leadership authority was a big issue. All throughout Scripture, you could always identify God with authority, but in the modern independent churches today, God's authority is simply the man who starts that church. So, I looked into the Episcopal church, which led me to Kansas City. Right before the service one Sunday morning, when I was supposed to talk to the bishop about becoming an Episcopal priest, I picked up a book by Thomas Howard, called Evangelical is Not Enough. I was just fascinated with it, because I assumed he was talking about the Episcopal church. At the end of the book, he wrote he had become a Catholic in 1987 or 1989. I thought, What! That blew me away. So I called him and we talked and he recommended I talk with Marcus Grodi. I did, and found out there were a lot of other people on the same journey I was. The Lord was leading me back to the Catholic Church. Still, the obstacle of my parents was in the way, because before I left for Bible college my dad and I got into a big fight, and that was always in the back of my mind, and to me that represented Catholicism. I didn't want anything to do with it. Yet, my studies were always leading me back to the Church.
Which studies in particular?
Of all, the one key point was the Eucharist. I knew from reading the Old Testament that the Israelites had to consume the lamb at Passover. They could-n't come up with cookies or other alternatives; they had to abide by God's word by slaughtering the lamb, bringing it into the home, cooking and eating it. I knew in the New Testament we had been waiting all this time for the Lamb of God. Now, here he was, and I was continually telling the people, Sorry, you've got to wait longer to get to heaven, because here's another symbol of God's Lamb, Jesus Christ. I knew we had to consume the lamb, and I knew the Catholic Church taught tran-substantiation. The host was the Body and Blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ. I hungered for that so intensely. There's no one explanation for that other than that I simply, suddenly developed this incredible hunger for the Eucharist.
Tell me how your family received your returning to the Church.
First, it was very dramatic. There was a tremendous healing between my father and myself, which was a byproduct of my coming back. It wasn't the reason I came back to the Church, but in the process of coming back, the Lord arranged the healing between me and my father. It was really a blessing. My family was very happy. I learned my mother had offered up every Mass for me over the years. My sisters were a bit confused, I think, because I had preached for so many years that the Church was wrong, and they probably were wondering why I was doing this. My mother-in-law's side of the family was dismayed. They're not Catholic.
Did your wife come into the Church at the same time?
Emily converted about 18 months after I went to Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio.
Why did you decide to attend Franciscan University?
Bishop Paul Dudley of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, who's now retired, encouraged me to do so, to get a Catholic degree. I went there with the family and ended up teaching there. I had a Bible time-line series at the university called “The Great Adventure,” teaching people how to read the Bible in the Introduction to Scripture class.
Did the class at Franciscan lead to other opportunities?
Yes, though not in the way I expected. After a year of teaching the class, Mother Angelica of EWTN called. They had heard my story and my work for the Church around the country, and wanted me to come and do the show with her. I did, and we hit it off, and she asked me if I would do a series for her. That became Our Father's Plan, with Scott Hahn. At the end of that show, Mother Angelica pulled me aside and asked me to pray about doing my own live show on the network for young adults. The Lord brought me out of the Protestant church and into the Catholic Church at a point when I wondered whether there was going to be anything for me to do in the Church. The Lord gave me the desire in my heart which was, from the time I was a boy, to be in TV and radio. Not only did I get to come back to the Church, with all the healing that went with it, but I also ended up doing for a living what I really enjoyed — combining the Gospel with broadcasting.
That's how
That's right, that's what she wanted me to do. I designed and named the show and set the format. The show first aired in January 1997. It is telecast live on Thursday evenings and then rebroadcast.
Other than your EWTN show, what Church-related works do you do?
I write articles for Envoy magazine, and I contributed to a book called Catholic for a Reason, for which Scott Hahn, I, and others wrote. I also have a major activity called Bible Time Line, which is a seminar in which I teach people how to read the Bible in chronological order. That is really going well around the country. I do a lot of conferences and also fill in for Mother Angelica on her show on Tuesday and Wednesday when she's gone. In addition, I lead Bible study groups to Israel. But my primary vocation is father and husband, and that is where I try to give most of my time. A memorable highlight was covering World Youth Day in Paris for EWTN. We did a special on the network.
What was your impression of the youth in Paris?
Oh, they were really excited. They were eager to be [led] by the Pope. Kids are really hungry for something. In Fides et Ratio, the Holy Father talks about how the younger generation lacks a valid point of reference. The result is their lives are shifting. When he visits a city, he brings a valid point of reference. Whether or not they are conscious of this, they at some level cry out for recognizing he is bringing this to them. He is bringing a stability and a certitude to their lives and is giving them a firm foundation on which to build in a society that is very relative and shifting and that has nothing to depend on.
Are adults and young adults also seeking this?
Yes. I think they've been disillusioned by a materialistic society and they know that's not where it is at. They're looking for things with a deeper meaning. They are looking for a challenge with a message that calls for them to give everything. They're looking for heroes, and that's why Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa and similar people are so attractive to young people. That age group can sniff out really quick false people, and they're looking for true leaders and heroes. The minute young people ask themselves, “Who am I?,” society gives them a number of choices: Mark McGwire, Michael Jordan, Madonna, and others. They look to these people and ask if they want to be like them. But they always come up short when they use some people as their ultimate model.
What do you say to them to find God as their role model?
They have to answer the question, “Who am I?” That answer is that they were created in the image of God; they are his children. Of course, the next question they have is, “What does that mean?” The answer is “Jesus,” because if you see Jesus, you see the Father. Young adults will never know who they are until they discover God. Then, they will discover who they are. They will then find real fulfillment in their lives. If they don't, then their lives will be that of imitating the way others dress and act, and they will come up empty. As a result, they fill their lives with drugs and alcohol, premarital sex, and everything like that. The real answer is that if you know who God is, then you know who you are, and what you are called to do with your life, because you are created in his image. The natural inclination to imitate is something that is put into all of us by God. You need to imitate something, but what is your ultimate calling? God is saying all the time, “Imitate me.” So, that is where they are going to find the ultimate choice.
Can you share a memorable experience in your apostolic work?
One that stands out happened not long ago when I was in the South, giving my talk on Scripture. I was challenged by a nun, who said Scripture was a myth, and that by giving people such certitude about Scriptures I was filling them with false hope. I then quoted from magisterial documents about the Church's teachings on Scripture, and I told her this was not my stand, but rather the Church's stand, and that I stood by the Church. She argued a little bit, then got up and walked out. I told her I was the wrong one for her to argue with, because I was only telling what the Church teaches.
What are your plans for the future professionally?
I'll continue on with my show, and also to write and provide tools to help people understand God's will for their life. I want them to help understand God and the Faith better.
How about personally?
One of the things I want to do more is simplify more. There's just so much that can distract me out there, and I want to work on what God has called me to do and do a really good job of it. I'm going to focus on what God has put on my plate. I like the simplicity of the saints. I also want to help young people, particularly, fight through this materialistic society. There is such an emphasis on materialism and consumerism. There are dangers to both of them, and they become placebos — a false hope. It says if we consume more, we'll be happier. The opposite is true. The less you have, the simpler your life becomes. Focus on those few things God has called you to focus on, and you will find happiness. For me, I want to take the truths of the Church and bring them down to a level the laity can understand and put into practice.
What can the average Catholic do to increase his or her faith?
No. 1, learn the faith. It's amazing how many Catholics I run into fight and argue about the liturgy, such as whether the Mass should be in Latin or English, the position of the tabernacle, and so forth. They don't know about the Bible or the catechism. They don't know the basics of the faith. They must get to know the faith very well through reading and viewing. And then the most important thing they can do is to live it. They have to find ways to put it into practice, by being faithful to the sacraments, by being faithful witnesses of Christ, starting at home and moving out into society. They also must teach it to their family and then pass it on to the next generation. They can't rely on the local CCD classes to give their children what they themselves have been given the responsibility to do. The parents are the ones who will stand before God some day and give accountability as to how they raised their children. If you live your faith and practice your faith, that's really, really critical.
Anything else?
One more point I would make is to exert the physical, mental, and spiritual energy into finding ways of communicating the Gospel to this world. It's not just setting up a meeting in a church and expecting the world to come to you, but to find ways to get the message right in front of people, in a way people will say, “Wow! you guys are different. Why are you so different?” Then, they can give an explanation. To do this, families have to be together in faith.
—Jim Malerba
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jeff Cavins ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson ----------- TITLE: U.S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 02/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:From selected publications
A Minority in St. Louis, Catholics Still Get It Done
“Unlike Mexico, in St. Louis [the Pope's] meetings and appearances will not occur against the backdrop of a Catholic culture. Yet though Catholics account for only about a quarter of this city's population, St. Louis boasts a thriving Catholic school system (the highest percentage of Catholics attending Catholic schools of any U.S. diocese); Catholic nuns sponsor most of the metropolitan region's hospitals; and Catholic Charities is the largest nonprofit charity in both Missouri and Illinois.”
“To put it another way,” concluded the Journal, “the venue itself witnesses to a powerful truth: that the experiment in liberty begun in 1776 has allowed not just individual Catholics but Catholic institutions to flourish—often more so than in traditionally Catholic nations.”
News Coverage of Religion Gets Mixed Reviews
EDITOR & PUBLISHER, Jan. 23—Retiring Los Angeles Times religion writer John Dart offers an optimistic view of trends in news media coverage of religion. As for quantity, points out Dart, “During the 1990s, dozens of newspapers…have launched weekly religion sections and increased front-page treatment of religion.”
As for the quality of coverage, Dart acknowledges a problem: “Invited to study tension between religion and the news media in 1992-93 at the Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University, I concluded in a report … that inadequate coverage of religion often resulted from widespread ignorance of a complex subject by news professionals.
He reports that “Numerous forums, including a conference in Rome last year … have called for more sophisticated religion coverage. ” And this, Dart writes, despite ” a reservoir of goodwill in newsrooms.”
But, according to reporter Ann Rodgers-Melnick of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, old habits die hard. On the converge of Pope John Paul II's recent visit and the issuance of the document Ecclesia in America, she observed that, “Some major news organizations devoted their coverage to two topics scarcely hinted at in the official document: artificial contraception and the ordination of women.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 02/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:From selected publications
Little Evidence of Hemispheric Unity in U.S.
A professor of theology at St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, N.Y., Msgr. Albcete points out that “the American hemisphere has fascinated this Pope since his very first visit to Mexico in 1979.” He recounts the now-moribund controversy over liberation theology and how Pope John Paul II “has rejected revolution based on class struggle as the solution to social injustice.”
In its place, Msgr. Albacete argues, “Latin America has been developing a ‘post-liberation theology’” that is grounded in the Church's social doctrine, and which today “requires Catholic leaders to seek 'solidarity’ with the poor and to place the poor's concerns above other considerations in setting Church policy.”
It is natural that North and South American Catholics would be drawn together for this purpose, especially as Latin American immigrants will soon form a majority of Catholic Church members in the U.S.
“But there is little evidence so far of a new hemispheric spirit among Catholics in the United States,” writes Msgr. Albacete. “If anything, the Hispanic apostolate seems inclined to dilute the impact of the Hispanic cultural contribution by seeing it as part of the ‘multiculturalism’ of the Church in America today.”
Role for Church in Preventing Another Pinochet?
“To prevent a return to the nightmare years of state-organized murder and torture, liberals and leftists are seeking the creation of a new human rights commission that would be sanctioned by the Catholic Church to investigate reported abuses,” writes Langman. “Those efforts have been met with resistance from the conservative-controlled Chilean Senate.”
The suggestion of a Church role coming from the left is indicative of the reputation for moral independence enjoyed by the Church in Chile. However, it is doubtful that a dictatorship will return to Chile any time soon. “The free-market policies the Pinochet regime adopted in Chile ultimately proved successful,” writes Langman. The civilian governments that have followed Pinochet have averaged a growth rate of 67%, placing Chile in a Latin American class of its own in terms of economic vitality.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 02/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:From selected publications
Capitalists Agree with Pope on Materialism?
“Though John Paul II sometimes leaves the impression that what he means by neo-liberalism is capitalism or the ‘excesses of capitalism,’ at its core what he means is materialism. And as capitalists themselves would be the first to recognize, materialism threatens capitalism as much as it does the soul.”
While careful not “to equate capitalism with the City of God,” the Journal points out that capitalism “is not value free. Like the Gospels, it elevates the straight and narrow over the free and easy; and hard virtues such as thrift, sobriety, enterprise. Like the Gospels, too, its message is ultimately one of hope.”
The Journal argues that “It is capitalists who refuse to accept that peoples are condemned to poverty, pointing to the energies that turned Hong Kong from a barren rock teeming with refugees into one of the world's dynamic success stories. And it is the capitalists who insist that the freer societies are, the more we need the intangibles of church, school and family.”
Where were Dissenters in St. Louis? Asks Paper
The report noted, “During last week's two-day visit to St. Louis… the pontiff found his once restive followers as quiescent as any time during his 20-year pontificate. A handful of demonstrators dotted the parade routes, but they were lost amid the sea of papal supporters.
“The only serious protest, apart from a small picket by a group of atheists and a smattering of fundamentalist Protestants, was a candlelight vigil held on the eve of the Pope's arrival, in front of the Cathedral in St. Louis.”
To worsen the problem of no-show dissenters, it seems even the dissenters the Record talked to support the Pope.
“I disagree with him on a lot of things, but he is a moral standard bearer. … The pope sets a high standards, but that's really what we need,” one woman told the paper as she went to Mass.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican ----------- TITLE: This Should Disturb the Conscience of any Believer DATE: 02/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:… From “The Family of God the Father on a Journey Toward Justice, Peace, and Reconciliation,” statement of the plenary session of the Sudanese Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Sept. 14:
“[I]n particular, we deplore extrajudicial punishment, disappearances, slavery, and slavery-related practices, tortures, restrictions on freedom of worship, lack of freedom of expression, discriminative laws, practices and attitudes, manipulation of the media, lack of genuine dialogue between Christians and Muslims. … We cite the situation of war to express our total rejection of it. This conflict should, in fact, challenge and disturb the conscience of any believer in God, or any person of goodwill. … We call upon the principal parties to the conflict to seriously work for a negotiated settlement and to stop the perpetration of heinous crimes.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: Jeff Cavins DATE: 02/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:Personal: Married, with three daughters; attended Franciscan University of Steubenville; started Bible study groups there for students and others.
Professional: Former Protestant minister; contributing writer to Envoy magazine; has collaborated on several books, including Catholic for a Reason; conducts seminars and conferences on the Bible and the faith nationwide.
Current position: Host of “Life on the Rock” program on Eternal Word Television Network.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: What the Pope Asks of America DATE: 02/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:Before coming to the United States on Jan. 26, the Holy Father issued a prophetic document that gives Americans a blueprint for the 21st century.
The post synodal apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in America is prophetic both in its recognition that the people of Latin America are becoming the dominant Catholic force north and south of the Mexico-U.S. border, and in the clarity of its call for the Church — bishops, priests, religious, and laity — to transform the Americas by deepening their own encounter with Christ, and bringing more people into communion with him.
The document comes after “the recent celebration of the five hundredth anniversary of the coming of the Gospel to America,” and on the eve of the “approaching Jubilee, when the Church will celebrate the two thousandth anniversary of the Incarnation of the Son of God,” the Pope reminds us in the introduction.
In these “special times,” the Church is very clear what she must do. She “wishes to bring the whole of society and every man and woman to share in the richness of communion with Christ.”
For years, economic forces have been forging ever closer ties between the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Central and South America. Many U.S. dioceses are moving quickly to welcome the high numbers of Latino Catholics that have come to our country. But the synod document, signed Jan. 22 at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, marks the most expansive response thus far by the Church to the new situation emerging in America.
It is also the best response. While it recognizes the depth of the economic challenges of an increasingly urban population (debt, corruption, drugs and crime, ecological concerns), it knows that there is only one answer: an encounter with Jesus Christ, “the definitive answer to the question of the meaning of life, and to those fundamental questions which still trouble so many men and women on the American continent” (No. 10).
Indeed, says the document, the human cost of an active, urban, American economy must be measured not just in terms of social justice but in terms of the need for evangelization.
“Just as she was able to evangelize rural culture for centuries, the Church is called in the same way today to undertake a methodical and far-reaching urban evangelization through catechesis, the liturgy and the very way in which her pastoral structures are organized” (No. 21).
This project constitutes the heart of the document's pastoral directives. To give Americans an authentic encounter with Christ, the Church must above all make available the Eucharist, which the document calls “the outstanding moment of encounter with the living Christ” (No. 35).
It is for this reason that the document issues a call for more vocations, better recognition of the role of women, more effective catechesis, and above all, a greater use of the sacrament of penance. And it is with this communion in mind that the document calls for the bishops of the Americas to address their problems as one.
The document is confident that the Church will transform the culture of the Americas. The document begins and ends by invoking Our Lady of Guadalupe, and when it turns to questions of evangelization, it points to her as our hope.
“In America, the mestiza face of the Virgin of Guadalupe was from the start a symbol of the inculturation of the Gospel, of which she has been the lodestar and the guide. Through her powerful intercession, the Gospel will penetrate the hearts of the men and women of America and permeate their cultures, transforming them from within,” it says (No. 70).
Under this same lodestar, the document calls for a reinculturation of the Gospel, one that takes into account the new realities of the 21st century and reaches an urban people through centers of influence, such as the schools and the media.
“In the overall work of the new evangelization,” the Holy Father writes, “the educational sector occupies a place of honor. For this reason, the activity of all Catholic teachers, including those working in non-denominational schools, should be encouraged. I also make an urgent appeal to men and women religious not to abandon this field which is so important for the new evangelization” (No. 71).
He continues, “Contemporary reality demands a capacity to learn the language, nature, and characteristics of mass media. Using the media correctly and competently can lead to a genuine inculturation of the Gospel. At the same time, the media also help to shape the culture and mentality of people today, which is why there must be special pastoral activity aimed at those working in the media” (No. 72).
But the document ends by emphasizing that the key to the encounter with Christ and the communion of the Americas lies not in the universities or media centers, or even with the bishops or religious, but with the family.
The Pope ends the exhortation with a prayer. “May families always be united, as you and the Father are one, and may they be living witnesses to love, justice, and solidarity; make them schools of respect, forgiveness, and mutual help, so that the world may believe” (No. 76).
It is a strong reminder that, though the Church will transform the world through her sacraments, and by preaching her message from the most advanced centers of research and communication, she relies on the day-today life of families to make all the rest of it possible.
----- EXCERPT: Editorial ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion ----------- TITLE: What the Pope Heard on Retreat DATE: 02/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:The reproduction of a detail of Fra Angelico's Sermon on the Mount on the cover of this book was surely inspired. Together with the title, Loving the Church, it captures the essence of the five-day retreat preached by Christoph Cardinal Schönborn to the papal household, gathered in an intimate group one week in Lent to pursue the spiritual exercises together. Christ, the central figure in the painting, holds a scroll in one hand and raises the other to the heavens, which glow in azure splendor above the tawny rocks. The Twelve are seated informally in a circle below him — the greens, reds, and blues of their robes blending imperceptibly into the gold of the Mount and catching up, like echoes, all the shades in Christ's vesture.
They are rapt in “living communion with Jesus Christ” — a description the Catechism of the Catholic Church uses for the Church. They are the Church, and as we pass beyond the cover to the simple and lucent text within, we begin to see this Church with new eyes, and learn anew to love her.
Who is the Church, in the deepest wellsprings of her being? The Dominican cardinal and editor of the Catechism would have us open our whole being to “the symphony of the faith,” in order to “hear all the notes together.” The Church is God's creation: conceived before all ages, formed through the history of Israel, established in this last age as his chosen bride, made manifest in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and destined for eternal union with him at the end of time.
Cardinal Schönborn has chosen these five elements, or stages, of the Church's life, delineated in Lumen Gentium (No. 2) and in the Catechism (No. 759), as his leitmotif. We are borne along the vast arch rising out of the waters of chaos in Genesis and ascending through, over, and beyond the history of our race, to lose itself in the unfathomable mists of eternity. The arch is the Church. The Church is the bow in the clouds. The splendid truth is that we are not onlookers: We are the bow. One with the Church, we share her glorious destiny.
Returning in thought to the primal emptiness where the Spirit brooded over the waters, the book contemplates creation from God's point of view. His “Let it be” brings light and life and meaning to the void and fills it with his beauty. At the heart of the story is the Church. “The Church is as old as creation,” the cardinal tells us. “In fact, in a certain sense she is older. … In the Shepherd of Hermas, the Church appears as an old woman: ‘She existed before there was a world, and for her the world was created.’”
Is this a figment of the imagination? Far from it. The Catechism says, “God created the world for the sake of communion with his divine life, a communion brought about by the ‘convocation’ of men in Christ, and this ‘convocation’ is the Church.” To see the Church, therefore, as the goal of creation is to see her through God's eyes, in all the magnificent reality of his eternal present.
The Church is at once goal and means. The goal of all creation, she is also the means whereby all creation returns to the Creator. How are we to encompass this mind-boggling concept? “A sense of creatureliness,” Cardinal Schönborn suggests, “of what it means to be a creature, is a prerequisite for a sense of the Church. … Creatures are not random ports-of-call in the voyage of evolution. … Creaturely variety is not an accident … but an expression in many forms of the plenitude of the divine essence. … The heart of Christian anthropology is that man is created in the image of God.”
Once lost in Eden, the primeval intimacy with God was to be restored by the same creative Word. Nearing the end of Day 1 of the retreat, we come upon this exhilarating challenge: “Believing in the Creator also means believing in the great things he expects of his creatures. … The creature can never know a greater self-fulfillment than letting himself be totally used by God.”
This, and indeed the whole book, may startle a reader immersed in the secular culture that dulls our days. And what will a feminist make of the passing comment, “In Mary we see, gazing across countless generations, the face of woman as God created her: Eve, the mother of all the living”?
We are back to Eden, but it is not a “re-run,” according to the book. We are being pointed upward along the arch, through the dark history of preparation, the saga of the Old Covenant, on through the formation, the establishment of the New Covenant, to the appearance of the chosen Bride, black but beautiful in the splendor of the Spirit's manifestation in this last age. We are looking at her destiny, our destiny, as it has been conceived from eternity to eternity.
Is all this sheer blind idealism? Can we deliberately close our eyes to what we see when we look at the Church, the “institutional Church” as so many think of it today, at the turn of the millennium? Where is truth? How escapist are we?
The plain truth is that the cardinal is very down to earth and disarmingly honest. Considering the Samaritan woman at the well, he sees the disciples as “trapped in the stupidity of their self-concern. What a ‘confessional mirror'this holds up for us. It challenges and tests our ‘compassion.’ Is it just ‘Anything for a quiet life,’ or, ‘Avoid complications,’ or, ‘We don't want a public outcry,’ or, ‘No awkward scenes, please?’Is there a thirst for the salvation of men burning in our hearts?”
Reflecting on the little children being brought to Jesus, Schönborn wonders aloud why the disciples “abused and barked at the people.” He muses, “How often it is we, the apostles and their successors, who hinder people from coming to Jesus!” The “drama of the sin of the shepherds,” painfully familiar in the Old Testament, is acted out step by step in the New, from their shocking silences, their talk on the road, to the unkindest cut of all, the dispute over which of them was to be regarded as the greatest (Luke 22:24). “He foretells his Passion, but they are talking about precedence and promotion.” This, too, is the Church. This is us. Yet we believe, we know that the Church is also the beloved Bride, born from the side of Christ on Calvary.
It is good to grapple with the paradox, good to look honestly at the less than comforting facts. It is even better to see them from God's point of view, even if it means standing on our heads and squinting through the eyes of faith. Acrobatics like this open doors to truth. Books like this lead us to the edge of loving the Church.
Sister Mary Thomas Noble, a Dominican nun, writes from Buffalo, New York.
----- EXCERPT: Book Review ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mary Thomas Noble OP ----- KEYWORDS: Books ----------- TITLE: When Christians Buy Into Therapeutic Fads DATE: 02/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:by William Kilpatrick(First Things, February 1999)
William Kilpatrick, professor in the School of Education at Boston College, writes: “When Christians embrace psychological fads in hopes of keeping up to date, they frequently end up behind the curve when the fads turn out to be just that. The foolishness that can result is illustrated by a recent Christian youth curriculum that includes a cross-dressing activity called the Suitcase Relay.
“There are a number of other therapeutic concepts that are now either in dispute or in disrepute with professionals but are nonetheless still tremendously popular with religious educators, parishes, priests, and bishops. Take the concept of self-esteem, now a central element in curricula for Catholics and other Christian youth. In psychological circles serious questions are being raised about the efficacy of high self-esteem, and about whether the trait can even be measured. … Moreover, as Christina Hoff Sommers has pointed out, there seems to be no connection between high self-esteem scores and academic success. … But there's more. Recent studies … suggest that high self-esteem may be related to anti-social behavior. In fact, the most dangerous youth seem to have highly inflated opinions of themselves.
“It's the same with the popular concept of nonjudgmentalism. If there was ever a time in which it was important for youngsters to exercise moral judgment, this is it. … Yet, in Christian education the emphasis is still very often on acceptance, trust, and the absence of judgment. … Meanwhile, other Churches have bought into the notion that homosexuality is biologically driven and is therefore not a choice. Yet these are issues that are hotly contested by professional psychologists. The evidence that homosexuality is biologically driven, for instance, is quite skimpy and far from convincing. It seems quite ill-advised for Christians to join the chorus of theories suggesting we can't help ourselves, that we are not really responsible for our behavior.
“One of the most destructive consequences of carelessly mixing therapy with faith is a diminished sense of sin. The best evidence that this has already happened in the Catholic Church is the tremendous drop-off in the practice of confession over the past thirty years. When we couple this with the nearly 100% communion turnout in most parishes, we have to conclude that most parishioners don't have a strong consciousness of sin.
“A related … problem resulting from freely mixing faith with psychology is a diminished sense of the sacred. … One of the deep mysteries that has suffered is the mystery of Christ's presence in the Eucharist. … In their quest for what is relevant and recognizable, religious educators often reduce God to a comfortable size. He becomes a chummy friend whom we can approach with an easy and casual familiarity, another reason why for many Catholics receiving communion seems not to be an occasion of soul searching or prior purification.
“The message of the therapeutic faith is precisely the reverse of John the Baptist's message, ‘He must increase and I must decrease.’… The co-opting of faith by therapy culminates in spectacles like that surrounding the death of Princess Diana. Faced with the stark contrast between the lives of Mother Teresa and Princess Di, the masses concluded that both were saints. Mother Teresa's project in life was to do God's work; Diana's project was mainly herself.
“It is important for people of faith to keep in mind that there can be no real compromise between Christianity and the psychological society. … But any culture that has no use for truth is ultimately a dangerous culture. If there is no meaning outside the self, there is no meaning. And if there is no meaning, there is no morality. As Dostoevsky famously warned, without God everything is permissible — and the therapeutic culture has no God.
“The Gospels tell us that if our hand offends us we should cut if off, it being better to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into Hell. Likewise, it may be better to enter the kingdom of Heaven with a repressed psyche than to enter the other place brimming with self-assertiveness. … The therapeutic culture's well-adjusted person, for all his serene sense of self, has one overwhelming problem: he is blinded to the beatific vision.”
A condensed version, in the words of the original author, of an article selected by the Register from the nation's top journals.
----- EXCERPT: Article Digest ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: Letters DATE: 02/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:Lying Under Oath
I appreciate the analysis by Mary Ellen Bork (Register Jan. 24-30) regarding the important question of whether lying under oath by the President of the United States has any serious consequences. I believe it has serious and far-reaching consequences. Lying under oath has serious implications for every court room in our nation.
Our first President, George Washington, is honored for his commitment to tell the truth. “I cannot tell a lie. I cut down the cherry tree.” His example is one we want to give our children. Our current President, Bill Clinton, implies the opposite, namely that he can tell a lie and get away with it.
Jan Urbanic Ann Arbor, Michigan
President Clinton may be guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice, but he is only the reflection of an American society wallowing in moral relativism and ethical indeterminism.
Without morals and ethics there is no law. Without law there is only anarchy and anomie.
The legacy of this status quo can be found in the biblical prognostication of Jeremiah 9:4-6 and Micah 7:5-6 — immutable truth that fits all ages, describing the end result of a morally corrupt society.
Joseph Dalton Downsville, New York
Church Unity
Our Holy Father's unshakable confidence in God's plan for the future of ecumenism (Register, Jan. 24-30) is evident throughout his reign. He considers the year 2000 to be crucial since it marks the end of the 2nd millennium, the period during which most Christian divisions took place. The Eastern Orthodox Churches and the Western Latin-rite Church separated in 1054; the Protestant Churches separating from the Catholic Church during the Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries.
The unity theme for 1999 — “God will dwell with them; they will be God's people” — is the theme representatives of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity chose for 1999. Any unity effort sought by the Christian Churches must not come from human efforts alone, but from God. Everyone committed to this effort is more than aware of the obstacles and the difficulties to be overcome.
The unity of the Catholic Church itself is a work of the Holy Spirit preserving the Church amidst the “infidelities of some of her ministers, and the faults into which her members daily fall.”
As the Church moves into the 3rd millennium of Christian history the message of Ut Unum Sint(That All May Be One) takes on a sense of urgency. How can we go before the Lord, on the 2,000th anniversary of the Incarnation, with a Church so badly divided? How can the Church be a sign of the unity of the human race — especially at this fractious point in human history — when she is herself so disunited? Is not a great work of ecumenical imagination required of all those who really believe the Spirit to be constantly present in the Church?
“What separates us as believers in Christ is much less than what unites us” (Pope John XXIII).
Aubert Lemrise
Peru, Illinois
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: They are Making Our Case For Us DATE: 02/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:This year's events commemorating Roe v. Wade will provoke familiar commentary. For at least three Januarys in a row, abortion lobby spokeswoman Kate Michelman has decried the number of pro-life initiatives in state legislatures around the country. Pro-lifers have not really addressed this message even though the response is simple: That's right. Keep making our case for us!
Much has been written about judicial activism in the context of abortion and other hot-button issues. But relatively little attention has been paid to the flip side of the judicial activist coin: the growing number of pro-life initiatives and victories in representative assemblies — state legislatures and even city councils — around the country. The spread of partial-birth abortion bans in 28 states is the most recent and publicized example. But states all over the country have entertained and enacted other pro-life laws, such as informed consent legislation for women seeking abortions and parental involvement requirements for minors to have abortions. When the people speak through their political channels their voice is clearly pro-life.
These legislative successes are important for the same reason judicial activism is important: Legislatures are representative of and accountable to the people. What takes place in state legislatures obviously is far more reflective of American sentiment than what takes place in the federal judiciary. Thus Kate Michelman's statements unintentionally highlight the pro-life leanings of most Americans, slogans about the “pro-choice majority” notwithstanding.
Legally and culturally, the real impact of Roe was the wrenching of the abortion issue from these representative assemblies, which reflect the will of ordinary citizens, to the bench, which reflects the will of the legal establishment. Until 1973, the year Roe was decided, abortion had been an issue for state legislatures. In the ‘60s and ‘70s, many state legislatures were in the process of revisiting abortion laws. While some states, most notably New York and Hawaii, loosened protections for the unborn to allow abortion in some circumstances, the overwhelming majority affirmed their legal protection. Little did they know that their work would be in vain.
One Iowa legislator explained that he was actually discussing abortion with colleagues the moment he learned of Roe. The practical effect was immediate. They all went home, figuring that the federal courts would now settle it.
This transfer of the issue from the state legislatures to the federal judiciary was no accident. Indeed, it is clear now that the move was a strategic one — and remains the preferred strategy among abortion advocates to this day. Efforts to legalize abortion with popular support simply had failed. Roe represents the deliberate bypassing of the citizens to appeal to the most abortion-sympathetic audience — the elite of the legal establishment, our judges.
Roe represents the deliberate bypassing of the citizens to appeal to the most abortion-sympathetic audience: our judges.
Judges, of course, are lawyers. They therefore are products of American law schools and the culture that dominates there. That culture is far more supportive of abortion then the culture that prevails in mainstream America. What's more, it is primarily liberal law professors who read and critique judicial opinions. Needless to say, law school faculty can exert influence over members of the bench who seek positive reviews in law journals. It is no wonder that abortion advocates preferred to take their case to this audience and not to the broader American public.
That remains the case to this day. Time and again one reads that a court, under the pretext of either state or federal constitutional constraints, has invalidated a modest pro-life statute. In fact, courts have invalidated even pro-life state constitutional amendments, which require, of course, a much higher degree of consensus. Arkansas and Colorado amendments on abortion funding come to mind.
To make matters worse, the attorneys general entrusted to defend pro-life laws often favor abortion, along with the judges presiding. In Montana, Massachusetts, and now Georgia, attorneys general have compromised pro-life legislation because they don't agree with the goals advanced. Talk about a travesty of justice.
This thwarting of the will of the people by the legal establishment has been, and remains, a very sophisticated and successful strategy. And it is a huge part of the abortion story in our country.
But this strategy also reveals a lot about the abortion movement. It is in effect a tacit concession by abortion advocates that they cannot successfully appeal to most Americans. Their strength lies in the sympathy and support they receive from America's elites — especially the legal elite.
Unfortunately, that support has more than sufficed. Abortion on demand for the full nine months of pregnancy, and now even during delivery, has been America's abortion policy and practice for more than 25 years. This is no small victory for abortion advocates. What's more, the Roe decision, despite its undemocratic and illegitimate nature, continues to teach Americans that abortion is morally acceptable.
That said, it must be noted — and celebrated — that most Americans still don't buy this. Despite the formidable influence of Roe and the courts, the majority of Americans remain extremely ambivalent about, if not opposed to, abortion on demand. And they continue to support measures in their representative assemblies that discourage abortion in favor of life. Just ask the abortion advocates. They're making our case for us.
Teresa Wagner, an attorney, writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Teresa Wagner ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion ----------- TITLE: The Spirit of St. Louis DATE: 02/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:Here is the text of Pope John Paul II's arrival speech at the St. Louis airport Jan. 26, a speech that showed both his keen insights into America and his willingness to embrace all that is good about the nation.
Mr. President,
Dear People of St. Louis,
Dear People of the United States,
It is a real joy for me to return to the United States and to experience once more your warm hospitality.
As you know, I have been in Mexico, to celebrate the conclusion of the Special Assembly for America of the Synod of Bishops. The purpose of that important meeting was to prepare the Church to enter the new Millennium and to encourage a new sense of solidarity among the peoples of the continent. Now I am happy to be able to bring this message to Mid-America, on the banks of the Mississippi, in this historic city of St. Louis, the Gateway to the West.
Greetings
I am grateful to you, Mr. President, for your courtesy in meeting me on my arrival. I likewise greet the Governor and authorities of the State of Missouri, as well as the Mayor of St. Louis and other officials of the City and surrounding areas. So many people have offered their generous cooperation in preparation for this visit, and I am grateful to them all.
As Pastor of the universal Church, I am particularly happy to greet the Catholic community of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, with its rich spiritual heritage and its dynamic traditions of service to those in need. I wish to say a special word of appreciation to Archbishop Justin Rigali, who has been close to me since I became Pope twenty years ago. I am looking forward to being with the priests, deacons, religious, and laity of this local Church, which has exercised such influence on the history of the Midwest.
With deep thanks I greet the Cardinals and Bishops. Their presence gives me an opportunity to send my good wishes to the whole Province of St. Louis and its ecclesiastical Region, and to all the Dioceses of this country. Although St. Louis is the only place I am able to visit at this time, I feel close to all the Catholics of the United States.
I express my friendship and esteem for my fellow Christians, for the Jewish community in America, for our Muslim brothers and sisters. I express my cordial respect for people of all religions and for every person of goodwill.
As history is retold, the name of St. Louis will be forever linked to the first trans-Atlantic flight, and to the immense human endeavor and daring behind the name: the “Spirit of St. Louis.”
You are preparing for the bicentennial of the Louisiana Purchase made in 1804 by President Thomas Jefferson. That anniversary presents a challenge of religious and civic renewal to the entire community. It will be the opportunity to reassert the “Spirit of St. Louis” and to reaffirm the genuine truths and values of the American experience.
Dred Scott … and Today
There are times of trial, tests of national character, in the history of every country. America has not been immune to them. One such time of trial is closely connected with St. Louis. Here, the famous Dred Scott case was heard. And in that case the Supreme Court of the United States subsequently declared an entire class of human beings — people of African descent — outside the boundaries of the national community and the Constitution's protection.
After untold suffering and with enormous effort, that situation has, at least in part, been reversed.
America faces a similar time of trial today. Today, the conflict is between a culture that affirms, cherishes, and celebrates the gift of life, and a culture that seeks to declare entire groups of human beings — the unborn, the terminally ill, the handicapped, and others considered “unuseful” — to be outside the boundaries of legal protection. Because of the seriousness of the issues involved, and because of America's great impact on the world as a whole, the resolution of this new time of testing will have profound consequences for the century whose threshold we are about to cross. My fervent prayer is that through the grace of God at work in the lives of Americans of every race, ethnic group, economic condition and creed, America will resist the culture of death and choose to stand steadfastly on the side of life.
To choose life — as I wrote in this year's Message for the World Day of Peace — involves rejecting every form of violence: the violence of poverty and hunger which oppresses so many human beings; the violence of armed conflict, which does not resolve but only increases divisions and tensions; the violence of particularly abhorrent weapons such as anti-personnel mines; the violence of drug trafficking; the violence or racism; and the violence of mindless damage to the natural environment.
The Family
Only a higher moral vision can motivate the choice for life. And the values underlying that vision will greatly depend on whether the nation continues to honor and revere the family as the basic unit of society: the family — teacher of love, service, understanding and forgiveness; the family — open and generous to the needs of others; the family — the great wellspring of human happiness.
Mr. President, dear friends: I am pleased to have another opportunity to thank the American people for the countless works of human goodness and solidarity which, from the beginning, have been such a part of the history of your country. At the same time I know that you will hear my plea to open wide your hearts to the ever increasing plight and urgent needs of our less fortunate brothers and sisters throughout the world.
This too — the spirit of compassion, concern, and generous sharing — must be part of the “Spirit of St. Louis.” Even more, it must be the renewed spirit of this “one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.” God bless you all! God bless America!
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: The President's Welcome Speech DATE: 02/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:President Clinton welcomed Pope John Paul II to St. Louis on Jan. 26 with the following remarks. “We honor you,” Clinton said again and again, praising the Holy Father's achievements and singling out his commitment to human rights.
Your Holiness,
On behalf of all of us gathered here today, indeed on behalf of all the people of our beloved nation, we welcome you back to America.
Your return brings joy not only to the Catholic faithful, but to every American who has heard your message of peace and charity toward all God's children. And we thank you for first going to Mexico, and for reaching out to all the people of the Americas.
We greet you and we thank you. For 20 years you have lifted our spirits and touched our hearts. For 20 years you have challenged us to think of life not in terms of what we acquire for ourselves, but in terms of what we give of ourselves.
This is your seventh visit to the United States, your 85th visit abroad as the bishop of Rome. Through it all you have given of yourself, with a boundless physical energy which can only find its source in limitless faith. You have come in the final year of a century that has seen much suffering, but which ends with great hope for freedom and reconciliation. It is a moment anticipated by countless prayers, brought forward by countless hands, and shaped very much by you, Holy Father, and your 20-year pilgrimage.
We honor you for helping to lead a revolution of values and spirit in Central Europe and the former Soviet Union; freeing millions to live by conscience, not coercion; and freeing all of us from the constant fear of nuclear war.
We honor you for standing for human dignity, human rights, and religious freedom; and for helping people to find the courage to stand up for themselves — from Africa to Asia to the Western Hemisphere.
We honor you for your work to bring peace to nations and peoples divided by old hatreds and suspicions. From Bosnia and Kosovo, to Central Africa, to Indonesia, to the Middle East, even to our own communities, people still need to hear your message that all are God's children, all have fallen short of his glory; all the injustices of yesterday cannot excuse a single injustice today.
Holy Father, we are moved by your desire to mark the new millennium with a journey to Jerusalem, to bring mercy and reconciliation to all those who believe in one God, in the holy place where all our faiths began.
Your Holiness, we honor you, too, because you have never let those of us who enjoy the blessings of prosperity, freedom, and peace forget our responsibilities.
On your last visit to the United States you called on us to build a society truly worthy of the human person; a society in which none are so poor they have nothing to give, and none are so rich they have nothing to receive. Today you visit an America that is thriving, but also striving — striving to include those who do not yet share in our prosperity at home, and striving to put a human face on the global economy by advancing the dignity of work, the rights of women, the well-being of children, and the health of our common environment.
You will see an America that is not simply living for today, but working for future generations. An America working harder to be what you have asked us to be: an example of justice and civic virtues, freedom fulfilled, and goodness at home and abroad.
The Catholic Church in America is helping all of us to realize that vision. Here in St. Louis, Catholic charities are helping families conquer violence and drug abuse; helping people in need to find work, and to finance their first homes; helping refugees from war-torn lands to build new lives; building housing for the elderly, including the new Pope John Paul II Apartments; and leading countless other efforts that lift our people's lives.
All over our country, the Catholic faithful do this work for the sake of all Americans, and they are joined in their work by Americans of all faiths.
Your Holiness, every American welcomes you and hopes that you will come to see us again. I am nowhere near as gifted a linguist as you are, Holy Father, but as they say in your native Poland, “sto lat I wiecej” — may you live a hundred years and more. And may you keep working and teaching and lighting the way, for all of us and all the world.
Welcome to the United States.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: Rocky Mountain High: Our Lady in Montana DATE: 02/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:The story of Our Lady of the Rockies, a majestic 90-foot statue that stands above the Western town of Butte, Montana, is more than a logistical and engineering feat.
Its inspiration came from a physical healing attributed to the intercession of the Blessed Mother. Its construction riveted the attention of an entire region, and its completion coincided with Butte's revival.
Our Lady of the Rockies is visible from anywhere in Butte, nestled in a valley 3,500 feet below. Catholics make up the largest Christian denomination in the town of 35,000, owing to early immigrations from Ireland and other European countries.
In 1985, after seven years of work to build a long and windy access road and prepare the site, the final execution of the monument itself was begun. Volunteers built the iron statue in five sections in Butte and were ready to move the Lady to her new mountain perch by dramatic airlift. The sections were lofted to their final resting place, 8,510 feet above sea level, by an Air National Guard helicopter. The final part of the statue, the head section, was lowered into place in December 1985.
In 1978, one of the first to join the plan to build the statue was Joseph Roberts, who coined the name Our Lady of the Rockies, and opened his heavy equipment machine shop for much of the project's construction.
A welder in his shop, Leroy Lee, volunteered to work on the project as designer and sculptor after the original sculptor quit. Lee lacked the experience that would normally be required for a project of this type, but he pressed ahead anyway.
Although a convert to Catholicism since his marriage, Lee wasn't overly devout. He regarded attendance at Mass as little more than a duty. But his eventual spearheading of the Rockies project ignited a spiritual rebirth that he attributes to Our Lady.
“This was a conversion process,” Lee said. “It changed my life.”
A growing trust in divine providence buoyed Lee in time of crisis. The work progressed until 1981 when Lee was confronted by his greatest creative and technical challenge — the design and construction of the Blessed Mother's head and face. Lee told his wife one Saturday that he would ask to be replaced on the project since his talents could take him no further.
At Mass that evening Lee found himself drawn to a figure of the Madonna and child. “Being a convert, I had never said a prayer to Mary,” confided Lee. “But for some reason I felt compelled to say, ‘Mary, if you want me to build a statue of you, you have to help me.’” A solution dawned on Lee later that night as he tried to sleep.
That inspiration — and his belief in Our Lady's power — were confirmed a short time later when he offered his second-ever prayer to Mary, asking her to win the healing of a friend with bone cancer. The friend went into remission within a week, and Lee became certain that the inspiration for completing the statue was genuine and should be implemented, which it was.
Lee's personal story is similar to that of Butte itself. In 1983 the town's primary industry and lifeblood, its mining operations, were suspended. The mid-1980s were some of the gloomiest years in Butte's history. The community was down, and many believe Our Lady of the Rockies was a key source of help when limited mining operations resumed in 1985, the same year as the statue's completion. Community spirit and the local economy soon rebounded.
“Things turned around, and that can be understood as coincidence or divine providence,” said Connie Kenney, the executive vice president of the Butte-Silver Bow Chamber of Commerce, who does not hide her confidence in the latter.
Father Sarsfield O'Sullivan, a retired Butte pastor, pointed to other benefits, including “the remarkable enthusiasm that the community has shown for the statue.” He said the highly visible Lady functions “like steeples of a church, always pointing us to God.”
William Fischer writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: Catholic Traveler ----- EXTENDED BODY: William Fischer ----- KEYWORDS: Travel ----------- TITLE: How It All Got Started DATE: 02/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:The idea of a statue of the Blessed Mother was born of desperation. In the mid-1970s, Butte's Joyce O'Bill was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness that required an equally dangerous operation — one that promised no more than a 50% chance of survival. Her husband, Bob, turned to a friend who recommended that the O'Bills place their trust in Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Bob did just that, promising to have a statue of Mary constructed should God deliver his wife safely through her operation. Joyce survived, and Bob set about fulfilling his promise. Little did they know how this mission would impact their entire community. While O'Bill envisioned a modest 5- or 6-foot-high statue, the statue now stands more than 10 times that height.
Joyce downplays the medical risks she endured, emphasizing the years of work that were supplied by hundreds of volunteers to bring Our Lady to the Rocky Mountains of southwestern Montana. More than 280,000 volunteer man-hours went into the project.
“It was done by people with various types of expertise, by old and young, all chipping in what they could,” she said. “The real story is not about miracles but about how the Lady brought this town together and brought people closer to God.”
It's a story that has been the subject of several books and videos and has been featured by media outlets as far away as Germany. More than 6,000 people made the two-hour round-trip to the mountain site by shuttle bus from Butte in 1998, and double that number visited the Our Lady of the Rockies gift shop and non-profit foundation headquarters in Butte's center city. A tram is now planned that will cut the round-trip time to 14 minutes.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: Getting There DATE: 02/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:By car: Butte is located at the junction of Interstates 15 and 90 in southwestern Montana.
By bus: Greyhound provides service to Butte. Shuttle bus service to the statue site is available at the Butte Plaza Mall.
By train: Not available.
By plane: Delta is the only large carrier to service Butte's Bert Mooney Airport.
For more information on making a pilgrimage to Our Lady of the Rockies, contact the Our Lady of the Rockies Foundation, at 434 N. Main St., Butte, or call the center at (406) 782-1221, or reach it via e-mail at ourlady@intch.com for any questions on the site or visits.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: What Kind of 'Catholic Higher Education' Is Truly Catholic? DATE: 02/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:At their meeting in November the U.S. bishops considered a draft document intended to help bring Catholic colleges and universities in the United States into closer conformity with the higher-education standards of the universal Church, as set forth in Pope John Paul II's 1990 apostolic constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae (From the Heart of the Church).
This proposed bishops’ document, styled an “Application” of Ex Corde Ecclesiae in the United States, was produced by a subcommittee headed by Anthony Cardinal Bevilacqua of Philadelphia. After further discussions to take place this year, the bishops are expected to vote on this proposed document at their annual meeting next November.
The application document has not garnered universal acclaim on the campuses of U.S. Catholic colleges and universities. The heads of two prominent Catholic institutions are among other educators who have come forward with sharp criticisms of the Bevilacqua subcommittee's whole approach.
Writing in the Jesuit magazine America (Jan. 30), Holy Cross Father Edward Malloy CSC, president of the University of Notre Dame, and Father Donald Monan SJ, chancellor of Boston College, claim that the bishops’ proposed document would “threaten particular havoc within Catholic universities,” would be “unworkable for American universities,” and would be “profoundly detrimental to Catholic higher education.”
These are strong words, especially considering that the approach of the Bevilacqua subcommittee is basically the same as the approach of Pope John Paul II and the Holy See. The subcommittee document represents, in fact, a carefully crafted response to a specific request from the Congregation for Catholic Education in Rome. Last year the congregation said an earlier bishops’ draft submitted in 1996 needed to include specific juridical norms governing Catholic higher education. The present document, then, represents the third attempt of the bishops to implement Ex Corde Ecclesiae in this country.
The first attempt to implement the document met with such monolithic opposition from leading Catholic colleges and universities that the bishops felt obliged to withdraw it and come up with something more palatable.
The result was a second draft that amounted to little more than a bland statement of the ideals of Catholic higher education. This was the 1996 document that Rome sent back, asking for revisions and strengthening. Yet not even this weaker document succeeded in gaining the approbation of the critics. They have consistently maintained a position that amounts to allowing the Church herself to have essentially no say in what Catholic colleges and universities should really be like — at least in the United States.
In their America article, Fathers Malloy and Monan join this chorus of criticism, and take their places in a long line of adamant American resistance. At this point, it should begin to give us some pause that the heads of major Catholic institutions persist unchanged in their opposition to the serious and sincere efforts of Rome and the bishops to take their concerns into account. The hierarchy have revised the documents several times — though they have maintained, of course, that the Catholic Church necessarily has some say in Catholic higher education.
The problem of systematic opposition from the present educational establishment goes back even further than the issuance of Ex Corde Ecclesiae in 1990.
Ever since the promulgation of the new Code of Canon Law in 1983, canons 807-814 have strictly prescribed certain standards and requirements for colleges and universities claiming the name “Catholic.” However, these university canons have been pretty much a dead letter in this country. Some American canonists have even argued, with apparently wide acceptance, that they do not apply here. In their article, Fathers Malloy and Monan actually describe the canons as “lifeless.”
Yet the Church has never agreed that these canons do not apply in the United States. On the contrary, an effort by the U.S. bishops in the 1980s to secure permission from Rome to set the canons aside was specifically rejected by the Holy See. Furthermore, the Congregation for Catholic Education, not to speak of Pope John Paul II himself in person, has specifically informed the Church in the United States that Ex Corde Ecclesiae must indeed be implemented here.
Fathers Malloy and Monan continue to disagree. Their principal objection seems to be that the institutional autonomy and academic freedom of Catholic institutions would be jeopardized by the acceptance of Ex Corde Ecclesiae. They are obliged to maintain this position in the face of the obvious fact — which they also admit — that both Ex Corde Ecclesiae and the bishops’ application document plainly accept and affirm both the institutional autonomy and the academic freedom of institutions of higher education.
The Malloy-Monan case is thus not a very strong one, and reflects what appears to be a prevalent belief among many contemporary Catholic educators that no university can really lay claim to being a fully “modern American university” if it is “subject” to any “outside” authority — most especially, it would seem, the authority of the Church.
The truth is, however, that all American institutions of higher education are regularly subject to a wide range of requirements and restrictions imposed by “external authorities” — by federal, state, and local governments; by accrediting agencies, foundations, donors, trustees, professional associations; and even by “politically correct” pressure groups. Today's students also make regular “demands” on university administrations — and they sometimes seem to be heard more respectfully than the Pope or the bishops.
University administrators and faculty don't seem to consider these outside restrictions and requirements to be compromising to their institutional autonomy or academic freedom. Only when the outside requirements originate with the Church, apparently, does there seem to be a cry of interference and of jeopardy to academic freedom.
Why, for example, is it considered so onerous that Ex Corde Ecclesiae and the Code of Canon Law require theology teachers to “have a mandate from competent ecclesiastical authority”? Licensure and other professional standards are maintained in virtually all other professions, after all. Why not theology? Are professors in any engineering, law, or medical schools in the United States allowed to teach at variance with the standards laid down by the accrediting associations in these fields? Why is the Catholic Church alone apparently denied the right to “accredit” those who, by definition, are teaching “Catholic theology”?
Turning to a specific issue raised by the America article, let's consider the role of boards of trustees in higher education in the United States.
The two priests correctly point out that most institutions of higher education are, in fact, governed by such boards in this country; but they then go on to imply that institutions governed by such boards could never subscribe to Ex Corde Ecclesiae or otherwise come “under” the Church or canon law. This is not the case.
They even muddy the waters by raising the issue of different “classes” of board membership, suggesting that clerics, religious, or religious orders (or even dioceses!) could never, therefore, properly “govern” an institution of higher education that was truly “American.” Once again, none of this is the case.
The fact is that nowhere does either Ex Corde Ecclesiae or the proposed bishops’ application document require either institutions or their governing boards to come “under” the Church or ecclesiastical control in any way which would undermine their institutional autonomy or academic freedom.
Rather, institutions of higher education, if they wish to be Catholic, and not simply bear the name for whatever expedient purpose, are being asked by Ex Corde Ecclesiae (Article 2) and by the bishops to make their own institutional commitment to being Catholic. They are also asked to maintain this commitment by formal institutional links and practices incorporated into their mission statements and their other documents and practices.
Once an institution has made its own commitment to being Catholic, all the dire problems for Catholic higher education raised by Fathers Malloy and Monan disappear. Nothing in either the civil law, U.S. accrediting association requirements, or common American higher education practice prevents boards of trustees — lay or clerical, or a combination — from making the institutional commitment to authentic Catholic higher education that Ex Corde Ecclesiae asks, and indeed requires, of them. Self-governing, autonomous institutions of higher education are entirely free within the American system of higher education to make this kind of commitment and to freely implement it in their own documents and practices.
I wonder if either of these distinguished educators has ever thought of distributing copies of Ex Corde Ecclesiae to the current members of their governing boards, accompanied by a simple explanation: “This is what the Catholic Church now requires for those colleges and universities that wish to be affiliated with her and continue to bear her name.”
Are they entirely sure what the reactions of the members of their respective boards would be? Would the members of those boards perhaps even prefer to “think with the Church” rather than to continue an increasingly unseemly public opposition to the U.S. bishops and the Holy See?
Kenneth Whitehead is a former U.S. assistant secretary of education for post-secondary education, and the author, among other books, of Catholic Colleges and Federal Funding (Ignatius Press, 1988).
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Kenneth Whitehead ----- KEYWORDS: Education ----------- TITLE: Education Notebook DATE: 02/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:Ads Target Race-Based Admission Policies
USA Today reported that the Center placed ads in the “student newspapers at 15 public and private colleges” and in “two journals aimed at trustees.” Students and trustees are the groups most affected by preferences and “most able to change race-based policies.”
The center “argues that many of the most competitive schools operate ‘on what amounts to dual admissions systems’ — one based on academic ability and the other on race,” according to the report.
Another Washington-based group, the Center for Equal Opportunity, has published details of “what it says are violations at [some] public institutions.”
The Center for Individual Rights won a 1996 lawsuit against the University of Texas Law School, “making affirmative action policies illegal in three states,” said USA Today.
Students Turning to S.A.T. Tutors
Throughout his junior year in high school, Gabe Schwartz of New York met with a tutor who helped him raise his score from 980 on the P.S.A.T., which students take in their sophomore year, to 1,380 on the S.A.T. (Both tests have a possible 1600 points.)
Schwartz attributes the improved score with helping him gain admission to the University of Michigan, which would surely have been closed to him with the lower score.
The magazine said 91% of the students who received tutoring at one professional agency increased their scores by at least 100 points at an average cost of $5,000 to $8,000.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education ----------- TITLE: Yuppies in Cyberlove DATE: 02/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:You've Got Mail delivers a likable but hollow love letter for the ‘90s
Love stories are always about obstacles — impediments placed in the way of two people whom the audience wants to see get together. Some are personal and familial, others are cultural. Often these hurdles tell us as much about the times in which the lovers live as they do about their individual personality quirks.
In You've Got Mail, writer-director Nora Ephron (Sleepless in Seattle) and her sister, co-screenwriter Delia Ephron, take the premise of the 1940 Ernst Lubitsch classic, Shop Around the Corner, which was set in a Budapest novelty shop, and recast it in the world of the Internet and the contemporary New York book business. The result is a postmodern romantic comedy where you root for the two lovers to link up, but whose charm is limited by the values of its characters and their social class.
Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) owns a small children's bookstore on Manhattan's Upper West Side which she inherited from her mother. She treats the business like a vocation. She and her close-knit staff are familiar with all the books and know most of the customers personally.
Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) is the owner of Manhattan's largest book super-chain which he describes as “selling cheap books and legally addictive substances.” With their huge inventory and large discounts, his outlets consistently undersell independents like Kathleen. He plans to open a new store in her area which will probably put her out of business.
Kathleen and Joe are natural rivals who, when the movie begins, have never met even though they have apartments in the same Upper West Side neighborhood. They both shop at the same grocery store and drink coffee at the same Starbucks. They also share a secret passion — the Internet and its chat rooms.
The movie's plot turns on the fact that Kathleen and Joe, while business rivals and neighbors, meet in cyberspace, exchange messages, and become electronic soulmates without discovering each other's real identity.
Kathleen's chat-room moniker is Shopgirl and Joe's is NY 152. Each is living with a significant other. But Joe and Kathleen reveal more about themselves on the Internet than they do with their real-life partners — a comment on the superficiality of their current relationships.
Kathleen's boyfriend, Frank Navasky (Greg Kinnear), is a well-known columnist for The New York Observer. He uses a typewriter instead of a computer and worries that our obsession with technology may be “the end of Western civilization as we know it.” He's self-absorbed and politically committed to the progressive left.
Joe's girlfriend, Patricia Eden (Parker Posey), is a successful book editor who's equally self-absorbed and works herself into a frenzy over each important contact and deal. The audience is primed to want to see these relationships collapse.
Kathleen and Joe eventually meet in person without realizing they're cyberspace soulmates, and because of their business rivalry, they take an instant dislike to each other. His mega-store opens and, as expected, her business declines.
In time of crisis Kathleen naturally turns for advice to her e-mail friend, NY 152, who, of course, is her real-life business rival, Joe Fox. His frame of reference for competitive enterprise is The Godfather. Hers is Pride and Prejudice, but she takes his advice and makes some aggressive moves. She gets Frank to write a column about the plight of her store which viciously attacks the Fox superchain. This garners some favorable publicity, but her sales keep dropping.
The filmmakers arrange it so that Joe learns that his e-mail soulmate, Shopgirl, is Kathleen, but she remains ignorant of NY 152's real identity. Armed with this knowledge, he's deeply wounded at their next face-to-face meeting when she continues to be hostile. “You're nothing but a suit,” she cracks. “That's my cue,” he sadly replies. “Goodnight.” At this point it looks as if not even the most heartfelt passion will be able to overcome the obstacles between them.
You've Got Mail has many likable qualities. Kathleen and Joe fall in love on the Internet with each other's minds — a radical departure from most Hollywood love stories in which physical appearance and charm are usually the primary lures. The two e-mail soul-mates are attracted to each other because of their opinions and sense of humor. They learn from each other and modify each other's behavior accordingly.
The movie's underlying message, the corporatization of urban culture, is an important one, skillfully dramatized by the obstacles used to keep the lovers apart. The filmmakers nostalgically evoke the appeal of vanishing big-city neighborhoods like the Upper West Side. We see small specialty shops like Kathleen's build up a loyal following, cozy restaurants turn their customers into regulars, and families get to know each other in its pocket-sized parks. It's a natural, organic setting which is threatened by the commercialized impersonality of megastores like Joe's.
The filmmakers also take the time to show us that giant bookstores can be fun and community-building as well. We see them as places where strangers gather to browse, drink coffee, and perhaps even get to know each other. The movie fairly presents both Kathleen's and Joe's point of view.
The problem is that both Kathleen and Joe, despite their differing attitudes, blandly accept the consumerism of our times. The movie is a glorification of the high end of yuppie culture, where people are defined by the designer clothes they wear and the high-status neighborhoods in which they live.
Even relationships become subject to these materialistic, instant-gratification values. At the movie's beginning both Kathleen and Joe are living with partners outside of marriage. There's no indication that their relationship will end up any differently. The pleasure principle trumps all others.
Beneath its wit and cleverly contrived comic situations, the original, Shop Around the Corner, has a kind of working-class soul. You've Got Mail is pleasant but forgettable, just like its main characters and the brand-name products they use.
Arts & Culture correspondent John Prizer currently writes from Paris.
You've Got Mail is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association of America.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts ----------- TITLE: Videos on Release DATE: 02/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:The Negotiator
As action thrillers go, The Negotiator is fairly effective, mainly for the quality of its acting (and if certain plot implausibilities are ignored). Set in Chicago, the film follows Danny Roman (Samuel Jackson), a brilliant police negotiator who has been wrongfully accused of killing his partner. Before Danny can defend himself, he's on his way to jail. In a desperate bid to buy the time necessary to deduce who's behind the police corruption scandal his partner had been investigating, Danny takes hostages in the internal affairs office. Because he knows all the tricks negotiators use to end standoffs, Danny proves to be a formidable opponent for the police. Finally, Danny says he'll deal only with Chris Sabian (Kevin Spacey), a top negotiator and family man from another precinct. The cool and clever Chris goes to work, and it's soon a battle of wits between two experts. The real villain is eventually revealed at the end. It's unfortunate that the film's plot twists are too often accompanied by violence. Register Ratings V-2 L-2 N:0 S:0
Dance With Me
Hollywood is slowly becoming aware that the U.S. Hispanic market represents enormous buying power. Over the past year or two, it's started releasing films designed to appeal to Latinos. So far, Hollywood hasn't had much luck, and that trend extends to Dance With Me, which found a limited audience in the theater. It deserved better. Dance With Me is a bittersweet tale about Rafael (Chayanne), a young Cuban dancer who travels to Houston to meet John (Kris Kristofferson), the father he never knew. John, who runs a slightly scruffy dance studio, is unaware that Rafael is his son, but he's willing to give the young man a handy-man job. Rafael soon meets Ruby (Vanessa Williams), a world-class ballroom dancer and single mother who teaches at John's studio as a way to support her son (Chaz Oswill). Rafael and Ruby fall for each other, but the professional dancer thinks she must forsake him because she's committed to rejoining her old partner at the world dance championships in Las Vegas. Both romance fans and dance aficionados will appreciate Dance With Me. The film is energized by a passionate love story and some great Latin dance routines. Register Ratings V:0 L:0 N:0 S:0
Smoke Signals
This film, written by Native American Sherman Alexie, is the first all-Indian production to enjoy a wide theatrical release. It follows Victor Joseph (Adam Beach) and Thomas Builds-the-Fire (Evan Adams) from Idaho's Coeur d'Alene Indian Reservation to the deserts of Arizona. The laconic Victor reluctantly travels from his home to the Southwest to pick up the remains of his long-estranged father. The effervescent Thomas accompanies him because Victor is his friend. Once they reach that alien domain, they encounter several difficulties, some of which they bring on themselves, some of which befall them. Although Smoke Signals is filled with uniquely Indian cultural motifs, experiences, and attitudes, it also displays many classic attributes of the American road story and the coming-of-age tale — as well as repeated humor. Both Victor and Thomas learn important lessons about love, family, loyalty, manhood, long-held secrets, and when to roll with the punches. Register Ratings V:4 L-1 N:0 S-1
Cousin Bette
A poor woman who didn't find a husband in 19th-century France was expected to live as an unpaid servant in a relative's household. That fate has befallen Bette (Jessica Lange), who for decades has suffered the slights of living with her selfish cousin, the Baroness Adeline (Geraldine Chaplin) and her family. On her deathbed, Adeline asks Bette to care for her husband and grown children. The quietly enraged spinster replies that she will take care of them. Her revenge starts when she leaves the baron's Paris home and assumes a job as a theatrical costumer to the notorious actress Jenny Cadine (Elizabeth Shue). It escalates when Bette discovers that Adeline's daughter Hortense (Kelly MacDonald) has appropriated the handsome young sculptor (Aden Young) whom Bette rescued from suicide. It culminates in a thorough-going disaster for Adeline's family as Paris is shaken by the 1848 revolution. Cousin Bette is based on Honoré de Balzac's famous La Cousine Bette. The novel was a subtle look at the tragedy of a good woman driven to evil by a constant, quiet oppression. The movie, however, neglects that theme for tawdry romp through the Parisian demimonde. All in all, a sad disappointment. Register Ratings: V:4 L-2 N-3 S-3
— Loretta Seyer
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Arts ----------- TITLE: Pro-Life Prospects in New Congress DATE: 02/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—Pro-life may have new life in the 106th Congress.
Separate initiatives seek to ban abortions, aid charities that help pregnant women and children, limit teen access to abortion, promote abstinence, address the RU-486 “abortion pill,” and curtail fetal research.
Late-Term Bans
Once again, the most prominent will be an effort to ban partial-birth abortion. Congress twice approved identical bills, but President Clinton vetoed them. The most recent effort to override his veto passed in the House but failed by three votes in the Senate in September.
Pro-life Sen. Tim Hutchinson (R-Ark.) told the Register, “Partial-birth abortion legislation will be a high priority in the Republican Caucus, and we hope to move it quickly.” Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), the most vocal foe of partial-birth abortion in the Senate, will soon reintroduce the bill he sponsored in 1997, according to his staff.
Thirty-two Democrats and four Republicans voted to keep partial-birth abortion legal, including 10 Catholics.
Polls indicate the American people strongly support banning partial-birth abortion, but the influence of the pro-abortion lobby prevents a vote which reflects this view, according to Hutchinson and others. “It's frustrating to the people and to those of us in the Senate who are passionately pro-life,” Hutchinson said.
It is unclear whether any of the 10 Catholic senators will be swayed by the appeal made in Living the Gospel of Life: A Challenge to American Catholics. The document, approved by the nation's bishops last November, specifically calls on Catholic officeholders to oppose abortion and other manifestations of the culture of death.
‘No public official, especially one claiming to be a faithful Catholic, can responsibly advocate for or actively support direct attacks on innocent human life.’
The document notes: “No public official, especially one claiming to be a faithful Catholic, can responsibly advocate for or actively support direct attacks on innocent human life.”
Each vote will be critical. It appears the November election netted one additional supporter. Efforts by Church and secular leaders might be enough to influence two more senators and achieve the needed 67 votes to override the expected veto of this year's bill.
But pro-life Rep. Todd Tiahrt (RKan.) told the Register, “Politically, it's going to require a change of heart to eliminate abortion. We need to work through our churches and synogogues to do that. Until then, we need to strengthen the alternatives to abortion.”
Helping Women & Children
One of the most promising of such alternatives is the Women and Children's Resources Act, introduced late last year by Rep. Joseph Pitts (RPa.) and scheduled to be reintroduced shortly. This is similar to a successful statewide program Pitts championed while serving as a Pennsylvania state legislator.
The bill will allocate $85 million annually to reimburse crisis pregnancy centers, maternity homes, and adoption agencies. Reimbursable services would include pregnancy testing, health care and guidance, sexual abstinence education, and referrals for assistance in a variety of areas.
The legislation prohibits any funds from being used to perform or make referrals for abortions. In addition, no contraceptive services, drugs, devices, or related advice can be dispensed.
According to Pitts, “Federal funding would be directed to states through a formula based on the number of outof-wedlock births and abortions in a state as compared to this sum for the nation. Upon receipt of the grant, states would privately contract-out the administration of the program.”
The National Right to Life Committee strongly supports this legislation. According to its legislative director, Douglas Johnson, “Despite the Clinton-Gore rhetoric about wanting to make abortion ‘rare,‘providers of alternatives to abortion services currently receive virtually no federal support, nor has the administration proposed any.
“If enacted, the Pitts bill would provide about half of the level of federal funding that is currently received by the nation's largest provider of abortion and abortion referrals, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.”
This measure is attracting wider attention. Carmen Pate, president of the Concerned Women for America, told the Register that Pitts’ bill was recently discussed at a meeting between House social conservatives (the Values Action Team) and pro-life, pro-family groups.
Teen Abortion Access
Several other congressional initiatives will look at ways to curb abortion among minors. The primary example is the Child Custody Protection Act, which passed the House by a 276-150 vote last July but was blocked from a Senate vote by pro-abortion senators.
The bill prohibits individuals other than parents from spiriting away children to other states for abortions. Such actions, undertaken by boyfriends or others, are used to take advantage of lax abortion laws in neighboring states.
The votes appear to exist to pass this apparently common-sense bill. Yet, according to Nationa Right to Life's Johnson, “The Clinton-Gore administration continues to demand revisions to gut the bill. For example, one administration-backed amendment would empower the mother-inlaw of a parent to take that parent's child across state lines for an abortion, without the parent's knowledge or consent.”
Abstinence
On another issue, staffer Peter Sheffield of the House Commerce Committee said, “We'll continue to evaluate how HHS [U.S. Department of Health and Human Services] is implementing abstinence education.” Last September, the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation held a hearing on the resistance that a federal abstinence program has faced from federal and some state officials.
This education initiative, part of the 1996 welfare reform bill, is now in its second year and is scheduled to provide $250 million over five years.
The money, part of the Maternal and Child Health block grant, is administered by HHS.
In support of this and other abstinence programs, the Consortium of State Physicians Resource Councils will hold a news conference in Washington on Feb. 10. In essence, they will argue that the recent decline in teen birth rates is due to abstinence, not increased use of contraceptives.
RU-486
Among additional anti-abortion inititiatives will be a renewed effort to prevent the Food and Drug Administration from proceeding with “testing, development, or approval” of the abortion pill RU-486. The House, led by Rep. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), passed such an amendment to the agriculture appropriations bill last June, but it was gutted in the Senate.
Pro-abortion advocate Nita Lowey (R-N.Y.) succeeded in attaching an amendment to another appropriations bill. This amendment, which was enacted into law, mandates contraceptives, including abortifacients, be included in federal employees’ insurance benefits.
But it needs to be annually approved, and there is expectation that it can be defeated this year. Coburn's administrative director, longtime pro-life champion Michael Schwartz, said, “I think we can win it and and we plan to do so in the Appropriations Committee. But we need to go on the offense.”
Fetal Research
All these bills represent efforts to promote legislation addressing longstanding concerns. But a new issue, embryonic stem cell research, has intensified in the last few months and promises to be explosive.
Although Congress has prohibited the use of federal funds for medical research using human embryos since 1995, the Clinton administration has indicated support for doing so. HHS has attempted to redefine “embryo” in an effort to allow such experimentation.
Stem cell research is supported by a number of disease advocacy groups, including the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, and the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation International. But pro-life groups have raised serious legal and moral objections.
A Senate Appropriations Subcommittee has held three hearings on the issue over the past two months. At these hearings, the pro-life side has indicated its goal to enact legislation which explicitly prohibits such initiatives. Among the legislative leaders here has been Rep. Jay Dickey (R-Ark.).
Richard Doerflinger testified at the last hearing on Jan. 26. In his testimony, he said that “laws and regulations enacted over the past 24 years were intended to ensure that the federal government never encourages the destruction of prenatal life as a source for research material.”
He told the Register, “There is a need to do a certain amount of background work to help members [of Congress] and staff understand this issue. The moral issue, though, is clear. When you get down to the basic moral issue, it's the same as abortion.”
Perhaps additional pro-life issues will percolate during the 106th Congress. But an essentially pro-life House will continue to face obstacles in pushing legislation through the Senate and, most especially, past the president's desk for signature.
Joseph Esposito writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Esposito ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life ----------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 02/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:In Evangelium Vitae Pope John Paul II spoke on capital punishment and the dignity of all life. (See story, “Pope's Death Sentence Request Gets Surprise Result.”)
And yet God, who is always merciful even when he punishes, “put a mark on Cain, lest any who came upon him should kill him” (Genesis 4:15). He thus gave a distinctive sign, not to condemn him to the hatred of others, but to protect and defend him from those wishing to kill him, even out of a desire to avenge Abel's death. Not even a murderer loses his personal dignity, and God himself pledges to guarantee this. And it is precisely here that the paradoxical mystery of the merciful justice of God is shown forth. As Saint Ambrose writes: “Once the crime is admitted at the very inception of this sinful act of parricide, then the divine law of God's mercy should be immediately extended. If punishment is forthwith inflicted on the accused, then men in the exercise of justice would in no way observe patience and moderation, but would straight away condemn the defendant to punishment … God drove Cain out of his presence and sent him into exile far away from his native land, so that he passed from a life of human kindness to one which was more akin to the rude existence of a wild beast. God, who preferred the correction rather that the death of a sinner, did not desire that a homicide be punished by the exaction of another act of homicide.” (9.3)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life ----------- TITLE: Oregon: New Laws Would Restrict Assisted Suicide DATE: 02/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:SALEM, Ore.—Two bills before the state Legislature are intended to restrict Oregon's assisted suicide law.
The broader bill, introduced by Sen. Neil Bryant, R-Bend, would limit where and with whom a terminally ill person could take lethal medication. It also would spell out a system for investigating doctors who participate in an assisted suicide but do not comply with the law.
The other piece of legislation is limited to one change. It would allow health care providers who oppose assisted suicide to sanction doctors who perform assisted suicides on their grounds.
While Bryant's bill would make more than a dozen changes in Oregon's existing law, Bryant said it is not intended to block the law.
“It's an emotional issue,” he said. “But when people realize you're not talking about a referral or a repeal, hopefully that will take the emotion out of it.”
Instead of defining who is incapable of making the decision to use the lethal medication, as stated in current law, the bill would define who is capable — potentially a higher standard. The bill also requires a patient to designate another adult to be present when the patient takes the lethal medication.
In addition, it would allow patients to use the medication only at a health care facility, at a private home or at a doctor's office — a condition that would prevent patients from dying in public places, Bryant said.
“You can imagine the shock people have coming upon that,” he said.
Bryant doesn't expect any opposition from supporters of assisted suicide. His bill, he said, isn't an end-run around the law, which was overwhelmingly upheld by voters in November.
So far, at least 15 terminally ill patients have taken a lethal dose of medication under the assisted suicide law. Dan Field, vice president of Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems, said the law needed stronger clarification about a hospital's right to opt out. Hospitals have policies banning some procedures like abortion, so he thought Bryant's legislation was appropriate.
“This doesn't interfere with access,” Field said. “It's really not changing anything that's not occurring now. It just makes clear what every-body's rights are.” (Pro-Life Infonet)
----- EXCERPT: Life Notes ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life ----------- TITLE: Nebraska Governor And Other Officials Join Pro-Life March DATE: 02/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:LINCOLN, Neb.—Pro-life Gov. Mike Johanns told pro-life supporters Saturday that he is committed to supporting the right to life and will fight to ban “the barbaric procedure of partial-birth abortion.”
Johanns and wife, Stephanie, stood together on the steps of the State Capitol Saturday morning before the 24th annual Nebraska Walk for Life. “I look out across this crowd, and I see the children and young people that are with you,” Johanns said. “The message that you are sending to them speaks volumes. ‘Respect the unborn'is what you are saying. God bless you in that endeavor, and let us help you in any way we can to support your agenda in this building behind you.”
Also participating in the march and rally were several pro-life officials including Nebraska Attorney General Don Stenberg, Lt. Gov. Dave Maurstad, U.S. Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., State Sen. M.L. “Cap” Dierks of Ewing and newly elected State Sen. Adrian Smith of Gering.
The Lincoln march and rally are held each year near the anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court decision of Jan. 22, 1973, that legalized abortion on demand.
Nebraska Right to Life organizers released hundreds of pink and blue balloons at the steps of the Capitol to mourn the 133,000 abortions in Nebraska since 1973.
After an opening prayer led by the Rev. John Carter of Liberty Gospel Baptist Church in Lincoln, Shirley Lang, treasurer of Nebraska Right to Life and the march's master of ceremonies, led the crowd in the pledge of allegiance and asked that the words be altered slightly to reflect the group's message: … with liberty and justice for all — born and unborn,” the crowd said. Saturday's event was the fourth march for Lincoln resident Mike Kotopka, who brought his two sons, Benjamin, 8, and Joseph, 5. Kotopka said the annual march is “a good way to show our numbers and show our support.” Joseph held a handmade sign that read, “Thanks for Choosing Life, Mom.” New to the march were Omahans Michael and Meg Dulac. “We're here to show everybody that we care about the unborn children,” Michael Dulac said. “We are trying to help protect innocent life.”
The crowd walked eight blocks from the Capitol to the Nebraska Union on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus for an indoor rally. Keynote speaker Eric Harrah, a former abortion facility operator, spoke to the group inside. Harrah had worked at abortion facilities in Pennsylvania and Delaware until two years ago. He now tours the country talking at crisis pregnancy centers and events sponsored by pro-life supporters.
“I didn't always like you people,” Harrah told the crowd. “As a former owner of several abortion clinics, I didn't like you at all. I used to come out and holler at you, and cuss at you and push you around. I apologize for that. I apologize for my involvement in making you feel like your work was worth nothing. “I figured if we tortured you long enough that you would simply go away, but I am glad today to see that you didn't go away, that you are still here.”
Offering an insider's view of abortion facilities, Harrah spoke of the selfishness of abortion practitioners who lie to women by telling them that aborted unborn children are “blobs of tissue” rather than babies. Harrah said that abortion has nothing to do with the right to choose or with empowering women, but that “the abortion industry is controlled by one thing and one thing only, and that is money.”
Julie Schmit-Albin, executive director of Nebraska Right to Life, said that according to the group's counters, about 4,800 people took part in Saturday's march.
(Pro-Life Infonet)
----- EXCERPT: Life Notes ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life ----------- TITLE: Canada Ends Human Life International's Tax Status DATE: 02/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:Are pro-life charities less legitimate than pro-abortion ones? activists ask
TORONTO—Canada's pro-life community is reeling after the Supreme Court let stand a decision stripping Human Life International-Canada of its charitable tax status.
The high court ruled Jan. 21 that it would not hear an appeal of a March 1998 decision revoking the pro-life organization's charitable status. As a result, HLI-Canada will no longer be able to issue tax receipts for financial contributions.
“The Canadian government appears to have a double standard which allows pro-abortion groups to maintain charitable status but discriminates against charitable groups that promote the right to life,” member of Parliament and pro-life caucus leader Jason Kenney told the Register. He is spearheading an effort to address the question of charitable status with new legislation.
He warned that “Americans should be vigilant to ensure that the IRS treats charities in a fair-minded way. The movement to pull the charitable status from Churches and religious organizations is probably going to increase.”
Ottawa attorney Arthur Drache, who argued the appeal on behalf of HLI-Canada, said the decision is chilling news for charitable organizations throughout the country.
“This means that Revenue Canada now has been armed with explicit powers to go after just about any vocal charity that has the nerve to raise or discuss matters that Revenue Canada considers to be controversial,” he warned.
Drache added that the Supreme Court's rejection of the HLI-Canada appeal could have a devastating impact on other charitable groups.
“Those who believe one aspect of a charity's objectives is to inform the public about pressing social issues should be appalled at this turn of events that might threaten the preferred tax status of many of this country's charitable organizations,” he said.
HLI-Canada is one of the country's largest pro-life, pro-family organizations. Founded in 1984, it represents more than 15,000 families coast to coast. It is the largest chapter of the U.S.-based parent organization.
Another Canadian pro-life group, Alliance for Life of Winnipeg, Manitoba, also saw the revocation of its tax status and is awaiting word on a similar appeal.
Canadian pro-life supporters are concerned that Revenue Canada may be targeting church and conservative charities with its auditing program. Since April 1996, 29 charities, including a number of church-affiliated groups, have seen their charitable tax status withdrawn.
The federal court ruled last March that the information provided by HLI-Canada on sex education, abortion, and homosexuality constitute “political activity,” thereby contravening charitable tax law. One of the restrictions imposed on charitable organizations is that they must spend only 10% of their revenue on political activities.
Revenue Canada officials said that in addition to engaging in political activity, HLI-Canada offers only one perspective on the abortion issue.
Canadian tax legislation governing charities prohibits groups from political advocacy and from presenting too narrow a focus, particularly on sensitive issues such as abortion and contraception. Despite these guidelines, a number of organizations supporting abortion, contraception, and family planning continue to enjoy charitable tax status in Canada.
Drache and other critics of the court decision pointed to the Childless by Choice Trust, a group closely affiliated with the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League (CARAL), which has the power to issue tax receipts for all financial contributions.
Drache also said Revenue Canada has now adopted too rigid a test of what constitutes political activity on the part of charitable groups.
“Does this mean that any subject on which there is more than one opinion is controversial, and therefore can be discussed only with some threat to charitable status?” Drache asked in an opinion column last spring. “Can a registered charity not speak out on prison reform? Or call for a crackdown on drinking and driving? Or speak out on smoking? Or on improving the lot of the poor? Is the subject of teen-age pregnancies off limits? The list of possible subjects which might be banned is endless.”
Carl Juneau, a spokesman for Revenue Canada, denied that the federal government is targeting church-affiliated charities, or has an agenda to undermine pro-family groups. He said Jan. 24 that the government regularly audits charitable groups with a view to the legitimacy of their tax status. He suggested that groups espousing only one side of controversial social issues offer propaganda rather than education.
HLI-Canada executive director Theresa Bell said the Revenue Canada decision is “manifestly unjust” considering that abortion-supporting organizations with “obvious political agendas” have for years enjoyed charity status.
“It is grave news for those Canadians who hold that human life is sacred in all its stages, and it is also a red flag for Catholic and other religious charities which speak to issues of faith, life, and family in this country,” she maintained.
Bell told the Register that her organization was hoping for a “stay of execution” from Revenue Canada to enable it to continue operating as a registered charity. Those hopes were dashed Jan. 29, when the court indicated it would not entertain any more postponements.
“It will be difficult to assess the immediate impact of Revenue Canada's decision on our organization, but we have to anticipate a significant drop in financial support,” Bell said. “Many of our supporters depend on that tax receipt when contributing to our work.”
Bell expressed hope that HLI-Canada members will continue to support the organization financially even without the hope of an income tax receipt. “We are praying that our people will see the benefits of continued support of our operations.”
Bell is optimistic that other Canadian charities will join forces with HLI-Canada to force a review of Canadian tax law governing charities. She said the ruling goes well beyond pro-life groups and could impact on other groups that espouse specific social and political issues.
“Revenue Canada talks about the necessity of presenting a balanced point of view,” she said, “but by going ahead with this move against us and Alliance for Life, the government is effectively shutting out the voices of two of Canada's largest right-to-life organizations. What kind of balance is that?”
The tax ruling, Bell said, could force HLI to activate a sister organization — the World Institute for the Family — to pick up the slack left by a financially weakened HLI-Canada. The World Institute, created by HLI founder Father Paul Marx in 1994, offers information and education on family and faith issues.
“It could be fully activated by April 1 and it would have the power to issue tax receipts for all donations,” Bell said.
In the meantime, Bell and other HLI-Canada officials are encouraged by demands from Kenney for a thorough overhaul of Canada's charitable tax laws. The Reform Party member of Parliament from Alberta told reporters he will call for a review when the Canadian House of Commons resumes sitting in February.
“We're going to be opening the whole file on the confused, contradictory, sometimes just plain outrageous application of charity law,” Kenney told the Ottawa Citizen newspaper Jan. 24. He also said the high number of church and conservative groups being de-registered as official charities smacks of political decision making on the part of Canada's federal government.
Kenney's call for a review is also motivated in part by a decision by Revenue Canada to reject a bid for charitable status by the Chastity Challenge, a team of Canadian high school and university students who advocate chastity and abstinence as a life-affirming alternative to promiscuity and casual sex. Kenney, who supports chastity education, said he would help Chastity Challenge appeal their rejection by Revenue Canada all the way to the Supreme Court.
Mike Mastromatteo writes from Toronto.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mike Mastromatteo ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life ----------- TITLE: Did you know? DATE: 02/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:• A doctor embarked on a crusade to “clean out” DeTerp Nursing Home [in Holland] and killed 20 residents without their consent or prior knowledge. Prosecutors charged him with five murders. Despite the fact that he pleaded guilty, a Dutch court cleared him of all counts — then presented him with an award of $150,000 for “having his name maligned”!
(“Where Euthanasia is a Way of Death,” Medical Economics, Nov. 23, 1987, page 23)
• In total violation of Dutch law, Dr. Frits Schmidt killed a woman who wanted to die merely because she had facial scars. He was not prosecuted or charged with any crime.
(Mark O’ Keefe. “For Doctors in Netherlands, Death is Part of the Job.” The Oregonian, Jan. 9, 1995, page A4)
Extracts from The Facts of Life by Brian Clowes
----- EXCERPT: Facts of Life ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life ----------- TITLE: Hyde's Next Target: Euthanasia DATE: 02/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:The most important legislation dealing with the so-called euthanasia issue last year was the Hyde-Oberstar bill. It was approved by the House Judiciary Committee but failed to come up for a vote on the floor. A similar Senate bill suffered the same fate.
The House version, sponsored by Reps. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) and James Oberstar (D-Minn.), amends the Lethal Drug Abuse Prevention Act to curb physician-assisted suicides. The bill was opposed by some medical and hospice groups because it appeared that it restricted the use of palliative or pain-reducing drugs.
Although he says that this palliative-care issue is a “red herring,” Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Catholic Conference/National Conference of Catholic Bishops said he believes the proposed legislation will be redrafted in such a way to accommodate most reasonable concerns. The conference is one of the organizations which support the legislation.
The conference's general secretary, Msgr. Dennis Schnurr, has said, “The proposed act provides a focused and reasonable vehicle for reaffirming federal obligations to protect the vulnerable from lethal drugs.
“It affirms that assisting a patient's suicide is not one of the legitimate medical purposes for which controlled substances are entrusted to physicians by the federal government,” he said
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Bishops See New Era After Havana Meeting DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:HAVANA — It would have been impossible a short while ago.
Thirty leaders of the Church from across the North American continent stood up in the center of one of the last bastions of communism and said, “Dear brothers and sisters of America: In communion with Pope John Paul II, we want to share with you our strong experience of episcopal fraternity lived here in Havana and ask you to unite your lives to serve Jesus Christ.”
With these words, five cardinals and 25 bishops from the United States, Canada, and Latin America summed up the groundbreaking meeting they held in a country known for its regime's antagonism to the faith and persecution of Catholics.
The Feb. 14-17 meeting was more than just 27th Inter-American Meeting of Catholic Bishops. It was a meeting that revealed a new future for the Church in Cuba — and throughout the American continent. It was made possible by Pope John Paul II's visit to Cuba last year and given added significance by his recent visit to Mexico City and St. Louis, where he issued a concluding exhortation from the 1997 synod for America.
The bishops' joint message echoed Ecclesia in America, emphasizing the new evangelization and “a united and reconciled America, sign of Christian hope for the world.”
The Inter-American meetings take place every one or two years, bringing together representatives from the bishops' conferences of the United States, Canada, and Latin America to discuss common issues related to the Catholic Church on both sides of the Rio Grande.
The president of the U.S. bishops' conference said the meeting in Cuba showed how “the world has not forgotten” the Cuban people, suffering “the horrible impact” of the U.S. trade embargo.
“The Cuban bishops tell us that it's very important the meeting is being held in Havana. … It's a sign that the Church in the American continent continues in solidarity with the Cuban church,” said the president, Bishop Joseph A. Fiorenza of Galveston-Houston.
The first Inter-American meetings in the 1970s focused on practical issues such as the financing of the pastoral projects and the pastoral attention of the Latino immigrants in North America. But since 1992, when the Pope officially announced his interest in holding a synod for America, the Inter-American meeting gained momentum and grew in significance.
A ‘New Discovery’ of America
The recent meetings in Havana set a landmark in the relationship among the bishops, they said.
“It is a beginning of a new stage in the relationship of Catholics in North and Latin America,” said Archbishop Estanislao Karlic, president of the Argentinean Bishops' Conference. “In one way, it is the ‘new discovery’ of America.”
Archbishop Luis Morales Reyes agreed. “This has been the most spiritually intense and at the same time productive meeting of its kind,” said the president of the Mexican Conference of Bishops. The meeting was special “because it took place in Cuba and right after the Pope's visit to America.”
The meeting, which would have been almost unnoticed in any other country, was an unprecedented event in Cuba. The large number of cardinals and bishops attracted so much attention from Catholic Cubans, that the event was “officially opened” twice on Sunday, Feb. 14: once, with a Mass presided over by Lucas Cardinal Moreira Neves, prefect of the Vatican's Congregation of Bishops at the National Marian Shrine of Our Lady of El Cobre; and then with another at Havana's Catholic cathedral, headed by Jaime Cardinal Ortega y Alamino.
During the Mass at the cathedral, Cardinal Ortega said that the Pope's post-synodal exhortation Ecclesia in America, presented last month, “has shown us that the new evangelization is our primary task, and that it has to become a revolution of love.”
“Maybe that is why so many ideologies, and even some so-called liberating theologies have failed, because they lacked the power of love,” the cardinal said.
The meeting's agenda, according to Fr. Jose Felix Perez Riera, secretary of the Cuban episcopate, was divided in two main points: to evaluate the situation of the Church in Cuba a year after the Pope's visit and to search for new ways of Inter-American cooperation after Ecclesia in America. At a practical level, the bishops decided that from now on, the two North American bishops' conferences and Latin America's joint conference, CELAM, will create a “collegiate commission,” which will coordinate the relationship on a permanent basis. The new commission, which will work on creating common pastoral initiatives, will be formally created at the end of May, after the elections that will choose a new presidency for CELAM.
The commission will be formed by two members for each one of the North American bishops' conferences and three representatives of CELAM; plus the secretary-generals of both episcopates and CELAM.
There is also a symbolic change. From now on, the Inter-American Meeting of Bishops will officially become Meeting of the Bishops of the Church in America.
Concern for Cuba
The meeting, nevertheless, was certainly dominated by the Cuban situation. Only the morning of Monday, Feb. 15, was officially programmed for discussing the Cuban situation, yet the theme remained a priority throughout the gatherings. In fact, that same evening, all cardinals and bishops visited different parishes to experience the contrast between the growing, lively spiritual life of Catholic parishioners and their crumbling church structures.
Cardinal Lucas Moreira Neves, a Dominican, was deeply moved by visiting the Dominican parish of Havana. “This is a lively Catholic community which needs more room and possibilities to grow and which deserves the full support of the fellow churches in America,” he said.
The cardinal's view was a common one. No wonder the bishops' final document said: “From Havana, we greet all our fellow bishops of America and our beloved communities, united to the Holy Father, whose visit to Cuba we are commemorating.
“Together with him, we want give our cooperation to create the conditions that will help Cuba to open to the world and the world to open to Cuba.”
The U.S. National Conference of Catholic Bishops has promised “more significant support” for the Church in Cuba, while the Mexican Bishops' Conference has already donated thousands of Bibles and catechisms.
Chilean bishops have pledged a special collection for Cuba, while the Argentinean Bishops' Conference is ready to send more priests and religious to work in Cuba, if the Cuban government allows their presence.
At the end of the meeting, Cuban President Fidel Castro invited all the bishops to a dinner, and spent 15 minutes in private with Cardinal Moreira Neves.
Archbishop Morales said, “There is a common concern and continentwide effort to assist our Cuban brothers and sisters as we start out on the road to a deeper and more fruitful integration between Catholics in North and Latin America.
“In this way, we put in practice the Pope's desire for one united Church in America.”
The Holy Father had pointed out, in Ecclesia in America, “Even though structures for dialogue between Conferences already exist, the [Americas] Synod Fathers underlined the benefit of inter-American gatherings, such as those sponsored by the Episcopal Conferences of various American countries, as an expression of practical solidarity and a chance to study common challenges to evangelization in America.”
He added, “It would be helpful to specify more exactly the nature of these meetings, so that they may become a better expression of communion among all Bishops. Beyond these more inclusive meetings, it could be useful, whenever circumstances require it, to establish special commissions to explore more deeply issues which concern America as a whole. Areas in which it seems especially necessary ‘to strengthen cooperation are the sharing of information on pastoral matters, missionary collaboration, education, immigration and ecumenism’” (No. 37).
Archbishop Morales also said he believes that this commitment is a way to put in practice one line of the bishops' final document: “We want to respond generously to our Lord Jesus Christ by proclaiming the Gospel to our people. We feel particularly called to promote reconciliation among our brothers and sisters, overcoming the conflicts and tensions that have created divisions between our peoples.”
Alejandro Bermudez writes from Lima, Peru.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Alejandro Bermudez -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Gauging the Clinton Fallout DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON-In the wake of his Senate acquittal on counts of perjury and obstruction of justice, President Clinton said he did not expect the country to be harmed by the episode.
Some Catholic leaders see things differently, according to interviews conducted by the Register.
The leaders were asked to gauge the impact of the impeachment-and-trial process and what it says about the United States. Their answers touched on the same issues the president raised in recent remarks.
Senator Rick Santorum
Clinton, at a press conference Feb. 19, said in his defense that “presidents are people, too.”
Senator Rick Santorum (R Pa.) argued that this self-exonerating attitude revealed much about today's America.
“Bill Clinton is a reflection of our culture, not its leader,” Santorum said. “The people of America knew what they were getting. They didn't think it mattered. They deemed character unimportant. We have become so nonjudgmental, we are no longer willing to fight for the souls of our children anymore. …
“Tolerance has become the virtue of all virtues. But it is essential to distinguish between tolerance of people and tolerance of their actions.”
As a senator, Santorum was a “juror” in the Clinton trial. He voted that the president was “guilty” on both counts.
“I felt my role as a juror was to find the facts and to judge them, not thinking necessarily about the cultural ramifications,” Santorum explained. “But his ability to lead the country was important in my decision. I do not think that many others felt this way.”
Father Richard John Neuhaus
The president was also quoted saying, “I think the Constitution has been re-ratified,” by the decision to acquit him.
Father Richard John Neuhaus, publisher of First Things magazine and head of the Institute for Religion and Public Life, said he believed that the opposite, in fact, happened.
Moreover, Father Neuhaus said, “My own hunch is that after all the dust settles, it will become evident that the so-called support for Clinton doesn't indicate a change in the basic moral attitudes of most Americans. I think people are over-reading the situation.
“There are many things which are deeply disturbing that some politicians publicly said they thought he was guilty and that it was impeachable, yet still voted to acquit.
“There seems to be a move away from representative government, even beyond government by plebiscites, to government by polls. But we don't have evidence that this tells us about our moral culture, despite its overlap with the political culture.”
Father Neuhaus added that there is “a very thoughtful and morally concerned sector of the public. They may make a prudential judgment and say that this has gone on long enough. … All this tells us nothing new that we didn't know two years ago, or even 20. It is the same mix of virtues and vices.
“What was odd about this situation were the circumstances. We have never before had an MTV president, a juvenile delinquent in the White House. It is an understandable reaction to want the whole thing to go away.”
David Schindler
Clinton said, “I hope that the presidency has not been harmed. I don't believe it has been.”
But David Schindler, a professor at the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family in Washington, D.C., and editor of the theological journal Communio, said that moral authority and public life should be inseparable.
“The question of integrity, which is the issue here deep down, however important it is in private life, does not affect the judgment of public life anymore,” he said.
Too many today “judge public life by efficiency. It is the issue associated with Macchiavelli: Do you want a good person in charge or a person who creates a good impression but is efficient?”
He said the consequences are worse than we might expect.
“The lack of genuine statesman-ship among world leaders today is dangerous. In the case of Clinton, it has to be asked how many lives were lost in foreign countries as a result of a president without credibility whose word has no moral authority behind it?”
He cited the arbitrariness of military action — and inaction — taken in Iraq and, most recently, Kosovo.
Monsignor George Kelly
“I can't say that I think this has been good for the country, but we will see,” Clinton said. “I expect to have two good years here.”
Author Monsignor George Kelly, founder of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, said that the effect on the country is obvious — but that it wasn't all caused by Clinton.
“Anyone for the Ten Commandments now is a right-wing radical,” Monsignor Kelly declared. “When the mainline Protestants gave up their faith in the core doctrines of Christianity, social action became the Gospel.
“Now, anyone who is Christian and insists on all Ten Commandments is looked on as a fanatic. The religion of the times is good works, not faith. The liberation of the '60s was a liberation from God, from the Commandments, because the Commandments interfered with ‘me’ and ‘my wants.’
“Clinton is a product of that era. It is appalling that Clinton can commit adultery in the White House without producing outrage.”
Edward Mulholland is based in New York.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Edward Mulholland -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Therapy for Homosexuals: U.S. Associations Clash DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:NEW YORK—A position statement issued by the American Psychiatric Association's Board of Trustees in December has set off a firestorm of protests from the American Psychological Association and practitioners who are engaged in “reparative” therapy for homosexuals.
The Psychiatric Association's statement opposes reparative and any other psychiatric treatment designed to change a person's sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual.
The statement said reparative therapy could harm a patient by causing depression, anxiety, and self-destructive behavior.
“There is no scientific evidence that reparative or conversion therapy is effective in changing a person's sexual orientation,” said Rodrigo Muñoz, Psychiatric Association president. “There is, however, evidence that this type of therapy can be destructive.”
Not so, responded the American Psychological Association, which was named in the statement as also having a policy against reparative therapy. That statement brought a swift rebuke from the Psychological Association and from practitioners involved in reparative therapy.
Dr. Mark Stern, a New York clinical psychologist, played a key role in keeping the Psychological Association from following the Psychiatric Association's ban on reparative therapy. The ban disturbed Stern, who said patients need to know that reparative therapy is successful.
“The American Psychological Association does not condemn reparative therapy or any other therapy that has proven its capacity to help an individual and does not harm him or her,” Stern said. “Any such therapy is valid.”
The question thus arises as to whether homosexuality is “normal” — the result of inherited genetic factors — or is truly a developmental disorder.
Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons is a physician who is a member of a national group of reparative therapists who have researched the topic closely. He said there is substantial evidence based on years of clinical experience that homosexuality is a developmental disorder. Homosexual feelings, he said, can occur when a child's need of a healthy identification with the same-sex parent and friends are not met. They also can occur when the child does not have a confident sexual identify.
“Therapy consists of helping male clients to understand the emotional causes of their attraction and to strengthen their masculine identity,” Fitzgibbons said. “It has been our clinical experience that as these men become more comfortable and confident with their manhood, same-sex attractions resolve or decrease significantly in many patients.”
Jerry Armelli's Story
One former homosexual, Jerry Armelli, agrees with that assessment. Now married, he is director of an ex-homosexual and AIDS counseling group called Prodigal Ministries, which he founded 12 years ago.
He said an advertising campaign called “Gays Can Change” had “a very personal meaning to me.” He also pointed out that homosexual advocates call it a “‘hate campaign’… but it was not a message of hate. It was a message of life.”
Armelli recalled when he was homosexual. “I was depressed; I was suicidal. I thought,’ Is this all I've got, the gay life?’ Is this my only option? It was death-inducing. So, the message that change is possible is not ‘hate speech’ to me.”
As a child, Armelli grew up in a household where his three older brothers were athletes, and his father was a football coach. He admitted he was not interested in becoming an athlete, and he felt different from his brothers and father.
He also said there is no such thing as a “gay gene” in the human makeup that predetermines homosexual behavior.
“I like … [the] analogy of the basketball player,” Armelli said. “There are certain genes that make it more likely a person will be a basketball player — height, quick reflexes — but no gene will make any man a basketball player. There also must be some triggering conditions in the environment. I thought that explained homosexuality very well.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church enjoins Catholics to have compassion toward homosexuals, even while acknowledging the behavior's sinfulness and abnormality.
“Its [homosexuality's] psychological genesis remains largely unexplained,” the Catechism says in No. 2357. “Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”
Catholics Respond
Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, who heads the Thomas Aquinas Psychological Clinic in Encino, Calif., has used reparative therapy for 15 years. He said he believes that homosexuality is a developmental disorder, not an inherited one. “There's no such thing as a ‘gay gene,’” he said. “The media go right along with that theory, and even some Catholic clergy take the same stance.”
Of the more than 400 patients whom Nicolosi has treated over the years, about one-third are fully cured of homosexuality, another third experience improvement, and the final third have no change in their sexual orientation. All, however, come to him seeking to overcome their homosexuality. About 98% of all his patients are men.
Nicolosi also is the executive director of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). This organization's primary goal is to make effective psychological therapy available to all homosexual men and women who seek a change.
NARTH was founded in 1992 by Nicolosi, Charles Socarides, and Benjamin Kaufman. It provides psychological understanding of the cause, treatment, and behavior patterns associated with homosexuality. It is currently the only organized voice against homosexual and professional groups who declare that any type of therapy to change homosexuals is unethical.
Socarides said he believes that there needs to be an open discussion about homosexuality. He is dismayed at the stance of the Psychiatric Association and other such professional organizations which, he said, have “totally stifled the scientific inquiry that would be necessary to stimulate a discussion. It remains very politically incorrect, very marginalizing, even to make the suggestion of a dialogue that opens up the question of the normality of homosexuality.”
Jim Malerba writes from Hamden, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: James Malerba -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Church Walks 'Fine Line' When Bingo Poses Threat to Compulsive Gamblers DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:NEW YORK—One of the more celebrated incidents of people coming to the defense of the bingo card was played out in New York more than a decade ago, when John Cardinal O'Connor had suggested to his priests that they find a “more dignified” method of raising money.
The simple request, reported in the archdiocesan newspaper, was picked up by the secular news media and trumpeted nationwide in such headlines as “O'Connor Says Bingo's Number May Be Up.”
The cardinal received a number of letters from lay people asking him to reconsider and pastors were flooded with questions from long-time parishioners, “Is he going to take away our bingo?”
A number of pastors did follow his cue and close down the games. But that incident was only one of a number of problems arising from the popular game of chance.
Dan Smith, who heads a compulsive gambling treatment center at St. Anthony's Medical Center in St. Louis, said that the Church walks “a fine line” by using gambling such as bingo and casino nights for raising revenue. If a parish is going to conduct such events, there should be an awareness of the dangers to problem gamblers, he said. The lone individual or couple who go five nights a week to five different parish bingos should not be seen as engaging in harmless recreation, said Smith.
“They're probably not going to go bankrupt on bingo, but there are other factors,” Smith said. “If they're out five nights a week, they are probably neglecting some duties in their lives, and they certainly are looking for a way to escape problems.”
He has seen patients who have run up $10,000 in bingo debts on credit cards.
Smith is one of only a handful of counselors nationally certified to train other counselors on problem gambling.
“Gambling has been around a long time. In biblical terms, we see gambling at the foot of the Cross, when the soldiers cast die for the garment of Jesus,” he said.
Bingo is Fine — For Most
The familiar parish bingo night which is good social fun for most and a welcomed fund-raiser for church and school can present dangerous temptations for some people. Without realizing it, these people can be drawn into a pattern of compulsive gambling that may pose grave threats to their health, their finances, and even their lives. They are among a small percentage of Americans who have what is recognized by medical authorities as a mental disorder that produces in them an overwhelming and self-destructive impulse to gamble.
Whether it is the simple Friday night bingo game or a high-stakes roll in Reno, the venue and the amount of money matter less to these people than the thrill of the chance and the sense of exhilaration and escape. In clinical terms, they are in the grip of an addiction that can be treated with a form of the 12-Step Program promoted the world over by Alcoholics Anonymous. Although non-denominational in orientation, the 12 Steps require participants to acknowledge a Higher Being and to admit that they are powerless in overcoming their addiction alone.
The corresponding international organization, Gamblers Anonymous, is not as well known as AA, and compulsive gambling is not as widely recognized as an addiction as excessive drinking. Gamblers Anonymous was formed in 1957, and the American Psychiatric Association has classified compulsive (or pathological) gambling as a mental disorder since 1980.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church does not object to gambling as such, but warns against abuse and addiction. “Games of chance (card games, etc.) or wagers are not in themselves contrary to justice. They become morally unacceptable when they deprive someone of what is necessary to provide for his needs and those of others. The passion for gambling risks becoming an enslavement. Unfair wagers and cheating at games constitutes grave matter, unless the damage inflicted is so slight that one who suffers it cannot reasonably consider it significant” (No. 2413).
“The main message we want to get out to the world is that compulsive gambling is truly a disorder that is biochemical in origin, and it is treatable,” explained Dr. Robert Hunter, a psychologist in Las Vegas who specializes in treating gambling disorders. “The problem is that not many people know that this type of gambling is an addiction and the public as a whole does not view gambling as an addiction. As a result, compulsive gamblers tend to look at themselves not as ill but as evil. The people in their lives look at them as weak.”
A person can live a normal life and have a predisposition to compulsive gambling exposed by circumstances later in life, he continued.
‘A Way to Ease the Pain’
Hunter, a Catholic, gets some referrals from the Church in Las Vegas, but he said most addicted gamblers are not likely to show up at Mass on Sunday or knock on a rectory door for help. As a result, most priests and other Church officials are not aware of the signs or the dangers of dangerous gambling behaviors.
A place like Las Vegas, where gambling is legal and casino chips show up in the parish collection baskets, provides more opportunities for compulsive gamblers, Hunter said. However, addicted persons are found everywhere and do not always fit the model of the desperate man at the poker table or the poor soul feeding coins into the “one-armed bandit” slot machines. More than half of Hunter's patients are women and 98% of them play games outside the Las Vegas casinos. Video poker and other video chance games account for the majority of the addictive behaviors.
“Videos are considered by most people lightweight gambling and innocuous, but they can be attractive to compulsive gamblers because they are easily accessible,” said Hunter.
Carol O'Hare of Las Vegas, who describes herself as a recovering compulsive gambler, was addicted to video poker. She has not gambled for eight years and is executive director of the Nevada Council on Problem Gambling, a state chapter of a national organization.
“For me, it was a coping mechanism, a way to ease the pain,” she said. “When I gambled, something changed in my brain and allowed me to escape into myself. When I gambled, I didn't care, I didn't deal with life and could live out my own fantasy.”
She started playing video poker after her divorce and to deal with the pressures of raising three school-age children on her own. Soon she was spending two to three hours a day and much-needed funds on gambling and was “absent even when I was present to my children.”
A friend led her to a recovery program after she tried to acquire an overdose of tranquilizers.
“I figured that if I couldn't undo what I'd done, at least I could stop doing it for good,” she stated.
She does not practice any formal religion and said that all churches, whether Catholic or Protestant, “need to deal with the addicted person without burdening him with more guilt than he already feels.”
Bingo does not carry with it the high-stakes dangers of casinos. But it still can have adverse effects on individuals and can tarnish the image of the church with people making references to “St. Bingo.” Loyalty to the game runs deep, however; outside some churches, the bingo signs still dwarf the Mass-schedule notices.
www.addictions.net
Smith has developed an Internet Web site on compulsive gambling, www.addictions.net, which outlines symptoms of problem gambling. Symptons include a periodic or constant loss of control over gambling; progressive increase in the amount wagered; preoccupation with gambling, or obtaining money just to gamble; gambling to elevate mood; lying and considering illegal acts to hide or finance gambling; and continuing such behavior despite adverse consequences.
The serious dangers of the addiction became evident in St. Louis after river-boat gambling was introduced in 1994 and two gambling-related suicides followed almost immediately, Smith said.
He pointed out that problem gamblers whose cases are not complicated by drug or alcohol addiction have an excellent chance of recovery. The phases run from the high of winning, the low of losing, the desperation of gambling at any cost, the crash of personal life and the seeking of help, and the hopefulness of recovery in a program such as Gamblers Anonymous.
Carol O'Hare lived through the phases. “It was a vicious cycle. Gambling allowed me to escape the stress of life, eventually the gambling added to the stress, and the only way I knew how to deal with stress was to gamble more,” she explained. “The change came when I faced an emotional crisis and a friend of mine admitted he was a recovering compulsive gambler and offered to help. I finally had to break the denial over my behavior.”
Brian Caulfield writes from New York.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Brian Caulfield -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Young, Mostly Single, And Afire with Faith DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:DALLAS—It's Wednesday night, and some 60 to 70 young adults are kneeling in the eucharistic chapel of St. Monica Catholic Church. They have come to adore the presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, pray the rosary, intercede for the intentions of the Holy Father and for their own intentions, and sing songs of praise and worship.
This reverent yet vibrant weekly prayer cenacle is the heart of a new organization that is sowing seeds of conversion, renewal, and vocations throughout the local diocese and beyond.
The fact that the group is young and mostly single “frees up all this energy” for work in the Church, according to Sheryl Collmer, who had already been active in parish adult education prior to joining the Young Serrans. “In regular parish life you have families with so many commitments, that you can come up with the good ideas but it's very hard to get things done.”
Collmer, an accountant and a third-year student at the University of Dallas' Institute for Religious and Pastoral Studies, added that the Young Serrans exhibit a “100% commitment” to growing in and sharing their faith that she's not seen elsewhere.
“There are so many people (in Young Serrans) that put the faith and Christ first … that's the most important thing in their lives,” she said.
Collmer believes the group's initiatives draw strength from the Eucharistic prayer cenacle, which “places us right smack in the middle of Catholic spirituality.”
Monique Taylor, 24, a second-year student at Southwestern Medical School who is discerning her vocation, testifies that her faith has grown through being a Young Serran.
“The Holy Spirit has really moved in our community,” she said. “When you have Jesus as the center, the focus, then holiness comes out of that. Hearts are changed. I have so much greater love for and understanding of the person of Jesus.”
Called the Young Serra Community of Dallas, the group of mostly single, age 40-and-under lay people have produced a major Catholic-Protestant debate, a year-anda-half-long lecture series by noted academics on the Catholic faith, a variety of youth retreats and programs, at least four vocations to the religious life, and four (soon to be nine) marriages. In five years the group has grown from 20 members to 115, two offshoot Young Serra clubs have recently begun in Fort Worth and San Antonio, and Catholics in other cities are taking notice.
In one sense the Young Serra club is just another of the more than 600 clubs of Serra International, an organization founded in 1934 by a small group of Catholic friends in Seattle who wanted to share ideas on how to live their Christian faith. Named for Blessed Junipero Serra, a Franciscan missionary from Spain, the group soon developed its special focus — adult Catholic education and the fostering of vocations to priesthood and the religious life — and it has spread that apostolate throughout 35 countries.
But the Young Serrans are also unique. Last summer, after the group's “Catholic Evangelization Weekend” project received the Father Junipero Serra Award as “the most successful and innovative effort to further Catholicism and promote vocations,” Serra International's executive director Robert Raccuglia said, “Everyone's interested in what's going on in Dallas. I don't think there's anything comparable in the Serra Club world like the Young Serrans.”
To begin with, the average age of most Serrans is about 60, and because of that, young people were just not being attracted to the organization, said Mike Murray, 31, a past president of Young Serrans.
So in 1993, Don Wetzel of the Serra Club of Dallas helped launch a specifically young group — more than half the Young Serrans are in their 20s — capable not only of bringing fresh faces to Serra, but also to be able to relate to youth in vocation awareness programs.
“We started out as an experiment; they didn't know if we'd make it,” explained Murray. “After about a year or two we finally figured out we were surviving.”
Service Projects
The club's early service projects included helping put on Youth 2000 retreats — prayer weekends for youth centered on the Mass and eucharistic adoration — and painting cabins at the Pines Catholic Camp in East Texas. In the spring of 1996 the Young Serrans put on their first vocations retreat, which ended up attracting more young adult leaders than kids to its program of talks, the rosary, the Divine Office, and Mass.
“We see that as a real launching pad. We became very confident in being very spiritual, and we settled into a pattern of being very spiritual,” recalled Murray. “(We realized) if we're going to work with kids, we're going to have to have the faith to impart. … Our philosophy is that if a young person does not know and love the Church, it's unlikely he'll consider a vocation.”
The Young Serrans now have a full schedule of spiritual, service, and social activities, another feature setting them apart from the more typical two-meetings-a-month for Serra Clubs. A calendar in the most recent newsletter notes the annual awards banquet this month; the regular monthly Friday night meeting featuring Mass and a speaker (this month it's Dallas Bishop Charles Grahmann); the Wednesday night prayer cenacle; weekly Bible study; second Saturday rosary and Mass; and each Sunday afternoon a game of Ultimate Frisbee.
What's not on the calendar are the various ongoing projects, such as pro-life work, in which Young Serrans are heavily involved, planning for new youth outreaches, development of adult education initiatives, and spontaneous social events. Young Serrans also encourage each other to grow in their faith through the sacraments; many attend daily Mass and make a practice of frequent confession.
The group's current president, Dave Tamisiea, said he “stumbled into the Young Serrans” after following up on a parish bulletin announcement for a Youth 2000 retreat. A recent law school graduate, Tamisiea had undergone a profound reawakening of his faith after traveling to Medjugorje, and he was looking for friends to support him in his renewed devotion.
Some months after joining the group, Tamisiea found himself in charge of the club's biggest project to date: the 1997 Catholic Evangelization Weekend, an event which drew some of the biggest names in apologetics and an audience of 4,000 people from around the country. The weekend, which earned the group the 1998 Serra award, also produced a number of conversions to the Catholic faith, including that of two ushers for the event, and galvanized the Young Serrans into the group they are today, he said.
The event opened with a Friday night prayer cenacle attended by some 2,500 Catholics that featured a Scriptural rosary led by Father Mitch Pacwa SJ; a Mass celebrated by Father Benedict Groeschel CFR, with a homily on the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist; and a talk by the convert and lay apologist Scott Hahn on the richness, beauty and truth of the Catholic faith, said Tamisiea.
‘Charitable’ Debate
The next day was billed as a “Protestant-Catholic Dialogue” (“We wanted them to debate the issues in a charitable way,” said Tamisiea), which matched Hahn with Rob Bowman, a Protestant Bible expert from Georgia, on the issue of salvation and justification; Father Groeschel with Dr. George Logan, a Presbyterian scholar from Australia, on the Eucharist; and Father Pacwa with Ken Samples of “The Bible Answer Man” on authority. All three of the Protestant scholars had grown up as Catholics, Tamisiea observed.
To follow up on people's interest from the weekend, the Young Serrans offered for the next 18 months the “Catholic for a Reason” lecture series featuring such scholars as Douglas Bushman, director of University of Dallas' pastoral studies program; Father Pacwa; and Dr. Janet Smith.
Tamisiea said he has since communicated several times with Dr. Logan, who told him, “That event in Dallas has struck me to my very core. In my whole life I've never been shown so much love by any group — Catholic or Protestant — than I was by the Young Serrans.”
Plans are in the works for “Catholic Evangelization Weekend II,” Tamisiea said. In March they will begin offering a 48-course video series by Father John Corapi, of the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity, on the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
So far the group claims four religious vocations.
“They pray for vocations and talk a lot about them,” said Father Joseph Mehan, associate pastor of St. Monica Catholic Church and chaplain for the Young Serra community for the past year and a half. “People feel comfortable in discussing vocations. Others in the group affirm them: ‘If you'd like to do that, we'll pray for you.’ There's not pressure to (choose a vocation), but there's not pressure not to. It's a positive thing.”
The Young Serrans also pray for and take seriously the sacrament of matrimony as a vocation. Mike Murray, the past president, and Colette Flood, another Young Serran, will be getting married in two months.
“I think the Young Serrans were instrumental in me really finally gaining full knowledge of what it meant to be a Catholic, which allowed me to grow closer to God and to be more comfortable and confident in my faith to share it with others,” Murray said. “It's a tremendous group of people with a great purpose.”
Ellen Rossini writes from Dallas.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Rossini -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: From Chicago to the Islands DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:This former auxiliary bishop of Chicago had known mostly urban settings. His ministry took him to the University of Detroit, Georgetown University, and a high school in Washington, D.C. Now, Bishop Murry is coadjutor bishop of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. On a recent visit to the North American College, Rome, he spoke with Register correspondent Raymond De Souza.
De Souza: How did you react when you heard the news of your appointment to the Virgin Islands?
Bishop Murry: The first reaction was surprise. I had no idea that I was even being considered to be sent to the Virgin Islands. I had spent three very enjoyable years as auxiliary bishop in Chicago, and before that my experience had been mostly a combination of educational and pastoral work. So I was surprised when I found out that I was going to the Virgin Islands.
Had you had previous experience in the Virgin Islands?
I had been to Puerto Rico, which is 40 miles west of the Virgin Islands, and I had a close friend who grew up in the Virgin Islands who now lives in Philadelphia. I was coming up on my 50th birthday and he had said to me just a few weeks before my appointment, “Why donít you go down to the Virgin Islands and stay at our house there? It will be a nice way to turn fifty.” So when I was appointed, I called him and said, “Not only will I go down to the Virgin Islands but I am going to stay there!”
How have your first few months been?
There was a certain apprehension about going to a completely different culture, a completely different place on the map, to be of service to the people there. I really appreciated the welcome that they gave me and the fact that the people took the time to explain things to me and show me around. I am sure they would do that for any bishop, but they were especially sensitive to the fact that I did not know much about the Islands.
I read as much as I could before going there about the history, and I tried to get as much information as possible. Yet I think that it is very human to wonder, “Can I go in and be an effective bishop for the people there?” I am not from there, I do not know the situation, I do not know the culture.
I wondered the same thing when I went to Chicago, and I found that the people helped me to be a good bishop and taught me how to be a bishop. The archbishops, [Joseph] Cardinal Bernardin and [Francis] Cardinal George, were very helpful. In the Virgin Islands, I have learned a great deal from Bishop Elliot Thomas and from the priests and the people there.
Have your found many similarities between United States and the Virgin Islands?
The Virgin Islands are a U.S. possession situated in the Caribbean, so there are cultural influences from the mainland United States and, along with that, cultural influences from the Caribbean or the West Indies. One of the things that many parents worry about in the Islands is that their children are exposed to the worst elements of “mainland culture.”
Some things are the same any place you go. An example of that would be either the faith or lack of faith of the people you are working with. The church in the Virgin Islands is alive, is a solid, faithful church, and is very involved in the day-to-day lives of the people in the Virgin Islands. They are a deeply spiritual, deeply religious people and that is a joy to work with. I think any bishop, any priest, going into a new situation looks to see what is the level of faith of the people here.
I found a deep faith, an abiding faith, and an animated faith in the Virgin Islands.
The difference in size between Chicago and the Virgin Islands must be a big change.
In Chicago, because of the size of the city and the size of the diocese, there is a huge number of parishes and schools. In the Virgin Islands we do not have a huge number. We have 10 parishes, three elementary schools, and two high schools, but the same questions are being asked there as would be asked in any diocese.
As a former high school president, Catholic schools must be a priority for you.
In our schools, the question comes up: How do we provide the best Catholic education for the young men and women who come to our schools? We face the same problems as the big dioceses do in the sense that it is very expensive to run Catholic schools. We are continually looking for ways of bearing the cost of those schools and preserving the most important thing, which is our Catholic identity. We are not just running private schools, we are running Catholic schools. What in my mind identifies them as Catholic is the fact that they are rooted in our Catholic faith and our Catholic tradition and we can in no way downplay that. That is the most important thing — to teach and live the faith.
Are there things that you can do in a smaller diocese that you couldn't do in Chicago?
In a small diocese, one of the great advantages is that you can know people. I am now in the process of doing weekend parish visits. When I do the parish visits, I spend the entire weekend at the parish — celebrate all the Masses, hear confessions, visit the sick, meet with the parish council and other parish organizations, and spend time with the priest. I get to know the priests and the people well and they get to know me and that makes it easy to exchange ideas and to work together.
The first advantage of a smaller diocese is that contact that you can have on a daily basis which helps to build a sense of understanding and trust and community. So there is a difference and it is a helpful difference.
What challenges are posed by the large number of tourists in the Islands?
One of the things that the priests and I have talked about is how we have to be very aware of the tourists that are coming in. Some of those tourists come in on a cruise ship and are only in the diocese for a day. … Other people come and stay for a longer period of time, they may be there for a week. There are some people who have two houses, one in the States and the other in the Islands and they come down for two or three months. It is important for us to be aware of them and then it is important for us to be available to them. …
I would like very much to have a priest in the area of St. Thomas where most of the cruise ships come in. I would like to have a chapel there and I would like to have a priest available there during the time when the ships are in if someone wants to go to confession or someone wants to talk to a priest. We cannot do that right now.
Have you experienced any culture shock?
It is what many people would describe as a laid-back culture. People tend to be more calm than they would be in some of the big cities in the States. Along with that calmness comes a certain peacefulness that you find very much among the people. Many of the priests kid with me because being from cities all my life I tend to want to move more quickly than many things move in the Islands. They tell me, “Bishop, you need to slow down!” I always kid them and say, “I'll meet you halfway — I'll slow down if you speed up!” I am learning and getting better at this.
Do you get time to keep up with your academic work?
No! [laughing] My degree is in American history and I try to read in that as much as I can, but there is not much time due to administrative and pastoral responsibilities. The thing I miss most from the academic part of my life is teaching — I love teaching.
The primary responsibility of any bishop is to help his people grow in Christ, and part of that involves teaching. When I was in Chicago, and now also in the Virgin Islands, I tried to use confirmations as an opportunity to teach the young people about the faith. Yet there is not time to teach as much as I did before. But that's OK — this is where the Lord is calling me at this point in my life.
I have never regretted the decision to be a priest, and I thoroughly enjoy being a bishop. I get the chance not only to be a priest to the people, but also to be a priest to priests, to be a pastor to priests. I have always found the priesthood, with all its challenges, to be very fulfilling. It would nice to spend more time with the books, but I love what I do.
—Raymond de Souza
BISHOP GEORGE MURRY
Personal: Born in Camden, N.J., in 1948; attended St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia and St. Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore; entered the Society of Jesus in 1972 and was ordained in 1979.
Background: Served as a university professor; president of Archbishop Carroll High School in Washington, D.C.; associate vice president for academic affairs at the University of Detroit before being appointed auxiliary bishop of Chicago in 1995.
Current position: Coadjutor Bishop of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands; member of the board of trustees of Loyola University of Chicago; treasurer of the Bishops' Catholic Legal Immigration Network; chairman of the Bishops' Committee on African American Catholics.
----- EXCERPT: An urban prelate becomes a Caribbean shepherd ------- EXTENDED BODY: Bishop George Murry -------- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: U.S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:THE NEW YORK TIMES, Feb. 14—The lead article in the Sunday New York Times business section was a positive look at Tom Monaghan and his Legatus organization for Catholic chief executive officers. The article sketched the history of the man who made his fortune as the founder of Domino's Pizza, and his Catholic apostolate, which was founded in 1987 and has grown to include 1,300 members in 25 American chapters and nascent groups in Canada, Mexico and Honduras.
“What many members share—and discuss at Legatus meetings—is the experience of having their faith and ethics tested by challenges at work,” wrote the Times' Alex Prud'Homme, who reported that Monaghan plans “to expand Legatus rapidly.”
Jews Needn't Fear Christians, Says Rabbi
Rabbi Lapin argues that Jews should not feel threatened by religious Christians but by “the failures of secular liberalism” that have weakened the family, the public schools and authority in general. “In fact, I am grateful for the country's Christian foundation, because it is that religious foundation that has made it possible for Jews to live in safety and security in this country for over 200 years.”
Bowen had written the paper: “What percentage [of the young men who frequent adult clubs] develop an attitude towards women that … eases their mindset toward violent sexual acts?”
----- EXCERPT: From selected publications ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Vietnam, in a Rare Move, Will Allow 9 Ordinations DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam—Priestly ordinations — rarely permitted in Vietnam — will be conducted on March 18 by Archbishop John Baptist Pham Ming Man at the Cathedral of Our Lady Queen of Peace in Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon.
The nine candidates for ordination are all members of religious orders. They include two Dominicans, two Jesuits, two Redemptorists, one Franciscan, one Sulpician and one member of the local Nazareth Institute. The Communists' permission for the ordinations is seen by many as another sign of a small opening toward religion.
Vietnam's communist government restricts ordinations to maintain some control over the activities of the Catholic Church. Government officials judge the candidates' qualities, set the number for each seminary, and can veto the assignments of new priests. Nevertheless, vocations continue to flourish in Vietnam.
Viewed with suspicion because they are usually international in scope and membership, religious orders are not officially allowed to accept candidates or open novitiates, although several institutes have unofficial formation houses.
The nine new priests range in age from 32 to 67 years. Because many who finish their studies while still young and have to wait years before they can begin their ministry, it is not unusual for new priests to be of mature age.
(CWNews.com/Fides)
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:Priest Urges Blocking Illegal Immigrants in Italy
“You have no idea how hard it is for me to say that.”Father Palazzo said because of illegal immigration his village, formerly home to 20 families, ballooned into a community of 20,000 people with illegally constructed homes and businesses, where prostitutes walk the streets day and night.
U.N. Satisfied with India's Efforts to Curb Violence
During a three-day visit to the country, Robinson said she believed displays of religious intolerance were taken very seriously by the authorities.
A BBC correspondent in Delhi said Robinson's remarks would be welcomed by India's coalition government, which is led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.
The party has been criticized by those who say India's secular image has been dented by the recent attacks on Christians.
Catholic Ranks Now Over 1 Billion
ASSOCIATED PRESS, Feb. 21—The Vatican's latest yearbook, presented to Pope John Paul II on Feb. 20, puts the number of Catholics in the world at 1 billion, 5 million.
The just-published 1999 Pontifical Yearbook includes the figure, which refers to the number of baptized Catholics as of Dec. 31, 1997. The publishers indicated that the latest figure is a population equal to about 17.3 percent of the world's population. Last April, the Vatican estimated that the number had topped 1 billion.
The yearbook, compiled from Church sources and from other data, also notes that the Holy See has diplomatic relations with 168 countries.
----- EXCERPT: From selected publications ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:Cardinal Ratzinger Says Media Misread His Job
The Catholic faithful have a right to know what is Catholic and what is not Catholic, he added. In an interview with the San Francisco arch-diocesan newspaper, prior to delivering an address at St. Patrick Seminary, Cardinal Ratzinger said the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has two mandates — promote the Catholic faith and defend it.
If Permitted, Vatican Would Switch Embassy to Beijing
The Church would move its nunciature back to Beijing, “not tomorrow but this evening if the Chinese authorities permitted,” said Cardinal Sodano in a story that was picked up by Inside China Today and numerous European publications.
He told journalists that the move would not mean breaking off relations with Taiwan, but simply bringing the nunciature back to Beijing, where it was located before the communists seized power in 1949.
Critiques of Pius XII Called ‘Shameful’
Father Gumpel is the relator of the cause for canonization of Pope Pius XII.
In the article he pointed out that those who thanked Pius XII for his role in helping Jews were “contemporaries and survivors of the Nazi persecution.” He said, “[T]hey had firsthand experience and direct knowledge of what they were saying. Nevertheless, their witness is today largely ignored by many who were still children or not yet born at the time of the Holocaust.”
The priest said he agreed with Newsweek magazine, which commented on the current attacks against Pius XII saying, “something shameful is going on.”
----- EXCERPT: From selected publications ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Eliminating the Poor DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:The U.N. Population Forum in The Hague ended Feb. 12 with little media fanfare. Next will come a concluding document from the Forum which will advocate abortion and sterilization as a “solution” to poverty, and confer the prestige of the U.N. on the latest definitions of “family.” Ideas concocted by first-world intellectuals will be urged on Third World nations that would reject the ideology if they didn't need the money so badly.
In short, the policies and attitudes which comprise what Pope John Paul II has called the culture of death have quietly won a victory. That victory will either become final or turn to defeat in March meetings when member nations shape and vote on a final, binding document.
The latest battle shows that population-control forces learned a lot since the U.N. Population Conference in Cairo in 1994. Then, Planned Parenthood and other groups made their agendas very clear: they wanted to alleviate poverty by reducing the strain on the food supply. They wanted fewer people. Such a “commitment to eliminate poverty could be confused with that of eliminating the poor,” said Monsignor Frank Dewane, Holy See observer, in remarks at The Hague. The Vatican successfully opposed those agendas in Cairo, with the cooperation of representatives from countries targeted for downsizing. At the time, it was a victory.
But conference organizers did a clever thing. They set a process in place that would revisit the U.N. directives after a five-year review. That gave the U.N. Population Fund and other population control advocates time to prepare for a final push, and time for the issue to die down in the media.
What resulted was a professional, polite, and closed-minded “Cairo + 5” Forum which received virtually no media attention and which may end up producing devastating results.
In 1994 at Cairo, the United Nations faced a high-profile confrontation that pitted anti-population bureaucrats against respectable representatives of traditional morality from the Third World and the Catholic Church. They lost. At The Hague in 1999, they made sure that same story line didn't get out.
This time around, pro-life journalists reported receiving strange treatment. They were kept under unusually close scrutiny by polite U.N. staff security guards. Mary Jo Anderson of Crisis and John Mallon of Inside the Vatican and the Register were made to know that they, and others, were “problem” reporters who were being watched. U.N. press operatives also refused to help pro-life journalists arrange interviews with U.N. officials — a service that they provided to secular reporters. One Muslim reporter who complained about being denied press access was physically bullied by a guard, according to a complaint he filed with the U.N.
It is obvious why they received such treatment. The Catholic Church (with its allies) is identified by the U.N. Population Fund as one of the “obstacles” to its population control policies. And the fund is becoming increasingly press-savvy: in its printed materials, it asked organizations who support its work to stop referring to “population control” and to speak instead about “economic development” in their remarks.
The very structure of the conference was meant to present a smiling face to the world. It began with a three-day youth extravaganza, a spirited photo opportunity that gave the forum an air of multicultural vigor. The forum ended with formal, dull presentations that the press avoided.
In between these events were two days' worth of presentations by “educational” organizations. In these, star billing was given to the population control groups, while pro-life groups such as the Knights of Columbus of Canada were denied a chance to speak.
Frances Kissling, whose organization Catholics for a Free Choice is noteworthy for its opposition to Church teaching and for its small size, was given two opportunities to address delegates, and therefore became the most prominent voice meant to represent Catholics at the forum. Meanwhile, the Arrow for Change, the conference's on-site publication, featured offensive cartoons of the Pope.
Thus, the population control crowd covered itself where it had been weak before. By tightly controlling “opposition” press, reframing its work in economic terms, and carefully selecting its speakers, it was able to do quietly and respectably what Cairo's noise prevented.
As a result, the forum's final document is replete with radical notions of “reproductive and sexual rights.” One directive urges access to abortion and contraception to children who “demand them.”
The Holy See, for its part, has played its hand very carefully. It made the Church's position clear with strong words — “The ability of a woman to make decisions is not dependent on the reduction of her fertility but on the level of her education,” said Monsignor Dewane. But it kept its contingent small, as if it smelled a setup and decided not to play along. Perhaps the Holy See and the rest of the Catholic contingent are saving their firepower for the real showdown at the United Nations meeting in New York that begins March 22.
There, delegates will decide how much money from American paychecks ought to be earmarked for practices and policies that many Catholics, Muslims, and Orthodox Jews abhor. It will not be easy. First lady Hillary Clinton promised the forum that the Clinton administration would do all it can to restore the $25 million assessment Cairo made on the United States. Congress, arguing that the money would aid and abet the forced abortion policies of China and other such human rights abuses, refused to pay that money last time. The fight will be harder now.
Its outcome may depend on how well Catholics take up the battle, as the Pope did in Cairo five years ago.
This is, after all, what the U.N. Population Fund fears. Whether the voice of truth will go unheard this time around, remains to be seen.
----- EXCERPT: Editorial ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Let Me Refer You ... DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:The excess of information available today means that recourse to reliable sources is necessary in order to check facts or to understand the wider context. Happily, it is becoming easier for the interested layman or parish office to create a small yet wide-ranging reference library without incurring prohibitive expense. For example, the Catechism of the Catholic Church and perhaps the new Encyclopedia of Catholic Doctrine (Our Sunday Visitor) would belong in such a collection. The three reference works reviewed here are of the kind that might be considered by interested laymen, parish librarians, catechists, university students, or seminarians.
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church first appeared in 1957, edited by the late F.L. Cross, and a second edition came out in 1974. This third edition is the best of the lot, and is as fine a reference work as is available anywhere.
As a dictionary it will not furnish enough material for a term paper on Christianity in Indonesia or for a homily on the Fall of man, but it provides a pithy summary. Extensive bibliographical notes also make it a good place to start a deeper inquiry — it tells you what to read on Indonesia, and that belief in the Fall was defined de fide by the Council of Trent. Want to know what de fide means? Look it up: It gives the definition in one careful sentence.
The economical prose conveys the relevant information in a few words. The nearly 1,800 pages therefore provide enough space to cover everything that ought to be covered. I keep it on my desk at the seminary, regularly looking up material that arises in class, and not once have I been stymied.
It is a dictionary of the Church, understood as including all of Christianity, but the dictionary focuses on those communities that consider themselves in the catholic tradition, principally Roman Catholics, the Orthodox, Anglicans, Calvinists, and Lutherans. While the dictionary is largely an Anglican project, it is scrupulously fair to others. For example, the entry on contraception makes it clear that patristic teaching was against it, and that it was the 1930 Lambeth Council (Anglican) that changed the ancient Christian consensus.
The Dictionary cannot be taken as a doctrinal reference though, as its format does not allow for the technical precision required to explicate doctrine. Rather it richly mines the Church's history and introduces thousands of saints and sinners who have influenced the history of the Church.
It is sturdy but not cumbersome, even at its great size, and has a beautiful dust jacket with a detail from the Lady Chapel windows at Ely, the magnificent 11th century monastery seized during the reign of Henry VIII. You will want it on your bookshelf whenever you next wonder what a baldachino is, or what St. Elmo's fire really means.
The Cambridge Companion to the Bible is not a standard biblical dictionary, and is comprised not of thousands of alphabetical entries, but a series of chapter-length essays on the theological, historical, cultural, and literary context of the biblical books. It is not a quick reference book as much as a useful introductory textbook to biblical scholarship. The essays provide insight and color, but are probably beyond the needs of most parishes and interested laymen, and do not always align with the Church's interpretation of the Bible. The frequent sidebars are a good feature, explaining in a few paragraphs varied topics such as the climate of Palestine, the Tetragrammaton, the Son of Man, and the tradition of stoning.
The Companion is afflicted with the usual posture of modern biblical scholarship that annoys most pious readers. It indulges in the silliness of using B.C.E. and C.E. (“before the common era” and “in the common era”) instead of B.C. and A.D., even as it explains that it is the birth of Christ that divides the two. In its attempt to maintain its critical academic approach, it uses expressions such as “the Jesus tradition” and refers to the Gospels as “not objective reports but propaganda.” Of course they are that in a certain sense, but they are also much more than that, otherwise nobody would be interested in reading the Bible today, or buying companions thereto.
Theodore James' compilation of key Catholic writings, The Heart of Catholicism, is an odd reference book. It lacks a sufficiently detailed subject index, and so there needs be a lot of flipping around to lay hold of an answer to a specific inquiry. And of course one volume alone does not pretend to be comprehensive. Yet this book, apparently a novel idea, might be just the right thing for someone who wants to know some of best things said by the best Catholic writers down through the centuries.
James has excerpted a few pages from classic texts from the early Church, through the patristic and medieval periods up to our own day, including writers such as St. Thérèse of Lisieux. Whether it is the Didache recording apostolic practice, Boethius on the Trinity, Dante's Paradiso, St. John of the Cross on the spiritual life, or Paul VI on sexual morality, the book testifies that the heart of Catholicism has been beating a long time, and still beats strong.
The excerpts are short, but long enough to give a sense of the main point being made. A book such as this can do no better than leaving readers wanting more. But even on its own, it does well to introduce Catholics to the majesty of their own tradition — the living tradition against which all new information must be measured against.
Raymond de Souza, a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Kingston, Ontario, writes from Rome.
----- EXCERPT: Book Review ------- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond De Souza -------- KEYWORDS: Books -------- TITLE: The Good News of Pain and Suffering DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:Carol Egan, a mother of five, writes: “In an earlier age, people had a more sober view of life; there seemed to be a greater understanding of the mystery of human suffering. … There was awareness that pain — while still inexplicable and mysterious — was to be endured for a greater purpose. Today, however, in the materialistic world in which we live, the only spiritualism one can find is in a pervasive obsession with psychic phenomena.
“Evil is the privation of a good that should be present. Both evil and good occur within the permissive providence of God. The only real evil occurs when sin is committed, thus upsetting the moral order. In sin, there is the absence of a good that should be present. As such, the only real and absolute evil is sin, which is mysteriously linked to suffering, but not necessarily as cause and effect.
“God's providence is mysteriously, inexorably bound up with evil. Says St. Thomas Aquinas, ‘If evil were entirely swept away, Providence could not regenerate and restore the integrity of things, and this would be a greater evil than the particular evils they suffer.’
“The pleasure principle dictates on a natural level our continuous, ongoing orientation. We love leisure and gratification. We are willing, happy receivers of good from God, but when He allows evil, we too often become rigid and unyielding. Job, the prototypical sufferer, marked the way toward the consummate work of the sacrificial Lamb, when He said ‘Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?’(2:10).
“Father John Hardon insists that the words love and pain should never be separated. If Love Incarnate endured the greatest pain in human history, then these two words are inexorably and mysteriously linked as condition and consequence. Francis Fernandez links pain with joy in his exposition on human suffering which is the Church's constant teaching since apostolic times. ‘Joy is inseparable from the Cross. Not only that, but we will also understand that we can never be happy if we are not united to Christ on the Cross, and that we will never know how to love if we do not at the same time live sacrifice.’
“That God sometimes permits evil in order to allow good is not self-evident. Our darkened intellects can scarcely place day to day events in their proper perspective, much less when there is some extended pain or suffering. Moreover, we tend to compare our crosses with those of others. This is a grave error for many reasons, but mostly because the possible benefit to one's soul could be lost in what can turn into envy at the ostensible greener pasture. By focusing on the pain itself instead of trying to discover what is behind it, or what it is that God wants of us during each painful but intensely valuable moment of the cross, we lost the opportunity to grow in grace by being patient under trial.
“In his Apostolic Letter, [Pope John Paul II] exhorts that ‘Salvation means liberation from evil, and for this reason it is closely bound up with the problem of suffering, and at the basis of human suffering there is a complex involvement with sin’ (14, 15). … The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that one of the Church's remedies for suffering is the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. Speaking about the union of a sick person with the passion of Christ, the writers entreat that ‘in a certain way he is consecrated to bear fruit by configuration to the Savior's redemptive Passion. Suffering, a consequence of original sin, acquires a new meaning; it becomes a participation in the saving work of Jesus’(1521).
“Human suffering is always accompanied by a desire for it to end. No one enjoys pain, but the key to successful endurance during trial is found in the conscious surrender of one's will to the will of God, trusting Him to effect some good from the experience of the misery.”
Ellen Wilson Fielding writes from Davidsonville, Maryland.
----- EXCERPT: Article Digest ------- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding -------- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Letters DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:Moscow Martyr's Real Death-place
Thank you for your front page coverage of the book Sentenced as Vatican Spies (Jan. 3-9). It is wonderful to see a sign that the silence which surrounds the sufferings of these martyrs to the Catholic faith in our own time might end. Ours was indeed a time worse than the “new age of Diocletian” that the Russian Catholic Exarch, Fr. Leonid Fedorov, foresaw at the very onset of the communist terror.
However, it is important to correct a major factual error in the article: Anna Abrikosova, who as co-founder and prioress of the Moscow Dominican sisters suffered so heroically at the hands of her tormentors, was not shot at the Solovki Camp, where in fact she was never imprisoned (as were some other sisters of the community). She died of breast cancer in the Butyrki prison in Moscow, on July 23, 1936. I am citing Sister Philomena, a member of her community who was imprisoned with her at various times; but there are numerous other witnesses, among them a total of six sisters from the community, who encountered her in prison shortly before her death. It seems likely that her body was cremated in secret in the basement of the prison, since her captors hoped — in vain — that knowledge of this heroic witness to our Faith would die with her.
Professor Joseph Lake University of Massachusetts
Sweatshops
Thank you for your article, “18 Top American Retailers Sued by Overseas Workers” (Jan. 24-30). How shameful of other nations not to maintain a fair, minimum wage legally enhanced and maintained — as well as enforced. One day, hopefully, Pope Leo XIII's wonderful encyclical about working mankind's fair and just wages may come to fruition.
G.D. Bones Southeastern, Pennsylvania
Medical Missions
I would like to thank you for your wonderful article on the Helping Hands Medical Missions. I am a volunteer with the organization and was excited to see the work of the missions being highlighted in your paper. It is truly an inspiration to work with others on the missions. We are always in need of volunteers to help us. I noticed that there was no mention of how to contact the mission team if anyone was interested. The person to contact is: Lupita Assad RN, 3405 Dartmouth Drive, Irving, TX 75062, e-mail: mission@airmail.net, Fax: (972) 650-9101.
Karen Robinson Irving, Texas
Editor's Note: The Register has received many requests for information about how to contact this group.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: More Than Just The Second Day of the Weekend DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:The word “weekend” often conjures up two almost opposite visions: work and relaxation. On the one hand, weekends are the time to do all the things there's no time for during the week: errands and chores, shopping and laundry. On the other hand, weekends are time for relaxation: for sleeping in or getting out, for disconnecting from the everyday grind.
The word “Sunday” is also likely to evoke contradictory images. A more traditional picture includes going to church and praying. It might also include images of one's “Sunday best,” and a family dinner. But those images compete with more contemporary ideas of Sunday as “the second day of the weekend.”
One Eastern newspaper promotes its Sunday edition as the ideal thing to read in bed that morning. The golfer who communes with God on the 18th hole is another ready image. In some places, morning soccer matches are so common on Sunday that recently one bishop publicly appealed to local school boards to stop scheduling them at that time.
In short, as part of today's culture wars, we face a struggle over the meaning of Sunday.
Pope John Paul II pointed to this phenomenon in Dies Domini, his 1998 apostolic letter on the meaning of Sunday. The letter notes the contemporary confusion between Sunday and the weekend (which includes a secularized Sunday). The Pope acknowledges that the weekend, as “a weekly period of respite,” can provide free time for “cultural, political, or sporting activities.” At the same time such a vision, warns John Paul II, entraps people into too limited a horizon, ensnaring them with the values only of this world. The weekend as time of rest, says the Pope, is a good thing as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough. It doesn't include the spiritual side of man.
John Paul makes it clear that Sunday is first of all a religious celebration and that it exists so that, particularly on the threshold of the year 2000, Christians can rediscover the significance of the Lord's Day “for human and Christian life.”
How then are we to recapture Sunday in the right way? First of all, it is essential to bring back the centrality of Sunday Mass. If we attend on Sunday morning, the Mass sets the tone for the day. If we go on Sunday evening, the Mass can be the closing summit of the day. Saturday evening Mass, reminding us of our roots in Judaism (for which the Lord's day started at dusk), can be a powerful help in “desecularizing” the weekend by inaugurating a time of worship and a time for the family to be together in the evening. This obviously means that Saturday evening Mass must be motivated by more than the simple desire to sleep in Sunday morning.
Whenever one attends Mass, it can be followed by common family activity. It might be Saturday night supper, Sunday brunch or lunch (at home or in a restaurant). We can consciously make Sunday a family day, a day to be together, talk together, do things together — sports, visiting museums, going to a park.
And don't forget praying together. Mass is the high point for prayer, but every family might find some other time during the day — perhaps just before a common meal — to pray, to re-read and discuss the Gospel or another Bible reading. At least at some times of the year (e.g., in Advent or Lent), family prayer might mean other devotions. (This also suggests that priests reconsider what has been lost with the disappearance of such “old-fashioned” devotions as Sunday Vespers or Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.)
Indeed, the Pope points out that Sunday worship and Sunday rest are not two separate things. It's not that Sunday worship is religious and Sunday rest secular. Rest does not mean inactivity. Rest means taking the time to regain perspective. God “rests” by looking at the sense and meaning of his creation, a creation in which he himself would one day become incarnate.
Sunday exists to raise human sights beyond the frenetic activity of this world. Sunday exists for people to ask themselves regularly what the Polish philosopher Father Jozef Bochenski once called “existential questions.” Who am I? Why am I here? Where is my life headed? Where should it be headed?
That's what Sunday rest is for. It's a time of resetting our compass vis-à-vis this world. That means getting our bearing on the rush of life in which people are so often enmeshed because the pure din of daily activity drowns out time for deeper thoughts. That's a far cry from rest as mere recuperation from the overwork of 50-60 hour weeks, from overex-tended commitments and sheer exhaustion. People stretched to the limit are not likely candidates for taking stock contemplatively of the meaning of life.
Sunday therefore asks us to review our priorities. It asks us whether we still have the physical or psychic energy to think. If not, Sunday asks us to cut back. Do we really need that weekend job? Do we really have to get ahead so far so fast? Would it really be so disastrous if we relaxed a bit?
Sunday sets a tone both for the week and for life. It tames the monster of our “work ethic” that reduces people to simple economic producers, who unfortunately, must sometimes take time off to recapture their efficiency. Sunday invites human beings to grow in their humanity by returning regularly to questions about who they are. Sunday asks us to face the great purpose God gave us when he made us human persons. Sunday asks us not to settle for just a weekend.
John Grondeleski writes from Arlington, Virginia.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: John Grondeleski -------- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: Data Show Religion Keeps Homes Intact DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:Most Americans know that something is deeply amiss in our society, thus demonstrating that they have an intuitive grasp of the natural order and what ignoring it portends for our nation's future.
The way God has created every creature establishes a natural law governing each one. The creature's capacities, potentials, structures, and functions are the clues to a law that governs its growth and wellbeing. Just as a machine has a way of operating based on its nature, so too do the actions of man illustrate the natural law governing him. If one drives and maintains a car properly, it will run well for an extraordinarily long time. Man too thrives when he lives according to the natural law.
However, if something goes wrong, e.g., a car's gears start to make a grinding noise, then we may conclude that the nature of the car is being violated.
American society is giving signals analogous to the grinding of those gears. It is not operating according to its nature. The signals are most visible in what is happening to our children, and in the data on how we are treating them.
THE PROBLEM
To get a clear picture of what is happening, keep in mind that the birth rate has been dropping steadily during the last five decades. During these same years the outof-wedlock birth rate has risen steadily, and a “divorce revolution” has taken place. When we bring these three major changes into focus together, a disturbing picture emerges. In 1950 for every hundred children born in this country, 12 entered a broken family — 4 by being born out of wedlock, and 8 through the divorce of their parents. This “rejection” ratio rose steadily until by 1993, the last year for accurate divorce statistics, for every hundred children born in this country, 33 were being born out of wedlock and another 25 were suffering the divorce of their parents.
This burden has many negative effects on children. Not every child is affected in each way, but as a group their risks are increased. For newborns, the risk of perinatal death or disease increases. (In public health the level of education is a good general proxy measure for the level of health. But not in this case. A child born to a college educated single mother is at greater risk of perinatal illness or death than a child born to grade school drop-out married parents). Children of broken families are at greater risk for lower verbal IQ; lower school attainment across all income levels; and lower job and income attainment as adults. They will have more behavioral and emotional problems, more anxieties, and more depression. They will commit more crimes, be more drug and alcohol addicted, get involved more often and earlier in sex outside of marriage, have more children out of wedlock, cohabit more, and divorce more.
The alienation of their adult parents translates into a heavy burden for them. The offspring of this creature called man do not thrive with parents who are separated or alienated. One eminent psychiatrist put a sharp edge on it: a dead father, he said, raises his children better than an absent father. Rejection between parents is withering and permanent; separation by death from a loved parent is gradually transformed into healing and fond memories.
Sociology points towards two main disturbances to the divinely given natural order that can undermine marriage. The most obvious disturbance is the pandemic of sex outside marriage. The second disturbance is the decrease in the worship of God.
The first disturbance — sex outside of marriage — quickly gives rise to out-of-wedlock births, and to abortions. Over 80% of abortions are procured by single women. Abortion is the ultimate contraceptive, and is used mainly because the unmarried mother is not yet equipped to handle a baby.
The second disturbance is the decline of the regular worship of God. On any particular weekend about 40% of Americans attend church, synagogue, or mosque. That number includes those who go to church once per month or less. About 28% go to church weekly. That this regular worship is part of the natural order for man, can be known not just by revelation — which is given outside the workings of natural law, though not contrary to it — but by the natural fruits of regular worship of God. The fruits of regular worship are the flip side of the deficits that arise from broken family lives, as enumerated above.
THE SOLUTION
All other things being equal, those who worship God regularly have better physical health, do better at school, go further in education, attain higher income, and have less psychological, emotional, and behavioral problems. (One Harvard don found that the biggest predictor that a child will make it out of inner city poverty is that his or her family attends church regularly.) Married people who go to church regularly have more stable marriages. If their marriages get into trouble, they are more likely to repair the difficulties if one of the two goes to church, and even more likely if both go to church regularly.
The worship of God is the great preserver and repairer. Or better put: God is the great preserver and repairer. His operations and good works can be seen even without the eyes of faith, even without revelation — by sociology.
From the literature on the development of criminals and alcoholics there are indications that there is a natural phase of psychological growth when a young teenager is primed to go deeper into issues about the divine. The young adolescent probes and queries, sometimes in a straightforward style, sometimes in a more defensive way. If his questions are not honestly handled he may walk away from religion. If there is a rebuff or an evasive response to serious, though frequently well disguised questions, then the risk is high that he will be alienated from God. On the other hand, if the person is given a good response, it is likely that he or she will go deeper. In short, adolescence is a critical time in a person's growth in relationship with God.
When marriage and regular church worship come together children also thrive the most economically. For instance, those who grow up in married families that go to church weekly have the highest income in comparison to comparable groups. Those from broken families who never go to church have the lowest incomes. A similar pattern holds for the incidence of teen sexual behavior. Furthermore, not only do children thrive when their married parents worship God, the parents do too.
Research data also shows that married men and women live longer. Men and women who go to church regularly live longer.
Studies show married people are happier than single people, and not surprisingly, they are happier than the divorced or separated. The recently separated are the most unhappy of all.
These findings of the social sciences point to the great impact of two things we can learn about from natural law: the right treatment of God and the right treatment of our spouse and children. Human happiness and well being are strongly linked to worship and marriage — to giving God his due and to giving one's spouse and offspring their due. Human happiness is linked to Sunday worship and to a family life of affection and commitment, with the sexual act ordered to the good, of the children first — for they are its most serious consequence — and then of the adults.
Today America groans under the weight of its social fracturing, under the culture of rejection and alienation, most visibly in its family life. While this nation has reached a level of economic success unmatched in human history it has simultaneously reached a level of alienation in family life perhaps also unmatched in recorded history. While we have developed the potential of the natural physical order and the potential of our economy, we have at the same time undone the natural order of family, affection, and marriage which is the garden where children grow strong.
THE BATTLE
Two major visions of man compete to explain human nature and behavior: a view based on a divinely given natural law and a view based on materialism. All major religions, whether they use or agree with the term or not, subscribe to a natural law view, a divinely given natural law view, of man. The materialist view, on the other hand, is embodied in various degrees in Marxism, socialism, libertarianism, and scientism. In the United States these two philosophies of man compete for the minds and hearts of the nation, and by all indices the materialist has been winning the day for some time.
But an unexpected monkey wrench has been thrown into the materialist camp. It is beginning to run up against certain results of sociological research that are hard for it to take, especially since the results come from a discipline it formerly regarded as an ally.
While economics brings good news about how our marketplace thrives and how our GNP grows, sociology brings the bad news that all this material wealth is not resulting in greater human happiness. And worse still, sociology is pointing to the presence or absence of marriage and worship as underlying reasons for alienation or belonging, growth or decay, and healing or fracturing.
Because many American fathers and mothers cannot now endure each other enough to raise their children together, there will be continuing, severe, and mounting natural consequences. These consequences can be reversed if society returns to putting first things first — especially by returning to the worship of God.
Patrick Fagan is a fellow of the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Patrick Fagan -------- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: What the Pope Means by 'Unconditionally Pro-Life' DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:On his recent visit to St. Louis, Pope John Paul made quite a splash even among the secular media with his successful appeal for clemency to death row inmate Darrell Mease. On the morning after the Pope's departure, Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan signed the order that commuted Mease's death sentence to life in prison without parole. Governor Carnahan cited John Paul's plea for mercy as the motive behind his decision, and said that the Pope's personal interest in the individual “moved me very greatly.”
Yet the Pope made very clear that opposition to the death penalty is of a piece with a full pro-life package. “The new evangelization calls for followers of Christ who are unconditionally pro-life,” the Pope announced, “who will proclaim, celebrate, and serve the Gospel of life in every situation.” And to exemplify this position, John Paul pointed to growing awareness of the dignity of human life “even in the case of someone who has done great evil.”
John Paul's vision of a culture of life goes further still. “To choose life,” he explained, “involves rejecting every form of violence.” Included under the heading of violence the Pope places poverty and hunger, armed conflict, anti-personnel mines, drug trafficking, racism, and reckless damage to the natural environment.
Some have seen in John Paul's encompassing campaign for life a blurring of differences among various life issues. Such would be the case, for instance, between abortion and capital punishment. Writing for the National Catholic Reporter, publisher Tom Fox states that in St. Louis John Paul “ended any distinction between ‘innocent’ and ‘guilty’ life by insisting that ‘life must never be taken, even in the case of someone who has done great evil.’” Fox further wonders aloud at U.S. Bishops' emphasis on abortion, since “the moral principle underpinning both positions is identical.”
Has the Pope indeed done away with any distinction between “innocent” and “guilty” life? By lumping together sundry expressions of contempt for human life, does the Pope intend to posit moral equivalence among them? Is this what John Paul means by the expression “unconditionally pro-life”?
In his final 1998 ad limina address to the American Bishops, Pope John Paul commented approvingly on the Church's presence in the public debate on capital punishment, “aware that in the modern state the cases in which the execution of an offender is an absolute necessity are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.” Nonetheless, the Pope went on to praise the Bishops for underscoring “the priority that must be given to the fundamental right to life of the unborn, and to opposition to euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide.”
All human life is sacred and all sins against life violate the same basic moral principle, but the Church has consistently stressed the absolute inviolability of innocent human life. In his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae, for instance, Pope John Paul writes the following: “If such great care must be taken to respect every life, even that of criminals and unjust aggressors, the commandment ‘You shall not kill’ has an absolute value when it refers to the innocent person” (57).
The National Catholic Conference of Bishops, too, in its November 1998 statement Living the Gospel of Life, differentiates among different life issues. The document speaks of the Church's adoption of a consistent ethics of life, and urges Catholics to “eagerly involve themselves as advocates for the weak and marginalized” in areas such as war, capital punishment, hunger, employment, education, and health care.
Nevertheless, employing the image of a house, the U.S. Bishops make a hierarchical distinction between these latter issues, which they compare to “the crossbeams and walls” of the house, and abortion and euthanasia, which “strike at the house's foundation.” Unless the foundation is firm, the house is built on sand. Furthermore, recognizing that good people often disagree on which problems to address, which policies to adopt, and how best to apply them, the Bishops offer a fundamental principle of action: “We must begin with a commitment never to intentionally kill, or collude in the killing, of any innocent human life.”
On a practical level, as well, a distinction must be drawn between strategy and goals. The goal of an army is to win the war, but it doesn't run helter-skelter into battle engaging the enemy on all fronts simultaneously. An effective army carefully chooses where to concentrate its firepower — not because these are the only points that matter, but because they offer it an important tactical advantage. Catholic Christians strive to promote a culture of life, but to achieve this goal certain bastions of the culture of death bear a greater strategic importance and must be given precedence. Similar prudential thinking underlies recent efforts to legislate a ban on partial birth abortion. All abortion is gravely wrong, but particularly savage methods more readily stir the public conscience. Often progress must be made in stages.
In St. Matthew's Gospel we find Jesus summoning his followers to a higher standard than they were used to. He enjoins them to avoid not only the more egregious offenses against God's law, but also the subtle, even internal, transgressions. “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’…. But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council” (Matthew 5:21-22).
Christ clearly does not mean to put verbal insults on a par with murder, but rather to show that both offend God and are to be avoided. He calls his disciples to moral consistency, to be “unconditionally” loving and faithful, without homogenizing all infractions of the Law as if there were no difference in gravity among them.
Similarly, Pope John Paul is calling on Catholics to fully embrace the culture of life, in all its facets. “The time has come,” he declares, “to banish once and for all from the continent every attack against life.” To be unconditionally pro-life is not to cease to distinguish between one issue and another, but to stand solidly on the side of life on all issues, regardless of legitimate distinctions.
Father Thomas Williams is rector of the general directorate of the Legionaries of Christ in Rome.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Thomas Williams Lc -------- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: Salt-of-the-Earth Americans DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:The Greatest Generation is about the cohort of men and women who were profoundly affected by World War II — those, as the author suggests, who were born around 1920.
The author, NBC news commentator and analyst Tom Brokaw, writes from the perspective of a 58-year-old journalist from a small town in South Dakota. He is neither a baby-boomer nor is he part of the generation he is writing about. This middle ground enables him to speak to both generations, the first needing to be convinced of the worth of the values of the “greatest generation;” the second needing to hear those values — their own values — affirmed in an age when commitment to principles and to family, loyalty, responsibility, and integrity are downplayed.
Brokaw writes what he calls a “family portrait” of persons he's met along the way as a journalist. He portrays ordinary citizens like those he grew up with in small town U.S.A., and famous ones like those he met through his years as a national journalist. For the most part, however, what impresses one in reading this assembly of personal stories is how familiar the people seem, whether their names are well-known or not.
Here are 47 portraits of single men, single women, and couples, whites, blacks, Asians, Hispanics, and Native Americans, all touched by the violence and discipline imposed by the war. The course of each life is like a river passing through mountainous terrain, diverted and deepened before rushing into the wide-open, fertile plain that was the postwar era.
Most of the portraits are of persons who more than survived the war. They learned lessons that have lasted a lifetime. Sometimes those lifetimes were long and prosperous. Other people, who died in the war, nevertheless left a rich legacy to their spouses and children after them.
After recounting each person's wartime episode of bold action in battle or heroic endurance against great odds, Brokaw frequently sums up by pointing out that they still think their sacrifices were worth it. Despite the horrors of the war, the profound injuries inflicted, the suffering and devastation burned into the consciousness (and unconsciousness) of the combatants, they are all able to describe how much their characters were forged and their perspectives on life sharpened by what they experienced.
Bob Bush is one such veteran. He owes his success in business, he says, to “the rigorous schedule pursued by so many World War II veterans. In the service, soldiers had learned the importance of identifying an objective and pursuing it until the mission was accomplished.” Furthermore, “these were children of the Depression, with fresh memories of deprivation.” They weren't about to miss the chance to make money after the war.
Doing business, however, was not the only thing the World War II generation set out to do after returning home. The lessons they learned fit them for public service, politics, family life, and social activism, creating a generation unequaled in success and the quality of character.
These men and women of the Great Generation, living examples of integrity, stand in stark contrast to succeeding generations. Brokaw extols those values formed in dark days of economic depression and world war, now placed on a mountaintop for all to see. Americans of younger generations have to admit that, indeed, this older generation has something going for it.
Brokaw has penned a best seller. More than that he has done a great job of proclaiming many of the values found in the Gospel: faithfulness to family and community, service to one's fellow human being; openness and fairness to all people. Though Brokaw does not pay a great deal of attention to religion, still he always points out the role of faith in seeing people through crises. For example, he chooses to highlight the lives of public servants like Joe Foss of South Dakota and Mark Hatfield of Oregon on the basis of their religious convictions.
The book seldom mentions current names on the political scene, but Brokaw's choices do not seem random. The reader can't help conclude that he is drawing a contrast with the behavior of public figures today. However, there is no moralizing or preaching for Brokaw. He lets the life of each person tell the story. In the end, this is the story of “Every Man,” and for that reason many are reading it.
Another plus about this book is the way it documents historic battles, setting real lives in the midst of documented history, bringing home the fact that the war was not the domain of military strategists and spies alone.
This is the kind of book that's contagious — you want to tell others about it. In this day of ready access to images of violence and self-indulgence, it is refreshing to read about lives full of honor and justice.
Paul Witte writes from Ypsilanti, Michigan.
----- EXCERPT: A Quarterly Review of Books for Active Catholics ------- EXTENDED BODY: Paul Witte -------- KEYWORDS: Books -------- TITLE: The Little Flower's Gift, Roots and All DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:When Louis Martin leaned over to pick a small white flower in the garden of Les Buissonnets, he drew it up roots and all and handed it to Thérèse. It became their symbol, and she kept it always. After her death, they found it pressed in her copy of The Imitation of Christ at the chapter “How one must love Jesus above all things.” The flower was simple, small, nameless, a flower growing beside a garden path that anyone might find.
Thérèse saw the flower as a symbol of herself “very, very little,” hidden, something for the eyes of Jesus alone. By extension, we may see it as a symbol of the “way of spiritual childhood,” which is her gift, roots and all, to the world.
In his study of the “little way,” originally a doctoral dissertation that has been revised, updated, and finely translated into English under the title of “The Power of Confidence,” we have the masterpiece of one who is a renowned authority on the youngest doctor of the Church. Discalced Carmelite Father de Meester traces the genesis and structure of Thérèse's way of spiritual childhood with the precision, delicacy, patience, wonder, and delight of a botanist, all transferred to the theological plane.
The skill with which he examines and analyses the teaching of the Little Flower, the painstaking care and good humor with which he separates and contemplates the gloriously tangled threads of her narrative one by one, reassembling them once more into a radiant, single whole before our gaze, is reminiscent of the botanist's art. Yet how incomparably deeper and more penetrating is this work of the theologian, analyzing the saint! Analysis and synthesis: the work is dynamic, imaging “the way” itself.
The core of Thérèse's doctrine is confidence. From this concept we move inward and outward, our vision anchored firmly and unflinchingly in the truth. The work is simple, but never easy. Looking inward, we see the truth of our weakness, littleness, and inadequacy to cope. We have to admit our radical inability to reach ultimate happiness, God.
Moving outward, we scan the infinite distance between our Goal and ourselves. But we also ponder our Goal, and with the eyes of faith we see that it is Love, bending down over us with that unique tonality of mercy that is reserved for us poor sinners. Everything is grace: the inward vision and the outward. To be helpless, to have an infinitely loving Helper, is the human condition. To know this truth is sheer grace. But how to bridge the gap? We cannot. And because he has made us free, God will not, without our cooperation.
Father de Meester suggests: “All this is seen in the warm light of God's infinite mercy. From this a tension develops between today and tomorrow, between reality and design, which has for its name hope, and which, together with love, is at the very heart [of our existence as believers]. … Thérèse's initiative places confidence at the center of the way to holiness — not as its goal but as its dynamic core. … This study is part of the great theological current that reflects on Christian hope.” He quotes Hans Urs von Balthasar: “In Thérèse, this springtime of hope has been canonized.” The dynamism of confidence in the merciful love of God is the key to the little way. Confidence itself is sheer gift.
In the introduction to this study, Bishop Patrick Ahern says: “The theology of Thérèse was a lived theology, and cannot be understood apart from her life.” Father de Meester divides Thérèse's life into three main periods, the first closing at her mother's death; the second including the years from 4 to 14, when she received the first “Christmas grace”; and the third extending to her death at 24. Through these stages, he traces the preparation for her discovery of “the way,” the actual moment of that discovery, and her subsequent growth into its meaning for herself and for all whom she is destined to draw after her.
When did Thérèse actually discover the little way, which she had sought from early childhood, and to which all the experiences of her early life led? Father de Meester sifts the evidence supplied by original sources, and by innumerable studies and commentaries of theologians produced over the past 50 years or more.
After painstakingly comparing and analyzing this extensive material with us, he finally puts his finger on the interval between two significant dates: Sept. 14, 1894, when Celine entered Carmel, and June 9, 1895, when Thérèse made her Act of Offering to Merciful Love. Celine had brought with her a notebook in which she had copied out by hand passages from Scripture, which seemed particularly beautiful to her. Shortly after her entrance, she gave the book to Thérèse. In it we find the two texts central to the little way: “If someone is very little, let him come to me” (Proverbs 9:4), and, “You will be carried at the breast, and they will caress you on their knees. As a mother caresses her child, so will I comfort you” (Isaiah 66:12-13). 1895, the year of the Act of Oblation, was Thérèse's “springtime year,” the happiest of her life.
Having found what she had sought so eagerly through darkness and suffering, she now began to move toward her Goal with swift, ever accelerated speed. Her “little way” was actually “a rediscovery of realities often forgotten.” “It is the Gospel itself,” Pope Pius XII declared in his radio message of July 11, 1954, “the heart of the Gospel that she rediscovered, but with how much charm and freshness.” It is the charm and freshness of this very little flower that Father de Meester has recreated in his study. It delights, it invites our emulation.
Dominican Sister Mary Thomas Noble writes from Buffalo, New York.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Mary Thomas Noble OP -------- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: 100 Years of News, With Gaps DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:The Century is a fascinating and lavishly illustrated account of the events of the last 100 years. This sizable book has had a deservedly high place on the best seller list for several months. It was produced as a companion to the television series of the same name on ABC and The History Channel.
So much is here that it's impossible to list it all: immigration to the States, the two World Wars, the Depression, the introduction of radio and TV, the Mafia, Nazism, Communism, the struggle for civil rights, and so much more.
Rather than a thorough history of the 20th century, however, this is an account of the events that had particular influence on the people of the United States. Thus, Nazi Germany, World War II Japan, and Communist Russia receive a great deal of attention because they were our protagonists during much of these years.
The book has one major flaw: It overlooks the role of religion — except for the fundamentalist (Scopes trial on evolution), revivalist (Billy Sunday), radical Islamic (Ayatollah Khomeini), and cultic (Jonestown mass suicide), all of which receive significant attention. Pope John XXIII, Pope John Paul II, and Mother Teresa receive one sentence each. Vatican Council II is not mentioned at all.
A second flaw arises in the reporting of the struggle between the culture of life and the culture of death — in the areas of abortion, biotechnology (e.g., in vitro fertilization), assisted suicide, and euthanasia. Jennings and Brewster are by no means anti-life and they attempt to fairly give both sides of the story. However, the reader is not left with a very profound understanding of the sacrifices so many people make for the principle of life.
On two other topics, the authors' approach is not balanced. The advance of feminism and the cause of homosexual rights are given treatments that, while not blatantly unfair, tend to favor these trends. A more adequate treatment is needed, one that would show the dignity of the human person and of the family.
In sum, the reader who can fill in the gaps on some key issues will find The Century to be an engaging and valuable retelling of many of the important events that influenced Americans of the 20th century.
Gerry Rauch is an Assistant Editor of the Register.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Gerry Rauch -------- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Au Revoir, Father Jacques DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:Père Jacques: Resplendent in Victory is the well-written and captivating biography of a French Carmelite friar who defied the Nazis, and paid full price. The life of this extraordinary man inspired the film, Au Revoir Les Enfants. For his efforts in sheltering three targeted Jewish boys, Père Jacques de Jesus is honored as “Righteous Among the Nations” by the Jewish community. For his personal holiness of life and fruitful apostolic ministry, he is being considered for canonization by the Catholic Church.
Born Lucien Bunel on Jan. 29, 1900, Père Jacques was the third of six children. That God had special plans for the boy is evident from an event of his infanthood. Little Lucien, at age 1, was sick to the point of death; the doctor gave up on him. But his mother did not. She “pleaded with the Lord; ‘My God, leave him with me until he is 20; after that, take him, for he is yours, but grant me the joy of offering him to you when he has grown up.’ Suddenly, little Lucien stirred in the carriage and then smiled at his parents, who fell on their knees in thanksgiving at the sight of their son, now revitalized before their very eyes.”
Lucien began his vowed service of the Lord not as a Carmelite, but as a diocesan priest. He studied at St. Romain Seminary in Rouen, France, 10 miles from his hometown. An ebullient and talented young man, he became a Catholic educator of renown. While his unconventional methods evidently raised some eyebrows, he was a great success with his pupils. He brought the same vigor and spark to his preaching, and became known and loved in this capacity as well.
In Father Bunel's heart, however, other things were stirring. At first he thought he wanted to become a Trappist; their austere way of life struck him as the closest possible way of following the Lord. But through his contact with Carmelites and through his reading of the Carmelite saints, he began to see that this was the spirituality to which he was called. Reaching Carmel was a bit of a difficulty for him, however.
The bishop would not agree to release him. He needed Father Bunel's talents at Avon, the boys school where the young priest was serving as headmaster. Again and again Father Bunel asked to become a Carmelite, and in the same way was rebuffed, yet always given the hope that it would happen eventually. It did, but Father was over 30 when he came to Carmel at last and was given the religious name, Père Jacques de Jesus. He said that he liked his new name, except that it made no mention of the Blessed Mother.
Père Jacques plunged into Carmelite formation with the same enthusiasm he always showed. He became totally immersed. That is why “he was totally unaware … of discussions taking place among his Carmelite superiors at that time, and their implications for his future.
The Discalced Carmelite friars' Paris province in 1932 revealed clearly that the community was small in number and advanced in age. A partial solution to the problem, according to the highest leadership of the order, would be to establish a … secondary school devoted to preparing students for the seminary and eventually the religious life. … The province was fortunate indeed, Father Louis realized, to have an already experienced, highly respected educator in its ranks.” When the decision was taken to start the school for certain, Père Jacques was volunteered for the job.
He accepted this assignment with his characteristic “spirit of enthusiasm,” but also with “a touch of irony. Had he not left diocesan service as an educator precisely to lead a more contemplative life? But he was also well aware of both the needs of the Order and his own suitability for the work.” In April 1934 he moved to the Carmelite community in Avon, and took on the formidable task of opening a school the following autumn. The Petit-College, as the school was called, flourished under Père Jacques' direction and drew more students each term. In all of this, Père Jacques never wavered from the belief that the Lord was in charge, and knew what was needed most.
He did not know at that time, however, the form the Lord's will would take for him. It was through the Petit-College that Father's incarceration at Mauthausen would come. As the Nazi shadow stretched over Europe, “it was the Jewish community in general and Jewish children in particular who evoked the deepest response from Père Jacques. Theologically, they were God's Chosen People; spiritually, they were his brothers and sisters. His outrage at Nazi treatment of the Jews brought Père Jacques into contact with the Sisters of Notre Dame de Sion in neighboring Melun. Mother Maria, the superior of the convent, often sought the help of Père Jacques in finding Catholic families with whom escaping Jews might be sheltered secretly.”
It was Mother Maria who made known to Père Jacques the plight of three boys for whom no other place could be found. Without hesitation, Père Jacques welcomed them into the Petit-College itself, passing them off as Gentiles. “In order to forestall any untoward inquiries or conjectures,” however, “Père Jacques took what could have been an ill-fated step. He confided the true identity of the newly arrived students to the three upper classes.
His confidence in the maturity and trustworthiness of the older boys proved well placed. Not one student violated the confidence and all strove to make their newly arrived classmates as welcome as possible.”
It was after one of the older boys had graduated, tried to flee the German occupiers, and was captured that disaster struck. Only under Nazi torture did the student betray his beloved headmaster. Having obtained the information they wanted, the Nazis came to the Petit-College at once. They arrested the three Jewish “students” and Père Jacques himself in front of the whole student body. As the boys waved, “Au revoir, Pere,” he called back, “au revoir, les enfants” — “goodbye, children.”
It was indeed their last goodbye. The three captured boys were deported to Auschwitz and “executed immediately.” Père Jacques went to camps Compiegne, Neue Bremm, and finally Mauthausen, experiencing declining health and escalating Nazi horrors all the way.
In all the camps, Père Jacques exhibited heroic fortitude and charity for others. He ministered as a priest as long as he could (which under the circumstances was not very long). He shared his meagre rations with others and visited the critically ill, though increasingly debilitated himself. His health held out until American troops liberated Mauthausen on May 5, 1945, but not much longer. Père Jacques perished on June 2, 1945, having poured himself out to the last.
Père Jacques: Resplendent in Victory also includes some selections from the writings and letters of this holy priest. The subjects, including education, spirituality, and the “art of living this war” humanly, all contribute to an appreciation of his life. Amid the darkness of 20th-century challenges, Père Jacques was resplendent in the victory of Christ.
Helen Valois writes from Steubenville, Ohio.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Helen Valois -------- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Pro-life 'Gains': Much Ado About Little DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:Is he pro-life?” a friend of mine often says. “I'd vote for Attila the Hun if he was pro-life.” The problem with that line of thinking these days is you have to ask “how much?” and “for how long?” Attila, whatever his faults, had a reputation for candor, and for backing up his words with deeds. Yet today, everybody has his favorite turn-coat story of the rock-solid religious family man who “converts” to safe-legal-funded-ism to run for higher office.
More recently, though, it has become apparent that even relatively committed anti-abortion politicians tend to prefer policy positions over policies. When it comes to pro-abortion federal nominees, abortion funding in population control programs, and political funding for pro-abortion candidates, many recipients of anti-abortion support are either missing in action or enablers of evil.
Kenneth D. Whitehead explains why in Political Orphan? The Pro-Life Cause after 25 Years of Roe v. Wade. Technically, Political Orphan? is not a book, in the sense that it was not written as one. The chapters comprise the unabridged versions of 16 articles that were published in six magazines between December 1993 and April 1998. (Most come from Fidelity and Culture Wars.) But they hang together well, because the author is so focused he never wanders far from his message.
The title reflects political reality today in the United States: The Democratic Party has embraced the culture of death, while the Republican Party is not very comfortable with the culture of life.
Whitehead takes the right tone when addressing the relationship of abortion opponents and their alleged political allies: Ask not what we can do for Republicans, ask what Republicans can do for us. The writer Joseph Sobran once claimed the first rule of politics is to punish those who betray you.
Similarly, Whitehead argues that pro-lifers must learn to reward and punish politicians the way other political interest groups do: “[P]ro-lifers as a class tend not to sell their allegiance dearly enough; pro-lifers seem to be so happy to find a politician willing to be ‘pro-life’ that they tend to demand very little beyond that.” But as must be clear to everyone by now, such an attitude spoils office seekers, who tend to think about how much they can squeeze one group of voters to pick up another.
Anti-abortion leaders also tend to congratulate themselves too much over too little: as Whitehead argues, piecemeal steps like parental consent, spousal notification, and waiting periods are hardly huge victories for a movement whose members believe that destroying a fetus without just cause is murder.
He endorses these measures, but only as a means to the ultimate prize of restoring protection for unborn babies through an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Forget about middle ground, “the goal of the pro-life movement must be to stop the killing.”
As these comments suggest, those looking for anti-abortion cheerleading will be disappointed. Whitehead goes after William Bennett, Jack Kemp, William Kristol, William Frist, Trent Lott, and Orrin Hatch, demonstrating that each has proven willing to ditch the anti-abortion cause for the greater principle of getting-it-behind-us.
But even true friends come up for gentle upbraiding. One of the book's lessons is that some compromises abortion opponents are willing to make are immoral, and have the added drawback of not working anyway. Whitehead notes that such anti-abortion stalwarts as U.S. Representatives Henry Hyde (R Ill.) and Christopher Smith (R-N.J.) in February 1997 sponsored an amendment allocating more money for worldwide “family planning” than the Clinton administration had asked for, in a failed attempt to prevent the money from going to abortion.
Just so, the vast majority of “pro-life” politicians have no problem with paying for “family planning” in this country and promoting it massively abroad.
But as Whitehead notes, contraception and the sexual revolution it made possible are at the heart of the abortion conflict: “Once the really fundamental decision has been made that it is the unwanted pregnancies that have to be eliminated, rather than the sexual promiscuity, then nobody any longer distinguishes very carefully between the various ‘methods’ to accomplish this, whether they come before or after … the conception of the child.”
America, as Whitehead says, has a “bad conscience” about abortion — polls show that most Americans don't like it and are willing to ban it under certain circumstances. But the polls also suggest that the siren song of sexual freedom pulls most Americans away from concluding that abortion is an abomination that must be stopped.
While the history of abortion in the last 30 years is mostly sad, Whitehead is not gloomy. In the epilogue, he notes that the recent campaign against partial-birth abortions has given anti-abortion forces perhaps their greatest rhetorical weapon ever. He contends that the issue has isolated abortion enthusiasts and put them on the defensive. If the partial-birth abortion ban is ever enacted, Whitehead argues, it will be the first major “breach” in the “wall” of the right-to-abortion. With better decisions and more boldness, anti-abortion leaders may be able to keep the offensive going until the vast majority of Americans finally make the connection between abortion and other types of murder.
One of the most useful things about Political Orphan? is that it amounts to a good political history of the anti-abortion movement, especially since 1993. Whitehead comes across as a wise insider with an inexhaustible attention span for tiny details. He explains labyrinthine legislative maneuvers over arcane appropriations bills in clear language that makes pro-life principles clear.
The book suffers from repetition and occasional wordiness — readers will eventually tire of terms like “prescinded,” “medically indicated,” and “equal protection under the law.” Yet Political Orphan? more than makes up for these problems with its eloquence.
Matt McDonald writes from Mashpee, Massachusetts.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Matt McDonald -------- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Saints Within Reach DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:Ann Ball's Faces of Holiness does a great service by introducing readers to men and women of inspiring holiness, from our time, who readers may have missed.
The “Century of Martyrs” is well represented in Faces of Holiness: Maria de la Luz Camacho was shot dead in 1934 at her parish in Coyoacan, Mexico, by youths from the country's Red Syndicate. A year later, in Guadalajara, Spain, three Carmelite nuns suffered the same fate. Blessed Miguel Pro, a Mexican priest, was executed with his brothers and several others in 1927.
In each of these cases, Ball notes, the martyrs cried, “Long live Christ the King!” as they died.
Other subjects in the book died less spectacularly, but led lives that are as inspiring in their own way. Many show a wry sense of humor. Some become something like patrons for modern Catholic lives: Blessed Gianna Beretta Molla, an Italian doctor who sacrificed her life for her unborn child can serve for the pro-life movement; the Venerable Thecla Merlo, who died in 1964 after a life of evangelization for media apostolate.
The book is also a good teaching tool for children: among its subjects are Santos Franco Sanchez, who died at age 11; and Montserrat Grases, who died at age 17.
Ball's painstaking research and anecdotal approach makes Faces of Holiness an excellent read that will engross and uplift readers.
Jim Malerba writes from Hamden, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Jim Malerba -------- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Changing of the Guard in Chicago DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:George Murry was an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Chicago when Joseph Cardinal Bernardin died and was succeeded by then Archbishop Francis George. The Register asked him about the transition he had to work with.
Was it difficult in the archdiocesan offices after the cardinal was gone?
We were blessed in Chicago to have Francis Cardinal George to follow Cardinal Bernardin. A man of deep faith, a man of a lot of experience not only in the United States but all around the world, and a man of unbelievable energy. I made a remark one day that he had more energy than all of his auxiliary bishops combined and I think it is true. The thing I learned from Cardinal George was a sense of confidence — a confidence in the mission of the Church, confidence that the gospel is being preached and that the kingdom of God is overtaking us. He again was a wonderful person to work with. A person who would listen, a person with whom you could exchange ideas, a person who asked a lot of questions, and a person who would put himself into the task before him and give it everything that he had. I think Chicago has been blessed with its archbishops. I had the honor to work with two of them and I learned a lot from both of them and valued the time that I had with both of them.
—Raymond de Souza
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond de Souza -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: She Gave More Than Her Millions DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:If “your treasure is where your heart lies,” then the only fortune stored up by a multimillionaire heiress during her long life was put in a heavenly savings account and audited in 1988, when Pope John Paul II beatified her as Blessed Katharine Drexel.
She began as a 19th-century socialite, a member of a prominent Philadelphia banking family. But she used her worldly riches to promote and spread spiritual, educational, and charitable treasures among Native Americans and African Americans — and gave herself to God in the religious life, and gave a new order of nuns to the Church.
The shrine dedicated to her in the motherhouse of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament is worth a visit by anyone interested in American history, including the history of the racial and social problems that continue to tear at the national fabric. More importantly, her shrine in Bensalem, just over the Philadelphia city line, is a place to pray for the intercession of a woman who knew how to solve those problems.
Named St. Elizabeth's Convent, the motherhouse and later buildings were done in a Spanish-monastic style. They were built by Blessed Katharine for the congregation she founded Feb. 12, 1891, when she was the first of 14 sisters to take vows as a Sister of the Blessed Sacrament. She and her community stayed that first year at St. Michel, her family's summer home in Torresdale, near Bensalem (then called Cornwell Heights).
A School of Charity
At St. Michel the teen-age Katharine and her older sister Elizabeth had started a Sunday school. They also helped their stepmother (Katharine was 5 weeks old when her natural mother died) carry out charitable work among the poor three days a week. The family never let their prominent place in Philadelphia society take precedence over this chosen work.
When the director of the Bureau of Indian Missions told her about the sufferings of the Native Americans out west, Katharine decided to investigate. After seeing their plight firsthand, she expanded her charitable horizons, and in the 1880s, began building schools and establishing missions on the reservations. She responded with the same generosity after learning about the suffering endured by blacks in the South and the East. The foreign missions were next to receive her aid.
After her parents died, she and her siblings inherited the income from a trust fund set up by their father. Katharine spent her share — estimated at $20 million in the days when a loaf of bread cost only 3 cents — on charitable works over the course of 65 years, before and after becoming a religious foundress.
Katharine's spiritual director, Bishop James O'Connor of Omaha, Neb., discouraged her interest in a religious vocation because of the good she could do as a woman of means in the world. But upon hearing of Katharine's willingness to go ahead with a vocation, Bishop O'Connor relented and even proposed that she found a congregation for the benefit of blacks and Indians, who had already become the objects of so much of her apostolic interest.
“She worked tirelessly to make them feel welcome in the Catholic Church,” observed Sister Ruth Catherine SBS, director of the Blessed Katharine Drexel Guild, which works for its namesake's canonization.
Blessed Katharine led her congregation for 44 years, until 1935, when she suffered a major heart attack. For the next two decades, until her death at age 96 on March 3, 1955, she remained confined to the mother-house where she devoted herself to prayer. Mass was celebrated in her room on the small altar before which she had made her first communion and confirmation.
“That same altar was used at St. Michel, the summer house, when the order first started out,” explained Sister Ruth, “and then in her room the last 20 years of her life when she was unable to come down for Mass.” The altar has recently joined the displays in the shrine.
Artifacts of a Dedicated Life
One area of the shrine contains personal effects, from her childhood desk to the office desk and chair used by Mother Katharine as foundress of the congregation. Her prie-dieu is also on hand.
Shrine visitors can also view a video that tells the story of her life and the work of her congregation. The gift shop contains many related items.
Another part of the shrine offers a fine display of crafts, artifacts, and items native to the peoples served by the congregation. Among the displays are ebony, ivory, and wood carvings from Haiti, Mali, and Kenya, and kinte cloth from Ghana.
Native American items include a Navajo rug, Sioux moccasins, and Pueblo pottery and terra cotta. A Native American cradleboard on prominent display happens to be one that was used in infancy by a current member of the order, Sister Rosita.
The shrine's focal point is the crypt tomb of Blessed Katharine, below the chapel of the motherhouse. Within the light-shaded stonework behind the raised vault is a niche with colorful angels depicted adoring the Blessed Sacrament. A plaque pays tribute to her as foundress and first superior general of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People.
During the time the shrine is open, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. daily, visitors can also pray in the nuns' large chapel, where there is daily exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. They can also attend Masses Mondays through Fridays at 7:30 a.m., Saturday at 9 a.m., and Sunday at 11 a.m.
The impressive chapel, with high wood vault and lines of choir stalls, has a resplendent wooden altar intricately hand-carved in Belgium. Above the altar is a magnificent crucifix. The life-sized corpus, finely carved in France by an American artist, was donated by Katharine's sister Elizabeth, who originally commissioned it for a chapel she was building in her parents' memory.
“The family very much supported each other,” said Sister Ruth. Elizabeth died in her first childbirth. Half sister Louise married but had no children. When Blessed Katharine died, the estate was divided according to their father's will among 27 charities — schools, hospitals, orphanages, and churches.
In the decade since her beatification, ever-larger crowds have flocked to the shrine for Mass on her feast day, March 3. To handle this year's attendance, Anthony Cardinal Bevilacqua, archbishop of Philadelphia, will celebrate a special noon Mass at the city's downtown Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul.
The shrine will be open after Mass for pilgrims to honor a religious sister and foundress who filled a heavenly treasury by lovingly using her worldly fortune to lavish spiritual and educational wealth on the unfortunate.
Joseph Pronechen writes from Trumbull, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: A shrine honors one of Philadelphia's finest, Blessed Katharine Drexel ------- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Pronechen -------- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: Dodging the Damage of Divorce DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:Since its very beginnings more than 80 years ago, Hollywood has excelled at manufacturing a certain kind of hybrid film. Its first half dramatizes serious contemporary issues with intelligence and depth. The last part smoothes over the rough edges and resolves everything in a sentimental mush, giving the audience a chance to cry its heart out.
Robert Redford's The Horse Whisperer is a recent example of the formula that works. It honestly lays out the emotional conflicts involved before introducing its idealized cowboy-hero. By contrast, Stepmom fails, falling between the genre's two stools of realism and sentimentality because it never confronts the key issue underlying its characters' problems: divorce. When we're finally supposed to pull out our handkerchiefs, the tears seem forced.
Director Chris Columbus (Home Alone) and his five screenwriters want to take a hard look at what are now called “blended families,” in which children live together in various combinations with natural and stepparents and try to sort it all out. Isabel (Julia Roberts), a hip Manhattan fashion photographer, falls in love with Luke (Ed Harris), a successful attorney with two kids from a previous marriage, 12-year-old Anna (Jena Malone), and 7-year-old Ben (Liam Aiken). Previously, the young career woman had “never chosen to be domestic,” but functioning as a part-time stepmother is part of her new romantic arrangement.
Isabel tries hard to be a responsible parent, but no one will give her a break. Even Luke has his doubts. Her problem is his jealous ex-wife, Jackie (Susan Sarandon), who says of her rival, “She's got the learning curve of a slug.”
The children, of course, adore their real mother. Prodded by her, they make life miserable for the new woman in their father's life. “Mommy, if you want me to hate her, I will,” Ben volunteers. Anna has already made up her mind. “She's such a witch,” she tells her dad.
We sympathize with Isabel. After she's late in picking the children up from school, Jackie tells her, “You're too self-absorbed to be a mother.” Then when Isabel takes the kids along on a Central Park shoot, Ben gets lost. This gives their vengeful mother an excuse to lay down the law. “That woman is going to have nothing more to do with my children,” she declares.
The movie presents with humor and skill the pros and cons of the long-running debate over the worth of the stay-at-home mother vs. that of the working woman. We see clearly delineated some of the conflicts between the responsibility of a family and the demands of a job. The filmmakers tilt slightly toward the choice of being a full-time mother.
Jackie is a former high-powered publishing exec who abandoned her career to become the ideal “soccer mom,” placing her children's needs above everything else. She's intensely aware that every decision she makes for them contributes to the shaping of their values and moral sensibility.
Her near perfection makes the situation almost impossible for Isabel. But as the younger woman gets to know Ben and Anna, she begins to change. At a key moment she's willing to jeopardize her fast-track professional future by rushing to their sides when they need her.
But all the adults' good intentions aren't enough. Both children want their parents to get back together, and that isn't going to happen. Ben voices their deepest fear when he plaintively asks his father, “Can you ever fall out of love with your kids?”
Anna is more direct. “You were husband and wife once,” she tells her parents. “Doesn't that mean something any more?”
Stepmom never answers this question because it cuts to the core of the changes which divorce has brought to our culture, and the movie doesn't want to challenge present-day permissive values. The parents may feel better off when they call it quits, but the kids often do not and suffer accordingly. The experience can leave a hole in their youthful psyches which may never heal.
The filmmakers try to distract us from these serious issues by a clever flaunting of some of the genre's feel-good clichés. First, everyone forgets their troubles by singing and dancing to a '60s soul tune (in this case, Motown's version of Ain't No Mountain High Enough). Next, all the remaining problems are submerged by the onslaught of a not uncommon plot twist: the disease-that-ennobles-before-it-kills.
Jackie discovers she's terminally ill and decides to put aside her differences with Isabel. Transforming herself from supershrew to saint, she works hard to achieve the transference of her children's love to her successor.
Despite these carefully calculated plot manipulations, a sour taste remains. Too much has been glossed over. Parenting someone else's children can strain a relationship to the breaking point, even when all parties are acting out of good will. And rarely does a discarded spouse become buddy-buddy with her exhusband's new partner, whatever the special circumstances. Stepmom's implicit message is that divorce is OK, and in order to get us to believe this, it must cover up the moral and psychological damage involved.
John Prizer currently writes from Paris.
Stepmom is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America.
----- EXCERPT: Stepmom glosses over the moral and psychological fallout ------- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer -------- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Videos on Release DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:Dancer, Texas, Pop. 81
In the beautiful but desolate terrain outside of El Paso, the inhabitants of Dancer, Texas, are preparing for an important event. Five seniors are graduating from high school on Saturday. Four of the graduates are boys. The four are delighted that they are finally leaving academia. They are also anticipating Monday, the day they will catch the bus to Los Angeles and a new life. But as Dancer, Texas, Pop. 81 reveals, these long-held intentions don't pan out as expected. The four find that familial responsibilities might hold them behind in their tiny burg. Keller (Breckin Meyer) has a feeble grandfather he's been caring for. Terrell Lee (Peter Facinelli) is expected to join the family oil business. Squirrel (Ethan Embray) has a drunken father to contend with. John (Eddie Mills) is being pressured by a younger sister, Josie (Ashley Johnson), to stay on the family ranch. Over a three-day period, the four have to decide if they have the ability, and the wish, to leave town. In many ways, Dancer, Texas, Pop. 81 is an old-fashioned film. It's nonviolent, it's family friendly, it's gently amusing. And it manages to be engrossing and thought provoking. A definite gem.
Passion in the Desert
It's 1798, and a troop of Napoleon's crack artillery is finding it difficult to find, much less defeat, bands of Egypt's wily Mameluke warriors. Laden with heavy European weapons, the French soldiers are trudging through the unforgiving Saharan sands in a seemingly futile effort to bring the ancient African country under Napoleon's rule. Their frustration is stressed further by the arrival of Captain Augustin (Ben Daniels), who is escorting an eccentric artist called Ventare (Michel Piccoli). Napoleon has assigned Ventare to accompany the soldiers and draw any Egyptian wonders he encounters. Ventare's obsessiveness leads to his and Augustin's separation from the troops in a sandstorm. The captain is enraged, but as an honorable officer he's determined to rescue them. The mysterious Sahara, however, defeats him. Driven mad by thirst and pursued by angry Bedouins, he stumbles into ancient ruins and a leopard's cave. Instead of mauling Augustin, the female cat adopts him, and a strange but dangerous relationship begins between the man and the big cat. Based on an eponymous novella by Honoré de Balzac, Passion in the Desert is an otherworldly experience. It explores how the most civilized of men can be reduced to the level of a beast in extreme circumstances.
4 Little Girls
On Sept. 15, 1963, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, and Carole Rosa-mond Robertson were attending Sunday school in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. No one expected that these fine, young, black Americans would become the innocent victims of the civil-rights unrest that had been haunting Birmingham, Ala., for years. Yet at an hour when many townsfolk were home enjoying breakfast, the four girls were torn to shreds by a bomb planted by a white supremacist. The tragedy proved galvinizing for the civil-rights movement. The leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference arrived in Birmingham and promised to help bring justice to the suffering. Millions of Americans who hadn't been paying much attention to the unrest in the South suddenly focused on the injustices experienced by blacks. The civil authorities started a long campaign to find and convict the bomber. 4 Little Girls, a documentary by Spike Lee that originally appeared on HBO, follows all this and much more as it examines the events that surrounded the bombing. In a series of touching interviews, it explores who the girls were, reveals the grief their deaths left behind, and examines the causes and effects of their tragedy.
Antz
Hollywood studio Dreamworks SKG is on a mission: to release animated films as good as any of Disney's classics. The latest Dreamworks video entry in this high-risk venture is Antz, a comic look at an unhappy ant and the teeming ant colony he resides in. The ant is Z (voice of Woody Allen), who is suffering existential angst. As the middle child in a family of 5 million, he's feeling neglected. As an ant who can lift only 10 times his body weight, he's feeling puny. And as a worker who spends his days digging tunnels with thousands of others, he's feeling unimportant. But all that changes when he meets Princess Bala (voice of Sharon Stone). Feeling slighted by her fiance, General Mandible (voice of Gene Hackman), this heiress heads to a workers' bar. Her encounter with Z sets the two ants on a series of adventures that permanently changes their futures. Although Antz is somewhat incoherent politically — it seems to recommend both the individualism of democracy and the stultification of socialism — it does have moments of high comedy. Children will enjoy the video's tale, while adults will enjoy the wry asides and cultural references.
— Loretta Seyer
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Loretta Seyer -------- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Courage Helps Homosexuals Change DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:Therapists are not the only ones involved in helping homosexuals who want to change their sexual orientation.
A group called Courage, founded by Terence Cardinal Cook in 1978, provides support to homosexuals who want to lead chaste lives and who want to enhance their spirituality.
Father John Harvey, of the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, was a full-time college-level professor when another priest, Father Benedict Groeschel CFR, recommended him to Cardinal Cook.
Father Harvey began meeting to counsel homosexuals on a part-time basis. By 1983 he abandoned teaching to concentrate virtually full time on counseling and supporting the group.
Courage, he said, is a 12-step program that gives homosexual men and women a serious chance to progress to a life of chastity, in accordance with Church teachings.
“There is a group support system in which we encourage our members to leave their homosexual lifestyle,” he said. “However, we don't make this a condition of membership. We can and do refer them to psychologists in New York, but our main objective is to provide meaningful spiritual direction and promote chastity.”
Courage is not without its detractors. Father Harvey said, “Our enemies want us out of business. Ironically, most of them are other Catholics.”
Father Harvey noted there is a sister group called Encourage. It is solely for parents of homosexuals and also provides a support mechanism for those struggling with their child's homosexual lifestyle.
Also working intensely in the Courage organization is Father James Lloyd, a Paulist priest in New York. He holds a doctorate in psychology and taught on the graduate level for many years.
Father Lloyd meets with about 15 homosexuals every week, all men. They range in age from 23 to 72 and run the gamut of professions. The group includes a rabbi, an Orthodox priest, and even a couple of married men.
“I work with them on a spiritual, social, and psychological basis,” Father Lloyd said. “It's very inspiring to see them progress. They have a tremendous struggle in their lives, but they learn to overcome it through daily Mass, spiritual readings, and other spiritual exercises.”
Father Lloyd pointed out that he does not try to change the men from homosexuality to heterosexuality; rather, Courage helps them contain their symptoms and lead a chaste life, while building up new and lasting friendships through their efforts in the group.
“One man, a brother in a religious order, told me he gets more out of our meetings spiritually than he does from his own order,” Father Lloyd said.
When someone joins Father Lloyd's Courage chapter, he is cautioned that Courage “is not a debating society or a round-table discussion.” Members speak of their experiences voluntarily and are not pressured in any way to participate, though most do.
Father Lloyd said he is enthusiastic about Courage and its success rate in helping homosexuals lead chaste lives. “These guys are hurting, but they're nice people, looking to solve their problem and live within the teachings of the Church,” he said. “They pay a great price in a way, but they know it's worth it.”
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Modern Myths about Homosexuality DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:The National Association of Research and Therapy of Homosexuality points to and counters the three major myths that surround homosexuality today.
Myth No. 1: Homosexuality is normal and biologically determined.
The facts: There is no scientific research indicating a physiological cause for homosexuality. Biological factors might play a role in the predisposition to homosexuality; however, this is also true of many other psychological conditions.
Myth No. 2: Homosexuals cannot change, and if they try, they will suffer great emotional distress and become suicidal. Therefore, treatment to change homosexuality must be stopped.
The facts: Psychotherapists around the world who treat homosexuals report that significant numbers of their clients have experienced substantial healing, through psychological therapy, spirituality, and ex-homosexual support groups. Whether leading married or committed celibate lives, many report their homosexual feelings have diminished greatly. The keys to change are desire, persistence, and a willingness to investigate the conscious and unconscious conflicts from which the condition originated. The client must realize that change comes slowly, usually over several years. The damage that has been done cannot be undone overnight.
Myth No. 3: We must teach our children that homosexuality is a lifestyle alternative equal to heterosexuality. We must also help teen-agers who have same-sex attractions to accept their homosexuality as normal.
The facts: Scientific research supports age-old cultural norms that homosexuality is not a healthy, natural alternative to heterosexuality. Homosexual attractions are, rather, a sign that deep emotional wounding has occurred. Teens in this position need love and counseling, not a push in the direction of the homosexual lifestyle, which might establish a sexual pattern which is medically risky and psychologically habit-forming.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Colleges Feeling Heat Over Sweatshop Goods DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—The litany of schools could be a list of basketball powerhouses: Duke, Georgetown, St. John's, Holy Cross, Boston College, the University of North Carolina.
What they represent, however, is a movement on campuses that takes a cue from 1960s civil rights and anti-war protests, with the 1990s twist of having its grass-roots in cyberspace.
For four days in early February, two dozen Georgetown University students occupied the office of the university president, Jesuit Father Leo O'Donovan, negotiating for a more stringent system of ensuring that Georgetown logo merchandise is not made in sweatshops.
With the backing and guidance of apparel workers' unions and human rights groups like the California-based Sweatshop Watch, student organizers around the country spread the word that trendy baseball caps and sweatshirts with university logos may have been made at slave wages by underage workers in unhealthy conditions.
Citing the Church's teachings on workers' rights and social justice, students at Catholic institutions have been in the forefront of several anti-sweatshop actions.
Sixteen months ago, the Student Labor Action Coalition at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Mass., picketed a Guess retail store in Boston, handing out leaflets about investigations into low pay and sub-standard working conditions at some Guess factories.
Since the summer of 1998, James Keady has been battling with St. John's University in New York over its contract with Nike, which has been criticized for using contractors that fail to meet international standards for workers' rights.
Keady, a graduate student in theology, quit his job as an assistant soccer coach at the university amid a dispute over his refusal to wear Nike logo clothing.
Keady first heard reports about Nike's manufacturing practices when writing a paper about the company's labor policies in the context of Catholic social teaching. In the paper, he raised questions about the morality of a Catholic institution accepting profits from a company that reportedly does not protect its workers' rights. He told Catholic News Service that St. John's contract with Nike reportedly pays the school $500,000 a year for seven years.
While he finds organizing students very difficult at a predominately commuter campus like St. John's, Keady is heartened by what he sees happening at other Catholic institutions like Georgetown.
“Students are actually holding their schools to their mission statements,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Georgetown protesters in February came away from their sit-in with an agreement that the university would adopt a more stringent code for companies producing apparel bearing the Hoyas' logo. Collegiate Licensing Co., which handles trademark licensing for about 160 colleges and universities, last year adopted a Code of Conduct that addresses some of the workers' rights issues the students raised.
But the Georgetown activists and their counterparts at campuses around the country want the code to not only spell out standards, but require universities to disclose the names and locations of factories making licensed products and to incorporate a standard for calculating living wages.
Georgetown freshman Cassandra Lyons said she participated in the protest at Georgetown because it was the right thing to do.
“We can't walk around in these sweatshirts that stand for Jesuit and Catholic identity when we know the conditions they are produced in,” she said.
Social justice concerns are causing a stir beyond the Catholic schools, as well.
The Georgetown protest followed a similar sit-in at Duke University in Durham, N.C., that ended with an agreement by the administration to rework the school's contract with Collegiate Licensing.
And as Father O'Donovan got his office back, administrators at the University of Wisconsin at Madison were facing a similar protest, also directed at the school's licensing contract.
He said he expects more sit-in protests and other actions over the next few weeks — at small Catholic colleges, big state universities and everything in between.
Tico Almeida, a Duke senior who helped create the nationwide organization, United Students Against Sweatshops, said in a phone interview that about 50 campuses are trying to pressure school administrators to tighten up on their licensing codes of conduct.
He said he expects more sit-in protests and other actions over the next few weeks. At small Catholic colleges, big state universities and everything in between, Almeida said students linked by e-mail and Web pages are enthusiastically fighting to keep their schools from profiting from sweatshops.
United Students Against Sweatshops was created after 11 college students spent the summer of 1997 as interns at UNITE, a textile workers' union.
Almeida, who was one of those interns, said before then only one school, the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, had adopted a code for its licensees. Now, while other universities work to enact codes or adapt their agreements with Collegiate Licensing, Notre Dame students are working to improve theirs.
Almeida said that like Collegiate Licensing's code, Notre Dame's has been ineffective because it includes no provisions for monitoring conditions at factories.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Patricia Zapor -------- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Education Notebook DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:The Other
The second article was by Father James Conn SJ of St.Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore. His discussion clarifies the main point at issue, the question of theologians teaching with a mandate from the appropriate Church authority. He quotes the bishops document, which says that a mandate would mean that “a Catholic professor of a theological discipline teaches within the full communion of the Catholic Church” and does so “as a special ministry within the Catholic community.” Father Conn asks, “Do not many Catholic theologians, be they clerical, religious, or lay, believe they are doing just that? Why would they object to a bishop publicly attesting that they do?”
He also points out that the new rules about Catholic theologians and universities in the 1983 Code of Canon Law propose “a far more modest role for the bishop in university life than he previously had.” The earlier code of 1917 stipulated that “all teachers of religion could be appointed or removed by the bishop,” The new code recognizes the autonomy of the universities and their internal responsibility for faculty appointments and terminations.
Father Conn also points out that if the national bishops fail to establish norms for the implementation of Ex Corde Ecclesiae in the U.S., then individual bishops will have the right and duty to apply the Church's norms in their own dioceses as they think best. Inaction by the bishops as a national conference will not mean there are no norms. The norms still exist as current Church law.
Father Conn then raises an excellent list of questions that need to be answered for implementation — questions like “who is the competent ecclesiastical authority” for each Catholic school? And does a bishop's successor “have a right to require a theologian to re-apply for a mandate?” He wants to re-focus the debate now on such key questions.
Shifting Bad Guys in the Catholic College Debate
Earlier reports portrayed the bishops as trying to take over Catholic colleges and universities. But now journalists are realizing that was never true. A recent report in the Waterbury, Conn., Republican American portrays the American bishops as quite reasonable and understanding.
The paper cites Monika Hellwig, executive director of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, as a source who believes “the bishops don't want to control the schools.” Winifred Coleman president of St. Joseph College in West Hartford, Conn., says the bishops are committed to negotiating and that “Catholic colleges present no problems for the bishops.” She says the local bishop, Archbishop Daniel Cronin of Hartford, “has been very respectful of us.”
Well then what's the problem? The new bad guy in the debate turns out to be Pope John Paul II and the Vatican offices. The report implies that the Church in Rome, as an international institution, is out of touch with the realities of the American scene, and the bishops are caught in the middle. They understand the American scene, but they are forced to appease the Vatican.
What, therefore, is the solution? The report turns to a common ploy of those who disagree with the Vatican: a new pope is likely to ease up on the standards. The debate, it says, “could outlive the Pope who triggered it.” Coleman is quoted saying that a new pope just might say, “This is not on my radar screen at all.”
Students Defend Tradition of Partying
But they were not the sort of protests, where students demand divesture based on unfair labor practices overseas (see story, this page.)
Here, at the campus that inspired the movie “Animal House,” the ruckus is over fraternities and sororities.
Said the report,“What has so shaken the campus was an announcement by the Board of Trustees and Dartmouth's new president, James Wright, that the college must begin to change its fraternity-dominated social culture. Among other things, the trustees said the system must be ‘substantially co-educational’ and must stamp out alcohol abuse.”
“And although officials are vague about the specifics, many students read that as presaging an end to their beloved fraternities and sororities, and responded as if the college were abolishing their families, stripping them of their friends and tearing down the venues for the fun that helps them through scholastic stress and the northern winter.”
The students' protest has been felt throughout Hanover, N.H., where the school is located. The yearly winter carnival that brings attention to the campus — and customers to the town — was cancelled this year. The event is mostly fraternity-and-sorority-run, and this year, the greeks refused to do the work.
“Dartmouth is permeated by fraternities and sororities to an extent far above the national average and unusual in the Ivy League. Freshmen are not eligible to join, but among upperclassmen, about half are members of the 28 houses known collectively as the Greek system.
“All but three of those houses are single-sex, and their basements often serve as beer fountains and dance halls,” said the report.
“Nationally, only about 10 percent of students are members of fraternities or sororities, said Jonathan Brant, spokesman for the National Interfraternity Conference. And only a handful of colleges in the last two or three decades have moved as significantly as Dartmouth toward disowning fraternities or requiring they go co-ed: Williams,
“Colby, Middlebury, Amherst and Bowdoin came to mind, Mr. Brant said.”
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Hague Forum Ignores Real Problem: Depopulation DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:FRONT ROYAL, Va.—Steven Mosher, President of Population Research Institute (PRI), today criticized the Hague Forum's single-minded focus on population control and abortion.
“The most pressing demographic problem is not overpopulation, but underpopulation,” Mosher said. “Fertility rates have fallen below replacement level in much of the Third World. In the First World, the population of many countries is actually falling.”
Hillary Clinton, as well as UNFPA representatives, took advantage of the Hague Forum to call for more U.S. funds for global population control efforts. Clinton also described as “coercive” efforts to restrict federal funds from providing universal access to abortion, which she described as a “basic human right.”
“The radical population control agenda of the Hague Forum ignores the most pressing demographic issues of our age,” Mosher said. “The forum ignored the “greying” of the world's population, the threatened collapse of pension funds in the U.S. and elsewhere, and the depopulation of the developed world.”
“To promote abortion as a means of population control in countries where it is illegal is a violation of national sovereignty,” Mosher continued. “Coercive family planning is a real problem in many parts of the world like China, where the government forcibly aborts and sterilizes women who get pregnant without permission.”
To correct the record, PRI will hold a Congressional Briefing on March 9, 1999 at 2-4 p.m. in Room 121 of the Cannon House Office Building on the topic of “The Economic and Social Consequences of Depopulation.” Economic and demographic experts will discuss the present demographic realities and their impact on foreign and domestic affairs, such as aid to the Third World and the looming social security crisis within the United States.
(Population Research Institute)
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Law Would Require Parental Consent DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:TOPEKA —A pro-life bill requiring a parent's consent for a minor to get an abortion would close a loophole in Kansas' abortion law and help reduce the number of abortions pro-life supporters indicated. Abortion advocates, as usual, disagreed.
Proponents of the parental consent bill had their say yesterday as the House Federal and State Affairs Committee continued its hearing.
The proposed bill would require approval by at least one parent or a guardian before a girl younger than 18 years could get an abortion. Pregnant teens could petition a district court to bypass the parental consent if they feared harmful consequences. Under current law, parental notification is waived if a court fails to rule in 48 hours.
Kansans for Life associate director Amy Heffren noted, “We are supporting it. It would be stronger than the current Kansas law.”
Sponsored by pro-life state Rep. Becky Hutchins (R), the proposed new law would allow the judicial bypass only in cases when parents had not been informed of the pregnancy. If a parent refused to approve the abortion, a judicial bypass would not be an option for a pregnant teen.
Heffren explained further, “The parental notice law which is currently in effect in Kansas has a judicial bypass which allows a minor girl to obtain an abortion without notifying her parents, as long as a judge determines she is ‘mature enough’. If the new law is passed, one of the changes would be that parents would not be held financially responsible if their minor daughter obtains an abortion without their consent. We hope this change will reduce the number of abortions by making the state less likely to allow the judicial bypass.”
Rep. Cliff Franklin (R-Merriam), asked a Planned Parenthood representative why parental consent is required for most medical procedures, and for tattoos and ear piercing, but not for abortions.
(Pro-Life Infonet)
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Will America Repeat Dutch Fate? DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:BRISTOL, Tenn.—The 13,000 member Christian Medical & Dental Society (CMDS) (www.cmds.org), responding to a Feb. 16report published by the Journal of Medical Ethics, said that the Netherlands' failed attempts to regulate euthanasia is compelling evidence that physician-assisted suicide should not be legalized. And the national organization of doctors says thousands of vulnerable people will die as long as physician-assisted suicide is permitted.
CMDS Executive Director Dr. David Stevens explains, “Physicians know it is dangerous for them to have the power to kill patients. Assisted suicide cannot be regulated or controlled, no matter how many safeguards are built in to protect patients from involuntary euthanasia. The data speaks for itself: one in five cases of assisted suicide occurred in Holland without the patient's consent, and in 17% of the cases, other treatment options were available. The survey also revealed that almost two-thirds of the euthanasia cases in 1995 were not reported. With this kind of irresponsibility and neglect, who will ever know what really went on between a doctor and a patient when a patient is dead?”
Dr. Stevens, who led CMDS in a successful campaign against physician-assisted suicide in Michigan last fall, explains further, “If we can't even control the actions of one doctor — Jack Kevorkian — when physician-assisted suicide is illegal, how can we expect to regulate the actions of thousands of doctors where physician-assisted suicide is legal? The Holland experience with euthanasia is one we can't afford to repeat.”
(Christian Medical & Dental Society)
----- EXCERPT: Doctors Kill Patients Without Consent and No One Pays The Price ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: 3 Options Loom in Vermont's Homosexual 'Marriage' Case DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—In the legal battles over homosexual “marriage,” Vermont is ground zero.
The five members of the Vermont Supreme Court are weighing the latest appeal of a 1997 challenge three homosexual couples made to the state's marriage laws. The decision, due sometime this year, could set off ripple effects in other states.
The first three parts of this series examined the history, key battleground states, and arguments about homosexual “marriage.” This concluding part looks at the three major options now looming in Vermont.
Option 1: Just Say No
The court could rule that the existing marriage law fits the Vermont Constitution just fine. It could give a lengthy explanation of its reasons, or it could just say, “Case dismissed.” Either way, the immediate possibility that homosexual “marriage” will be mandated by a court would be over.
Then the people of Vermont would have to be vigilant in their own state Legislature to see that marriage continues to be defined as the union of a man and a woman.
Elsewhere, however, there are 21 states still without marriage recognition laws. Some of these, notably California and Oregon, are shaping up to be major battlegrounds.
In California the issue is the Defense of Marriage Initiative, which will be on the ballot in March 2000.
In Oregon, the issue is more complicated. In December a midlevel court held that the Oregon Constitution forbids discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation” wherever government is concerned. The present case is about insurance benefits, not the marriage statute. But the marriage statute is now up for grabs, and efforts are under way to amend the constitution.
Option 2: Say, ‘Maybe,’ Then Stall
The court could decide on the procedural rules of the case, rather than the case itself. This is exactly how the Hawaii Supreme Court got the current crisis rolling, back in 1993. It issued a rule for the case, and sent it back to the lower court to put the marriage law on trial.
In layman's terms, the Vermont court could essentially say, “We don't know if the law is constitutional or not. But we're switching who has the burden of proof. Now it's the state.”
This is what the Hawaii court did. It fixed the rules so that the state was almost bound to lose, given the difficulty of proving “a compelling state interest” for marriage.
Defenders of traditional marriages anticipated that problem, so they concentrated on other things, such as convincing the Legislature to propose a Marriage Amendment to the state constitution. The result: the constitution is now amended.
There's a big problem in Vermont, however, that the people in Hawaii didn't have to face. It is very difficult to amend the Vermont Constitution. It takes at least three years.
While the people of Vermont are busy trying to help win the case and amend their constitution, citizens in the other states will need to scramble to finish passing marriage recognition statutes. This will be especially important in New England and the Mid-Atlantic, where the homosexual community is well-organized and well-positioned in the event that they lose the case in Vermont.
Option 3: Full Speed Ahead
The Vermont Supreme Court could decide to go all the way and mandate same-sex “marriage.” It could do this in one of two ways.
First, the court could rule that the Constitution of Vermont, enacted in 1793, requires the legalization of homosexual “marriage.” The court would issue a lengthy explanation of its unconventional conclusions, and then discourse on liberty, equality, rights, and so forth. Since the decision would be constitutional, the only remedy would be a constitutional amendment.
The second (and more clever) decision could be that Vermont's marriage law, which does not literally use the words “one man and one woman,” should now be interpreted to include homosexual couples. Since this would be a decision about a statute, the Legislature could overturn it, if it chooses to.
Either way, the Legislature will be busy, and the citizens of Vermont might be furious.
But what about everybody else? If you're in Kansas or Utah or North Carolina, what happens now?
In theory, hundreds or thousands of homosexual couples will drive or fly to Vermont and get married. Then they will go home and demand to have their marriage be recognized under the law of their home state. Immediately, officials in those states would have to make momentous decisions.
They could acquiesce in and accept these claims to homosexual “marriage.” Or they could fight. Every state that doesn't acquiesce will have multiple lawsuits seeking to force marriage recognition. Officials will be under tremendous pressure from state and national homosexual and lesbian groups.
Defenders of traditional marriage would have to work fast to have their states pass a marriage recognition law. Even in the 29 states that do have a marriage recognition law, such law need to be defended by the attorney general and local authorities. Governors, attorneys general, and mayors might need encouragement to stand firm and not be intimidated by lawsuits challenging the law.
Bishops and pastors could also communicate with those in authority. Interdominational groups could also band together in the effort.
In this legal struggle, ordinary people have already made a great difference. Key factors in their success include:
• being open to all people, including those they disagree with;
• careful studies of the issues involved;
• a willingness to take stances that will be ridiculed by elites;
• a cooperative spirit, working together with like-minded people of good will; and
• persistence in the effort to help others understand the importance of the issue.
Such persistence will shape the future of marriage law in the United States.
David Coolidge writes from Washington, D.C.
How You Can Defend Marriage
Homosexual “marriage” is an issue in every state. But it is particularly crucial in the following states with no “marriage recognition” laws:
California
Colorado*
Connecticut*
Louisiana*
Maryland*
Massachusetts
Missouri*
Nebraska*
Nevada*
New Hampshire*
New Jersey*
New Mexico*
New York*
Ohio Oregon*
Rhode Island*
Texas*
Vermont
Wisconsin
Wyoming
West Virginia*
Information on the Web:
www.pono.net (Hawaii Catholic Conference)
*colorado.cftm.org (to find information about states with asterisks above, type the state's name followed by .cftm.org.)
www.capitolresource.org/b-doma.htm
—David Coolidge
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: David Coolidge ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:Pope John Paul II spoke on the gospel call to serve and how young people play a vital role in their communities and the spread of the gospel. (See “Young, Single, and Afire with Faith,” p.1)
Jesus went in search of the men and women of his time. He engaged them in an open and truthful dialogue, whatever their condition. As the good Samaritan of the human family, he came close to people to heal them of their sins and of the wounds which life inflicts, and to bring them back to the Father's house. Young people of World Youth Day the Church asks you to go, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to those who are near and those who are far away. Share with them the freedom you have found in Christ. People thirst for genuine inner freedom. They yearn for the life which Christ came to give in abundance. The World at the approach of a new millennium, for which the whole Church is preparing, is like a field ready for the Harvest. Christ needs laborers ready to work in his vineyard. May you, the Catholic young people of the world, not fail him. In your hands, carry the Cross of Christ. On your lips, the words of life. In your hearts the saving grace of the Lord.
(World Youth Day, 1993)
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Life Notes DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:Life League Chief Is ‘Heartened’ by Sen. Smith's Stance
WASHINGTON—Judie Brown, president of the American Life League, said she was “heartened that a major candidate for the presidency publicly stated his intent to ‘protect all children, born and unborn.’”
The candidate, Sen. Bob Smith, from New Hampshire further promised that upon his election he would send Congress legislation “defining life as beginning at fertilization.”
Encouraged by the comment, Brown agreed.
“We only pray that every candidate would clearly state these same principles.”
She further added, “The American Life League is not a political organization and neither endorses nor opposes any particular candidate for public office.
We simply stand against the killing of any innocent human being — including human babies from fertilization until natural death.”
Brown said it was “absolutely ridiculous, in this day and age, that a politician could cause a controversy just by stating the basic scientific fact that every human being's life begins at fertilization.”
She said it was time that laws affirmed the sanctity of life of every innocent human being. “Only then can we move forward to discussing how best to protect and nurture each individual.”
She said she hoped the headline “Democrats and Republicans agree: Preborn babies are people too” would highlight the year 2000 political campaign.
(Pro Life Infonet)
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Did You Know DATE: 2/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: February 28-March 6, 1999 ----- BODY:Proponents of Euthanasia often speak of how euthanasia would only be used in extraordinary circumstances. However, once euthanasia becomes “legal,” the definition for its use broadens until it includes both young and old, sick and healthy.
For example, in Holland, a child would not have to be terminally ill or in fact ill at all. He could be killed legally in a Dutch euthanasia clinic under the following proposal by the Dutch health Council (Gezondheidsraad) — the official medical society advising the Dutch government.
• This body has proposed a “Model Aid-in Dying Law” that would allow any child six and older to make a death request. According to this “Model” Law, if the child's parents objected to the decision, the child could present himself to a special aid-in-dying board for a final, binding decision. According to the “Model” Law, “Minors have the right to request aid-in-dying whether or not their parents agree.”
“Dutch in Agonizing Debate over Voluntary Euthanasia,” The Pittsburgh Press, 31 July 1989, p.1.
----- EXCERPT: Facts of Life ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: States Vouching for Catholic Schools DATE: 03/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 07-13, 1999 ----- BODY:MILWAUKEE—If Michael Guerra, of the National Catholic Education Association is to be heeded, “Enemies of the voucher program are fighting a war.”
If that's true, there are many fronts:
• In Florida, Gov. Jeb Bush released a proposal allowing children in the worst-performing public schools to attend private and religious schools with public funds.
• Georgia state Senator Clay Land has proposed a lottery-funded voucher system.
• In New Mexico, Gov. Gary Johnson places school vouchers among his top eight priorities for improving the state's schools.
• In Arizona, the state Supreme Court upheld a tuition credit tax law in January.
• In Wisconsin, the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of Milwaukee's voucher system last year.
Voucher proponents in each of these instances should brace for more attacks, said Guerra. “They won't give up. They lost in the legislature, they lost in the courts. They probably will next fight their war by attempting to place regulations on schools accepting vouchers. If they lose there, they'll find a case and publicize it any way they can.”
Milwaukee is the most mature example of vouchers at work. Since it was first proposed as a concept in 1995, the school voucher program in Milwaukee has promised better educational opportunities for thousands of students from the poorest sections of the city.
To its proponents the program, which is open to all low-income students in public elementary and high schools, is living up to its goals.
To its detractors, it is a reform that may badly damage public education while compromising the separation of church and state or, alternatively, because it could hurt religious instruction.
The cost, directly, or indirectly, comes from the public school budget,” said Elliot Mincberg, legal director of the People for the American Way, an organization whose stated agenda is to fight what it calls the “Christian right.”
One kid leaving a classroom doesn't reduce that school's costs — rather, it leaves a gap,” Mincberg contended. “That means money needed in public schools is sent to a private or religious school. The voucher program serves as a camouflage for politicians to reduce funding to public education.”
Under the program, state monies are not paid directly to private or parochial schools. Eligible parents receive vouchers — cash payments — for the equivalent value of the public education they are passing up in favor of a school that charges tuition. The parents, typically earning a combined annual income of about $26,000 for a family of four, are expected to use the vouchers for tuition payments, which sometimes exceed the vouchers.
That can make a big difference to parents on both sides of the issue.
One, Stephanie Sandy, sides with Mincberg, saying the program creates a hardship for public schools by siphoning off funds. Her own child attends a school in the Milwaukee public system.
But Diane Harris said the voucher program has given power to parents in Milwaukee. It not only allowed her daughter to attend Catholic school, but gave her a voice in the type and quality of education the child receives.
Good for Religion?
Apart from the money, even proponents like Guerra claim that the system can seem to parents like an attempt by a school or individual teacher to proselytize a student. And that can lead to lawsuits.
They'll get the most mileage out of that kind of case that they can,” he said.
Catholic schools, on their part, have tried to protect against such an event. In fact, all students who apply and meet the income guidelines are accepted by the Catholic schools, regardless of their religion.
Further, Wisconsin's program contains an “opt-out” or “religion-free” clause for non-Catholics who attend Catholic parochial or private schools. The clause says non-Catholic students who do not want to attend religious education classes — which are part of the curriculum in every Milwaukee Catholic school — are exempt from doing so.
So far, said Maureen Gallagher, director of Catholic education for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, that has not happened. “No one has used the opt-out clause,” she said. “We've been educating non-Catholic kids for years and have gotten very few converts. We certainly don't push them to adopt our faith.”
Gallagher added that admitting all eligible students demonstrates to everyone that there is no bias. Some opponents, she said, have accused voucher schools of “creaming,” or taking only the best students from the public schools. That's not true, she said, because “we don't even look at their report cards when they apply for admission.”
Some say these schools have tried too hard to hide their religion for the sake of the vouchers. Marshall Fritz of Separation of School and State alliance said that the clauses that inhibit religion instruction in voucher plans are not just potentially dangerous — they are an open rebuke to the concept of Catholic education.
The ‘opt-out’ provision of Milwaukee is a Trojan horse with the Greeks on the outside. It's that bad,” he said.
Brother Bob Smith, a Capuchin, is principal of Messmer High School, which serves a large minority population, including voucher students. He said getting permission from the state to allow students into his high school was not easy.
The Department of Educational Instruction was very wary of having sectarian schools, Catholic or otherwise, part of the voucher program,” he said. “They came to Messmer and counted crucifixes, the number of people in clerical garb, the number of religious books, and just about everything else dealing with religion.”
In the end, they allowed the voucher program,” said Brother Smith, because the churches opened all their campuses to the program and not just a few inner-city schools.
Fritz warned that by strenuously avoiding the reproach of authorities over religious materials, schools can compromise their identity.
You see [school officials] almost boasting that they've never had a conversion to Catholicism,” he said. “You have no right to call that a Catholic school.”
Brother Smith said he fears vouch-er's secular opponents will try to “strangle” the program with new regulations in attack after attack. “They're saying to us, ‘We want you to know this isn't over.’”
The Public Monopoly
Bruce Cooper, an education specialist at New York's Fordham University, said one of the greatest strengths of the school voucher program is that it will help break up the monopoly public schools now enjoy.
The failure of government-run systems, including public education, leads me to believe that if we allow more public and private schools to open, we will have a more entrepreneurial system,” he asserted. “Catholic schools will be the biggest beneficiary,” because of their predominance.
Some proponents of the voucher program are quick to point out that they are not against public education. They see the program as an avenue to a better education for students for families who would otherwise not be able to afford it.
One is David Urbanski of Marquette University in Milwaukee. “A national movement has arisen, largely from the success of vouchers in Milwaukee.”
Like Fordham's Cooper, Urbanski feels there is a public education finance monopoly in this country. “It's always been taken for granted that all money for education should go to the public schools,” he said. “When a parent is dissatisfied with the public system, why shouldn't they be allowed to use their portion of the public money to send their child to a private or religious school?”
Urbanski also sees a protracted struggle by voucher opponents, though the form it takes has yet to be seen.
There's no question [the opponents] will continue the battle,” he said. “It's been demonstrated plenty of times that the public education monopoly will fight to the end. The bottom line, though, is that the voucher program is a very good one, and many newspapers around the country have supported it in their editorials, though the Milwaukee Journal has expressed its opposition.
Many of those editorials have said this is a good idea that must be tried. I couldn't agree more.”
James Malerba writes from Hamden, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: James Malerba ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: 24 hr. Adoration Is Recharging U.S. Parishes DATE: 03/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 07-13, 1999 ----- BODY:CLEVELAND—Mary Ann Wirtz in Cleveland tells of cases of alcoholism overcome and marriages saved. Father Richard Talaska in Milwaukee points to increasing attendance at Mass and confession. Deacon James Stahlnecker in Staten Island, N.Y., speaks of the profound sense of peace people experience in the midst of busy lives.
These testimonies from around the country describe some of the effects attributed to perpetual eucharistic adoration, a practice that is becoming more widespread in parishes and religious houses. The benefits ascribed to this traditional yet innovative devotion are many. But for regular devotees, or “adorers,” these blessings are simply part of a larger and more important reality — the presence of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. It is the eucharistic Lord who is the center of their devotion and he calls them to a closer relationship.
“My husband and I have experienced a great many graces, and we have had people come to us saying that they really need God in their lives and they find him in our chapel,” said Wirtz, who helps coordinate the perpetual adoration chapel at Our Lady of Angels parish in Cleveland.
Those who practice and promote this devotion also see it as a remedy to the decline among Catholics of the belief in the real presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.
Despite its many positive aspects, perpetual adoration is a demanding practice for a parish or even for a religious community. It requires the Blessed Sacrament to be exposed, usually in a gold monstrance, for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all year long, and for at least one person to be present in worship at all times. For perpetual adoration to be carried out correctly, adorers must be present at the wee hours of the night, as well as the bright hours of the day.
What would bring someone to church at 3:30 am? “It's inspiring to see two or three people there in the earliest hours,” said Deacon Stahlnecker, coordinator of the round-the-clock schedule at the Alba House Chapel, run by priests of the Society of St. Paul in Staten Island. “The attraction is Jesus himself. They come to see him, to talk to him, to find his peace.”
‘Inestimable Value’
Father Talaska, pastor of St. John the Evangelist in Milwaukee, came to the parish in 1992, nine years after a perpetual adoration chapel had been founded.
“Adoration has an inestimable value in our parish,” he told the Register. “We see it in the large Mass attendance and the many hours of confession. I believe that time in our Lord's presence is priceless.”
Eucharistic adoration is a practice familiar to older Catholics who recall from their grammar school days frequent occasions for exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, including after High Mass, and at the annual Corpus Christi processions through the streets with bells ringing and smoking thurible swinging around the priest holding the monstrance.
Such practices became less frequent in the 1970s and 1980s. Some pastors, thinking it an outdated devotion, did away with even occasional periods of adoration, encouraged by liturgical experts who stressed the dynamic worship of Jesus during Mass over the “static” devotion of adoration.
However, a de-emphasis of worship of the Eucharist outside of Mass was never called for by the Second Vatican Council. Current Church teaching sees adoration as an extension of the worship during Mass, and not as a separate or purely private devotion.
In his apostolic letter on the mystery and worship of the Eucharist (Dominicae Cenae, 1980), Pope John Paul II writes that worship of Jesus in the sacrament is performed primarily during Mass but also must be extended to other periods.
The Pope calls for a return to “various forms of Eucharistic devotion: personal prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, Hours of Adoration, periods of exposition, short, prolonged and annual (Forty Hours) — Eucharistic benediction, Eucharistic processions, Eucharistic congresses.”
The Holy Father points out that these practices serve as “proofs of that authentic renewal” outlined by Vatican II. He concludes the document with a provocative and prophetic exhortation: “May our adoration never cease!”
At the 1993 International Eucharistic Congress in Seville, Spain, the Holy Father was more specific, urging the establishment of perpetual adoration chapels throughout the world.
While perpetual adoration had been carried out for centuries by religious communities, the Pope was proposing a new manifestation of eucharistic worship: perpetual prayer and intercession before the exposed Blessed Sacrament by the laity, and in their own parishes.
Because of the Pope's popularity among the young, a new generation is discovering eucharistic devotion. In the Youth 2000 program that started in New York and has spread to a number of dioceses across the country, the Blessed Sacrament is exposed from Friday to Sunday evening during retreat weekends. Teen-agers and young adults who have never seen the practice find themselves swept up in the presence of Christ.
“It takes only 24 hours in the presence of our Lord for that veil of worldliness and secularism to begin to fall,” said Father Herald Brock, a Franciscan Friar of the Renewal, former spiritual director of Youth 2000. “They experience a joy, peace, freedom and friendship in Jesus that they have been looking for.”
Hectic Scheduling
St. John Fisher Seminary in the Diocese of Bridgeport, Conn., may be the only diocesan seminary in the United States to offer a program of perpetual adoration, a phenomenon that has been imitated by New York's St. Joseph's Seminary on a limited basis. Both programs include the active participation of the surrounding lay communities and both are dedicated to fostering vocations.
The establishment of perpetual adoration in a parish represents a great commitment on the part of pastor and people. Most parish adoration schedules operate on a weekly cycle, which means that at least 168 persons are required to cover an hour each week.
“The planning and scheduling can get a little hectic, but we've had amazing cooperation,” Wirtz said of the program in Cleveland. Wirtz never had a problem filling in the hours. If someone can't make it at the last moment, we have a list of substitutes who can be called and they'll come in at all hours on short notice.”
When Father Talaska was assigned to his Milwaukee parish seven years ago, he was not sure what demands the adoration chapel would make on his time.
“Some priests said to me, ‘You don't want that around your neck.’ But the people really do all the work.” And, “they have made it known that they want perpetual adoration to remain, even when a new pastor is appointed.”
The number of adoration chapels across the country is growing steadily, said Father Victor Warkulwiz, national director of the Apostolate for Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration in Mount Clemens, Michigan. A separate organization, Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration, is based in La Harve, California.
Father Warkulwiz and several other priests have recently organized the Missionaries of the Blessed Sacrament, a private association of clerics to support the apostolate. Most weekends of the year, he and half a dozen other priests are invited to parishes to preach about eucharistic adoration at all the Masses and to assist the pastor and laity in establishing a program of adoration.
Already this year, Father Warkulwiz has been to Shenandoah and Johnstown in Pennsylvania; Columbus, Ohio; Maple Lake, Minn.; and areas in Nebraska and Colorado.
“There is a great enthusiasm for perpetual adoration and it is spreading,” he told the Register. “It is not coming from any effort on our part to advertise but is a movement of the Holy Spirit among the people. They spread word among themselves, or people visit a parish that has perpetual adoration and then work to establish it in their own parish.”
The reason, he said, is simple. “There's a certain intimacy with God that people are crying out for. In the Blessed Sacrament, you're looking at Jesus face to face.”
For information on establishing perpetual adoration or obtaining materials useful for adoration, call the Apostolate for Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration in Michigan, at (810) 468-4646; or Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration in California at (562) 690-7667.
Brian Caulfield writes from New York.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian Caulfield ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: The Allure of Apologetics DATE: 03/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 07-13, 1999 ----- BODY:Challenged about his Catholic faith by a friend, Matt Pinto was ready to leave the Church—but he decided he needed to find out what he was leaving. After two years of discovering the depth of his faith, he was in the Church to stay. Now, he has devised innovative ways to teach it, from the book Did Adam and Eve have Belly Buttons? to the magazine Envoy, which he cofounded. Pinto recently spoke with Register correspondent Larry Montali.
Montali: You and
Pinto: Sure. The medium in many ways is the message. We take very seriously the idea that we're competing against MTV, television, billboards, etc., for people's attention. We know the Church's message is a life-giving one, but if it doesn't get a hearing in the marketplace, it won't achieve its end. So we've considered it our mission from the beginning to vie for the attention of the Catholic on the street. They are watching TV and consuming other media as much as anyone. By creating “candy for the eye,” yet substance for the soul, we think we're helping to get the Church's message a hearing.
In being so deliberate in your use of marketing techniques, do you think there's a danger of cheapening the message by selling it as you might sell detergent?
We certainly avoid things that are crass or too low brow. But remember St. Paul says he becomes a Jew to the Jews and a Gentile to the Gentiles. He's looking to whom the message is being delivered. He's not changing the message, he's just presenting it in a manner that the Jew or the Gentile hears and understands. It wouldn't be a good idea to reduce the faith to being a product to be manipulated by marketing equations — and we're not. We're just speaking the language of the age. We're looking at what the world is presenting and we're addressing people on their own terms. We strive to be in the world, but not of the world.
The success of
Our heart's deepest longing is for the truth. This age is clouded in countless “isms” — consumerism, fundamentalism, environmentalism, secularism, and so on. None of those things nourishes the soul in the manner that humans need. Apologetics provides a firm foundation on which to stand. It gives people the peace of mind that they're heading in the right direction. Apologetics brings about peace, and that certainty of faith we're all looking for. We know the truth exists; apologetics just helps us find it.
Personally speaking, how did you come to that understanding of the truth?
About 10 years ago, I was challenged on my faith by a very well-intentioned evangelical friend. I was close to leaving the Church due to the very simple and sellable gospel message he put forth. But I decided to learn before leaving, so I spent two years listening to about 400 hours of audio tapes and reading books. My questions were answered and I was in the Church to stay. I became convinced of the pro-life position and started doing pro bono public relations work for the cause. I then decided I wanted to do full-time marketing for the Church. I sold my advertising business and went to work for Catholic Answers in San Diego.
What tapes and books really moved you?
There were many, but those that stand out were by the staff of Catholic Answers, by Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Dr. William Marra, Msgr. William Smith and other apologists on the scene in the late 1980s.
Our culture doesn't support the idea that a definable truth exists and that it can be known.
That's right. It also doesn't support the notion that that truth is important and beautiful. Because we live in this age that is so often devoid of beauty and truth, people are hungry for those things. They always have been. But, in many ways, our work now is different than in times past.
How so?
Many people don't even have a basic faith foundation. We have to do much more basic catechetical work, but it's easier in a sense because when people hear a presentation of the faith presented in a clear manner, they get excited. There is a large and growing movement of apologetics where people can't get enough of delving into the profound truths of the Catholic faith.
In recent years, you've traveled around, speaking at conferences and working with Catholics in different parts of the country. Have you sensed any changes or noted any particular trends in the American Church at the grass-roots level?
I see a strong resurgence towards a more traditional, orthodox faith. That's really not surprising. Once someone hears the compelling case the Church makes for itself and Jesus Christ, it's rare that he or she will lose interest. It typically grows into a deep love for the faith. We're seeing an explosion in the numbers who are strongly committed to the faith. We're seeing more activism, stronger families, more vocations. In the last 10 years, we have had an explosion of lay-run apostolates that are faithful to the Church. I think that is a sign of the times.
How would you interpret a recent poll out of the University of Chicago indicating that in the past 30 years, the number of people who describe themselves as strong Catholics has dropped by about 10%.
I think we may be seeing a greater gap forming between those who are seriously committed and those who are not. You've got to expect significant fallout from a whole generation of poorly catechized Catholics; we'll still see results of that for a long time to come. On the other hand, those who do discover the truths of the faith as presented by John Paul II are going nowhere but forward. Nine out of 10 of those Catholics will be faithful for the rest of their lives. Because once the truth grabs a hold of your head and heart it's very hard for you to leave it. You see the reasonableness, the peace, the fruits that come from it.
Did you know immediately that you wanted to devote your professional life to promoting the faith or did that evolve over time?
I wanted to be the next Donald Trump. I wanted to be an advertising and business guru, but after four years, I realized I'd only be so satisfied marketing Bennigan's hamburgers or memberships at Gold's Gym. I wanted to sell a more everlasting message and that was the message of Jesus Christ and the Church. The decision came pretty quickly. I tend to be energetic and enthusiastic about most things, and I wanted to bring the same zeal I had about secular work to the Church. When I realized I wanted to present the Church's message, it was a quick transition, and I found myself in the thick of things within a year.
You've done a lot of work with youth and young adults. What do you see as their particular needs in the Church today?
They need to see the relevance of the Church. They need stronger catechesis with apologetics. Young people are looking for a firm foundation. They're looking for something to attach themselves to. They're looking for genuine heroes and, they may not know it, but in their heart of hearts they are looking for truth. They will not be repelled by the strong claims of Catholicism. When the Church's teachings are presented clearly and boldly they will gravitate to them. I also think young people need to hear a message of hope. We live in an age when life is infinitely devalued by drive-by shootings, abortion, etc. — that plays deep in the psyche of teens. That's why you're not going to stop smoking or drug use or other typical teen problems until young people see themselves as made in God's image and likeness, and until they come to know of their infinite value in the mind of the Father.
Is the Church doing an adequate job of addressing those needs?
It could be doing a better job, though there are some rays of light. We're seeing better youth ministry popping up. We're seeing things like LifeTeen, more books for teen-agers, and more products like You magazine. There are more solid youth speakers and we're seeing the tremendous growth of apostolates like Youth 2000, the eucharistic-based retreats run by Father Benedict Groeschel's Franciscan Friars of the Renewal. Then there's the success of (EWTN's) teen television show “Life on the Rock.” We're seeing an explosion in numbers at the Franciscan University of Steubenville youth conferences. So you see these rays of light, but I think, corporately, the Church still has a long way to go in investing financially in more dynamic youth ministry.
You think the Church is still being outdone by other churches on that front?
The evangelical and Mormon youth outreaches are putting us to shame in many cases, and that's why our young people are getting wooed out of the Church. The Church needs to invest financially, but it also has to be imaginative and bold in presenting the message to youth. I believe the Holy Spirit gave us John Paul II 20 years ago in part to reach this lost generation that hasn't been catechized and formed in the faith as strongly as it could have. But we have to harness that enthusiasm and energy the Pope stirs in young people, and put it into action at the diocesan and parish levels.
Your book
There is little in the way of apologetics for a younger audience. It's a real need that hasn't been met. You have catechists who feel ill-equipped. You have teens who are hesitant to ask questions, or who are frustrated because they're not getting answers to the questions they do ask. You have youth ministers who want to do more than pizza and parties, and you have parents who are concerned about their teens. The book provides short, pithy, solidly Catholic answers that are often the first clear apologetics young people have heard.
What books have been particularly influential for you in your faith?
Many books on the lives of the saints, Theology for Beginners and Theology and Sanity by Frank Sheed. Catholicism and Fundamentalism by Karl Keating played a key role in my early days. I'm also a big fan of The Soul of the Apostolate by Dom Chautard, a book that stresses that anyone in the active life needs to balance his or her activity with a deep spiritual life, otherwise they'll be like a clanging cymbal — making a lot of noise but having no substance. And, of course, the Bible.
Who are your favorite saints and why?
St. Philip Neri for his seriousness about the faith but his lightheartedness. Also St. Catherine of Siena for her boldness. St. Joan of Arc is absolutely one of my favorites, for the way she overcame such amazing obstacles at such a young age. St. Maximilian Kolbe, because he's a saint of this age and one who used mass communication to spread the Gospel.
What's been the biggest test of your faith?
Fortunately, I haven't had any crisis in belief since I've come to truly believe that Jesus is the Messiah and his Church is the ark of salvation for the world. In terms of difficulties in living the faith, it comes down to the discipline needed to go the “spiritual gym and keep working out.” Sometimes it seems easier to do the big things — putting on a conference, publishing a magazine, or writing a book — than to make daily Mass or pray the rosary.
Do you have any philosophy about dealing with the demands of your apostolic work while being a good husband and father?
Well, I just remember that my primary vocation isn't how many souls I can save, but how many saints I can raise and how strong my marriage is. If either of those two things are lacking then I know I need to reassess my priorities.
What do you envision for your future?
I have a straightforward plan: In a personal sense, I want to live the faith to the fullest. In a family sense, I want to strive for even greater joy and strength. In an apostolic sense, I want to use any skills I may have to reach as many souls as possible — as quickly as possible — with the message of the abundant life found in Christ and his Church.
You're one of the founding members of the newly formed Missionaries of Faith. Would you explain a little about the group?
It's a Catholic evangelization and education apostolate dedicated to using the print and broadcast media to lead people to a deeper understanding of Christ and the Church. Our dealings include such things as involvement with the Catholic Radio Network and publishing projects with Envoy magazine and Basilica Press, which are both merging with the Missionaries of Faith. The apostolate is also involved with establishing Bible studies at the local level and putting on regional and national conferences. Basically, the Missionaries of Faith is involved with a wide variety of projects using the most contemporary means available, including the Internet and other new media technologies, to spread the Gospel.
Who's behind the project?
The founder is a 34-year-old Lebanese-American businessman named Daniel Daou, president of San Diego-based Daou Systems. Our management team includes Daou; Dr. Scott Hahn; Patrick Madrid [editor of Envoy]; Alan Napleton of the Catholic Marketing Network; Anthony DeBellis, a San Diego businessman; and myself. The people involved have skills in the secular world and share a great love for the Church. We realize our plans are ambitious but with God's grace and a lot of hard we hope to accomplish much for the building up of the Kingdom.
How did the group come into being?
Dan is a very devout and dynamic Christian who has long had a desire to help the Church in its missionary activities. The success of his company allowed him to start the foundation for the purpose of launching new apostolates and supporting existing ones. At the time the foundation was established, Patrick Madrid and I had been discussing the possibility with Daniel of bringing Envoy into a closer relationship with it. After prayer and consideration, we decided it would be helpful for both the foundation and Envoy to team up.
Do you see the initiative as an outgrowth of Pope John Paul II's call for a new evangelization?
Absolutely. We see the Missionaries of Faith as being inspired by that and also by the Vatican II document Inter Mirifica which calls the laity to use the most modern and effective means available to transmit the Gospel message to the world. We're approaching this as St. Augustine said: “Working as if everything depended on us and praying as if everything depended on God.” We're committed to being excellent stewards and to being as resourceful as possible, but we're also mindful that we are the neediest of servants. So, we're instituting a prayer support network to help our work. We already have Masses being celebrated regularly, and prayers being said, thanks to a lay prayer support network. We're hoping we'll have several thousand people committed to praying for us on a regular basis.
Earlier on, you mentioned working with radio projects. It sounds as if you're not only focused on new media but older, proven forms as well.
That's right. Our latest project is called “Right Here, Right Now,” Envoy's new radio program. It's a one-hour radio magazine filled with interviews and catchy bumper music — everything from Beethoven to the
Personal: Aged 33, married with one child.
Background: Graduate of Temple University with a bachelor's degree in communications and a minor in sociology; ran a successful advertising business; has appeared on numerous television programs, including EWTN's Life on the Rock, Mother Angelica Live!, and Living his Life Abundantly; has conducted seminars on a variety of Catholic issues throughout the country; president and cofounder of Envoy magazine; author of best seller Did Adam and Eve have Belly Buttons? … and 199 other questions from Catholic Teenagers.
Current position: President and co-founder of Envoy magazine, a journal of Catholic apologetics and evangelization.
----- EXCERPT: A marketing man's call to deliver the truth with flair ----- EXTENDED BODY: Matthew Pinto ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson ----------- TITLE: U. S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 03/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 07-13, 1999 ----- BODY:Feminist Defends Virginity and Modesty
According to a review by Tamala M. Edwards, Shalit's A Return to Modesty, Discovering the Lost Virtue (The Free Press, $24, 304 pages) is the latest in a growing volume of feminist literature that finds the sexual revolution wanting. Shalit's critique is especially forceful given that she is a 23-year-old member of the first generation of women to come of age since the 1960s upheaval in sexual mores.
Edwards contended that the young author is occasionally naive or exaggerated. However, “Shalit defends, at times compellingly, shame, privacy, gallantry and sexual reticence, if not virginity until marriage. Without these, she says, women have lost power, consigned to ‘dreary hookups’ or sexual violence.” She also quotes Shalit's refrain: “We want our ‘feminine mystique’ back.”
In a similar review for the Catholic journal Commonweal, Barbara Defoe Whitehead joins those wondering about the consequences of sexual license. “Today's young women are unhappy,” says Whitehead, siting recent studies. “They suffer from depression, eating disorders, binge drinking and body-image disturbances. … This generation is better educated and more sexually liberated than any earlier generation of women in history. What's gone wrong?”
Catholic Health Care Providers Upbraided
He writes: “The public is not inclined to make the ‘fine distinctions’ about ethics that permit”those procedures. The avoidance of moral culpability, often approved by theologians who employ hair-splitting logic, effectively “erase an institution's Catholic identity and Christian witness before the public. Rather than look to ‘moralists’ for advice, [Catholic health care providers] should look to the example of the martyrs who chose death rather than apostasy. If the significant pressures of the marketplace make [them] feel like a gun is to their head, sometimes the answer must be: ‘Go ahead and shoot — I cannot deny my God or my faith.’”
TV's Latest Favorites — Young Homosexuals
Programs with youthful homosexual characters include Dawson's Creek, Felicity, and Party of Five. “I don't think it's adding any element of controversy to the show; it's adding an element of well-roundedness,” claimed Dawson's creator Kevin Willamson.
According to Christian Action Network, “two dozen homosexual characters [are] portrayed weekly on network television.”Levin reports that the Christian organization has asked the Federal Communications Commission to warn viewers of the trend by adding a “HC” label for homosexual content to TV's voluntary content ratings system.
Abortion and the Labor Movement
Msgr. Higgins calls this a “doubtful and somewhat patronizing proposition.” On the contrary, he points out that longtime AFL-CIO pollsters have repeatedly found that “most members feel it is inappropriate for unions to take positions on controversial social and cultural issues (such as abortion and gun control).” He adds that AFL-CIO President George Sweeney, a Catholic, holds the same position.
----- EXCERPT: From selected publications ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: Survey Says 31% of Americans Are 'Unchurched' DATE: 03/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 07-13, 1999 ----- BODY:VENTURA, Calif.—Almost one third of America's adults have not attended a Christian Church service in the past six months other than a special event, a Barna Research Group study reports.
The study found that 31% of Americans could be classified as “unchurched” — a proportion that represents between 60 and 65 million adults — because they did not attend a Christian service during the past six months other than an event such as a holiday service or a wedding or funeral.
Eighteen months earlier, researchers found that 27% of adults could be considered unchurched.
Researchers found that men are 67% more likely to be unchurched than are women (40% of men and 24% of women are unchurched). Adults who are politically liberal are more than twice as likely to be unchurched as those who consider themselves to be politically conservative (54% of the liberals are unchurched versus 21% of the conservatives).
The younger and more educated a person is, the more likely they are to be unattached to a Christian Church.
The study reported that the lack of attendance at a Church did not preclude other religious activities. Ten percent of those not attached to a Church read the Bible in a typical week; 8% listen to Christian radio in a typical week, and 20% watch religious television shows in a typical week.
The survey also found a variety of spiritual perspectives among the unchurched.
While 62% called themselves Christian, one third of those unaffiliated with a Church were connected with non-Christian faiths. Six percent of those not affiliated with a Church cited Judaism and 4% cited Islam. Seventeen percent of the unchurched claim to be agnostic or atheist.
George Barna, president of the Ventura, Calif.-based company that did the research, said, “Americans feel tremendous freedom to construct their own religious perspectives and practices, regardless of traditions and time-honored teachings,” he said. “The American public is sending a clear message to Christian leaders: Make Christianity accessible and practical or don't expect their participation.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: Martyrs to Communism Move Closer to Beatification DATE: 03/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 07-13, 1999 ----- BODY:WARSAW, Poland—A cardinal and six bishops from Romania's once-outlawed Eastern Rite Catholic Church, who died as martyrs under communist rule, have moved closer to beatification.
Meanwhile, Pope John Paul II has praised the Church's “courage and loyalty” in a message marking the anniversary of an Eastern Rite archbishop who began his priestly ministry under the cloak of secrecy at the height of communist persecution.
Romania's Religious Life bulletin said the first two public beatification hearings for the cardinal and bishops had taken place in January at Blaj's Theology Institute, chaired by Metropolitan Lucjan Muresan of Alba Iulia.
It added that the sessions had been requested by the Vatican, and had included the appointment of a formal court and historical commission, as well as the registration of documents.
The most senior candidate, Iuliu Cardinal Hossu (1885-1970), whose cardinal's hat was secretly conferred in 1969 by Pope Paul VI, died under house arrest at Caldurasani monastery, six years after being exempted from a general amnesty for Romania's Catholic clergy.
Hossu, who was consecrated a bishop in 1917 at age 32, was decorated a year later by Romania's first independent government after publicly reading out the proclamation of Transylvania's secession from Hungary, and was an honorary Romanian senator for 22 years before communist rule.
Among the bishops, Ioan Suciu of Blaj (1907-53), Valeriu Traian Frentiu of Oradea (1875-1952) and Tit Liviu Chinezu of Bucharest (1905-55) all perished while imprisoned at Sighet, while the Roman-trained Bishop Vasile Afteniu of Bucharest (1900-50) was shot in the capital's Interior Ministry basement.
Bishop Alexandru Rusu of Baia Mare (1884-963), a dogmatic theologian and leading wRiter, died of kidney failure at Gherla prison during a 25-year sentence of hard labor for “treason and agitation.”
Bishop Ioan Balan of Lugoj (1880-1959), a biblical scholar and a former consultant of the Pontifical Commission of eastern canon law, died under confinement in an Orthodox monastery at Ciorogarla.
The Romanians are among 22 Eastern or Greek Rite bishops recommended for beatification from various parts of Eastern Europe where their Church suffered savage persecution in an attempt to destroy its traditional combination of the eastern Rites similar to those of the Orthodox and loyalty to Rome.
The list includes 14 martyrs from neighboring Ukraine, where the Church was outlawed in 1946, including Bishop Teodor Romza of Mukacevo, who was murdered in a hospital bed in 1947, aged 36, and the younger brother of Metropolitan Sheptycky of Lviv, Klemens Sheptycky, who died in Russia's Vladimir prison in 1950.
Formal beatification proceedings for the Romanian bishops were launched in January 1998, when documentation was forwarded to the Vatican's Congregation for Causes of Saints.
The Pope has also praised the bishops and priests who have survived the communist era and continue to minister. In a letter to Archbishop George Gutiu of Cluj-Gherla marking the anniversary of his secret ordination, the Pope said he wished to “praise and pay homage” to the prelate's “fidelity to the supreme pontiff,” adding that the archbishop's priesthood had been shaped by “deep piety, openness to every soul and readiness for sacrifice.”
“We gladly remember the wise zeal with which you began your evangelization,” John Paul II added.
“This is so necessary in our epoch, when some people, scarred by secularism and materialism, have jeopardized their souls by losing their sensus Dei, as well as their sensus hominum.”
Archbishop Gutiu, 74, worked under the same conditions as some of the men now proposed for beatification. He was one of three priests clandestinely ordained on December 8, 1948 in a chapel of Bucharest's St Joseph's cathedral. The ordination, approved by Pope Pius XII, took place a week after the Church was banned by a communist decree, when other priests and bishops were being rounded up.
Arrested two years later for illegally ministering, Father Gutiu was sentenced to hard labor for life but pardoned under a 1964 amnesty. The Pope named him bishop of Cluj-Gherla in 1990, when the Church was re-legalized after the bloody overthrow of communist rule, and archbishop in 1994.
During its time underground, the Church lost its places of worship and at least 400 of its 1,800 priests to persecution.
The Religious Life bulletin said the postulators for the bishops' causes, Fathers Pantilimon Astelean and Mihai Todea, had summoned priests, teachers and lay people as witnesses to the January hearings.
It added that the Cluj-Gherla diocese's Viata Crestina monthly had published photographs of the bishops from their prison files, as well as biographical data collected from various sources.
Among five Latin Rite cardinals and several bishops believed candidates for sainthood from communist-ruled Eastern Europe, the Pope has so far beatified three: the Hungarian Bishop Apor Vilmos of Gyor (1892-1945), who was shot at the door of his residence by Red Army soldiers; the Bulgarian
Bishop Eugen Bossilkov (1900-1952), who was executed as a “Vatican spy;” and Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac of Croatia (1898-1961), who died under house arrest after a prison sentence.
A beatification process was also launched in 1994 for a Latin Rite priest from Romania, Father Vladimir Ghika (1873-1954), who died in a communist prison at Jilava.
The names of Greek Catholic martyrs are included in a list of 3200 “Martyrs to the faith of Christ” currently being compiled by the Vatican for the year 2000.
— Jonathan Luxmoore
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jonathan Luxmoore ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 03/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 07-13, 1999 ----- BODY:Priest Helps Smash Child-Abuse Ring
Two teachers, a child psychologist, and a school dentist, all in their 50s and 60s, have been arrested on charges of sexually abusing children over more than two decades.
Father Cullen, a native of Ireland, works in the Philippines and was chiefly responsible for exposing the ring, police said. The defendants denied the allegations.
Bishop of East Timor Faces Greatest Danger
Reporter Chris McGillion, in The Morning Herald in Sydney, Australia, writes: “Now, with Indonesia having announced it is considering withdrawing from East Timor, and the fratricide already beginning inside the territory, these are especially dangerous times for Belo.”
A civil war would suit the purposes of those few East Timorese who don't want to see Jakarta quit the territory. “Killing the bishop of Dili would be one sure way to start it” says McGillion.
Bishop Belo concedes this, but says it doesn't matter to him, saying: “It is the role of the Church and the bishop to protect people, to suffer, even to die for the people.”
Time of Reckoning Over General Absolution
The Vatican meeting resulted in a declaration, endorsed by Pope John Paul II, urging bishops to exert their leadership and uphold discipline, particularly over the sacraments and liturgy of the Mass.
“Unfortunately, communal celebrations have not infrequently occasioned an illegitimate use of general absolution,” the statement warned, underlining the importance of individual confession. “This illegitimate use … is to be eliminated.”
----- EXCERPT: From selected publications ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 03/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 07-13, 1999 ----- BODY:Pope: Lay Involvement Needed
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE, March 1—Pope John Paul II has encouraged efforts to get lay people more involved in the Church.
The Pope pointed to a number of “signs of hop,” such as increasing numbers of the faithful worldwide, and their greater participation in Church activities.
“At the same time, however,” he said, “How can we ignore the fact that … not a few Christians, forgetful of the commitments of the their baptism, live in indifference, and give in to compromise with the secularized world? How can we touch these faithful who … following the suggestions of the typical relativism of today's culture, balk at accepting the doctrinal and moral teachings of the Church?”
To Mock the Pope No Big Deal
“A crowd of supporters at the National Family Planning and Reproductive Center are going to differ with the position of the Church, but the disrespect shown for Catholics and their spiritual leader goes against everything groups like this claim to believe in: tolerance, respect, open-mindedness.”
On the challenges of a serious commitment to the Catholic faith, Kunig opines: “Living by a strict set of moral rules isn't trendy or convenient, but it does offer a much-needed anchor in this era of ‘Who cares, the economy's doing great!’”
----- EXCERPT: From selected publications ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican ----------- TITLE: Opposing the Death of the Guilty DATE: 03/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 07-13, 1999 ----- BODY:Henri Pranzini was a triple murderer, caught red-handed. His countrymen reviled him for his singular lack of remorse for his crimes.
Leo Echegary was found guilty of repeatedly raping his 10-year-old stepdaughter. As in Pranzini's case, his Catholic country was convinced that his death penalty was just.
Darrell Mease was convicted of killing not only his drug partner, but the man's wife and handicapped teenage grandson. Many Catholics joined the majority expressing outrage at his pardon.
Isn't it obvious that the practice and custom of the laity accepts capital punishment without qualification? Shouldn't the Church?
Wait one moment.
Pranzini had a powerful advocate in St. Thérèse of Lisieux. “I wanted at all costs to save his soul, and I multiplied my prayers and sacrifices for his conversion,” she wrote.At his execution, the killer walked to the guillotine cursing God, but at the last moment showed remorse, kissing a priest's crucifix three times.
Echegary's execution was the first in the Philippines in 23 years, and Jaime Cardinal Sin strenuously objected to it. Church bells tolled across the country to mark his passing.
Mease's first scheduled execution date in Missouri was Jan. 27, when Pope John Paul II was visiting St. Louis. The Pope asked for his pardon, and then said that our times demand “followers of Christ who are unconditionally pro-life … even in the case of someone who has done great evil. Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform.”
It is true that some voices in our day call for the death penalty for commendable motives, and not simply for revenge. They point out that even an execution can serve the dignity of the human person in a superlative way. Only in capital punishment does the state fully acknowledge the gravity of murder, and justly repay the one who destroys the image and likeness of God in another.
But the intervention of each of these Christians — heavenly intervention, in Thérèse's case — forcefully illustrates the position of the Church: we acknowledge the gravity of these murders, and even the justness of the sentences. However, when the world has forgotten the sanctity of human life, it falls to us to embrace it all the more forcefully.
As the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains, it is certainly not unjust for a society to put a killer to death: “Preserving the common good … requires rendering the aggressor unable to inflict harm” (No. 2266). Nonetheless, “If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order … public authority should limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person” (No. 2267).
In today's world, in which the Pope sees a “culture of death” where violence of all kinds prevail, the common good is best served when we promote the value of all human life. The bishops of South Africa recently made this observation the day after suspects in the killing of a priest were brought to court. (See story, Page 16.) They said his death “underlines a cold fact of life in South Africa: Life has ceased to have any value. There are many who will plead for the reintroduction of the death penalty as a deterrent. The Church does not advocate this. Rather, we call for a national campaign to emphasize the sacredness of human life — something which will not just happen without a determined effort to stop every form of murder.”
Only this kind of hope — a hope that proves itself with action — will allow us to break free from the culture of death and begin to build the culture of life.
----- EXCERPT: EDITORIAL ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion ----------- TITLE: Genius from the Shadowlands DATE: 03/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 07-13, 1999 ----- BODY:Branches to Heaven: The Geniuses of C.S. Lewis by James Como(Spence Publishing Co., 1998, 224 pages, $22.95)
James Como has made a significant contribution to the tower of books about Lewis. Subtitled The Geniuses of C.S. Lewis, his book Branches to Heaven gives readers a sympathetic yet critical look at Lewis: whence it came, what it accomplished, and how he did it.
Como begins: “C.S. Lewis is the sort of author — a ‘discovery’ of the first order — that compels a reader to spread the word, so strikingly direct and familiar is his voice, so bracing his thought. You might have begun with what I call the ‘you, too?’ reflex, ‘you, too?’ being what you whispered with happy surprise three decades ago when you noticed someone else engrossed in a Lewis tome. You go on to gather fellow enthusiasts into a society dedicated to the study and enjoyment of his work. … You do not want anyone to miss out on even the smallest morsel of him….”
Part 1 of the book, “Roots,” is highly biographical. It stretches back to Lewis' youth to examine the origins of both his worldview and his manner of communicating it. In this part, Como develops a number of themes regarding Lewis' personality and history which he carries on throughout the book. One is the issue of Lewis' will, the drive behind the man which impels him to argumentation and to his vocation as an apologist for Christianity. Another is his childhood loss of his mother. Como sees this loss as a significant influence until Lewis' mature years. Only then did he come fully to terms with it. There are as well the themes of Lewis' search for joy, his conversion, even his personal holiness — for instance, his efforts at corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
The second half of the book, “Branches,” analyzes at length what Como regards as central to Lewis' effectiveness as writer and apologist: his powerful and persuasive rhetoric. Here Como weaves in stories of Lewis'early life and of his ongoing struggles as a Christian.
For example, after his conversion, Lewis persistently willed to subordinate the self, but he did it in a way that led to a certain tension. Part of the tension had to do with the fact that willing anything is to some degree to assert the self. Another part was related to Lewis'vocation as writer and apologist, a vocation demanding a potent rhetoric that required a measure of self-awareness.
Furthermore, a standard Lewis rhetorical technique was to employ himself as a datum in argument. This use of the self to make a point, or to “witness” to the truth of Christianity, Como calls the rhetorical self; and it heightened the problem of self-assertion for Lewis.
As Como writes, “The self upon which Lewis's genius of the will turned its back is the very same self so palpably conspiring with his genius of rhetoric, the very same rhetoric that issued forth in response to his willed commitment to a vocation, that same self that … so enjoyed an audience and which Lewis — ‘coyly,’ I have said — warned us against discussing.”
In the end, argues Como, Lewis adopted a “veiled” approach regarding himself, a mode of indirect discourse. The self isn't wholly removed — it can't be — but the references are more indirect, both concealing and revealing Lewis.
Lewis has sometimes been called dogmatic and domineering by both friend and foe.
Whatever the truth of this in his personal behavior, this certainly isn't true of Lewis' writings. Yes, Lewis was decidedly a man of strong conviction. But he was never facile about what it means to be a Christian. On this Como quotes the actress Debra Winger, who portrayed Lewis' wife, Joy, in Richard Attenborough's film Shadow-lands.
“He may make difficult questions accessible,” observed Winger. “I don't think he makes the answers ‘easy.’… His statements are not like books that are written by experts. … He's saying ‘think about this.’That's why I think he opened [Christianity] to so many people. He wasn't dogmatic.”
Another commonplace claim regarding Lewis is that the fearless, argumentative, and highly rational apologist of the early years was in later life supplanted by the more doubtful, cautious Lewis, given more to exposition of the faith than to proof. Como doesn't buy the stereotype of Lewis' dogmatism, though he strongly insists that there was indeed a change in the later Lewis. The real shift, as Como sees it, was from the more rhetorical self, employed explicitly to make the case for Christianity, to the “veiled” approach.
The cause of this shift? For Como, it lay in some spiritual/psychological crisis. Among the factors that contributed to the crisis, Como lists the death of Mrs. Moore, the mother of a World War I compatriot Lewis pledged to support after his friend's death, as well as Lewis' own spiritual struggles as a best-selling Christian author, his coming truly to experience and wholly accept God's forgiveness for his sins, and the death of his wife. These are important elements of what Como believes accounts for a deeper, more existential faith in Lewis, as well as his shift in rhetorical style.
Branches to Heaven is neither light literary fare, nor drab scholarly analysis. It is written for the reader already familiar with Lewis' work and at least somewhat familiar with his biography. An interpretive essay of the first order, the book explains not merely Lewis' writings and rhetoric, but something of the man himself. Some of Lewis' devotees may disagree with this or that point in Como's thesis, but surely even the pettifoggers among them must admit he gives readers something of the real Lewis — believer, writer, apologist, master of rhetoric.
Mark Brumley writes from San Francisco.
----- EXCERPT: Book Review ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mark Brumley ----- KEYWORDS: Books ----------- TITLE: Reality Check: Just What the Doctor Ordered DATE: 03/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 07-13, 1999 ----- BODY:Dominican Father Romanus Cessario, professor of systematic theology at St. John's Seminary, writes: “At the beginning of the 13th century, the received tradition explained human knowledge by appeal to some variety of divine illumination. … Illuminationists generally conceived of the soul as a mirror or receptacle ready to capture the rays of intelligibility from the Divine Mind.
“As a result of reading Aristotle, Aquinas had come to a different conclusion. … Rather than looking to illumination to guarantee the authenticity of the created world, he argued that the created world itself, the world of mobile nature and natural things, possessed its own intelligibility and, furthermore, that God had equipped the human mind to capture it. What is more important, he argued that since human beings know the reality of the world, they also can move demonstratively from this sure knowledge back to a sure knowledge of God, at least as he is the cause of this creation.
“In the decades immediately following Aquinas' death, Thomists continued to welcome the introduction of Aristotle into the West, and so challenged many theological truisms. Later, in the 16th century, Thomists answered the objections raised by the Protestant reformers against the Church's teaching on justification, the sacraments, and the nature of the Church herself, while others were developing a theoretical groundwork for contemporary international law. From the start, then, Aquinas inspired discussions that range from mystical theology to cosmology, and from political theory to personal morality.
“Aquinas proceeded on the supposition that all theological writing ought to express the unity of divine truth; in his phrase, theology is like an impression of the divine knowledge in the created mind. Because he grasped this connection, Aquinas would reject today's tendency to regard theology as a constellation of diverse fields of specialized inquiry whose only unity derives from the fact that they somehow coalesce to promote Christian service. … In other words, Aquinas was persuaded that the best theology reflects the simplicity of God whose knowledge of himself remains the one source of all true wisdom. … Aquinas appreciated the unity of truth that flows from the divine simplicity, and would have been deeply repelled by conflicting truth claims produced by theologians asserting expertise in one or another theological discipline.
Aquinas argued that the created world itself possessed its own intelligibility and, furthermore, that God had equipped the human mind to capture it.
“Recall that Aquinas, as Pope John Paul II has confirmed, produced a philosophy of ‘what is,’ not of ‘what seems to be.’ Reality offers much more to philosophize about than do appearances. [In the late 1800s,] Pope Leo wanted to steer Church thinking away from the fascination with the apparent that had captivated European thought in the modern period, and we can see in retrospect that his initiative prompted a flowering of Catholic intellectual life.
“Although [John Paul II's] Fides et Ratio enforces no allegiance to a specific set of philosophical theses, it does condemn those intellectual positions that faithful adherence to Aquinas inhibits: eclecticism, historicism, scientism, pragmatism, and nihilism.
“In Fides et Ratio the Pope also acknowledged the enduring originality of Aquinas' approach both to thinking about the truth that God has revealed in Christ and to expressing the harmonies that arise once the rational creature is enabled to ponder what ‘eye hath not seen’ (Isaiah 54:4).
“It is Aquinas' profound love for the Incarnation that makes him still a faithful guide for preserving the Christian Church from errors that erode her confession of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Aquinas knew that because God chose to save the human race by sending his only Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, the Church of Christ is committed to reconciling the human and divine. Aquinas teaches us the right way to view the creation of the world with the new creation of the gospel. There is every reason, therefore, to suppose that at the end of the millennium about to commence he will still rank among the figures who have most influenced the course of human intellectual activity.”
Ellen Wilson Fielding writes from Davidsonville, Maryland.
A condensed version, in the words of the original author, of an article selected by the Register from the nation's top journals.
----- EXCERPT: Article Digest ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding ----- KEYWORDS: Education ----------- TITLE: LETTERS DATE: 03/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 07-13, 1999 ----- BODY:Was Washington Magnanimous?
Your editorial “Post-Impeachment Blues?” (Feb. 21-27) is commendable except in one important respect.
Hardly was George Washington “a model of magnanimity.” Along with most other founding fathers, Washington was a slave owner. Several hundred slaves “worked” his Mount Vernon plantation.
How's that for moral “compartmentalization”?
John Cooligan, Jr. Buffalo, New York
A Culture in Dire Need
It has been my good fortune to read the Register for about 15 years, thanks to the generosity of a wise pastor. I wish to express my gratitude to you and a staff of gifted writers and reporters. The Register keeps the life's blood of our Catholic faith flowing. You are indeed a sentinel and literary light in the darkness of a culture in dire need of illumination. May God continue to bless your work. I read virtually every line printed in your paper and often share Register articles with friends.
James Zawadzki San Diego
Catholic Suffering in the Ukraine
I read the article on the Orthodox Church in Romania (“Orthodox Church in Romania Open to a Visit by John Paul,” Feb. 7-13), where the communists confiscated over 2,000 Catholic churches and handed them over to the Orthodox Church in Romania.
In the Ukraine the communists did the same; they confiscated 2,000 or more Catholic churches. In 1932-33, 7-10 million Ukrainians died of forced starvation by a Soviet government-engineered, man-made famine in eastern Ukraine, according to The World Almanac, 1997 edition.
I would bet hundreds of millions of young Catholics have never heard these horror stories. The Church and State Under Communism has 321 pages of horror stories. This is not a book; it is a report by U.S. and European experts on communism, released by U.S. Senate and Congress committees in 1964-65.
John De Maio Hoboken, New Jersey
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion ----------- TITLE: A Hidden Agenda Behind the News That's Not So New DATE: 03/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 07-13, 1999 ----- BODY:In the course of my work I review hundreds of pages of news clippings weekly. Recent months' clippings tell one story over and over and over again: “anti-abortion” folks are a violent lot. A violent lot determined to use any means necessary to shut down women's access to abortion.
I can tell you from experience how incredibly hard it is to get a story covered by the major press. It has to meet a lot of conditions to be considered “hard news,” the kind of news that makes the “A” section of any paper. It has indeed to be “new.” And it has to be important to a lot of people. Or, it has to involve some very big name(s). But these conditions have apparently been waived for stories involving access to abortion clinics.
L'affaire Lewinsky, wars in Eastern Europe and Africa, natural disasters of gigantic proportions, and other major stories notwithstanding, over the past two years, coverage of violence at abortion clinics has ranked second or third among the top three news stories across the United States. This has been measured by a leading news organization. And the coverage is often “old news,” by definition not really news at all.
I cannot count the number of times I have picked up The New York Times or The Washington Post, both widely read papers across the United States, and read the “news” that “84% of U.S. counties are now without abortion providers.” Or that the numbers of abortion clinics, abortion training programs, or abortionists is in decline. These sorts of figures are collected by groups like the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League and the research affiliate of Planned Parenthood, the Alan Guttmacher Institute, and faxed to news organizations about once ever year. But they appear in news stories all the year long. Even in stories with little relationship to these factoids. And each time they are repeated, reporters or editorialists use the occasion to attribute the declines to “terrorist” tactics on the part of the “anti-abortion” movement.
A few observations. First and most importantly, the actual “pro-life” movement in the United States has again and again, on the record, repudiated and condemned the use of violent means. No one is more deeply aware that in order to realize our dream of a “culture of life,” we have to model one now. You don't achieve a society that respects life without doing it, and thereby also attracting people who long for one but don't know the way. We have to show the way, not mirror the culture of death.
Second, the decline in the numbers of abortion clinics, abortion training programs, and abortionists has actually been going on since the mid-1970's. After the first flush of “wow, I'm a legal abortionist” following 1973, the “glamour” of legal abortion declined and declined. As is only natural. One can only tell people — especially the aborted woman or the doctor inside the clinic — that bad is good for so long. And so, since about 1976 the number of hospitals training residents and the number of doctors willing to do abortions, has steadily declined. Numbers of abortion clinics have been declining since the early 1980s. This is not “new” let alone “news.” And it is not related in time to violence at abortion clinics, which seemed to flare up in the late 1980s and into the 1990s.
Finally, I firmly believe that the recent volume of newsprint devoted to violence at abortion clinics is a direct response to the public conversation about partial-birth abortion. Many with decades of experience in the pro-life movement commented over the past two years as to how they had never seen more media coverage about “abortion itself” than in connection with the partial-birth debate. All of a sudden, many stories spoke about the details of an abortion procedure. They spoke about the fate of the partially born child. And equally devastating to the abortion industry, they spoke about the stream of falsehoods issuing from the leadership of the “pro-choice” movement. No question about it. Reporters couldn't evade it: Abortion advocates were caught red handed in very, very specific lies. So how to rehabilitate them? Portray them as martyrs.
It's tough to swallow. Especially when people who share our “label” have committed indefensible violence. So we must respond by doing even more to model pro-life in our communities as nobly as we can. More nobly than we can, if we let God work in us. We won't be able to stop most madmen from violence, but we can raise the tenor the entire movement with our witness. And the partial-birth debate proved that it is possible to overcome the public's blinders-mentality about abortion from time to time. This we will continue to pursue. Finally, if I may put it plainly, we cannot let Satan, with seething resentment about unfair treatment received, tempt us away from the work that we must steadily advance.
Helen Alvaré is director of planning and information, Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Helen AlvarÈ ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: Beyond Feelings or Attraction DATE: 03/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 07-13, 1999 ----- BODY:When Rome's marriage tribunal inaugurated its work for 1999, John Paul II took the occasion to address its members on the deepest meaning of their work. The full text, omitting reference citations and introductory words, follows.
The subject I intend to address at today's meeting is an analysis of the nature of marriage and its essential characteristics in the light of the natural law.
Everyone knows the contribution which the jurisprudence of your Tribunal has made to our knowledge of the institution of marriage by offering a very sound doctrinal reference point for other ecclesiastical tribunals. This has made it possible to bring into ever better focus the essential content of marriage on the basis of a more adequate knowledge of the human person.
Value of Marriage Is Questioned
In the mentality of the contemporary world, however, we can discern a widespread deterioration of the natural and religious meaning of marriage, with troubling repercussions in both the personal and the public sphere. As e v e r y o n e knows, not only are the properties and ends of marriage called into question today, but even the value and the very usefulness of the institution. While avoiding undue generalizations, we cannot ignore, in this regard, the growing phenomenon of mere de facto unions and the unrelenting public opinion campaigns to gain the dignity of marriage even for unions between persons of the same sex.
It is not my intention to go on deploring and condemning in a setting such as this, where the primary concern is to correct and redeem painful and often tragic situations. I would like instead to remind not only those who belong to the Church of Christ the Lord, but everyone concerned with true human progress, how serious and indispensable are certain principles that are fundamental for human society and even more so for safeguarding the human dignity of every person.
The central core and foundation of these principles is the authentic concept of conjugal love between two persons of equal dignity, but different and complementary in their sexuality.
Obviously, this statement must be correctly understood, without falling into the facile misunderstanding that sometimes confuses a vague feeling or even a strong psychophysical attraction with real love for another person, which consists of a sincere desire for his or her welfare and is expressed in a concrete commitment to achieve it.
This is the clear teaching of the Second Vatican Council, but it is also one of the reasons why the two Codes of Canon Law, Latin and Eastern, promulgated by me, declared and set forth the bonum coniugum [good of conjugal life] as also a natural end of marriage.
A mere feeling is tied to the inconstancy of the human heart; mutual attraction alone, often stemming primarily from irrational and sometimes abnormal impulses, cannot have stability and is thus easily, if not inevitably, prone to fade away.
Unions That Are Not Marriage
Amor coniugalis [conjugal love], therefore, is not only and not primarily a feeling, but is essentially a commitment to the other person, a commitment made by a precise act of will. It is this commitment which gives amor [love] the quality of coniugalis. Once a commitment has been made and accepted through consent, love becomes conjugal and never loses this character. Here the fidelity of love, which is rooted in the freely assumed obligation, comes into play. In one of his meetings with the Rota my Predecessor, Pope Paul VI, said succinctly: “From a spontaneous feeling of affection, love becomes a binding obligation.”
Faced with the juridical culture of ancient Rome, Christian authors already felt compelled by the Gospel command to surmount the well-known principle that the conjugal bond lasts only as long as the affectio maritalis [marital affection]. They opposed this conception, containing in itself the seeds of divorce, with the Christian vision, which returned marriage to its original unity and indissolubility.
Here we sometimes encounter the misunderstanding in which marriage is identified or at least confused with the formal, outward rite that accompanies it. Certainly, the juridical form of marriage represents a civilized advance, since it confers both importance and efficacy on marriage in the eyes of society, which consequently undertakes to safeguard it. But you jurists cannot overlook the principle that marriage consists essentially, necessarily, and solely in the mutual consent expressed by those to be married. This consent is nothing other than the conscious, responsible assumption of a commitment through a juridical act by which, in reciprocal self-giving, the spouses promise total and definitive love to each other. They are free to celebrate marriage, after having chosen each other with equal freedom, but as soon as they perform this act they establish a personal state in which love becomes something that is owed, entailing effects of a juridical nature as well.
Your judicial experience lets you see first-hand how these principles are rooted in the existential reality of the human person. In short, the simulation of consent, for example, means nothing other than giving the marriage rite a merely external value, without the corresponding will for a reciprocal gift of love, of exclusive love, of indissoluble love, or of fruitful love. Is it any surprise that such a marriage is doomed to failure? Once the feeling or attraction dies, it lacks any element of internal cohesion. Missing is that reciprocal commitment of self-giving which alone can guarantee its permanence.
Something similar also applies to cases in which someone has been deceived into marrying, or when grave external coercion has taken away the freedom that is the presupposition of every voluntary commitment of love.
In the light of these principles, we can identity and understand the essential difference between a mere de facto union — even though it claims to be based on love — and marriage, in which love is expressed in a commitment that is not only moral but rigorously juridical. The bond reciprocally assumed has a strengthening effect, in turn, on the love from which it arises, fostering its permanence to the advantage of the partners, the children, and society itself.
In the light of the above-mentioned principles we can also see how incongruous is the demand to accord “marital” status to unions between persons of the same sex. It is opposed, first of all, by the objective impossibility of making the partnership fruitful through the transmission of life according to the plan inscribed by God in the very structure of the human being. Another obstacle is the absence of the conditions for that interpersonal complementarity between male and female willed by the Creator at both the physical-biological and the eminently psychological levels. It is only in the union of two sexually different persons that the individual can achieve perfection in a synthesis of unity and mutual psychophysical completion. From this perspective, love is not an end in itself and cannot be reduced to the corporal joining of two beings, but is a deep interpersonal relationship which reaches its culmination in total mutual self-giving and in cooperation with God the Creator, the ultimate source of every new human life.
Freedom Finds Fulfillment
As you know, these deviations from the natural law inscribed by God in the nature of the person seek their justification in the freedom that is a prerogative of the human being. This justification, in fact, is self-serving. Every believer knows that freedom, as Dante said, is “the greatest gift that God in his bounty made in creation, the most conformed to his goodness,” but it is a gift that must be correctly understood if it is not to become a stumbling-block for human dignity. To conceive of freedom as the moral or even juridical license to break the law is to distort its true nature. Freedom consists in the human being's possibility of conforming responsibly, that is by personal choice, to the divine will expressed in the law, and in this way to become more and more like his Creator (cf. Gn 1:26).
I have already written in the Encyclical Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of the Truth): “Man is certainly free, inasmuch as he can understand and accept God's commands. And he possesses an extremely far-reaching freedom, since he can eat ‘of every tree of the garden.’ But his freedom is not unlimited: it must halt before the ‘tree of the knowledge of good and evil,’ for it is called to accept the moral law given by God. In fact, human freedom finds its authentic and complete fulfillment precisely in the acceptance of that law. God, who alone is good, knows perfectly what is good for man, and by virtue of his very love proposes this good to man in the commandments” (No. 35).
Unfortunately, the daily news amply confirms the miserable fruits that these aberrations from the divine-natural law ultimately produce.
It seems as if the situation which the Apostle Paul describes in the Letter to the Romans is being repeated in our day: “Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct” (Rom 1:28).
This necessary reference to the problems of the present moment should not lead to discouragement or resignation. It should spur us instead to a more determined and better focused commitment. The Church and, consequently, canon law recognize that every person has the possibility of contracting marriage, a possibility, however, which can only be exercised by those “who are not prohibited by law” (Canon Law 1058). The latter are, first of all, those who have sufficient psychological maturity of intellect and will, along with the ability to fulfill the essential obligations of the marital institution. In this regard, I must once again recall what I said in my addresses precisely to this Tribunal in 1987 and 1988: an undue broadening of these personal requirements, recognized by Church law, would ultimately inflict a grievous vulnus [vulnerability] on that right to marriage which is inalienable and independent of any human power.
I will not dwell here on the other conditions laid down by canon law for valid marital consent. I will merely emphasize the serious responsibility incumbent on the Pastors of God's Church to provide engaged couples with serious and appropriate marriage preparation: only in this way can the mind of those preparing for marriage be instilled with the intellectual, moral, and spiritual dispositions necessary for fulfilling the natural and sacramental reality of matrimony.
I entrust these reflections, dear prelates and officials, to your minds and hearts, knowing full well the spirit of fidelity that inspires your work, in which you intend to apply the Church's norms in your search for the true welfare of God's People.
In support of your efforts, I affectionately impart my Apostolic Blessing to all of you here and to those in any way connected with the Tribunal of the Roman Rota.
Pope John Paul II, Jan. 21, Tribunal of the Roman Rota.
----- EXCERPT: The Pope tackles today's thorny issues at inaugural address to Rome's marriage tribunal ----- EXTENDED BODY: Pope John Paul II ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary ----------- TITLE: We've Been Framed! DATE: 03/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 07-13, 1999 ----- BODY:In a little-noticed court case early this year, a federal judge decided that Christian landlords in Alaska may refuse to rent to unmarried couples on religious grounds. Those landlords, observed the judge, do not pose much of a threat to people's ability to find housing in today's America. Though in the current judicial climate this is one of the saner rulings on religion in recent memory, the way this issue and many others are framed in the law, the media, and the culture pose a grave threat to our free exercise of religion.
The distorting frame begins with the decision itself, in which the judge seemed willing to grant Christians free exercise largely because it had no real effects. We used to think that rights of conscience and property took precedence, whatever their effects, over vague entitlements to secondary goods like housing. In fact, it is worth remembering that the Constitution and Bill of Rights make a point of guaranteeing freedom of religious exercise and disposition of our own property. Without both rights, religion must become merely private worship limited to specially designated religious places or to the home — as it is in communist nations, and in countries like Mexico that hold strong Enlightenment prejudices against public religiosity.
By now, the media and the culture more generally also frame religious issues in this same problematic way. When the judge rendered his decision, the headlines in most papers read something like this: “Judge's Decision Likely to Make Apartments Harder to Find for Some Americans.” Journalists have in most cases unconsciously accepted the framing narrative that religious expression is a secondary matter, to be trumped routinely when a controversy erupts over what are thought to be more basic questions, like “inclusion” or civil rights.
There are admittedly some hard cases. Religion and property rights were sometimes used to deny black Americans their civil rights. But to assume that because religion has sometimes been misused in the past, religion must now bow before any right that anyone claims is the sheerest mental laziness and a dangerous prejudice. There must be strong, almost foundational reasons for government to abrogate conscience and property rights. And for all but a fraction of a percent of contemporary issues, there are no such reasons.
Behind this error lies a popular confusion about the nature of democracy. By definition, democracy is a form of government. That is, the rules of democracy tell us something about how a government is constituted, what are its limits, and whence it gets its legitimacy.
For us in America, our government was established by the Constitution, which allows to the federal government only certain enumerated powers that derive their legitimacy from the people's consent.
But this does not mean that in other areas of life the people themselves must follow the same rules as their government. The U.S. government, for example, cannot prefer one religion over another; individual Americans or the population as a whole may do so because their religious choices are outside federal jurisdiction.
As George Washington famously wrote to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, R.I., even the notion of tolerating religions is different in this country: “It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should [comport] themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”
No governmental entity may discriminate against any American citizen; but you or I may choose with whom we wish to associate, or to whom we shall rent our property, because no one has any authority to force us to do otherwise.
Arguments like these are often thought to shipwreck on questions of race. If we allowed people that freedom, the response goes, we would be back in the old segregationist America. If so, that would be deplorable. But it is unlikely things would turn out that way. The civil rights movement has made almost all of us more sensitive to those questions; the people who remain unconvinced are unlikely to be deterred from practicing discrimination by laws that are quite difficult to apply.
And in any event, to forbid us to pick and choose among people on the basis of their chosen behavior and our deep-held beliefs, as in the Christian landlords' case, is to say that real religion, religion that makes a public difference, is not welcome in America. Some proponents of “civil society” have openly stated that non-democratic, exclusive, hierarchical, “patriarchal,” or other aggressively religious groups present a problem for democratic societies. That might be true if our system dictated that “society” must be democratic, but it does not. For us, our government is a democracy precisely so that society, including particular groups and individuals within it, will not be subject to curtailment of their rights to free exercise.
Confusion about this matter has led to any amount of mischief. My children once informed me at the dinner table that, even in the house, they had a constitutional right to free speech. I explained that the Constitution forbade Congress to limit political speech, but that their mother and I are in a different jurisdiction at home. Such is our confusion about the kind of government and society in which we live that many of us, not only children but adult believers included, seem ready to allow the substance of our freedoms to be framed in a way that allows an abstract, erroneous, and demonstrably dangerous notion of freedom to threaten true freedom.
Robert Royal writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Robert Royal ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: For Families, This Tax Law Pays DATE: 03/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 07-13, 1999 ----- BODY:PHOENIX—Sally Shanahan's four children received scholarship grants of $800 each for five years from the Arizona School Choice Trust to attend a Christian school in north Phoenix.
A tax law in Arizona makes it easy for donors to give to funds like the trust. And that made life easier for the Shanahans.
“Out tuition bill was $8,600 a year for four kids,” Shanahan said. “That $3,200 was a big chunk. It went a long ways for us. And the money goes directly to the school of our choice with no strings attached. That's the beauty of it — it's all private money.
It protects the school from the strings that come with government funds.”
After a lengthy legal battle, the Arizona Supreme Court recently upheld the state's tuition tax credit law. The statute allows a state income tax credit of up to $500 to contributors of a “school tuition organization” which in turn gives scholarship grants to children from low-income families to attend private schools.
The Arizona Supreme Court ruled that the statute was constitutional because it “does not prefer one religion over another, or religion over non-religion; it aids a broad spectrum of citizens.”
It also said the role of the state in the distribution of the scholarship money was “entirely passive” and so found no excessive entanglement between the state and any religious entity.
Under this law, an Arizona taxpayer can make a voluntary contribution of up to $500 to a tuition organization, and write it off his state income taxes.
Then, 90% of the money collected by the tuition organization funds the scholarships (it's allowed 10% of what it collects for administrative costs). Any family that qualifies for the federal school lunch program is eligible to apply for these scholarships, available for children through grade 12.
“The money goes directly to the parents, and the law provides that parents have the choice of what school their children can attend,” explained Msgr. Edward Ryle, director of the Arizona Catholic Conference. “However, contributions [to the tuition organization] can't be designated for one's own kids.”
‘Nobody Loses Except …’
“We hope to help every child who wants to attend a private or religious school,” said Jack McVaugh, president of the Arizona School Choice Trust, the group which helped to draft this legislation and which administers the tuition organization scholarship grants.
“For every child in private or religious schools, the state taxpayer saves around $5,000, so the state still makes money even with the tax credit,”
McVaugh explained. “Nobody loses except the public schools — they lose kids.
“We don't want to kill the public schools. We just hope that enough kids will get to change that it will really hurt the public schools and they will have to change their ways to stay competitive.”
The Arizona School Choice Trust has given out more than 400 scholarships over the last seven years to nearly 80 children. McVaugh said that roughly half of them use the money to attend Catholic schools.
Msgr. Ryle said there are still “several hundred openings” in Catholic schools statewide for families participating in this program in the future.
A tax credit, vs. a tax deduction for a charitable contribution to a tuition organization, makes a significant difference for the taxpayer's bottom line.
“A $500 contribution to a tuition organization could take between $250 and $350 off your taxes, depending on your adjusted gross income,” according to Justin Moran, financial analyst for the Phoenix diocesan high schools. “The basic difference is whether you are sending your tax liability to the state, or sending it to a charitable cause. You have a choice: Send it to the department of revenue or send it to the tuition organization.”
The Arizona law falls short of providing tax relief to families of all income levels, as advocated by many tuition-paying parents of children in private schools across the country.
However, the Arizona case may help other states to craft broader legislation that will not only be passed into law, but also survive the tests of their courts.
This year, the Shanahan family income was too high to qualify for the scholarships, but they are on a waiting list of about 800.
As more money is donated to the tuition organizations, the income scale for recipients can slide up incrementally. They are hoping that the Arizona Supreme Court decision can be a big boost to the tuition organization's fund-raising capabilities.
Choice With the Parent
However, Marshall Fritz, director of the Separation of School and State Alliance, called the Arizona Supreme Court decision “steps in the wrong direction.” Fritz's organization rejects vouchers and tax credits.
“Catholics grubbing for dollars through the tax man is taking us away from the solution of parental responsibility,” Fritz commented. “This Arizona thing is money laundering. … It doesn't really solve the problem. What happens with the Arizona Supreme Court decision is that it says you don't have to be responsible any more” for the consequences of bad public schools.
Shanahan saw things differently. “The choice lies with me as a parent, not with the state or the teacher's union,” she said.
The debate surrounding the Arizona case highlighted the fact that several factions of private education supporters exist, and they do not always agree in their approach to helping families meet tuition costs.
McVaugh said, “This is all private money — that's why we feel that a tax credit is so much better than a voucher bill. The money comes from citizens who wish to contribute.
“We have a voucher bill still before the [Arizona] Legislature. We hope it does not pass … because then the government is paying for these children's education and they can start nitpicking so they are controlling religious education.”
In California, some state legislators are working on an omnibus tax bill that will allow a tax credit for any legitimate educational expense incurred by families with children in public or private schools, anything from textbooks to band uniforms to tuition.
“We are working on a blanket $500 per child tax credit for any legitimate educational expense which can include tuition, but it goes a lot further in saying … that the state and private sector should be in a partnership to educate these children,” stated Robert Teegarden, director of education for the California Catholic Conference. “The Arizona decision will go a long way to encourage that development in California.”
Molly Mulqueen writes from Colorado Springs, Colorado.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Molly Mulqueen ----- KEYWORDS: Education ----------- TITLE: Canada Shows More Leeway DATE: 03/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 07-13, 1999 ----- BODY:Canada generally allows more public tuition-assistance for private school children than does the United States.
Each province maintains its own unique system, but as a general rule, there is more government financial assistance for private schools in Canada than in the United States.
“What is happening here is that if parents choose to send their children to private schools, the [Alberta] government funds that at about 75%, which is really quite generous,” according to Peggy Anderson, a trustee with the Calgary Public Schools Board of Education.
“Alberta has a Catholic school system which is protected constitutionally under the Canada Act,” Anderson explained. “In 1905, when Alberta joined the federation, that was part of the deal.”
And does all that government money flowing into private education come with stipulations that compromise the schools with a religious affiliation?
Anderson said that all schools, public and private, have to meet provincial curriculum standards, but they do not interfere with any religious mission. In her words, “that is not a problem at this point.”
“The private school system is thriving more than the public school system would like,” Anderson said. “As the public system becomes more and more secular, private schools are becoming more traditional.”
“We [the Calgary Board of Education] are doing everything we can to help private schools, and our defense of that … is that we desperately need the competition.”
Molly Mulqueen
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Molly Mulqueen ----- KEYWORDS: Education ----------- TITLE: EDUCATION NOTEBOOK DATE: 03/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 07-13, 1999 ----- BODY:In Praise of Supporters Of Catholic Schools
For public schools to win that kind of support, “business leaders need to see urban school districts and teachers unions embracing the kinds of reform that have worked,” says USA Today. “For districts, that means real school accountability. For unions, it means real teacher accountability and tearing up contracts that prevent districts from sending the best teachers to the neediest schools.”
When those things start to happen, “the next generation of business leaders will come with their sleeves already rolled up.”
Old-Style Principal Wows the Media
The Times' Anemona Hartocollis describes Farina as “a compact but commanding presence,” the principal “everybody loves to fear,” who “gets results.”
In addition to a rise in academic performance and an 80% turnover in staff, those results include parents lining up to get their children into Farina's now-exclusive school. As it happens, the principal of Public School 6 is a product of a Catholic education.
New Age In, Christianity Out?
The school district defended its programs as “standard educational fare,” and took issue with the plaintiffs for complaining about such things as its Drug Abuse Resistance Education Program and peer counseling.
Steven DiNozzi, 13, testified that his religious beliefs were offended when a bird fashioned from a milk carton and tissue paper, representing the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, was hung inside his former classroom.
Earth Day ceremonies and a card game with “demonic references,” occult rituals, and depictions of human sacrifice were also mentioned in the complaint.
Plaintiffs' lawyer James Bendell said the case offered an opportunity to end what he called a double standard that allows teachers to “smuggle in” lessons about Eastern and neo-pagan religions while not permitting lessons about Christianity.
Political Activism On Campus Is Changing
Cowen was a participant in a daylong conference sponsored by the Young America's Foundation organization that brought conservative students together from around the country to share ideas and celebrate the growth of their efforts.
“Emboldened by growing support from national conservative, libertarian, and Christian … organizations, conservative students increasingly are insisting their voices be heard on issues they care about,” reports USA Today's Mary Beth Marklein. Those issues include race quotas and the use of student fees to support causes like abortion on demand.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education ----------- TITLE: Director's Affliction Makes Religion Suffer DATE: 03/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 07-13, 1999 ----- BODY:Because movies and television shows have become almost as influential as schools and churches in the formation of our culture's values, it's important to understand the mind-set of its key creators — particularly if they are doing harm.
The danger signs are easy to spot when movies and television programs have excessive sex and violence. But more subtle — and perhaps more damaging — are attitudes of moral relativism and despair. These are often easiest to identify in productions made for idealistic reasons rather than the fast buck.
Paul Schrader, the screenwriter responsible for the likes of Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and the scandal-causing The Last Temptation of Christ, was raised as a conservative Protestant with a Calvinist bent. Although he lost his faith as a young adult, his work often examines religious beliefs, sometimes with a deviant twist. He was a critic before he was a screenwriter, and he published Transcendental Style in Film, a study of directors like Dreyer, Bresson, and Ozu, whose movies had spiritual themes. Schrader's own work is, in many ways, an extension of that tradition.
As a writer-director, Shrader's latest is Affliction. Based on a novel by Russell Banks (The Sweet Hereafter), the movie shows how the violence of an abusive father affects his sons. Schrader sets the action during a single deer-hunting season in Lawford, New Hamsphire. It begins at the end of October, when evil spirits are symbolically unleashed. Snow has already fallen and provides a bleak backdrop for what follows.
Narrator Rolfe Whitehouse (Willem Dafoe) informs us, “This is the story of my older brother's criminal behavior.” Schrader makes an ironic visual juxtaposition by cutting to the town's symbol of law and order, policeman Wade Whitehouse (Nick Nolte). We're warned that things aren't going to turn out well for Rolfe's middle-aged sibling.
The reason is given in a later piece of narration, a lament for the boys “who were beaten by their fathers, whose capacity for love and truth was crippled almost at birth and whose best hope for a connection to other human beings lay in elaborating for themselves an elegiac mode of relatedness, as if everyone's life was already over.”
This description applies to Rolfe and Wade. Both brothers have had their lives shaped by paternal violence. As a result, Rolfe bottles up all his emotions, but Wade can't keep his under control.
Wade is overwhelmed with problems. He wants to take custody of his 9-year-old daughter, Jill (Brigid Tierney), away from his ex-wife, Lillian (Mary Beth Hurt). Both regard him as a violence-prone pest.
To help make ends meet, he works for the prosperous local developer (Holmes Osborne) who orders him around in a humiliating fashion. Wade and Rolfe's father, Glen (James Coburn), a tyrannical drunk, is still alive. At key moments, the movie flashes back to his beatings of his wife and sons.
A powerful labor leader is killed in what looks like an accident while deer hunting with Wade's friend, Jack (Jim True). Wade seizes on the possibility of a mob connection, hoping that if he finds proof, it will somehow redeem his unhappy life.
Schrader uses religion as a frame of reference. Wade and Rolfe's sister is a born-again Christian, a spiritual commitment the filmmaker implies is a defense mechanism against her abusive upbringing. Her faith is unattractive and judgmental. At their mother's funeral she bullies Rolfe for his lack of belief, threatening him with going to hell. “I guess I will,” he replies with a smile, adding that the rest of the family will probably join him there.
At times the religious symbolism is pushed too far. In one sequence, when Wade directs traffic outside the school, the camera lingers on his outstretched arms as if it were an image of crucifixion.
Wade however, still has the remnants of a conscience. “Right is right,” he rages. But this moral awareness doesn't help him. He's one of the walking wounded, and despite good intentions, his ungovernable emotions always get the better of him.
The movie skillfully captures Wade's inner agony and makes us root for him to find a way out. But the cop is caught up in the same archetypal notions of aggressive masculinity that drive his brutal alcoholic father. The sins of the father are passed on to the son.
Schrader dramatizes this dark subject by creating a world that's the reverse image of his youthful Christianity. In Affliction, there's no possibility of salvation or redemption. Evil goes unpunished. It's as if the filmmaker's own loss of faith is projected onto his characters' fates, and positive values like honesty and decency are corroded by nihilism and despair.
John Prizer currently writes from Paris.
Affliction is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts ----------- TITLE: Videos on Release DATE: 03/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 07-13, 1999 ----- BODY:Ever After: A Cinderella Story
Ever After: A Cinderella Story adds several twists to the traditional tale of an oppressed but good young woman and a powerful man who rescues her. Danielle (Drew Barrymore) is living as an unpaid servant in the house left by her father. The feisty Danielle adores books, fights injustice, and is inspired by St. Thomas More's Utopia, refusing to be cowed by her intimidating stepmother (Anjelica Huston) and two stepsisters (Megan Dodds and Melanie Lynskey). She also refuses to be awed by the prince (Dougray Scott) when he finally appears — with good reason. Prince Henry has remained somewhat adolescent in his behavior. However, the two do fall in love, grow in maturity, and embark on a deeper appreciation of love's responsibilities. Ever After is one of the few truly romantic films released in recent years. Although its pacing is occasionally off, the movie manages to be amusing, inspiring, and even enchanting.
John of the Cross
In the early ‘80s, Leonardo and Patti Defilippis founded Saint Luke Productions. The two actors produced traveling plays about great Church figures. Each production was a one-man show starring Leonardo Defilippis. But when the husband-and-wife team decided to film the life of St. John of the Cross, they expanded the cast to include Patti as Saint Teresa of Avila, and extras in other roles. The result is John of the Cross, a video co-released by Saint Luke Productions and Ignatius Press. The film isn't a straightforward biography of the great 16th-century mystic. It presents the overall arc of his life, but pauses to illustrate important incidents, particularly the relationship between the two saints as they reformed the Carmelites. The video also quotes extensively from St. John's gorgeous poetry. In fact, the poetry is by far the strongest aspect of this earnest but slightly amateurish production since it serves as an introduction to the mind of one of the Church's greatest figures.
Shadrach
For most of his adult life, the 99-year-old Shadrach (John Franklin Sawyer) has been living as a sharecropper in Alabama. This former slave has outlived his family, and he knows that he will soon die. So he walks north hundreds of miles to Virginia, looking for the Dabney family, on whose plantation he had been born in 1836. Shadrach finds some Dabney descendants, but they are suffering from the Depression, which has drained their wealth. The clan is led by Vernon Dabney (Harvey Keitel), a stouthearted but verbally profane man, and by his wife, Trixie, a kind woman with a fondness for beer. These two are the caring but casual parents of seven children. Vernon and Trixie take Shadrach, their younger kids, and a neighbor boy, and head to the family's old plantation and the graveyard the venerable sharecropper wants to be buried in. The ending forces the Dabneys to make several tough decisions. Shadrach is a bittersweet, almost lyrical story about family, responsibility, and the power of the past. It slowly reveals how seemingly simple decisions can have incalculable consequences.
— Loretta Seyer
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Loretta Seyer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts ----------- TITLE: Up From the Ashes DATE: 03/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 07-13, 1999 ----- BODY:Recognized as one of the preeminent Marian shrines in central Europe, Our Lady of Kevelaer welcomes more than 800,000 pilgrims each year. The faithful come from all over the world to pray before a miraculous image of the Virgin Mary in the village square.
The story of the shrine dates back to the 17th century. The small town of Kevelaer had been decimated by the Thirty Years' War and was finally wiped out by fire. The village was a virtual wasteland when, in 1641, an event occurred that eventually brought it back from the ashes.
Hendrick Busman and his wife acquired an image of Mary in extraordinary circumstances (see story below). Upon returning to the family cottage with the picture, Busman found his home besieged by an endless number of pilgrims who came to pray before the holy image.
Unable to accommodate all the visitors who wanted to venerate and pray before the image, the merchant asked the local Capuchin friars to enshrine the picture in their chapel. So great were the pilgrim crowds that they overwhelmed the Capuchins' sanctuary. The friars encouraged Busman to quickly finish construction on a red-brick shrine that he had begun building over the spot where he first heard a voice telling him to build a chapel.
On June 1, 1641, the holy portrait was finally brought in solemn procession to the new sanctuary. The swelling number of pilgrims soon overwhelmed the parish priest, and the bishop assigned three additional priests.
Stories of healings became almost daily occurrences. So many miracles were reported during the first five years that the local diocese called for an investigation. After an exhaustive inquiry, many of the cures were declared miraculous.
The importance of the shrine soon meant that a more imposing structure would be required. In 1654 the local church officials consecrated the present-day sanctuary which encloses the original brick-pillar shrine and the miraculous picture. As the years went by, the sanctuary continued to grow in popularity.
All pilgrimages to the shrine, located near the French border, were suspended during the French Revolution. In order to protect the precious image from ruthless destruction, the priests placed the picture in the tower wall of the parish church. Here it remained until 1802, when pilgrimages to the shrine resumed. Ninety years later, the miraculous image was crowned in a papal coronation during celebrations of the shrine's 250th anniversary.
Today the image of the Virgin still remains visible, though it has faded considerably over the years. Devotion to Our Lady of Kevelaer, however, remains stronger than ever.
Pilgrims can be seen throughout the year praying before the holy image, beseeching the Mother of God for her comfort and protection. In recent years, Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa have been among the most famous pilgrims to visit the shrine. Along with Our Lady of Altötting, no other Marian shrine in Germany receives more visitors annually.
A popular and lively place of pilgrimage, the Kevelaer shrine is home to many celebrations and processions throughout the year. Among the most landmarks are the Chapel of Mercy, which features the miraculous image of our Lady, and the Candle Chapel, the place where pilgrims light candles in honor of their petitions. Another great attraction is the shrine's 19th-century basilica.
Most of the services for pilgrims are held in this bright, ornate church. Several chapels connected to the basil-ica also serve as additional places of worship, including the Chapel of Baptism and Confession, named for its art that depicts these two sacraments, and the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament. There is also an outdoor, partly covered Pax Christi Chapel, site of many services during the summer months. If not praying at one of the many chapels, pilgrims can often be found walking along the peaceful tree-lined Stations of the Cross.
The pilgrimage season begins May 1 with the opening of the Pilgrim's Gate, and ends Nov. 1. Guided tours of the shrine are available year-round, but reservations should be made in advance.
The shrine provides housing for pilgrimage groups, but not for individual travelers.
Kevin Wright writes from Bellevue, Washington.
----- EXCERPT: Our Lady of Kevelaer keeps pilgrims coming to a German sanctuary ----- EXTENDED BODY: Kevin Wright ----- KEYWORDS: Travel ----------- TITLE: A Christmas Gift from Mary DATE: 03/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 07-13, 1999 ----- BODY:During Christmas season of 1641, a wandering peddler named Hendrick Busman, from the nearby town of Geldern, was passing by the empty, fire-ravished village of Kevelaer. He suddenly felt an urge to stop and spend a few moments at a wayside cross.
After dismounting from his horse, the merchant knelt to pray for the souls of those who had perished in the fire and to ask for a safe journey home. Then, just as he began to get back on his horse, he heard a voice say: “At this place, you shall build me a chapel.”
Busman quickly put the voice out of his mind as he continued his journey. A week later, while passing through the same vacant area, he felt the same urge to stop at the wayside cross. Again, while in prayer, Busman distinctly heard the words of a heavenly voice directing him to build a chapel at the spot.
After hearing the voice for a third time on another day, the merchant knew he had to accept the mission. He worried about the limited funds he had to do the job, however.
A short time later, another key event occurred. The peddler's wife awoke one night to find a bright light shining into their bedroom. In the midst of it appeared a little shrine, with a very small picture of the Virgin Mary. She recognized the image as that of Our Lady, Comforter of the Afflicted, enshrined for many years at a famous Luxembourg sanctuary. The apparition also showed two soldiers who were each carrying paper images of the same Madonna, also know as Our Lady of Luxembourg.
When the traveling peddler heard of his wife's vision, he encouraged her to discover the whereabouts of the military men and the image. Somehow she eventually tracked the soldiers down and retrieved a picture identical to the one in her dream. This might have come from an army lieutenant who was serving time in the nearby Kempen prison.
The colorless image resembles a sketch or an illustration done in the style of a woodcarving. It depicts the Madonna wearing a flowing cape and star-studded crown. In her left arm is the Child Jesus with a crown and orb, and in her right hand a scepter. In the background is the town of Luxembourg and its Chapel of Mercy.
Upon learning of his wife's discovery, the merchant made plans to construct the shrine in accordance with her vision.
—Kevin Wright
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Kevin Wright ----- KEYWORDS: Travel ----------- TITLE: Israeli Group Helps Women Forgo Abortions DATE: 03/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 07-13, 1999 ----- BODY:JERUSALEM—Just under a year ago, Leah, a Jewish Israeli, narrowly escaped having an abortion.
“I had three little daughters at home and I was pregnant again,” recalls the 24-year-old homemaker. “I don't work and things were hard economically. My husband didn't want another child at the time and said, ‘Get an abortion.’”
Hoping to receive some moral support, Leah called a close friend just before checking into a local hospital for the procedure. The friend didn't provide any. “She asked me why I wanted to kill my baby. When we got off the phone she called Efrat.”
A volunteer from Efrat, known in English as the Committee for the Rescue of Israel's Babies, then called Leah and tried to persuade her to stay home. When that didn't work, the volunteer phoned Leah's mother and persuaded her to rush to the hospital.
By the time the mother arrived, Leah was already prepped for an abortion. “My sister works at the hospital so they put me at the top of the list. I was already on an IV when a woman from the Efrat arrived.
“She told me that she was 33, unmarried and had no children. She said I was lucky to be pregnant. Then my mother walked into the room and told me that she would take care of the baby if I didn't want him.”
At the time, Leah says, “I was angry. I thought, ‘My husband wants me to have an abortion and it's no one else's business.’The nurses told me that it was my body and I had a right to have an abortion. But then I just couldn't.”
‘Think a little more. Are you sure you won't regret this step when it's too late to undo it?’
After giving birth two months ago, Leah says that neither she nor her husband has had any regrets about her decision to go through with the pregnancy.
“In the beginning my husband was very angry with me, but as it turned out, we had a son after three daughters. He's thrilled about the baby, and very embarrassed by his insistence that I abort. Had I done it, he wouldn't have the son he always wanted.”
Thanks to Efrat—a group that is directed by a self-described “pro-choice” doctor—and a new educational campaign by the Ministry of Health, more women could soon be following Leah's lead.
According to official government statistics, the rate of abortion in Israel is on the wane. The number of abortions per 100 live births decreased from 14.9 in 1992 to 14.0 in 1997, the last year for which statistics are available. While women's organizations say that improved sex education has led to an increase in contraceptive use and fewer abortions, anti-abortion activists take much of the credit.
Regardless of the reasons for the decrease, activists say that the rate of abortion in Israel is still too high. In 1997, 17,400 legal abortions took place, and it's assumed that a few thousand illegal procedures were also performed.
Until 1997, the only abortion legislation in the country was a law dating back to the British Mandate. It prohibited all abortions unless there was a serious risk to a woman's health or life. In 1997, the country introduced its own legislation, which permitted abortions in a number of cases. Abortion was allowed when the pregnancy was likely to endanger the woman's life or cause her physical or emotional harm; when the woman was under the age of 17 or over the age of 40; when the pregnancy resulted from a rape or incest, or from relations not sanctioned from marriage; or when continuing the pregnancy would cause social or economic distress. Due to efforts from the ultra-Orthodox community, this last clause was removed from the law.
Since the majority of Israelis are pro-choice—and Jewish law advocates the termination of a pregnancy if the mother's life is endangered — anti-abortion activists have focused their energies not on voiding the law but on persuading women to carry their babies to term.
Late last year, in the biggest boost to the anti-abortion movement in recent memory, Shlomo Benizri, the deputy minister of health, ordered the publication of a booklet showing the development of a fetus, and stipulated that the booklet must be shown to every woman seeking an abortion from an authorized hospital or clinic. (Women seeking an abortion must apply to the hospital's or clinic's abortion committee, which is comprised of two physicians and a social worker. Between 90 and 95% of those requesting abortions receive permission.)
The booklet, whose cover shows an adorable infant looking out from a blanket, includes ultrasound photos of fetuses, accompanied by the words, “Surely you're curious about the developmental stage of the fetus in your womb and what it looks like.” The text says that life begins at conception, and that the fertilized ovum contains all the future characteristics of the child.
The booklet ends with another baby picture and the words, “think a little more. Are you sure you won't regret this step when it's too late to undo it? Is ending the pregnancy so important that you're willing to take the physical and emotional risks it entails?”
In an even bolder step, Benizri is also reportedly preparing legislation that would forbid abortions after the 24th week, even if continuing the pregnancy endangered the woman's life or health.
In a January interview in the Jerusalem Post magazine, Benizri — a member of the country's 500,000-strong ultra-Orthodox minority — explained why he started the campaign: “As a rabbi, I want [a woman] to be convinced … that abortion is murder. I want every woman to understand that she's not aborting an extraterrestrial or a silkworm.”
Women's rights organizations have blasted the deputy minister's actions, saying that he has overstepped his authority.
Rivka Makawes, a member of law committee of the Israel Women's Network, says that “it is not the job of the Ministry of Health to make these kinds of decisions. I think abortion is a very difficult decision for every woman, and the conditions under which a woman can legally have an abortion are difficult. It's not up to the ministry to persuade anyone.”
Due to an outcry by women's groups and civil rights organizations, the ministry had to halt publication of its booklet halfway in January. However, 15,000 copies reached hospitals and clinics before the health minister froze distribution.
While applauding Benizri's efforts, Dr. Eli Schussheim, the director of Efrat, believes that the most effective form of persuasion is a personal one.
According to the physician, his organization has been able to “save” more than 10,000 babies during the past three decades, ostensibly by approaching expectant mothers on an individual basis and offering them financial and other support.
“Most abortions are unnecessary,” says Schussheim, an Orthodox Jew. The physician said he does support some abortions, in situations which are “very rare.”
The Catholic “Charter for Health Care Workers” opposes abortions even in the case of danger to the mother — and so does the Hippocratic oath and centuries of medical ethical teachings, said Carmelite Father Bonifacio Honings, when introducing the charter in 1995.
Health care workers have opposed abortion for millennia, he said, “even if the health of the mother, a child too many, a serious fetal deformation, and a pregnancy caused by sexual violence, all involve very serious questions.”
He added, “Here the evident synthesis of Hippocratic ethics and Christian morality cannot be contested — both Hippocratic ethics and Christian morality regard all forms of direct abortion or direct euthanasia as illegitimate because one is dealing with an act which destroys a prenatal life and with an act of murder which nobody can justify.”
As for Schussheim, his team of 2,400 volunteers do everything in their power to win over women of child-bearing age.
“I'm giving lectures in schools, at army bases, in the universities,” he said. “We publish a lot of material. We put 1.4 million leaflets of the [anti-abortion booklet] The Baby's Diary in mailboxes. In schools where we don't have permission to speak, I send out volunteers to hand out leaflets to students outside the schools.”
Rather than organize demonstrations, Schussheim advocates a one-onone approach. “We talk to pregnant women considering abortions and ask why they're doing it. If the problem is financial, we try to help them. We ask them which supermarket they buy food from, and every month we send a check in her name directly to the store so she can buy groceries. Once the baby is born the groceries continue for six to eight months and we give the woman baby supplies in addition.” Efrat also provides “foster homes” to single pregnant girls whose parents have evicted them.
Schussheim said, “I've never organized a demonstration but I think I've convinced many women to keep their babies.”
In Evangelium Vitae Pope John Paul II embraces such a one-on-one approach. He points out that the abortion is often encouraged by a woman's family.
“As well as the mother, there are often other people too who decide upon the death of the child in the womb. In the first place, the father of the child may be to blame, not only when he directly pressures the woman to have an abortion, but also when he indirectly encourages such a decision on her part by leaving her alone to face the problems of pregnancy: in this way the family is thus mortally wounded and profaned in its nature as a community of love and in its vocation to be the ‘sanctuary of life.’
Nor can one overlook the pressures which sometimes come from the wider family circle and from friends. Sometimes the woman is subjected to such strong pressure that she feels psychologically forced to have an abortion: certainly in this case moral responsibility lies particularly with those who have directly or indirectly obliged her to have an abortion.
Doctors and nurses are also responsible, when they place at the service of death skills which were acquired for promoting life” (No. 59).
At Efrat, they are doing just the opposite.
Michele Chabin writes from Jerusalem.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Michele Chabin ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life ----------- TITLE: Hmong Meet Natural Family Planning DATE: 03/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 07-13, 1999 ----- BODY:MINNEAPOLIS—Coming to America hasn't been easy for the Hmong people of Laos.
In flight from the communist regime that took over their home-land amid Asian turmoil following the Vietnam War, the Hmong eventually fled to the United States by the thousands beginning in the late 1970s.
Among with the usual problems of entering a strange culture, the Hmong faced the problem of how to support their traditionally large families in their new, generally urban surroundings. The problem was particularly acute in the Twin Cities area, where the Hmong population numbers 60,000, the largest in the United States.
The traditional rural folk were accustomed to seeing children as a blessing, and, though not all of them are Christians, the very thought of using artificial contraceptives was foreign to them.
That's when MayLy Lochungvu stepped in. Lochungvu, a Hmong, saw the problem and responded, with the help of the Twin Cities Natural Family Planning Center. She underwent training and in 1995 became the center's outreach coordinator to the Hmong.
She recalled when she began to teach her compatriots about fertility awareness and the ovulation method of natural family planning.
“For them, doing nothing already means natural family planning,” Lochungvu said. “They maybe abstain for two or three months because they do not know their fertile and infertile times. Even educated Hmong don't know that you only ovulate once a cycle.”
Lochungvu helped the Twin Cities staff understand deal with her people's cultural traits. The Hmong were very shy about their sexuality, for instance; spouses were reluctant to discuss it with others. And because their written language is relatively new, there was a need to develop special teaching materials for them to learn natural family planning.
“To say it's natural family planning would be misunderstood to be what they already do, which is to not use chemicals and devices,” Lochungvu said. “We had to show it was an actual method — the ovulation method — to help them understand the difference. Once they take the classes, they understand women's fertility and see it is a natural and safe way to plan their family size. They are culturally OK with fertility awareness, but not necessarily sex education.”
Among the traditional Hmong, fertility was seen as a sign of prosperity. Large families were common in their native Laos and practical for their farming economy.
In 1975, as communists took over Laos, many Hmong fled to Thailand where they lived for five years in refugee camps. There, many encountered Catholic and other Christian missionaries, and converted from their animist and shamanist beliefs. In 1979 and 1980, they started coming to the United States in large numbers.
Today in urban America where the Hmong have been resettled, language barriers, illiteracy, and a lack of skills have barred many of them from good jobs needed to support a large family. Hence, for the first time in their history, family planning is an issue.
Natural family planning proved to be culturally fitting for the Hmong who oppose invasive medicines and reject the birth control pill and contraceptive devices, Lochungvu said.
To devise a curriculum geared for the Hmong, the Twin Cities center obtained a grant from the Minnesota Department of Health. This included a videotape, written materials, instructional slides, and a client manual, which were developed by Lochungvu and Georgia Amdahl, the center's education director. They also devised a new charting system that could be readily understood by anyone, even non-English speakers.
Lochungvu has taught 40 couples since 1994, and her referrals are growing. “You teach two or three couples and they will pass on the information,” she explained. “It will spread by word of mouth and in the long-term, it will be more like a network.” The center's goal is to teach at least 5% of the Hmong.
The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis is supportive of Twin Cities center and promotes its materials and courses through the arch-diocesan Office of Marriage and Family Life.
However, the executive director of Twin Cities, Mark Erickson, sees the need to service everybody, not just the Catholics who make up about one-half the center's clientele. Erickson, a Baptist, believes that natural family planning is a way to manage the God-given gift of fertility.
Pope Paul VI, in his encyclical Humanae Vitae, wrote, “If therefore there are well-grounded reasons for spacing births, arising from the physical or psychological condition of husband or wife, or from external circumstances, the Church teaches that married people may then take advantage of the natural cycles immanent in the reproductive system and engage in marital intercourse only during those times that are infertile” (No. 16). For a fuller excerpt, see the Gospel of Life box on Page 16.
Lochungvu said, “We try to explain that natural family planning is not avoiding pregnancy, it's avoiding and achieving pregnancy. We are not telling couples not to have any children. We teach the fertile days and the infertile days and they make their own decisions.”
Father Robert Wellisch, who was a chaplain in the St. Paul Hmong community for 11 years, said for them it has never been for them a moral decision to have or not have children, but one of tradition.
“I don't think it has to do with strong morals along the same lines as Catholics,” he said. “They always saw the birth of a child as a happy thing, especially since in their traditional culture there was so much infant mortality.
“Family was their social security and everybody had a place in the family. Clearly here, it is not as good economically. They have a fear of being caught in a culture of poverty if they have too many children. I'm sure they are trying to find a way on their own and Church is offering this means [natural family planning], but the word has to trickle down to them.”
Community Outreach
Outreach to the medical community is helping. Amdahl, the education director at Twin Cities, said a natural family planning presentation was made to the nursing and obstretics-gynecology staffs at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis. The staffs were favorable to the Hmong program, Amdahl.
Jennifer Williams, an OB-GYN nurse at the Hennepin center, said many nurses were surprised by the presentation; many didn't know that natural family planning existed and that it is effective.
Moreover, she added, many of the nurses were grateful to have a resource that is culturally acceptable to the Hmong, who comprise about 15% to 20% of the OB-GYN patients at the Hennepin center. Many of the Hmong are very receptive to natural family planning, Williams added.
“It depends on the family,” the nurse explained. “Some are interested and grateful to have an option that fits their cultural values. Others still want the large families, particularly the husbands and the younger couples, many of whom are 16, 17, or 18 years old. They don't want to think about limiting their families yet. But at some point they may, and the natural family planning materials will help.”
The Hmong videotape, narrated by Lochungvu, is now distributed at hospitals, clinics, and other locations. In addition, the Twin Cities center has provider contracts with several insurance companies and is working on a plan to educate the physicians and clinics in those insurance groups. They are also trying to recruit more physicians to their natural family planning medical consultant program, including a local Hmong physician.
Their long-term goal is to spread the Hmong curriculum to other parts of the country, develop a Spanish-language curriculum for Hispanic communities, and identify other cultural groups to target. Their online address is www.tcnfp.org.
“Natural family planning respects cultures, customs, and fertility,” said Lochungvu. “In our differences, we are united with our cycles. Any culture should have the right to get this knowledge.”
Barb Ernster writes from Fridley, Minnesota.
----- EXCERPT: Twin Cities facility reaches out to Laotian immigrants and the medical community ----- EXTENDED BODY: Barbara Ernster ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life ----------- TITLE: Did You Know? DATE: 03/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 07-13, 1999 ----- BODY:Euthanasia, or so-called mercy killing, is being promoted in state legislatures and in the U.S. Congress. The experience in Holland shows how euthanasia works in practice.
• Every Dutch doctor receives formal “how to” euthanasia training in medical school, and the Royal Dutch Society of Pharmacology issues a “how to” euthanasia book to every doctor. This book contains recipes for undetectable poisons that doctors can place in food or inject in such a way that they are almost impossible to detect during an autopsy.
(“The Member's Aid Service of the Dutch Association for Voluntary Euthanasia,” Euthanasia Review, Fall 1986, Page 153. “Choosing When to End Life,” Albuquerque Journal, Oct. 16, 1988, Page F1.)
• The Dutch Euthanasia Society published Dr. Pieter Admiraal's “how to” euthanasia manual in 1977. Euthanasia groups presented this manual to every doctor in Holland, and have also translated it into English and shipped it to the United States. Every doctor knows the exact cost of treatment for every common illness or injury beforehand, because they are written up on charts for easy reference and analysis for each individual case. Hospital administrators instruct their general practitioners to use these charts and then to give involuntary lethal injections to those elderly patients whose care is deemed “too expensive.”
(“Restructuring Health Care,” The Lancet, Jan. 28, 1989, Page 209. “Dutch Euthanasia Rule Stirs Ethical Conflicts,” John Henley, Associated Press, The Oregonian, Feb. 11, 1993, Page A9.)
----- EXCERPT: Facts of Life ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life ----------- TITLE: Murdered Priest's Bishops Warn Against Death Penalty DATE: 03/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 07-13, 1999 ----- BODY:EAST LONDON, South Africa— The murder of a priest in South Africa has prompted the South African Catholic Bishops' Conference to make a startling observation about the country today.
“The death of Father Peleman underlines a cold fact of life in South Africa: Life has ceased to have any value,” the bishops said in the statement. “There are many who will plead for the reintroduction of the death penalty as a deterrent. The Church does not advocate this. Rather, we call for a national campaign to emphasize the sacredness of human life — something which will not just happen without a determined effort to stop every form of murder.”
The statement was released Feb. 20, a day after three suspects appeared in a magistrate's court in the north of South Africa in connection with the murder earlier this month of the 74-year-old Belgian Benedictine priest, Father Albert Peleman. He was shot dead in his apartment at a mission station near the town of Pietersburg.
A parish priest who worked especially with blind, Father Peleman's last words were all the more poignant: “I cannot see anymore.”
The missionary had been in South Africa for 15 years.
The bishops said it was heartening that the suspects in the priest's death had been caught within a week of the murder, after a tip-off from the public.
They also pointed out that there were “also too many guns in South Africa — licensed or otherwise.”
South Africa, with a population of about 40 million, has 2.2 million licensed firearms, and the number of unlicensed guns is also high. On average more than 30 people die from gunshot wounds every day in South Africa, according to the Charter for Gun Control, a document launched in Johannesburg this month.
Licensed firearms, of which more than 2,000 are reported lost or stolen every month, are considered a good source of supply to those with criminal intent.
The bishops' statement continued:
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life ----------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 03/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 07-13, 1999 ----- BODY:Pope Paul VI spoke about the use of natural family planning and the well-grounded reason for spacing births. (See story by Barbara Ernster.) In Humanae Vitae he wrote:
If therefore there are well-grounded reasons for spacing births, arising from the physical or psychological condition of husband or wife, or from external circumstances, the Church teaches that married people may then take advantage of the natural cycles immanent in the reproductive system and engage in marital intercourse only during those times that are infertile, thus controlling birth in a way which does not in the least offend the moral principles which we have just explained.
Neither the Church nor her doctrine is inconsistent when she considers it lawful for married people to take advantage of the infertile period but condemns as always unlawful the use of means which directly prevent conception, even when the reasons given for the later practice may appear to be upright and serious. In reality, these two cases are completely different. In the former the married couple rightly use a faculty provided them by nature. In the latter they obstruct the natural development of the generative process. It cannot be denied that in each case the married couple, for acceptable reasons, are both perfectly clear in their intention to avoid children and wish to make sure that none will result. But it is equally true that it is exclusively in the former case that husband and wife are ready to abstain from intercourse during the fertile period as often as for reasonable motives the birth of another child is not desirable. And when the infertile period recurs, they use their married intimacy to express their mutual love and safeguard their fidelity toward one another. In doing this they certainly give proof of a true and authentic love. (No. 16)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life ----------- TITLE: Life Notes DATE: 03/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 07-13, 1999 ----- BODY:New Strategy Calls Abortion Procedure ‘Murder’
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo.— Missouri lawmakers are taking a new tack in their attempts to ban partial-birth abortions, with a bill that addresses the procedure under criminal murder statutes by defining it as infanticide, reported the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The Kansas City Star also reported on the story, and added that the measure does not even contain the word “abortion,” but bans “the killing of someone who is ‘partially born,’” defined as those with “the head in a cephalic presentation, or any part of the torso above the navel in a breech presentation, [that] is outside the mother's external cervical os,” or outside the mother's abdominal wall in a Caesarean section.
The bill appears headed for approval in the House, as the bill's 116 co-sponsors are 34 more than needed for a majority, according to the reports. Pro-life legislators also control the state Senate, but pro-abortion Gov. Mel Carnahan has insisted on an exception for the mother's health, which would render the bill meaningless. He vetoed partial-birth legislation last year, and the Senate override failed by one vote. (ProLife Infonet)
Police Target Russian Christian School
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia— Russian police and Christian families have been in a standoff over a government order for an evangelical school to vacate the former army barracks it had been allowed to use since 1991.
Dozens of children, parents, and teachers have occupied the school operated by the Dutch Open Christian Society since Feb. 22 as busloads of police waited outside. A court order demanding the school vacate the premises goes into effect on March 11, and some police standing watch said they have been told they will then storm the building.
St. Petersburg has revoked a 1991 rent-free lease for the school, but school supporters said they should be allowed to remain. Police had forced their way into the building on Feb. 23, but the protesters lay on the floor singing religious songs until the police left after three hours. In a press release two days later, the city said the school had violated the terms of the building's lease and was enlisting the support of international organizations by spreading inaccurate information in a publicity campaign. (CWNews)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Blackmun Dead, Abortion Lives DATE: 03/14/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 14-20, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—As tributes were paid to retired Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun on his death, pro-lifers said their great regret is that he will be remembered mostly for a terrible legacy.
Blackmun, who died at age 90 of complications from hip surgery, was the author of the court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision which made abortion legal and set off cataclysmic social and political changes that shake the nation to this day.
“It's always a tragedy when a person of his prominence dies,” said Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. “But when one looks at his record, the legacy that he left us is one which certainly does not endear himself to the one who respects the innocence of human life.”
“We are praying for his soul,” was the only public comment from many pro-lifers, including American Life League's spokes-person, at news of Blackmun's death March 4.
The retired justice took his seat on the court in June 1970. Few people would have guessed then that history would most remember him for a decision that has since resulted in the death of tens of millions of unborn children.
The opinion, which Blackmun worked on for more than a year, noted that the Constitution did not explicitly mention a right to privacy. Nonetheless, Blackmun said, the court in a variety of contexts “has recognized that a right of personal privacy, or a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy, does exist under the Constitution.”
The court then found constitutional protection for “a right of personal privacy” that is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”
According to a New York Times report, he told a group of law students in 1986, “If it [Roe v. Wade] goes down the drain, I'd still like to regard Roe v. Wade as a landmark in the progress of the emancipation of women.”
While Blackmun saw the court's decision as helping women, Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon described Roe v. Wade as a “decision more concerned about protecting doctors than women.” Glendon is an expert on family law.
She said that Blackmun, a lawyer for the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., before being appointed to the Supreme Court, had worked on his opinion in the clinic library in the summer of 1972.
Of the reasoning he used, Glendon contended, “Much of it was prompted by fear of medical professionals.”
She continued, “Once he had written his opinion, he could have rethought it or stepped back from the brink of the abyss, but instead, like any of us who make a mistake, he began to dig in, rationalizing, and became more extreme and stubborn about defending his mistake.”
Asked for comment, the Mayo Clinic did not return calls.
Donohue described Blackmun as a man who went to the high court as a “strict constructionist,” someone who took a more literalist interpretation of the Constitution, but he left as a person who “basically tried to rewrite the Constitution.”
“There was no authority for the court to make that [Roe] decision,” Donohue asserted. “That was an example of judicial imperialism and this is a man who also makes utilitarian decisions instead of constitutional decisions.
“He substituted his own politics for legal reasoning and to that extent, his legacy, I believe is a sorry one.”
In remarks posted Jan. 17 on the Vatican Web site, Cardinal John O'Connor of New York summed up the consequences of Roe v. Wade.
“The horror of abortion itself provides more than enough ‘drama.’ In the United States today, annually since the infamous Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling of 1973, approximately 1,500,000 unborn babies are destroyed. The estimate since 1973 is a total of 30,000,000 babies. The overall destructiveness of the single action of abortion defies calculation, in terms of the lives of countless numbers of mothers, fathers, siblings, abortionists and assistants. Only the baby dies. The mother and others often live or try to live with souls churning with guilt, minds in turmoil, normal patterns of behavior turned upside down.”
Glendon pointed out that, in terms of its legal argument, Roe had not stood the test of time: “The fact is that the Supreme Court has repudiated much of Roe v. Wade,” not by overturning its effects but because it has “understood that it was faulty” in its expansive understanding of the privacy right.
Joan Andrews Bell, who has been arrested more than 200 times for civil disobedience at abortion clinics, said of Blackmun, “I have been praying for him for a long time. He saw the arguments against abortion but” rejected them. She said the Supreme Court brushed aside medical testimony about when human life begins.
Chris Andrews Bell, director of Good Counsel Homes, and Joan's husband, added that it is “very sad that [Blackmun] will be remembered as the author of the most brutal decision in the history of mankind, giving rise to the downward slope of the culture of death.”
“Another soul to pray for,” was the reaction of Jason Kenney, chairman of the Canadian Parliamentary Pro-Life Caucus. “He was a living symbol of the principle shot fired in the culture war.”
“His decision in Roe v. Wade became a reference point for courts in many other developed countries which took its cue in legalizing abortion on demand,” added Kenney, a Reform Party member who represents part of Calgary. “Certainly his decision was used as a cue by the Canadian Supreme Court in creating the wide-open abortion regime” here.
In his 1973 written opinion, Blackmun was forthright about his reasons for wanting abortions to increase. He wrote that “there is the distress for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child, and there is the problem of bringing a child into a family already unable, psychologically and otherwise, to care for it.”
Before his retirement, Blackmun reversed his long-held support for the death penalty, saying he would oppose it in all cases because he felt it was being applied unfairly. In several death penalty appeals reviewed by the court during his final term, he voted to overturn sentences, but was overruled each time by a majority of the justices.
Geraldine Hemmings is an associate editor of the Register.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Geraldine Hemmings ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Policy Stirs Bay City Battle DATE: 03/14/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 14-20, 1999 ----- BODY:SAN FRANCISCO—The Archdiocese of San Francisco is again having to defend itself against policies implemented by the city government. In the wake of the most recent instance of friction between the archdiocese and municipal policy-makers, the city's Health Commission is undertaking to rewrite one if its own policies.
Policy 24 requires all agencies that contract with the commission to have an “ethnicity, gender identification and sexual orientation composition” that is “representative of the clients served.”
In other words, if a Church agency has a contract with the Health Commission to supply services to a specific group such as AIDS patients, senior citizens or emotionally disturbed children, that agency must have a mix of employees who identify themselves on the basis of gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation that is roughly proportionate to the self-identifications of the clients served.
This policy has required that agencies providing contracted services complete a survey asking the gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation of its own employees.
In November, the health commission canceled a $97,000 contract with the Catholic Youth Organization after its board refused to comply with the request for such a survey. The contract was to supply mental health services to children.
Maurice Healy, director of communications for the archdiocese, said the youth organization had no problem with the idea of reporting race and gender statistics, but “they took issue with asking people to identify themselves in terms of sexual orientation, believing it is a privacy issue.”
The contract cancellation came after public comments by Archbishop William J. Levada in which he took issue with Policy 24 and several other city policies which, he said, pressure religious non-profit organizations “to conform to politically correct mantras.”
Unacceptable Burdens
In an Oct. 13 address to a prayer breakfast held at St. Mary's Cathedral, Archbishop Levada cited three instances in which the city had placed unacceptable burdens on religious organizations which provide city-contracted services.
The first was a city ordinance dealing with “domestic partners.” This was the most widely publicized point of contention between the city and the archdiocese. This ordinance required that all city-contracted agencies which provided health care benefits to spouses also provide the same benefits to “domestic partners,” including homosexual partners.
In a February 1997 compromise with the city, Archbishop Levada agreed to expand health care coverage to allow employees to designate any “legally domiciled member” of their household to receive “spousal equivalent benefits,” thus avoiding the “domestic partners” issue while expanding coverage.
The second imposition cited by the archbishop was the so-called sunshine ordinance, for nonprofit organizations with city contracts. Mayor Willie Brown signed the ordinance into law last June. The archbishop was said to have personally lobbied the mayor to veto the ordinance.
The archbishop said the “most onerous aspects” of this ordinance included “a requirement to have board meetings open to comment on any topic — rather than comment limited to the parameters of the city contract. This provision provides critics with a platform to attack any belief, teaching or position of a religion. The ordinance also intrudes upon the operations and governance of nonprofit organizations through interference in the selection and appointment of nonprofit organizations'boards of directors.”
The third point of contention addressed by the archbishop at the October prayer breakfast was Policy 24. He said the “Catholic Youth Organization's board of directors is rightly challenging this demand, which violates both the integrity of governance and the privacy of individuals.”
‘Catholophobia?’
“Perhaps only in San Francisco,” he said, “would a nonprofit organization with a history of service be denied a contract to help children simply because it would not identify the homosexual composition, if any, of its staff and board of directors.
“One senses there is a tendency toward ‘Catholophobia’ among some people in the city, marked by an intolerance of those who have a religious perspective.”
In January, two months after the cancellation of the Catholic Youth Organization contract, Healy said the archdiocese began to consider the possibility of a lawsuit to challenge Policy 24.
“We came to the conclusion that Policy 24 could be challenged in court on a number of grounds,” he recalled.
In statements to the San Francisco Chronicle, however, Healy expressed the archdiocese's desire to talk before suing.
“We're not in a sue-now, talk-later mode,” he told the Chronicle. “Our hope and intent is to resolve this issue with the Health Commission as we have in the past.”
News of a possible archdiocesan lawsuit seemed to catch Health Commission members by surprise, and in January they were reported to be considering options for answering such a suit.
According to Healy, the mayor then “voiced his opposition, that Policy 24 is dumb and should be changed.”
Cancellations to Come?
In a March 4 statement to the Register, Dr. Mitchell H. Katz, director of health for the San Francisco Department of Public Health, said that the Health Commission has scheduled a March 16 meeting to discuss possible changes to Policy 24.
“The department will be proposing changes in the policy which emphasize the ability of an agency to demonstrate cultural competency in delivering services and a discrimination-free environment,” he said.
This move would seem to signal a victory for the archdiocese and its policy of trying to work through problems with city government.
Katz's statement made it fairly clear that under the new policy, if it is adopted, there will likely be no more cancellations of contracts like the Catholic Youth Organization's.
It is unclear whether such a resolution would signal warmer relations between the city and religious nonprofit groups. The Salvation Army has already withdrawn from all of its $3.5 million in city contracts, seeing the relationship as unworkable.
Cyril Jones-Kellet writes from San Diego.
----- EXCERPT: Archdiocese at odds with San Francisco over quota survey ----- EXTENDED BODY: Cyril Jones-Kellet ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: New Religious Community in Denver Offers Hope from the 'Heart of Jesus' DATE: 03/14/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 14-20, 1999 ----- BODY:DENVER—He calls himself a “basket-case sinner.”
Raised a Catholic, the youngest of seven children, Lawrence Young was always the most religious of his friends. But through his high school years in Newark, Del., his conscience became subtly eroded, and after graduation he found himself caught up in the “party scene” at a state college, he said.
During the summer of 1989, at age 20, Young was living with a group of guys in a beach house in a little “party town.” His friends appeared untroubled by their indulgent lifestyle, but Young was torn up inside — a “basket case.” But that was before Cor Jesu.
“The hound of heaven was just chasing me down,” Young recalled. “I was disillusioned with the whole party scene, and I became more and more convinced of the desirability of God's ways.”
As he began to pray, certain things started coming back to him: the daily rosary he recited with his dad before school, the family's faithful attendance at Mass, the support from his strong church youth group. And the desire to become a priest.
It's been nine years since that turning point. Young is living in Denver now, sharing a house with another group of guys. You can catch them playing sports, hiking around in the nearby mountains or having snowball fights in the winter. Most of their days, however, are spent in silence, prayer, the study of Latin, spiritual reading and instruction in religious life, as they live the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience.
The Mission
Young — you can call him Brother Young — and his 10 companions from throughout the United States are members of a new religious institute of men known as Cor Jesu, or “Heart of Jesus” in Latin.
“In the wasteland of broken, hurting people out there, we need the heart of Jesus,” said Brother Young. “We need love today more than ever. Cor Jesu seeks to bring people back again in a fresh way to the beating heart of Jesus Christ.”
Traditional in religious practice and faithful to the magisterium, Cor Jesu seeks to take the charism of St. Ignatius and the early members of the Society of Jesus, and to “translate it for our time and, hopefully, beyond our time,” according to Cor Jesu founder and rector Father Anthony Mastroeni.
“The charism in sum would be a commitment to be identified as an intimate friend and companion with Jesus and the Most Blessed Trinity,” said Father Mastroeni, a diocesan priest and theology professor from New Jersey. “The heart of Jesus is the center of the whole plan of redemption. It is through the heart of Jesus that we return to the Father and receive the power of the Holy Spirit.
“Through Jesus we go to the Father, and the apostolic result, the fruit, of that — because he calls us not only servants, but friends — is to spread the faith.”
Catholic apologist and Jesuit Father Joseph Fessio said he is not surprised that the charism of the Jesuits is being lived out in different communities. He said that men who would have been attracted to the Jesuits in former times are now joining other communities.
“If you can't find [the charism] where it should be found, it's good to find it somewhere,” he said.
Cor Jesu is a sign of hope “after so many years of disappointment,” Father Fessio said. “It is not surprising that zealous, manly young men are attracted to a new order which is enthusiastically faithful to the Church's perennial tradition of priestly and religious life.”
One way the order will live out the charism of friendship with Christ is to provide a “rigorous defense” of the Gospel of Life, an issue that did not even figure into the 16th century, said Father Mastroeni. “We're totally committed to that,” he said.
Catechetics a Priority
But primarily, Cor Jesu priests will specialize in catechetics — providing young people, especially high school age and older, with the foundations of faith, which so many are lacking today, he said. The priests will also be trained to preach the faith in a clear and convincing way. Finally, they intend to offer spiritual direction and what Father Mastroeni calls a “heroic availability” to the sacrament of reconciliation.
“The catechetical challenges are formidable,” Father admitted. “Young people for the most part are uncatechized. Many are from dysfunctional or broken families. They are growing up in a totally secularized environment. For the past 30 years the Church has lost considerable influence in public life.”
But despite being raised in a culture of death and during what he calls the “first pornographic presidency,” young people today do look to a strong Pope for vision and example, he said.
The new order, under the official name Societas Cordis Jesu, Fontis Vitae et Sanctitatis — the Society of the Heart of Jesus, Font of Life and Sanctity — has begun with the blessing of Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, who last August granted canonical status to the community as a “public clerical association of Christ's faithful.” The archbishop also arranged for the men to move into his diocese and live in a former convent attached to Sts. Peter and Paul parish.
“The men of Cor Jesu witness to the sacred name they bear through their great love for the Church,” said Archbishop Chaput. “I believe they will be a prophetic voice for the Catholic renewal that is continuing to grow and spread.”
Franciscan Father Benedict Groeschel said he hopes Cor Jesu will be “one of the premier new communities” that offer young people an opportunity to lead fervent and dedicated Christian religious lives.
“Anyone looking for a way to assist the Church in these difficult times would do very well to consider assisting one of these communities,” he said.
Father Groeschel is founder of one such community, the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, the “Gray Friars,” established in 1987 and best known for their work with the Youth 2000 Eucharistic-centered retreats.
Other new communities for men include the Fathers of the Pentecost, with a call to Gospel poverty and to “cross-cultural evangelization” in North America among native people, urban blacks and rural Appalachians, and the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter, founded in 1988 as a society of apostolic life of pontifical right to form priests in celebrating the Tridentine Mass of the Latin rite.
Local Help
Their efforts and example are appreciated by the local parishioners who join the Cor Jesu community for daily Mass and give generously whenever they are asked to help, said Father.
“The people have been very good to us,” he said. “You just ask for one thing … we once asked at morning Mass for sleeping bags, and we got about 20 to 25.”
Father James K. Goggins, a priest of the Archdiocese of Denver and pastor of Sts. Peter and Paul, said Cor Jesu is a gift to the parish and to him personally.
“They are a great inspiration for the people of our parish, especially the young people,” Father Goggins asserted. “They have a great vitality and enthusiasm, and the young people are naturally drawn to them. More than anything we see in them the fire of evangelical life in a very profound way. That witness is very much needed in our Church and in parishes around the world.”
The novices are not the only ones being purified by a kind of “spiritual boot camp.” Father Mastroeni, though already a priest, is new to community life — he is learning and living as a novice, even while serving as rector.
At 51, he has a rich background that includes academic degrees in theology, civil law and counseling, providing legal defense for pro-lifers, leading retreats for the Missionaries of Charity around the world, and many years of teaching in high schools and universities.
The idea for establishing the association dates back some 20 years — “it was just a nice thought” that he shared with his friend and co-founder Father Joseph Chacko, Father Mastroeni recalled. But it was while he was teaching moral theology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville that Father Mastroeni shared his vision with a few young men. Some were drawn to the idea, and in preparation, six of them began theological studies in Rome. Soon after, with the granting of canonical status, Cor Jesu was born.
After new aspirants to Cor Jesu spend two years in the novitiate, developing the spiritual formation and acclimation to religious life, they will spend up to seven years studying theology and philosophy prior to ordination. Because some of the current novices have a strong theological background already, Father Mastroeni said, the first ordinations will only be a year and a half away.
Brother Young said that after several months with Cor Jesu, he has come back to the simplicity of the faith of his childhood, but with a depth and a love that almost surprises him.
“I am coming to a deeper, firmer belief,” he said. “I am convinced more than ever that a man 2,000 years ago, from Palestine, was the Son of God. His disciples fanned out all over the world, and died for this truth. Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life.
“I'm tremendously grateful that I've received this vocation. I want to tell everyone about this. The Catholic faith is the best thing going. What compares to it? The more I enter into it, the more I am delighted and amazed by its beauty, richness and profundity.”
Ellen Rossini writes from Dallas.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Rossini ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: For 2000, Israel Scrambling To Roll Out the Red Carpet DATE: 03/14/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 14-20, 1999 ----- BODY:An extra 4 million pilgrims are expected to converge on Israel for the Jubilee year 2000, and that means a logistics nightmare is looming.
Israel looks forward to it.
With its economy shrinking for the first time in modern history, and unemployment at 10%, Israel is taking steps to welcome millennium pilgrims and the $3.4 billion they will bring with them.
But problems remain. Pope John Paul II has said he would like to visit the Holy Land next year. But such a trip is unlikely if there is no significant progress in the Middle East peace process. That process is stalled until Israel's general election in June. A Vatican decision on the trip is unlikely before the end of July.
Whether the Pope visits or not, pilgrim numbers will increase. Tourism is Israel's biggest industry, and usually 20% of those who visit are religious pilgrims. To highlight what steps have been taken to welcome Christian pilgrims, and to hear suggestions, last month the Israeli government invited 550 delegates from around the world to a Holy Land 2000 World Leaders Conference.
Attending the five-day conference were Vatican officials, pilgrimage organizers, tour operators, religious affairs journalists and senior clergymen, including Catholic bishops from Poland, the Georgian Patriarch, and Anglican bishops from England and Australia. The Palestinian Autonomous Authority was also involved.
The conference highlighted the major improvements made to Christian pilgrimage sites, particularly in Jerusalem and Galilee. Access and facilities have been improved, and many churches and shrines now benefit from nighttime floodlighting.
‘Tourist Friendly’ Strategy
Israeli officials gave assurances that emergency accommodations would be available if the millennium crowds prove far greater than anticipated. They added that security procedures at airports and borders will be made more “tourist friendly.” The border between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, however, can be sealed off at any moment.
In Bethlehem, which is under the control of the Palestinian Autonomous Authority, refurbishment work is also under way. The large Israeli military barracks, much hated by Bethlehem's native population, has been demolished and in its place a “peace center” is being built. Much of Nazareth also resembles a building site at present; work there is scheduled for completion in the next four months.
Improvements to Nazareth have arrived late because the Israeli government discriminated against the town's Arab population, says Mayor Jaraisy Ramiz. He claims hotels in the town did not benefit until recently from tax-exemption grants made available to hotel construction projects in Jewish areas.
“After 1968, all Arab areas in Israel suffered discrimination,” said Ramiz. “Fifty percent of all tourists used to come here, but there was nowhere where they could stay the night.” Not only does Nazareth now have its own hotels, but the local population is also benefiting from new parks and open spaces designed to make the town more appealing to tourists.
The Church has broadly welcomed these improvements. Assumptionist Msgr. Robert Fortin, of the Jerusalem Patriarch's pilgrimage commission, thanked the Israeli Tourist Authority for its “considerable efforts.”
However, in a message to Israeli tour guides, Msgr. Fortin warned that Christian-owned hotels and hostels should be “patronized on an equal footing” with those owned by Israeli-Jewish groups. He advised that Israeli-organized tours for Christian pilgrims must include time for prayer, the reading of biblical passages and the daily celebration of the Eucharist.
“To a Catholic the word pilgrimage would be a misnomer without these essential elements,” he said.
Outlining the Church's plans for next year, Msgr. Fortin said Holy Week and Pentecost celebrations will be more elaborate than usual. There will be a special celebration at Cana for married people, he said, and a wide range of pilgrimages will focus on the sick, young people, seminarians and other groups.
Holy Sepulcher Site
Msgr. Fortin reported, however, “Things are not moving as well as they should at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem. However, we have not given up hope of seeing improvements even there.”
The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Christianity's holiest shrine, is, at times, a dismal place. Visitors wait an hour in line to see particular holy places such as the site of the Crucifixion. The church itself is dark and gloomy, and badly in need of repair and restoration — and will likely remain so for the near future. It is occupied by six Christian communities — Catholics (represented by the Franciscans), Greek Orthodox, Armenians, Syrians, Copts and Ethiopians — who jealously guard their rights and territories.
These rights are enforced by the “status quo” ruling imposed by Jerusalem's Turkish rulers in 1757 in a bid to end conflicts between non-Muslim religious groups. As well as governing Christian shrines, the status quo also guarantees the right of Jews to pray at the Western Wall of the Temple Mount.
The pilgrim does not come here for economic reasons, but for reasons of faith. Therefore there should be no bureaucratic obstacles in coming to this country.
Because current regulations are rigidly adhered to, little had changed at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Above one entrance a temporary ladder sits permanently for the only reason that a ladder has “always been there.” When an earthquake damaged the site in 1927, it wasn't until 1959 that a mutually acceptable restoration plan was agreed upon, and 1988 when the work was actually completed. To this day, because the Christian communities within couldn't agree who would hold a key to the entrances to the church, two Muslim families have responsibility for unlocking and locking the church's doors each day.
The Basilica of the Nativity is a far more pleasant spiritual experience and cooperation between the Greek Orthodox and the Franciscans at the Church of St. Catherine appears to be good.
However, because of the sheer number of visitors, you have little time to cross yourself in the grotto where Jesus was born 2,000 years ago. And many of those who kneel before the hallowed spot marked by a 14-point star do not do so as a genuflection, but to take a photograph. For spiritual peace and tranquility, many prefer other sites: the Shepherds' Field or the Mount of the Beatitudes overlooking the Sea of Galilee.
Since the time of the Crusades, a trip to the Holy Land is an experience in Realpolitik. But it is also a religious experience. Msgr. Liberio Andreatta, managing director of Opera Romana Pellegrini and member of the Vatican Jubilee Welcoming Committee, said of the Holy Land:
“There is no tourist who does not become an instant pilgrim the moment his feet touch this land. The pilgrimage is a very important tool to stabilize this country and bring peace to it. The pilgrim does not come here for economic reasons, but for reasons of faith. Therefore there should be no bureaucratic obstacles in coming to this country. This land is a land which belongs to everybody, and everybody should be welcome to it. We know why security is needed, but at the entrance and exit to this country tourists should feel welcome.”
In a document on the Jubilee of the year 2000, Incarnationis Mysterium, Pope John Paul II mentioned the Holy Land: “The Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 is almost upon us. Ever since my first encyclical letter Redemptor Hominis, I have looked toward this occasion with the sole purpose of preparing everyone to be docile to the working of the Spirit.
“The event will be celebrated simultaneously in Rome and in all the particular Churches around the world, and it will have, as it were, two centers: on the one hand, the city where Providence chose to place the See of the Successor of Peter, and on the other hand, the Holy Land, where the Son of God was born as man, taking our flesh from a Virgin whose name was Mary.
“With equal dignity and significance, therefore, the Jubilee will be celebrated not only in Rome but also in the Land which is rightly called “Holy” because it was there that Jesus was born and died. That Land, in which the first Christian community appeared, is the place where God revealed himself to humanity. It is the Promised Land which has so marked the history of the Jewish People, and is revered by the followers of Islam as well. May the Jubilee serve to advance mutual dialogue until the day when all of us together — Jews, Christians and Moslems — will exchange the greeting of peace in Jerusalem.” (No. 2)
CE Instead of A.D.
In a bid to make Israel more welcoming to Christian pilgrims, the government is launching a public awareness campaign about the economic importance of the millennium year. Education programs in schools and colleges will also explain the Christian celebration of the Jubilee.
There were signs that some such education is needed. A sign in the Israel Museum, for instance, is not quite right. It reads: “After the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, and particularly in the second century CE, Christianity started to direct its efforts towards the pagan world, adopting some aspects of classical culture. Around this time the stories of the birth of Jesus, his crucifixion and his resurrection, began to occupy an important place in Christian belief.”
The CE for Common Era, instead of A.D. for anno Domini, is understandable. But what might rankle some pilgrims is the implication that stories about Christ's death and resurrection were not important to the Christians of the first century.
In mitigation, Rabbi David Rosen, president of the International Council of Christians and Jews, said, “Very few of Jews in Israel actually encounter people of other faiths. The transition from the second common millennium to the next provides unique opportunities for the Jewish-Christian encounter, especially in the land that is holy to both Judaism and Christianity, as well as Islam.”
Cian Molloy writes from Dublin, Ireland.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Cian Molloy ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Church Sees Thaw In Ties with Russia DATE: 03/14/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 14-20, 1999 ----- BODY:WARSAW, Poland—When a reliquary containing the bones of St. Thérèse of Lisieux arrived at Moscow's Sheremetiev airport in the small hours of Feb. 25, the Catholics who'd gathered to greet it found the required documents hadn't been completed.
But customs men relaxed the rules and agreed to allow the precious cargo through, so it wouldn't be late for the morning Mass at the capital's St. Ludvik church.
Preaching later with the reliquary before him, western Russia's apostolic administrator, Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, thanked all those who had spent the night waiting in vigil, as well as the Caritas staffers who had arranged the formalities and the nuns who had composed special prayers.
But he had a word, too, for the Russian officials who'd shown good will, in a country long noted for its inhospitality to the Catholic Church.
St. Thérèse's reliquary is the second sacred object to be taken on tour in Russia after the image of Our Lady of Fatima traversed the country for six months in 1997.
“At the threshold of the Great Jubilee of the year 2000, humanity needs examples as never before — examples which will help us change the world for the better,” Kondrusiewicz explained in a pastoral letter.
“This pilgrimage by St. Thérèse's relics constitutes a spiritual exercise for everyone, as well as marking a key stage in the history of our evangelization.”
In the past few months, there have been other signs of modest progress in that history too.
When Russia's four-member bishops' conference, the world's newest, held its inaugural session at St. Petersburg in February, it set up eight councils covering all areas of Church life, and named Father Stanislaw Opiela, Russia's leading Jesuit, as its first secretary.
Elected chairman, Archbishop Kondrusiewicz hailed the meeting as proof that Russia's 2 million-strong Catholic minority was “beginning to live a full life.”
In May, the St. Petersburg seminary will have its first three post-communist Russian priests ordained.
Parish Life Reawakening
Meanwhile, life develops slowly in Russia's struggling Catholic parishes.
In January, Tiumen's early 20th century St. Joseph's church was reconsecrated by Siberia's Jesuit administrator, Bishop Josef Werth, 70 years after it was confiscated and closed by the Soviet regime.
In February, a Catholic parish at Irkutsk was permitted to start building a church after interventions by the Vatican's Slovak-American nuncio, Archbishop John Bukovsky (see Inperson, Page 1), to replace the Catholic cathedral which is still used as a concert hall.
Since last September, when Moscow's Sts. Peter and Paul parish became the first to be legally re-registered under Russia's restrictive 1997 religious law, only a dozen parishes have followed suit, raising fears that many could miss a December 1999 deadline.
Meanwhile, with all Catholic priests and nuns legally bound, under an August 1998 directive, to obtain fresh visas abroad every three months, Church life is hampered severely.
But the Catholic Church is determined to continue its work.
In a declaration after their February meeting, the bishops insisted Catholics in Russia came “under their pastoral care for historical reasons.”
However, other Russian citizens had a right to join the Catholic Church too “if their consciences so desire,” the bishops added, in line with principles of religious freedom and Vatican II teachings.
“The Catholic Church's basic endeavors in Russia will be concentrated on pastoral work with Catholics,” noted the declaration.
“We regard as unacceptable all forms of proselytism, meaning some-one's forceful reconversion to a given faith, or the use of unsightly means to induce or attract them.”
The declaration was presented to the Russian Orthodox patriarch, Aleksi II, and pledged Catholic help in “rebuilding Christian unity” and bringing down “barriers and prejudices.”
Tensions Remain
Yet tensions with Orthodox leaders still pose serious problems.
On the face of it, Orthodox talk of a “Catholic threat” seems illogical. In a statement to his Moscow diocese's annual assembly last December, Patriarch Aleksi said Russia's Orthodox parishes had grown from 6,800 at the time of the 1988 Christian Millennium to more than 19,000.
The church's eparchies, or dioceses, he added, had increased to 127 from 60, and were home to 151 working diocesan and auxiliary bishops, backed by 17,500 priests and 2,300 deacons.
Meanwhile, almost two-thirds of the Orthodox church's 478 monastic institutions had also reopened since the collapse of Soviet rule in 1991, and 4,000 priesthood candidates are studying at the Orthodox church's 26 seminaries, 29 spiritual schools, five academies and two universities.
Even this represents only a proportion of what the Orthodox church possessed before the 1917 revolution, when Russia boasted 54,000 Orthodox parishes and 50,000 parish schools, as well as 40 Orthodox seminaries and more than 1,000 monasteries.
But the number is increasing. In fact, it was out of date within a week of Aleksi's statement, when the Orthodox Synod consented to a new diocese for Azerbaijan, Dagestan and Chechnya, and sanctioned seven new monastic houses in Russia and three new parishes abroad.
By contrast, the Catholic Church has no dioceses in Russia, and only two provisional “apostolic administrations,” currently home to 190 priests and around 130 registered parishes. The Catholic Church's only seminary in St. Petersburg has just 60 ordinands. Its pre-seminary school in Novosibirsk has nine students on its modest two-year course.
Yet Orthodox leaders appear worried by the Catholic Church's potential.
Dialogued Curbed
In a New Year message, the Russian Orthodox foreign relations director, Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk, said his church would maintain ties with Evangelicals, Anglicans and Lutherans, despite a late December decision to suspend participation in the Geneva-based World Council of Churches.
However, dialogue with Catholics could be curbed, Kirill warned: It had failed to “achieve any practical results.”
“We cannot conduct dialogue for dialogue's sake,” the metropolitan added. “Either it will genuinely help regulate our relations, or it will simply not go on.”
Kirill was referring to Ukraine, where the Soviet-outlawed Greek Catholic Church, combining the Eastern rite with loyalty to Rome, has set up six dioceses and 3,000 parishes since being re-legalized in 1991, compared to 29 dioceses and 6,500 parishes belonging to the ex-Soviet republic's Russian Orthodox Church.
But the latest frost in ties has been felt as much in Russia. Although several churches are planning a joint conference for the year 2000, the chancellor of Russia's Moscow-based administration, Father Vadim Shajkievich, says preparations for the millennium have had “no ecumenical character,” owing to Russian Orthodox hostility.
Speaking recently in Warsaw, Shajkievich said Catholics were still “completely isolated” in Russia as a “nontraditional confession,” and had retained a “client status” in all ecumenical initiatives.
The Russian Orthodox obstinacy could backfire.
A Catholic-Orthodox International Commission reconvenes this June after a decade's suspension to debate historical and theological disputes.
Meanwhile, with a papal visit to Romania planned for May 7-8, the first by a reigning pope to a predominantly Orthodox land, interchurch relations will be under the spotlight as never before.
Patriarch Teoctist of Romania has dubbed the pilgrimage a “signal of dialogue and peace.” But there's tension over Pope John Paul II's itinerary, and Orthodox leaders are skeptical.
Speaking at a Rome conference, a Moscow Patriarchate representative, Father Viktor Petliushenko, said the “brave but risky” initiative would backfire if the Pope failed to unveil a “new era” in interchurch ties.
Besides Romania, the Pope holds state invitations from predominantly Orthodox Bulgaria, Georgia, Macedonia and Ukraine. Pressure for great-hearted interchurch gestures is certain to grow as the millennium approaches.
In a January interview, Romania's ambassador to the Vatican, Teodor Baconsky, said long-running Catholic-Orthodox disputes in his country had been seen as a “great shortcoming” abroad.
“It's important that this Pope visits Romania, since no other communism-defeating Pole will sit on the throne of St. Peter — a Pole who embodies post-war history and thinks like us,” Baconsky told his country's Ziua daily.
“He knows and admires Orthodoxy, and is one of us in his sensitivity, culture and outlook. We need his presence to show our Orthodox Church is self-governing and doesn't receive orders from any other — that Orthodoxy isn't a handicap barring the way to the European Union.”
That kind of realization should provide fertile ground for wise Church leaders to work on, in appeasing the legitimate fears and anxieties which persist on both sides.
Hope on the Horizon
Not all signs are bleak anyway.
In December, Russia's Orthodox, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist leaders set up a Permanent Interfaith Council, and said they planned to invite Catholics too.
Meanwhile, President Boris Yeltsin is expected to meet Catholic leaders when he pays a millennium visit to Bethlehem next December. This month, an international Orthodox council met in Switzerland to prepare an Inter-Orthodox Synod, which could go some way toward bridging the divide with other denominations.
In a poll of 5,000 Russians last November by the Center for International Social Surveys, half revealed they knew virtually nothing about the Catholic Church and opposed talk of Christian reunification.
But just as many wanted closer ties and saw many possibilities for Catholic-Orthodox cooperation. Those who knew something about the Pope were sympathetic and often enthusiastic. Most sensed prejudices and stereotypes would break down as contacts increased.
That's the kind of common-sense tolerance which was evident at Sheremetiev airport, when Russian officials guided St. Thérèse's relics through customs in time for the morning mass at St. Ludvik's.
After Moscow and St. Petersburg, the reliquary will travel to Catholic parishes in 19 Russian towns, from Smolensk, Pskov and Novgorod, to Omsk, Irkutsk and Vladivistok, before being transported to the United States for its 11th national tour.
Besides being a patron of France, St. Thérèse (1873-97) is a co-patron of Christian missions. But that means missions of mercy and love, not missions of rivalry and rejection.
“Today's young generation finds itself at a crossroads, and is trying to find its own way in life among so many temptations,” Archbishop Kondrusiewicz told Catholics in his pastoral letter.
“In these conditions, we need St. Thérèse to shine for us like a polestar.”
Jonathan Luxmoore writes from Warsaw, Poland.
----- EXCERPT: St. ThÈrËse's relics arrive for tour ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jonathan Luxmoore ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Russia Is Free. What Now? DATE: 03/14/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 14-20, 1999 ----- BODY:As papal nuncio to Russia, Archbishop John Bukovsky represents the Pope in a post-communist country that had legally rejected almost all religious activity in its borders except that of the Russian Orthodox Church. The law has now been changed, but challenges remain for the Church. During a recent visit to Dallas, the archbishop spoke about the Catholic Church in Russia with Register correspondent Ellen Rossini.
Rossini: How have Russian Catholics fared after the collapse of the U.S.S.R.?
Bukovsky: With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, we lost most of the Catholics to the Ukraine, Latvia and Lithuania. I would say in Russia at the present moment, between the Catholics that are found and organized and the Catholics that are still waiting, there must be over 1 million Catholics. Of those who are found and practicing, those who come weekly to holy Mass and receive the sacraments, there might be about 100,000.
Last July, the Holy Father was able to name two new bishops. Now we have four Catholic bishops, total, 190 priests and 170 sisters. Most of these nuns and priests are not Russian, but come from the United States, Mexico, Argentina and Europe.
Often, the Pope points to three things as contributing to the strength of the faith: the family, the laity and the Church. Yet you have said these are “challenges” in Russia.
I would say the greatest challenge is toward finding a real Christian family. Due to the Communist system, the family was destroyed, more or less. There are many divorces, many abortions. We have many street children who are missing their parents.
The second is to prepare lay people. Still now the tendency is to be clerical. We have to build up lay people who can substitute, who can help in the catechesis and the education.
The third task of the Church — and I'm sure the bishops will do it — is to organize our Church. Our Church is dispersed all over … due to the exile activities of Stalin. My impression is that the majority of the Catholic population is in Siberia, due to the exiling of different nationalities and religions there.
What is the state of vocations in Russia?
Naturally, I would say also the vocational aspect is important. Most of our priests and religious are foreigners, and we have only 10 Russian priests, five in Siberia and Kazakhstan. We have Jesuit fathers who were born in Russia — about five of them. … We need about 400 priests for Russian work, and it takes about 30 years to fill this [need].
There's also the legal aspect. [But] the Russian government is flexible — if we discuss with them, we can work it out.
Ninety-five percent of the priests and nuns are not Russian, and we have great difficulty in obtaining residency for them. They have to go back every three months to renew their visas, or every year if they are from a country that was formerly part of the Soviet Union. It's an economic burden, and also psychological because they have to go in and out.
This will be a long process, but I want to be optimistic — it will be done. The Church is small, and in my belief it will always be small. According to the new laws we have the right to remain in Russia, and we will do that.
What limits are placed on the different religions by the new law?
We can live by it. The new law makes all kinds of categories of the religious groups and then requires all kinds of registrations … by the Ministry of Justice. I don't know how much this is known in the West, but the application of the law in Russia depends very much on the individual. It's a very subjective interpretation of laws.
In Russia we have 87 republics, all independent territories. Some of the provinces are quite friendly, some are very hostile. It complicates the whole thing. Eventually we have to resolve this juridically and politically.
You indicated that an even greater danger from the West than materialism are religious groups seeking to win Catholics away from the faith. How serious a threat are they?
They are coming in very strongly. The last law on religions was inspired by the politicians and also by the Orthodox church to stop the coming of the sects into Russia. [At first] the law was not clear enough, and it would have affected the Catholic Church and Protestants. The Holy Father wrote to [President Boris] Yeltsin to have them respect our rights.
The sects are very, very active in Russia. Most of them are coming from America. As far as I know, the ministry approved the Mormons, the Catholics, the evangelicals, and, naturally, the Orthodox church. The Orthodox church, according to the new preamble, is the “church of merit” for the Russian people and the Russian culture. It's not a state religion. Christians, Buddhism, Judaism and Islam are recognized as traditional religions of Russia — the Catholic Church is covered under the Christian church.
The Church has charities, and we help. We take care of the street children and the old and dying. We have sisters who are doing wonderful, charitable work. [But] with 5 million people in Moscow and 6 million in St. Petersburg, we do not have the personnel and we do not have the means.
The sects have a real personal approach. They have the means to help the people, and they have quite a bit of success. Jehovah's Witnesses have a great success; also — if you call them sects — the Pentecostals and the evangelicals.
Do the Catholics offer much resistance?
If you have a million Catholics in a nation of 47 million, what does it mean? It's a fraction. We are in groups, in clusters in Siberia, in Moscow, in St. Petersburg. In Siberia they are in small groups, you find them all over, and it's very difficult to say how much the sects have impacted Catholics, [but] it's a real danger to us.
What is life like in Russia now?
Economically, like in all aspects, Russia is a country of contrasts. You will have, for instance, the Bolshoi Theater with first-class performances. You have universities and institutions in Moscow, so you have a high level of culture. On the other hand, you have men on the streets who are begging and drinking. You have millionaires and billionaires, and you have poor people, begging. You never see it like this in any other country, and I have traveled a lot.
What role does the Church see in serving these problems?
The Church has charities, and we help. We take care of the street children and the old and dying. We have sisters who are doing wonderful, charitable work. [But] with 5 million people in Moscow and 6 million in St. Petersburg, we do not have the personnel and we do not have the means.
The Orthodox church now has a social ministry, and this has not been part of their tradition, so they are learning from [the Catholic Church]. Also, catechism is being introduced, and in this they are imitating us.
What do you see as signs of hope for Russia's future?
I wish and I pray that the bishop's conference will involve the [lay] Catholics. The graduates of the Catholic school, St. Thomas Aquinas College, will produce the people who will really help us. The Church, anywhere in the world, cannot rely on the priests only — not anymore. We need good fathers and mothers, women and men to help us.
As far as the good literature and catechetical materials, we can make it over there, we can have it printed and the people that know Russian very well can do it, but we do not have the finances. We would appreciate good books to be translated, especially on the family and pro-life, literature about abortion — not too many, but something representative, and then, if possible, secure the financing of it. People can contact me or one of the four bishops.
You hope and pray that the laity will be more involved. But are the negative signs overwhelming?
I personally can say I am very hopeful and optimistic because the communist system left a great, great spiritual vacuum in the people. The question is, will materialism fill this vacuum? The Church has to fill it with beliefs, principles and values. The Russians are very kind people, very friendly, very open-minded, but they are searching. If we don't fill them, they will find something else.
[The sudden fall of communism] is a miracle. Who would have thought of it before Gorbachev? We had two churches open in St. Petersburg and Moscow. Today we have dozens and dozens open and functioning.
How are your universities compared to the Orthodox Russians?
We have two seminaries, 17 men in the major seminary, about 12 in the minor seminary. We have the college, St. Thomas Aquinas, which was the bishop's college. We gave it to the Jesuits, because they are experienced in education and schools, and asked them to develop a special course for a master's degree in Christian social ethics, which is completely absent in the life of Russia today. We want this to be recognized by the Russian intellectuals and even by ordinary people.
The Orthodox tradition doesn't have too much in this respect. We need to develop something which will correspond to the needs of man. Western capitalism is not ideal, and communism is not ideal … but the freedom of man has to be guaranteed.
[Many] Russians are poor; they are struggling to survive. I sometimes admire Russian patience. I know university professors who live on $200 a month, I know teachers who haven't been paid for four months, and they continue. Life is tough.
What is the biggest obstacle to Pope John Paul's great hope of reuniting the Orthodox and Catholic churches?
There are very few doctrinal differences. The serious obstacle is the papacy. There is some question about marriage, because [the Orthodox] tolerate divorce. But the main obstacle is the papacy, to recognize the office of Peter. The Holy Father wrote about it and said the office as such cannot be touched; the chair of Peter is the foundation of unity, but the exercise of it can be discussed. More cannot be written, and more he cannot say. I sincerely hope the patriarchs — and there are 12 of them — can sit down and study this together.
Also, our dogmas needed centuries to fully develop. … The [Orthodox] believe in the Real Presence, but the Eucharist you hardly see. They come into the Church, they kiss the icon, they light the candle and they go. They never developed the devotion, the processions and so on. In the Latin Church, there is the development of dogmas. …
I admire their liturgy, which is very nice. They did not secularize it as we do. There is much more mystery left. They still have real sacrum. So we [Catholic priests] still have our full cassocks — the people want it, and it has to be beautiful. Our sisters and our priests accommodate this.
They have confession. For them, it's something divine, the liturgy and the sacraments. In this respect, we could learn from them, the spirituality and so on. We are really, as the Pope said, sister churches on account of the common patrimony which we have.
What does your new work mean to you personally?
I never thought [I would be here]. I wanted to be a missionary; I wanted to go to Ghana or the Philippines. I could not, because I lost my Slavic citizenship, and I did not return. I was sent to Washington and to Rome to study. I was teaching for 15 years. While in the [Vatican] secretariat, I had Thailand, Philippines, Japan, Togo under me. In 1972 I went to work in the Vatican. Maybe if communism had stayed, now I would be working in the secretariat!
It seems you get used to any kind of work. It's a very interesting thing.
Every nuncio, especially in Russia, Romania and Bulgaria, has three tasks to do. The first one is to follow the development of the Church and inform the Holy Father of the life of the church in these countries. The second is to maintain good relations with the authorities in the government. And the third is ecumenism, which in Russia, Bulgaria and Romania is a big task.
It's not always what you think, what you want to do. But at the same time, it's very satisfying work. There is not much bad will on either side [between Catholics and Orthodox]. But after 1,000 years of estrangement, to do it over is not an easy task.
Ellen Rossini writes from Dallas.
Personal: Native of Slovakia; naturalized citizen of the United States; a member of the Society of the Divine Word; speaks seven languages.
Studies: Studied liberal arts and philosophy at Divine Word College and pursued graduate studies in theology at Divine Word Theologate in Techny, Ill.; obtained degrees in theology and sacred Scripture at the Catholic University in Washington, D.C.; did advanced studies in Near Eastern languages and culture at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago
Experience: 18 years in the Eastern European Affairs section of the Vatican Secretariat of States. Nuncio in Romania.
Current mission: Appointed by Pope John Paul II as Papal nuncio to Federated Russia.
----- EXCERPT: Pope's representative confronts the mess that communism left ----- EXTENDED BODY: Archbishop John Bukovsky ----- KEYWORD: Inperson -------- TITLE: U.S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 03/14/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 14-20, 1999 ----- BODY:Greek Orthodox Divide Over Archbishop
A national organization called Greek Orthodox American Leaders has been formed to work for the archbishop's removal, and has raised nearly $1 million in the process, it reported. The archbishop has been criticized for his attempt to buy a $1.4 million house without prior church consent and for filing a federal lawsuit against his church critics, who used a Church mailing list without his authorization, said the article.
Last fall, the lay-driven revolt began getting unexpected help from the hierarchy, it said. In October, the nation's five metropolitans, who are Archbishop Spyridon's spiritual equals, wrote a blistering private critique of his New York-based administration.
Cardinal Maida Shares Sorrow for Holocaust
The cardinal said the pope has challenged Catholics to use the end of the millennium as a time to examine their consciences and ask for healing, including on matters involving the Holocaust.
“I understand what he's saying, and it is very nice …,” said Sallyjo Levine, a member of the Jewish congregation. “You have to go on with the idea, ‘What can we do now,’ as opposed to asking who was to blame 50 years ago,”
Laity Seen as Key to Hispanic Ministry
The institute prepares lay people to serve as leaders of their fellow Hispanics, who are being served by a declining number of priests. Graduates of the program can also be expected to help stem the tide of Latinos who are leaving the Church in favor of Protestant denominations, said the article.
Hispanic Catholics comprise about 65% of the estimated 4 million Catholics in Southern California. However, recent statistics have shown that among Latinos the percentage who identify themselves as Catholic has dropped nationwide, to 62% today from 75% in the 1970s.
----- EXCERPT: From selected publications ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Evangelicals Support Pope's Plea For Religious Equality in Greece DATE: 03/14/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 14-20, 1999 ----- BODY:ATHENS—Evangelical and Roman Catholic leaders in Greece have backed calls by Pope John Paul II for Greece's minority religious communities to be accorded the same rights and freedoms as the majority Orthodox Church of Greece.
They also urged the Orthodox church — which claims the support of the vast majority of Greece's 10.4 million citizens — to be more open to ecumenism.
“Legally, religious freedom is secure here,” said Antoni Koulouris, secretary-general of the Greek Evangelical Reformed Church. “But the attitude persists that citizens have a duty to be Orthodox, and that belonging to other denominations is unpatriotic and heretical.”
Koulouris was commenting on comments by Pope John Paul in defense of religious freedom. The speech was addressed to Greece's eight Catholic bishops during their visit to Rome in February.
“The Orthodox Church plays a crucial role in political life, influencing policies and laws,” said Koulouris. “As the predominant church, [the Orthodox Church] claims all Greeks as members, even though most are only nominal Christians and only 1 to 2% go [regularly] to church.”
According to a recent statement by the local Catholic Church, ecumenism is “non-existent” in Greece. Many problems had been caused by a “juridical vacuum” in Greek legislation, the statement said.
Among areas of “practical discrimination,” Catholic Archbishop of Athens, Nikolaos Foscolos listed Greece's armed forces, where being Orthodox was the “first requirement” for officers.
“Orthodoxy is the church of the state, so non-Orthodox are considered incompletely Greek,” Archbishop Foscolos said. “Although the constitution guarantees citizens the same juridical status regardless of creed, religious discrimination exists.”
The rights of Catholics in Greece — about 50,000 ethnic Greeks and 150,000 foreign residents — have been a particularly sensitive issue since the Supreme Court ruled in 1994 that the Catholic Church enjoyed religious freedom but not legal status. Article 3 of the constitution of Greece declares Orthodoxy the country's “dominant religion.”
In a report in 1998, the human rights-monitoring group, International Helsinki Federation, claimed that 14 communities belonging to the Greek Evangelical Church and Fellowship of Free Evangelical churches, had been accused of operating illegally during 1997.
The report added that the Greek government had overruled attempts by the country's 150,000-strong Muslim community to elect their own religious leaders.
However, Antoni Koulouris said a popular weekly newspaper, Bhema, had apologized to Evangelical Christians in late February after publishing an article which listed their Church as a “sect,” along with Satanists.
Officials at the Church of Greece's synod and at the archbishop's residence in Athens refused to be interviewed.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 03/14/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 14-20, 1999 ----- BODY:Some Clergy Balk at General Absolution Ban
The letter was signed by 75 priests, brothers and sisters who took part in a national colloquium in Sydney on the Statement of Conclusions that resulted from a meeting last October between Vatican officials and a group of Australian bishops held in the Vatican in conjunction with the Synod of Oceania.
The clergy group also expressed “dismay” with the statement's call to end the practice of general absolution. McGillion described the Vatican's insistence on individual confession as “controversial.”
Millions Fleeing Indonesia Violence
Fides said 160 people had died in the past month in fighting among Christian and Muslim groups in the Molucche archipelago of Indonesia, which includes the island of Ambon.
An unnamed source working for the Diocese of Amboina, Indonesia, told Fides that the clashes were less over differences in religion than ``various ethnic, economic, cultural and social reasons.”
Church in U.K. Accused on Not Following Own Norms
Church officials have admitted that some bishops in the UK may be failing to follow the Church's own child protection guidelines. The Church's strict child protection procedures, in place since 1994, state that in any case where a complaint is made against a priest, social services should be informed and the priest removed from parish duties.
However, the BBC found one priest under investigation who was still working. Another, recently suspended, was allowed to work in a primary school while under suspicion of abusing children.
----- EXCERPT: From selected publications ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 03/14/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 14-20, 1999 ----- BODY:Pope Might Travel to Iraq in Autumn
Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, president of the Vatican Committee for the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, speaking at the Pontifical French Seminary in Rome March 2, said the pilgrimage would begin in Ur, the ancient Chaldean city that was home to Abraham. However, the cardinal said that “agreements must still be reached with the various religious leaders” in Iraq.
Zenit emphasized that the Pope's plans would focus international attention on the economic embargo against Iraq. The article said the Holy See has repeatedly condemned the embargo, “which for seven years has lacerated the weakest of the population, especially children, women and the elderly.”
Iran's President to Meet Pope
Iranian newspapers have hailed the trip as a turning point in the nation's relationship with the West. Reuters quoted an editorial in Iran News that claimed “President Khatami's meeting with Pope John Paul II will be the first step toward a dialogue between Christianity and Islam and will lead to further dialogues with other nations, religions and civilizations.”
European oil giants ENI and Elf Aquitaine signed an early March deal worth $1 billion to develop Iran's offshore oil fields. “The deal flies in the face of U.S. sanctions which target firms that invest more than $20 million in Iran's oil or gas sectors,” said the report.
----- EXCERPT: From selected publications ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Vatican II Is Big News DATE: 03/14/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 14-20, 1999 ----- BODY:On March 1, Pope John Paul II called it “the most influential ecclesial event in our century,” especially “on its teaching regarding the dignity, vocation and mission of the laity.”
But the Second Vatican Council has been greatly underestimated by many outside the Church.
This immensely important event (1962-1965) was not even mentioned in the top 100 news stories of the 20th century recently rated by journalists for the Washington, D.C.-area “Newseum.” In fact, no prominent Church newsmaker or Catholic event was included — though the founding of Microsoft (No. 97), the surgeon general's warning about tobacco (No. 100) and the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal (No. 53) all made the list.
Needless to say, when history looks back at our times, the Church's story will dwarf Bill Gates, cigarette labels and the president's travails.
It has been a century of withering attacks on the Church. From the rise of materialist philosophies, to the martyrdoms in the world wars to our present, woeful state of separation of the Church from the public square, the 20th century can be seen as a steady attempt to drive the Church out of acceptable society — and to drive the faith out of the daily lives of Catholics.
At Vatican II, the Church countered this trend in a forceful way. It encouraged the laity to “raise the eyes of the temporal realm” to heaven.
Today, the problems in the “temporal realm” have reached a high-water mark. The Holy Father has written encyclicals on the most important ones. The civilized world has embraced a culture of death and rejected the gospel of life, it has embraced a current of intellectualism that distorts both faith and reason, and it has adopted a morality of misunderstood tolerance that denies the splendor of truth.
But the Pope seems certain that these obstacles can be overcome by the Church — but only, he says, if its lay members cooperate with the Holy Spirit by living the faith and bringing it to bear on the world around us every day.
In his March 1 remarks, the Pope provided an examination of conscience for the laity, which included these questions: “What have I done with my baptism? How am I responding to my vocation? What have I done with my confirmation? Have I allowed the charisms of the Spirit to flower? Is Christ still present in my life?”
And, last: “What has been my contribution to building a way of life that is more in keeping with the dignity of man and to the inculturation of the Gospel in the most important changes taking place at this time?”
Catholics know the value of an examination of conscience, and these questions are special. They do not ask what we have done wrong — but what we have failed to do.
Those 100 top news events might have been very different if the laity had responded immediately and vigorously to the call of the Vatican II — and their contribution would have been impossible to ignore.
However, the Pope is certainly not despairing about the state of the lay mission in the Church. He said the Jubilee will reveal an “epiphany of the laity” in the next millennium and concluded, “The world needs the witness of ‘new men’ and ‘new women’ who by their words and works make Christ more intensely present.”
An examination of conscience can also turn its attention to what we have done right. On that same list of news events, we see several where Catholics have worked to good effect.
No. 13: Communism collapses with the dissolution of the Soviet Union — and, we might add, after the apostolate of prayer that so many lay people aimed at Russia throughout the 20th century. No. 27: The Berlin Wall falls, in no small part as the result of a lay movement in Poland and the shock waves it caused all over Europe. No. 38: Roe vs. Wade legalizes abortion — and Catholics, from the beginning, led a movement to oppose it, keeping it a live and prominent part of public debate.
Already, said the Pope, one of the most evident fruits of Vatican II has been “the promotion of the laity, their participation and co-responsibility in the life of the Christian community, in its apostolate and in its service to society.”
But, he warned, “I do not want the laity to shy away from this examination of conscience; they must cross the threshold of the Holy Door of the third millennium penetrated by the truth and holiness of the disciples of Christ.”
----- EXCERPT: EDITORIAL ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Opinion -------- TITLE: Inside Christ's Mind at the Passion DATE: 03/14/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 14-20, 1999 ----- BODY:Serious students of the Church who know their faith and have not yet chosen a book for Holy Week may have to look no further. Adrienne von Speyr's The Passion from Within will provide a great accompaniment to the triduum. The insights the author brings to her account of the passion of Christ are so direct and provocative that it is obvious why Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar was such an aficionado of her writings.
Von Speyr, a 20th-century Dutch mystic, brings an intense and urgent spirit to her many works about theological topics. It's a pleasure to see her works introduced by Ignatius Press to English-speaking audiences, both in the fine translations of Adrian Walker and in Sister Lucia Wiedenhöver's here.
Written as a narrative of Christ's inner dispositions and attitudes, The Passion from Within moves slowly toward the culminating event of Calvary. The book follows him as he “parts” with progressively more intimate and costly aspects of his life: his body in the Eucharist, his will in Gethsemane, his life in the end.
The author effectively applies lessons from Christ's life to the Christian's. For instance, she points out that, on Holy Thursday, “The Church receives the body of Christ before he suffers the Passion; only afterward will he go and deliver his body up to death. … [I]f the Lord had suffered first and then instituted the Eucharist she would not be able to share his passion; she would be at once the triumphant Church with the Lord's death lying behind her.” If that is the case, then our participation in the Eucharist confers a great responsibility.
She makes difficult parts of the Passion come alive with meaning. Her reflections on Gethsemane, for example, show the hardship and the momentous nature of Christ's acceptance of his Father's will. Here as elsewhere she provides enlivening detail. In the chapter titled “The Lord is Distraught,” she describes how Christ might have felt as he, sinless, made himself personally responsible for all sin for our sake. For he has now come into completely unfamiliar territory and, in a sense, loses his bearings: “What is that noise in the darkness? A mouse? Or a house collapsing? Or the world coming to an end? Every means of taking stock of the approaching disaster is taken away.”
Thus, her high “theological” tone is occasionally punctuated with a novelistic passage, allowing von Speyr to give life to her ideas about the Passion. Her reflections can be supremely relevant. She helpfully devotes a chapter to “The Role of Money in the Passion.” And she dwells on Pilate, pointing out that we are in greater danger of becoming like him than like Judas.
One important caveat: The author is an exciting writer, but she is not a theologian. If a theologian's project can be summed up as “faith seeking understanding,” von Speyr's might be “faith seeking experience.” For instance, she dictated the culminating chapters of the book in a state she calls “hell” — a kind of heightened awareness beyond natural possibilities, bearing all the signs of a trance, that puts her at the Lord's side on Calvary, and later with him in the tomb.
These chapters are the most difficult. Their claim to such a degree of intimacy with the Lord's thoughts is unsettling. Von Speyr has so far been very credible. But now she asks us to accompany her in reflections that can only be explained supernaturally. The reader can feel backed into a corner, unsure of how to regard what she says.
The chapter “The Institution of the Eucharist” says a great deal about the importance of this sacrament. The author sees an interesting twist on “the Word became flesh,” as Christ speaks the words that are now used in the Mass. To von Speyr, with this act, “the flesh became words.” The insight is interesting, arresting and perhaps profound. But she stays with the thought. “And now the Lord himself is startled in the face of these words. He shudders.” The reader wonders: Did he shudder? Was it because his flesh was becoming words?
Later in the chapter, von Speyr speaks of a “human trinity” in our Lord: himself, his eucharistic presence, and his body the Church. Then she lists questions raised by our faith in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. These can give a bracing and refreshing reminder of Christ's real presence. Or they can confuse or mislead. “If he becomes bread that we can eat, does his life end with this meal? And since bread can be produced repeatedly: Does he come to an end when we eat this bread? Is it a symbolic death, or do we perhaps really kill him when we receive him into ourselves? Was all human life ordered toward this ultimate reality of bread that is being eaten? Is the prophecy of the passion concerned with … bread?” And so on.
This sort of “theological” reflection, where intuition and not logic leads to startling discoveries, is exciting the way dangerous things are exciting. It is exciting because of the raw power of the conclusions she arrives at. But it is dangerous because those conclusions rest on the coherence of the author's fidelity to Christ, and not on the coherence of an argument. The conclusions can't be disproved, because no proof was offered. In the hands of a gifted writer less faithful to the Church, such artistry could be destructive.
Tom Hoopes is executive editor of the Register.
----- EXCERPT: Book Review ----- EXTENDED BODY: Tom Hoopes ----- KEYWORD: Books -------- TITLE: How to Finish the Pro-Life Struggle DATE: 03/14/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 14-20, 1999 ----- BODY:William Murchison, syndicated columnist and author of There's More to Life Than Politics, writes: “As is clear to those who can see past the end of their noses, the abortion movement and the euthanasia/ assisted suicide movement are genetic twins, feeding off the same ambivalence about life's goodness, the same syrupy addiction to ‘tolerance’ in human affairs. A lawmaker's rockbottom duty is the protection of life, born as well as unborn; but if on some days, in some years, all we can do is keep the killer doctors, the Kevorkians, at bay, that counts for something.
“At the start I spoke of that broad intersection where politics and morality meet. What happens when they meet? It depends on what issue you mean, and when the meeting takes place. When politics and morality reinforce each other, the meeting goes smoothly enough. In other words, when moral consensus underlies political judgment and political action, there is not much to fuss and fight about.
“Let me illustrate. There is a moral consensus about robbery — a thing everyone abhors, except for burglars, stick-up artists, and architects of the IRS Code. The moral consensus, based on direct instruction (the Bible, etc.) and intuition (You can't just take something from somebody!) holds that robbery must be prohibited and punished. … Not so with life issues — and with a great many other issues as well; issues revolving around what are often termed ‘lifestyle choices.’ … A lifestyle choice, in the argot of the 1990s, is one that affects the chooser alone. The chooser is lord of his own life so long as he leaves others to their own devices — respecting in others the freedom he asks for himself.
“By a painful and sometimes zig-zag process, the culture over the past 30 years has defined choices regarding sex, and sexual expression, as lifestyle choices par excellence — matters pertaining to the individual and the individual alone.
“This is curious, given that sex, though private and personal in nature, is rarely solitary, affecting only one person (the examination of pornography, for instance). Pregnancy results from the union of two people. What is more, it produces a third. This makes pregnancy, on any reasonable showing, a social occasion — one, that is, in which society takes an interest. Thus, prior to Roe v. Wade, the states made it their business to protect that third life by banning abortion. The Supreme Court was able to overturn these laws only after a process in which the new view of lifestyle was assimilated at the highest level. Pregnancy, which had formerly been social, became intensely individual — a matter for the woman and the God in whom she might or might not believe.
“As with abortion, so with euthanasia/assisted suicide. The killing of real outside-the-womb human beings stirs reservations that seem not to pertain in the cases of unborn babies, without names, almost without pasts. Still, Dr. Kevorkian (and his friends at 60 Minutes) are whooping it up for unfettered lifestyle choice. The quest for autonomy in death might not seem to be related directly to the quest for autonomy in sex. In fact, the latter gave rise to the former; it raised indelicately a once-scandalous contention, that, to put it bluntly, what's mine is mine. As the public adopted that viewpoint, legislators, who supposedly represent the public, started likewise to adopt it, at least for legislative purposes.
“What we stand for, the majority of us Americans, is … tolerance. What we need — critically so — is the restoration of norms and standards and an end to fuzzy, feel-good thinking about the equivalence of certain key ideas. The point may be unremarkable. I remark it by way of trying to demonstrate the limitations of politics.
“Democratic politics, however vital to our society, will take a modern American just so far. Organize, theorize, propagandize: still the voters have to agree. How is Congress going to abolish abortion unless the sovereign voters agree to its abolition: something (if polls are accurate) they are far from agreeing on?
“The anti-abortion crusade of the past quarter century has been vital in keeping alive intellectual opposition to abortion, but the crusade's failure so far to triumph in the political arena shows the character of the opposition. The task is only in part to chase from office the hollow men and women unwilling to attach supreme value to human life. The task is at least equally — I would argue more — to reinstill in American culture a sense of reverence for life.
“What's needed? Probably more example of personal concern for life by pro-lifers — like Marvin Olasky and his wife, organizing a crisis pregnancy center at their Austin, Texas, kitchen table and adopting, shall we say, cast-off children so as to love them.
“The task is cultural, broadly speaking. It is more precisely theological. At this sublime task the churches have lagged. Not that some churches — the Roman Catholic Church is notable here — have failed to speak up for the unborn life. The larger failure is more subtle: it is that of failing to connect all the dots in the great diagram of life, showing the diagram as one masterwork of God. With masterworks, you defer to the Master's wishes. You defer gladly, joyously, gratefully, as a matter of fact.”
Ellen Wilson Fielding writes from Davidson, Maryland.
----- EXCERPT: Article Digest ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding ----- KEYWORD: Opinion -------- TITLE: Letters DATE: 03/14/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 14-20, 1999 ----- BODY:Belarusan Catholics
After reading the article “Vatican Spies' Book Chronicles Church's Suffering in Soviet Union” (Register, Jan. 3-9, 1999), I am obliged to write and set the facts straight. The author says the following among other things: “The Catholic Church's Mohilev archdiocese, based at St. Petersburg, was home to 1.5 million mostly ethnic Polish Catholics in 1917.” Nonsense!!! … Our Belarusan people in those days were divided into Polish and Russians, not according to their nationality, but to their religious backgrounds. This was done by the hierarchs of Moscow and Warsaw. The so-called “ethnic Polish Catholics” were in the minority in Belarus. …
There is a mention in the article of Father Fabian Abrantovic … and of Father Hieronim Cerpento … The above two priests were not the only ones who served God and their own Belarusans and other Catholics with great piety and dedication, who suffered for their devotion to Jesus Christ. To our knowledge the following should be also counted as victims of communist repressions: Jazep Hermanovic, Anton Laskievic, Zachar Kavalou, Kuzma Najlovic, Fama Padziava, Adam Stankievic, brother Anton Aniskievic and many others like Archimandrite Andrej Cikota. …
There are some Polish sources who claim that there are 1.5 million Poles in Belarus today. Wrong!!! There were three repatriations of the Polish people from Belarus after World War II and the majority of them left for Poland and settled in the regions that Poland regained from Germany after World War II. …
The “Polish Catholics” in Belarus today speak the Belarusan language at home and use the Polish language to pray in churches. They are called “The Sunday Poles” by the Belarusan Uniate and Orthodox people. The Polish priests, who were sent from Poland on a mission to Belarus, are making all efforts to turn the Belarusan Roman Catholics into Poles again. The Polish and Russian hierarchs in Belarus are trying to Polonize and Russianize the Belarusan people again today as they did it in the past when the tsars were in power.
Thank you for letting me speak the truth.
Vera Romuk
Bielarusian Coordinating Committee Chicago
In his fifth-century Confessio, St. Patrick writes of how he evangelized Ireland's chieftains and royalty. He particularly notes how hard the work was because of his commitment to poverty and because of the taunts of those who misunderstood his work.
So, how is it that in Ireland, where they never had any knowledge of God but, always, until now, cherished idols and unclean things, they are lately become a people of the Lord, and are called children of God? The sons of the Irish and the daughters of the chieftains are to be seen as monks and virgins of Christ!
And there was, besides, a most beautiful, blessed, native-born noble Irish woman of adult age whom I baptized; and a few days later she had reason to come to us to intimate that she had received a prophecy from a divine messenger [who] advised her that she should become a virgin of Christ and she would draw nearer to God. Thanks be to God, six days from then, opportunely and most eagerly, she took the course that all virgins of God take, not with their fathers' consent but enduring the persecutions and deceitful hindrances of their parents. …
So I hope that I did as I ought, but I do not trust myself as long as I am in this mortal body, for he is strong who strives daily to turn me away from the faith and true holiness to which I aspire until the end of my life for Christ my Lord, but the hostile flesh is always dragging one down to death, that is, to unlawful attractions. …
What is more, let anyone laugh and taunt if he so wishes. I am not keeping silent, nor am I hiding the signs and wonders that were shown to me by the Lord many years before they happened, [he] who knew everything, even before the beginning of time. … They were talking among themselves behind my back, and saying: “Why is this fellow throwing himself into danger among enemies who know not God?” Not from malice, but having no liking for it; likewise, as I myself can testify, they perceived my rusticity. And I was not quick to recognize the grace that was then in me; I now know that I should have done so earlier. …
For even though I am ignorant in all things, nevertheless I attempted to safeguard some and myself also. And I gave back again to my Christian brethren and the virgins of Christ and the holy women the small unasked for gifts that they used to give me or some of their ornaments which they used to throw on the altar. And they would be offended with me because I did this. But in the hope of eternity, I safeguarded myself carefully in all things, so that they might not cheat me of my office of service on any pretext of dishonesty, and so that I should not in the smallest way provide any occasion for defamation or disparagement on the part of unbelievers.
Legends abound about St. Patrick, but his autobiographical Confessio, in rustic Latin, is considered authentic.
What is more, when I baptized so many thousands of people, did I hope for even half a jot from any of them? [If so] Tell me, and I will give it back to you. And when the Lord ordained clergy everywhere by my humble means, and I freely conferred office on them, if I asked any of them anywhere even for the price of one shoe, say so to my face and I will give it back.
More, I spent for you so that they would receive me. And I went about among you, and everywhere for your sake, in danger, and as far as the outermost regions beyond which no one lived, and where no one had ever penetrated before, to baptize or to ordain clergy or to confirm people. Conscientiously and gladly I did all this work by God's gift for your salvation.
From time to time I gave rewards to the kings, as well as making payments to their sons who travel with me; notwithstanding which, they seized me with my companions, and that day most avidly desired to kill me. But my time had not yet come. They plundered everything they found on us anyway, and fettered me in irons; and on the fourteenth day the Lord freed me from their power, and whatever they had of ours was given back to us for the sake of God on account of the indispensable friends whom we had made before.
Also you know from experience how much I was paying to those who were administering justice in all the regions, which I visited often. I estimate truly that I distributed to them not less than the price of fifteen men, in order that you should enjoy my company and I enjoy yours, always, in God. I do not regret this nor do I regard it as enough. I am paying out still and I shall pay out more. The Lord has the power to grant me that I may soon spend my own self, for your souls.
Behold, I call on God as my witness upon my soul that I am not lying; nor would I write to you for it to be an occasion for flattery or selfishness, nor hoping for honor from any one of you. Sufficient is the honor which is not yet seen, but in which the heart has confidence. He who made the promise is faithful; he never lies.
St. Patrick's feast day is celebrated on March 17.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Commentary -------- TITLE: Forging the Future America Forfeited DATE: 03/14/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 14-20, 1999 ----- BODY:The Archdiocese of Denver sponsored the second annual Mile Hi Congress Feb. 25-27 with the theme, “On the Road to the Father,” focused on Catholic educators, both teachers in schools and parents in the home. Following are excerpts from Archbishop Chaput's address.
My theme this morning is “forming disciples for the third millennium.”
Let's talk first about the idea of “forming.” Forming is not the same as informing. It's not just a matter of providing choices to another person, and then standing back to see what happens. I'm a Capuchin Franciscan, and I was formed to think and feel, act and pray, in the spirit of my community, which is rooted in the life of St. Francis. I was molded.
Spouses mold each other in the covenant of marriage, guided by God's grace. Friends form each other through the joys and sorrows of their friendship. And parents form their children through their encouragement and discipline. In every case, the goal is a deepening of communion, love, joy and maturity — but the means to that end can be experienced as pressure and suffering. Real love can sometimes feel like a hammer. …
Proverbs (3:11-12) tells us, “Do not despise the Lord's discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.” And the letter to the Hebrews (12:7) reminds us that in suffering, “God is treating you as sons, for what son is there whom a father does not discipline?”
And this is why the letter of James tells us, “Count it all joy, my brethren, when you meet various trials” (1:2). Suffering is a tool. God uses this tool to shape each of us into the saints he wants us to be. God sees the shape of our holiness in the marble of our humanity. Then he cuts away the stone of sin to free us.
The Sculptor and the Teacher
Now, people aren't blocks of stone. They're living tissue, with the freedom and dignity of children of God. And teachers aren't chisels and hammers. Or at least they shouldn't be. They are active, cooperating agents in God's plan, not merely his instruments. But we can still draw some lessons from the sculptor and his work.
First, the great sculptor is motivated by love, not merely technical skill. The sculptor loves the beauty and the truth he sees locked in the stone. In the same way, the great teacher loves the possibilities for beauty and truth — the hint of the image of God — she sees in the face of her students.
Next, the great sculptor has a passion for his work and a confidence in his vision. In like manner, no Catholic teacher or parent can form another person in the faith without a passion for the Gospel, a personal zeal for Jesus Christ, and an absolute confidence in the truth of the Church and her teaching. No teacher can give what she doesn't have herself. If you yourself don't believe, then you can only communicate unbelief. If I'm not faithful myself, then I will only communicate infidelity. Who we are, is part of the formation we give to others.
Finally, we need to recognize that people, unlike marble, have free will which must be respected. A person can freely reject the Gospel. The person who forms another in the faith must rely, therefore, on persuasion and never coercion. At the same time, though, the teacher should never lose sight of the fact that real freedom, Gospel freedom, is a very different creature from secular ideas of liberty, and choice for choice's sake.
Real freedom emerges from self-sacrifice, not self-assertion. That's a radically counter-cultural message today. But of course, it's the truth. If we believe God created us for a purpose, then some choices lead to beauty, truth, dignity and joy. And others do not. Real freedom consists in conforming ourselves to God's plan.
Who is Jesus Christ?
“Go therefore, and make disciples of all nations.” But what does a disciple look like? What does a disciple do? Well, maybe we should start with what a disciple doesn't do.
A disciple doesn't merely assent to Jesus Christ, with this or that intellectual reservation, because Jesus is not an idea. A disciple doesn't endorse the message of Jesus Christ from the sidelines. A disciple doesn't relativize Jesus Christ as a first century reformer who would have included this or that social issue in his agenda if he'd just had the benefit of 20th century hindsight. A disciple does-n't merely admire Jesus Christ as a great teacher and prophet.
Jesus is so much more than all these things.
On the contrary, the disciple of Jesus Christ loves and follows him. The disciple of Jesus Christ accepts him without reservation as the Son of God. The disciple of Jesus Christ submits and conforms his or her whole life to the Gospel. The disciple of Jesus Christ believes that he is “the way, the truth and the life,” the only redeemer, the only messiah, the only sure path to eternal joy. He is the savior; there is no other.
Discipleship is not the equivalent of a club membership. Properly lived, it's sacrificial. In fact, it's all-absorbing, which is why real discipleship is so unpopular in contemporary American culture. It gets in the way of consumer self-indulgence. Discipleship is the total dedication to following Jesus Christ, preaching His Gospel and serving His Church.
In his recent apostolic exhortation, Ecclesia in America, the Holy Father says, “the vital core of the new evangelization must be the clear and unequivocal proclamation of the person of Jesus Christ — that is, the preaching of his name, his teaching, his life, his promises and the kingdom he has gained for us by his paschal mystery.” …
First Millennium Spirit, Third Millennium Realities
That brings us to the final idea in our theme for this morning. What exactly does it mean to form disciples for the third millennium?
I have two answers.
Here's the first: Forming disciples for the third millennium is going to demand exactly the same missionary spirit and missionary skills it took for the first 2,000 years. The human predicament on January 1, 2000, will probably look pretty much the same as it did on January 1, 1990, and pretty much the same as it will on January 1, 2010. There's nothing secret or magic or frightening or radically new, or even particularly dramatic, about New Year's Eve 1999 — unless you're looking for an excuse to party. Or unless you believe in Jesus Christ as the center and meaning of history. God is still God. We're still made of the same stone. And most people in the world have still not heard the Gospel preached to them.
For 70% of the people on this planet, the “new millennium” is no more than a convenient standard for measuring time. It has no religious content whatsoever. For me, that's much more troubling than the hands on any clock. If the world does not know Jesus Christ, it's because of us: our lack of missionary zeal, our lack of sacrifice, our lack of love. And that problem isn't solved by new tools or new information. It's solved by our own conversion and discipleship — which is pretty much the same story as every generation since the cross.
Real freedom emerges from self-sacrifice, not self-assertion. That's a radically counter-cultural message today.
But we are entering an age which will have its own unique challenges, and this is my second [point] — that we need to form disciples in the decades ahead who are prepared for a world drastically different from anything in American memory. Physics is changing the way we articulate the structure of the universe. Genetics is changing the way we articulate the structure of the human person. And in the midst of this accelerating power and knowledge, Western societies — many of them constituting the Christian world as we once knew it — are removing themselves from the future.
Removing Ourselves from the Future?
What I mean is this: In today's developed countries, one in seven persons has an age of 65 or older. But in 30 years, that number will grow to one in four. In other words, over the next three decades, the percentage of older people in our population will nearly double.
Here are some other statistics: In 1950, the developed countries had about 24% of the world's population. By 2050, they will account for barely 10%. Over the next half century, more than 30 developed countries, from Austria, to Russia to Spain to the United Kingdom, will actually lose population in real numbers. The fertility rate in every developed country has already fallen below the replacement rate of 2.1. By 2050, the 12 most populous nations in the world will include only one of today's developed countries. That will be the United States, which will sustain its population on immigration. These data come from Peter Peterson's new book, Gray Dawn, but they're widely available from other reliable sources as well.
The implications for people in the developed countries are pretty obvious. As lifespans increase and fertility drops, pension and healthcare expenses will go up. Unfortunately, the workforce supporting those expenses by taxes will shrink. Therefore, the tax burden on each younger worker will grow. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that euthanasia, to name just one example, will look more and more cost effective in the coming decades. At a minimum, friction between the old and the young in developed countries will increase. And it will have a huge impact on social welfare policies. Population growth in the less developed countries, meanwhile, is likely to continue. This is why governments like our own are forcing population control on the more fertile developing countries — it's now seen as a matter of urgent national security in many of the aging, industrialized states.
I mention these projections because the assumptions which we've made, for most of our lives, about the shape of the future — well, they're going to be wrong. Drastically wrong. The human story will remain the same, but the organizational terrain of human societies and institutions will not. And we can't avoid much of what's coming, both the good and the bad. If the entire developed world woke up from its death wish tomorrow and began restoring its fertility rate, it would take decades to have any effect. More importantly though, if a society has freely chosen against life, does it make any sense to mourn it? Beyond a certain critical threshold, the human family might be better without such a society. …
Whatever lies ahead, the world doesn't need more anger, more fear and more enclaves. It needs seeds of renewal, and the leaven of Christian hope. That means us, and those whom we teach. The work each of you does today as a Catholic educator is the most important enterprise in the world. Forming disciples for the third millennium boils down, finally, to preaching, teaching and building the culture of life which flows from the cross of Jesus Christ.
Archbishop Charles Chaput is the ordinary of Denver.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, OFM Cap ----- KEYWORD: Commentary -------- TITLE: Pitchforking God from the Universe DATE: 03/14/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 14-20, 1999 ----- BODY:The hottest ticket in London this winter was not for a rock concert or the latest Tom Stoppard play, but for a debate entitled, “Has Science Killed the Soul?” Richard Dawkins, who holds the Chair of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford (endowed with Microsoft millions) drew a crowd of 2,300 to hear him discuss the death of the soul with the American evolutionary scientist Stephen Pinker.
It was not exactly a debate, since both men are fervent neoDarwinists who think that natural selection explains everything from the sonnets of Shakespeare to sliced bread. (They do not stop to consider whether the destruction of the unfit, which is what natural selection does, can explain the origin of the fit.) The evening was actually an evangelical rally of Darwinian triumphalism. What Dawkins and Pinker were proclaiming was the victory of science over religion, the pitchforking of God from the universe by men in white smocks.
Dawkins surprised nobody by affirming that science has indeed killed the soul. The idea that we are animated by an immortal spiritual substance is, according to Dawkins, “circular and non-productive” for a scientist. A biologist or physicist can dispense with the supernatural, and so, therefore, can everyone else.
This is a classic Dawkins argument, which can persuade only those who are not paying attention. What he is saying is that since a scientist does not use God as an explanation for anything, God therefore does not exist. But this is to confuse the very different jobs of scientist and theologian. A scientist deals with secondary causes. That is what scientific methodology is all about. But since a scientist never invokes a First Cause, that does not mean that there is no First Cause. This is an inadmissible leap of logic, but Dawkins gets away with it.
Pinker, the latest star on the pop-science circuit, agreed with Dawkins that the human conscience is no more than very complicated matter. The brain, like the Apollo spacecraft, is a complex device crammed with other complex devices. When we think, nothing is happening beyond a collection of chemical interactions. Thought and free will are nothing but matter in motion.
Pinker said nothing that we haven't heard already from crusading materialists in the scientific community. In fact, he and Dawkins are simply echoing Thomas Henry Huxley, Darwin's bulldog, who in 1874 said that the will and mind are the sheer results of molecular changes in the brain. Huxley believed that “we shall sooner or later arrive at a mechanical equivalent of consciousness.” Pinker likewise told the audience that he couldn't quite explain how the chemical reactions in the brain turn into thought but that it is only a matter of time until someone will.
But hold on — there was a question from the floor: Wasn't their argument a bit like saying that a TV program is created by the innards of a TV set, when we all know that it comes from elsewhere? In response, Dawkins cracked a joke and made an ex cathedra pronouncement about how evolution and not God explains everything. But he did not answer the question.
What Dawkins and Pinker are peddling is not science, but anti-theism tricked up as science. It is an intellectual con game that gets wide play in the media. Both make sweeping statements about God without showing any sign of having spent three consecutive minutes thinking about the subject. There are at least three glaring anomalies in their arguments:
First, Dawkins and Pinker keep using words like “design” and “beauty” to describe the universe. But these words only make sense in a universe that is ordered and purposeful — that is, in a universe that points to the existence of a Creator. In using these theistically charged words, they are trying to have it both ways.
Second, they never acknowledge that evolutionary theory cannot answer the most fundamental question of all: Why is there a universe? Darwin cannot tell us how something came out of nothing. He can only tell us how something turned into something else, and his explanation even for that is not always convincing.
Third, if it is true that the mind is no more than an accidental whirl of atoms, then there is no such thing as free will. If that is the case, then we cannot trust any products of the mind, including the utterances of Dawkins and Pinker. Dawkins tells us that we are puppets of “selfish genes” whose only interest is survival. Fine. But who wants to listen to a puppet's discourse on metaphysics? The gene-driven motions of Dawkins' brain apparently have not revealed to him this elementary contradiction in his position.
This is the Achilles' heel of most modern philosophies. Their truth claims are self-canceling because they deny the existence of free will. If the will is not free, intellectual discourse is a dark and futile enterprise. Yet, the “scientific” nihilism of people like Dawkins and Pinker has become common cultural coin. That is one reason why Pope John Paul II had to issue an encyclical, Fides et Ratio, defending the traditional prerogatives of reason. One of the ironies of the closing of the millennium is that the Catholic Church finds itself the main defender of reason in the public square. Who would have thought it?
George Sim Johnston, a New York-based writer, is author of Did Darwin Get It Right?
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: George Sim Johnston ----- KEYWORD: Commentary -------- TITLE: The Little Flower's Place Among the Spiritual Masters DATE: 03/14/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 14-20, 1999 ----- BODY:On Oct. 19, 1997, Pope John Paul II proclaimed St. Thérèse of Lisieux a doctor of the Church with the following words.
Thérèse Martin, a discalced Carmelite of Lisieux, ardently desired to be a missionary. She was one, to the point that she could be proclaimed patroness of the missions. Jesus himself showed her how she could live this vocation: by fully practicing the commandment of love, she would be immersed in the very heart of the Church's mission, supporting those who proclaim the Gospel with the mysterious power of prayer and communion.
Thus she achieved what the Second Vatican Council emphasized in teaching that the Church is missionary by nature. Not only those who choose the missionary life but all the baptized are in some way sent ad gentes. This is why I chose this missionary Sunday to proclaim St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face a doctor of the universal Church: a woman, a young person, a contemplative.
Everyone thus realizes that today something surprising is happening. St Thérèse of Lisieux was unable to attend a university or engage in systematic study. She died young: nevertheless, from this day forward she will be honored as a doctor of the Church, an outstanding recognition which raises her in the esteem of the entire Christian community far beyond any academic title.
Indeed, when the magisterium proclaims someone a doctor of the Church, it intends to point out to all the faithful, particularly to those who perform in the Church the fundamental service of preaching or who undertake the delicate task of theological teaching and research, that the doctrine professed and proclaimed by a certain person can be a reference point, not only because it conforms to revealed truth, but also because it sheds new light on the mysteries of the faith, a deeper understanding of Christ's mystery. …
Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face is the youngest of all the “doctors of the Church,” but her ardent spiritual journey shows such maturity, and the insights of faith expressed in her writings are so vast and profound that they deserve a place among the great spiritual masters.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Krakow DATE: 03/14/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 14-20, 1999 ----- BODY:Talk of Krakow, and you'll find images welling up in Polish minds of a city of eternal greatness, basking with the distant glory of queens and princes, exotic artisans and holy mystics.
It's a city of culture, situated close to the borders of Ukraine, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, where the plains of central Poland run up against the Tatra Mountains.
It's also a city of faith, with more places of worship per square mile than Rome or Jerusalem — a fitting place for its most famous modern son, Pope John Paul II, who studied and served the Church here for four decades, and will be back again this June in the city he knows and loves.
For a thousand years, Krakow has been the heartland of Polish statehood, as well as the spiritual capital of Europe's most Catholic nation.
It was Poland's first Christian king, Mieszko I, who annexed the area, inhabited by Slavic tribes, into his 10th-century principality. Krakow became a bishopric in 1000, and in 1036 King Kazimierz the Restorer made it his capital.
Ravages by Tartar marauders didn't prevent Krakow from growing. By 1257, when it gained its city charter, it had acquired the basic street layout which it maintains today.
Wawel castle, built on a promontory overlooking the Viatula River, became the place for crowning and burying Polish kings, and stayed that way until the last coronation, of Augustus II, in 1734.
Of the 47 towers which punctuated Krakow's medieval walls, only four survive, including the 14th-century Florian Gate and 15th-century Barbican.
The city was looted by the Swedish army after King Sigismund Vasa had transferred his seat 200 miles north to Warsaw in 1609. And when Poland was partitioned in the late 18th century, it was taken over by the Austrians.
Yet Krakow was destined to change hands several more times in the 19th century.
United with the grand duchy of Warsaw in 1809, it was briefly occupied by the Russians before being proclaimed a free city under the Treaty of Vienna six years later. But in 1846, its independence was again revoked by Austria.
Krakow finally regained free status when Poland became independent in 1918. It was spared destruction under Nazi occupation — although its Jewish inhabitants were massacred.
But when the Polish communists took over after World War II, they attempted to counterbalance the city's elite traditions by building an industrial suburb.
Nowa Huta was intended to be a symbol of communist “monumentalism” — a feat of economic and social engineering. In the 1980s, it is ironic that the suburb became the Solidarity move-ment's strongest bastion after Gdansk.
But it also altered the city's face. Although Krakow is a spa area, its architecture and citizens' health were badly damaged by pollution until an ecological cleanup began after the collapse of communism in 1989.
While modernity has cramped Krakow somewhat, the city has retained its ancient gems.
Market Square, Europe's largest after Venice's Piazza San Marco, retains its importance. The square was used for everything from acts of feudal homage to public executions. Its Gothic-Renaissance Sukiennice, or Cloth Hall, was first used by mercers in the 13th century. It was here that Poland's 1794 uprising was proclaimed by Tadeusz Kosciuszko (1746-1817), the brave military leader who returned to lead his countrymen against the Russians after fighting alongside George Washington in the American Revolution.
Across town, Krakow's Kazimierz suburb, founded by King Casimir the Great in 1335, boasted Europe's largest Jewish community, a group that would number more than 70,000 by the 1930s.
“This is the only place in the world,” wrote the scholar Felix Scharf, “where Corpus Christi Street crosses Rabbi Meisels Street, and where a magnificent church stands just a few dozen meters from a Jewish house of prayer.”
It took the German governor Hans Frank two days in May 1943 to erase Krakow's six-century Jewish presence, in scenes of atrocity captured in Steven Spielberg's 1994 film Schindler's List. But Jewish remnants survive, including one of Europe's oldest Jewish cemeteries, along with kosher restaurants and Jewish facades and railings.
Yet it's in its Catholic churches that Krakow's greatest glory lies. Churches, in fact, are everywhere, and their styles recount the city's history.
They vary from the tiny 10th-century city-center's St. Adalbert's church, named after the Polish-Czech patron, to the vast Church of the Ark in Nowa Huta, which was finished only in the 1980s.
Krakow's most visited church, St Mary's, contains a Gothic altar by the late medieval sculptor Witstwosz (1445-1533). When the city was attacked in the 13th century, a Polish trumpeter sounded the alarm from the basilica's highest tower window, only to be shot by a Tartar arrow.
Poles take their traditions seriously. The same tune is played every hour from the same window in his memory, and breaks off at the same fatal note.
Krakow's 13th-century Franciscan church contains world-renowned stained-glass windows by the fin de siècle artist Stanislaw Wyspianski (1869-1907).
The nearby Carmelite church contains the tomb of charity worker St. Adam Chmielowski (1845-1916), while the baroque St. Anna's university church is the burial place of St. Jan Kanty, a 15th-century Jagiellonian professor.
Above all, symbolically and literally, stands Wawel castle's Gothic Sts. Waclaw and Stanislaw cathedral, completed in the 14th century, a fabled place for all Polish citizens.
Legend has it that Krakow takes its name from the monster Krakus, who inhabited a cave on the Vistula River below Wawel, and was killed when a local boy shone a mirror into its fiery, alldevouring eyes.
It is said the fabled Pan Twardowski was sent to the moon from here after selling his soul to the devil, and that one of the seven holy stones cast around the world by the Buddha landed on the spot where the cathedral now stands.
Wawel cathedral houses the tombs of national leaders, ranging from King Jan III Sobieski (1629-1696), who routed the Turks at Vienna in 1685, to Marshal Jozef Pilsudski (1867-1935), who turned back a Red Army advance at the “Miracle on the Vistula” in 1920.
It contains a 9th-century rotunda, dedicated to Sts. Felix and Adauctus, as well as the marble sarcophagus of St. Jadwiga and the silver shrine of St. Stanislaw.
Both saints occupied a special place in the life of Karol Wojtyla, who was ordained a priest on All Saints' Day, 1946, in the private chapel of the arch-bishop's residence — a chapel that would become his from 1964 until his election as Pope in 1978.
Father Wojtyla celebrated his first Masses the next day, All Soul's, among the royal tombs in the cathedral's 12th-century St. Leonard's crypt.
The young priest was also the last person to be awarded a habilitation (an associate professorship) of the Jagiellonian's theology faculty before its forced communist closure in 1954.
As archbishop and cardinal, the future Pope led the local Church in the implementation of the Second Vatican Council, and through some of the most tense moments of the communist era, including the long battle to build a church for the people of the Nowa Huta.
John Paul has returned to Krakow six times as Pope — and will be visiting places indelibly associated with him when he goes back on June 14: Rakowicka Cemetery, where his parents and brother lie; the metropolitan's residence on Franciszkanska Street; the city-center Blonia Meadow where sheep and cattle still graze in winter.
Canonizing the Angevin-Hungarian Queen Jadwiga in the meadow two years ago, he recalled some of the city's greatest alumni, such as the revolutionary scientist Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543) and the rector Pawel Wlodkowic (1373-1434), an early pioneer of human rights.
Krakow would always be, John Paul II added, his own “beloved city.”
“People studied and taught here who made the name of Poland and this city famous throughout the world,” the Pope said. “It became an important center of thought in Europe, the hearth of Polish culture and bridge between Christian West and East, making an irreplaceable contribution to the formation of the European spirit.”
Krakow has been called many other things in its time — the “Polish Rome,” “Little Paris,” the “Florence of the North.”
But the current interest in Krakow seems to ensure the future life of what the Pope has called this “city of youth” and “cradle of saints.”
Jonathan Luxmoore writes from Warsaw, Poland.
----- EXCERPT: John Paul II's 'beloved city' has deep roots in the faith ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jonathan Luxmoore ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Getting There DATE: 03/14/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 14-20, 1999 ----- BODY:By plane: Krakow's international Balice Airport has direct flights to London, Paris, Rome, Vienna, Austria, and other European cities.
By train: Krakow can be reached in under three hours from Warsaw, and also run direct to Austria, Germany, Hungary, Romania and Ukraine. The city has good east-west and north-south highway connections, and reliable bus and tram facilities.
Accommodations: Hotels range from $15 to $150, and you can eat well at restaurants for $25 or less. Half-day excursions include Poland's Jasna Gora national sanctuary, the Auschwitz concentration camp and famous Wieliczka salt mine.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: A Central European Pearl DATE: 03/14/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 14-20, 1999 ----- BODY:It's not hard to spot the famous on the streets of Krakow, thanks to the compactness of its streets. Visitors to the city — 3 million annually and climbing — can rub shoulders with the likes of Nobel literature laureate Wislawa Szymborska.
Today, Krakow retains its vibrant cultural atmosphere, and ranks alongside Vienna, Prague and Budapest as one of Central Europe's pearls.
Though barely 800,000 people live here, it is home to 6,000 historic buildings and an estimated 2.5 million artworks. In 1978, the city was placed on the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's list of World Historical Heritage monuments.
The Jagiellonian University is Central Europe's oldest center of learning after Charles University in Prague. Its oldest surviving building, the Gothic Collegium Maius, was constructed from a bequest by its foundress, St. Jadwiga, and contains arcaded courtyards reminiscent of Oxford.
Appropriately, the university's motto is Plus ratio quam vis (Thought achieves more than force). At any one time, Krakow is home to 70,000 students, whose lively presence culminates each May in an open-air Juvenalia. When it comes to living art and music, Krakow is home to much more.
Its famous cabaret, the Cellar Under the Sheep, survived and thrived here under communism as a shrine of free expression.
Meanwhile, the Krakow Festival each June coincides with Jewish festivities and Corpus Christi processions, in a yearlong cultural cycle which ranges from an October jazz festival to a December competition for the best-decorated Szopka Krakowska, or traditional Christmas.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Warm Heart, Lame Wit DATE: 03/14/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 14-20, 1999 ----- BODY:Some voices are hard on Hollywood these days. They believe the entertainment industry is pushing society in the wrong direction. Parents, in particular, dislike the permissiveness and moral relativism which many of its stories promote.
The problem is that few in Hollywood want to be cultural commissars. Most chose their careers for reasons of self-expression and for the opportunity to make big bucks, and, except for a handful of political activists, they don't pay much attention to the moral view they're propagating.
Ignorance is no excuse. The creators, financiers and marketers of movies, television and popular music must be made to take responsibility for what they produce. But at the same time as we press these demands, we also take for granted a high level of professionalism in their work. Few points are given for good intentions if the end result is boring or dull.
Jack Frost has its heart in the right place. It's a contemporary fairy tale about a father who seeks to do right by his son. When killed in a freak auto accident, he gets a temporary reprieve from the hereafter to come back and tie up loose ends.
The movie wants to be a positive influence on parents and children. The first half is an effective dramatization of a father's struggle to balance the competing demands of family and career. The second half is stylistically different. It is a cartoonlike, comic fantasy about a boy and a talking snowman, and, sad to report, it isn't funny.
MTV-trained director Troy Miller and screenwriters Mark Steven Johnson, Steve Bloom, Jonathan Roberts and Jeff Cesario try to present the traditional morality of strong families in a way that will seem palatable, even hip, to the baby-boomer generation of parents. Jack Frost (Michael Keaton) fronts a hard-rock blues band, singing and playing the harmonica. Although he's able to provide for his wife, Gabby (Kelly Preston), and 12-year-old son, Charlie (Joseph Cross), in a comfortable, suburban manner, the big-time success he deserves has always eluded him.
Jack is an ambitious workaholic, often on the road. His long hours keep him from participating in important events in his son's life. As depicted in the movie, Jack's dilemma isn't much different from that of any middle-class dad with a demanding office or professional job. The filmmakers show us a cleaned-up version of the rock ‘n' roll lifestyle — no drugs, groupies or any other hedonistic follies.
One evening, after having missed one of Charlie's ice hockey games, Jack tries to make amends by building a snowman with him. Then he gives his son an old harmonica which he claims has magic powers. “Whenever you play this, no matter where I am, I can hear you,” he promises. Charlie is moved even though he knows his father made up the story on the spot.
A year later, after Jack's death, Charlie builds a snowman like the one the two of them had constructed earlier. On top of it he places his dad's hat, scarf and gloves. The memories lift his sagging spirits.
Before falling asleep that night, Charlie plays a few notes on the har-monica. Much to his surprise, his father hears the call and miraculously returns home. But there's a hitch. His spirit is reincarnated in the snowman.
Charlie's first reaction is that it's all too weird, and he avoids the talking snowman like the plague. Eventually, they work things out, and he connects with his father in a deeper way than when he was alive.
Unfortunately, they communicate in a jokey, one-liner, sitcom manner. “I'm the wizard of blizzard,” Jack proclaims in what's meant to be a funny line. Later his snowman's head comes off and rolls a feet away. “Talk about separation anxiety,” he lamely cracks.
Jack Frost's leaden humor and its unsuccessful mix of styles make it a long 95 minutes. The filmmakers may pass the test as cultural commissars, but, as movie craftsmen, they fall short, and for most of us, that's not good enough.
Like it or not, Hollywood has become a permanent fixture of our cultural landscape. As such, we're right to insist that it be both solidly built and pollution-free.
John Prizer currently writes from Paris.
----- EXCERPT: Jack Frost is all too weird ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORD: Arts & Culture -------- TITLE: Videos on Release DATE: 03/14/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 14-20, 1999 ----- BODY:Big and Hairy
A large serving of suspension of dis-belief is essential while watching Big and Hairy. Based on a novel by Brian Daly, this family-oriented film is filled with whimsical notions and general silliness, but it also makes a series of solid points that few parents would disagree with. Big and Hairy follows the adventures of Picasso Dewlap (Robert Burke), a middle-schooler who has moved to Cedar Island from Chicago. Picasso has been forced to leave his friends behind because his father Victor (Richard Thomas) has accepted a job as a designer for a lawn-ornament factory. Picasso soon discovers that he and his parents don't fit in with the inhabitants of Cedar Island. The Dewlap parents handle this by living spontaneously and obliviously. Their son tries to deal with the problem by joining the basketball team, but even there he has difficulties. Then, Picasso's life is changed by a wandering sasquatch, an adolescent named Ed Tibbets (Trevor Jones). Ed becomes a brilliant basketball player, to the joy of the basketball-crazy town, but this only makes Picasso's life even harder. Over time, the boy has to learn a series of lessons about love, friendship and responsibility before he realizes the true source of happiness.
Next Stop Wonderland
Next Stop Wonderland is a variation on one of humanity's oldest tales, but it's the variation's cleverness that makes the film so beguiling. Instead of the standard boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-regains-girl plot, the movie follows a different course. The boy, Alan (Alan Gelfont), and the girl, Erin (Hope Davis), don't meet each other until the very end of the movie, although they have close encounters all the way through. This complex dance is set in Boston. Alan, a plumber studying to become a marine biologist, is hoping to become an employee of the city's aquarium. Erin, a shell-shocked nurse trying to recover from being dumped by her hyperprogressive boyfriend Sean (Philip Seymour Hoffman), is trying to fend off her manipulative mother (Holland Taylor), who has placed a personal ad in the classifieds. At first, Hope ignores the 64 responses on her answering machine, but eventually starts meeting some of the prospects. None work out because her true love is just around the corner. In a very subtle way, Next Stop Wonderland exposes the hollowness of many contemporary lives. It quietly reveals the desperation of those who live without love and a core philosophy.
Ronin
In feudal Japan, ronin were samurai whose lord had been killed. Masterless, they wandered the land as bandits or hired swords. If they were fortunate, they found a new and just master; if they were unfortunate, they died cruelly. The story of the wandering samurai is at the heart of Ronin, a thriller from noted action director John Frankenheimer. Only these ronin are masterless because of the Soviet bloc's breakup. These former spies, soldiers and mercenaries circle the globe looking for the work they were trained to do. In the chaos of the post-Cold War world, they often don't know who is bidding for their services, and the small band assembled in Paris is even more in the dark than usual. All that the group understands is that they're taking orders from the Irish Deidre (Natascha McElhone), that their object is a briefcase with unknown contents, that the briefcase's holders are ruthless and that only two of the band, Sam (Robert De Niro) and Vincent (Jean Reno), know what they're doing. “Ronin” has many of the qualities of a great thriller — elaborate plot, impressive action scenes, top actors — but it makes the mistake of pushing these qualities too far. The result is an oddly top-heavy movie.
Without Limits
In June 1975, a 24-year-old runner was killed in a car accident after taking a friend home. The tragedy shook American sports since the runner was Steve Prefontaine (Billy Crudup), one of the world's most gifted and notorious athletes. Pre, as he was known, had shaken up the stodgy and corrupt milieu of international amateur athletics while he was setting records in 5,000-meter races. He had also shaken up the notions of his hard-driving track coach at the University of Oregon, Bill Bowerman (Donald Sutherland), one of the founders of Nike. And he had almost shaken up the determination of his devout Catholic girlfriend, Mary Mardox (Monica Potter). From early childhood as a German-speaking boy in the village of Coos Bay, Ore., Pre had known he was different. This Olympian attributed his difference and his confidence to his uncanny ability to withstand pain and a sheer desire to run flat out. This sublime arrogance inevitably brought clashes with other strong-willed persons, a process that “Without Limits” highlights well. Pre was a difficult person, but he serves as a fascinating subjecting for a biographical film. Without Limits tells his story with care and integrity.
— Loretta G. Seyer
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Loretta G. Seyer ----- KEYWORD: Arts & Culture -------- TITLE: The Man Who Made Steubenville Is Stepping Aside After 15 Years DATE: 03/14/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 14-20, 1999 ----- BODY:STEUBENVILLE, Ohio—During a quarter century in the leadership of Franciscan University of Steubenville, Father Michael Scanlan turned a stumbling, small-time concern into a humming center of Catholic intellectual and devotional life, doubling enrollment in the process.
The “Scanlan revolution” as some have dubbed it, will mark a milestone on June 30 when the Third Order Regular Franciscan priest steps down as president and immediately becomes the university's first chancellor, an elder statesman's role that relieves the 67-year-old priest of the day-to-day management of an institution that he has come to personify.
Father Scanlan's reasons for the move are simple. “I'll be able to spend more time speaking, preaching and interacting with the students,” said the priest, who will also be available to help the new administration with fund raising and other issues. He said he will also continue to write books (he published three while serving as president) and host EWTN's Franciscan University Present, a television show that features Steubenville colleagues and guests.
Father Scanlan came to the priest-hood, and to Steubenville, by an unlikely route. A native New Yorker and a 1953 graduate of Williams College, he completed a law degree at Harvard University and entered the Air Force, becoming staff judge advocate.
Following several years of discernment, he entered the Third Order Regular in 1957 and was ordained in 1964. After a number of administrative and teaching assignments that included stints at Steubenville, he served as rector-president of the order's St. Francis Major Seminary in Loretto, Pa., from 1969 until taking the helm at Steubenville in 1974.
A Three-Pronged Approach
Once at the helm, his approach to the office was three-pronged: university identity, campus life, and administration.
Steubenville was a very different school in those days. It was known chiefly as a party-school, a reputation that had a dark side. Father Scanlan began his tenure as president in the midst of crisis — a student revolt, of which he made short work. In response to a “non-negotiable” demand for open, co-ed dorms and no Sunday liturgies came Father Scanlan's “non-negotiable” establishment of the household system, mandatory for every student, and an emphasis on religion.
Households consist of four or five students who regularly gather for prayer, sharing and social activities, including sports, as a support system. Public Relations Director Lisa Ferguson said Father Scanlan was inspired to establish the households as a Christian alternative to fraternities and sororities and to combat the alienation and loneliness that can come with college life, especially in the early stages. It also serves as a faith support or “positive peer pressure,” said Ferguson.
Father Scanlan then turned to academics, which were languishing at the school. He made it a point to “think with the Church,” and established theology as the college's pre-eminent department.
Staffed by some of the country's leading Catholic scholars, the department now turns out graduates who are in demand as directors of religious education, teachers and lay formation leaders. In 1980, the university added master's degree programs in theology and Christian ministry.
Hand in hand with theology came a spiritual renewal that has made the college famous. To this task Father Scanlan brought his own charismatic spirituality, then sweeping the American Church. The school quickly became famous as “the charismatic Catholic college,” a reputation that it sought to foster through conferences, seminars, publications and guest speakers who were leaders in the burgeoning movement.
Bucking the Trend
At the same time, still early in Father Scanlan's tenure, the school was teetering on the brink of financial ruin. Debt was deep, enrollment down and alumni dispirited. The challenge would require a deft administrative hand and some wondered if religion was really the way to go in an age of spiraling secularization.
He bucked another trend and angered the alumni by withdrawing Steubenville from participation in expensive intercollegiate athletics — still considered an effective way to put a school on the map and draw student applications. Father Scanlan decided to rely instead on intramural sports to help build the kind of campus community atmosphere that would be appealing to the students he wanted to educate.
But being out of step with the prevailing campus environment created a niche, especially for an institution that was in touch with the spiritual trends of the time.
Father Scanlan's plan was better business than some might have suspected. The Catholic emphasis and the fame created by the charismatic identity gave Franciscan University a national base of potential students, allowing the college to be selective.
“We did national marketing through national ministries,” Father Scanlan explained. Those ministries included FIRE, a Catholic Alliance for Faith, Intercession, Repentance and Evangelism, that used the Franciscan campus for most of its conferences. The charismatic magazine New Covenant started on the campus, as did its Human Life Center.
Father Scanlan credits his secular background with being of help at this point. “In the military, my job was setting up and running a legal office,” he noted. “This taught me administrative and organizational principles.” In fact, Father Scanlan gave an example of thrift by personally handling all of the school's legal affairs during his first seven years in office.
By the time a generous and anonymous benefactor paid off the university's entire debt in 1983, the school's financial situation had already been significantly turned around.
Steubenville is now a very different place than the one Father Scanlan found himself in charge of in 1974.
The university today draws just over 2,000 new students annually from all 50 states and more than 35 foreign countries.
“And they are excellent students,” says Jesuit Father Joseph Fessio, publisher of Ignatius Press and former director of the St. Ignatius Institute at the University of San Francisco. “The notion that they would attract anything less than proven students is another version of the nonsense that a college cannot be truly Catholic and achieve high academic standards.”
Not Just for Charismatics
Even some of Father Scanlan's major imprints have evolved and changed over time, especially the college's reputation as an exclusive haven of charismatics.
Now optional, household membership has become a favorite feature of Steubenville campus life. The groups often organize around a favorite devotion or saint, including Cari Domini dedicated to the Sacred Heart, and the “Little Flowers” who admire St. Thésèse of Lisieux.
While still engraved in the popular imagination as synonymous with Steubenville, the charismatic movement is not the only spirituality on campus. Because of what Father Scanlan calls Steubenville's “dynamic orthodoxy,” the college is a beacon for young people who want to learn in close fidelity to the teaching magisterium of the Church.
“I don't think there's a separation any more,” said Father Scanlan. “It's more of a rainbow effect. There aren't two spiritualities on campus, but more like a dozen.”
These include groups that are dedicated to Marian spirituality, eucharistic piety and the pro-life movement. “People identify themselves in different ways, and we support all renewal movements that are orthodox and submitted to the Holy Father,” says Father Scanlan. “That's what it means to be Catholic.”
Students can join prayer groups and also find time for quiet reflection in the college's chapel of perpetual eucharistic adoration. In addition to Masses at which participants raise their hands in praise, the Latin Novus Ordo Mass of Vatican II is sung each month to the accompaniment of a student schola that specializes in Gregorian chant and classical hymns in English. The schola also sings at solemn vespers and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament each Sunday evening.
Today's bursting-at-the-seams campus is an outward manifestation of Father Scanlan's legacy. lt now sports the John Paul Il Library, a replica of the Portiuncula in Assisi, the St. Joseph office center, the Finnegan Fieldhouse for intramural sports, and Kolbe-Clare dormitory — all constructed or completed since “Father Mike,” as the students call him, first took over.
Programs in education, nursing, business, computer science, counseling, anthropology, economics, and social work have been added along with the founding of an overseas campus in Gaming, Austria, in the autumn of 1991.
U.S. News & World Report recently ranked Steubenville 27th out of 123 schools in the Midwest region. Father Scanlan is bullish about the future of the university, and he does not expect the college to suffer without him.
“We will continue with the same direction, spirit, and mission. The school will continue to expand in the same way,” he predicted.
Helen Valois writes from Steubenville, Ohio.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Helen M. Valois ----- KEYWORD: Education -------- TITLE: EDUCATION NOTEBOOK DATE: 03/14/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 14-20, 1999 ----- BODY:Vouchers Proposed By New York Mayor
A New York Daily News report noted that school Chancellor Rudy Crew is opposed to the idea and, at first, threatened to resign over it — but that he later backed away from his promise to quit. The chancellor and the mayor hope to meet soon.
Giuliani is proposing a pilot program that would allow some parents to use tax dollars for parochial or private school tuitions. The program would be tested for three years on a trial basis in some of the city's poorest neighborhoods.
Artist is Casualty Of Liturgical Zeal
“The stuff Carignano did was miraculous. He painted it right on the wall,” John Griffith, Gonzaga's acting director of campus ministry, is quoted saying. However, some applaud the 1960s students for covering Carignano's traditional rendering of Jesuit heroes and such saints as Margaret Mary Alacoque.
Campus architect Mac McCandless says students and the art world would benefit from a return of Carignano's images. “There's a movement afoot to bring back the old architecture,” McCandless told the paper. “Today's Catholics are not intimidated by the church and its history.”
Students Demanding More Supervision
They seem to be seeking a tamer campus and an updated and subtler version of in loco parentis, the concept that school faculty and administration are stand-in parents.
Schools have been implementing programs with greater interaction with professors and adult staff in extra-curricular activities such as theater outings, even chaperoning off-campus parties, said the paper.
There is also a consensus that modern college students are not adults. “There needs to be an assimilative process in the crucial years of 18 to 21,” David Ward, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin, told the paper.
In an op-ed page opinion piece the next day, author Katie Roiphe recalled how her college experience in the early 1990s was disappointing for its lack of adult involvement.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Education -------- TITLE: Pregnancy Discrimination Still Happens in the Workplace DATE: 03/14/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 14-20, 1999 ----- BODY:HOUSTON—According to the Houston Chronicle, companies like to boast about being family friendly, but when pregnancies, newborns and sick children collide with business needs, many times it's not the family that comes first. In the category of “Is that still going on?” consider the case of Veronica Wallace.
Wallace said her working life took a definite downward slide during her annual job evaluation when she was pregnant with her second child. A nurse at Houston's Methodist Hospital, Wallace said her boss gave her an ultimatum during her evaluation: her nursing career or her family.
Wallace had become pregnant with her second child almost immediately after returning from maternity leave with her first child and said she was stunned by the directive. She said she had never missed work because of a sick child or because of her pregnancies, nor had she been criticized for her job performance.
But while she was pregnant with her third child, she was fired. Wallace sued Methodist for pregnancy discrimination and was recently awarded $507,500 in damages by a Houston jury, reported the paper.
The hospital said Wallace was fired for falsifying a doctor's order, but that's something that nurses routinely do, according to Beatrice Mladenka-Fowler, a Houston lawyer who represented Wallace. When a doctor gives a treatment plan, he often leaves out several intermediate steps, Wallace said. So nurses routinely perform the routine tasks and write up the request as if the doctor had specifically requested it.
But Wallace believes that her pregnancies — three in three years — were viewed by her supervisor as a liability to the hospital. They had to hire another nurse to fill in, yet the hospital still had to pay Wallace for her vacation and sick leave.
Wallace said there were other signs things weren't going well at work: Tensions escalated when she refused a request to return to work earlier than she planned after the birth of her second baby. And when employees were allowed to cut back their shifts by eight hours every two weeks yet still keep their full benefits, Wallace said her boss let her know she didn't want her signing up for the new program. Wallace did anyway.
The paper said the 35-year-old mother of three daughters, who are now five, four and three years old, found herself out of a job four days before Christmas in 1994. She knew she had a case when a nurse called to tell Wallace that the supervisor was heard telling coworkers that Wallace was fired for being pregnant three times in three years.
Allegations denied
Methodist wouldn't talk about the case, but indicated in a written statement the hospital does not discriminate based on pregnancy and denies Wallace's allegations. About 500 hospital employees are pregnant each year, and the decision to terminate Wallace was reviewed and approved by a female supervisor who did not know she was pregnant, according to Methodist. A Methodist spokeswoman said the hospital is confident the jury's verdict will be overruled or at least the damages will be reduced by U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal.
Many employers still believe employees can serve only one master and they want to be that master, said Joe Ahmad, an employment lawyer who has represented women in pregnancy claims.
Though the problem persists, pregnancy discrimination complaints make up a minuscule portion of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's workload. Nationwide in 1998, the commission received 4,219 pregnancy discrimination complaints out of a total 79,786, continued the report.
The small numbers, however, don't tell the whole story. They could be the result of a coding problem, said H. Joan Ehrlich, district director of the commission in Houston. If a case involves a firing, the pregnancy case code may have been left off, making it appear as though pregnancy weren't involved.
Ellen Bravo, co-director of Nine to Five, National Association of Working Women in Milwaukee, says most women also don't do anything about it because it happens at such a stressful time in their lives. And almost half of all workers, those who work for firms with fewer than 50 employees or haven't had enough time on the job, are not covered under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act, which requires employers to give their workers 12 weeks of leave to care for a newborn.
(Houston Chronicle and Pro-Life Infonet)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 03/14/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 14-20, 1999 ----- BODY:Families face many difficulties in today's world (see Pregnancy Descrimination story, below). In Familiaris Consortio Pope John Paul II offers them guidance and hope:
The family in the modern world, as much as and perhaps more than any other institution, has been beset by the many profound and rapid changes that have affected society and culture. Many families are living this situation in fidelity to those values that constitute the foundation of the institution of the family. Others have become uncertain and bewildered over their role or even doubtful and almost unaware of the ultimate meaning and truth of conjugal and family life. Finally, there are others who are hindered by various situations of injustice in the realization of their fundamental rights.
Knowing that marriage and the family constitute one of the most precious of human values, the Church wishes to speak and offer her help to those who are already aware of the value of marriage and the family and seek to live it faithfully, to those who are uncertain and anxious and searching for the truth, and to those who are unjustly impeded from living freely their family lives. Supporting the first, illuminating the second and assisting the others, the Church offers her services to every person who wonders about the destiny of marriage and the family.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Did You Know? DATE: 03/14/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 14-20, 1999 ----- BODY:“Mercy Killing” is an act of direct euthanasia usually committed for the alleged purpose of ending the suffering of an “unproductive” or terminally ill person. Many times, comatose people are deemd “unproductive” and judged “irreversibly comatose.” However, medical researchers have performed a number of extensive studies to determine how many people in so-called irreversible comas actually recover.
• One study of 84 people whom physicians considered to be in a “persistent vegetative state” showed that 41% had regained consciousness within six months and 58% had regained consciousness within three years. A second study of 26 children in comas lasting more than 12 weeks found that three-fourths eventually regained consciousness. Another study found that one-third of the 370 patients in a “persistent vegetative state” for up to one year recovered enough to return to work.
“Managing the Persistent Vegetative State: Early, Skilled Treatment Offers the Best Hope for Optimal Recovery,” British Medical Journal, August 1992, Pages 304-305.
“Results of Head Injury Study Released,” Minnesota Physician, January 1989, Page 5.
“Neurologist Has Cautionary Tales for Euthanasia Fans,” Vancouver Sun [Canada]. Sept. 8 1993, Page B3.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Iranian President And Pope Hold Historic Meeting DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—Pope John Paul II held a historic meeting March 11 with President Mohammad Khatami of the Islamic Republic of Iran as some 200 Iranian dissidents shouted protests on the fringes of the Vatican city-state.
Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls described the 25-minute meeting in the Pope's private study overlooking St. Peter's Square as “cordial” and said the talks were “marked by a spirit of dialogue between Muslims and Christians.”
Christian-Muslim relations are strained in many parts of the world, including Indonesia, the most populous Muslim nation and the site of recent bloody clashes that have caused dozens of deaths.
The Iranian president, who is also an Islamic cleric, is the highest-ranking Islamic official to visit the Vatican and the first president of Iran to meet with Pope John Paul.
The visit took on added significance because Khatami is also at present the head of the 55-nation Islamic Conference, which brings together Islamic nations with populations totaling about 1 billion people — equal to the number of Catholics in the world.
“President Khatami, alluding to the interreligious encounters the Holy Father has convoked in the past at Assisi, expressed the hope that this ‘spirit of Assisi’ might remain for the future as the model of the common accord between religions and peoples,” Navarro-Valls said.
In invoking Assisi, Khatami referred to the periodic gatherings of leaders of the world's religions at the Umbrian hill-town, birthplace of St. Francis of Assisi, since the Pope presided over an interreligious celebration there for World Day of Prayer for Peace on Oct. 27, 1986.
Following their private meeting, both the Pope and the Iranian president displayed unusual warmth during a brief ceremony in which they exchanged gifts and posed for photographs.
“At the end of my visit to Italy and after this meeting with you, I return to my country full of hope for the future,” Navarro-Valls quoted Khatami as saying. He said the Pope replied with thanks “for this visit that I consider important and promising.”
Khatami expressed his hope “for the final victory of monotheism, of ethics, together with peace and reconciliation.” He asked the Pope to pray for him and said, “I pray that the most holy God will grant you success and health.”
‘At the end of my visit to Italy and after this meeting with you, I return to my country full of hope for the future…’
The enthusiasm of one member of Khatami's party, who was dressed like the president in the black turban and robes of a mullah, took the Pope and his aides by surprise. “May I do something?” the man asked the Pope at the doorway. When the Pope replied, “Certainly,” he leaned over and kissed John Paul on the cheek.
Khatami, 56, arrived in Italy on March 9 to start the first state visit by an Iranian leader to Western Europe since the overthrow of the shah in 1979. His papal audience followed meetings with President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, Prime Minister Massimo D'-Alema, Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini and Italian businessmen, as well as a visit to Florence.
Italian authorities imposed tight security, closing Khatami's motorcade routes to all other traffic, causing mammoth traffic jams in the center of the city. That did not, however, stop demonstrators from pelting his dark blue Maserati limousine with eggs on March 10.
Police and paramilitary Carabinieri forces checked some 1,000 cars parked on his route to the Vatican today and took into custody four men carrying paint-filled eggs and banners.
A large force of police and Carabinieri blocked all access to Vatican territory for two hours, leaving confused tourists milling about on surrounding streets. They kept a tight cordon around some 200 noisy but peaceful Iranian dissident demonstrators, who shook their fists, shouted, “Justice, justice” and waved placards saying, “Stop the massacre” and “Khatami murderer.”
Italian officials have said they hoped the visit and increasing trade relations with Iran will help to encourage Khatami, whom they view as a moderate, to modernize Iranian society and loosen the grip of its fundamentalist clergy. Khatami, for example, has called for a “dialogue between civilizations and countries and different people and cultures” — in sharp contrast to his revolutionary predecessors.
In the exchange of gifts between the Pope and the president, which is part of the protocol of a state visit, John Paul gave Khatami a bas-relief in bronze of the Apostles Peter and Paul. “It is a very precious gift,” the Iranian leader said.
Khatami gave John Paul a small framed carpet showing St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, a collection of the work of the Farsi poet Hafiz and six videocassettes of an Iranian television series about the adventures, as told in the Koran, of a group of early Christians who fled persecution and hid in caves in the mountains surrounding Tehran.
“I am sure you will find them very interesting,” Khatami told the Pope.
After Iran nationalized many Church-run social institutions in 1980, about 75 Catholic missionaries were either forced to leave the country or departed on their own. In recent years, however, Iranian authorities have shown more cooperation regarding entry visas for Church personnel.
Although freedom of worship is guaranteed in Iran, Church sources said Catholic activities are monitored carefully by authorities. The Church has no publishing rights, and Iranian Christians — along with other religious minorities — suffer various forms of discrimination in the legal system and in public life, according to human rights groups.
(CNS contributed to this report)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Peggy Polk ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Psychiatrist Argues Doctors Shouldn't Prescribe Religion DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:NEW YORK—A medical journal article that questioned the benefit of religion for patients and advised doctors not to talk about the subject with their patients, won lots of media attention. But it failed to persuade Mary Clarke.
Clarke, a former nurse, recalled when her husband was first diagnosed with cancer. Doctors reckoned he had one month to live. “They told me six months at the very most — if he was lucky,” said Clarke, who asked to be identified by her maiden name.
With such a grim diagnosis she entered a surgeon's office in despair. He surprised her with a new prescription: “Prayer helps.”
“Those words gave me such hope,” she recounted. Month after month her husband returned to Letterkenney General Hospital in County Dunegal, Ireland, where doctors began to dub him “the miracle man.” Then it became year after year.
“We spent three healthy and active years together,” Clarke said. “And I say thanks to a surgeon who reminded us of the power of prayer.”
Despite stories like Clarke's, an article published Feb. 20 in the British journal The Lancet strongly advises against any mention of faith by doctors. “Religion, Spirituality and Medicine” is coauthored by Dr. Richard Sloan, professor of psychiatry at Columbia University. Sloan said the article is a review of previous studies from other medical professionals.
The article said, “Health professionals, even in these days of consumer advocacy, influence patients by virtue of their medical expertise. When doctors promote a nonmedical agenda, they abuse their status as professionals.”
Sloan told the Register that if religious or spiritual factors were shown convincingly to be related to health outcomes, they would join other factors such as socioeconomic status and marital status, which are already significantly associated with health.
“For example, the decision to marry: People live longer and healthier,” he said. “But we regard that area of people's lives as personal and private, even if it has implications for people's health. The same is true of religion.”
Sloan added that there is a difference between taking into consideration all aspects of the person and taking them on as “objects of intervention.”
“If patients are very religious, then it is important for physicians to understand that,” the psychiatrist advised. “What's questionable is whether doctors should make recommendations on the basis of that evidence.”
But physician assistant Richard DiBella of St. Raphael's Hospital in New Haven, Conn., doesn't think such issues are necessarily part of a “non-medical agenda.”
“[Doctors] are not just physical body technicians,” DiBella asserted. “If the patient is operating under a system of beliefs, then supporting that, offering encouragement, can only help the patient. It's not a misuse of professionalism.”
Patients appreciate it, too, he said. “I have found that patients respond very favorably to having their spiritually acknowledged. It creates a bond between us for one thing.
“Faith is a very important part of getting well. We are body and spirit. You have to pay attention to that.”
More Medical Schools Addressing Religion
Sloan noted that his and his coauthors’ research was prompted by numerous media reports that examine the “hundreds and hundreds” of papers discussing whether religious practices influence health. His report comes at a time when more than 50 medical schools are including courses on religion and spirituality in their curricula. Sloan said the data about the benefits of linking faith and medicine raised ethical concerns, and he pointed to the possible harm to patients who might link serious illness and moral failure.
Dr. David Larson, president of the National Institute for Healthcare Research, agreed that many of Sloan's concerns should be addressed. But he said the question rarely is about “forcing” religion on patients or “making people feel more guilty.”
He said that courses on religion and spirituality are being added to medical school curricula “due to the data, but not the data that he is talking about.”
“About 5% to 10% of patients are already guilty and so you are not making them guilty. You're not addressing it if you don't deal with it and that is our concern.
‘If the patient is operating under a system of beliefs, then supporting that, offering encouragement can only help the patient. It's not a misuse of professionalism.’
“They might need some sort of chaplain or clergy person to work through that distress. Medical problems bring on a sense of alienation, rejection and ‘Why has God done this to me?’ It happens and it's not because it's being [brought up] by medical doctors, it's because [patients] feel this way already.”
Heather McGrath said that as a registered nurse in Long Beach, Calif., and Washington, D.C., she has seen religion as a great benefit to patients. It was not a matter of “bedside conversions,” she said, but a strength of spirit in her patients.
“I saw hope,” she stressed. “I saw them reach out more and want to get better. The one thing about hope, is that every person has the right to hope. And our job is, in little ways, to include that in a [patient's] care.”
Mental Health
Larson said that while Sloan is “well-intentioned” and his study is driven by ethical concerns, “he actually is only reviewing one area.”
He said there had been much mental health research on the benefits of religion that had not been reviewed, including addiction research. “We actually did a consensus report that not only looks on the mental health but on the physical health and the addiction area even in neuroscience,” he said. “He just looks at the one area when there are other areas of research that need to be looked at as well.”
Dr. Gladys Sweeney agrees. The director of the Washington, D.C.-area Catholic Institute for Psychological Sciences said that when it comes to the practice of psychology, “the fact is that for some patients their spiritual life is a very important aspect. And for those clients, it becomes part of their psychology.”
To intentionally ignore such an important part of the client, she said, is to practice “bad psychology.”
She added, “A psychologist would not be departing from his channel of expertise by addressing spiritual issues that are so connected to the psychology, especially to a client that wants to use those resources.
“The therapist should not be a spiritual director. That is not his expertise, but to ignore it and to say that spiritual issues are outside the psychology of an individual — that is not true. He is saying that spiritual issues are apart,” she said.
Seeing the link between body and soul, the Catholic Church teaches that the sacrament of the anointing of the sick can at times lead to physical healing. Regarding the sacrament, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “This assistance from the Lord by the power of his spirit is meant to lead the sick person to healing of the soul, but also of the body if such is God's will” (No. 1520).
In clinical experience, Sweeney said she had seen a very definite link between religion and health: “What I see from my clients, is even a greater sense of peace even in the face of the worst catastrophes of their lives. They can deal with it a lot better because they have hope.
“They can deal with trauma better because they understand sometimes the meaning of suffering. And so I definitely see that they do heal faster.”
Geraldine Hemmings is an assistant editor of the Register.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Geraldine Hemmings ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Annunciation 1999 Means Nine Months Until Jubilee DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—The Church is in the final year of preparation for the great celebration of the Jubilee of Christ's birth which begins this year on Christmas Eve.
Kelly Bowring, administrative assistant of the national bishops’ office for the Jubilee said that the feast is a special part of the preparations this year.
He told the Register that March 25 begins a “nine month countdown to the celebration of the Birth of Christ and of the Great Jubilee.” He describes it as “a novena of preparation for the Jubilee, a time of getting things in order, as a mother would do when she is expecting a birth.”
The Liturgical Year
The Jubilee of the Annunciation will be celebrated next year — nine months before Christmas 2000. Cardinal Roger Etchegaray and Archbishop Crescenzio Sepe explained in a June statement from the Vatican's Jubilee office that the Jubilee and the liturgical year 2000 “cannot be separated, but must vivify that unique period of time in which the chronological date, inherent in the number 2000, and the mystical date, that of the sacramental celebration of the mystery of Christ, are harmoniously welded together.”
Because of the significance of the liturgical year, they wrote, several events from Christ's life will be celebrated in a special way in the year 2000, regardless of when they fell in history. The article cited Easter, the Epiphany, and the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord.
The U.S. bishops are stressing the preparatory year, 1999, with its emphasis on God the Father, the virtue of charity, and sacramental confession. But these are summed up nicely in the Annunciation, said Bowring.
After all, it was God the Father who invited his daughter Mary to be the mother of his son, and it is in deep charity that she responded. Bowring added that we can look to Mary, Refuge of Sinners, at this time “to focus on our conversion, on reconciliation with the Father.”
In the context of the year of the Father, Bowring said that the bishops’ committee on the Jubilee sees the time from March 25 to December 25 as “a period of immediate and joyful expectation, the final phase of our pilgrimage to the House of the Father.”
Our Lady of Guadalupe
Mary's openness to God means that the next nine months from the Annunciation to the Jubilee of Christ's birth can be understood as uniquely a time of Our Lady of Guadalupe, believes Peter Sonski, director of communications of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington.
The Annunciation is a novena of preparation, a time of getting things in order, as a mother would do when she is expecting a birth.
“To my knowledge, the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is the only [widely known] image we have of a pregnant Mary,” said Sonski. “Besides that, the Pope has designated her the patroness of the New Evangelization. It's as if she is now ready to give birth to the new civilization of love that the Pope tells us to expect in the third millennium.”
Sonski says several parts of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe suggest a pregnant woman: the cinture just below her folded hands reflects an Aztec tradition showing that a woman was with child. Also, the four-petaled flower positioned over Mary's womb was another Aztec symbol that can be interpreted as an indication of the presence of the divine child in her womb.
Thus, the feast can draw American Catholics closer to the woman whom Pope John Paul II has put in care of the New Evangelization, he said.
In rededicating the Americas to Our Lady of Guadalupe in his Jan. postsynodal apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in America, Pope John Paul II said again that Mary “is linked in a special way to the birth of the Church in the history … of the peoples of America; through Mary they came to encounter the Lord. … Mary, by her motherly and merciful figure, was a great sign of the closeness of the Father and of Jesus Christ, with whom she invites us to enter into communion” (No. 10).
He added, “It is my heartfelt hope that she, whose intercession was responsible for strengthening the faith of the first disciples, will by her maternal intercession guide the Church in America, obtaining the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, as she once did for the early Church, so that the new evangelization may yield a splendid flowering of Christian life.”
A Way of Life
Santiaga Aventurado said she has personal experience of the Marian aspect of evangelization work. Now living in Burke, Va., Aventurado's vocation started in the Philippines where she entered the Institute of Our Lady of the Annunciation, an international organization of consecrated women numbering over 600 — called Annunciationists for short. She plans to celebrate the jubilee of the Annunciation in a special way this year.
“It was a very hard life in the Philippines, going into remote areas in the mountains. We did the work priests could not do because they could not get around to everyone.” She said she would catechize, give communion and pray for the dead.
Aventurado says the spirituality of the Annunciationists sustained her. Members of the institute are called “to continue the work of Mary here on earth by embracing whatever is the will of God — like Mary did at the Annunciation,” she told the Register.
As her guide she looks to the way that Mary gave witness: “She announces the Good News to people by her continuing yes to God the Father, embracing everything that is his will, including all the pain and frustration.”
Philosopher and theologian Dr. David Schindler stressed that the Marian spirituality typified by the Annunciation is not something of interest only to a few who have a particular call. He believes it goes to the heart of the difficulties of our entire culture at the close of the second millennium: “There's scarcely anything more important to recover today than the Marian dimension of Christian discipleship as pointed out by Pope John Paul. At the heart of it is, of course, the Annunciation.”
Schindler believes that “all the fundamental doctrines and devotions of the Church have to become ways of life. None of them are extraneous; none is simply propositional truth. In the deepest Catholic sense they imply an entire way of being.”
He said the Pope is trying to call mankind's attention to a different vision from the “knowledge is power” mindset. He cited the closing lines of the Pope's most recent encyclical, Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason):
“Between the vocation of the Blessed Virgin and the vocation of true philosophy there is a deep harmony. Just as the Virgin was called to offer herself entirely as human being and as woman that God's word might take flesh and come among us, so too philosophy is called to offer its rational and critical resources that theology, as the understanding of faith, may be fruitful and creative.
“Indeed, it is then that philosophy sees all its inquiries rise to their highest expression. This was a truth which the holy monks of Christian antiquity understood well when they called Mary ‘the table at which faith sits in thought.’ In her they saw a lucid image of true philosophy, and they were convinced of the need to philosophari in Maria” (No. 108).
Schindler points out the Pope is saying that even philosophers have to have a Marian spirituality.
“To philosophize in Mary,” he said, is a challenge that only someone like Pope John Paul II could propose to the hard-bitten and skeptical philosophers of our day.
Gerry Rauch is an assistant editor at the Register.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Gerry Rauch ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Pulpit of the Corner Office DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:High finance, high technology, and classic cars have been some of the accouterments of George Maly's life in the fast lane. He's been an insurance company executive, a developer of sophisticated industry software and now works as a consultant to corporate heads. To these distinctions, the Indianapolis member of the Catholic executives group Legatus has added another: a determination to allow the faith to penetrate his daily life, in order to evangelize the work-place by example. Has it worked? Recently, he spoke with Register correspondent Jim Malerba.
Malerba: You take the application of your faith to your business life very seriously. What accounts for your zeal?
Maly: First of all, I went to parochial schools, but our parish church had an abundance of priests who became great role models for me. That was important, because my father was killed in a hunting accident when I was 4 years old. I had a loving mother and family, but it was the influence of those priests that built the moral and ethical foundation that has been with me all my life. We also had missionaries who came to our church to talk about their work, and they were a great inspiration to me, as well.
How has that been manifested in your life?
Sure, I was mentored by good examples. My involvement in both Serra International and Legatus came about as a result of what those priests did for me. I see it all as a continuation of what I saw in my formative years. I now, in turn, mentor young people who need help. I am hopeful they look to me as their role model, and that I have made a positive difference in their lives.
What help do you have as you try to live your faith?
Legatus is a dynamic organization for chief executive officers and presidents of companies. Equally important, it's for couples, not just the CEO himself or herself. Tom Monaghan, who built Domino's Pizza into an international chain, founded Legatus in 1987. I found out about it in 1988 and phoned Ann Arbor, Michigan, where the main office is located. The funny thing was, I already knew Tom Monaghan through a classic-car club I was a member of. I flew out to Ann Arbor for a retreat, and then became a member-at-large. Then, Tom asked me to form an Indiana chapter. That became only the second or third in the nation. Pat Rooney, another insurance company executive, was the co-founder.
How does Legatus impact your business life?
Remember, CEOs have a tremendous responsibility in their companies, and they carry a lot of weight. They are role models for better or for worse. By their attitude, they can impose upon the business world a tremendous amount of their own values structure. The same thing is true in their personal lives, such as their relationships with their wives and children. We must always be mindful of this. When we are out there, we are always cognizant of our Catholic values in every aspect of our lives.
GEORGE MALY
Personal: Married to Bette-Jane, who also is active in Legatus; five children and six grandchildren; family once raced cars at the Indianapolis 500.
Background: Graduate of Purdue University and the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania; Air Force officer from 1945 to 1956.
Professional: Formerly owned an insurance agency; developed sophisticated software for a major American auto manufacturer that performed insurance payment surveillance; president of National Underwriters Inc. from 1960 to 1968; was a leader in bringing the Indianapolis Colts football team to the city from Baltimore.
That must be difficult. Sometimes even the pace of the world seems to make that impossible.
We also try to practice this in our marriages, because chief executive officers, because of their power base, have a problem with marriages. They have a very high divorce rate. By concentrating on spiritual and family values, they attain a degree of role modeling in the workplace and in the home. Incidentally, the word “Legatus” means ambassador, and that's what we try to be — ambassadors of faith, good morals and ethics.
Have you seen fruits from your efforts to be a better Catholic in the business world?
Oh, yes. I've seen Legatus members become closer in their marriage, and I've seen CEOs become more active not only in the Church, but also as role models for Christian values.
I remember one couple who joined a Legatus chapter and at the time were pro-choice.
Over time, by studying more about the faith, they concluded being pro-choice was not in any way a Christian value. They changed their values tremendously and became more spiritual.
There is a tremendous degree of evangelization here through role modeling, but it's done in a very subtle way. We don't actively seek converts; rather, we show our beliefs and values through the way we lead our lives.
You also work with Serra International, which promotes vocations to the priesthood — a very different life from the business world. What do your two activities have in common?
In answering that one, let me begin by saying that in so secular a culture, such as ours, religion is not seen as a priority in life. It's something that's “nice” to have, but it's not a key ingredient.
The problem there is that parents want their kids to become doctors, lawyers or other professionals that pay a lot of money.
But some dioceses and orders are flourishing in their vocations.
Yes, and the ones experiencing this appear to be those that have an exacting discipline that you saw years ago in the Church
There is something held out to die for and be proud of or be disciplined for in terms of our relationship with God. Then, there also is something that instills in a person's soul the spirit of a vocation.
I also see that in our culture today. There is a yearning for the truth, even among people who are not necessarily religious. In society, what is the “truth” today might not be the truth tomorrow. All of us are instilled with a sense of the divine. We yearn for God, and we yearn for truth. When we bounce from one set of moral values to another, the spirit rejects this and says, there must be more to life than this.
Do you expect this disconnect with God to end in the near future?
There will be a time of reflection on what life is truly all about, and the destructive values of the past 30 years or so will be shed for deeper, spiritual values.
And the Church is preparing for this through a new sense of evangelization.
Legatus is just one. I think we're going to see a huge increase in radio stations carrying the Catholic message. As I said, there will be a spike in solid Catholic values and a bringing of truth to our society.
What can be done to ensure that we achieve this change?
First, when you have kids who are truly in love with Christ, in contrast to those who don't know Christ, when they have fun, kids attuned to higher values have a joyful fun. It is through the Holy Spirit that this comes.
For adults?
The best thing people can do is sit back and evaluate their vision for tomorrow.
What is your destiny? What is necessary for you to achieve that destiny, in terms of eternal destiny, or in terms of your destiny with your spouse or in your work?
What are you willing to sacrifice and give?
What value does a faith perspective play in your life?
I believe that if you lead your life with a fixed objective and plan it, you're going to have a greater ability to reach it in a joyful and happy manner.
----- EXCERPT: An executive evangelizes by example, not preaching ----- EXTENDED BODY: George Maly ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: Opposition Is Mounting Against Infanticide Ethicist DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:PRINCETON, N.J.—When Christopher Benek heard that Princeton University had appointed Peter Singer to its Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bio-ethics post last summer, he was shocked.
“I found it hard to believe that any university, especially one as prestigious as Princeton, would select a professor of bioethics whose views permit the killing of certain handicapped newborns,” said Benek, a graduate student at Princeton Theological Seminary.
Singer, an Australian bioethicist, has sparked protests around the world because of his views on infanticide and animal rights. He has argued that killing a disabled newborn infant is not necessarily immoral and that no infant has as strong a claim to life as a rational, self-conscious human being. He also believes animals may sometimes be worthier of life than disabled infants since there is no automatic hierarchy of species among living things.
In July, Singer will begin teaching bioethics at Princeton — unless students like Benek have something to say about it.
Immediately after Singer's appointment, many Princeton students and faculty members expressed concern and outrage. Students wrote letters to the Daily Princetonian, the student newspaper, and picketers gathered outside Princeton's University Center for Human Values where Singer will serve.
In his books Practical Ethics and Should the Baby Live?, Singer argues that disabled newborns do not qualify as “persons.” He suggests that parents should be allowed to have their disabled children killed up to 28 days after birth, and he advocates establishing criteria for distinguishing newborn infants from “normal human beings” using such conditions as “rationality, autonomy and self-consciousness.”
‘Hopefully, by organizing students to protest the appointment of Dr. Singer, we will raise awareness throughout academia that there are fundamental human rights that must be maintained in order to secure each and every student's freedom to participate in their own education’…
With just four months remaining before Singer assumes his permanent teaching post, the controversy hasn't faded. As a matter of fact, it has escalated. Students opposed to Singer's views on infanticide and people with disabilities have mobilized to pressure the university to rescind his appointment.
“Hopefully, by organizing students to protest the appointment of Dr. Singer, we will raise awareness throughout academia that there are fundamental human rights that must be maintained in order to secure each and every student's freedom to participate in their own education,” Benek, who recently formed Princeton Students Against Infanticide, told the Register. “The appointment of a professor whose views claim that, in certain cases, disabled babies may be rightly killed supports the false notion that many disabled persons’ lives are less worth living and inherently inferior to the lives of others.”
Benek said Princeton Students Against Infanticide, an umbrella organization representing several campus organizations opposed to Singer's appointment, has launched a petition drive against the appointment. Organizations are planning a rally against the Singer appointment on campus April 17. He said that interest in the group continues to grow as more individuals learn of Singer's radical views and he hoped the group's petition drive would both educate and activate students on the issue.
The first paragraph of the petition reads, in part: “We protest his hiring because Dr. Singer denies the intrinsic moral worth of an entire class of human beings — newborn children — and promotes policies that would deprive many handicapped infants of their basic human right to legal protection against homicide.” It continues by citing Singer's own publications supporting the killing of disabled newborns in certain circumstances.
The petition ends by stating: “The hiring of Dr. Peter Singer is a blatant violation of Princeton University's policy of respect for people with handicaps. If Princeton University is committed to upholding the principles of nondiscrimi-nation, it must rescind its decision to hire Dr. Peter Singer.”
Living With Disabilities
Princeton University officials say Benek and others opposed to Singer's appointment are simply uninformed or have an “ax to grind” with the university.
“To describe Dr. Singer as a supporter of infanticide is an absurd description,” Justin Harmon, Princeton's director of communications, told the Register. “The guy, whether you agree with him or not, has done exhaustive work to establish the moral framework on the nature of life across species.”
Harmon said Singer was chosen for the post due to his intellectual and scholarly accomplishments. He said that Princeton doesn't necessarily endorse Singer's views, and he attempted to downplay Singer's support for the direct killing of disabled newborns by calling such actions “extreme situations which occur in very, very rare circumstances.”
“We're definitely not saying we endorse his views, but the guy is qualified to frame the discussion on bioethics,” said Harmon.
Harmon says opponents of Singer's appointment are forgetting that Princeton is a nonsectarian institution that seeks to engage students in a scholarly debate of various issues. Princeton's commitment to academic freedom overrides any opposition to the appointment, he said. In response to Benek's assertion that the Singer appointment violates the university's nondiscrimination policy protecting those with disabilities, Harmon disagreed, stating that the policy deals with adults and their access to university facilities and programs.
“They haven't read his stuff,” he said of Students Against Infanticide. “He's never written anything about an individual who has a learning disability or uses a wheelchair who is a [functioning] adult.”
“Imagine being a handicapped student sitting in Dr. Singer's class and hearing him say that your parents should have had the right to end your life when you were a newborn,” said Benek. “The issue is about maintaining students’ freedom to be educated, no matter what their personal characteristics may be, without being demeaned.”
Although Singer's writings may focus on newborns, some activists see his views as a threat to disabled people of all ages.
Mary Jane Owen, executive director of the National Catholic Office for Persons with Disabilities, told the Register that Singer's appointment offers an excuse for those who seek to denigrate lives of the disabled. Owen contended that Singer's appointment sends a dangerous message not only to disabled students, but all disabled individuals.
“I find it unbelievable that Princeton has appointed Peter Singer,” said Owen. “This man's view that a young pig has more potential to enjoy life than a disabled newborn and a disabled person is odious.”
Owen, who is blind and uses a wheelchair, said Singer's perspectives on the disabled undermine everything the disabled community has been struggling to affirm for several decades and may even violate the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Owen says that by advancing arguments that dehumanize the disabled, Singer undermines the ability of people to combine their strengths and weaknesses to build strong communities. It is by helping each other and feeling needed that people become truly civilized, she said.
“One of the evil things about Peter Singer's views is that he just doesn't grasp the concept of interdependency,” said Owen. “We are meant to be interactive, not autonomous. We need each other.
“We need people with disabilities.
We don't need to kill people with disabilities.”
In his encyclical Evangelium Vitae (the Gospel of LIfe), Pope John Paul II warns about “a misguided pity” toward those who suffer: attitudes that lead people to think they can control life and death: “Euthanasia is sometimes justified by the utilitarian motive of avoiding costs which bring no return and which weigh heavily on society. Thus it is proposed to eliminate malformed babies, the severely handicapped, the disabled, the elderly, especially when they are not self-sufficient, and the terminally ill” (No 15).
He adds in No. 63: “The Church is close to those married couples who, with great anguish and suffering, willingly accept gravely handicapped children. She is also grateful to all those families which, through adoption, welcome children abandoned by their parents because of disabilities or illnesses.”
While Princeton's Harmon says the university has no intention of rescinding Singer's appointment, Students Against Infanticide's Benek says members of the group will continue to mobilize against Singer through the petition drive, educational tables on campus, and the April 17 rally.
Benek is optimistic that the Princeton students and alumni can stop Singer's appointment. He believes the university is already feeling pressure from the appointment in the form of negative publicity and possible fallout from alumni. However, whether or not the students succeed in having Singer's appointment rescinded, Benek sees a bigger picture.
“We don't really think the university cares what students think on this issue,” he said. “But we're going to show them that students do care about this issue. Princeton made a mistake that is still forgivable if only they will rescind their decision to hire Dr. Singer.”
Greg Chesmore writes from Bloomington, Indiana.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Greg Chesmore ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Proud to be Catholic… At Least in Brochures DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:LOS ANGELES—Catholic colleges are touting their religious identity with an exuberance that has been absent for decades.
Even though religious identity isn't a leading criterion for high school students when shopping for a college, sufficient numbers consider it enough of a factor that the colleges are trying to make a religious connection with prospective students.
Examples abound. The Internet Web site for LeMoyne College in Syracuse, N.Y., proclaims the school a “Catholic college founded in the Jesuit tradition.” In advertisements in journals secular and religious, the University of Portland describes itself as “Oregon's Catholic University” and features drawings of the campus chapel.
Beginning in the 1980s, “Catholic colleges started to wake up and notice that their precious identity was slipping away,” said Monika Hellwig, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities
The slip in Catholic identity was due to many factors. Traditional religious emphases were downplayed on most Catholic campuses following the landmark Land O'Lakes conference in Minnesota. Some 26 Catholic college leaders effect ively declared their independence from the Church by concluding that the Catholic university “must have a true autonomy and academic freedom in the face of authority of whatever kind, lay or clerical, external to the academic community itself.”
In several important ways, Pope John Paul's 1990 apostolic constitution, Ex Corde Ecclesiae, was a response to Land O'Lakes. He stated that “[a Catholic university] is linked with the Church,” and that this is achieved “either by a formal, constitutive and statutory bond or by reason of an institutional commitment.” This is to be guarded through a number of concrete steps such as having a Catholic serve as president of a Catholic college and keeping a substantial portion of the faculty Catholic.
Regardless of how Ex Corde Ecclesiae is finally implemented – the U.S. bishops are now working on the matter – Catholic colleges have already decided that the perception of Catholic identity is a plus in attracting students and parents.
“In general education circles, it began to be more apparent that there was an appeal for Catholic education,” said Linus Ormsby, a 14-year veteran of public relations at Niagara University in New York. “It is seen as attractive and safe.”
Without its Catholic identity, “there would be no need for Iona College,” said Irish Christian Brother James A. Liguori after accepting a second term last month as president of the New Rochelle, N.Y., college. Religious identity is one of the “points of differentiation that are important to our current constituents and our future students,” said Brother Liguori.
“Catholic values are part of the lore and Zeitgeist of the ‘90s,” said Michael McKeon, dean of admissions at the Jesuits’ Seattle University. “They are also being perceived as marketable.”
Money Talks
Religious identity also has fund-raising implications for Catholic colleges. “These schools have a deep stake in being identified as Catholic institutions, for alumni support and student recruitment,” said Father Richard John Neuhaus, editor in chief of the monthly religious and social journal First Things. “Hopefully, though, they are also calling themselves Catholic more and more for nobler reasons.”
Father Charles Currie, director of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, said that parents have come to favor Catholic colleges more and more because they are seen as places where “there are values, where there is ethical concern and a more holistic kind of education.”
Thomas Plough, president of Assumption College in Worcester, Mass., explained that parents are keen on the “caring atmosphere” implicit in a Catholic school. “Plus, if we departed too far from the Catholic mission, our friends and alumni would be all over us,” Plough said.
Alumni, major donors to schools, want the colleges to abide by Catholic mission and identity. Polls at schools like Assumption and Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles show that alumni place the Catholic connection on top of their list of reasons for giving support.
Soft Sell
The Catholic tag does not work in every instance, especially for graduate-level courses or when students are coming from a limited geographic area.
“When you are advertising so many graduate programs and a law school, you have to appeal widely to the public,” said Father Stephen V. Sundborg, president of Seattle University. “We are not going to deny that we are Catholic and Jesuit, but we aren't going to put that first.”
Quincy University in Illinois is working on new recruitment publications that will increase the emphasis on Franciscan heritage. It is part of finding a workable niche in the college marketplace.
“We are trying to narrow down our markets and find students who are really interested in a small, Catholic liberal arts school,” said Tracy Zuspann, the school's public relations chief.
Leaders at St. Benedict College and St. John's University in Minnesota, two partner schools, are pondering a clearer Catholic identity in their literature and Web site. Even though religious affiliation does not rank high in student-preference surveys, school officials realize that identity could set them apart from other Midwest liberal arts colleges.
“I think we have a real subtle approach now,” said Mary Milbert, an admissions official at the schools. “We simply call it an environment where a student can continue to grow spiritually. I'm gathering the other vice presidents for help in how to best describe the Catholic nature of the schools.”
Commuter Schools
In a survey of students at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, school researchers found that Jesuit and Catholic identity ranked only eighth in a list of 20 reasons for attending. Only 5% of students picked faith as the most important reason for attending.
Like a lot of “day hop” colleges, the majority of Loyola Marymount students are from the area and do not reside on campus. On commuter campuses, faith life falls behind academics and even location in importance
“It was a very sobering experience,” said Joe Merante, associate vice president for academics. As a result, Loyola Marymount markets the Catholic identity, but cautiously. The school's Web site features a photo of the chapel, but the cross is not visible.
The introductory paragraph mentions proximity to Los Angeles and the Pacific Ocean; then comes the description, “a comprehensive Catholic, independent institution … in the educational traditions of the Society of Jesus and the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary.”
A Customer Speaks
Neuhaus, founder of the Institute on Religion and Public Life, is bouyed by these marketing trends. “I think we should be encouraged that schools are interested in having a good Catholic identity,” he said.
More skeptical is Travis Lawmaster, who recently attended Loyola Marymount. Asked about brochures that stress a Catholic identity at colleges, he told the Register, “I would be suspicious of it. It could be a marketing strategy geared at more conservative parents.”
A Catholic from his infancy, he said he was searching for a deeper faith when he attended undergraduate courses. “I wasn't actively practicing my Catholic faith. … I was part of an evangelical Christian group.”
He said his professors, “didn't give me any kind of clear direction, or clear guidance back to the magisterium of the Church. It was sort of a ‘believe what you want’ kind of attitude. With that, I drifted farther away from the Church.”
It was only later that he returned, by encountering the apologetics movement. Now, he gives talks at apologetics conferences titled “How to Keep Your Kids Catholic.”
His advice for parents who confront the marketing brochures at Catholic colleges? “Yes, Catholic young people should go to these colleges. But they should go equipped.
It's the parents who are the primary teachers of the faith.
“For myself, I would look into a college more, and verify if its claim is the case. Visit the campus. Talk with professors, even. And see if students are really being taught their faith.”
Ed Langlois writes from Portland, Oregon.
----- EXCERPT: A Register survey of colleges ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ed Langlois ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: U.S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:From selected publications
Cardinal O'Connor Still at His Post
THE NEW YORK POST, March 10—“An amused John Cardinal O'Connor said reports of his retirement are greatly exaggerated.” That was the opening line of reporter Gregg Birnbaum's story that helped wave off a flury of media speculation that the cardinal was planning to step down as archbishop of New York by his 80th birthday in January.
Speculation over Cardinal O'Connor's possible retirement was fueled by a March 1 letter to the priests serving in the archdiocese, inviting them to concelebrate the Chrism Mass during Holy Week, said the paper. The cardinal wrote, “I don't want to sentimentalize this, but it is obvious that this may well be my final Chrism Mass as archbishop.”
A spokesman for the archdiocese later clarified the statement by explaining that the Cardinal has made similar allusions in his annual letter to the priests ever since reaching the customary retirement age of 75, reported Birnbaum.
“My wish is to serve the Church every day I get up and thank God I am alive,” Cardinal O'Connor told the Post, explaining that his fate lies with Pope John Paul II.
Catholic Paper Spikes ‘Pray and Publish’ Ads
ASSOCIATED PRESS, March 11—The official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati is ending its long-standing practice of printing “thank-you” ads to saints “because they appear to make promises that cannot be guaranteed,” reported AP. The weekly newspaper, in its 168th year, had accepted such ads for years.
The so-called “pray and publish” ads typically give thanks to a particular saint for answering a prayer, repeat the prayer and encourage people to use and publish it — often with the inducement, “never been known to fail.”
Telegraph Editor Tricia Hempel found that the ads resemble chain letters, according to the report.
The Messenger, the newspaper for the nearby Diocese of Covington, Ky., runs “thank-you” ads in its classified advertising section, but takes out any references to “pray and publish,” the editor, Jerry Enderle, was quoted saying.
One Good Joe Recalls Another
THE EVANGELILST, March 9—Following the death of Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio on March 8, Father Joe DiMaggio of Johnstown, N.Y. spoke with the newspaper of the Albany Diocese about what it has meant to have the same name as one of the greatest baseball players of all time — and to have met the legendary center fielder.
Growing up with the name Joe DiMaggio was an honor, but it put pressure on him whenever he stepped inside the batter's box, and resulted in some jeers at the not-so-occasional strike out.
As he got older, the paper reported, Father DiMaggio found out just how good it was to share Joltin’ Joe's name.
“Every time I called for tickets to a show in New York City or a ball game at Madison Square Garden, I would get the best seats in the house,” he was quoted saying.
The paper reports that Father DiMaggio saw Joltin’ Joe play ball in person, and the two Joes actually sat next to each other at a basketball game at the Garden. Father DiMaggio recalled the surprise on the Yankee Clipper's face after he said, “Hi, my name's Joe DiMaggio. What's yours?”
Father DiMaggio, pastor of Immaculate Conception Church in Johnstown, then pulled out his Visa and American Express cards to prove that he wasn't kidding, and the priest and the ballplayer laughed over the encounter and shook hands after the game.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:From selected publications
A.P. Distorts Cardinal's Concerns
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, March 5—The archbishop of Barcelona has criticized anti-AIDS campaigns that promote condom use without warning of their failure rate.
Cardinal Ricardo Maria Carles also said the condom program is contributing to the spiritual and moral ruin of the young.
He voiced his opinion of the government media campaign promoting condoms in a newsletter circulated throughout his northeastern Spanish city.
The AP's spin was that the Cardinal “condemned” and railed against the program, pointing out that “the article comes after the church in Spain elected a particularly conservative leadership at its Bishops Conference.”
Calling for full disclosure by the government of the health risks involved in its campaign hardly seems “conservative,” however.
According to official figures, there are 53,000 AIDS patients in Spain. Most of them contracted the illness through drug use, said the report.
Need for Gaelic Questioned for Scottish See
THE IRISH TIMES, March 10—Should the next bishop of the Scottish Highlands and Islands be a Gaelic-speaker?
Reported Douglas Fraser, “priests in the diocese of Argyll and the Isles are disagreeing over whether the priority is to have a bishop whose cultural roots are strong in the area or an outsider whose qualifications are more spiritual.”
Father Paul Hackett, an English-born Gaelic-learner in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, commented: “In a climate of Gaelic revival, the churches should be seen to be showing an interest. It's part of the culture of the isles in the music and the hymns. This is the language in which people pray.”
But only six out of about 22 priests in the diocese speak Gaelic, and Msgr. Roderick Macdonald of Glencoe told the paper, three of them are too old to be made bishop.
“It would be great to have a good Gaelic-speaking bishop, but it's a nonsense to say that it's essential,” Msgr. Macdonald is quoted saying.
Three Nuns Reported Missing in the Congo
FIDES, March 10—Three nuns are missing in the Republic of Congo, where vandals have sacked Catholic religious communities, forcing more than half of them to close, Fides announced in Rome.
Father Bernardo Cervellera, director of the news agency operated by the Vatican Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, said a group of nuns had written to Fides from the Congo to report that violence against church property and staff has reached alarming proportions.
The letter said three nuns have disappeared from the Diocese of Brazzaville, 29 convents have been attacked and sacked and 49 of the 81 religious communities in the country have been forced to close their doors.
About 40% of Congo's population of 2.4 million is Catholic, according to church figures, said the report.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:From selected publications
Indulgences Still Misunderstood
THE SALT LAKE CITY TRIBUNE, March 6—The Utah newspaper reported that Pope John Paul II has approved the granting of special indulgences for the Great Jubilee of 2000, as is customary for all holy years.
But reporter Peggy Fletcher Stack added that indulgences had been abandoned by Vatican II, and were now being brought back by the present Pope. “Why, then, would that arcane practice re-emerge at the end of the 20th century?” she asks, acknowledging that “there was no suggestion about the selling of indulgences” in the Pope's appendix on the subject in his decree The Mystery of Incarnation.
She did quote Church sources setting the record straight. “The worst thing about indulgences is the name,” because “it conjures up notions of distortions,” said Msgr. Frances Mannion, a local theologian who defended the teaching on indulgences. If they were not worthy, he pointed out, “[indulgences] would not have survived … and been renewed in our time.”
Msgr. Mannion compared indulgences to the efforts that must be made after a serious blow to a friendship. “Merely saying, ‘I'm sorry,’ … doesn't do the job completely,” Mannion said. “Sometimes the damage is long-lasting … [and] needs ongoing work and time to heal.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Lady of the Millennia DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:The annunciation made to Mary by the angel Gabriel was an event of the greatest consequence.
“Never in human history did so much depend, as it did then, upon the consent of one human creature,” writes Pope John Paul II in Tertio Millennio Adveniente (Advent of the Third Millennium, No. 2).
He continues, “The fact that in the fullness of time the eternal Word took on the condition of a creature gives a unique, cosmic value to the event which took place in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago” (No. 3).
When on March 25 we commemorate the anniversary of the annunciation, of the great “yes” that Mary gave to God's salvific plan, we can remember that it also has a deep significance for our time. For the world has, in a number of ways, given a great “no” to God's plan for us: a “no” that is summed up in what the Pope calls a “culture of death” that rejects God's invitation to us to share in his life-creating mission.
There is a movement for more places to call March 25 the “Day of the Unborn Child,” as Argentina's president, Carlos Menem, has done. This is appropriate, for there is a pro-life message hidden in the gospel narrative of the annunciation and visitation.
Imagine the moment when Mary was invited to be the mother of the messiah, and consented. The Gospel tells us that she immediately she set out to a town in the hill country of Judea to visit her cousin Elizabeth. Researchers identify the place as a little village called Ain Karim, about five miles west of Jerusalem. Mary, we are told, went “in haste” and so probably would have gone by mule or donkey. Even is she went on foot, it would not have taken no more than a week.
The young woman had only just become pregnant, with a tiny life inside her that was just beginning to grow. So tiny that she couldn't even feel it.
We can picture her communing with, talking to, and maybe even singing for that little life within her womb on the way to meet her cousin Elizabeth who was way beyond the childbearing age, and yet was carrying a child.
Upon seeing Mary, her cousin blessed her and added, “How does it happen that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”
The pro-life implications of this greeting are tremendous. First, Mary is addressed as “mother” — not somebody who might become a mother later on, if she gives birth to the child, as is the way of speaking in our day. Newly pregnant, she was already a mother. And, what's more, Elizabeth refers to the tiny fetus as “my Lord” — a title never given to a thing, only to a person. Elizabeth's addressing Mary as the Mother of her Lord is a biblical confirmation of the personhood of the fetus, from the first days of conception.
In our day, it is crucial that we imitate Mary and her cousin Elizabeth when we welcome life into the world — but also, in this year of preparation for the Jubilee of the birth of Christ, when we welcome Christ into our lives, and through us, into the world also.
There is a beautiful custom that many contemplative nuns observe, when they enter an entirely unlit chapel in the dark winter evenings of Advent. A sister lights the Advent candle and then kneels down before it and prays: “Adore, oh my soul, in the womb of Mary, the Son of God who for love of you became the Son of Mary.”
As we near the Jubilee year, Americans in particular can make this prayer our own. In February remarks upon returning from his visit to the United States and Mexico, John Paul recommended once again the program of the new evangelization he had laid out in his postsynodal apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in America.
He added that it would be made possible because of “the motherly assistance of Our Lady of Guadalupe, who has indelibly marked America's history.”
Of Our Lady of Guadalupe, whose image bears the symbolism of her pregnancy, he said, “I entrust to the intercession of the patroness of that beloved continent the hope that the encounter with Christ will continue to bring light to the peoples of the New World in the millennium which is about to begin.”
It is hard to overstate the great expectation the Church has for our Jubilee recommitment to Christ, or the trust the Pope places in the inter-cession of his heavenly mother. He expects it to bring about something even greater than the fall of communism and the destruction of the Berlin Wall.
As he wrote in Advent of the Third Millennium, “It would be difficult not to recall that the Marian Year took place only shortly before the events of 1989. Those events remain surprising for their vastness and especially for the speed with which they occurred” (No. 27).
If we truly join Mary in her “yes,” what vast changes will the years ahead bring?
----- EXCERPT: Editorial ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Luke, From Its Roots to Today's Issues DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:Mission of the Messiah: On the Gospel of Luke
by Tim Gray
(Emmaus Road Publishing, 1998,149 pages, $9.95)
When we meditate on Scripture, we generally focus on the more uplifting passages. This is why Psalm 23:1 (“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want”) is more familiar than, say, Luke 23:19 (“Now Barabbas had been imprisoned for a rebellion that had taken place in the city, and for murder”). I suppose this is only human. Still, everything that is recorded in the Scriptures was put there deliberately by the Holy Spirit. It is up to scholars guided by the Holy Spirit, thinking with the mind of the Church (sentire cum ecclesia), to mine the less obvious gems of Biblical teaching and to share them with the rest of us.
One such scholar is Tim Gray, assistant professor of Scripture and catechetics at the Notre Dame Graduate School of Christendom College. His new book Mission of the Messiah takes an educated and spiritually enlightened look at the Gospel of St. Luke, drawing forth insights highly beneficial for the average layman while remaining readable. For example, he provides the following Lucan tidbit about Barabbas the insurrectionist:
“The choice between Barabbas and Jesus is larger than simply the choice between which individual will go free, and which will be executed. Israel is at a crossroads: There are two different paths before her, two ways of being Israel. Barabbas, an insurrectionist and murderer, represents the way of violent revolution. Barabbas embodies the common belief that the kingdom will come with the violent and vengeful overthrow of the Romans. Here the call is to take up the sword and rally against the Romans. Jesus embodies and offers an altogether different approach. His way is forgiveness and peace. The kingdom will come not through the overthrow of Caesar, but of Satan. Sin, not Roman soldiers, needs to be defeated. Jesus’ call is to take up one's cross and follow the Prince of Peace. Jesus knows that the path of violent revolution, the path of Barabbas, is a dead end.”
In addition to being an important point of Scriptural insight, isn't Gray's observation relevant to the present-day anti-abortionists, faced with the parallel choice of defending life by positive and spiritual means, or by the murder of abortionists?
Mission of the Messiah also considers the Gospel of Luke in light of the Old Testament. In the “Questions for Reflection or Group Discussion” found at the end of the first chapter, our author asks, “Have you ever picked up a book, or started watching a movie, in the middle or towards the end, and had difficulty understanding the plot? How is that comparable to reading the Gospels without any knowledge of the Old Testament?” The relationship between the Testaments is more profound than that, of course. The Old Testament “contains” the New in an embryonic form. The characters that thus foreshadow Christ in prophetic ways are called types, and the study of this foreshadowing is called typology. Gray's book is a useful handbook of essential typology for the lay reader.
Most people are already aware, for instance, that the “Suffering Servant” passages in Isaiah refer to our Lord. But how many people connect the mission of the Messiah with Ezekiel? Gray explains: “The unusual phrase ‘set his face to go to Jerusalem’ (Lk. 9:51) is a Hebrew idiom used to describe the arduous mission of a prophet. …
“The parallels between Jesus and Ezekiel are truly striking. Ezekiel was sent to warn and admonish Israel of impending judgment. Ezekiel set his face to Jerusalem and the Temple and foretold their destruction. Ezekiel was told that the people will ‘hear what you say but they will not do it’ (Ez. 33:31). Jesus too gives prophetic warning to the people and predicts the impending destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. Ezekiel foretold the destruction of the first Temple, Jesus the second.”
In this straightforward style, Gray takes up the main themes of the Gospel of Luke one by one. His topics include “The Baptism and Anointing of Jesus” (Chapter 1), “Signs of the Kingdom of God” (Chapter 3), “Celebrating the New Exodus” (Chapter 7), and “The New Paschal Lamb of the New Exodus” (Chapter 8). What emerges is a cohesive vision of the mission of the Messiah as told by the evangelist Luke, and as it was likely to be understood by its original Jewish audience, steeped in the Old Testament Scriptures.
Even the aforementioned chapter-ending questions make their own contribution to the book's impact. Instead of simply asking for reiteration of points already made, they are thought-provoking — alluding to history, culture, liturgy and other points of connection with the topic at hand, or directing the reader to other sources of information to look into. One of the questions for Chapter 1, for example, says: “George Fredric Handel began his masterpiece Messiah (1742), which tells the story of Jesus from a wide selection of Scripture passages, with the first five verses of Isaiah's fortieth chapter. Given what you have learned about Isaiah, why do you think Handel chose to begin his musical story of the Messiah with those particular verses?”
Gray's book lives up to Jeff Cavins’ billing: “Mission of the Messiah will serve as a tremendous catechetical tool in preparation for the Year of Jubilee.”
Helen Valois writes from Steubenville, Ohio.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Helen Valois ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Religion is Dead Where Truth is Forbidden DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:“The Cry of the Scholar: From ‘Religious Studies’ to Catholic Theology”
by Paul Thigpen
(Lay Witness, March 1999)
Paul Thigpen, a fellow in theology at the College of St. Thomas More in Fort Worth, Texas, writes: “I came across a simple petition of St. Thomas Aquinas [which] captured the longing of my heart.”
The prayer of Aquinas: Lord my God, bestow upon me an understanding that knows you, diligence in seeking you, wisdom in finding you, and confidence that I shall embrace you at the last.
“I knew as soon as I read those words that I had to pray them every day. But … I was teaching at a secular state university, and since my office was government property, there were limits on what I could display there.
“I posted the words in large letters on the back of my office door. Whenever it was closed and I was alone, I could read and ponder St. Thomas’ petition. But the door always remained open and back against the wall whenever I had visitors, so no one else knew it was there.
“That hidden prayer symbolized for me all the joys and frustrations of teaching religious studies in a large state school. To speak of God in my classroom setting was a joy for me, even if I was limited in what I could say. … And I was happy to relieve my students of the common misconception that all religions are basically the same and all are somehow true in their own ways, despite the differences in their beliefs and practices.
“At the same time, however, I felt considerable frustration. Many of my students were ‘seekers’ who flocked to religious studies courses in search of faith. I longed to present a sustained apologetic for the Catholic faith that could address their most profound questions and longings.
“My faith couldn't always be stuffed in a closet without a corner left sticking out the door. I remember the student who whined that I referred to God as ‘He, ‘the student course evaluation complaining that I once called Jesus ‘Christ’ while describing Christian doctrine.
“Just as I couldn't advocate a particular religious belief in class, I couldn't offer even a mild critique of particular religious traditions. Day after day, I had to portray a sampling of the wide array of religions in our nation as if they were simply equivalent choices in a spiritual cafeteria line, waiting to be selected according to individual tastes.
“I knew I was making a significant difference in the spiritual lives of at least some of the students, because they often told me so. … Nevertheless, the impact I had on these young lives took place ‘beyond’ my job, or even ‘in spite of’ my job, rather than ‘because of’ my job.
“I once had an attorney friend who lamented the fact that, in all his years in law school, the focus of his courses was on legality. The more primary issue — What is justice? — never seemed to be considered. In a similar way, it seems to me that religious studies in the secular state classroom works hard to focus on religious diversity. The more fundamental question — Which religion is true? — is shunned as improper or even impossible to answer.
“My experience led me to the same conclusion reached well over a century ago by John Cardinal Newman, that a merely secular education is inevitably a false education: false not just because it leaves out the subject that is most critical, but also because no other subject can be rightly understood except in the light of that all-important reality. Ultimately, a secular education can never answer the question ‘What is true?’ It can only ask — and not always correctly — ‘What works?’
“One day a colleague told me that a student from a Christian background … had been experiencing spiritual turmoil. But then something he had learned about Buddhism in our classes attracted him, and now he had decided to convert to that religion.
“That night, in turmoil myself, I sought God in prayer. How could I continue in good conscience in a position that required me to introduce students to religious teachings I knew to be untrue without allowing me to challenge those teachings?
“I applied [to] The College of St. Thomas More … [Now, t]ogether with my students … we pray with one voice the timeless cry of the scholar who seeks the Lord above all else.”
Ellen Wilson Fielding writes from Davidson, Maryland.
----- EXCERPT: Article Digest ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: LETTERS DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:Never Too Young
I received your letter Jan. 26th. It's a great idea and I would love to get the 4 free weeks and be able to pay for the rest of the issues. Also, I like National Catholic Register's ideas about the “hard issues” the media doesn't like to talk about. Although I am only 12, and your offer only being for checks and credit cards, I'm in a jam. Since they don't let kids my age get checks or credit cards it looks hopeless. If there were any way I could just send cash, please inform me.
Wendy Philip Evergreen, Colorado
Business manager's note: What a pleasure to receive your response! The best solution is to use postal money orders, available at your post office in exchange for cash. Many of our subscribers use them.
Notre Dame's Catholic Identity
I enjoyed the article on the real Catholic identity of 10 Catholic colleges in your issue of February 21-27, 1999 (“Identity Crisis on Campuses?”). It had a very personal meaning for me since my daughter is a graduate of the University of Dallas.
However, the same issue carries an article about Notre Dame choosing to retain its Catholic identity rather than becoming part of the Big Ten consortium. How “Catholic” does Father Malloy want to be? If I am not mistaken, Father Malloy objects to Notre Dame being in compliance with Ex Corde Ecclesiae. Am I missing something here?
Sarah A. McCray Annapolis, Maryland
Editor's note: Notre Dame's former president, Father Theodore Hesburgh, signed the Land O'Lakes document in 1967, which declared Catholic universities independent of ecclesiastical control. The university's current president, Father Edward Malloy, in America (Jan. 30), praises the ideals of Ex Corde Ecclesiae, but objects to the current draft of a document by a U.S. bishops’ committee which contains regulations meant to implement Ex Corde Ecclesiae in this country. The bishops had invited comment on the draft.
Ed Langlois’ article, “Identity Crisis on Campuses,” (Register, Feb. 21-27) left Notre Dame on the sidelines instead of a major player in the contemporary struggle on college campuses to maintain and nurture its Catholic identity. Graduating in 1934 I returned to reside on campus in 1991 to find the same, only more so, Catholic thinking and living. In my student days the campus chief chaplain, Father John F. O'Hara, CSC, later Cardinal, called Notre Dame “The City of the Blessed Sacrament,” with a chapel in each dormitory hall. Today, it is more so when we have 25 chapels with daily Eucharistic Liturgies, and to boot, Sacred Heart Basilica which on Sundays rocks with student worshippers, student choirs and Eucharistic ministers. The student daily newspaper, The Observer, is alive with faith-filled student articles and letters to the editor. Our Campus Ministry is highly visible.
As a consolation prize, your article did honor our “little sister” next door, Saint Mary's College for women. … We remind all comers that Notre Dame's founder, Father Edward Sorin, CSC, was also the Founder of St. Mary's College. …
In reflecting upon why Notre Dame may have been omitted from your listing of resurrectional Catholic colleges, I like to think that it is common knowledge, and need not be publicly mentioned, that Our Lady's University has faithfully flown Her banner of faithfulness to the faith.
Vincent Ferrer McAloon Notre Dame, Indiana
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Now's Not the Time To Simply Lament The Misery in U.S. DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:In his Lenten message Pope John Paul II spoke of “situations of persistent misery which cannot but impinge upon the conscience of Christians, reminding them of their duty to address these situations both as individuals and as a community.”
The word “impinge” means to make an impression on, to come into a relationship with, to strike. Are today's “situations of persistent misery” impinging on us?
There are people living in misery even in the United States: single parent families, the unemployed, immigrants struggling to make it, women dealing with the aftermath of abortions. We are often vaguely aware that people must deal with grinding misery but all too often it does not involve us. We live our non-involvement and call it by another name: “I'm busy.”
Recently I heard John DiIulio, a professor at Princeton and an expert on crime, talk about the problem of education for the poor in large urban public schools, “a situation of persistent misery.” He sees the school problem as, among other things, a literacy problem. Many children come from homes where the mothers did not finish school. Thirty-seven percent of the children in kindergarten do not know their ABCs. They come from broken families and have known only broken relationships. The public schools are not teaching them to read, a key to helping them break the cycle of poverty. By the year 2006 there will be 30 million teenagers, the largest number we have ever had, and many of them who live in large urban areas will still not be able to read. However, there is much that can be done at the margins to help these young people.
DiIulio said the literacy problem in all large cities is an ethical question that should touch everyone. These young people live in our community and are not being served adequately by the public school system, their families or the church. A large number of illiterate teenagers do not feel they are part of society and will easily get into trouble. We all should feel a certain sense of responsibility to do something to turn that around for the sake of the common good.
DiIulio is practicing what he preaches, devoting the rest of his life to helping churches in big cities find better ways of reaching out to the poor.
We have expanded scientific knowledge but we have cheapened life by classifying people as wanted or unwanted.
The misery of these young people is the direct result of broken families, and of the lack of positive cultural influences of church and school. The culture of rap, sex and drugs is there to fill the vacuum. These young people are victims of the “culture of death” no less than those unborn children who are aborted by their mothers. They are alive but lack the positive experiences that go into shaping a young mind and heart into a responsible human being. They lack a “culture of life.”
At the end of the 20th century there is a huge gap between the advance of technology and medicine and the condition of our moral purpose as a society. We have expanded scientific knowledge but we have cheapened life by classifying people as wanted or unwanted. The unwanted are the poor, the elderly, the disabled and children who cannot read. Society's lack of virtue is breaking down bonds that are necessary for a healthy and vibrant way of life, and for the task of addressing misery.
We might say that these cultural attitudes do not really affect our lives, but we would be wrong. The attitudes of radical autonomy and indifference to children are presented in the TV shows we watch, in the movies we choose and in the magazines we read. Fashion magazines often present androgynous, emaciated women in freakish clothes, not women who are serious about their lives and work.
The mindset that does not want children does not want to deal with situations of persistent misery in a positive human way. The tendency is to throw money, one resource we have in abundance, at the problem and turn it over to a bureaucracy. The attitude of the “culture of life,” on the other hand, must be one of commitment to finding a “human” solution to today's problems. To say that the problem of literacy is an ethical question for all who live in large cities is to frame the question in a human way. It is to ask the community, not just the government, to try to solve it. We have to find more human solutions for those who suffer: the weak, the frail, the elderly, those who are not “useful” any more. A highly technological society, with computers, gadgets, videos and digital TV, tends towards habits of utility to the point that we value only what is useful to us and forget about the bond that ties us to our fellow citizens and their needs, especially those in situations of persistent misery.
What will it take for us to be impressed, for our hearts to be moved?
Mary Ellen Bork, a board member of the Catholic Campaign for America and the Institute for Religion in Democracy, writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mary Ellen Bork ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Grace Conferred By Age DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:People today live longer and enjoy better health than in the past. They are also able to cultivate interests made possible by higher levels of education. No longer is old age synonymous with dependence on others or a diminished quality of life. But all this seems not enough to dislodge a negative image of old age or encourage a positive acceptance of a period of life in which many of our contemporaries see nothing but an unavoidable and burdensome decline.
The perception of old age as a period of decline, in which human and social inadequacy is taken for granted, is in fact very widespread today. But this is a stereotype. It does not take account of a condition that is in practice far more diversified, because older people are not a homogeneous human group and old age is experienced in very different ways.
All Must Prepare for Old Age
There are those older people who are capable of grasping the significance that old age has in the context of human existence, and who confront it not only with serenity and dignity, but as a time of life which offers them new opportunities for growth and commitment. But there are others more numerous in our own day — to whom old age is a traumatic experience, and who react to their own aging with attitudes ranging from passive resignation to rebellion, rejection and despair. They are persons who become locked into themselves and self-marginalized, thus accelerating the process of their own physical and mental deterioration.
It may thus be affirmed that the aspects of the third and fourth ages are as manifold and varied as older people themselves, and that each of us prepares for old age, and the way we experience it, in the course of our own life. In this sense, old age grows with us. And the quality of our old age will especially depend on our capacity to grasp its meaning and appreciate its value both at the purely human level and at the level of faith. We therefore need to situate old age in the context of a precise providential scheme of God who is love. We need to accept it as a stage in the journey by which Christ leads us to the Father's house (cf. Jn 14:2).
Only in the light of the faith, strengthened by the hope which does not deceive (cf. Rom 5:5), shall we be able to accept old age in a truly Christian way both as a gift and a task. That is the secret of the youthfulness of spirit, which we can continue to cultivate in spite of the passing of years.
The Testimony of Linda at 101
Linda, a woman who lived to the age of 106, left us a magnificent testimony of this. On her 101st birthday, she confided to a friend: “I'm now 101 years old, but I'm strong, you know. Physically I have some disabilities, but spiritually there is nothing I can't do. I don't let physical impediments stand in the way, I pay no attention to them. I don't suffer old age, because I ignore it: it goes ahead on its own, but I pay no heed to it. The only way to live well in old age is to live it in God.”
To correct the current, largely negative image of old age is therefore a cultural and educational task which ought to involve all generations. We have a responsibility towards older people today: we need to help them to grasp the sense of their age, to appreciate its resources, and to overcome the temptation to reject it, and so succumb to self-isolation, resignation and a feeling of uselessness and despair. We also have a responsibility towards future generations: that of preparing a human, social and spiritual context in which each person may live this period of life with dignity and fullness.
In his message to the U.N.'s World Assembly on Aging, Pope John Paul II affirmed: “Life is a gift of God to man who is created out of love in the image and likeness of God. This understanding of the sacred dignity of the human person leads to the appreciation of every stage of life. It is a question of consistency and justice. It is impossible to truly value the life of an older person if the life of a child is not valued from the moment of its conception. No one knows where we might arrive, if life is no longer respected as something inalienable and sacred.”
The multigenerational society we aspire to shall only become an enduring reality if it be based on respect for life in all its phases. The presence of so many older persons in the modern world needs to be recognized as a gift, a new human and spiritual potential for enrichment. It is a sign of the times which, if fully accepted and understood, may help contemporary men and women to rediscover the fundamental meaning of life, which far transcends the purely contingent meanings attributed to it by market forces, by the State and by the prevailing mentality.
The Better Memory of the Elderly
The contribution that older people, by their experience, can make to the process of making our society and culture more human is particularly valuable. It needs to be encouraged by fostering what might be termed the charisms proper to old age, namely:
Disinterestedness. The prevailing culture of our time measures the value of our actions according to criteria of efficiency and material success, which ignore the dimension of disinterestedness: of giving something, or giving ourselves, without any thought of a return. Older people, who have time on their hands, may recall the attention of an over-busy society to the need to break down the barriers of an indifference that debases, discourages and stifles altruistic impulses.
Memory. The younger generations are losing a sense of history and consequently the sense of their own identity. A society that minimizes the sense of history fails in its responsibility to educate young people. A society that ignores the past more easily runs the risk of repeating its errors. The loss of an historical sense is also attributable to a system of life that has marginalized and isolated older people, and that hampers dialogue between the generations.
Experience. Today we live in a world in which the responses of science and technology seem to have supplanted the value of the experience accumulated by older people in the course of their whole lives. This kind of cultural barrier should not discourage people of the third and fourth ages, since they still have a lot to say to the young generations and to share with them.
Interdependence. No man is an island. But growing individualism and self-seeking are obscuring this truth. Older people, in their search for companionship, challenge a society in which the weaker are often abandoned; they draw attention to the social nature of man and to the need to repair the fabric of interpersonal and social relationships.
A more complete vision of life. Our life is dominated by haste, by agitation, and frequently by neurosis. It is a distracted life, a life in which the fundamental questions about the vocation, dignity and destiny of man are forgotten. The third age is also the age of simplicity and contemplation.
The affective, moral and religious values embodied by older people are an indispensable resource for fostering the harmony of society, of the family and of the individual. These values include a sense of responsibility, faith in God, friendship, disinterest in power, prudence, patience, wisdom, and a deep inner conviction of the need to respect the creation and foster peace. Older people understand the superiority of “being” over “having.” Human societies would be better if they learnt to benefit from the charisms of old age.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Cardinal James Francis Stafford and Bishop Stanislaw Rylko ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Mission Of the Elderly DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:The Council of the Laity also recalled that Pope John Paul II had addressed older people when he received 8,000 of them in audience March 23, 1984: “Do not be surprised by the temptation of interior solitude. Notwithstanding the complexity of your problems … and the forces which gradually wear you down, and despite the inadequacies of social organizations, the delays of official legislation and a selfish society's failure to understand, you are not and must not consider yourselves to be on the margins of the life of the Church, passive elements in a world in excessive motion, but active subjects of a period in human existence which is rich in spirituality and humanity. You still have a mission to fulfill and a contribution to make.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Learning to Kill with Confidence DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:The data are in for the first year of physician-assisted suicide in Oregon. In November 1997 the people of the state voted in a referendum to make it legal for doctors to help people kill themselves. Now, after one full year under the law, the data have been sifted through and analyzed in a supposedly objective, dispassionate, scientific fashion and reported in the New England Journal of Medicine. The proponents of physician-assisted suicide were delighted with the results and now make the claim that there should be no cause for concern among the public in the face of this “expanded medical service.”
There were no reports of adverse physical reactions to the drugs in terms of vomiting or convulsions, and no one had to help kill a loved one by tying a plastic bag over his head when the drugs failed, as some claimed would happen.
Most of the individuals were unconscious within five minutes, all within twenty minutes. Most died within one hour, although one lived on for almost twelve hours after taking the lethal drugs. “You see,” say the advocates of physician-assisted suicide, “it is all so easy, so clean — so efficient.”
It was thought by many who voted for physician-assisted suicide that those suffering from intractable pain would be the ones who would avail themselves of it. However, the New England Journal of Medicine study showed a much different motivation. People did not choose suicide because they were in pain but because they feared they would lose control of their lives as their illness advanced. Also, the suicides tended to be those who were never married or who were divorced. A sense of loneliness. Isolation. Fear of lack of control. Those are hardly medical factors requiring the intervention of a physician.
Only 23 people were given prescriptions for lethal drugs. Of those, only 15 managed to kill themselves. Six died from their underlying illness first. Rather small numbers in the estimation of some. Of course, those are only the numbers reported. In Oregon there are no penalties for not reporting the practice. Also, it was just the first year of the implementation of the law. Wait until people grow accustomed to the idea. The numbers may grow yet.
In Holland where euthanasia is technically illegal but seldom prosecuted, some 20% of those being killed by doctors have never requested it, according to the Journal of Medical Ethics. Indeed, the Journal reports that 59% of doctors do not even report euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide, as required by law.
In Oregon moral reservations on the part of doctors and patients kept the number of suicides from being higher. Six of the 15 people who sought lethal prescriptions had to go to two or more doctors.
The article in the New England Journal of Medicine reported the qualms of conscience which plagued many of the physicians who helped patients kill themselves. “It was an excruciating thing to do … it made me rethink life's priorities.” “This was really hard on me, especially being there when he took the pills,” and, “This had a tremendous emotional impact.”
This uneasiness should not be too surprising. After all, for more than 2,000 years physicians had been taking the Hippocratic Oath and pledging: “I will give no one a deadly potion even if asked, nor counsel any such thing.” It is not an easy matter to turn one's back on more than 2,000 years of a moral tradition of noble pagan origins. Or on more than 3,000 years of the Judeo-Christian tradition and its commandment: “Thou shalt not kill.” But many of our physicians are tremendously resilient these days. We adapt.
As I read the doctors’ remarks in New England Journal of Medicine, I thought of a religious education class I attended while I was a high school student. The teacher asked us if we wanted to kill our consciences. He then went on to tell us how. He told us to go into a store and simply take something we wanted. He said that we would immediately feel pangs of conscience. As soon as our conscience began to bother us, he said, we should steal again. As we repeated that behavior, he said, the pangs of conscience would eventually disappear altogether.
The physicians in the New England Journal of Medicine article expressed qualms about their behavior. But there is no reason to think such qualms will persist. Indeed, the proponents of euthanasia hope they will not. We just have to give our physicians and our dying neighbors in Oregon more time to kill their consciences before they begin feeling really comfortable about killing themselves and one another.
Dr. John Haas is director of the National Bioethics Center in Boston.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Haas ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Christmas Connection DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:In a pastoral letter for March 1999, Bishop Sylvester Ryan of the Diocese of Monterey, Calif. called the attention of his parishes to the special significance of this year's feast of the Annunciation.:
The impressive and attractive Basilica of the Annunciation sits in the middle of the City of Nazareth in the Holy Land [see photo, this page]. It is a two-tiered church, with a lower and an upper floor. Mass can be celebrated simultaneously in both places. The lower floor opens into a grotto, the location of the Annunciation event. The entire church exudes a palpable sense of the holy. When I visited the Basilica I found myself drawn immediately into a deep mood of prayer and adoration. The Basilica serves as a touching reminder of the Annunciation's singular place in the story of our redemption.
Within the church's liturgical year we celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25th nine months before the feast of Christmas. This year the Feast of the Annunciation has an additional Christmas connection. The Jubilee Year 2000 officially begins on the Feast of Christmas. In an eloquent way, therefore, this year's Feast of the Annunciation anticipates the Jubilee Year.
For this reason, I want to invite all of our parishes to celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation in a special manner. Sister Barbara Long, O.P., has sent an Annunciation Vespers service to each of the parishes. Along with the celebration of the Eucharist, this will be a prayerful and reverent way to remember the gift of the Blessed Mother in our lives by joining together as a Diocese in the church's Vesper prayer. …
[A]n evening service of Vespers on the Feast of the Annunciation by all the parishes of the Diocese will provide a distinctive homage to Our Blessed Mother as well as our opening celebration of the Jubilee year.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A Gothic 'Folly' Revered by Millions DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:In 1858, they called it “Hughes’ folly” — even as New York Archbishop John Hughes laid the cornerstone on Aug. 15 of that year. Who would dream, New Yorkers said, of building a huge Gothic cathedral amid farmland and the shantytowns of midtown Manhattan? But today, that so-called folly is the most visited church in the United States: St. Patrick's Cathedral.
Each day some 20,000 people visit the cathedral. Popes have led prayer there, including Pope John Paul II, who led a recitation of the rosary on Oct. 7, 1995. On Sundays, more than 3,000 people attend the Mass celebrated by Cardinal John O'Connor. An estimated 7 million people each year visit and marvel at the 11th largest Catholic cathedral in the world.
St. Patrick's on Fifth Avenue is an example of what a place of worship should be, both in its grand design and in its details. For instance, it boasts a great 19th-century Jardine organ (7,855 pipes). Hearing it played with orchestral accompaniment and choirs, one is tempted to believe the gates of heaven have opened.
It was Archbishop Hughes who contracted with the pre-eminent New York architect James Renwick to design an ideal Gothic Revival cathedral. Renwick already had Washington, D.C.'s Smithsonian Institution to his credit. With the new project, he went even further as an architect, especially with the cathedral's faÇade and its twin spiraling towers, which stand at 330 feet tall.
The vaulted interior is vast, light, and airy, making it an inviting place for visitors. Both inside and outside, this masterpiece is an undisputed model of dramatic Gothic ornamentation.
Renwick's bold design included the extensive use of white marble rather than the brownstone that was fashionable at the time. He once wrote that the spires during sunset reflecting the “colors of heaven, will produce the effect of carrying the mind of the beholder to the true object of the building — the worship of the maker of the universe.”
Work on the building ceased for more than two years, due to a lack of funds and the Civil War. In 1869, Cardinal John McCloskey, who succeeded Archbishop Hughes, resumed work on the building. He noted that the chief source of funding was coming from Irish immigrants. The cathedral was completed and dedicated in 1879. As Edison introduced his incandescent lamp, the brightest light on the horizon for American Catholics was St. Patrick's Cathedral.
The cathedral is built in geometric Gothic style and Latin cross form. Its faÇade faces Fifth Avenue, It is both imposing and impressive, particularly in the architecture's spiritual atmosphere. The facade is massive, yet delicate like a rare gem, while the graceful arches and lines of the interior harmonize to create a sense of peace.
Once inside the massive bronze front doors that were added in 1949 (the central ones weigh 20,000 pounds each) the eye can't help focus on the sanctuary's high altar and 57-foot baldachin. Its bronze looks like polished gold and features figures, statues, symbols and shields telling the story of redemption, beginning with the Old Testament.
The high altar and baldachin were added this century, while the liturgical white marble altar in front of it was designed by Renwick to honor the Holy Family. This architect also designed several of the chapels along the side aisles, including those dedicated to St. John the Evangelist and the Holy Face.
He also designed the intricately ornamented Gothic altar of the Holy Family in the northern transept. Beside the altar is a 58-foot window portraying the life of the Blessed Mother.
In the southern transept, there is a titular window with 18 scenes which tell the story of the cathedral and its patron. Nearby, a separate window depicts Patrick as bishop and apostle of Ireland. Donated by Renwick in 1879, the window's signature scene includes the architect, Archbishop Hughes and Cardinal McCloskey.
In this same transept is the Shrine of the Sacred Heart. For years the Blessed Sacrament was reserved on this altar. It has been relocated to the Lady Chapel by the present archbishop, Cardinal O'Connor.
Though part of the original plans, the sublime Lady Chapel at the top of the ambulatory behind the sanctuary was added in the first decade of this century. Here, people pray quietly before the Blessed Sacrament.
A later architect, Charles Matthews, used 13th-century French Gothic architecture to make the Lady Chapel a delicate and ornate treasure. The marble altar in particular catches the eye with its mosaic of the Annunciation in soothing, soft blues and browns. The stained glass windows of the chapel highlight the glorious mysteries of the rosary (the joyful and sorrowful are in the side chapels). The highly detailed windows in blues and reds were constructed in England between 1912 and 1934, and are reminiscent of those in Sainte Chapelle in Paris.
All the original windows on the cathedral's first level were completed either near Chartres or Nantes, France. The clerestory stained glass windows in the main body of the cathedral came from midcentury America, as did the faÇade's 26-foot rose window.
Opposite the Lady chapel is the crypt which contains the remains of those closely connected with the cathedral — among them Archbishop Hughes, Cardinal McCloskey, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen and Venerable Pierre Toussaint who was originally buried at old St. Patrick's.
The chapel of St. Joseph beside the Lady chapel depicts the simplicity of life of Jesus’ foster father. The shrine is less elaborate and ornate with its Renaissance-style altar.
St. Patrick's continues to evolve slowly. It is a living cathedral honoring the saint who went to pagan Ireland to convert tens of thousands. Like that of its namesake, this great work of love is not a “folly” at all — St. Patrick's Cathedral is the heart in the heart of Manhattan.
Joseph Pronechen writes from Trumbull, Connecticut
----- EXCERPT: St. Patrick's is the 11th largest cathedral in the world ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Pronechen ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Parish of America's First Saints DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:A visit to St. Patrick's should begins downtown at St. Patrick's Old Cathedral. Surrounded by an ancient churchyard and a stately wall, and circled by the narrow, bustling streets of Little Italy, the original cathedral has a dignified presence in the heart of old New York.
The cathedral was dedicated in 1815 and rebuilt in 1868 after having been devastated by fire. This city landmark became a parish church on May 25, 1879, the same day St. Patrick's Cathedral in midtown was dedicated by Cardinal John McCloskey. He not only celebrated the first Mass in the new Gothic cathedral, but was invested as the first American cardinal in the original one.
The congregation was once made up mostly of Irish and Italian immigrants. In recent years, Chinese and Dominican immigrants have become members.
Children also attend St. Patrick's Old Cathedral School across the street which was built in 1817. It's the oldest operating school in the archdiocese. It was originally founded as the first Catholic orphanage by Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first native-born American saint. The first male American citizen to become a saint, John Neumann, was ordained in the old cathedral in 1836.
In 1970, the old cathedral was carefully restored along its original lines. The gold-leafed and ornately carved wood reredos behind the large marble altar was moved forward. In the center of the reredos, there is a painting of Christ's resurrection.
The tall, Gothic stained glass window have scenes depicting Jesus and Mary and also many other saints, including St. Patrick. Beneath the windows are statues honoring our Lord, our Lady and the saints. The 1870s Erben organ, one of only a handful of such great instruments in the city, remains unaltered, connecting today's visitors with the rich heritage of the past.
— Joseph Pronechen
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Pronechen ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Newman Center Fuels Faith At Champaign-Urbana DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:Eve Christman walked into St. John's Chapel at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and was immediately drawn to the stained glass windows and the large crucifix. “Then I looked to one side and saw the statue of Mary,” the senior recalled. “She was beautiful, and I felt like I was home.”
A baptized Catholic who became a Methodist in high school, Christman will be received into the Church at this year's Easter Vigil Mass, along with 52 others.
The size of the Newman Foundation's Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults program is testimony to the quality of the campus ministry program at the university, which is carried out in careful harmony with the teachings of the Holy See.
St. John's is considered a model of the Newman Center apostolate — the pastoral care of Catholics at non-Catholic colleges. It is a ministry often overshadowed by America's many Catholic institutions of higher learning. But the vast majority of American Catholic college students attend public, not Catholic, colleges, making the Newman apostolate fertile ground for the evangelization of the college-age population.
A joint 1994 document, The Presence of the Church in the University, was prepared by the Vatican's offices for Education, for Culture and for the Laity. The document urges the use of three ways of teaching — catechesis, personal guidance and friendship -— and a deepening of the spiritual life based on the Scripture, the sacraments and liturgical life.
All three aspects were present in Eve Christman's return to the Church.
She first attended Mass at St. John's on the invitation of her roommate and was prompted to return again and again by the sincerity of the Christian faith she saw among the students. In Father Tom Gibson and fellow student Sarah Meeks, the leaders of her RCIA team, she received personal guidance and orthodox instruction that has filled the gaps of her knowledge of the faith. A full sacramental life and participation in a retreat program have deepened her personal commitment to Christ and the Church.
“I didn't know what I was missing until it was re-explained to me,” said the biochemistry major, who will be confirmed at the Easter Vigil. Christman and her fellow catechumens form a group that consists in roughly equal parts of non-Catholic Christians, those who are unbaptized, and Catholics who have not been confirmed or who have left the Church for another denomination or religion and now wish to return.
The campus ministry is staffed by four full-time priests who, along with several lay assistants, serve an estimated 10,000 Catholics on the sprawling campus of almost 25,000 undergraduates.
In addition to three daily Masses, six Sunday Masses and daily confession, the staff is responsible for three residence halls, a modest curriculum of Catholic studies, an assortment of lecture programs and study series, and a highly successful retreat program.
A Convert's Enthusiasm
Father Stuart Swetland heads the Newman Foundation and St. John's Chapel. He graduated first in his class from the U.S. Naval Academy, received a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford University, converted to Catholicism, was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Peoria in 1991, and earned a doctorate in sacred theology from the John Paul II Institute for Studies in Marriage and Family in Washington, D.C.
Father Swetland acknowledges the challenging missionary aspect of his work. Today's Christian community must be counter-cultural, he said, and this begins with the university. “We really have to stand up for reason and the ability to know truth, much in the same way the Holy Father recently stated in [his 1998 encyclical] Fides et Ratio,” said Father Swetland.
And then there is joy. “The faith is joyful and it's really important to allow the ethos of the community to reflect Christian joy,” he added.
Vocations
A sign of the vitality of the St. John's program can be found in the vocations it produces for the priesthood and religious life. “Vocations … tell you that the environment is conducive to hearing the call of the Holy Spirit,” said Father Swetland.
Luke Spannageo is one of four 1998 graduates to enter the seminary. For Luke, now in his first year of studies at Mount St. Mary's Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md., it was the vibrancy of faith in the Catholic community on campus that helped to solidify his vocation.
Spannageo said there is something for everyone at the ministry, which “gives kids a really strong base to hang on to, especially when other aspects of the college experience run counter to your faith.”
Another aid to spiritual growth offered by the Newman Center is musical quality and diversity. St. John's sponsors six separate choirs, ranging from a traditional group to contemporary praise. Each of the groups is professionally directed.
Learning the content of faith holds central place in the Newman program, which offers elective courses within the university system. Classes cover social doctrine, Catholic identity and doctrine, and marriage.
Extracurricular activities focus on faith and learning through weekly Bible study groups, discussion groups and prayer groups.
Catholic Dormitories
Another unique facet of the Illinois campus ministry is its administration of three campus dormitories. The dorms are certified by the university but run as Catholic dorms with directors and resident assistants hired and supervised by the campus ministry. Male and female students live in separate wings, there is a curfew, and there are no visitations between the two wings after curfew.
Not surprisingly, some members of the larger university see the rules as archaic. An editorial in the campus newspaper opined that the rules “hardly recognize the maturity and independence of college students” and that “curfews limit the interaction among students.”
Those who choose to live in the dorms do so because they find it a “sane environment,” said Father Swetland, who has a waiting list for rooms. “The dorms are a great blessing to the apostolate.”
Mo Fung writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: Built on sound doctrine, St. John's Chapel thrives ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mo Fung ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: EDUCATION NOTEBOOK DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:Giulani Plays Politics With School Vouchers
THE NEW YORK TIMES, March 10—After some tense and public bickering between New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew, both sides seem content to table Giuliani's plan for a limited school voucher program in the city's poorest neighborhoods.
A Times news analysis by Dan Barry questioned the seriousness of the mayor's proposal which, unlike many other voucher plans now in use or under study around the country, would probably not have passed constitutional muster and was designed to appeal to Republican voters in anticipation of a run for higher state or national office.
In a separate article, the Times featured New York Archdiocese Superintendent of Schools Dr. Catherine Hickey, who also happens to be a former New York public school teacher.
Dr. Hickey told the paper she can understand the opposition to vouchers but endorses them because they are the only means by which “the poorest of the poor” can experience any choice over their children's education.
As for the inevitable “bugs” that are bound to surface in any voucher program, Dr. Hickey is not worried. “It doesn't do kids any harm to learn about Catholicism, and it won't do Catholic kids any harm to learn about the other kids’ religions.” The paper quotes her adding, “Religion is a good thing.”
Notre Dame Honors Historian Gleason
NOTRE DAME UNIVERSITY, March 11—Notre Dame historian J. Philip Gleason will receive the University's 1999 Laetare Medal, the university reported in a press release.
Dr. Gleason will be honored for his service as “an interpreter of American ethnicity and immigration” and for his “insights into the assimilation of diverse peoples into a truly national community,” said Notre Dame President Father Edward Malloy in a statement.
Dr. Gleason is the author of a number of books on the history of American Catholicism, including Contending with Modernity: Catholic Higher Education in the 20th Century.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Catholic College Marketing By the Numbers DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:In a survey of 1.1 million college-bound 1998 high-school seniors, the National Research Center for College and University Admissions found that 32% of those who want a denominational college want one that is Catholic. That was by far the largest denominational preference. About 19% would choose a Baptist college, with the other preferences mixed among a dozen denominations including Lutheran, Mormon and Episcopalian.
That Catholic-seeking population has grown during the 1990s. In 1991, it measured only 26%. Catholic schools have paid attention to the upward trend.
At Barry University in Miami, researchers have found that Catholic students have a 4.4% lower attrition rate than others. “That indicates some sort of positive fit between those students and the institution,” said David Molnar, director of institutional research.
Many colleges, including Quincy University in Illinois, hire national communications firms like Stamats to do market research. The data help colleges refine their recruitment approach in mailings and on their Web site. Stamats, based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, conducts an annual survey of thousands of students.
The firm is finding that more colleges are enhancing their Catholic identity as a distinguishing trait in a bustling marketplace, even if religion is not of primary importance to applicants, said Stamats research director Becky Morehouse.
The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., is reasserting its Catholic identity, to good effect. The admissions office reports an increase in the number of students who have made specific positive reference to Catholic identity in their applications.
Partly based on Jesuit appeal, applications to Seattle University have skyrocketed. Michael McKeon, dean of admissions, expects about 2,700 applicants, up almost 50% from last year. The school, the largest independent college in the Pacific Northwest, counts 5,700 students. In the past five years, Seattle University has established an endowed chair on Catholic thought to make sure the topic remains vibrant and up front.
Seizing on the association between the term “Catholic” and the connotation “safe,” about five years ago, Niagara University in New York began to place terms like “Catholic” and “Vincentian” more prominently in its advertising copy. That strategy includes the Internet Web site, the medium of choice for more and more prospective students.
Niagara's home page features a photo with the lofty cupola of the chapel topped by a cross. A sign in front of the building includes the words “Vincentian Fathers” in large print.
In part because of the Catholic focus, applications at Iona College in New Rochelle, N.Y., have been increasing by about 10% per year.
At the nation's largest Catholic university, De Paul in Chicago, Catholic identity is a “good marketing tool,” asserted administrator Brian Lynch. De Paul counts almost 19,000 students.
“The identity plays a role in the decision-making process of both Catholic and non-Catholic students,” Lynch said.
—Ed Langlois
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A Feast for the Heart DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:To most filmmakers today, a chaste, ascetic lifestyle is bad for your mental and physical health, and puritanism is a form of pious self-denial that guarantees psychological repression. By contrast, the spontaneous enjoyment of earthly pleasures is often held up as the path to emotional and spiritual sanity.
At first glance, Babette's Feast, winner of the 1987 Oscar for best foreign film, seems to embrace these behavioral clichés. Based on a novella by Isak Dineson (Out of Africa), the movie revolves around a sumptuous, sensuous meal prepared by a French cook for a congregation of stern Danish Lutherans. But director Gabriel Axel goes beyond the usual stereotyped understanding of religious zeal, pointing out the positive along with the negative. In the process, he creates a subtle, good-hearted comedy-drama that preaches charity, compassion and love.
The action takes place in the mid-19th century in an isolated seaside village on the Jutland peninsula. As the narrator explains, it is a time when “piety is much in fashion.” The local pastor (Pouel Kern) has two beautiful daughters, Philippa (Hanne Stensgard) and Martina (Vibeke Hastrup), whom he describes as “my right and left hands.” For a mixture of motives, he discourages the two from leaving him and marrying. On the one hand, they are an essential part of his church's mission to the sick and the poor. On the other, he, a widower, selfishly doesn't want to be left alone at home.
Philippa's main suitor is a famous French opera singer, Achille (Jean-Phillipe Lafont), who believes she has the voice of a great diva. “Are you a papist?” her Protestant father suspiciously asks. Even though the answer is affirmative, he gives the singer permission to train her and “make her sing like an angel for the glory of God.”
Despite her respect and affection for Achille, Philippa decides to remain with her father. Her turbulent response while singing Mozart's romantic duet, “I'm Afraid of My Own Joy,” suggests the reasons.
In like manner, Martina rejects a handsome, love-struck cavalry officer, Lorens Lo Wenhielm (Gudmar Wivesson). Although the filmmaker makes clear both women are allowing their talents and emotional lives to atrophy in a way that most people today would find repellent, they're never portrayed as cold or unfeeling. The two sisters’ kindness and devotion to the needy is unwavering.
Thirty-five years pass, the pastor dies, and his daughters continue his works of mercy. After a long silence, Achille writes to Philippa. Contrary to what modern audiences might expect, he tells her that “you have chosen the best part of life” through piety and reminds her that someday her voice “will enchant the angels.” He asks the two sisters to take in a servant: Babette (Stephane Audran), whose husband has been killed during a civil war and whose life is in danger.
The French woman works for them for 14 years. She is a woman of compassion as well as shrewd practicality, and the dour villagers respond to her positively. When she wins 10,000 francs in the French lottery, she decides to spend it all on a seven-course banquet which she will cook in honor of the 100th anniversary of the pastor's birth.
Twelve of his former congregation are invited to the meal. Because Philippa and Martina are afraid that such a display of excess will anger the Lord, they and the rest of the diners agree to eat what's offered but not to praise or enjoy it.
At the same time, Martina's old flame, Lorens, pays a surprise visit after a long absence. Now a distinguished general and man of the world, he arrives in time for the feast, but unlike the others, he isn't sworn to silence. He recognizes the exquisite artistry that has gone into the preparation of each dish and exuberantly proclaims his appreciation.
“This woman, this head chef, had the ability to transform a dinner into a kind of love affair,” the narrator comments, “a love affair that made no distinction between bodily appetites and spiritual ones.”
Even though Lorens’ worldly wisdom is favorably contrasted with the pious villagers ’provincialism, the film-maker also emphasizes the worth of the path the latter have chosen. Lorens often repeats with great respect the late pastor's religious sayings. “Grace is infinite,” he used to proclaim. The general also admires the pastor's exhortation to a way of life where “mercy and truth, justice and joy embrace.”
The feast changes Babette and the two sisters for the better. We're shown that a truly holy life requires an appreciation that our bodies and our souls are one — and that the pleasures of the senses and the spirit, kept in proper balance, both enrich us. The movie also suggests that a commitment to charity can be catching. If people are treated with love, they may return it in kind to others many times over.
John Prizer currently writes from Paris.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Videos on Release DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:In God's Hands
Those old enough to remember the ‘60s might remember a seminal film called Endless Summer. This semidocumentary followed the adventures of a band of surfers as they traveled the world in search of the perfect wave. In God's Hands is the latest attempt to measure up to it, but it falls short. The filmmakers certainly did their best to make their movie a visually stunning experience. They captured astonishing footage of surfers handling, or not handling, massive waves. They set their film in far-flung and highly photogenic corners of the world. And they hired expert wave-riders who have the experience and the ability to attempt surfing the enormous breakers whose power could easily kill them. What the filmmakers did not do is concoct an integrated plot. In God's Hands loosely follows the adventures of three surfers as they train to handle the earth's biggest waves. Although the film tries to make the men interesting, they don't have much intrinsic personality to offer. What they do have is impressive athletic ability and uncanny fearlessness. That's the intriguing aspect of In God's Hand.
Fast, Cheap & Out of Control
This is a rare find, a truly unique film. Produced and directed by the noted documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, Fast, Cheap & Out of Control explores the work of four men who seem to have little in common. Dave Hoover is wild-animal trainer for a traveling circus who has made a study of the big cats he works with every day. George MendonÇa is a gardener who has been shaping topiary animals at a Newport, R.I., estate for decades. Ray Mendez is a nature photographer with a special interest in naked mole rats, a unique species of mammals with many of the attributes of insects. And Rodney Brooks is a robot scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who loves building mobile machines that look uncannily like insects. All four men are masters of their crafts and obsessed by what they do. They make fascinating comments about the natural world and man's place in it. Morris has assembled some unusual footage to go along with the documentary treatment of his subjects, and the results are exhilarating.
— Loretta G. Seyer
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Laity's Mission of Example DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:In Workplace, Home, and Apostolic Groups
In Pope John Paul II's ad limina address June 6 to the bishops of the states of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota, he stressed that bishops must encourage a laity who live their faith in their daily decisions in every aspect of their lives — through groups like Legatus and Serra International (See Inperson, Page 1). Here is an excerpt (Nos. 4-5 and 8) of the text of the Pope's address, which was given in English.
As the Fathers at the 1987 Synod on the Laity pointed out, it is an inadequate understanding of the role of the laity which leads lay men and women to become so strongly interested in Church services and tasks that they fail to become actively involved in their responsibilities in the professional, social, cultural, and political field.
The first requirement of the new evangelization is the actual witness of Christians who live by the Gospel. … Since lay people are at the forefront of the Church's mission to evangelize all areas of human activity — including the workplace, the worlds of science and medicine, the world of politics, and the diverse world of culture — they must be strong enough and sufficiently catechized. …
As my predecessor Pope Paul VI put it: “Take a Christian or a handful of Christians who in the midst of their own community show their capacity for understanding and acceptance, their sharing of life and destiny with other people, their solidarity with the efforts of all for whatever is noble and good.
Let us suppose that, in addition, they radiate in an altogether simple and unaffected way their faith in values that go beyond current values, and their hope in something that is not seen and that one would not dare to imagine.
Through this wordless witness these Christians stir up irresistible questions in the hearts of those who see how they live: Why are they like this? Why do they live in this way? What or who is it that inspires them? Why are they in our midst? Such a witness is already a silent proclamation of the Good News and a very powerful and effective one” (Evangelii nuntiandi, No. 21). …
The immediate and in many ways most important arena of the laity's Christian witness is marriage and the family.
Where family life is strong and healthy, the sense of community and solidarity is also strong, and this helps to build that ‘civilization of life and love” which must be everyone's aim. But where the family is weak, all human relationships are exposed to instability and fragmentation. Today the family is under pressure from many quarters. …
Since the Christian family is the “domestic church,” couples must be helped to relate their family life in concrete ways to the life and mission of the Church…. The parish should be a “family of families,” helping in every way possible to nourish the spiritual life of parents and children through prayer, the word of God, the sacraments, and the witness of holiness and charity. Bishops and priests should be eager to help and encourage families in every way, and should give their support to groups and associations which promote family life. …
Finally, I wish to tell you of the great joy which I experienced last week-end in St. Peter's Square at the meeting of so many lay members of the various ecclesial movements and communities which represent a providential gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church of our time. … As instruments of conversion and authentic Gospel witness, they render a magnificent service in helping the Church's members to respond to the universal call to holiness and to their vocation to transform worldly realities in the light of the Gospel values of life, freedom and love. … An extraordinary and surprising new springtime for the Church will blossom from the dynamic faith, living hope, and active charity of the lay men and women who open their hearts to the life-giving presence of the Holy Spirit.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Singer's Worldview DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:Peter Singer's appointment as professor of bioethics at Princeton University's Center for Human Values has touched off a fierce debate at the school. In his books and other writings, Singer argues that humans should not receive preferential treatment over animals. The traditional view treats human beings as holding special rights because they are created in the image and likeness of God — a view that Singer rejects as a “religious premise.”
From Practical Ethics:
“It is speciesist to judge that the life of a normal adult member of our species is more valuable than the life of a normal adult mouse.”
“Even an abortion late in pregnancy for the most trivial of reasons is hard to condemn unless we also condemn the slaughter of far more developed forms of life for the taste of their flesh.”
“When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed.”
From All Animals Are Equal:
“But what is this capacity to enjoy the good life which [William Frankena says] all humans have, but no other animals? Other animals have emotions and desires, and appear to be capable of enjoying a good life. We may doubt that they can think — although the behavior of some apes, dolphins and even dogs suggests that some of them can — but what is the relevance of thinking? Frankena goes on to admit that by ‘the good life’ he means ‘not so much the morally good life as the happy or satisfactory life,” so thought would appear to be unnecessary for enjoying the good life; in fact to emphasize the need for thought would make difficulties for the egalitarian since only some people are capable of leading intellectually satisfying lives, or morally good lives. This makes it difficult to see what Frankena's principle of equality has to do with simply being human. Surely every sentient being is capable of leading a life that is happier of less miserable than some alternative life, and hence has a claim to be taken into account. In this respect the distinction between humans and nonhumans is not a sharp division, but rather a continuum along which we move gradually, and with overlaps between the species, from simple capacities for enjoyment and satisfaction, or pain and suffering, to more complex ones.”
—The Family Research Council and The American Life League contributed to this report
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Nurses Becoming Less Tolerant of Abortion, Poll Finds DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:MONTVALE, N.J.—Nearly two-thirds of the hospital-based registered nurses polled by RN magazine say that partial-birth abortions should be prohibited by law. And six out of 10 would not work in an OB/GYN unit where abortions — of any kind — are performed; a decade ago, the majority (52%) said they would.
“We saw perhaps the most striking change among nurses who actually care for mother and baby,” said Marianne Dekker Mattera, editor of RN. “Only 37% of the respondents who work in obstetrics or the nursery say they would work on a unit where the abortion is performed, a decline of 18 percentage points from 1988.”
The article suggests a number of possible reasons for the decline in support for abortion. One is that more nurses today may be personally opposed to abortion given the myriad of abortion alternatives available.
As opposed as most nurses may be to abortion, however, some are still adamantly for abortion: A greater number today (35%) than a decade ago (20%) say they wouldn't work on a unit where abortions were prohibited.
The survey was mailed to 2,000 randomly selected, hospital-based nurses who subscribe to RN. Results are based on 743 responses. Findings from the survey, conducted on the 10th anniversary of RN's last survey on ethical issues, are featured in a six-part series that began in the November 1998 issue of RN.
(Pro-Life Infonet)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Surprised by Joy of Unplanned Pregnancies DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:DUBLIN, Ireland—Women who become pregnant without intending to, are more likely to enjoy motherhood than women who plan their pregnancies, according to a study published in the current issue of the British Journal of Medical Psychology.
Researchers at Glasgow University found that women who became pregnant without planning to do so, had better chances of strengthening their relationship with their partner or spouse and of also improving their work and social life.
The study is based on interviews with 128 women. Eighty-one percent of respondents who did not plan their pregnancies were found to be in a position where they believed they gained from becoming mothers, while only 16% of those who planned their pregnancies were of that view.
The study supports claims made by Archbishop Desmond Connell of Dublin on the effect family planning and some treatments for infertility have on the relationship between parents and their children.
In a homily given marking the anniversary of the publication of Humanae Vitae, Archbishop Connell said: “We all know what is meant by the unwanted child, but we do not perhaps sufficiently appreciate what is meant by the child that is wanted. The wanted child is the child that is planned; the child produced by the decision of the parents begins to look more and more like a technological product. This is clear in the case of in vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, genetic engineering, cloning; but it may not be altogether absent in the practice of family planning.
‘A profound alteration in the relationship between parent and child may result when the child is no longer welcomed as a gift…’
“A profound alteration in the relationship between parent and child may result when the child is no longer welcomed as a gift, but produced, as it were, to order. Parental attitudes would thereby be affected, creating a sense of consumer ownership as well as a new anxiety to win and retain the child's affection. The child no longer belongs to the family in a personal sense if it is radically a product rather than a person. So much of parental ambition has been invested in the one or two children that a properly personal relationship becomes problematic.”
The archbishop's comments have provoked a great deal of controversy in Ireland. Tony O'Brien, chief executive of the Irish Family Planning Association, said: “It is extraordinary to hear a leading cleric resorting to fiction in an attempt to justify the teachings of the Catholic hierarchy. To suggest that children who have been ‘planned’ are not intrinsically loved by their parents is a fantasy, gratuitously offensive and without any basis.”
Others, particularly Catholic couples who used Church-approved family planning methods, were hurt by the archbishop's remarks, as they believed Church teaching was that families should only have as many children as they could afford.
A subsequent statement issued by Father John Dardis, communications officer for the Dublin Archdiocese, indicates that Catholics using Church-approved natural family planning were included within Archbishop Connell's remarks.
Father Dardis said: “The issues in the planning of families require deeper reflection. Regardless of whether the method used is artificial or natural, if the mentality of planning takes over from the idea of a child as a loving gift from God, then the problems the archbishop talks about are likely to occur. This is very far removed from the position the Irish Family Planning Association accuses the archbishop of holding.
“Thirty years ago, the lack of availability of contraception was seen as a problem by women [in Ireland] and contraception was seen as potentially liberating. Now, it is the availability of contraception that many people, including women, see as problematic since contraception freely available can give the impression that sexual activity can be engaged in without consequences. There is a real danger that instead of encouraging young people to understand the true nature of a sexual relationship within the context of marriage, our society could promote contraception as a panacea.
“Archbishop Connell is extremely sensitive to the needs of married people and has supported them” Father Dardi said. “He is aware of the problems that exist in marriages and is convinced that marriage is the bedrock of Irish society and must be supported. It is in this light that his concerns and comments should be read.”
In his homily, Archbishop Connell discussed how Humanae Vitae has alienated some Catholics. “It is true that many Catholics dissent from this teaching and live at odds with Church authority,” he said. “It is also true that dissent on an issue that is regarded as important gives rise to a dissenting mentality that may easily spread beyond that particular issue alone. Dissent with regard to contraception lay at the origin of what has come to be known as a la carte Catholicism.
“We are told that if only the Church would admit it was wrong about contraception, people would find it easier to accept its authority on a wide range of issues concerning sexual morality about which they now feel unsure.
“Put in this way, it seems that wrong-headed stubbornness on the part of Church authority is causing immeasurable harm to the Church as the people of God.
“A question that has to be answered, however, is whether contraception is right or wrong … That question cannot be answered simply by listing the advantages that would seem to follow if a decision were made in favor of contraception. That would make it a matter of expediency rather than truth. …
“One can even ask whether some of these advantages are as real as they seem. For example, does the answer we give to the question about contraception affect the rest of sexual morality? That is the question I asked myself when Humanae Vitae was published. It seemed to me then, and the experience of the last 30 years has provided abundant evidence, that the issue of contraception is the linchpin of the whole of sexual morality. The pill … broke the bond between intercourse and procreation. This bond with procreation situates sexual relations within a whole order of meaning, which includes the nature of love as an interpersonal mutual gift of self.
“Contraception violates that bond and thereby undermines the world of meaning associated with procreation by introducing direct opposition between intercourse and procreation.”
Cian Molloy is based in Dublin, Ireland.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Cian Molloy ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: A Legal Voice Crying Out in N.Y. DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:NEW YORK—When the Church in New York gets its message into the public arena, the voice often heard is that of Public Policy Network head Edward Mechmann, a former federal prosecutor and Harvard Law School graduate, who has placed his talents in service of the Gospel.
And what talents they are. “He's filled with ideas and energy and excite-ment,“said Kathleen Gallagher, associate director of the New York State Catholic Conference. “He's a brilliant legal mind and a good Christian man. He doesn't have to preach his faith. It comes out from him, from his manner.”
As a lawyer and a spokesman, he has fought side by side with the archdiocese and Cardinal John O'Connor. Mechmann opposed New York City public school demonstrations of condoms and its materials advocating homosexual practices for elementary students. He lobbied against partial-birth abortion in Albany. And he lobbied to keep Church teaching about homosexuality “legal” in Westchester, when the county was deliberating legislation that he claims would have labeled such teaching as “discriminatory speech.”
But he wasn't always a big gun for the Church. First, he was a big gun for the state — until he was inspired to leave it all behind.
He spent six years in the Manhattan District Attorney's office, and three years in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Brooklyn. In time, he “was getting tired of putting people in jail,“and decided to drop out of mainstream law and seek God's direction.
In 1993 he and his wife, Peggy, moved with their two children to West Virginia and worked with the Passionists volunteers in Appalachia. Living and laboring for a year with poor people in simple surroundings changed his attitude toward money and career goals.
“It was life-changing for me, for us,“Mechmann said. “To share meals [with the poor] and connect with them on a personal level gave me a whole new perspective on the dignity of the human person.”
Baptism by Fire
At the end of a year, with a third child on the way, he began seeking employment to support his family and heard that the New York Archdiocese was looking for someone to head up a new department. He took over the Public Policy Network in the fall of 1994 and walked into a maelstrom of controversy over the public schools’ curriculum.
On behalf of the thousands of Catholic parents sending their children to public schools, the archdiocese was lobbying against an AIDS program that required condom demonstrations in classrooms and a “Children of the Rainbow“course in “tolerance” that included books promoting homosexual lifestyles such as Heather Has Two Mommies and Daddy's Roommate. For Mechmann, it was baptism by fire.
“We would speak at public school board hearings, and homosexual activists would stand up, chanting slogans and throwing condoms at us,“he recalled. “My experience had been in the courtroom, where the atmosphere was controlled and civil. We would really fight it out in court but always maintain a level of professionalism and respect.”
Working with Msgr. John Woolsey, director at the time of the Family Life Office, Mechmann helped devise a strategy that won widespread public support and convinced a majority of school board members. Condoms and the offensive curriculum were removed from the classrooms, though the victory was not complete. Students can still visit school-based health clinics to receive condoms.
“Our argument before the school board was not specifically Catholic; we knew that message would not be heard,“ said Mechmann. “We said basically that if you're going to teach our children anything about sex in the classroom, teach them healthy values that will help them lead virtuous lives.
“There is no place in the schools for teaching values that are contrary to the majority of parents and against all religious traditions. From a health standpoint, we pointed out that condoms don't work well in preventing AIDS. In the end, most people agreed that this was a bad idea, a dangerous idea that was misleading our children, whom we should be challenging to be chaste.”
Successes — and Failures
Gallagher said that her office, the policy wing for New York's bishops, consults regularly with Mechmann.
“We have our own legal counsel, but I'm still on the phone with him almost every day,“ she said. “He knows the civil law inside out and is very aware of the legal and political realities in New York State. He is always searching for ways to introduce the Church's view within those strictures.”
Father John Bonnici, present director of the Family LifeñRespect Life Office, said, “He brings with him a great deal of experience in the legal world and has a keen understanding of the operations of public policy and how the teachings of the Church can be brought into that forum. I have come to rely on him in many respects.”
Mechmann is realistic about his efforts. “We win some, but sometimes we get clobbered,“ he said.
Especially frustrating is the failure of the state Legislature in the past two years to move a ban on partial-birth abortion out of committee. With the shooting death of Buffalo abortion doctor Barnett Slepian last year, the tide has turned even more against pro-life efforts, and Republican Gov. George Pataki is supporting a clinic access bill that threatens to keep pro-lifers far from clinic doors.
Regarding a parental-notification bill for minors seeking abortion, he said, “We busted our brains trying to get it passed but it was killed in the Assembly.”
Despite these setbacks, Mechmann sees hope in pushing the ban on partial-birth abortion, which he says is slowly turning the tide of public opinion against abortion.
“The deception at the heart of the heart of the other side's argument is exposed by the partial-birth abortion issue. They are cornered into defending the indefensible, the killing of a fully developed baby already coming out of the mother's birth canal,“ he said. “We can use this as an example of one abortion procedure and show that it differs little from any other earlier abortion.”
Brian Caulfield writes from New York.
----- EXCERPT: ProLife ProFile ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian Caulfield ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: British Columbia Warms Up to RU-486 DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:OTTAWA—Ottawa Health Canada has written to the manufacturer of the dangerous abortion drug RU-486 at the request of the British Columbia government, which says the firm may file soon for approval of the drug. The letter, obtained by The Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper, explains that the submission for RU-486 would be treated the same as one for any drug.
The dangerous abortion drug is available in France, Britain, Sweden and China. It is expected to be available in the United States next year, despite fierce opposition by pro-life groups.
John Dossetor, a policy adviser to federal Health Minister Allan Rock, described the letter, which was written a year ago, as a straightforward statement of how the drug-approval system in Canada works.
B.C. Health Minister Penny Priddy says the letter will reassure the company that the political climate in Canada means the company would get a fair hearing here.
“There has been a letter to Exelgyn saying that if they applied they would have a fair hearing, et cetera,” Priddy said in an interview. “That is kind of what the company needed to hear, not that they would get approval, or whatever, but that there was a climate that would provide a fair hearing for that, because there are some climates that wouldn't.”
Under the Food and Drug Act, Health Canada cannot ask a company to submit a drug because it would give the perception of bias. Hoechst-Marion-Roussel, which had owned the rights to the abortion drug, refused to seek approval for it in North America because it was so controversial. However, in April, 1997, Hoechst-Marion-Roussel gave the Canadian rights to a new company, Exelgyn, based in France.
The company was formed by Dr. Edouard Sakiz, one of the originators of the drug, Bernard Lachapelle, a spokesman for Hoechst-Marion-Roussel, said yesterday.
Exelgyn has not yet asked the Canadian government to approve the drug, Dossetor said. British Columbia has been pushing to make RU-486 available in Canada. (Pro-Life Infonet)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:On Feb. 10, recalling his visit to the United States and Mexico, the Pope exhorted Americans to build a culture of life through their daily lives, prayer, and action (see story by Brian Caulfield on this page).
I am pleased to add that I found American Catholics very concerned and committed to the defense of life and the family, inseparable values which are a great challenge for the present and future of humanity. In a certain sense, my journey was a great appeal to America to accept the Gospel of life and the family in order to reject and combat any form of violence against the human person, from conception to natural death, with moral consistency. No to abortion and to euthanasia; enough of the unnecessary recourse to the death penalty; no to racism and to the exploitation of children, women and indigenous peoples; put an end to the arms trade, to drug trafficking and to the destruction of the environmental patrimony!
To win these battles, we must spread the culture of life, which does not separate freedom and truth. The Church works each day for this by proclaiming Christ, the truth about God and the truth about man. She is particularly active in families, which are sanctuaries of life and fundamental schools for the culture of life: it is in the family that freedom learns to grow on firm moral foundations and, ultimately, on the law of God. America will only be able to play its important role in the Church and in the world if it defends and promotes the immense spiritual and social patrimony of its families.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Life Notes DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:Buchanan Urges Congregation to Fight for Life
ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS, March 8—“Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan capped a three-day campaign swing through Alaska with a brief spell at the pulpit Sunday, where he urged parishioners at the Anchorage Baptist Temple to take action in the fight for the right to life,” reported the Alaskan paper. Buchanan called the pro-life movement “God's cause … above all other today.” Four of Buchanan's eight Alaska stops — in Kenai, Fairbanks and Anchorage — were at right-to-life fund-raisers, reported the paper. “We've got to make both parties pro-life, and then we've got to get together and make all America pro-life again,” he told the Sunday congregation, according to the report. The paper also reported that Buchanan would visit several other states, among them North Dakota, South Dakota and Iowa.
Northern Ireland Bans Pro-Life Advertisement
BELFAST TELEGRAPH, March 9—The Northern Ireland newspaper reported that two Ulster radio stations banned a pro-life group from the air-waves. Citybeat and Downtown told the pro-life group Precious Life they could not run its advertisements. “The advertisements were part of an allout campaign by the group to oppose any change to abortion legislation in Northern Ireland.” It added that the County Antrim-based organization has already “bought advertising space on 70 billboards and 300 buses for the major publicity campaign.” Bosses at Downtown said the advertisements were refused “because it might cause offense.” Sales director Ciaran Boyle told the paper, “We would avoid any ad which was likely to stir up a contentious public debate.” Citybeat station manager Simon Walker said his station had “referred the advertisement to the radio advertising watchdog … which advised them to drop it.” Walker added, “We run the risk of incurring a fine from the watchdog if we run politically sensitive advertising,” reported the paper.
Pro-Life Supporters Sue Over Taxes
MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE, March 5—According to the newspaper report “more than 40 pro-life supporters have filed suit in U.S. District Court in Minnesota charging that the use of Medicaid funds for abortions violates their right to freedom of religion. The suit also argues that the court must adhere to federal rulings that public funds may be used for abortion only in cases of rape, incest or to save a woman's life.” The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that the suit “seeks to overturn a December 1995 Minnesota Supreme Court ruling that a previous state ban on suing medical assistance funds for abortions interfered with a woman's so-called right to have an abortion because it added financial considerations to that decision.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Did You Know? DATE: 03/21/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: March 21-27, 1999 ----- BODY:Though Holland has outlawed euthanasia, it is still practiced there, and many Dutch citizens live in fear of being euthanized without their knowledge. In self-defense, many people now carry a “Declaration of a Will to Live.”
• Dutch cardiologist Richard Fenigsen notes that “the burden of justifying his existence is now placed upon the patient.”
Richard Fenigsen, M.D., Ph.D., “Negative Verdict on Euthanasia,”
Medical Economics, March 7, 1988
• If a person 60 years of age or older cannot avoid entering a Dutch hospital, doctors and nurses will repeatedly suggest euthanasia to him, even if he has not asked for it, and even if he is suffering from only a minor illness.
Address by Pieter Admiraal to the Voluntary Euthanasia Society in London, April 14, 1985.
----- EXCERPT: Facts of Life ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Academic Institute To Sidestep Bishops DATE: 03/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 28 - April 3, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—As U.S. bishops work to set guidelines governing theology and doctrine at Church-related schools, a group of Catholic educators is trying to launch a foundation that will fund academic research “but not be jurisdictionally related” to the American hierarchy.
The new institution is seeking to establish a $50 million endowment that offers grants for research and scholarships that fit its understanding of the Catholic intellectual tradition.
The formation of the Catholic Institute for Advanced Studies was reported March 5 by ZENIT, a Rome-based news agency. The group has since changed its name to the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies.
According to its own fact sheet, the new institute “will enjoy the support and encouragement of the American hierarchy, but not be jurisdictionally related to them.… Neither will the [institute] be affiliated with or controlled by any single Catholic college or university, precisely to be of service to all of them.”
The institute's leader, Marianist Father James L. Heft, said that he had not planned to go public with news of the institute until fund-raising efforts were more advanced. An anonymous foundation has promised substantial matching funds in this effort, according to an institute fact sheet.
Heft is chancellor of the University of Dayton and chairman of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities. He has gathered a newly formed Commission on Catholic Scholarship made up of 26 priests, religious and lay people who are getting the institute off the ground.
The group includes Jesuit Father William Byron, former president of The Catholic University of America; Sister Doris Gottemoeller, president of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas and a past president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious; Father J. Bryan Hehir, of the Divinity School of Harvard University; Monika Hellwig, executive director of Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities; and Margaret Steinfels, editor of Commonweal magazine.
The institute is being formed as the Church enters a crucial point in a debate over bishops' authority regarding the doctrinal content of theology courses in their dioceses. At a Nov. 22 meeting, the bishops plan to hammer out the ways Pope John Paul's apostolic constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae will be implemented in America.
The 1990 document describes the life of the university as coming, in the words of its title, “from the heart of the Church,” and outlines the need for a distinct Catholic culture on campus and a close relationship between schools and Church authorities. This relationship must not, however, compromise the legitimate autonomy and educational mission of the university but rather should enhance it, the document states.
Bishops concerned about the lack of Catholic identity of many American universities have tended to stress the need for a closer relationship. University heads worried about the loss of institutional authority and academic freedom have tended to focus on the document's statements that support these qualities.
Institute Criticized
Dominican Father Matthew Lamb, professor of theology at Boston College, told the ZENIT news agency, “Given the views of some of the scholars on the Commission [on Catholic Scholarship], I'm afraid the projected institute might just give some dissenters another platform to oppose the Church's papal and episcopal magisterium.”
Father Heft called such criticism “very unfair.” He said the institute's goals and makeup were being judged prematurely, adding that Father Lamb's remarks were designed to “draw us into a public debate before we ever wanted to go there.”
Father Heft further asserted that the new institute will help universities implement Ex Corde Ecclesiae.
Yet, in February, at the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities' annual meeting, the board that Father Heft heads voted to reject any further attempts by the bishops to oversee universities and their faculties. This action was in response to a proposal issued last year by the bishops seeking to implement Ex Corde Ecclesiae's call for teachers of Catholic theology to apply for a mandate from the local bishop and for the heads of some universities to take an oath of fidelity.
Rather than offer amendments to this proposal, the college association's board suggested that the bishops continue to work with an implementation document that had been already been rejected by the Vatican as lacking teeth.
The association's membership, representing 211 institutions of higher education, overrode the vote of the board after hearing an address of Cardinal Francis George of Chicago.
While praising the assembled university presidents and theologians for their service to the Church, Cardinal George told them that the bishops will seek in November to codify through canon law the relationship between universities and the hierarchy. Instead of resisting oversight, he said, university presidents would do better to help the bishops to develop a workable plan.
“At [University of] Chicago, I'm a curiosity,” the cardinal quipped, in reference to the speech. “At a Catholic university, I'm a threat.”
The morning after the speech, members of college association formed a committee to develop recommendations and submit them before May to Bishop Joseph Leibrecht, chairman of the bishops' implementation committee.
Rome Has Spoken But …
Before the announcement of the institute, Catholic education expert Kenneth D. Whitehead said that Father Heft and certain members of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities were engaged in a stealth mission to win the confidence of the bishops while conceding nothing of substance.
“I think he's trying to give the appearance of complying with Ex Corde Ecclesiae in a number of areas where he originally has not been willing to comply,” he told the Register. “He is doing this in order to reassert that the theologian has overview over magisterial teaching, and this is not in keeping with Ex Corde Ecclesiae. They want to say, ‘Rome has spoken but we still have freedom to look at what is spoken and judge it on our own terms.’”
Whitehead was especially critical of Father Heft's speech on the Dayton campus in January, which expressed openness in some respects to a stronger Catholic identity on campuses. Father Heft spoke of the right of a university to define itself as Catholic taking precedence over the academic freedom of a professor, and described the model for a Catholic university as “an open circle” which gives primacy to Catholic tradition but allows a balance of other views.
He left open the role of theologians, however, stating that they must be free to question and reformulate even magisterial teachings for the good of the Church.
Father Heft told the Register that the different levels of Church teaching come in language that is more or less adequate.
“It is perfectly legitimate to question even an infallible teaching, not in regards to its truth, but in regards to the manner in which it is expressed,” he said. “You have to find how to articulate it for your time and culture.”
Brian Caulfield writes from New York.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian Caulfield ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Catholic Colleges Yawn At SAT Rule on Athletes DATE: 03/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 28 - April 3, 1999 ----- BODY:The legal battle brewing over the fairness of nationwide entrance requirements for student-athletes might leave many Catholic colleges relatively unscathed.
Federal District Court Judge Ronald Buckwalter in Philadelphia ruled March 8 that the Scholastic Aptitude Test minimum could not be used to exclude athletes from participating in varsity-level sports because it discriminates against African-American athletes, who often do not have the advantage of an adequate high school education.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association said it will appeal to a U.S. circuit court.
While other colleges may gain some recruitment advantage over the Catholic colleges, most coaches, athletic directors and other officials at Catholic institutions dismiss the SAT row as being of little concern since they already maintain entrance standards above those imposed by the NCAA.
At Catholic colleges, “the talent level goes beyond athletics to the point where [the student-athletes] are often involved in the Church, the community and every other aspect of life,” said Vincentian Father James Maher, campus minister for athletics at St. John's University in Jamaica, N.Y. “They are committed to being good people.”
Daniel Saracino, director of admissions at the University of Notre Dame, said his school doesn't go by whether a student applying for admission is an athlete or not.
“The average SAT at Notre Dame is 1270,” Saracino said. “We do admit athletes with lower SATs, but we won't consider them if we feel they can't make it academically here.”
Notre Dame, he added, looks at a prospective student's overall record, including courses taken, grade point average, and SAT score. They also interview student-athletes, to determine their commitment to the classroom. “If they ask the right questions about studies, they are more likely to be admitted,” he said.
Saracino said about 95% of all basketball and football players graduate. He cited Rocky Bleier and Jerome Heavens as examples of star collegiate and professional athletes who went on to successful business careers that required solid academic and intellectual preparation.
However, he said, there should be less emphasis on SAT scores.
“The SAT does seem to discriminate against minority students,” he maintained. “I wish more emphasis were placed on graduating more black students. Right now, it's at about 41%, and that's a real embarrassment.”
At another Division I school, Marquette University in Milwaukee, the SAT concern has never been an issue, officials said. Athletic director Bill Cords said Marquette's admissions policies, like those at Notre Dame, are strict.
“We have a competitive athletic program, and our coaches know what it takes to succeed,” Cords said. “We talk to a prospective student-athlete's coaches, teachers and guidance counselors. We demand to know an incoming student is committed to graduate and succeed in life. If you want to come to Marquette, you need to know we're as competitive in academics as we are in athletics. Our GPA [grade point average] for all students is 3.1.”
Georgetown University's associate vice president for university relations, Richard Conklin, shared a similar view. Georgetown is a Division I college in basketball, but wants only those student-athletes who can compete in a highly demanding academic environment.
“Our admissions requirements are very high, and we look seriously at the courses a student has taken in high school,” Conklin said. “The overall record must be excellent.”
On the East Coast, the Mid-American Athletic Conference competes at a level below Division I-A, also highly competitive in sports. This year the conference can boast two Rhodes scholars: Erin Whalen of Iona College, co-captain of the women's crew team while maintaining a perfect 4.0 grade point average; and José Vargas of Loyola College of Baltimore, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic and a biology major who plays on the school's soccer team.
Rich Petriccione, athletic director at Iona, is adamant about the need for minimum standards, including the SAT.
“We're at a disadvantage [with the Division I-A colleges] because we don't take just anyone,” he asserted. “At our school, just meeting minimum standards usually means a student won't be admitted.”
Petriccione pointed out that the 400 student-athletes at Iona had a grade point average of 3.0 for the fall 1998 semester.
Like Petriccione, Loyola's Athletic Director Joe Boylan enforces high academic standards for his athletes. “The big issue is, what do they do after they earn their degree?” Boylan said. “It's critical that they do graduate, and then become productive in society. That's our challenge.”
Loyola is indeed meeting that challenge; more than 80% of all student-athletes who attend the college earn a four-year degree. “If you create an academic environment, the student-athlete will respond positively,” Boylan said.
A similar view is held by the University of San Francisco, which also enjoys a high graduation rate among student-athletes. Jim Wiser, vice president for academic affairs, said the university looks at the overall student-athlete record, from class rank to courses taken, and grades earned in those courses. And, yes, they also use the SAT score as a criterion.
The question arises, what can be done, especially with minority students, to raise their SAT scores? One answer came from Robin Gusick, director of Community Outreach for Kaplan Educational Centers, a nationwide organization that prepares students-athletes and non-athletes for the dreaded SAT.
Gusick oversees the Good Sports Athletic Scholars Program, which was created to help financially disadvantaged student-athletes, largely minority, to meet NCAA standards for both the SAT and ACT (American College Test).
“We've had incredible results with this program,” she said. “Any student who completes the 35-hour Kaplan program is guaranteed to raise his or her SAT score by 100 points. For those in the Good Sports program, the average has been a 200-point increase.”
Gusick said her organization recruits students through high school coaches and guidance counselors, who then nominate minority students for Good Sports. There is no charge to the student.
She said standards are important, because the combined high school grade point average and SAT are the best indicators of how a student-athlete will do in college. She added that the SAT is a window on a larger societal issue.
“Disadvantaged students don't always have access to the best academic resources,” Gusick noted. “We help provide them with a chance to enhance their academic skills and open the door of opportunity to succeed as college-level students, as well as athletes.”
Notre Dame's sports information director, John Heisler, said, “We like to think student-athletes want our institution because of the academics, not because of our sports reputation.”
He noted that every sport must have its schedule approved by a faculty board, which dictates a student can't miss three classes because of games or practice in any semester. Heisler also said Notre Dame goes an extra step for student-athletes with a support service network that oversees an athlete's classroom progress.
“The SAT situation might represent a radical change for some colleges, but it won't have a tremendous effect on us,” Heisler said. “Our admissions people are interested in the quality of a prospective student's core courses and other academic factors.”
What happens next in the boiling SAT cauldron is uncertain. NCAA president Cedric Dempsey said the organization will consider over the next several weeks whether to utilize current grade-point-average and core-course standards as minimum academic rules, or move forward with no standardized rules in place while it appeals the judge's ruling.
— Jim Malerba writes from Hamden, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: jim Malerba ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: 1st U.S. Diocesan Major Seminary Since Vatican II to Open in Denver DATE: 03/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 28 - April 3, 1999 ----- BODY:DENVER—The first new major diocesan seminary in the United States since the close of the Second Vatican Council in 1965 will open this fall in the Archdiocese of Denver.
Denver's plan, announced March 16 by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, represents a number of important firsts for the local, regional and national churches, and even has a link to the universal Church.
St. John Vianney Seminary is not only the first theology-level seminary sponsored by the Archbishop of Denver, it is the first diocesan theologate ever to exist in the vast western region between Minneapolis and the Pacific Coast. Sacred Heart School of Theology, opened by the Archdiocese of Detroit in 1988, is not comparable since it replaced a regional diocesan seminary, also based in Detroit.
It will also be the first seminary in the United States to be linked to a papal university in Rome, the 200-year-old Pontifical Lateran University.
The seminary will serve the rapidly increasing number of men preparing for the priesthood in northern Colorado.
“We have 68 men in formation for the priesthood today — that's more than double a few years ago,” Archbishop Chaput told members of the news media gathered for the announcement at the seminary site. “Call this a surprise action by the Holy Spirit.”
The Denver ordinary gave his explanation while surrounded by about 40 seminarians wearing Roman collars, a few of them dressed in traditional black cassocks.
“No one [among the reporters] seemed satisfied with my answer,” the Archbishop told the Register in an interview after the announcement. “I don't really know why we are getting vocations, but I do intend that our formation program be fully Catholic.”
The seminary will be located in the former St. Thomas Theological Seminary, established in 1907 by the Vincentian Fathers to train their own seminarians along with candidates from other religious communities and dioceses, including Denver. The Vincentians closed the seminary in 1995 when enrollment dwindled to about 30 men.
Before leaving Denver for a Vatican post in 1996, then Archbishop J. Francis Stafford bought the 40-acre campus for $2.6 million with an eye to using the facility as the archdiocesan chancery and, perhaps, as a seminary.
Following the completion of renovations in 1997, the plant was renamed the John Paul II Center for the New Evangelization and the archbishop's offices and many of his archdiocesan ministries were moved in.
In creating the seminary, Archbishop Chaput also announced the establishment of Our Lady of the New Advent Theological Institute, which will encompass the new seminary, the archdiocesan deacon formation program and the many lay formation programs of the archdiocese.
Pope's University
The Denver seminary is only one of 25 institutions worldwide to be affiliated with the Lateran University. While the seminary will function under Archbishop Chaput's jurisdiction, all degrees will be granted by the Lateran in Rome.
Often called “the Pope's university,” the Lateran was founded in 1773 by Pope Clement XIV and remains under papal jurisdiction. It forms the top tier of Vatican teaching institutions along with Gregorian and the Angelicum universities. Affiliation with the Lateran “shows our strong relationship to the universal Church and to the Holy Father,” Archbishop Chaput told the Register.
The recent increase in men preparing for the priesthood for the Archdiocese of Denver has been dramatic. In 1995, there were 29, but by 1997, that number had climbed to 42. During the 1998-99 academic year, the archdiocese has 68 seminarians studying at nine sites.
When St. John Vianney opens in September, the majority of the men being formed for the Archdiocese of Denver will be enrolled at the new seminary.
Father John Hilton, archdiocesan vocations director, attributes the vocations increase to a number of factors, including World Youth Day in 1993, when Pope John Paul II visited Denver, and the wide appeal of the youthful Archbishop Chaput, whom seminarians consider a spiritual father.
Archbishop Chaput has named Father Samuel J. Aquila as rector of St. John Vianney. Father Aquila, currently secretary for Catholic education for the archdiocese.
Twenty-five full- and part-time faculty members are expected to teach at the seminary in its first year, most of whom have either a doctorate or pontifical license from Roman institutions. Faculty members will include priests, sisters, and lay men and women.
Spirituality Year
Seminarians will participate in a six-year formation program focused primarily on philosophy and theology that begins with a non-academic “spirituality year” that focuses on prayer. Proficiency in Spanish is also required for graduation.
St. John Vianney is already home to seminarians who are members of the Neocatechumenal Way, an international Catholic spiritual movement, a number of whom took up residence on the campus three years ago.
While often drawn from outside the area, the Neocatechumenal seminarians “will be ordained for the archdiocese and will serve outside of Denver only if they are sent by me on a specific mission,” Archbishop Chaput told the Register.
Seminarians for Cor Jesu, a religious community of diocesan rank established in Denver under Archbishop Chaput, will also train at the new seminary.
Archbishop Chaput said his archdiocese is growing both through Latin American immigration and from new arrivals from other parts of the country, attracted by the area's natural beauty and its reputation as a wholesome environment in which to raise a family.
The archbishop attributes the burst of vocations in Denver and the encouragement they are receiving through the foundation of a new seminary to what Pope John Paul has called a “New Advent” in the Church at the dawn of the third millennium.
He told the Register: “They are signs of the spring time of the Church that the Holy Father has been predicting.”
— Joe Cullen is an assistant editor of the Register.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joe Cullen ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Hebrew Catholics Celebrate Passover and Easter, Both DATE: 03/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 28 - April 3, 1999 ----- BODY:HIGHLAND, N.Y.—Next week, like millions of Jews for more than 3,200 years, Judy Bratten and her family will celebrate the first night of Passover with a seder, the traditional supper with unleavened bread and other kosher foods that marks the passing of the angel of death over faithful Israelite households before their exodus from Egypt.
A few days later, like millions of Christians for about 2,000 years, Bratten and her family will celebrate Easter, the day the Church marks the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.
The Brattens see no conflict. Judy Bratten, growing up in a Conservative Jewish home in New York, loved Hebrew school and the Jewish feasts her family observed. Upon becoming a Christian (and later, in 1985, a Roman Catholic), she wanted to pass on the traditions to her children. Her husband, David, a gentile who grew up Episcopalian, also participates in the annual seder.
The Brattens, who live in Hopedale, Ohio, belong to the Association of Hebrew Catholics, which aims to preserve the identity of Jews who become Catholics.
The association, based in Highland, N.Y., was founded in 1979 by Father Elias Friedman, now 83, a Jewish Carmelite monk living in Israel. Father Friedman, the author of Jewish Identity, hopes the Church will approve special registration of Jewish converts at baptism, which would continue with their descendants.
The idea is not separatism, according to association president David Moss, but preventing Catholics of Jewish origin from becoming alienated from their heritage.
“Personally, I think it's absolutely essential for the People of Israel to see a way to preserve themselves within the Church,” said Moss, 57.
Convert-making is not the association's purpose, but Moss allows that forming an expressly Israelite wing of the Church may make it a more welcoming home for Jews interested in Jesus' claim to be the Jewish Messiah. As it stands, though, the Church looks like foreign territory.
Speaking of Jews, Moss said: “If the people are an elect people, and they know it — and the Church knows it and teaches it — then you can't expect them to respond to a message that destroys them as a people. … They look at the Church as an … institution for gentiles, not for them.”
For Judy Bratten, the annual seder is a way to continue and pass on her Jewish traditions while using its symbolism to reflect on the family's faith in Christ. She has developed her own introduction to the ritual:
“This evening we gather together to celebrate the feast of Passover. All over the world Jewish families are sitting around tables with the same symbolic food, the same cups of wine and the same exciting story of God liberating his people.
“Two thousand years ago, Jesus sat with his disciples around a table and celebrated the Passover in a special way. We call that special Passover Supper the Last Supper.
“As we go through this ceremony, listen for things that remind you of Jesus.”
‘I've had times when I've felt really like a stranger in a strange land,’ he related. ‘I had to pick what was most important, which was Christ.’
The Brattens emphasize to their son Jonathan, 13, how similar the symbolism of the two traditions is. The Passover candles, for instance, Judy Bratten identifies with Jesus as the light of the world (John 8:12). Several times during the seder the leader purifies his hands by washing them, which Bratten links to the priest's washing his hands before the consecration during Mass.
“I've always thought that God in his wisdom established these rituals as multisensory experiences to help people remember their meaning,” she said.
Judy Bratten has two older daughters. Rebecca, 25, a graduate student at the University of Dallas, and Joanna, 23, a graduate student at St. Andrews University in Scotland, became Catholics with their mother in 1985, and are still attached to their Jewish traditions.
“So they both tend to continue the Passovers,” Bratten said of her daughters. “They tend to look for other Hebrew Catholics because it's something special they can share. It makes them feel like they're part of the family.”
But finding Hebrew Catholics can be tough. Father Arthur Klyber, a Jewish Redemptorist priest (age 99) who collected a sort of rough census of Jewish converts to Catholicism from the 1930s to the 1980s, once estimated that about 1,000 Jews per year join the Church in the United States. Yet that's hardly a drop in the seder wineglass when compared to the 60 million Catholics in this country.
Phil and Marilyn Prever's four oldest daughters, for instance, all married gentiles. “It was too much to hope for that they would find Jewish-Catholic husbands,” Phil said. “We were happy that they found Catholic husbands, and good men.”
The Prevers, who live in Claremont, N.H., were brought up as secular Jews but became Catholics in the late 1970s. They hold a seder with their four younger children every Holy Saturday before Easter Vigil Mass, on the theory that such a joyous occasion belongs after Lent ends. The meal, which Phil called “one of the high points of the year,” includes the traditional matzo, bitter herb, green vegetable and roasted shank bone of a lamb.
The Prevers also interpret Passover symbolism in a Christian way: To Phil, for instance, the Passover marks God's liberating of his people the way Jesus died to liberate man from his sins.
Like the Brattens, the Prevers spent several years as Protestants. Among their fellow evangelical Protestants, Phil Prever recalls, he and his wife were something like stars. Evangelicals, with their emphasis on Scripture, paid a lot of attention to Jews and prophecies about the end times, such as those found in St. Paul's letter to the Romans.
“And when we became Catholics,” Phil recalled, “we found out that people didn't really care that much.”
Since he joined in 1979, he has found the Catholic Church welcoming but not always familiar, in both senses of the word. “I've had times when I've felt really like a stranger in a strange land,” he related. “I had to pick what was most important, which was Christ.”
Moss, the president of the Hebrew Catholic group, said that since the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church has emphasized dialogue with Jews outside the Church, not within it. A leading figure in Catholic-Jewish dialogue, Dr. Eugene Fisher, said the Association of Hebrew Catholics does not have much to do with that dialogue.
“It would only affect dialogue if that group saw as its goal the idea of proselytizing,” said Fisher, director of Catholic-Jewish Relations for the National Council of Catholic Bishops' Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs. “That would be a problem. … They keep saying they don't, and I believe them.”
Official recognition of a Hebrew Catholic community is a matter for the Vatican, Fisher noted.
In 1988, Fisher said, the U.S. Bishops released a document called God's Mercy Endures Forever that instructs Catholics not to incorporate New Testament readings into Passover seders. “There is a liturgical integrity to the Jewish Passover seder that the Church has every interest in respecting,” he said. But he said he sees no difficulty with a family using Passover symbolism as a Christian educational tool.
Education alone, however, does not instill emotional attachment. Phil Prever already sees his half-gentile grandchildren as less interested in the Jewish traditions than his children. He hopes the Association of Hebrew Catholics succeeds in securing some special status for Israelite Catholics so that choosing Jesus doesn't mean choosing assimilation.
But just what special status would mean isn't clear. Moss envisions voluntary ways of maintaining connections with Jewish identity, such as celebrating Jewish feasts that are compatible with Catholicism. Some have even suggested a separate rite for Hebrew Catholics, such as the one Byzantine Catholics have, though Moss said it would have to grow organically from the community under the guidance of the Church.
Before approaching the Vatican, Moss said the association needs to identify its constituency. It publishes a newsletter, The Hebrew Catholic, about six times a year, which it mails to between 800 and 900 subscribers around the world. Moss is also preparing to make his small Catholic publishing house, The Miriam Press, a subset of the association.
He can be reached at Association of Hebrew Catholics, P.O. Box 798, Highland, N.Y. 12528; or by e-mail at ahc@vh.net.
Matt McDonald writes from Mashpee, Massachusetts.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Matt McDonald ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: His Reasons Turned To Ashes DATE: 03/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 28 - April 3, 1999 ----- BODY:Thomas Howard
Born into an evangelical Christian family, a Philadelphia native and prolific book writer, he literally read his way to the C a t h o l i c Church 14 years ago. By his own admission, he is “head over heels” in love with his faith still. He spoke recently with Register correspondent Jim Malerba.
Malerba: Tell me about your early background.
Howard: I was brought up in Protestant fundamentalism in Philadelphia. Now, while fundamentalists tend to be the most anti-Catholic, I did not experience this feeling within my family at all.
Before coming to the Church, were you actively involved in evangelical work?
After graduating from college, I worked for a year as a staff member of the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship in Chicago, an evangelical organization. What I did was go around the country, visiting student Christian groups in various colleges and universities. I was assigned to focus on the foreign mission aspect. After that, I spent two years in the Army.
Did you then begin your journey to the Church?
I guess in the broadest sense, you could say that. I went to England in the late 1950s and taught at Kingsmead School, for boys, from 1961 to 1963. In 1960, I went across the Anglican bridge and was received into the Church of England. I was an Anglican for 25 years. I was received into the Church in 1985. The Anglican contribution to the whole thing was to familiarize me with the notion of Church history, which fundamental-ists do not have, and the sacraments, which are also absent from fundamentalism.
What happened in those 25 years that ultimately led you to Catholicism?
I literally read my way into the Church. I studied Church history, rites of liturgy and most notably the early Church fathers. Before I was finished as an Episcopalian, I called myself what many Anglicans like to call themselves, namely an Anglo-Catholic. On the surface, the High Church has the smells and bells of the Catholic Church. In one sense, the Anglican Church is close to Catholicism in that most Anglo-Catholics believe in transubstantiation and in devotion to Mary. What's more, they call the eucharistic celebration the Mass. They also have bishops. So, in one sense I had been ready for the move in many ways, but the point of no return came over the question “What is the Church?” You can't do the reading I was doing without being forced up to the threshold of Rome. I realized there were only two bodies in Christendom — Rome or Orthodoxy — which could made a realistic claim to apostolicity. After reading everything I could about Orthodoxy, I came to accept the Roman claim, the Petrine nature [apostolic succession from Peter] of the Church. Eventually, I ran out of reasons not to become Catholic. By 1984, all the reasons had turned to ashes in my hands. I had to get in touch with a priest and ask, “How do I become Catholic?”
Did your wife also become Catholic when you converted?
No. She entered the Church in 1995 — 10 years to the day after I did. But I want to say my conversion did not in any way affect our marriage. Lovelace (she comes from the American South and that is her given first name) was delighted, and knew that my becoming Catholic was the right move for me. Our son and daughter continued on as Episcopalians, though my daughter was received into the Church in '98. Our son is still an Anglican, but he is aware the Catholic claims are true.
You were teaching at evangelical Gordon College in Massachusetts at the time. How did they receive the news of your conversion?
I lost my job. Here I was, 50 years old, and “unhirable” anywhere else. That's because I had tenure at Gordon and no dean at any college was about to hire an old whippersnapper. That is how I came to become professor of English literature at St. John's Seminary College in Boston in 1985, where I've been ever since.
And you are happy there?
Yes, because as far as I know, I'm in the place God wants me to be. To teach at a Catholic seminary is what I like to call a professor's paradise. Any young man in this era who feels called to the priesthood and is studying here is making such a commitment and is serious about being there. He's done some pretty heavy-duty thinking. There's nobody sitting in the back row chewing bubble gum. Everybody here has consciously chosen to be here and is serious about what is going on. This is a so-called minor seminary, where the young men are studying toward a bachelor's degree. If they continue to discern a priestly vocation, they then move on to St. John's seminary here.
Have you noticed an upswing in the number of vocations at the seminary?
Not a significant one, but we do have more young men with us now than we have had for some time.
Let's talk about your book writing. How did you come to it?
Back in 1965, I published an article in an evangelical journal, Christianity Today. A publisher, Lippincott, read the article and liked it a lot. I was just back from my honeymoon when I wrote the article. An editor at Lippincott wanted me to write a book-length work based on the article, which was on art and Christianity. I wrote back and said I couldn't do that, since I had put everything I knew about the subject into the article. He wrote back and said, well, write a book about anything. You don't always get a publisher pawing your arm. It's usually the other way around. That's how I got started.
What was the title?
I named the book Christ the Tiger, getting the title from a T.S. Eliot quote. It was an autobiographical book about my own religious odyssey from early childhood in a very good evangelical childhood to the point of marriage. Unlike 99 out of 100, I didn't throw in the sponge on my faith. The book made a big splash in the evangelical wing of Protestantism when it came out in 1967. The amazing part is, I wrote it in one month! The editor had gotten to me in the summer, so I just set aside the time and wrote it all day, every day.
What came next?
My next book was called Chance or the Dance, which was an aesthetic apologetic for Christian belief. The idea was, is the universe flung together by chance, or is it choreographed like a dance? By the time [1969] I wrote that one, I was an Anglican. I was familiar with evangelical par-lance and also Anglican parlance. I could interpret one to the other.
How successful was
It sank without a ripple.
In 1996, you wrote
I have to say it was very difficult to become a Catholic, and I wanted to show this to people. My head was there, and so was my heart, in many ways. But there's a big difference in knowing what is on the other side of the Atlantic and stepping onto the Mayflower and sailing away. Cradle Catholics have no idea how daunting it is for an evangelical to make that step. They have no idea of the Himalayan nature of such a move, especially for one from such a fundamentalist background. I wanted to show people I made the move for the utterly stark, simple reason that the Church spoke the truth. This is what I was trying to convey, and to do it from the layman's point of view. I also wanted evangelicals to understand it, and equally important, to educate cradle Catholics.
And how was this one received generally?
On Being Catholic didn't make any big splash, but it seems to be selling well. However, I'm not getting rich on the book; in fact, I could probably buy paper clips with the royalties I'm receiving. Catholics have commented very favorably on it, but what is really pleasing is the positive reaction in letters I'm getting from some evangelicals — those who appear to be on the bridge to Rome.
You've also written about C.S. Lewis. Did he have a particular interest to you?
I was a great devotee of his writings, and I taught about him in the classroom. While he was never a Catholic, the shape of his religious vision was Catholic. Indirectly, he inspired me in my journey to the Church by his sacramental vision. Cardinal John Newman also was very influential as I was reading my way to Catholicism.
Any other books in the works?
No, and yes. My daughter is a writer and just sent in her first novel to a publisher. I might write a book with her on men and women and marriage.
How has becoming Catholic influenced your daily life?
There's no question that faith, family and life form a seamless package. I go to Mass daily, read the Office, and perform other spirituals that are an integral part of my daily prayer life. I am truly happy for the intercession of Mary. My wife also is a daily churchgoer. I consider her the happiest woman in the Church. In fact, she's much holier than I am. In my church, I teach a class on Friday nights. I guess you could say that, overall, I'm head over heels in the faith.
What can you say to others to help them live the faith more fully?
The ultimate bottom line is to love and fear God and keep his commandments. Holiness and our formation in charity are what we need in life. They give life meaning. I'm lucky, because the English literature material I teach represents religious questions and merges with it. In teaching the seminarians, I try to inculcate in practical ways the imperative of getting comfortable in the harness of the charity sweepstakes.
—Jim Malerba
----- EXCERPT: This author left the fame he enjoyed in evangelical circles to become a Catholic ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jim Malerba ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: THOMAS HOWARD DATE: 03/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 28 - April 3, 1999 ----- BODY:Personal: Married to Lovelace; one son, one daughter.
Background: bachelor's degree, Wheaton College; master's, University of Illinois; doctorate, New York University; taught at an English boys' school and a New York boys' school; taught English at Gordon College in Wenham, Mass., for 15 years.
Professional: He has published articles for more than 30 years, including in The New York Times Book Review, Redbook, New Oxford Review, and many others; has published 10 books, the latest is On Being Catholic.
Current position: Professor of English literature, St. John's College Seminary, Boston.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Morality Wins Some, Loses Some at Oscars DATE: 03/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 28 - April 3, 1999 ----- BODY:LOS ANGELES—This year's Academy Awards seemed to show that morality isn't totally dead yet in Hollywood.
Judges at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences couldn't help choose a story with a strong moral theme as this year's best picture. Nominated films addressed such heavy subjects as World War II, the Holocaust and the Reformation.
They chose a lighter option, picking the “art” film Shakespeare in Love, which swept the awards, winning top honors including best picture. In accepting the award, Shakespeare's leading actress, Gwyneth Paltrow, fought back tears as she graciously praised the other nominees and professed love for her family. With her at the event were her parents.
Shakespeare in Love is a playful look at a young William Shakespeare (Joseph Finnes) overcoming writer's block to scribe a play he had decided to call “Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter.” The lovely Viola (Paltrow) disguises herself as a young man in order to play Romeo in the story. Soon Shakespeare becomes smitten with her female incarnation. Poetry flows freely and “Ethel” is redubbed “Juliet.” Queen Elizabeth (Dame Judi Dench, named as best supporting actress) offers a challenge that no play can reveal the true nature of love.
The film is so charming that one almost forgets there is more adultery than “true love” in it. Hollywood has not so aggressively romanticized this vice since the Oscar-garnished The English Patient.
Shakespeare in Love also nabbed best original screenplay for Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, as well as best costume design, comedy score and art direction.
Spielberg's 2nd Oscar
Steven Spielberg takes a more compelling look at virtue and vice in his ode to U.S. veterans of World War II in Saving Private Ryan. He was awarded his second Oscar for best direction in this exploration of valor in combat. Tom Hanks (who lost out in the best actor category for his part) leads a group of reluctant soldiers on a seemingly impossible mission to find and bring back a mother's last surviving son.
Though Spielberg's treatment is occasionally overstated, the film re-creates D-Day at Omaha Beach in one of the most spectacular war scenes ever filmed. Shot with hand-held cameras in muted greens and maroons, audiences can actually see laser bullets. The cinematographer, editor, and sound and sound effects teams all received well-deserved Oscars for their work. In the context of the story, the graphic scenes bring the audience to feel an enormous gratitude for the sacrifice the soldiers made.
In receiving the award, Spielberg also thanked his father his part in the war, and dedicated his Oscar to him.
Ryan easily overshadowed another World War II nomination for best picture, The Thin Red Line. Based upon the novel by James Jones, this is a sprawling account of Charlie Company at the battle of Guadalcanal. Despite its interesting juxtapositions between the lush landscape and the brutal warfare, the film is tortuously convoluted, and fails to make the impact Ryan does.
Spielberg was also recognized as the executive producer of the heart-wrenching Holocaust account The Last Days, chosen as best documentary feature. Yet it was an Italian who stole the show March 21 when he won awards for his own treatment of the Holocaust.
Benigni's Triumph
Roberto Benigni was named best actor for his part in Life is Beautiful. The movie, which he also wrote and directed, was also named best foreign language film. Benigni, a comedian, climbed onto his seat to cheer. He had good reason: His was the first foreign language film to receive seven nominations.
In exuberant, broken English, he cried out that he felt a “hailstorm of gratitude.”
Like Paltrow and Spielberg, he also credited his father with his success, and went on to thank his parents for the victory, saying that they gave him “the biggest gift, poverty.”
In the evening's only reference to a higher power, he exclaimed, “there is a Divinity and when you have faith, that Divinity appears. That's why I want to dedicate this prize to the victims of the Holocaust.”
Many Jews, however, had criticized the picture for underplaying the horrors of the Holocaust. In the story, a gregarious father attempts to shield his young son from the reality of the Holocaust by pretending it's all a game. Although the film does not mention God directly, its sense of hope resounds spiritually.
Benigni was particularly taken aback when Pope John Paul II had asked to see the film with him at a private Vatican screening (see Register, Feb. 21).
“I couldn't even watch the picture!” Benigni said. “I kept thinking: ‘Mamma mia! This is the real Pope watching the movie with me, giving me three hours of his time! Not even to Bill Clinton does he give three hours of his time!’” In what is being called the “Pope's Oscars,” a Vatican list of 45 outstanding films, Life is Beautiful is listed as No. 3.
Failures and Controversies
It's unlikely, though, that some of this year's nominations will make the Vatican list anytime soon. In a stridently anti-Catholic version of the English Reformation, Elizabeth was overlooked in its major nominated categories, winning only in the category of best makeup.
Another film which was strongly critical of the Catholic Church, Gods and Monsters, received an award for best screenplay adaptation, but lost in Sir Ian McKellen's bid for best actor. Lynn Redgrave, who plays his acerbic Catholic housekeeper, was also passed over for best supporting actress.
In the film, McKellen, who is a homosexual activist, plays the homosexual director of the 1931 Frankenstein, James Whale. The film is based on gossip that surrounded his suicide.
McKellen had reportedly told friends that, if he won the best actor award, he had planed to make an “impassioned” attack on discrimination against homosexuals in the film industry. On March 17 the London Daily Express observed that if McKellen did in fact make the statement, “it will make Hollywood history as the first time a gay man has raised the issue of his homosexuality at the event.”
Hollywood's ethic of “tolerance” was tested when the academy honored director Elia Kazan with the Lifetime Achievement Award. Kazan, who holds Oscars for Gentleman's Agreement and On the Waterfront, named Hollywood communists before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952.
What enrages many in the industry is Kazan's refusal to denounce his actions. It appears to indicate that he did it out of conscience rather than weakness. Tension filled the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion as the majority of the house refused to rise as the nearly 90-year-old Kazan made his entrance.
Formerly blacklisted writers, directors and actors gathered outside the movie academy headquarters in Beverly Hills the week before to protest and decry Kazan's award. The protesters took out full-page advertisements in the trade papers Variety and Hollywood Reporter showing an Oscar and proclaiming, “Don't Whitewash the Blacklist.”
Stephen Hopkins writes from New York.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: stephen Hopkins ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: U.S.Notes & Quotes DATE: 03/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 28 - April 3, 1999 ----- BODY:Reputed Conyers Visionary Objects to Company
Fowler objected to the aggressive fund raising tactics of Our Loving Mother's Children, and complained about the group's decision to publish a book of the messages from Conyers without her final approval, said the report.
Robert Hughes of Our Loving Mother's Children told the newspaper that he would not publish the book without Fowler's approval, and that fund raising — to pay for broadcasts of the Rosary — is not new.
Lent Is Not About Changing God
Montaño's insights were included in a roundup on how Christian churches in New Mexico are observing Lent. The portions on Catholicism recalled Lents past in perhaps too dark a vein, but accurately reflect the current understanding that penance and “giving things up” should be accompanied by positive steps such as additional prayer and acts of charity. Montaño, for example, said she tries to eat more simply, read the scriptures and pray more often during Lent.
Former DIGNITY Priest to Lead New Ministry
“The Church wants to support the homosexual person but not homosexual activity,” Archdiocese spokesman Dan Andriacco said. “There is a need for pastoral care of homosexual persons. The archdiocese wants to meet that need, and not cede territory to ministries that don't support the teaching of the Church.”
Father Michael Leshney, chaplain to a Cincinnati chapter of DIGNITY in the 1980s, will be spiritual director for the new ministry.
The AP report concludes with citations from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which holds that homosexual activity is “contrary to the natural law” and “objectively disordered,” but that homosexuals should be “accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity.”
DiMaggio a Man of Prayer, Says Priest
Msgr. Casale, president of St. Thomas University in Miami, described what he called DiMaggio's “last Mass,” at DiMaggio's bedside at his home in Hollywood, Fla., a few days before he died March 8. “Joe couldn't talk that Sunday but his lips silently formed every response to the Mass,” Msgr. Casale told the paper.
----- EXCERPT: From selected publications ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 03/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 28 - April 3, 1999 ----- BODY:Polish Bishops in Deal With U.S. Investment Firm
“Economic activity of this type to secure the stability of schools, hospitals and various centers is common for most national bishops' conferences,” Jesuit Father Adam Schulz, the bishops' spokesman, was quoted saying. “Only in Poland is this a novelty,”
The new partnership, Arka-Invesco, was formed with Atlanta-based Amvescap group in a bid to profit from the current boom in private pensions. It will compete for an estimated 7-8 million Polish customers, but devote its profits to charitable, social, educational and pastoral activities, said the report.
Poland's Rzeczpospolita daily newspaper said the bishops had provided 20% of the initial $10 million capital outlay for the Arka-Invesco partnership, which would have local offices in all 42 Catholic dioceses.
Vietnam Has Long Way to Go on Religious Freedom
U.N. expert Abdelfattah Amor said the government maintained elaborate controls over all religious groups to prevent the emergence of any organization that might rival the Communist Party, it said.
There was no immediate Vietnamese response to the publication of the report, said the paper. But in the past, Vietnamese authorities have insisted that they respect religious freedom.
Buddhism is the primary religion among Vietnam's 78 million people. Important minority religions include the Catholic and Protestant churches.
Aussie Confessions to be Normalized
The use of “general absolution” that has become prevalent in Australia. General absolution is reserved for use in emergency situations and for soldiers going to battle, where individual confession would be unworkable. By making it a common way of confession, the Holy See fears that the authenticity of the sacrament — and the sense of sin of the penitents — are being compromised.
“The Vatican has demanded an explanation from Adelaide's … archbishop Leonard Faulkner of his refusal to ban the communal form of confession during Lent,” reported The Australian.
“A please-explain letter, believed to have been sent to Archbishop Faulkner by the Holy See's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was described by one church insider yesterday as ‘accusatory.’”
The report continues that it believes a particular group — Australian Catholics Advocacy Center — is behind the attempts to have the sacrament normalized in Australia.
----- EXCERPT: From selected publications ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 03/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 28 - April 3, 1999 ----- BODY:Agreement Reached For Papal Trip to Romania
ASSOCIATED PRESS, March 16—The Vatican has reached an agreement to allow Pope John Paul II to visit Romania in May, the first trip to a predominantly Orthodox country of his 20-year-long papacy, the AP reports.
John Paul will spend three days in Bucharest, the capital, but will not travel to Transylvania, where most Catholics live. More than 80% of Romania's 23 million people are Orthodox, while Catholics — Latin- and Eastern-rite — number about 2.4 million, or 10%, said the report.
A visit to Romania could help smooth the way for the Pope to visit Russia, where Catholic-Orthodox relations are tense.
Relations between the churches have been strained in a number of Eastern European countries following the fall of communism by arguments between Orthodox and Catholics over property seized from Catholics and handed over to the Orthodox.
Pope Appeals for Peace on Ambon
The fighting there between Christians and Muslims claimed more than 200 lives in two months, said the report. Police there have arrested 20 men at Ambon's port, after they arrived by boat from other islands carrying arrows, daggers and sickles.
“The Pope has appealed directly for an end to religious violence wracking Indonesia's eastern island of Ambon,” it said. The appeal, made in the Holy Father's weekly radio address, was reported at Sunday Masses to parishioners.
----- EXCERPT: From selected publications ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: When the Cross Reaches Rome DATE: 03/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 28 - April 3, 1999 ----- BODY:In Turin, Italy, hundreds of young people gathered around a television March 14 to hear the Holy Father speak about an unpopular topic nowadays: the cross. With them was a large cross they had been carrying all day. Young people of the dioceses of Italy were taking the cross on a pilgrimage that ends Palm Sunday, when they enter Rome to celebrate World Youth Day in a vivid reminder of Christ's entry into Jerusalem.
The gathering for the television broadcast took place March 14, Laetare Sunday, named for the Latin of the day's entrance antiphon at Mass. With it, the Church encourages her faithful in the midst of their pilgrimage through the sacrificial season of Lent: “Rejoice (Laetare), Jerusalem! Be glad for her, you who love her; rejoice with her, you who mourned for her, and you will find contentment at her consoling breasts.”
This jubilant scene in Turin was a foretaste of what the World Youth Day in Rome would look like two weeks later. There, the crowds and their cross would be all the more remarkable compared to the other pursuits — good enough in themselves, but lacking any acknowledgment of the Cross — that young people would be engaged in around the world this Palm Sunday:
—In New Zealand, high school students who make it to the grand finale of the Great Asian Cook-Off will compete nationally for the first-place prize.
—In Cuba, the Baltimore Orioles will play an exhibition game, lauded as a sign of new openness in the country, which will rivet the attention of base-ball's many young fans there.
—And in Gunstock, Mass., snowboarders, skiers and mountain bikers will compete in a downhill obstacle-course race that the Boston Globe promises will be “wild and weird, so snowboarders will like it.”
Truly, as Pope John Paul II told his young audience on Laetare Sunday, “life is meaningless without the Cross.” The meaning of life has been much on the Church's mind these 40 days — occasioned by the Lenten meditation on the meaning of death — a meditation that the world, with its constant pursuit of distractions, shrinks from making.
The Pope began Lent with a meditation on the Ash Wednesday words, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you will return.” He said that for man, death is “a reality he must constantly face,” but “is nevertheless not a primordial truth. … It did not exist in the beginning, but as the sad consequence of sin, it entered the world through the devil's envy.” He also recalled other words: “Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel,” which he said is possible because “human death was defeated by the death of Christ.”
Only faith can properly contemplate death. The culture that has brought us abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide and other manifestations of death does not understand death at all. When the Pope addressed the Pontifical Academy for Life on “Love and Solidarity for the Dying” Feb. 27, he pointed out that this “culture of death” is dependent on various attitudes that consistently ignore death.
Among them is what he called the “culture of well-being” which he said, “often involves an inability to see life's meaning in the situations of suffering and debilitation that accompany human beings as they approach death.” Then there is the “principle of self-determination,” whereby the individual cuts himself off from others to autonomously pursue his own satisfaction. Last, there is a “utilitarian ethic which governs many advanced societies according to the criteria of productivity and efficiency.”
This approach to life ends by embracing forms of hasty death, because it leaves no room for hope — which is also to say that it leaves no room for pain. It understands only pleasure, license and material success, and when these are lacking, life has no more meaning.
The youth of Italy's dioceses heard a very different message on Laetare Sunday.
“It is the Resurrection that reveals the true value of the Cross. … It is not a sign of death, but of life; not of frustration, but of hope; not of defeat, but of victory. Indeed as an ancient liturgical hymn says, the cross of Christ is our ‘only hope,’ for any other promise of salvation is deceptive, since it does not resolve the fundamental human problem: the problem of evil and death.
“This is why Christians venerate the cross and recognize it as the sign par excellence of love and hope. Young people too, oriented by nature to life, embrace the cross of Jesus like Francis of Assisi and all the saints because they understand that the mystery of life would be a meaningless riddle without it. …
“To [the young people] that have joined us by television I offer a special greeting and say: Do not be afraid to welcome the cross of Christ into your life!”
The Pope concluded with a call to bring this message to their peers around the world.
“The Cross, the sign of salvation and the banner of final victory, is the witness, dear young people, which you must receive from the generations that have gone before you, so that you can carry it into the third millennium as true apostles of the Gospel.”
Tom Hoopes is Executive Editor of the Register.
----- EXCERPT: PERSPECTIVE ----- EXTENDED BODY: Tom Hoopes ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Questions Science Cannot Answer DATE: 03/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 28 - April 3, 1999 ----- BODY:It is a delight to find a readable and entertaining book on this controversial topic that gives a valid, well-researched and comprehensive history and explanation of Darwin's theory of evolution and the bonus of a valuable list of suggested readings for each chapter.
In the introduction, author George Sim Johnston puts his cards on the table: “Common sense, Chesterton observed, has become an extinct branch of most scientific disciplines. A modest aim of this book is to suggest its reintroduction in the area of evolutionary biology.”
Most Catholics are familiar with the Galileo episode, which, Sim Johnston tells us, “helped to precipitate the tragic split between faith and science in the seventeenth century, from which Western culture has not recovered.” Pope John Paul II has had it at heart throughout his papacy to encourage dialogue that will bridge the gap and heal the rift. One of his first acts as Pope was to appoint a commission of scholars to study the Galileo affair.
In the course of the investigation some interesting facts surfaced: Luther “had the privilege of being the first to call Copernicus ‘a fool,’” while Galileo argued that Scripture often uses figurative language, but that its purpose is to teach us “how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.” Ironically, the same point was made in two outstanding papal encyclicals — Leo XIII's Providentissimus Deus in 1893 and Pius XII's Divino Afflante Spiritu 50 years later. All of which points us to the fact that “the real issue in the Galileo affair was the literal interpretation of Scripture.”
In the case of Darwin's hypotheses, we again run into the issue of science and Scripture. Pope John Paul II has this to say: “The theory of natural evolution, understood in a sense that does not exclude divine causality, is not in principle opposed to the truth about the creation of the visible world, as presented in the Book of Genesis” (General Audience, Jan. 24, 1986). Sim Johnston outlines the Church's position on evolution clearly and unequivocally:
“It makes no difference whether man is descended from some apelike creature, so long as we understand that there had to be what John Paul II calls an ‘ontological leap’ between that creature and the first human person. This would have involved the direct action of God, who creates each rational soul out of nothing. As a result, man is a being profoundly different from the rest of the animal kingdom, no matter what his biological antecedents. Man is a person made in the image of God. Dogs and chimps are not. Genesis teaches this truth. But the Church is warning us that the Sacred Author does not, in addition, mean to give scientific information about how God's creation of man unfolded in the natural order, whether it was done in a flash or over many eons.”
Far from beginning with Darwin, the theory of evolution was already around in St. Augustine's day. In his commentary On the Literal Meaning of Genesis the bishop of Hippo proposed a theory of evolution in the strict sense of the word, that is, the gradual development or unfolding of what was already there, as acorn becomes oak, which Sim Johnston describes as a theory of “creation on the installment plan.”
“There are, in fact,” Sim Johnston explains, “two inseparable arguments in [Darwin's] Origin: First, that evolution has occurred; and second, that natural selection is its prime agent. But the main issue was natural selection. This is an important point, because many of Darwin's early scientific critics, who were ready to accept the historical reality of evolution, balked at the idea that natural selection could be its primary cause.”
While evolution is highly probable within any given species, and indeed observable, the theory of natural selection, used by Darwin to posit essential links between species, fell flat in the absence of any observable “links.” It was pure theory, with species originating as the result of blind, mechanical (and purely theoretic) laws rather than from the creative will of God. The theory would thus dispense with a Creator altogether, a tendency that can be seen at work in many areas of contemporary culture.
So we had, with Darwin, a twofold process of evolution and natural selection, or survival of the fittest. Hilaire Belloc was quick to see the circular argument slumbering within this last, and remarked that “science did not need Darwin to tell it that if there is a flood the cows will drown and the fish survive.” Again, the author cites C.H. Waddington, one of the great biologists of our century, who dismissed natural selection as “vacuous,” saying that “it merely amounts to the statement that the individuals which leave the most offspring are those which leave the most offspring.” And Arnold Lunn argued that “to call natural selection creative, as many evolutionists do, is a bit like saying that the Nazi air strikes against London during World War II were creative because they left Westminster Abbey standing.”
Sim Johnston traces the debate during Darwin's lifetime and thereafter up to the present, with verve and impressive scholarship. He collects witnesses from the most unlikely backgrounds, strange bedfel-lows in anyone's book, “some of the sharper minds of the nineteenth century … a bipartisan panel of intellectuals if there ever was one,” including John Stuart Mill, John Henry Newman, Nietzsche, Charles Sanders Peirce and William James. These men gave the Origin of Species less than a passing grade. Newman commented on the “logical insufficiencies” of Darwin's theory, while Nietzsche denied the existence of transitional forms between types of life: “Every type has limits,” he said. “Beyond these, there is no evolution. … That the higher organizations should have evolved out of the lower has not been demonstrated in a single case.”
As we pursue the history of Darwin's hypothesis through Sim Johnston's brilliant chapter after chapter, there is indeed little of it left standing, and the missing link remains among the missing. But the aim of the book runs deeper. Beneath the amusing aspect of this rather wicked demolition of a theory, lies the proven fact that the authentic findings of science and the Catholic belief about creation are not only compatible but are also complementary parts of a truth that is one. “Catholics can anticipate with serenity,” Sim Johnston suggests, “modern scientific discoveries that, more often than not, raise fundamental questions science itself cannot answer.” It is a given, and a gift, to know that faith and science, like faith and reason, will always converge in the end.
Dominican Sister Mary Thomas Noble writes from Buffalo, New York
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Dominican Sister Mary Thomas Noble, OP ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Dante Wanted No Pity for the Damned DATE: 03/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 28 - April 3, 1999 ----- BODY:“Dante: A Party of One”
by Robert Hollander
(First Things, April 1999)
Robert Hollander, professor of European literature at Princeton University, writes: “Rarely has a writer left a more indelible mark — and under less favoring circumstances — than Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). His major work The Divine Comedy is considered one of the crowning achievements of human expression. It lives even today, nearly seven hundred years after its making, as one of the two or three greatest poems ever written.
“It is important … to note the dangers of taking the Comedy as a sort of ‘summa’ of medieval thought. … A reader of the Comedy unversed in medieval debates and unaware of Dante's idiosyncratic notions about them is easily persuaded that this work indeed represents the late middle ages in nuce. In fact, Dante finds something to quarrel with in the positions put forward by almost every recognized authority, even those he respects the most, from Aristotle (whom he honors perhaps more than any other thinker) to Aquinas (with whom he fights mainly friendly but nonetheless frequent little battles).
“From Dante's first insistence that what is narrated as having occurred is to be treated as having actually occurred, it is clear he does not actually expect us to believe that the journey [through hell, purgatory and heaven] really took place. He does want us, though, to pay particular attention to the fact that he has claimed that it did. … Dante does not want his poem categorized as mere fiction, like those castigated by Aquinas and other theologians who held that poets are in effect liars and have little to say that is epistemologically valid.
“Nothing is more difficult for one who teaches this poem to students than to convince them that all of the damned souls, no matter how attractively they present their own cases, are to be seen as justly damned. The poem creates some of its drama from the tension that exists between the narrator's view of events (in Inferno often represented by Virgil's interpretive remarks) and that of the protagonist. What makes our task as readers difficult is that at some pivotal moments neither the narrator nor Virgil offers clear moral judgments. Instead, Dante uses irony to under-cut the alluring words of sinners who present themselves as victims rather than as perpetrators of outrage in the eyes of God.
“Everything in God is just; only in the mortal world of sin and death do we find injustice. … In the Inferno we see this insistence on God's justness from the opening lines describing Hell proper, the inscription over the gate of Hell (III,4): Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore (Justice moved my maker on high). If God is just, there can be absolutely no question concerning the justness of his judgments. All who are condemned to Hell are justly condemned. Thus, when the protagonist feels pity for some of the damned, we are meant to realize that he is at fault for doing so. This is perhaps the most crucial test of us as readers that the poem offers. If we sympathize with the damned, we follow a bad example.
“Yet it also seems to some readers that Dante's treatment of Francesca, Ulysses, and others asks us to put the question of damnation to one side, leaving us to admire their most pleasing human traits in a moral vacuum, as it were.
“It is probably better to understand that we are never authorized by the poem to embrace such a view. … Dante's innovative but risky technique was to trust us, his readers, with the responsibility for seizing upon the details in the narratives told by these sympathetic sinners in order to condemn them on the evidence that issues from their own mouths. It was indeed, as we can see from the many readers who fail to take note of this evidence, a perilous decision for him to have made.
“The Divine Comedy's greatness is reflected in its rich and full realization of the complicated nature of human behavior and of the difficulty of moral judgment for living mortals. It asks us to learn, as does the protagonist, as we proceed.”
Ellen Wilson Fielding writes from Davidson, Maryland.
A condensed version, in the words of the original author, of an article selected by the Register from the nation's top journals.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: LETTERS DATE: 03/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 28 - April 3, 1999 ----- BODY:Animal and Abortion rights
[On the] article “Jesuit Magazine Puts the Bite on ‘Animal Rights’” (Feb. 28 - March 6): I have found when people want you to sign a paper for “Animal Rights,” the person with the paper is also for “Abortion Rights.”
Fran Flanagan
Phoenix
President Clinton
It was fitting that you give your in-depth coverage to the Pope's speech and to the speech of President Clinton in St. Louis in deference to the high office they hold.
However, what were you thinking in publishing that sanctified photo of the Pope and the President which will be copied all over the country as the co-president seeks public office?
Throughout the country the media and public parroted the Biblical quote in reference to Clinton, “He who is without sin, etc.” No biblical scholar am I, yet what comes to mind is this one: “By their deeds ye shall know them.”
After Clinton was caught lying to the grand jury, ostensibly he found God. One month later for the third time he vetoed the ban on the grisly procedure termed partial-birth abortion and continues to push for funds for abortions overseas, [for] federal employees, the military and all other bedroom issues. Planned Parenthood receives a couple hundred million dollars to waste in court fights and to open abortion clinics and the average voter isn't even aware of his tax dollars wasted.
Betty F. Bennett
Garfield Heights, Ohio
Death Penalty
Regarding the editorial “Opposing the Death of the Guilty” in the Mar. 7 - 13 Issue: In our society we are besieged by violence and that violent behavior cannot go without consequences. Sometimes the consequence must be capital punishment since the individual would be a continuing threat to society and beyond rehabilitation. Anyway, prisons should not be rehabilitation centers; they should be places for criminals to pay their debts to our society. No more.
Capital punishment is not murder. Capital punishment is the ultimate consequence for the most heinous of crimes.
I see no correlation between abortion and capital punishment. One can be against abortion and pro-capital punishment. Abortion is murdering an innocent human and capital punishment is removing an ongoing threat to society.
Our society needs to place a higher value upon human dignity and, for that to be done, we as a nation need to keep capital punishment in place to defend ourselves.
Margaret Searle Robert
via e-mail
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: On Bearing Christ's Cross In New York DATE: 03/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 28 - April 3, 1999 ----- BODY:New York is not often considered a place of pilgrimage. Author Peter Kreeft is fond of remarking that if God does not destroy New York, He will have to issue an apology to Sodom.
Perhaps so. But last year I celebrated the Paschal Triduum in New York and found it a marvelous place to do so. For in New York, the Cross of Christ must be chosen very deliberately amongst the competing distractions. Many do choose it. And to choose the Cross on Good Friday in New York is to experience in a special way the drama of choosing the Cross in our culture.
Last year, as per usual, John Cardinal O'Connor was in his cathedral on Good Friday, preaching on the Seven Last Words of Christ from noon until three o'clock, and then celebrating the liturgy of the Lord's Passion. Meanwhile, up in the Bronx, Mayor Rudolph Giulani and the largest home-opener crowd since 1975 were at Yankee Stadium for an afternoon game.
The cardinal protested in his Easter week column in Catholic New York. “I love the Yankees. I love the Mets. I love baseball,” he wrote. But he announced that he would not attend any baseball games in the 1998 season to protest the major leagues playing on Good Friday. “Playing on Good Friday cheapens our culture. I resent it,” he said.
The cardinal's intervention called attention to the lack of public observance of Good Friday. The New York Stock Exchange closed, but otherwise the city did not pay much attention to the holiest hours of the Christian year.
New York's Jewish community was preparing for Passover, which began that night, as the New York Times advised on its front page. The weather was beautiful and the sidewalks of Fifth Avenue were teeming with shoppers and sightseers. USA Today devoted a full two pages of its Friday edition to Fifth Avenue, “one of the world's most legendary boulevards,” reporting that business was booming and real estate was going for $2,400 per square foot.
Neither the Times nor USA Today nor the mayor seemed to notice that it was Good Friday. On Fifth Avenue some did and some did not. In between the teenagers flocking to Trump Tower's Nike Town on 56th Street, and the society matrons strolling into Saks on 49th, there were thousands of the faithful attending Good Friday services, whether at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian on 55th, St. Thomas (Anglican) on 53rd, or St. Patrick's Cathedral on 50th.
A few blocks over on Park Avenue, almost two thousand went to the Waldorf-Astoria grand ballroom, where Father George Rutler preached his famous three-hour meditation on the Seven Last Words of Christ. Even though St. Agnes Church, a stone's throw from Grand Central Station, was already rebuilt, it could not hold the number of faithful who wished to attend, so St. Agnes continued holding its Good Friday services in the nearby hotel.
Father Rutler began last year, as he often does, noting that the streets were full and the city was bustling. “These three hours are the most silent of hours,” he declared. New York, like Jerusalem on the first Good Friday, may be noisy, he conceded, “but Heaven is silent, for in Heaven they know what is happening.”
Father Rutler's practice of preaching the Seven Last Words at the Waldorf is a great sign of contradiction amidst the opulence and luxury of the hotel, and a sign that the Cross of Christ is not alien in any place. He noted that in the very same ballroom a month earlier, Time magazine had held its gaudy anniversary dinner, piling honors upon those who had graced its cover. “Some may have been truly great, but were they saints?” he asked. The difference between the two is the difference between what is chosen. “The difference between those who are great and the saints is their embrace of the Cross.”
While Father Rutler was preaching in the Waldorf, the Brooklyn chaplain of Communion and Liberation was leading the Stations of the Cross at another great New York landmark, the Brooklyn Bridge. At the annual event, Father Ronald Marino leads a large group, the majority of them young, across the bridge toward St. James Cathedral in Brooklyn. In the midst of the traffic and noise of the Brooklyn Bridge, the Cross of Christ is proclaimed. “No space is beyond the sacred,” said Father Marino, “Christ belongs everywhere, even on the Brooklyn Bridge.”
To choose the Cross on Good Friday in New York is to choose very deliberately indeed. And for those young people on the Brooklyn Bridge, or their fellow pilgrims at the Waldorf, it is to choose in the face of a worldliness and wealth that refuses to worship a king who is nailed to his throne.
In New York the sacred and the sinful grow together like the wheat and the tares. An overflowing congregation packed St. Patrick's Cathedral, and knelt as Cardinal O'Connor, prince of the Church, prostrated himself before the large naked cross that dominates the sanctuary on Good Friday. It is only princes of Church who prostrate themselves. Princes of the world do not. While he did so, the great organ of St. Patrick's was silent. The great crowd was silent. Like the great crowd of silent witnesses in heaven, they knew what was happening.
They were not silent at Yankee Stadium. The traffic did not stop on the Brooklyn Bridge. The stores and restaurants in the Waldorf did not close. They were not silent on Fifth Avenue. At the end of the liturgy, the great doors of St. Patrick's were thrown open, and the Cross of Christ could be seen from the street. The faithful leaving St. Patrick's are greeted by the giant statue of Atlas across Fifth Avenue at Rockefeller Center. Standing in the nave of St. Patrick's on Good Friday is to stand exactly between Atlas and the Cross. Between the fallen god, who struggles and strains to carry the world on his back, and the God-Man who peacefully lays down on the Cross to be lifted up, so that He may draw the world to Himself.
The nave of St. Patrick's Cathedral is a good place to be on Good Friday. To stand between Atlas and the Cross. And to choose.
Raymond de Souza, a seminarian, writes from Rome.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymonde J.De Souza ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: AVatican II Examination of Conscience DATE: 03/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 28 - April 3, 1999 ----- BODY:On March 1, the Holy Father addressed those associated with the work of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, which recently held an assembly. Following are excerpts from his remarks:
As the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: “Confirmation perfects baptismal grace; it is the sacrament which gives the Holy Spirit in order to root us more deeply in the divine filiation, incorporate us more firmly into Christ, strengthen our bond with the Church, associate us more closely with her mission, and help us to bear witness to Christian faith in words accompanied by deeds” (No. 1316). The “new creature,” reborn by baptismal grace, becomes a witness to the new life in the Spirit and a herald of God's great works. “The confirmed person,” explains St. Thomas, “receives the power to profess faith in Christ publicly and, as it were, officially (quasi ex officio)” (Summa Theologiae III, 72, 5, ad 2; cf. Catechism, no. 1305).
“Lay people: confessors of the faith in today's world,” the theme chosen for your plenary assembly, contains a whole plan of life: to become “confessors of the faith” in word and deed. Is this not a providential invitation to the lay faithful on the threshold of the third millennium of the Christian era?
On the eve of the Jubilee, in this particular kairos, the whole Church is called to present herself humbly before the Lord, to make a serious examination of conscience, to resume the journey of profound conversion, of Christian maturity, of faithful adherence to Christ in holiness and truth, the journey of authentic witness to the faith.
This examination of conscience must also include the reception given to the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council — the ecclesial event which has most greatly marked our century — as well as to its enlightening teaching on the dignity, vocation and mission of lay people.
What Have I Done With My Baptism?
The Jubilee therefore spurs every lay Christian to ask himself some fundamental questions: What have I done with my Baptism? How am I responding to my vocation? What have I done with my Confirmation? Have I made the gifts and charisms of the Spirit bear fruit? Is Christ the “Thou” always present in my life? Am I fully and deeply a member of the Church, mystery of missionary communion, as willed by her Founder and as realized in her living Tradition?
In my decisions, am I faithful to the truth taught by the Church's Magisterium? Is my marital, family and professional life imbued with Christ's teaching? Is my social and political involvement based on Gospel principles and the social doctrine of the Church? What contribution do I make to creating ways of life more worthy of man and to inculturating the Gospel amid the great changes taking place?
With the Second Vatican Council, “the great gift of the Spirit to the Church at the end of the second millennium” (Tertio millennio adveniente, No. 36), we have experienced the grace of a renewed Pentecost. Many signs of hope have sprung from it for the Church's mission; I have never failed to point them out, to emphasize and to encourage them.
I am thinking, among other things, of the rediscovery and appreciation of the charisms which have fostered a more vital communion between the different vocations given to the People of God, of renewed zeal for evangelization, of the advancement of lay people and their participation and co-responsibility in the life of the Christian community, of their apostolate and their service in society. At the dawn of the new millennium, these signs encourage us to expect a mature and fruitful epiphany of the laity.
At the same time, however, how can we ignore the fact that unfortunately many Christians, forgetful of their baptismal commitments, live in indifference, yielding to compromise with the secularized world? How can we not mention those faithful who, while active in their own way in the ecclesial communities, are attracted to the relativism of contemporary culture and find it difficult to accept the Church's doctrinal and moral teachings, to which every person is called to adhere?
I hope, then, that the laity will not shirk this examination of conscience, so that they can pass through the Holy Door of the third millennium strengthened in the truth and holiness of authentic disciples of Jesus Christ.
“You are the salt of the earth. … You are the light of the world. … Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:13-16). The world needs the witness of “new men” and “new women” who, in word and deed, make Christ present in an ever more powerful way, for Christ is the only complete and super-abundant answer to the longing for truth and happiness in the human heart. He is the “cornerstone” for building a more human civilization.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Pope John Paul II ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: A Peace and Justice Examination of Conscience DATE: 03/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 28 - April 3, 1999 ----- BODY:by THE BISHOPS OF THE UNITED STATES
In their national meeting last November, the U.S. bishops addressed the topic of the role of the Christ's faithful in their document, Everyday Christianity: To Hunger and Thirst for Justice: Following are excerpts:
Social justice and the common good are built up or torn down day by day in the countless decisions and choices we make. This vocation to pursue justice is not simply an individual task — it is a call to work with others to humanize and shape the institutions that touch so many people. The lay vocation for justice cannot be carried forward alone, but only as members of a community called to be the “leaven” of the Gospel …
The Family
We demonstrate our commitment to the Gospel by how we spend our time and money, and whether our family life includes an ethic of charity, service and action for justice. The lessons we teach our children through what we do as well as what we say determines whether they care for the “least among us” and are committed to work for justice. …
The Workplace
Workers are called to pursue justice. In the Catholic tradition, work is not a burden, not just how we make a living … Decisions made at work can make important contributions to an ethic of justice.
Corporate Environments
Owners, managers, and investors [can] seek justice and pursue peace. Ethical responsibility is not just avoiding evil, but doing right, especially for the weak and vulnerable. Decisions about the use of capital have moral implications: Are they creating and preserving quality jobs at living wages? Are they building up community through the goods and services they provide? Do policies and decisions reflect respect for human life and dignity, promote peace and preserve God's creation? …
The Marketplace
As consumers, believers can promote social justice or injustice. In an affluent culture that suggests that what we have defines who we are, we can live more simply. When we purchase goods and services, we can choose to support companies that defend human life, treat workers fairly, protect creation, and respect other basic moral values at home and abroad. We can also make conscious efforts to consume less. …
Politics
As citizens in the world's leading democracy, Catholics in the United States have special responsibilities to protect human life and dignity and to stand with those who are poor and vulnerable. We are also called to welcome the stranger, to combat discrimination, to pursue peace, and to promote the common good. Catholic social teaching calls us to practice civic virtues and offers us principles to shape participation in public life. …
Salt and Light
The Word of God calls believers to become “the salt of the earth, the light of the world.” The Pope and the bishops are called to teach and lead, but unless the Church's social teaching finds a home in the hearts and lives of Catholic women and men, our community and culture will fall short of what the Gospel requires. Our society urgently needs the everyday witness of Christians who take the social demands of our faith seriously. …
As the Third Christian Millennium approaches, the call to live our faith in everyday choices and actions remains at the heart of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. This call takes on renewed urgency as we approach the Great Jubilee, but it is not new. The task of disciples today was probably best and most simply expressed in the words of the prophet Micah: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, to love kindness and walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: 'Feminine Genius' Revealed on Good Friday DATE: 03/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 28 - April 3, 1999 ----- BODY:Every year on the evening of Good Friday, after presiding at the celebration of the Lord's Passion in St. Peter's Basilica, Pope John Paul heads across town to the ancient Coliseum to lead worshipers in praying the Stations of the Cross. Flanked by torchbearers he makes his way slowly along the 14 stations, often braving unpleasant weather.
The Way of the Cross, or Via Crucis, originated as a means of imitating pilgrims who traveled to the Holy Land to visit the places where Christ worked, taught and suffered.
It is noteworthy that all those remembered in the Way of the Cross as reaching out to Christ and consoling him in the hour of his passion were women. Mary his mother (4th station), Veronica (6th station), and the holy women of Jerusalem (8th station) offered Christ their comfort and stood by him in his suffering. Simon of Cyrene also came to Jesus' assistance, but the Gospel tells us he was conscripted into service.
In this simple devotion we perceive an instance of what Pope John Paul calls the “feminine genius.” In his 1988 apostolic letter On the Dignity and Vocation of Women, the Holy Father wrote that the “moral and spiritual strength of a woman is joined to her awareness that God entrusts the human being to her in a special way” (30). He adds in his 1995 Letter to Women: “Perhaps more than men, women acknowledge the person, because they see persons with their hearts.” And not only do they see others in their greatness and limitations, they also “try to go out to them and help them” (12).
The 6th station illustrates this point. “Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus” is one of the least historically tenable of the stations, but one of the most evocative. It recalls the stirring scene of a woman emerging from the crowds of onlookers that lined Jesus' path as he carried his cross from the Roman Praetorium towards Golgotha. According to tradition, the woman produced a cloth and wiped Jesus' face. On withdrawing the cloth she found it marked with an image of Christ's features.
Who was this woman? Was she aware that this condemned criminal was Jesus of Nazareth? Had he perhaps raised her own son from the dead, or cured her daughter's leprosy? Had she herself been healed, or exorcised or fed with loaves multiplied on the hillside? Had she listened to Jesus' preaching on God's mercy or the coming of the Kingdom and become convinced that he was indeed the Messiah, the one who was to come into the world? Or was she merely moved to compassion at the sight of a fellow human being who struggled along bearing the instrument of his own torture?
The encounter between Jesus and Veronica, like other moments commemorated in the Way of the Cross such as Jesus' three falls, appears nowhere in the Gospel accounts, which has led many to question its historicity. Yet beyond its mere materiality, this simple scene conveys a deep truth central to Christianity. Jesus taught that every good deed done to any human person, even the “least” (the poorest, least pleasant, least attractive, least virtuous), he considers as done to himself.
As Jesus painfully labored under the weight of the cross, he hardly appeared to be the same man who had preached with such assurance and authority in the Jewish synagogues, calmed the storm on the Sea of Galilee, and expelled demons from the possessed. His face, swollen from the soldiers' blows and masked with dirt, blood, spittle, and sweat, was disfigured “beyond human semblance” (Isaiah 52:14). Yet even in this wretchedness a woman recognized human dignity, and in her act of mercy discovered the Son of God.
At times we easily discover Jesus in our neighbor. Some people so reflect his goodness and humility, his holiness and warmth, that we naturally respond to them in like manner. Other times mud and spittle disfigure Jesus' face, and our neighbor's real or apparent defects conceal his presence — but he is there. He is always there, and we need to find him.
Compassion is not the exclusive domain of women, and women hold no patent on mercy. Christ's words “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36) are addressed to men and women alike. But in a world marked by self-absorption and indifference to God and neighbor, we look to the “feminine genius” to show us the way.
Father Thomas Williams is author of
Building on Solid Ground.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Thomas Williams lc ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: Marytown a Eucharistic Town DATE: 03/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 28 - April 3, 1999 ----- BODY:Earthly kings never give their subjects unlimited access. They are not granted audiences whenever they want. But at Marytown in Libertyville, Ill., subjects of the King of kings are at liberty to walk into this regal shrine at any time, any day, to visit their eucharistic Lord.
“Christus Regnat Venite Adoremus” (Christ Reigns Come Let Us Adore), reads the open invitation carved on the facade of Marytown's sizable chapel. It bids everyone to take part in the perpetual eucharistic adoration that has been ongoing since June 7, 1928.
The Beginning
The Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration of Clyde, Mo., were the shrine's custodians for the first 50 years. They built the chapel at the invitation of Cardinal George Mundelein, head of the Archdiocese of Chicago during the first International Eucharistic Congress to be held in the United States, in June 1928. The prelate accommodated 1.5 million people who attended the opening session and 850,000 who attended the closing held on the grounds of St. Mary of the Lake Seminary.
The cardinal decided the fervor of the congress should continue with a chapel of perpetual adoration. He turned to the Benedictines to establish one.
The sisters finished the chapel in 1932 on donated land that bordered the seminary grounds. They named it Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament Chapel, a title that emphasized the bond between Mary and Jesus and that would take on further significance in 1978 with the arrival of Conventual Franciscans. The friars from Kenosha, Wis., found this to be the ideal location where they could combine two ministries: perpetuation of eucharistic adoration and promotion of the Marian vision of Father Maximilian Kolbe, their patron, who was canonized in 1982.
The friars purchased the chapel from the sisters (who returned to their motherhouse in Missouri), moved their American Marytown down from Kenosha, and continued with perpetual adoration for the spiritual renewal of the world.
Eucharistic Fervor
“The move was spiritually and theologically apropos,” explained Conventual Franciscan Father John Grigus, head of the lay adoration program. “Our friars were eucharistic [back] in the 1940s; in Kenosha we had eucharistic processions through the streets.”
They immediately invited the laity to join in Marytown's perpetual adoration. At first, they came slowly. But several years ago, after Father Grigus rejuvenated the program, the number of lay adorers increased fourfold.
“Our purpose is to communicate to our adorers that everyone there represents the entire Church,” he said. “And it's also a means of evangelizing.” Regulars invite others to come.
Marytown is also the national center for the Militia of the Immaculata, founded by St. Maximilian in 1917 as a worldwide movement for evangelization. In 1997, a conference center and a retreat wing were also opened.
The Blessed Sacrament Chapel is an important stop for many visitors. Once inside, the people stand in awe at its marble interior modeled after the Basilica of St. Paul-Outside-the-Walls in Rome.
The words Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus are inscribed on the steps that lead to the altar of exposition, where Jesus is enthroned in a 5-foot-2-inch tall monstrance. It's made completely from gifts of precious jewelry. Medallions presenting symbols of the Eucharist encircle the host. A figure of Mary as Our Lady of Grace with her foot crushing the serpent forms the graceful stem.
“The monstrance speaks of our theology,” said Father Grigus. “It's a meditation piece itself.”
Below its supporting marble pedestal with angels carved in high relief, rests the tabernacle. Its main image shows Christ with four streams flowing from his pierced heart. They represent the Gospels. The four streams then divide into seven, the sacraments.
The gold-leafed baldachin, a canopylike mark of royalty, stands on eight columns of marble and appears like an immense crown high over the King's head.
A Palace
With its inspiring liturgical art and overall sumptuous beauty, the entire chapel becomes a scripturally based palace par excellence. At the same time, it reminds the people in prayer that they're in the presence of the heavenly King.
A stunning mosaic spans the arch above the sanctuary. Below the arch, near the altar of exposition, stand life-sized statues of Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament and St. Joseph, carved from single blocks of marble.
The Benedictine sisters were thoughtful builders. Latin inscriptions placed just under the red and gold coffered ceiling form a litany of eucharistic titles. The colorful stained glass windows teach the doctrines of the Eucharist. In windows high above these, choirs of angels bear sacred vessels and vestments in procession toward the altar.
Between the sets of windows, there are 14 unparalleled mosaics which portray the joys and glories of the Blessed Mother's life. Her sorrows are the focus of the adjoining Sorrowful Mother Chapel. The chapel's magnificent altar is made from 10 different marbles. The altar's frontispiece depicts Mary's immaculate heart pierced by seven swords.
Nine-foot-tall paintings of Mary's seven sorrows, expertly reproduced by the nuns from originals in the Cathedral of Antwerp, Belgium, line the walls. Stained glass windows in blues and reds honor Mary as Daughter of the Father, Mother of the Son and Spouse of the Holy Spirit. They also present her as Co-redemptrix, Advocate and Mediatrix of All Graces — titles that St. Maximilian also propagated.
Because the shrine fosters devotion to Our Lady of Fatima, the chapel contains a statue of the Blessed Mother by Jose Thedim, sculptor of the International Pilgrim Virgin statue. It is one of three original statues commissioned at Fatima.
The Passion-Kolbe Chapel has a riveting altarpiece mosaic of the suffering Christ. As the shrine is also the diocesan shrine to St. Maximilian, another mosaic represents the saint rising from the fires of Auschwitz, where he was martyred.
In the main chapel, 11-foot mosaics of four scenes from his life join Franciscan saints such as Francis, Anthony, Clare of Assisi, Margaret of Cortona and Joseph of Cupertino.
The founder of the U.S. Marytown at the original Kenosha site, Conventual Franciscan Father Dominic Szymanski, visited this chapel many times. On one occasion in 1949, he told friars, “Someday this place will be ours.” History proved him correct.
—Joseph Pronechen writes from Trumbull, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Pronechen ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: GETTING THERE DATE: 03/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 28 - April 3, 1999 ----- BODY:To reach Marytown in Libertyville, Ill., about 40 miles north of downtown Chicago:
By car: Exit Interstate 94 at Route 176 (Rockland Road). Turn west on 176 and go about 4 miles. Marytown is two blocks past Butterfield Road.
By train: From Union Station, take the Metro commuter train to either Libertyville or Mundelein (next town), then local taxi services from depot to shrine.
By plane: O'Hare International Airport to Chicago's Union Station, and Metro as above.
For more information call (847) 367-7800.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: He Sold His Soul to God DATE: 03/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 28 - April 3, 1999 ----- BODY:The Holy Spirit catches fire in unusual places. Under communism, most members of the officially sanctioned Soviet intelligentsia were Marxists, hostile to religion. The late writer-director, Andrei Tarkovsky, started out as a pampered member of that class. What led him to become a Christian is not known, but his career predictably suffered. His 1966 masterpiece, Andrei Rublev, a drama about a medieval icon painter (reviewed in the Register in November), was banned for several years, and he was pushed into exile in 1983.
“Art is born and takes hold whenever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual,” Tarkovsky wrote. He tried to show in his work how and where the numinous, invisible reality of God intersects with the ordinary physical world in which we live. He believed he could perceive the presence of the Divine through art. To him, this interaction of the seen and unseen has the logic of a dream which reveals the spiritual battles being fought around us.
The Sacrifice, winner of the Jury Prize at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival, is about a celebrity TV journalist and professor, Alexander (Erland Josephson), who learns that nuclear war is about to begin. He promises God he will give up everything he cherishes if only the world will be spared. The crisis becomes his call to a spiritual awakening.
The setting is Faro Island off the coast of Sweden, where Swedish director Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries), whose work has influenced Tarkovsky's, owns a home and has shot many of his films. It's the professor-journalist's birthday, and a small party is thrown in his honor. In attendance are family members and selected friends, including the eccentric local postman, Otto (Allan Edwall), who once was a history teacher. But the apple of Alexander's eye is his young son, nicknamed Little Man (Tommy Kjellquist), who isn't able to speak despite a recent operation.
Among the guests, there isn't much small talk. They express themselves in long, philosophical monologues during which they rarely look at each other. The air is thick with alienation and conflict although no one is willing to admit it.
Art is born and takes hold whenever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual.
Alexander isn't a religious man, yet he questions things deeply, speculating about the meaning of existence and inveighing against the materialism of the modern world. Otto is a non-Christian “mystic” who's more directly involved with the spiritual. He reads Nietzsche and collects stories about paranormal phenomena. During the unwrapping of the presents, he prophetically declares, “A gift is always a sacrifice.” And when he inexplicably faints during the party, he says, in premonition of the catastrophe to come, “It's the wing of an evil angel that touched me.”
Tarkovsky evokes the approach of the nuclear holocaust without resorting to mushroom clouds or military confrontations. Instead, Alexander's house begins to shake. The glassware tinkles, and the sound of jets is heard overhead. The guests listen to the prime minister's declaration of war and warning about disaster on television. The prospect of death evokes differing responses among them, but all wish they could relive their lives.
Alexander separates himself from the others, unexpectedly falls to his knees and recites the Lord's Prayer. He confesses to a too strong attachment to material possessions and a belief in ideas that have led him away from God. He vows to give all that up if humanity is saved. He also promises to renounce everything else he values, including his beloved son. The scene has biblical resonance. One is reminded of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac and of God the Father's offering of his only Son to redeem mankind.
Throughout the rest of the film, at key moments, we hear the sound of coins dropping to the floor. Tarkovsky uses this symbolic device to reiterate that Alexander has made a wager with God and the huge cost it will exact if his request is granted.
Only Otto is told about Alexander's holy pact. The postman suggests that the professor-journalist seek out one of his household maids, Maria (Gudrun Gisladottir), who lives near an abandoned church. It's implied she has spiritual powers that may be of help. Alexander takes Otto's advice ands sets off on a quest to assure his prayers are answered.
The Sacrifice is slow-paced. Its narrative rhythms are contemplative. The filmmaker's highly stylized methods suggest that the whole incident may be only a dream. Audiences used to fast-moving Hollywood productions may be dis-oriented, but it's worth the effort.
Tarkovsky believed that art must be more than self-expression. It must help create “a spiritual bond with others.” He wanted us to understand “the true affirmation of self is sacrifice.”
His film is also, among other things, the story of how one individual is saved. It encourages us to be like Alexander and enter into a dialogue with God about the meaning of his creation.
Few movies today challenge us to grapple directly with issues like faith, redemption and salvation. Almost alone among contemporary filmmakers, Tarkovsky and the late Polish director, Krzysztof Kielowski, devoted themselves to these themes.
Both came from communist countries where Christianity was under attack. It's worth noting that two of our most compelling witnesses to spiritual truth emerged from these crucibles of persecution.
John Prizer currently writes from Paris.
----- EXCERPT: In The Sacrifice, a former communist tells of a doomsday wager ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Videos on Release DATE: 03/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 28 - April 3, 1999 ----- BODY:Four Days in September
Four years after their 1964 coup of Brazil's elected government, the military junta suspended civil rights and freedom of the press. When demonstrations erupted, the junta reacted by kidnapping and torturing its opponents, some of whom were Marxists. Four Days in September shows how one communist group, filled with the zeal of youth, theory and revolution, decides to up the ante by kidnapping the U.S. ambassador to Brazil, Charles Burke Elbrick (Alan Arkin). This ragtag group includes both middle-class radicals and ruthless terrorists. They demand recognition and the release of 15 political prisoners. On Sept. 4, 1969, the kidnappers grab Elbrick and begin a four-day countdown that tests the nerve of the terrorists, the Brazilian government and the ambassador. Four Days is an examination of the psychology and behavior of revolutionaries who find themselves forced out of the theoretical realm into a very ugly reality. Some reveal an odd honor, others a cold cruelty; but overshadowing everything are forces that none of the parties can control.
USCC rating: adults.
Everything That Rises
Western Montana's wide, open spaces, vast sky, jagged mountains, and rugged people all make for riveting cinematography. They're also at the heart of Everything That Rises, the first film directed by actor Dennis Quaid, who also plays rancher Jim Clay. His film has the elements of the classic Western. There is a strong, laconic hero, Jim, whose self-containment threatens to distance him from his family and a tough but loving wife, Kiley (Mare Winningham), who has little problem in confronting her husband about this. There is a dissatisfied son, Nathan (Ryan Merriman), and a loyal ranch hand, Garth (Harve Presnell), who is savvy about the outside world. Quaid has updated these familiar elements to the late '90s — the family's cattle ranch is under threat from a housing developer. Complicating all this is a disastrous accident that places nearly intolerable stress on the Clay family. By no means is Everything That Rises a classic. Rather, it's a gorgeously shot family film that teaches the usual lessons about love, loyalty and family commitment.
Maborosi
The Japanese word “maborosi” can be translated as a mysterious, even beguiling light that shines far out to sea. It is the key concept of the film called Maborosi, although the title's significance doesn't emerge until the movie is almost over. Until then, this subtitled film slowly follows the life of Yumiko and her small son, Yuichi. The young Yumiko has been a happy wife, taking delight in her husband, Ikuo, their baby son and their life in Osaka. But, one day, Ikuo commits suicide for no apparent reason. Yumiko is bewildered and devastated. Her practical mother reminds Yumiko of her obligations to her son, and life slowly moves on. Four years later, the young widow consents to a second marriage with a widower. The new husband lives in a remote fishing village on the Sea of Japan, so mother and son travel on a cold, winter day to join Tamio and his daughter. As spring arrives, Yumiko slowly warms to her husband and her new life, but her sadness about Ikuo hasn't been resolved, and she distances herself from Tamio. In the end, he illuminates her bewilderment and gives her a new chance at happiness.
— Loretta G.Seyer
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Loretta G.Seyer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Rapper's Gift Saves Church School DATE: 03/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 28 - April 3, 1999 ----- BODY:NEW ORLEANS — An entertainment mogul who built his fortune on “gangsta rap” has stepped forward to save his dying Catholic elementary school.
Percy “Master P” Miller, who now reigns as a multimillionaire gangsta rap impresario with interests in movies, clothing and professional sports, has quietly donated $500,000 to St. Monica and two nearby Catholic churches.
Church officials had decided earlier this month to close St. Monica's after 75 years, sending its 125 students a nearby school. Distressed parents were searching for a last option when St. Monica's school board president put in a call to P for help.
“I graduated from St. Monica,” P said. “That school's been in my community all my life, that's the church that I'm committed to.”
Miller, 28, emerged from the B.W. Cooper Housing Development in the early 1990s to become Master P, rap star.
His company, No Limit, is the highest-grossing independent rap label in the nation. Last year, Forbes magazine ranked P tenth on its list of highest-paid entertainers, ahead of Celine Dion and Garth Brooks, with an estimated income of $56 million.
While Archdiocese of New Orleans officials were initially concerned about accepting a gift from a rapper, Auxiliary Bishop Gregory Aymond said he spoke directly with Master P and was assured by him that his days as a solo rap artist were over. However, his core business, the No Limit label, is still founded on rap music.
“He kept saying ‘I love my Church,’ said Bishop Aymond. I want my kids to have opportunities I didn't have.”
St. Monica's school educates students who are overwhelmingly black and poor, coming from families paying tuitions ranging from $1,400 to $1,700 per year, officials said.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: EDUCATION NOTEBOOK DATE: 03/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 28 - April 3, 1999 ----- BODY:Just What the Cardinal Ordered: A Tax Credit
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL, March 18—After hearing the testimony of Cardinal Francis George and others at hearings, leaders of the Illinois House “engaged in political maneuvering to ensure the passage of a controversial measure giving income tax credits to the parents of children who attend parochial and other private schools,” reported UPI.
The House voted 74-41 for a state income tax credit of up to $500 per year for parents who pay at least $2,500 per year toward their children's' educational expenses, said the report.
“The bill was the focus of an intense lobbying effort this spring by the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago. The archdioceses says its private school system faces further financial problems unless it can increase enrollment,” said the article.
Cardinal Francis George appeared at the Statehouse earlier this week to urge lawmakers to back the idea, saying he thinks tax credits could persuade more parents to put their children into private schools, it reported.
Student Uprising
One Canadian Catholic school district has fallen on such hard times, students have resorted to civil disobedience, reported the Toronto Star. At one school in the Peel Catholic school district, 25 of 127 teachers have resigned, and students protested by refusing to wear their school uniforms, and making a list of complaints, said the story.
Those same complaints have been heard at all 18 high schools in the district:
● 112 of the district's 1,504 teachers have resigned to take jobs elsewhere.
● Students and staff say they are demoralized.
● Students have been without extracurricular activities for much of the school year.
● Discipline, security, and supervision has eroded.
● Unqualified instructors and even senior students have been pressed into service to supervise classes and lunch rooms.
Vince Nichilo, superintendent of employee relations for the Peel Catholic board, shared their disillusionment.
“I can tell you this is a frustration shared by all board employees,” Nichilo said.
“We have an aggressive teacher recruitment campaign to ensure that qualified teachers are in place for our students,” he told the newspaper.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: LIFE NOTES DATE: 03/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 28 - April 3, 1999 ----- BODY:Dr. Death Has Another Day In Court
The trial was scheduled to open Mar. 22 and this time Kevorkian is charged with first-degree murder — not assisted suicide — in connection with the videotaped death of Thomas Youk. CBS's 60 Minutes aired the tape in November. “If he is convicted,” the report said, “Kevorkian could face life in prison.” “If Kevorkian is acquitted, opponents — and even some supporters — of assisted suicide worry that the jury will send the message that it's OK for physicians to administer fatal drugs to patients,” said the magazine. “The reason: This time, Kevorkian isn't merely arguing that doctors should be allowed to assist dying patients; he's arguing they should be the ones to do the deed, as he did when he injected the 52-year-old Youk with deadly drugs.”
Pro-Lifers Say Bush Isn't Pro-Life
STEUBENVILLE, Ohio—At a family reunion, two cousins talked about why, in their early 30s, neither of them is married yet. “I have no desire to marry,” mused the first. “And I have no one to marry,” countered the other.
In an age when illegitimate child-bearing creeps lower and lower, the age of married parenting continues to climb. According to U.S. Bureau of Census figures, the median age at first marriage was about 20 years in the 1950s, and about 25 years now. Headlines tell of Tony Randall becoming a father for the first time in his 70s, and a woman long past menopause becoming pregnant by artificial means. Parenting later in life, it seems, is “in.”
Later marriage was part of the eugenic utopia envisioned by Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. This raises the question of whether the trend toward later marriage and later parenting represents the successful “Sangerization” of U.S. society.
To some extent, yes, but to some extent, no, said Janet E. Smith, a philosophy professor at the University of Dallas. Smith, who has written and lectured extensively on the social and moral impact of artificial birth control, observed, “There are lots of complicated reasons that people get married later.”
Young adults living in a contraceptive culture are sometimes conditioned to value achievement to the exclusion of all else, Smith insisted. They “feel no desire to marry,” she noted. “There's something wrong with a culture that doesn't know that parenthood is something valuable to aim for.”
Another factor often cited for late marriages is the complexity of a society that requires higher education for many people. In years gone by, a high school degree sufficed for entry into the work-place, and not everyone had that. Now, many jobs require qualifications that go far beyond a bachelor's degree.
Even after graduate-level work is completed, paying off student loans can present a practical impediment to marriage for years. For young adults delaying marriage and struggling with chastity, contraception becomes a powerful temptation. When such people do get married later on, the aftereffects of contraceptives and abortions, plus the effect of the woman's advanced age itself, can present fertility problems.
Courtship Is Tougher
Not everyone, of course, delays marriage and parenting for Sangerian motives. Many simply cannot find a suitable spouse. Ageneration ago, parish picnics, community functions and parental supervision created situations in which young men and women could meet, get to know one another, and move toward marriage in a healthy and natural way. Now, social lives may gravitate toward bars and Internet chat rooms.
“We have destroyed courtship in this culture,” Smith maintained. “For young people who want to remain chaste [while looking for a spouse], our culture doesn't tell them what to do.”
One such person who remained chaste before her later-in-life marriage is Janet Thompson of Scottsdale, Ariz., who married her husband, Marc, when she was 34.
“I had a deep desire to be married, but there was no opportunity for many years,” Thompson recalled. “I realized that it wasn't God's will to fulfill the desire in my heart at that time. I didn't know if that desire would ever be filled. So I sought the Lord's will in other areas, including higher education and apostolic opportunities. From these I was greatly enriched and prepared for the marriage the Lord had prepared for me.
“The only drawback is that the student loans from following the Lord's will have forced us to delay starting our family, which we are most anxious to begin.” Thompson cited natural family planning as a marriage-builder during this time.
The geographical isolation experienced by so many families today is also a contributing factor. Years ago, when the parents, grandparents and cousins were clustered in the same town or neighborhood, there was more support for family life and more direct experience of it. Today, instead, it is common to find “30-year-old fathers in parenting classes, holding a baby for the first time,” Smith remarked.
Growing Up Slower?
Later parenting has a generally deleterious effect on society, Smith maintained. Not only is society deprived of the many children who would otherwise have been conceived and raised, she said, “we as a culture are deprived of adult input. If you have children younger, you grow up faster. Parents are concerned about school systems, communities, colleges and spending issues.” Fewer parents, then, translates into less general concern.
Not all older parents are parenting for the first time, of course. Gerry and Joan McKeegan of Bloomingdale, Ohio, had their first child at ages 28 and 26, respectively, and their eighth exactly 20 years later.
“We do see a difference between parenting at a younger age and parenting when you're older,” Joan observed. “With the older kids, we were more physically active. We took them boating and skiing. Now, we let the grown kids do these kinds of things with the growing ones.”
While older parents are limited in some ways, she said he believes they are more effective in others: “I think that we are able to provide a smoother home life for the younger children, because most of the emotional ups and downs of family life have by now been resolved. We're also more attentive to our children's spiritual needs than we were before.”
The double-edged sword of later parenting is experienced by another category of “later parents” as well — grandparents who are being recruited in droves to take over the parenting responsibilities of their grown children dealing with drug addiction, divorce or other personal problems. The difficulty of raising grandchildren poses its own problems.
“He knows we are his grandparents, but he calls us ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad,’” said one couple raising their grandson while his abandoned mother spends decades in rehab. “It wasn't so bad when he was smaller. We could take him to the park and play with him. Now that he is in high school, we just can't keep up. Every year he has more energy, and we have less! We'd like to go to all his games and things like supportive parents should, but for us, it's just impossible.”
The trend toward later parenting can also be seen within the context of “delayed vocations” as a whole. Even people entering religious life these days are doing so later and later. Maximilian Kolbe, early this century, entered the Franciscan order at age 14, a not uncommon age to make a life commitment at the time. Now, men are becoming priests in their 30s, 40s, even 60s.
Whatever the motive for late marriages, the Catholic Church strongly upholds the value of fruitfulness in a marriage.
In the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI echoed the teaching of the Second Vatican Council when he wrote: “Finally, this love is fecund. It is not confined wholly to the loving interchange of husband and wife; it also contrives to go beyond this to bring new life into being. ‘Marriage and conjugal love are by their nature ordained toward the procreation and education of children. Children are really the supreme gift of marriage and contribute in the highest degree to their parents' welfare’” (No. 8).
Helen Valois writes from Steubenville, Ohio.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Helen M.Valois ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: LIFE NOTES DATE: 03/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 28 - April 3, 1999 ----- BODY:What Do the Statistics Mean?
As part of a regular Newsweek poll, Princeton Survey Research Associates asked a series of questions about abortion in late 1998. The response to one question—"Do you personally believe that abortion is wrong?" — seemed to indicate strong support for the pro-life view. A total of 57% of the public answered that abortion is wrong.Thirty-six percent said abortion is not wrong.
But, according to the report, “the very next question found results that the pro-choice side couldn't help but like:‘Whatever your own personal view of abortion, do you favor or oppose a woman in this country having the choice to have an abortion with the advice of her doctor?’ On this question, 69% said they favor a woman having the choice to have an abortion. Only 24% said no.”
How can these two sets of numbers be reconciled? Isn't the public taking two opposing views on abortion at the same time? asked the article.
Its answer:The public is listening to the exact questions and giving a nuanced set of answers.Poorly stated or slanted questions simply generate confusing and often meaningless results, it said. It's impossible to understand a poll's findings without knowing the exact wording of the questions.
So what is the best thing to do? “The next time someone quotes a poll to you, make sure you ask:‘What was the question?’” suggests the report.
N.Y. Gov. Urges Removal of GOP Plank on Abortion
The plank in question reads, in part, “The unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed,”according to the report. It goes on to call for a constitutional amendment banning abortions.
Said the report, Pataki said that the platform should recognize “diverse opinions” on abortion.In a report by the Associated Press, Pataki said, "Where there are differences, such as on the question of abortion, I think we should just recognize … the existence of a diversity of opinion, tolerate that diversity of opinion and have a big-tent type of philosophy.”
But in 1990, when Pataki, then a state assemblyman and chairman of the state GOP platform committee, set off a battle with other party members when he fought to have an anti-abortion plank removed from the state platform, said the report.The battle led to a poor GOP showing in that fall's gubernatorial election, won by the Democrat, Mario Cuomo.
Minnesota Law Fuels a Hot Debate
“The rules require doctors to pinpoint why patients want abortions by using a 10-point checklist that includes motives ranging from "emotional health" to "economics" to "does not want children at this time." Doctors must also record the number of abortions they perform, in addition to post-abortion complications and the woman's method of payment,” it said.
Although the new requirements took effect last year, the state health department won't begin compiling the data until April 1, it said. But pro-life groups that helped push the reporting law through last year's legislative session hope the new data yield a better understanding of abortion. "If we could find out why women are having abortions, maybe there is a way to address the issue in terms of public policy," says Jackie Schwietz of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, told the magazine. She hopes the law becomes a model for other states.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Indians Demand Legal Assisted Suicide DATE: 03/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 28 - April 3, 1999 ----- BODY:KOLLAM, India—Four old men are demanding assisted suicide be legalized in India, and their lawyer's office is flooded with letters from hundreds of other senior citizens who support them.
There is little expectation the lawsuits will overturn India's ban on euthanasia and physician-assisted suicides, but attorney Vincent Panikulangara says the case underlines the problems of elderly care in India.
Experts say the elderly are increasingly neglected and isolated, particularly in the southern state of Kerala where the right-to-die suits began.
By 2020, India will have 145 million people 60 or older, says the British-based HelpAge International, an aid group that has a wide network in India.
The issue is most acute in Kerala, a state of 30 million people where the success of primary health programs has meant people live far longer compared to elsewhere in India.
Life expectancy for all of India averages 59 years, but in Kerala the average is 70. Almost 7% of India's citizens are elderly — 65 million in a population of nearly 1 billion — while 20% of Kerala's people are elderly.
That is part of the reason Kerala is India's suicide hub: Every hour, on average, one person commits suicide and nine people try to kill themselves, the state government reports say. Nearly 9,000 suicides were recorded in 1997.
“Old people are discarded by their descendants. Their property is grabbed by their relatives. … I see this all around me,” said 69-year-old Mukundan Pillai, a retired teacher who is one of the men who has gone to court seeking to legalize assisted suicide.
Pillai is healthy and mentally alert and his grown sons live close by. He has no immediate plans to die, but he says he must plan for a possible lonely future.
In a country where people rarely talk about death, Pillai shocked his family when he declared he was filing his assisted-suicide petition.
Pillai, who lives in Kollam, a small trading town 1,350 miles south of New Delhi, said the lack of help for the elderly is at the root of his suit. “Either the government should help them live, or it should help them die,” he said.
There are few government programs in India that especially target old people.
The federal minister for social justice, Maneka Gandhi, announced plans in January to develop a national program to provide senior citizens with pensions, health insurance, housing and other help. But it could take years for the idea to be discussed and enacted into law. And many people question whether India can afford such programs.
(Pro-Life Infonet)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Woman Seeks 'Right to Die' in Australia DATE: 03/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 28 - April 3, 1999 ----- BODY:SYDNEY—Australia's simmering euthanasia debate is set to be reignited this week when a terminally ill cancer patient features in a television commercial threatening suicide and pleading for the right to die.
Mother-of-four June Burns, 59, says if no one helps her to die, she will kill herself.
“I don't want to have to kill myself, but if nobody can help me, I'm going to have to,” the newspaperSydney Sun-Herald said. Burns, who is suffering from bladder cancer, says she takes 20 pills a day, including three doses of morphine, but the pain remains.
The advertisements were made for the Voluntary Euthanasia Society of New South Wales. Australia has been at the forefront of the campaign to legalize assisted suicide and in 1997 an Australian man became the world's first to die by legally sanctioned euthanasia.
Under the Northern Territory legislation, two doctors had to confirm that a patient was terminally ill and suffering unbearable pain before life could be ended. A psychiatrist had to confirm that the patient was not suffering a treatable clinical depression.
Three people took advantage of the pro-assisted suicide law before it was defeated in a conscience vote by Australia's upper house senate in March last year after fierce condemnation from the Vatican, politicians, local church leaders and prominent Aboriginals.
The Catholic Church said Burns was being exploited for political gain. “Facing death is a very traumatic business. What people need at the time they are facing that trauma is support and encouragement,” said Brian Lucas, spokesman for the Catholic Church in Sydney.
“They need the privacy of their loved ones around them. They don't need to be exploited by organizations who are looking for a political agenda.”
(Pro-Life Infonet)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 03/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 28 - April 3, 1999 ----- BODY:In his ad limina remarks to bishops from California, Nevada, and Hawaii, Pope John Paul II pointed to the pro-life responsibilities of bishops. (See story about English Bishops on this page.)
We are coming to the end of a century which began with confidence in humanity's prospects of almost unlimited progress, but which is now ending in widespread fear and moral confusion. If we want a springtime of the human spirit, we must rediscover the foundations of hope. Above all, society must learn to embrace once more the great gift of life, to cherish it, to protect it, and to defend it against the culture of death, itself an expression of the great fear that stalks our times. One of your most noble tasks as Bishops is to stand firmly on the side of life, encouraging those who defend it and building with them a genuine culture of life.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Did You Know? DATE: 03/28/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: March 28 - April 3, 1999 ----- BODY:Making contraception more available has often been touted as an effective way to prevent “unwanted pregnancies” and abortion. But not only have births to unwed mothers and abortion sky-rocketed with the widespread use of the Pill, statisticians hired by abortion businesses have researched the field and expect it to happen.
“A high correlation between abortion experience and contraceptive experience can be expected in populations to which both contraception and abortion are available … women who have practiced contraception are more likely to have had abortions than those who have not practiced contraception, and women who have had abortions are more likely to have been contraceptors than women without a history of abortion.
Dr. Christopher Tietze, “Abortion and Contraception.” Abortion: Readings and Research. Butterworth & Company., Toronto, Canada. 1981, Pages 54 to 60.
----- EXCERPT: Facts of Life ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Vatican and Allies Stall Rich Nations At U.N. Meeting DATE: 04/11/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: April 11-17, 1999 ----- BODY:NEWYORK—What was supposed to be the final session of the United Nations' meeting on population stalled March 31 at 1 a.m. after the Vatican and Third World allies opposed U.N. committee proposals during marathon, 15-hour negotiations.
The March 24-31 meeting on population and development was meant to prepare a final document for the U.N. General Assembly that would guide the implementation of population policies first set down in Cairo, Egypt, in 1994.
Delegates of the Holy See and the Group of 77, an organization of 133 nations from the developing world, argued for more medicine and relief to poor countries. They opposed attempts by delegates of the United States and the European Union to stress ideological and contraceptive concerns. According to the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, headquartered in United Nations Plaza, these included attempts to:
• Make “sexual and reproductive rights” equal to human rights.
• Provide “sexual and reproductive rights” for adolescents as young as 10 years old.
• Allow exceptions for “emergency contraception,” against current bans on abortion-as-contraception.
The meeting presented many of the same challenges to the Vatican and pro-life organizations that they had faced five years earlier in Cairo. The March “preparatory committee” meeting in New York will have to be revisited in May and will culminate in the so-called Cairo+5 Conference this summer. In a related meeting, the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women revisited 1995's Beijing conference (see story, Page 18).
“A disproportionate amount of attention has been given to a very limited understanding of reproductive health,” said Bishop James T. McHugh on March 24, representing the Holy See at the weeklong meeting. Bishop McHugh, a veteran of the 1994 Cairo conference, argued that not enough attention is being paid to health, education, the family, the aging and migrants.
The bishop was proved right as most member states voted against a Holy See-sponsored provision seeking basic social services for refugees and migrants, including access to health care, clean water and sanitation. The Holy See was rebuffed by most delegations, including the United States, when it asked for help in getting the clause in to a document it was preparing for the summer conference.
Bishop McHugh, coadjutor bishop of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, N.Y., made it clear at the meeting that the Holy See has not changed its moral position against abortion, contraception, sterilization or the use of condoms in HIV/AIDS prevention. But its 12 members tried to focus attention on issues such as stable family life and educational opportunities for children.
Delegates to the meeting generally lined up along a north-south polarity, with wealthy, secular countries facing off with poor, Catholic or Islamic nations on many of the same hot-button issues that were debated in Cairo, particularly those having to do with reproduction.
Many of the pro-life organizations participating in the meeting still see a bleak picture in the population control movement. Dr. John C. Willke, president of the International Right to Life Federation, pointed out that in southeast Africa, AIDS and other factors have lowered the life expectancy from 60 to 37 years of age.
“Yet we are still imposing birth control on them,” he said.
Willke commented that over the past five years, “the U.S. has pushed with great compulsion the radical pro-abortion, anti-family, feminist, homosexual agenda under the guise of population control.”
Missionaries interviewed by the Register shared much the same view.
A disproportionate amount of attention has been given to a very limited understanding of reproductive health...
Salesian Father John Thompson, who has worked in Liberia and Sierra Leone since 1980, said West Africa experienced a boom in population in the 1980s but not in the past decade, when contraceptives from abroad were “all over the place,” he said.
“NGOs [non-governmental organizations] give out condoms left and right,” he told the Register. “There's been a massive push in the past 10 years.”
Most non-governmental organizations are interested in treating disease, not just in curbing population, in Father Thompson's estimation. But pro-life observers such as U.N. lobbyist Mary Meaney find the contraceptive push to be in overdrive. While in Kenya recently, she found a woman lying on the side of the road in need of medical attention. Driving her five hours to a hospital, she could find no doctors and no medicine, but the hospital did have about 75,000 condoms on hand.
Some Muslim, African and Asian delegates to the U.N. meeting worked to get sexual “rights” considerations out of the document, while Canada called for consideration of sexual orientation and the European Union advanced language supporting “reproductive rights” for adolescents as young as 10 years old.
“Our greatest concern is language about emergency and post-coital contraception, which we see as abortive,” said Msgr. James M. Reinert, an attaché to the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations. “We're willing to admit that it may not always be abortive, but the other side is not willing to admit that it is sometimes abortive. They insist it's only contraceptive.”
The World Health Organization takes the latter view, but pro-life lobbyists pointed out that some contraceptives allow a human egg to be fertilized but prevent the resulting zygote, the first stage of human development, to be implanted in the womb.
“Sperm swims to the ovum in as little as 30 minutes,” Willke told the Register. “A woman can be pregnant before she gets out of bed.”
The Church's stand was appreciated by many delegations which are “getting mighty tired hearing the constant calls for reproductive rights,” said Austin Ruse, director of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute. “There are much bigger problems people have to deal with, such as in the area of development.”
For poor people in the Sierra Leone countryside, children are not a burden but a blessing, said Father Thompson. They are security to elderly parents, and a family might have seven or eight children, anticipating loss of some to war and disease. Even natural family planning is a tough sell, the missionary said.
Funding was also a contentious issue at the meeting. Commitments made at the Cairo Conference have fallen short, and the report on the March meeting will ask for more money.
The Holy See and Nicaragua introduced language, written by a Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute-led coalition, that would limit family planning money to voluntary programs, with a narrow definition of “voluntary.” Similar to a bill introduced into the U.S. Congress last fall by Rep. Todd Tiahrt, RKan., the resolution seeks to remove coercive elements from funding.
But, again, the Holy See was unsuccessful.
“There would be no quotas, no schedules, no timetables, no promises of food or medicine,” Ruse said of the proposal. “It says that other aid can't be based on acceptance of family planning programs. So, for example, the U.S. wouldn't be able to say to another government, ‘We'll give you a million dollars worth of food, but you have to take a million dollars worth of condoms.’”
Such a resolution could help poor countries that are vulnerable to the pressure of countries like the United States. “If you are a small, Third World country, you'd jolly well do what the wealthy nations want you to do or you won't get the help you need,” Willke commented.
In Nigeria, for example, the government “will take anything as long as it's not paying for it,” in the view of one observer from that nation, which is struggling with democratic reforms.
Nigeria is vulnerable to foreign pharmaceutical companies, who sell watered-down drugs there, according to Father Charles Imokhai, who has spent most of his 31 years as a priest in the African nation. “Typhoid is very easy to treat, but if you are handing out drugs that are not genuine, it's deadly,” he told the Register.
There is not enough medical care for children, but primary care clinics promote contraceptives, Father Imokhai observed. Condoms brought into the country to fight AIDS are later promoted for birth control.
Father Imokhai, who has ministered in New York since 1995, would rather see more attention paid to proper trash removal in the big cities of Nigeria and sanitary water in the countryside.
John Burger writes from New York.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Burger ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Assault on Serbs Stirs Catholic Blitz DATE: 04/11/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: April 11-17, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—At the highest levels of the Church in Rome and in the United States, and in the largest Catholic charity organizations in the world, Catholics responded quickly to the crisis in Kosovo when NATO forces began bombing Serbian targets March 24.
Pope John Paul II and U.S. cardinals worked separately to find avenues of peace, and Catholic agencies delivered aid to help some of the tens of thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees fleeing war-ravaged homes and Serbian atrocities throughout Holy Week and Easter Week.
The Vatican responded quickly after the bombing began. Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican secretary of state, convened an urgent meeting March 30 attended by ambassadors of 16 NATO and U.N. Security Council nations to plead the case for an end to military operations. He called for immediate delivery of humanitarian aid and the setting up of a new peace process involving the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
The next day Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, assistant secretary of state for relations with states, flew to Belgrade, Yugoslavia, to meet April 1 with top religious and civil authorities and deliver a personal message from Pope John Paul II to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
Cardinals Lobby Clinton
Citing the Holy See's suggestions to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the U.N. Security Council, all eight American cardinals called U.S. allies and Milosevic to return to the negotiating table. They urged an immediate end to the Kosovo war and convocation of a peace conference.
“The efforts of these negotiations must seek to guarantee the populations of Kosovo a degree of autonomy which respects their legitimate aspirations, according to history and law,” they said.
In separate letters to Milosevic and U.S. President Clinton, the cardinals quoted the Pope's words: “There is always time for peace. It is never too late to meet again and negotiate.”
The letters were sent out by Cardinal Bernard F. Law of Boston, who released the texts at a press conference in Boston on April 1.
“The rhetoric and actions of war will not bring all the parties to a negotiating table without further, incalculable loss,” Cardinal Law told journalists.
The letter to Milosevic urged “an immediate cessation of Serbian military and police operations against the population of Kosovo and your government's cooperation in accord with international conventions with those agencies wishing to provide emergency assistance to the population of Kosovo.”
The cardinals added, “At the same time, we have written to President Clinton asking for a cessation of NATO bombing.”
To Clinton the cardinals expressed “profound concern for the deteriorating situation in the Balkan region.”
They acknowledged that the NATO military intervention followed Yugoslavia's “regrettable refusal” to accept compromise peace proposals that would restore autonomy to Kosovo, but they added, “The unfolding human tragedy demands immediate attention.”
They told Clinton they had asked Milosevic to halt all military and police operations against Kosovars. “We ask you to use your influence to bring about a cease-fire,” they added.
Besides Cardinal Law, signers of the letters were Cardinals John J. O'Connor of New York, Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles, William H. Keeler of Baltimore, James A. Hickey of Washington, Anthony J. Bevilacqua of Philadelphia, Adam J. Maida of Detroit and Francis E. George of Chicago.
In a separate statement March 31, Bishop Joseph A. Fiorenza of Galveston-Houston, president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, called for an immediate halt to Yugoslavia's “unjustifiable and intolerable aggression and ethnic cleansing by Kosovar civilians,” to be followed by suspension of NATO's bombing campaign.
He called for Yugoslavia to open its doors immediately to international agencies, relief organizations and human rights monitors, and urged a peace process that would include protection of minority rights and enforcement by an international peacekeeping force.
Kosovar Catholics
There had been no news for more than a week from three Franciscan friars of the Djakovica monastery in Kosovo, located just a few miles from the Albanian border. According to the Holy See's agency Fides, the Serbs occupied the monastery to defend themselves from the NATO bombings directed against nearby military structures.
There are eight Franciscan friaries in the war zone, some in areas bombed by NATO. Others, like that of Djakovica, are close to Serbian barracks and, because of this, run the risk of being taken by force by Yugoslav soldiers. The Franciscans of Grahovica, whose monastery is near the barracks, have already had to move.
The Franciscans, who have been in the territory of former Yugoslavia for centuries, are strongly represented among the 330 men and women Catholic religious who now work in Serbia, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Rescuing Refugees
Catholic relief agencies have also increased aid to the region, especially to help stem the rising tide of refugees fleeing into neighboring countries.
As 200 tons of food and aid were being rushed by NATO troops to the refugees, forces from Britain, France and Italy were already setting up tents at Brazda, Macedonia, where eventually about 100,000 refugees will take shelter. The tent city will serve as one of two holding centers before the refugees are ferried to airports and flown to other countries.
The United States has announced that it will take in about 20,000 refugees. Other NATO members said they would receive a combined total of 100,000 others.
Baltimore-based Catholic Relief Services has pledged an additional $600,000 to its efforts to assist refugees fleeing Kosovo to Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia and Montenegro. Funds will also be targeted to reach the minority Muslim population within Yugoslavia.
The Catholic Medical Mission Board, based in New York, has announced that it will assist refugees from Kosovo and other victims of the war with medicines and medical supplies.
“We are working with Caritas Internationalis, which is coordinating relief efforts with local Caritas agencies ... in Albania, Croatia and Macedonia,” said Terry Kirch, Catholic Medical Board executive director. “We expect to be airlifting medicines and providing other assistance very soon.”
—ZENIT contributed to this story.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joe Cullen ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Crisis Puts Ecuadoreans on Edge DATE: 04/11/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: April 11-17, 1999 ----- BODY:GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador—The Catholic Church has always be seen as an influential force throughout Latin America. But its impact couldn't be greater than in Ecuador, one of South America's smallest countries.
Ecuador is the only Latin American country, in fact, that has been officially consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus by its president and Congress. And a statue of Antonio Garcia Moreno — one of the country's presidents who was murdered by Freemasons at the steps of Quito's Cathedral — is the only statue that has been erected in the garden of the Latin American College in Rome.
Some of the Catholic bishops who come from the most traditional families in the country are also related to many historical figures and among them, national heroes.
It's no surprise, then, that after social unrest almost paralyzed the country in March, social organizations looked to the Catholic bishops for guidance.
The bishops are faced with the difficult task of maintaining a critical stand against the recent neo-liberal economic reforms of the government without withdrawing their support from President Yamil Mahuad, the only man who seems capable of bringing the country out of the crisis situation.
Mahuad, the former major of Guayaquil, Ecuador's largest city, was once considered a political outsider. He entered politics late in life having first been a successful entrepreneur. He studied in the United States.
After his election, his decision to open talks with Peru to try to resolve 50-year-old border disputes received broad public support.
Last year, both countries signed a peace agreement, bringing Mahuad's popularity to its peak.
Necessary Reforms
Yet Ecuador, crippled by a bloated military budget and inefficient state-owned enterprises, needed urgent economic reform. In late February, Mahuad negotiated a restructuring of its almost $10 billion debt with the International Monetary Found and announced dramatic economic measures.
Almost from the beginning, the tax policy changed. A fixed, higher rate was established. As well, the price of gasoline was tripled in order to increase government coffers — and this in a country that produces cheap gasoline. Thousands of workers were laid off at state-owned enterprises as a first step toward privatization.
Social reaction to the new measures was swift. Few people, though, could have predicted that such unrest would paralyze the country for almost a week. In the larger cities like Quito, Guayaquil and Cuenca, taxi and bus drivers took to the streets and blocked main avenues with their vehicles, in protest against the government reforms. Truck drivers paralyzed main roads in the countryside, and in Quito and Guayaquil teachers' and health workers' unions demonstrated and clashed with police. Several political parties threatened to undo Mahuad's program unless he made important changes.
Amid the tensions, Archbishop Antonio José González Zumárraga of Quito urged the country and its people to keep working. During the worst days of the transportation crisis, the archbishop deliberately chose activities that required walking significant distances. When greeted by the people, he insisted that they go back to work.
“If all [sectors] say that they want the best for Ecuador, why is it impossible to sit around a table and reach an agreement?” asked the archbishop. “It is necessary for people to understand that, before resorting to extreme measures, we need to give a chance to the path of dialogue, of mutual understanding.”
Where to Put the Burden?
A source close to the Ecuadorean bishops' conference told the Register that the state-controlled economy endangered the country's future. Political reform was necessary for the country to survive, the source said.
For most Ecuadoreans, it remains unclear as to why suddenly their already stringent lifestyles must become even harsher. “Most of the people do not understand the relationship between reducing the state, and the future of their kids,” the source told the Register. “Such relationship indeed exist, but for many it is hard to understand [the reason for] their sacrifice.”
The bishops themselves believe there are other ways which would reduce the impact of economic reform on poorer Ecuadoreans.
“There are people who have the economic capacity to carry better the burden of the reform,” according to Bishop Antonio Arregui Yarza, secretary-general of the bishops' conference. Referring to the policy of establishing a flat tax rate, he asked, “Is it not justice to ask more of those who have more, when the common good is at stake?”
Nevertheless, the bishops are aware of another danger: the military. In a country that, until very recently, was obsessed with war, the military has been used to playing a leading role in politics and the economy — a role which it no longer plays.
Mahuad has promised to privatize most enterprises which were the property of the army, and to reduce the oil taxes directed at the army. The measures would lead to a down-sizing of the military and remove several generals' opportunity to increase their wealth, as was once the case.
Since the social unrest would be the perfect excuse for a military coup, the bishops have shown a strong commitment to preserving democracy.
Therefore it's not surprising that as much as they have called for a more humane economic policy, they have also called for unions and organizations to “keep their protests within the boundaries of a democratic, civilized system,” and to “waive disagreements in the table of dialogue and mutual understanding.”
Just before Holy Week, the Congress decided to support Mahuad's reform after the president agreed to partially reduce the price of oil products.
While political and social unrest eased during Holy Week, Ecuador's future remains uncertain. The bishops are aware that, whatever happens, they will play a decisive role.
Alejandro Bermudez is the Register's Latin America Correspondent.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Alejandro Bermudez ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Fire of Divine Mercy Is Spreading DATE: 04/11/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: April 11-17, 1999 ----- BODY:STOCKBRIDGE, Mass.— For a growing number of Catholics worldwide, and more than 725 U.S. parishes, April 11 is Divine Mercy Sunday. For Dr. Bryan Thatcher, of Valrico, Fla., who built his own apostolate around the relatively new devotion, it is also a day of thanks for the mercy he experienced firsthand.
A few years ago, Thatcher was a prominent gastroenterologist who appeared to outsiders a happy family man. But he was destroying his marriage, he admitted, and inside he was falling apart. “I was a mess, but nobody knew what was going on,” he said.
At a low point, a friend sent him literature about Divine Mercy. The message of forgiveness gave him hope, and the devotion helped him repair his marriage and himself. Thankful, in February 1996 he started a lay ministry, Eucharistic Apostles of The Divine Mercy. He has given up practicing medicine to spread the devotion through corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
His devotion is shared by a multitude. About 13,000 people are expected to attend Divine Mercy services and Masses the weekend of Divine Mercy Sunday hosted by the Marians of the Immaculate Conception in Stockbridge, Mass., where Bishop Thomas Dupré of Springfield was scheduled to celebrate the main Mass. That's up from about 500 people in the mid-1980s, according to Father George Kosicki, a priest of the Congregation of St. Basil and former director of Divine Mercy International.
“I believe it's God providing for his people today,” said Sister Isabel Bettwy, director of the Marians' National Shrine of the Divine Mercy. “It's a way of bringing his people back to him.”
Blessed Faustina
The Divine Mercy devotion stems from the reported apparitions of Jesus to a Polish nun, Blessed Faustina Kowalska, who died in 1938. In her diary, Sister Maria Faustina of the Most Blessed Sacrament recorded messages from Christ instructing people how to receive and reflect the mercy of God. Best known is the chap-let of Divine Mercy, a series of prayers that follows the structure of the rosary while emphasizing God's willingness to forgive through the sufferings of Jesus and his holy Eucharist.
According to Sister Faustina, Jesus asks people to pray the chaplet daily, and especially on the days leading up to the Sunday after Easter. He also promises “a whole ocean of graces” to those who go to confession that day, the diary states, and “complete forgiveness of sins and punishment” for those who confess and receive Communion.
Getting mercy requires giving mercy, though, and the diary quotes Jesus demanding deeds of mercy “always and everywhere.” It also requires trust in God's ability and willingness to forgive: “The more a soul trusts, the more it will receive,” the diary states.
“The message of mercy is really that of God's infinite love,” said Peter Sonski, communications director at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., which has hosted Divine Mercy Sunday services for more than 10 years. “John's Gospel says that it was because of his great love that the Father sent his only Son to suffer and die for us. No matter the depth and breadth of our sins, God's merciful love is far greater. Once we understand this, the challenge is to emulate and share that mercy with all we meet.”
No better time, say supporters, then the second Sunday of Easter. Every year, the Gospel reading is John 20:19-31, when Christ breathes on the apostles and tells them, “Those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven.”
A Devotion for the Dying
Devotees of Divine Mercy see timeliness in the liturgical calendar, but also for the current era. Robert Stackpole, academic director of the John Paul II Institute of Divine Mercy, in Stockbridge, Mass., finds mercy an alluring image for an age that has tuned out fire and brimstone.
“As the world kind of wanders farther and farther from the light of Christ — the culture of death and its rejection of Christ's principles — what's going to call it back? It's not going to be retribution and justice,” Stackpole said. “I think the message of mercy touches so much. ... When you've wandered a long way, the first thing you need is mercy.”
Among the prime candidates for grace from the devotion are the dying, according to Sister Faustina's diary. It quotes Jesus as saying that if the chap-let is prayed in the presence of someone dying, “I will stand between my Father and the dying person, not as the just Judge but as the Merciful Savior.”
Nancy Lavoie, of North Attleboro, Mass., saw the effect on her husband. Racked with cancer, he refused drugs to deaden the pain, because he was afraid it would reignite his alcoholism. Instead, he offered his sufferings to Jesus for the conversion of sinners, while his wife and friends said the chaplet daily. He died March 2, 1989, a day after his 55th birthday.
“He had an extremely peaceful exiting from this earth ... and returning home,” Lavoie said. “That really stuck in my heart.”
In 1996, Lavoie and Brother Ronald Taylor organized a Divine Mercy Sunday celebration at the LaSalette congregation in Attleboro, Mass., a spinoff from the larger gathering in Stockbridge. Each year it has grown, attracting about 800 people in 1998. Father John Randall, a diocesan priest from Rhode Island, will celebrate this year's 12:10 p.m. Mass.
Pope John Paul II and the Devotion
Lavoie noted that Pope John Paul II has a special connection with the Divine Mercy devotion. In 1978, as archbishop of Krakow, Poland, he was instrumental in getting the Vatican to lift its late 1950s ban on Sister Faustina's devotion formulas. According to a Marian devotion booklet, the ban derived from “erroneous and confusing translations” of her diary, which could not be corrected because of the political situation in Poland.
Then in 1993, as Pope, he beatified the nun. The Vatican is investigating a reported miracle that would enable her canonization. In 1995, the Pope approved a request from the Polish bishops to establish a national feast of Divine Mercy on the Sunday after Easter. Notably, the Pope's second encyclical was Dives in Misericordia, “On the Mercy of God.”
A Day for Divine Mercy
About five years ago, about 70 churches in the United States celebrated Divine Mercy Sunday, Father Kosicki said. This year, the Marian Web site lists more than 10 times that many.
In St. Louis, Archbishop Justin Rigali has arranged for a special service and Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis, to be celebrated by Auxiliary Bishop Michael Sheridan. The service will start at 2 p.m. to be followed by Mass at 5 p.m., according to the cathedral rector, Msgr. James Telthorst.
In Washington, D.C., the Immaculate Conception basilica usually draws about 3,000 people for its Divine Mercy celebration, according to Sonski. This year's services will begin at 1 p.m. with multilingual confessions, followed by the Divine Mercy chaplet and Mass at 2 p.m. celebrated by Father Michael Scanlan, president of the Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio.
And in Rome, this year's Divine Mercy celebration will be the first in St. Peter's Square.
—Matt McDonald writes from Mashpee, Massachusetts.
The second Sunday of Easter is recognized by many as a feast of Divine Mercy, but that feast is not universal, and is not formally recognized in the United States.
Dennis McManus, associate director of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops' Secretariat for the Liturgy, said the U.S. bishops are not now considering applying to Rome to make Divine Mercy Sunday a feast day.
“Nobody's raised it,” he said. “It's not on the agenda.” Indeed, there are arguments against it. One supporter of the devotion, Father Peter Stravinskas, editor of the bimonthly The Catholic Answer published in Huntington, Ind., sees no need for a formal feast.
About 1988, he said, he began the first Divine Mercy novena in New Jersey, when he was pastor of Holy Trinity Church in Newark. But he noted that generally private devotions are not formally institutionalized by the Church, even when the Church recognizes their validity.
Private revelations accepted by the Church — even well-known apparitions of Mary such as those in Lourdes and Fatima — do not have to be accepted by Catholics as essential to the faith. They do not define doctrine or offer new beliefs.
Father Stravinskas does not expect the Vatican to approve a universal feast of Divine Mercy. “I can't imagine that happening,” he said. “Again, because this is a private devotion. It's not a matter of faith and morals. And we ought not to dogmatize devotion.”
Supporters of a feast day make an analogy with the feast of the Sacred Heart, which they note came from private revelations to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690). National churches asked Rome to celebrate the day as a feast, and eventually it became part of the universal church calendar.
—Matt McDonald
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Matt McDonald ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A New Age Dawns -- It's Catholic DATE: 04/11/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: April 11-17, 1999 ----- BODY:The Pope tries to find the right fit for big jobs. He has given this man big jobs: naming him auxiliary bishop of Paris in 1979, archbishop in 1980 and cardinal archbishop in 1985. Now he is president of the Pontifical Council for Culture. He's also a good fit: The author of 20 works on theology, history and world religions, his other duties include the Congregations for Divine Worship, the Evangelization of Peoples and Catholic Education; and the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. Recently he spoke with Register correspondent Berenice Cocciolillo.
Cocciolillo: When did you realize that you wanted to dedicate your life to the Church?
Cardinal Poupard: Oh, I never dreamt of doing anything else. When I was very, very young, I would watch my parish priest say Mass every morning. He was always present in the life of our community, in times of mourning as well as joy. I basically wanted to be like him. Unfortunately, however, I never managed to be a parish priest, though my life has certainly taken me in some very interesting directions. In 1981, when I was the rector of the Catholic Institute of Paris, I had the great honor of receiving the Holy Father, Pope John II, at my home. It was then that he invited me to come to Rome to head the Council for Culture. Rome is now the place I've lived in for the biggest part of my life.
How has your own history benefited your work with culture?
I was born in Anjou, in western France. I had the good fortune to be born into a Christian family, to be educated in a Christian school, to have a mother and father who loved each other as well as their three children. Of course I didn't know it then, but I grew up in a cultural environment which was exquisitely Catholic.
Even in today's secularized culture there seems to be a great need for religion, for spirituality.
Oh, yes. Man is profoundly religious. It is part of his nature; he is not just “homo sapiens” but “homo religiosus.” Religion is not as many have said, a moment in the history of humanity which was destined to disappear and be replaced by science, but a fundamental dimension of man. Ironically, the same “intellectuals” who said that God was dead are now saying that God has returned! But God never left. However, in the meantime, a significant number of people have distanced themselves from the Church. The problem is that instead of returning to the Church in order to fulfill their spiritual needs, they go in other, disastrous directions.
How can the Gospel reach our hypersecularized culture?
If we want the Gospel to reach the soul of every person, it is necessary for the
Gospel to become part of culture. However, the Gospel must evangelize culture without losing itself in the culture. This, of course, is not an easy task. In fact, when the Holy Father called me to Rome to head the Council for Culture, he told me that he was asking me to do something very, very difficult. We live in a time when human life is devalued, love is seen as merchandise and truth is obscured. It is to this culture that we must bring the Gospel of life and joy. Let us remember that the word “gospel” means good news — and the good news is also for today's culture.
What do you mean by the phrase “evangelize culture”?
Evangelizing culture means offering the values of the Gospel in a manner that is convincing. Absolute respect for human life, the dignity of responsible love, the devotion to work and family, the need to give meaning to one's existence, the sensitivity to the needs of others; these are values which we must never tire of proclaiming, and not just in words but also by concrete initiatives. Finally, let us think about the mystery of the Pentecost as described in the Acts of the Apostles, where each man hears in his own language the marvels of God. This is really what the Pontifical Council for Culture is all about: By speaking the language of the people, we aim to help them to speak the language of God.
How do you personally do that at the council?
You could say that my role is similar to that of a minister of culture for the Vatican. Next month I will go to Paris for a conference sponsored by [the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization] entitled “A New Humanism for the Third Millennium.” After that I head for the Yucatan, Mexico, where there is the problem of the encounter of the Gospel with both ancient, indigenous cultures as well as the culture of new religious movements. In a huge, alienating metropolis like Mexico City with a population of 20 million, it's no wonder that the inhabitants lose touch with Catholic culture as well as culture in general. Our job is to help bishops, parishes, as well as Catholic universities to help all these people rediscover the Gospel.
You are an expert on religious sects and new religious movements such as New Age. What it is about New Age that makes it so attractive?
The New Age phenomenon has revived one of the most ancient hopes of mankind, that is, a new era of peace, harmony and reconciliation within oneself, achieved through the discovery and development of a person's own “divine” capabilities. It is this vision which makes the New Age movement so fascinating for many of our contemporaries. In reality, New Age is simply a cocktail of neo-pagan beliefs, neo-gnostic theories, magical practices and syncretistic doctrines. It is one of the most dramatic religious and cultural challenges to Christian faith today, especially because it is reductionist with regard to certain essential elements of Christian faith: Christ is no longer the one redeemer of mankind; inner enlightenment replaces faith as obedience to God. You just take a little of this and a little of that and paint Christ's face over it.
Give to Caesar that which is Caesar's and to God that which is God's. In other words, the Church does not wish to substitute for man in his role as politician, artist, worker or thinker. But Christ and the Gospel are necessary, as yeast is necessary for bread. This is why we must try to bring the politician back to Christ, so that he can be immunized against temptation and corruption.
Have you personally seen signs of this?
On a recent trip to Brazil I saw people praying to a statue which represented both the Blessed Virgin and the Goddess of the Sea. In this way the image of Christianity is preserved but there is no content and people are tricked into an ingenuous optimism which provides no answers to the real problems of human existence. It is like going to the market and buying cheap things, thinking that you've gotten a bargain. Often, when you get home you realize that you've simply been tricked.
Has the contemporary Church perhaps neglected man's need for spirituality and mystery by concentrating so much on the social and the political aspects of life?
That is what I call the sociopolitical temptation. After the cultural changes that took place in the late ‘60s, it became a common belief that in order to reach man it was necessary to reduce the Church's message to a socio-political one. But people don't need the Church for this. Christ, at the end of the Gospel, said, “Go forth and convert all nations, baptize and teach them to live the message that I have given you.” This message has gotten lost.
What signs of this have you seen?
I witnessed it recently in Quebec where I participated in a conference on “Cultural Changes, Transcendence and Challenges to the Church at the Dawn of the Third Millennium.” In this historically Catholic area, entire congregations are dying out. The reason is that people are not getting the spiritual message that they need. The French Christian philosopher Gabriel Marcel used to tell me: “Without mystery, life would be unbreathable.” We have now reached a moment when life has become unbreathable. People are tired of all the confusion of contemporary culture, dominated by sex, money and violence, and desperately seek something else. That something else is mystery.
What can the Church do to renew its message?
We must rediscover the impetus of the early Christian communities, as described in the Acts of the Apostles. These early Christians were devoted to the word of God, to the holy Eucharist and to fraternal life. Let's help people rediscover these fundamental points, without looking for impossible solutions. It is the duty of the Church, as well as all of the faithful, to help man recover his religious dimension, as revealed by Jesus Christ. This enormous task is what I call the new humanism for the new millennium. Christ presents us with an image of ourselves that is much more wondrous than what we would believe, because we are made in Christ's likeness. The great French writer Blaise Pascal said, “Man exceeds man infinitely.” We must help people rediscover man's likeness to Christ, which is much more fascinating than any New Age cocktail.
Last January, the pontifical council organized a symposium on Europe and culture. Was it your idea?
As usual, the idea came from the Holy Father, who asked me to organize this conference in preparation for the synod of European bishops, which will be held next fall. I had organized a similar conference 10 years ago, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of the Soviet Union.
What were the conference's conclusions?
The best way for Europe to bring hope and love back to its cultures is to reaffirm the value of the human person and the call to solidarity, which are both taught most forcefully by the Christian faith. Before the mediocrity and the vulgarity of today's dominant culture, Christ becomes desirable for man. This is really how we will build the third millennium.
The Italian philosopher Remo Bodei wrote that the Catholic Church today fills the void left by the fall of communism. Do you agree with Bodei that the Church is destined to replace the state in terms of representing the poor and the underprivileged?
My answer can be found in the Gospel: Give to Caesar that which is Caesar's and to God that which is God's. In other words, the Church does not wish to substitute for man in his role as politician, artist, worker or thinker. But Christ and the Gospel are necessary, as yeast is necessary for bread. This is why we must try to bring the politician back to Christ, so that he can be immunized against temptation and corruption. This is one way to evangelize culture, by sanctifying the political, which Pope Pius XI said is the greatest field of charity, because it is for the common good. The Church asks its children to bring Christ's message to economics so that it remains in the service of man and does not become an anti-human tyranny.
The Council for Culture must be very busy preparing for the Jubilee. Do you see the laity responding?
Yes, we are planning many things for the year 2000. I must say that in my travels throughout the world, I see a great anticipation for the Jubilee, especially in young people. This can only be explained by the Holy Spirit. Everywhere I go, priests tell me that young people in their parishes are constantly asking, “When are we leaving for Rome?” I am convinced that this is proof of God's grace. It is a momentous time for the Church. To return to the job of the Pontifical Council for Culture, the time is ripe for the Church to speak the language of man in order to help man learn the language of God.
— Berenice Cocciolillo
----- EXCERPT: He wanted to be a parish priest – now, the world's culture is his parish ----- EXTENDED BODY: Cardinal Paul Poupard ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: Orthodox and Catholics Find Common Ground in Boston DATE: 04/11/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: April 11-17, 1999 ----- BODY:BOSTON—When the new Romanian Orthodox Church opens in Boston, the Orthodox won't be the only believers worshipping there.
The church has invited local Romanian Eastern Catholics to celebrate their liturgy in the same building. Actually, they're returning a favor: The Eastern-rite Catholics had earlier invited the Orthodox to share the chapel they use on the grounds of a Melkite seminary.
What is happening in the Boston area illustrates the increasing contact between Orthodoxy and Catholicism — even while East and West still disagree over many matters.
These range from liturgical issues — April 11 is Orthodox Easter Sunday, calculated on the Julian calendar long out of use in the West — to fundamental issues such as papal primacy. The Boston churches experience a kind of cooperation rarely seen in Romania and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, where Catholics and the Orthodox have been battling for the possession of church properties.
But in Boston, “The two communities got along very well, and they always wanted our experience to serve as an example for the communities in Romania,” said Father Michael Moisin, pastor of the Romanian Eastern-rite Catholic community.
Eastern-rite Catholics share the liturgy and religious traditions of the Orthodox, while remaining in communion with Rome. But the hard feelings between Eastern-rite Catholics and the Orthodox in Europe during the 1990s caused a setback in dialogue aimed at reuniting the Catholic and Orthodox churches.
Nevertheless, an ecumenical optimist could point to some recent developments:
• Pope John Paul II will make a historic first trip to a predominantly Orthodox country May 7-9 when he visits Bucharest, the capital of Romania. The government of Ukraine has also invited the Pope to visit that country.
• After a long hiatus, the Joint International Commission for the Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church is scheduled to meet this summer.
• In America, bishops from both churches have stepped up undertakings such as joint pilgrimages to Rome and Constantinople, in an effort to help Christians on both sides of the divide appreciate their common spiritual patrimony.
• In the Middle East, Orthodox and Catholic believers continue to seek closer relations, unhampered by the sort of disputes that have plagued relations in Eastern Europe.
• Talks are even under way to seek a common date for the celebration of Easter. The two Easter celebrations happen to fall on the same day in the year 2001, and that is spurring an effort to celebrate Easter together in following years.
The difficulties have by no means been swept aside. The papal visit to Romania is marred by disputes over the Pope's itinerary, and the Catholic-Orthodox dialogue will have to once more take up the issue of Eastern Catholic churches within Orthodox countries.
These developments, however, can easily overshadow the progress that the two churches have made over the past decades, according to Father Ronald G. Roberson. Father Roberson has responsibility for relations with the Orthodox within the National Conference of Catholic Bishops' Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs.
Starting in 1980, the Joint International Commission produced important statements of common belief on subjects ranging from the sacraments to apostolic succession.
“These are really the first common theological statements that are sponsored by Catholics and Orthodox since the Council of Florence in the 15th century,” Father Roberson said. “So these are all extremely positive developments, and I think this should never be lost sight of when one looks at the current difficulties.”
The plan of the interreligious dialogue is to tackle the subjects first upon which agreement can be more readily reached, Roberson said. The thorniest issues, such as the role of the Pope in a reunited church, are being saved for last.
Ecumenical Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I suggested in 1997 that the two churches had become fundamentally different, and he seemed to throw cold water on reunion efforts. But during Bartholomew's more recent 1998 trip to Poland, Father Roberson said, the Ecumenical Patriarch was more conciliatory, speaking in favor of efforts to reunite the two churches.
“The liturgical traditions are different,” Roberson said, elaborating some of the distinctions. He said the Orthodox liturgy “is filled with chant and candles and icons, and an elaborate ritual. In the West, it is more simple, direct and brief.”
The Orthodox and Catholic churches — both tracing their succession of bishops to the apostles — formally split in 1054. While the Catholic Church is centralized, with the Pope as its head, Orthodoxy is a collection of churches, with the Ecumenical Patriarch as a first among equals, but with no authority comparable to the Pope.
“Basically, the Orthodox have a problem with the papal claim to direct jurisdiction in the Christian East,” said Timothy Ware. Ware, author of the classic work The Orthodox Church, is also the Orthodox Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia. “We are willing to extend to the papacy a primacy of loving service, if you like; that the Pope might have an apostolic concern for the whole Christian world; that if problems arise, he might take an initiative to set in motion consultations for a solution. But we wouldn't believe the Pope alone would decide the question.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church stresses the need for unity to fulfill the prayer of Christ “that they may all be one.”
“But we must realize that this holy objective, the reconciliation of all Christians in the unity of the one and only Church of Christ, transcends human powers and gifts. That is why we place all our hope in the prayer of Christ for the Church, in the love of the Father for us, and in the power of the Holy Spirit” (No. 22). Later, it states, “The Pope, Bishop of Rome and Peter's successor, is the perpetual and visible source and foundation of the unity both of the bishops and of the whole company of the faithful” (No. 882).
In his postsynodal apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in America, Pope John Paul II included Orthodox Christians in the Church's plans for the new evangelization. He wrote: “The Synod Fathers wished to express their special desire ‘to cooperate in the dialogue already under way with the Orthodox Church, with which we share many elements of faith, sacramental life and piety’” (No. 49).
The churches had been progressing steadily in their dialogue when the fall of communism suddenly changed the religious picture in Eastern Europe.
Eastern-rite Catholic Christians, whose churches had been forcibly suppressed and merged into the Orthodox Church, suddenly emerged from the catacombs and began demanding church properties back from the Orthodox in Ukraine, Romania, Slovakia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Sometimes they took legal action to reclaim churches. But sometimes they took them back by force.
The Pope's recently announced trip to Romania comes at a price for Eastern-rite Catholics in that country: They had to agreed to drop all their legal claims to church properties.
Moreover, the Orthodox “have insisted that the Pope not go to Transylvania, which is the area where most of the Catholics live,” said Father Robert Taft, vice rector of the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome. Father Taft called the conditions “an offense and a humiliation to the Catholics who have suffered for over 50 years because of their loyalty to the Pope.”
While tensions have been high in parts of Eastern Europe, the Catholic and Orthodox churches of the Middle East have been enjoying more harmonious relations. In fact, 1996 saw the unprecedented move by the Melkite Greek Catholic Church to restore communion with the Antiochian Orthodox Church, independently of overall relations between the Catholic and Orthodox churches.
Rome said that was going too fast. But the incident highlighted good relations between the churches. “In the Middle East the issues are completely different,” said Michael J. La Civita, editor of Catholic Near East magazine. “You have the Christian community as a minority that is struggling with economic issues, (and) being a minority in an overwhelmingly Muslim environment.”
The Boston Experience
The trouble in Romania didn't stop Father Moisin in Boston from offering Romanian Orthodox a place to worship.
The area's Romanian community is small, perhaps 2,000 people, and the two churches are smaller still. Father Moisin counts only 25 people or so in his mission church, and the Orthodox have perhaps 10 times that number. Father Moisin said the numbers more or less reflect the proportion in Romania.
A typical Sunday finds a joint matins prayer service beginning at 9:30 a.m., followed by the Eastern Catholic liturgy, then the Orthodox liturgy. Some stay all the way through the services, and everyone has a lunch-time meal afterward.
When one priest is away, both congregations have been given permission to attend the liturgy of the other priest.
The two church communities have bake sales together and other events, and they are working on putting together a Romanian festival.
“The relationship is wonderful,” Father Moisin said. “We do everything together. There are no hard feelings, nothing whatsoever. The only thing they have to say is that the people in Romania need to learn from us.”
—Wesley R. Young writes from Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Wesley R. Young ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: U.S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 04/11/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: April 11-17, 1999 ----- BODY:Bishop Is Hailed as Church Hero
During an appearance before a large and enthusiastic gathering of the Toledo chapter of Catholics United for the Faith, Bishop Bruskewitz “estimated he received 400 negative communications and 45,000 positive ones in the form of letters, faxes, e-mails, and bouquets of flowers.”
“Meanwhile, Bishop Bruskewitz's diocese, which takes in 87,000 Catholics and 132 parishes spread over 25,000 square miles, is flourishing,” reported Tarjanyi. “The diocese will ordain at least nine priests in May (there have been 36 ordinations over the last seven years), and last year started its own college-level seminary, St. Gregory the Great. The seminary is fully accredited and has 27 students enrolled.”
Bush to Court: Reconsider Prayer Before Play
A spokesman said the governor “supports the right of students to participate in the free exercise of religion, a right which is guaranteed under the Constitution,” the wire service reported.
The ruling, 2 to 1 by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on March 1, upheld a lower court's decision allowing limited prayer at graduation ceremonies but prohibited the prayers or other “solemnizing ceremonies” before football games.
Connecticut Bishop Promotes Vocations
“The St. John Fisher Residence in Stamford for young men considering the priesthood was opened at Egan's behest in 1994,” reported staff writer Cameron Martin. “This year, seven new candidates are scheduled to be ordained.”
“He put a lot of energy and personnel into promoting vocations because that wasn't really happening,” said Father Nicholas Calabro, a priest of the diocese. A key element in the seminary's success has been the practice of perpetual Eucharistic adoration, carried out by the students with wide support from area parishes.
----- EXCERPT: From selected publications ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 04/11/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: April 11-17, 1999 ----- BODY:No Sainthood by 2000 for Mother Teresa
Father Brian Kolodiejchuk said public and media hopes for a quick canonization were raised March 1 when Pope John Paul II waived the normal five-year waiting period before she can be officially considered as a possible saint. Even Sister Nirmala, Mother Teresa's successor, had her hopes raised by the possibility of sainthood by the year 2000.
“That would be nice, to have an exceptional model of holiness from the end of one century become a model of sainthood for the next century. But my expectation is that it's not going to happen,” Father Kolodiejchuk told the paper.
“Normally the process of canonization takes at least 20 years,” he said in a telephone interview with the Citizen.
Cardinal Stepinac Recruits a ‘Smuggler’
Frances Chilcoat was in Rome in 1962 en route to visit relatives in Yugoslavia when Father Ivan Tomas went out of his way to befriend her and win her confidence, all to ask a special favor: would she smuggle a set of cardinal's robes to Archbishop Stepinac, who had recently been released from jail by the communists and was living under house arrest?
In order to allay her fears, Father Tomas told Chilcoat that Pope John XXIII would be praying for her. She agreed and left on her mission, which she thought was doomed when a communist official suddenly demanded to see the contents of her suitcase during the final leg of her train trip into Yugoslavia. The official cut his hand on the broken case and quickly withdrew, never to return. Ironically, several attempts by Chilcoat to have the case repaired in Rome had not been successful. She still “wonders if the incident wasn't a small miracle,” reported the Universe.
----- EXCERPT: From selected publications ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Archbishop Franc Perko DATE: 04/11/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: April 11-17, 1999 ----- BODY:BELGRADE, Yugoslavia—For five days, the archbishop of Belgrade, Yugoslavia, had no news from the Catholic clergy in Kosovo, who care for an estimated 60,000 Catholics. He expressed his fears in an interview with the Italian daily Avvenire. Despite his confidence in Vatican diplomatic efforts and those of the international community, including Russia, he does not feel the situation will clear up quickly. The following are excerpts from the archbishop's comments.
Archbishop Perko: I am afraid, very afraid, not because of the bombs that might fall on me — NATO is only striking military targets — but because the situation is worsening. ... The conflict could last weeks instead of days — months, long months.
Every afternoon we have eucharistic adoration, the sirens notwithstanding. But, of course, there are very few faithful.
How formidable are the Serbs?
The Serbs are solidly behind their authorities. They will not give in easily. They want to resist until the end. The strength of these people lies in their unity. Yesterday, Patriarch Pavle sent a message to the Orthodox Serbs calling for unity, saying that this is an unjust war and exhorting them to trust in God.
What will be the outcome of Pope John Paul II's peace efforts?
There is a lot of interest, including by the media, in everything John Paul II and his collaborators say. There is both interest and keen appreciation for the nuncio's endeavors as well.
We must look at the situation, as Israel's prophets did when Babylon destroyed Jerusalem and the temple. The prophets did not accuse the Babylonian forces but the sins of the people. In the first place, the sin of lack of trust in God. Today, however, the situation is so difficult that we must believe, more than ever, in God's plan, rather than men's, even if they are powerful.
Are you glad for the NATO intervention?
We cannot be in favor of war — of any war. It goes without saying, however, that the massacres in Kosovo must stop. Arkan's [indicted war criminal Zeljko Raznjatovic] paramilitaries must be stopped. They cannot play this way with so many human lives.
—From ZENIT dispatches.
----- EXCERPT: Insider ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: 'Urbi et Orbi' Message Reflects The Tragedy of Easter 1999 DATE: 04/11/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: April 11-17, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—The Pope, along with many Christians, faced a terrible interior struggle this Easter: How can there be celebration and joy when, as the Pope declared, “ the heavens are rent by the din of war, when the whistle of shells is heard around people's homes and the ravaging fire of bombs consumes towns and villages?”
Fifty thousand people crowded into St. Peter's Square to hear the Pope's Easter message, “Urbi et Orbi” (To the City of Rome and to the World).
Though he also addressed grave situations in many other parts of the world, the dramatic situation in Kosovo was his central concern. As he reminded the world of “those who have been killed, of those made homeless, of those who have been torn from their families, of those who are being forced to flee,” he shouted, “Let the solidarity of everyone be mobilized, so that finally brotherhood and peace may begin to speak once more!”
To alleviate the tragedy of Kosovo, the Pope appealed to Slobodan Milosevic and the authorities of Yugoslavia “to allow a humanitarian corridor to be opened, in order for help to be brought to the mass of people gathered at the border of Kosovo.
There can be no frontiers to impede the work of solidarity,” he said.
The traditional “Urbi et Orbi” message concluded with an appeal for confidence in the face of these dramatic situations. “Christ, the conqueror of sin and death, urges us not to surrender,” he said.
For the fourteenth time, a team of Dutch landscapers transformed St. Peter's square into a veritable garden, with pink and red rhododendrons, yellow, orange and violet azaleas, and a sea of tulips, narcissus and hyacinth of various colors. The Holy Father made special mention of their work in his greetings to the world, which he gave in 61 languages. (ZENIT, Register Staff)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 04/11/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: April 11-17, 1999 ----- BODY:Israel Says Pope Will Visit on Annunciation 2000
Reuters reported that the Israeli Tourism Ministry announced that the Holy Father would begin the historic visit to the Holy Land on March 25, 2000 and that the visit would include Israel and Palestinian self-rule areas, including Nazareth.
Two days later, the Jerusalem Post's Haim Shapiro reported that, “even as local tour companies were flooded with requests for rooms on March 25, 2000, and as the Tourism Ministry went into high gear to prepare for the papal visit on that date, local Catholic officials could not confirm that any specific date had been set.”
First Jewish Architect to Design a Catholic Church
Since Pope Boniface VIII inaugurated the first jubilee in 1300, holy years and accompanying urban renewal projects have been the sole responsibility of the Vatican. This year, however, with the marking of the millennium and the Church's Great Jubilee, “the state is sharing the financial burden for the jubilee with the Church,” reported Eleanor Curtis.
While the Church is commissioning such international architects as Richard Meier, an American, and Alvaro Siza from Portugal to construct two new churches, Rome's City Council has chosen an Italian, Renzo Piano, to design a new auditorium, and a music and arts complex, the report said.
Meier, famed for his designs for the Getty Center in Los Angeles, “is the first Jewish architect in history commissioned to design a [Catholic] church,” wrote Curtis.
----- EXCERPT: From selected publications ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: EDITORIAL DATE: 04/11/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: April 11-17, 1999 ----- BODY:The 20th century seems destined to end as it began: with a powder-keg of fighting exploding in the Balkans. Pope John Paul II has pledged to do all in his power to prevent that from happening.
It will be difficult. Fighting in Kosovo is nothing new. Similar oppression of ethnic Albanians by occupying forces raged there in 1912, helping to spark World War I. When communists took over, they merely centralized the violence. They also inspired the creation of a new kind of research institute: the kind that catalogues human rights abuses. In one of its earliest reports, for instance, the Albanian Cultural Institute documented a 1944 incident in which Franciscan Father Alexander Luli was captured by Marxist guerrillas. “His captors cut Luli's throat and dumped him in an unmarked grave in Kosovo,” it said.
Furthermore, in these days at the end of the millennium, when the Church is looking back at her history, it is appropriate to note that Kosovo has been a hot spot, in one way or another, since Christianity began.
In Kosovo, 90% of the population is Albanian, of whom 10% are Catholic, 20% Orthodox, and 70% Muslim. But it was not always that way.
The land's history is significantly Christian. St. Paul reports evangelizing “Illyricum,” present day Albania, across Kosovo's border to the west. St. Jerome was “ethnically Albanian” along with two popes and some 588 saints and beatified martyrs. St. Francis of Assisi established one of his first religious communities in the region, the beginning of a centuries-long Franciscan presence there.
In the 15th century, when Ottoman Turks threatened to take the region — a key borderland territory to the Western world — Albanians banded together under the great leader Skenderbeg, who almost single-handedly turned back the invaders, and received the commendation of two popes for his efforts.
After he died, the Turks succeeded. The country became progressively more Muslim, but the Catholics there have always strongly influenced the development of its culture. Priests and religious first codified and collected the Albanian language, published its folk tales, and documented its music.
The deep Christian history of the land and its Muslim majority created an unusual situation in Albania, where Muslims, Catholics and Orthodox thrived side by side, and even honored each other's feast days. And its tribal, harsh ways — including the strict vendetta systems and blood vows that make its terrorism intractable — formed a people of strong, tenacious character.
When married to faith, the Albanian character has produced the likes of Mother Teresa. When indifferent or antagonistic to the faith, it has produced Slobodan Milosevic.
So, when Pope John Paul II called for peace in the area, and said that the “conflict in Yugoslavia prompts deep concern both for the victims and for the consequences it can have on Europe and the world,” his words cannot be taken lightly.
Neither can his actions. An unexpected private audience of Italian President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro had with the Pope capped the first week of the NATO bombings, a week in which the Vatican scrambled to do all it could to end the conflict.
Scalfaro's office said he dined with the Holy Father to “discuss the absolute need to accelerate diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict taking place in the Yugoslavian Federation.”
That meeting took place as the Italian government was urging the conflicting parties to return to the negotiating table. Next, Cardinal Angelo Sodano met with the ambassadors of the NATO states and members of the U.N. Security Council to seek more avenues of peace.
The Holy Father presciently demanded peace in the reason, before the rest of the world witnessed the toll in human suffering in the aggression, especially the 60,000 Kosovan Albanian Catholics fleeing Serb aggressors and dodging “friendly” fire on Easter weekend. John Paul knows the history of the Balkans well, and its ability to produce a Milosevic — or a Mother Teresa.
“The time to make peace is always,” he said in a recent Angelus message. Particularly when a place like Kosovo is at stake.
----- EXCERPT: The Land of Mother Teresa and Milosevic ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: The Countercultural Truth about Families DATE: 04/11/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: April 11-17, 1999 ----- BODY:edited by Paul C. Vitz and Stephen M. Krason
(The Society of Catholic Social Scientists, 1998, 277 pages, $20)
Scholarship is essentially an ongoing conversation between experts, and, as in everyday conversation, it is often necessary to restate the obvious if an interlocutor is unaware of it, or contradicts it. Thus the physicist who seeks to re-establish the discoveries of Newton against those who are denying them is making a useful contribution. And in restating the obvious, he might even find he has discovered something genuinely new.
The men and women who comprise the Society of Catholic Social Scientists know something about restating the obvious. The society was formed only a few years ago and is an association of scholars who take both their scholarship and their faith seriously. Dr. Stephen Krason of the Franciscan University of Steubenville, president of the new association, along with the noted psychologist Dr. Paul Vitz, has shepherded this first project of the society to publication.
The release of this book, Defending the Family, is a suitable occasion to note with gratitude the existence of the society. It does not propose that there is a Catholic way to do psychology, or economics, or sociology, but rather that Catholics ought to bring to their work in these fields a competence borne of their vocation to holiness, and an understanding borne of their Catholic faith. Social science is fundamentally about how and why man, a social being, behaves as he does. Social science that lacks a proper understanding of man will soon lose itself in either irrelevance or error. Economics, for example, suffers acutely today from its flight into quantification and its neglect of actual human experience. As this field of study becomes more focused on hypothetical models than on actual people, its status as a social science is weakened.
Catholics believe that only in Christ is the mystery of man fully revealed (cf. Gaudium et Spes, 22). The Catholic social scientist, therefore, conducts his research according to the proper methods of his discipline, but faith provides him with an anthropology that allows him to avoid errors that others make because of improper conceptions of man.
The volume reviewed here is an example of the right kind of social science in action. It collects papers about the current crisis in family life that flow from an understanding of the traditional family — a husband and wife with their children — as the best institution for the successful continuation of the human project on earth. Human well-being requires strong families. One can come to that conclusion either by revelation — from Scripture as interpreted by the Church's magisterium — or by reflection on experience, which is the work of scholars. Indeed, the necessity of strong families is obvious. But today it is much denied, and so the social scientists' group has decided to devote its first book to restating what we ought to know.
That is not to say that the scholarship presented here is simplistic or boring. The editors clearly intend this “sourcebook” to give Catholic leaders and intellectuals valuable articles on a range of topics that can be useful in their own work. The academic style of many of the articles, dripping with citations and footnotes and sporting lengthy bibliographies, ensures that it will be helpful to other professors, university students, writers and commentators who need to know what scholarly material is available to defend the traditional family.
It does not propose that there is a Catholic way to do psychology, or economics, or sociology, but rather that Catholics ought to bring to their work in these fields a competence borne of their vocation to holiness...
The articles cover liberalism, feminism, sexual morality, homosexuality, economics and welfare policy, popular culture, theology, practical aspects of child-rearing (parental authority, nurturing, breast-feeding, home-schooling, corporal punishment, child abuse). They are introduced by an extraordinarily helpful article by Paul Vitz documenting the decline of the family as measured by the various statistics of social science.
Vitz's article represents the collection at its best, with a careful examination of the facts, an avoidance of strident language, and provision of the sources for others who are working in this field. A similarly outstanding contribution is Richard Cross' article on corporal punishment, which does not present unwar-ranted conclusions, but solidly refutes claims not supported by the evidence. His assessment of the research to date concludes that prudent use of corporal punishment is not damaging to children, and his mastery of the nuances of a complicated topic is a good example of careful scholarship.
In a collection of this range uneven quality is to be expected. Some of the articles rail against the modern world in a way that is jarringly strident and unfortunate in a “sourcebook.” James Likoudis contributes such an article on liberalism, which misses the opportunity to carefully sift the wheat from the chaff in our dominant political-cultural ethos. William Marra, in his article on home-schooling, confesses that he has a dream in which a “massive bolt of lightning envelops the entire world and melts every copper wire in existence. Just think: no more radio, TV, video or audio tapes, no phones or faxes: just humans talking to each other!”
These kinds of statement are not particularly helpful, even though they are surely tongue-in-cheek. The battle for the family is not going to be won if the anti-family forces suspect the pro-family movement is purely reactionary. Thankfully the other broad survey articles on philosophy (Bryce Christensen on the utopian impulse against family life), morality (especially the careful treatment of homosexuality in Judaism by Dennis Prager) and theology (Father Richard Hogan on Pope John Paul II's theology of the body) show a sensitivity to contemporary concerns for freedom and autonomy that strengthens their arguments.
Vitz concludes the volume with a short proposal for a political and religious defense of the family. Politically he proposes some very bold measures, including taxing married people at lower rates than divorced people, and penalizing participants in state-sponsored retirement schemes who have fewer children. Many objections to such proposals immediately come to mind, but it is reasonable to hope that the scholars of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists will devote further effort, either collectively or individually, to developing more comprehensive ideas.
In the end, Vitz acknowledges that the state of the family is fundamentally a cultural, that is, religious, matter and that it will not be rectified by politics. Indeed, how one works for the kind of religious revival that would renew the family is something beyond the specific expertise of social science.
Raymond de Souza, a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Kingston, Ontario,writes from Rome..
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond J. De Souza ----- KEYWORDS: Books -------- TITLE: LETTERS DATE: 04/11/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: April 11-17, 1999 ----- BODY:Catholic Universities
The sources for your front page article “Academic Institute to Sidestep Bishops” (March 28-April 3, 1999) may have been less than well informed themselves. The title of the article is misleading because it suggests evasion or opposition to the bishops, which is contrary to the fact.
As to what happened at the annual meeting of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities the facts are rather simple. We are in the midst of lengthy discussions with our bishops, both nationally and locally, about the most appropriate way of translating the General Norms of the Apostolic Constitution Ex corde ecclesiae into the required local ordinances for the United States. Other episcopal conferences are similarly engaged with the universities under their jurisdiction. As far as we know, none have yet completed the process and received approval from Rome, because the process is complex. Last October a proposal was presented not by but to the bishops' implementation committee, which sent out to all involved a request for comments on the workability of the proposal. There is a general sense that there would be serious problems with this proposal. When the ACCU board met before the annual meeting, it passed a resolution requesting that the implementation committee proceed by way of seeking from Rome a five year ad experimentum period with the document the bishops had passed in November 1996, which the Holy See found needed further specifics. The resolution asked this on the grounds that the ongoing dialogues with the bishops were proving very productive.
This resolution was not rejected by the members at the business meeting. In fact it was never presented to them. The reason for this was that in the meantime the speech given by Cardinal George the previous evening suggested another, more attractive possibility that had not occurred to us, namely to offer some suggestions of ways that the further specifics of the Holy See might be formulated to avoid the problems. It was one of the suggestions that came from the floor at that business meeting, and we have been acting on it.
Concerning the institute that is planned, your source may be under the impression that it is to be a theological institute. This is not the case. It is to be an institute of Catholic studies in a much broader sense, dealing with the whole range of the Catholic intellectual tradition, involving the keeping alive of the heritage in literature, art, political theory, philosophy, music and drama, and so forth, and bringing the Catholic heritage and expertise into conversation with modern natural and social sciences and with the great social and human questions of our times. A broad interdisciplinary exchange of scholarship is envisaged. Hence the Commission that your source finds so threatening includes a mathematician, some sociologists, several historians, some philosophers, some people with expertise in running research institutes, representatives of religious congregations, a judge, a litterateur, a journal editor and so forth. Most of us in this group now serve or have in the past served on various committees of the USCC.
Concerning the talk given by Father Heft, SM, at the university of Dayton, it seems extraordinary to launch an attack in the name of orthodoxy on a text published in Origins. This journal is published by the USCC and ordinarily publishes statements of the Holy See, the NCCB or individual bishops or other church officials.
Monika K. Hellwig
Executive Director
Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities
On the Other Hand...
Thank you for the most informative article by Brian Caulfield titled “Academic institute To Sidestep Bishops” (Register, March 28 – April 3).
I have researched the “gilded age” legacy of American foundations such as the Carnegie and Rockefeller efforts. These foundations and others like them amounted to a creation of secular materialist power machines, some called Institutes. They manufactured a product cadre of secular materialist experts who were funneled into Protestant universities, and eventually government of the time, to interpret the truths of Scripture and atheist science for human consumption. These elite philanthropies sidestepped the governing authorities of the time to compete with their own interpretation of truths. Sure they accepted the truths, but just saw them differently; like killing didn't include pre-born life; and like religion was real, but just a real fantasy of the mind.
Now I see a parallel effort against the Faithful Church Teaching Magisterium and Ex Corde Ecclesiae, to mimic the great earlier success of secular materialism in wrecking Protestant school traditions such as at Yale, Harvard, etc.
The flaunting of big money, $50 million dollar endowment to start, in itself says something about the worldly power security of the Ex Corde Ecclesiae adversaries. I bet they will get plenty of money; every enemy of the Faithful Church can surely be counted upon to contribute to such a wonderful “funnel.”
In effect the Academic Institute sounds like a new “Super-School” to oversee funneling of AmChurch agendas into Bishops' authorized schools, and eventually Church government. It sounds like direct competition with the Pope and Teaching Magisterium. It sounds to me like the same old message: “I will not serve!”
Frank Strelchun, Ph.D.
Canaan, CT
Images of Mary Pregnant
Although the famous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe can be interpreted as looking pregnant (“Annunciation 1999 Means Nine Months Until Jubilee,” Register, March 21-27), she is by no means unique in that respect. Every depiction of the Visitation shows Mary pregnant. Catholic art from the Middle Ages to the baroque era made this Maria Gravida theme quite explicit through several different conventions: Mary's abdomen is as swollen as St. Elizabeth's; the women touch each other's bodies; tiny figures of unborn Christ and St. John are shown in their mothers' wombs; sometimes the initials of Jesus (IHS) glow on Mary's breast. There are even statues with niches or compartments that hold an image of Our Lord and monstrance's where the Host is inserted into the middle of Mary's body. Piero della Francesca's Madonna of Confinement shows her as a fifteenth century Tuscan lady with unbuttoned gown.
The concept of Mary as an expectant mother has not been neglected by the Eastern Church, either. But the motif is treated symbolically in icons, with a Christchild's image appearing on a medallion in front of Mary's body. Variants of the formula, including the widely popular “Mother of God of the Sign,” derive from a painting in the Church of the Blachernai, an ancient Marian shrine in Constantinople.
Those looking for images of the pregnant Madonna will find almost 300 examples pictured in Maria Gravida by Gregor Martin Lechner published by the Munich Kunsthistoriche Abhandlungen in 1981.
Sandra Miesel
Indianapolis, Indiana
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Lobbying for Life and Death At the U.N. DATE: 04/11/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: April 11-17, 1999 ----- BODY:If the following paragraph sounds at all confusing, imagine yourself appearing in the midst of a U.N. meeting as a first-time lobbyist, an amateur in the hallowed halls of international diplomacy. That's where I found myself recently, in the U.N. building in New York, wondering: Why are my greenhorn services needed? But after a few days in the trenches I could see that every possible pro-life witness was precious.
From March 24 to 31, the United Nations hosted a conference on “population and development” as a review of the first, and very controversial, Cairo Conference of 1994. At the March meeting, termed “Cairo+5,” national delegations and interested groups called “non-governmental organizations” were collaborating to prepare a special session of the General Assembly later this year. The General Assembly plans to issue a document appraising the implementation of the Program of Action agreed to in Egypt.
For lobbyists — both veterans and newcomers like myself — the mission was clear: to remind delegates that, behind the facts about “population” were human lives, and beyond the figures about “development” were moral imperatives. Ever since Cairo, in fact, there has been a push by the U.N. Fund for Population Activities to insist on worldwide access to abortion under the guise of “reproductive health,” and on the extension of family planning and so-called sexual rights to “adolescents,” defined as anyone 10 years old or more. Our duty was to speak directly to those delegates who were willing to listen, and later on to suggest precise wordings for the final document.
We had a mission control center, of sorts, also: the office of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, which has a permanent presence at the United Nations. The pro-lifers at the conference formed a broad-based, loosely coordinated coalition. About 140 men and women paid their own way to come from as far as Australia with organizations representing Catholics, Evangelicals, Muslims and Mormons. Many had previously participated in Cairo, Beijing or the recent preliminary meeting at The Hague, Netherlands.
Our only success came in lobbying developing nations. They have a particular stake in the Cairo issues since their populations are growing. Also, their national sovereignty is often at stake in these issues because the more powerful countries try to strong-arm them into accepting programs that limit population.
The “opposition” was quite aggressive. The International Planned Parenthood Federation was present in its many affiliated organizations, and it even had members in the national delegations. Catholics for a Free Choice were few in number yet very vocal, and even held a petition campaign to have the Holy See's status as a permanent observer of the United Nations reviewed and revoked.
Since I was a first-timer, I limited myself to lobbying with the handouts that different organizations had prepared on various issues. It was an almost impossibly difficult task.
First came some faltering steps. I spoke with the delegation from Venezuela — only to find that their minds were already very much aligned with Planned Parenthood. Argentina was one of the only countries vocally pro-life, even though a petition campaign was launched against their call for a Day of the Unborn. I tried with no avail to present facts that prove maternal mortality is linked much more closely with general women's health care and hygiene than with unsafe abortion. Even an Irish delegate was unimpressed when I pointed out, wielding my handout, that Ireland, where abortion is illegal, has the lowest maternal mortality in the world.
Bishop James McHugh responded to this argument best in the interview he gave the Register later on. He said the burden of proof must be on those who want to end life. And this is just the point that was missing in my many encounters that week.
There was a sense among the delegates that there was no need to question their own actions, that a “burden of proof” was no longer at issue. There was, rather, a self-assured attitude that treated the moral tradition of the world's major religions as an annoying roadblock to be pushed aside or walked around.
For them, “development” is merely materialistic and “population” is more often than not an obstacle to material comfort.
In the final day, the conference was deadlocked and unable to produce the final document we had all been lobbying to perfect. But if I could choose just one line, a phrase, to be included in that document, it would be this: “A heart without hate is the true measure of development.”
Would the United Nations accept such language? I don't know. But how long can it survive if it won't?
Edward Mulholland writes from New York.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Edward Mulholland ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: Kids Whose Siblings Were Aborted DATE: 04/11/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: April 11-17, 1999 ----- BODY:A woman reportedly told her nine-year-old son about an abortion she had had years before he was born. He responded, “I knew, Mom, that there was something wrong. I always have nightmares about knives and my mother killing me. I have an imaginary brother who wants to kill me. If you had not aborted the other, would you have aborted me?” (Abortion Stories)
This is a story repeated more times than most people realize, and represents a societal and pastoral problem whose proportions are greater today than at any previous time in history: the phenomenon of tens of millions of abortion survivors.
It is clear that abortion's primary victim is the child who is killed. It has also become increasingly clear that to kill the child is to harm the mother and father as well. What is not always so well known, however, is that abortion makes its impact felt on those who have had a sibling aborted, and that this impact is felt in surprising and astonishing ways, which also have wider implications for the whole of society.
I have come to learn about this mostly through my personal association with Dr. Philip G. Ney. ... For the purposes of this article, I have drawn heavily on two of his works, Abortion Stories (1998) and How to Talk with Your Children About Your Abortion: A Practical Guide for Parents (1998).
Ten Types of Abortion Survivors
Those who find out that a sibling has been aborted are actually among ten types of “abortion survivors.”
Statistical survivors. These are people who survived in countries or cities where there is a statistically high probability that they would have been aborted. They come to know that the odds were definitely stacked against them. In some parts of Eastern Europe, the chances of being aborted are as high as 80%.
Wanted survivors. These are people whose parents carefully deliberated about whether or not to abort them. They may have calculated, consulted, and discussed the possibility. Interestingly, there is growing evidence that unborn children are affected by the hormonal changes that result from major conflicts in the mind of the mother. (In one case study a person who had tried to commit suicide on the same day every year discovered that the day was the date his mother had once set an appointment to abort him.)
Sibling survivors. These are people born into families where one or more of their siblings were aborted.
Threatened survivors. These are children whose parents have used abortion as a threat, even if they never considered it during the pregnancy, “You wretched, ungrateful child, I should have aborted you!”
Disabled survivors.These are people who, because of developmental defects or other circumstances, would usually be aborted. In fact, they often wonder whether their parents would have aborted them had they known about the defects.
Chance survivors. These are children who would have been aborted if the mother had been able to obtain the abortion. The abortion was prevented by a lack of money, time, permission, availability, etc.
Ambivalent survivors. These are children of parents who could not make up their minds about the abortion and delayed until it was too late. They are often caught up in their parents' continuing ambivalence, and can wonder whether they can still be terminated.
Twin survivors. These are people whose twin was aborted. Twins communicate, touch, and even caress each other in the womb. The loss of the twin by abortion is deeply felt and often causes the survivor to be suicidal.
Attempted murder survivors. These are people who survived an actual abortion attempt. Besides the physical harm that is often done, they suffer intense psychological struggles, nightmares, confused identities and a fear of doctors.
Murdered survivors. These are children who survived an abortion for just a short period of time, and were subsequently killed by the abortion staff or left to die.
Regarding sibling survivors, the first question that likely comes to mind is, How do they know in the first place that a sibling was aborted? As the quote at the beginning of the article reveals, they often know by a strong and mysterious intuition, or the sensation of the presence of a “missing” or imaginary person.
Case histories and research evidence indicate that if a mother has had an abortion, this fact will be communicated in one way or another to the surviving siblings. Dr. Ney simply states, “You cannot not communicate.”
Many dynamics are at work here. Abortion is often discussed in our society, so children easily wonder whether there was one in their own family. Their curiosity may lead them to indirectly probe the matter with their parents, or they may overhear conversations about it. Objectively, moreover, the abortion does cause various symptoms of distress within the family, and this can lead children to conclude that the unspoken cause of the distress is an abortion. Parents may at times blurt it out to the child in a moment of anger.
Yes, Survivors Should Be Told
Dr. Ney is clear that women who have had abortions should tell their surviving children about it. The reasons, simply summed up, are that the price of not honestly communicating about it is higher than that of revealing it. The truth will set you free is true not only on a spiritual level, but also on the level of natural psychology. The destructive dynamics of a past abortion will be felt in the family, unavoidably. It is better that children come to know the reasons for these dynamics, rather than have to live with pseudo-secrets and with a fantasy that may be far more horrifying than the reality. Good advice regarding the timing and manner of telling children about an abortion, and how to deal with the possible responses, is found in Dr. Ney's book How to Talk with Your Children About Your Abortion.
The Wounds of Sibling Survivors
To know how to help the sibling survivor, one must understand some of the psychological dynamics at work. Dr. Ney points out that research reveals several patterns:
Survivor guilt. “Why am I alive, and not my brother or sister? I feel guilty. I don't deserve to be alive. I can't enjoy life when I know that my parents might have killed me. They arranged for the death of my brothers or sisters, who were probably better than me.”
Existential anxiety. “I want to live but I fear I am doomed. Something awful is going to happen to me I don't know how or when.” This suffering springs from the awareness that one is alive because one was “wanted.” What, then, if I am no longer wanted? Can I still be killed? This fear can lead to an exaggerated effort to stay wanted, and such an effort can make one weary and, at a certain point, completely rebellious in an effort to reject the need to constantly strive to be wanted. This can account for the mindless vandalism of many adolescents.
Anxious attachment. “I'm not sure how my parents feel about me, so I have to stay close to them, but the closer I get the worse I feel.” From the parent's perspective as well, abortion interferes with their ability to bond with subsequent children or to respond tenderly to their helpless cries.
Pseudo-secret collusion. “I desperately need to know what happened to my unborn brother or sister, but am afraid to ask. It may be too terrible to know and asking may ruin my relationship with my parents.”
Distrust. “I can't believe that my parents, who would kill one of their children, can really love me.”
Self-doubt. Having destroyed a child by abortion, parents develop deep fears of how they or others might hurt subsequent children. They can become over-protective. Constantly warning children to be careful can then decrease the child's confidence, making decision-making extremely difficult for the child.
Ontological guilt. “I know I am talented and have lots of opportunities. I could have a good future, but I can't seem to get my act into gear.” Survivors feel a deep uncertainty about the future, or their own prospects of survival, and so may find it hard to make good plans. They keep quitting and starting again, and may rationalize their failures.
Dislike of children. Because they are unsure of their own existence and identity, survivors feel threatened by children, and may either avoid having them, or put them in day-care at a very early age.
How Do We Respond Pastorally?
Abortion survivors are all around us, and responding to them pastorally will be an ever greater aspect of our ministry in the months and years ahead. ...
Healing the wounds of abortion is a family matter, and needs to be facilitated within the family. Helping parents to identify the way abortion harms their family and their interpersonal relations, and then counseling them regarding how to speak with their children, are aspects of our role.
Prevention, of course, is essential; and the road to alleviating the problem of so many who suffer the effects of being abortion survivors is to have fewer abortions. ... According to Dr. Ney, one of the best means to facilitate the healing process is to involve families in which there are abortion survivors in projects aimed at preventing the same problems that they experienced.
Dr. Ney points out that group psychotherapy is effective in assisting the survivor of abortion. Family therapy should follow. In the absence of intensive psychotherapy, which is the ideal, counseling is very valuable, especially when directed at the existential guilt.
In this regard, it is necessary to point out the distinction between being wanted and being welcomed. Being wanted is not necessarily a consolation. It gives the wrong message, namely, that my life or death depends on the fact that someone wants or doesn't want me, that I have no intrinsic right to be.
Welcome, on the other hand, is the response to someone who has an intrinsic value, a value that is recognized and acknowledged to be independent of the circumstances in which one comes to be. When one is welcomed, he or she is not subject to the plans, desires, or expectations of others.
Dr. Ney emphasizes the key role of spiritual renewal and the Church community in assisting the abortion survivor. Our clear and consistent teaching on the intrinsic value of every human life speaks directly to the needs of the abortion survivor. In the words of Evangelium Vitae: “Life is always a good. ... Why is life a good? ... The life which God gives man ... is a manifestation of God in the world, a sign of his presence, a trace of his glory. ... Man has been given a sublime dignity based on the intimate bond which unites him to his Creator: In man there shines forth a reflection of God himself” (34).
In the words of Dr. Ney: Abortion survivors must be able to see that parental love is real. When they see it in people, they then can understand that God, as our Father, can be loving toward them. They need to understand that they are welcome in God's family. and that when they have God's Spirit within them he gives purpose, joy and meaning to their lives. Salvation through Jesus Christ is both the cause and effect in the healing process.
This article is excerpted with permission. It first appeared in the January-February issue of Sacerdos, a Rome-based magazine for priests. Sacerdos can be contacted at informations@mail.sacerdos.org. Father Frank Pavone of New York is a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life and is the international director of Priests for Life.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Father Frank Pavone ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: Leaving No Debate Unjoined DATE: 04/11/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: April 11-17, 1999 ----- BODY:In Randall Jarrell's Pictures From an Institution, one of the characters says there are thirty hours in every day, “if only you know where to look for them.” Lucky man. I guess I don't know where to look. I've never found more than about eighteen useful hours and normally far fewer than that. What I find myself forced to do — what you undoubtedly find yourself forced to do — is to undertake some things and let others slide. We aren't clever enough to find those thirty hours, and we aren't saints who can bilocate, thus being in two places at once and getting twice the work done.
Worse, when it comes to choosing which tasks we will tackle, the choosing often is done for us. Our own preferences are subordinated to the demands of family or school or workplace. Even in the workplace our freedom is circumscribed. The enjoyable tasks must take second place to the daily routines. We have to please the boss before we can please ourselves, and often enough we never even please the boss. The day flits by without giving us an opportunity to turn to the things we really enjoy. (If that leaves you disgruntled, tough. As that great American theologian, Jimmy Carter, once observed, “Life's unfair.”)
These thoughts come to mind as I review e-mail messages I have been receiving. Having intruded myself into the public forum, I find that people feel free to ask me to give a seminar here or attend a conference there. Usually I have to turn down the invitations, not having discovered those thirty hours. I wish I could accept every invitation that came my way, but that wouldn't be possible even if I forswore doing any of my “real” work, and nearly all my time is taken up with the “real” work. There isn't much left for going out on the hustings.
Normally inviters accept a declination with good graces. They understand the constraints. I tell them that a decade ago I could give as many as five parish seminars a week for several weeks running and not collapse, but no longer. They understand why I now try to spread things out — not just because of the ravages of middle age but because, well, I'm just not in the mood to run myself ragged like that. (Certain ascetic practices are for the young. In college you had no trouble “pulling an all nighter,” but now, you think, no exam would be worth skipping sleep for.)
Even though most people are good sports when an invitation is declined, not all of them are. Some just won't take “no” for an answer. This is especially the case with folks associated with certain fringe groups. They think every challenge to debate must be accepted because a declination implies a mental or moral lapse. A negative answer can't be based on reasonable considerations, such as not being scheduled to be in that section of the country any time soon, or not having the time, or not wanting to give encouragement to fruitcakes. To decline a challenge is to condemn oneself — sometimes literally.
“Please debate the issue so that your soul may not be condemned.” That's how one woman phrased it. She insisted that I take up a challenge issued by a group that promotes a rigorist interpretation of Church doctrine. The members of that group interpret the Church's dogma in a harsh and unbending way. Even so conservative a pope as Pius IX had a different interpretation, but that doesn't faze such people — like liberals, they say Pius wasn't issuing an ex cathedra definition, so it didn't count and can be ignored.
The challenges to debate have been prompted by a Web site that gives my e-mail address and asks visitors to contact me, apparently on the theory that it is proper to try to annoy someone into debating. Another woman took the hint and wrote, saying, “Your refusal to respond to the challenge leaves one to suspect that you are not as confident about your position as you would have others believe.” That comes about as close to a catch-22 as a quondam debater is likely to get. If you decline an invitation, it must be because you think you'll lose. What other reason could there be?
Such notions make me wonder whether these people have families, jobs and lives outside their fringe groups. It never seems to occur to them that, while the issue itself may be worth debating, their standard-bearer may not be. Debates take much preparation — much more than a lecture — and, after a while, by necessity you find you must discriminate. Will a debate on this topic, with this opponent, help people understand the faith? If so, accept the invitation, other duties permitting. If not, or if you just don't have the time, then decline. This strikes me as a sensible approach — but folks on the fringe keep sending those e-mail messages.
Karl Keating is founding director of Catholic Answers. Doctrinaire debaters can hassle him into an argument at www.egghimon.com.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Karl Keating ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: Who's Afraid Of a Backlash? DATE: 04/11/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: April 11-17, 1999 ----- BODY:In November, U.S. bishops will meet to discuss how they will work with Catholic universities to comply with Pope John Paul II's apostolic constitution on Catholic higher education,
Most agree that Ex Corde Ecclesiae (From the Heart of the Church), Pope John Paul II's 1990 apostolic constitution on higher education, outlines the essential features of a Catholic university. Even critics praise the document itself and seldom, if ever, explicitly dissent from its teaching. Yet, the leadership of America's Catholic colleges and universities resist the American bishops' efforts to establish it juridically — to lay out how the document will be formally implemented on campuses throughout the country.
Claims that juridical implementation of Ex Corde Ecclesiae will trigger adverse legal consequences for American Catholic colleges and universities are false or greatly exaggerated.
But before looking at the implications for Catholic colleges under American law, Ex Corde Ecclesiae must be seen within Church law. Its contents are already required by the new Code of Canon Law, approved by Pope John Paul in 1983.
Canon 812 states that “it is necessary that those who teach theological disciplines in any institute of higher studies have a mandate from the competent ecclesiastical authority,” usually understood to be the local bishop.
Another pertinent canon is 810, which calls for the “appointment of teachers ... who besides their scientific and pedagogical suitability are also outstanding for their integrity of doctrine and probity of life.”
America's bishops and Catholic college officials have yet to devise the ways and means of implementing these canons. And, even if Ex Corde Ecclesiae were to vanish into thin air, that work would remain.
Pitting the Constitution Against the Canons
While Ex Corde Ecclesiae, with its larger pastoral and intellectual vision, seems like the appropriate place to work from, some hold that conforming to the underlying canons will inadvertently impede progress toward full realization of John Paul's ideals for Catholic higher education.
This theory holds that, if colleges are obliged to take a stand, many will “opt out” and choose the secular path. It would be better, they say, to go slow, accept the spirit of Ex Corde Ecclesiae and let the colleges adjust to the canons at their own pace. But is this not implicitly to concede that, at present, these colleges are not Catholic?
Exaggerated Financial Fears
The most prominent fear among critics involves government financial aid programs.
Very few institutions of higher learning could attract enough students to maintain viability without access to the financial aid that is provided or insured by government. Approximately 93% of all federal aid to higher education has been in the form of aid to students. Probably a large majority of students at most colleges receive such aid, or money from similar state programs, or both.
The doomsday scenario, according to critics of juridical implementation, is that courts might consider colleges which faithfully implement Ex Corde Ecclesiae to be “pervasively sectarian,” the most extreme characterization of a religious school under our law, and one that has only been applied to primary and secondary schools.
In these critics' view, juridical implementation runs a risk of putting colleges in that category. But even if Catholic colleges did fall into that category — an almost impossible scenario — there would still be no impact upon this vital type of financial aid.
The category into which Catholic colleges currently fit, and will fit after full implementation of Ex Corde Ecclesiae, is “religiously affiliated,” a status that in no way threatens eligibility for student aid programs, and for all but a few types of direct financial assistance in the form of grants to schools themselves.
There may be isolated instances where Ex Corde Ecclesiae might place in doubt grant money to colleges. But the amounts involved will not be institutionally life-threatening. Losing any money is unfortunate. But any college which would resist implementation of Ex Corde Ecclesiae for this money alone simply does not care much about its Catholic character.
The Supreme Court Has Spoken
The Supreme Court has made it abundantly clear that students' eligibility for public assistance in the form of student loans has nothing to do with the character of the institutions they attend, regardless of whether they are pervasively sectarian or pervasively atheistic. The law considers the money to be a benefit to the student, not the school.
The GI bill is the classic example. Since its implementation right after World War II, the program has allowed millions of people to attend colleges which were, by any of today's measures, intensely, unequivocally sectarian, such as the Notre Dame of yester-year.
The 1986 Supreme Court case which establishes and protects programs like the GI bill is Washington v. Witters, a case that involved a student who used his federal dollars to attend Inland Empire School of the Bible, a private, Christian college in Spokane, Wash., where, in the words of the court decision, Witters “studied the Bible, ethics, speech, and church administration in order to equip himself for a career as a pastor, missionary, or youth director.”
The voucher programs now in use or under consideration in cities and states around the country have passed constitutional muster because they are effectively designed as GI bills for primary and secondary students.
Accreditation Worries
While religious affiliation is not a threat to a student's ability to receive financial aid, his college's lack of accreditation would be. A school must be accredited in order for its students to have federally guaranteed loan privileges.
The argument is made that implementing Canon 812 will result in a loss of institutional autonomy so serious that accrediting bodies will withdraw their approval. Follow Ex Corde Ecclesiae, they say, and lose accreditation — and your students. If sound, this argument would effectively eliminate the liberty under law just outlined.
But the argument is unsound. It is probably untrue that following Ex Corde Ecclesiae would threaten accreditation by the associations which currently accredit putatively Catholic colleges, the “big six” regional accrediting associations.
But what if my opinion turns out to be wrong? All that follows is the need for a specifically Catholic accrediting association — a need that, in my opinion, is already clear. And there is no legal reason why such an association could not be organized, and why it would not flourish.
All that federal law requires of a school to be able to enroll federally funded students is that the school be accredited by a body that has been formally recognized by the U.S. secretary of education.
The regulations for recognition have to do with the quality of the training offered.
Standards are minimal, and none of the 235 or so colleges in the Catholic Directory would encounter any trouble meeting them. More importantly, there are no requirements pertaining to religion.
A college's religious character does not enter into the equation under current American law and practice. The secretary of education already recognizes for accrediting purposes the Association of Bible Colleges and the Association of Advanced Rabbinical and Talmudic Schools. Already on the Secretary's list is the U.S. Catholic Conference's own Commission on Certification and Accreditation, which accredits programs in clinical pastoral education.
There is no legal or significant practical obstacle to setting up an accrediting body to accredit colleges which juridically implement Ex Corde Ecclesiae, and to having that body recognized by the secretary of education.
Gerard V. Bradley writes from South Bend, Indiana.
----- EXCERPT: U.S. Catholic colleges need not fear papal document, says Notre Dame law professor ----- EXTENDED BODY: Gerard Bradley ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: EDUCATION NOTEBOOK DATE: 04/11/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: April 11-17, 1999 ----- BODY:Catholics' Patriotism Was Beyond Reproach
“Catholicism became identified with superpatriotism,” noted McDermott.
He cited Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Catholic, comparing the school that once employed him as a professor to New York's Jesuit university: “In the era of security clearances, to be an Irish Catholic became prima facie evidence of loyalty. Harvard men were to be checked; Fordham men would do the checking.”
Florida Hears a Plea For Voucher Program
In testimony before a select committee on education, Larry Keough of the Florida Catholic Conference called vouchers “a social justice issue,” reported staff writer Judy Gross.
“Parents are the first ... educators of their children and should not be financially penalized for exercising this right,” Keough told the paper. “This should be especially so for the poor.
Why should inner-city single parents, whose children are in failing schools, be denied the opportunity to choose the schools for their children that other parents can and do choose?” he asked.
U.S. Supreme Court To Decide Student Fees
Self-described conservative students at the University of Wisconsin at Madison challenged the fee —$168 per semester — because the money was distributed to groups such as the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Campus Center. “Some of the subsidized groups also lobby legislators,” reported Mauro.
he Supreme Court has never dealt directly with the student fee issue, though in other contexts, such as union dues, it has said that individuals should be given a way to ensure that their money does not go toward speech with which they disagree, said the report.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Much Ado About EDtv DATE: 04/11/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: April 11-17, 1999 ----- BODY:What happens when a 31-year-old video store clerk with no direction in life gets his 15 minutes of fame? Plenty, if he happens to live in our media-saturated, celebrity-obsessed culture. In fact, he gets much more, in fact, than he bargained for: money, fame and the attention of beautiful women — but at the price of privacy and freedom.
True observations, but certainly not new ones. In EDtv, director Ron Howard (Apollo 13, Ransom), is content to provide a wry snapshot of a society smitten with media and celebrity. And though he fails to dig deeper into what that portends for the culture, Howard's bemused take on the subject makes for an entertaining film.
The plot is simple enough: A programming executive (Ellen DeGeneres) at a cable network with even worse ratings than the Gardening Channel, proposes TrueTV, 24-hour-aday coverage of an average Joe's life. After a little searching, they find their man in Ed Pekurny (Matthew McConaughey): a friendly, funny, telegenic underachiever. A few screen tests and a few cable exec meetings later, and EDtv is born.
If the premise of “all Ed, all the time” television reminds you of last year's Truman Show starring Jim Carrey, be assured that you won't be seeing the same movie twice. One seemingly small difference — that Truman's life was broadcast from birth without his knowledge, while Ed willingly signs on — actually makes a world of difference.
The birth of EDtv is uneventful enough. Ed wakes up. Ed clips his toe-nails. Ed toasts a Pop Tart for breakfast. Ed recommends Burt Reynolds over Steven Segal to teen video renters. Not exactly the kind of high drama to sell you on the new cable offering.
Not surprisingly, initial ratings are lukewarm, but Howard makes it a point to show that even Ed's mundane activities are enough to compel some people to tune in. The action switches away from Ed to show a cross section of people around the country with enough patience to see what this newfangled program is all about.
It isn't long before they get their reward. Less than 24 hours into the show, with the suits already threatening to pull the plug, a love triangle develops between Ed; his brother, Ray (Woody Harrelson); and Ray's girlfriend, Shari (Jenna Elfman), a UPS driver.
When Ed, with camera crew in tow, stops by to visit Ray, Shari — along with the rest of the viewing public — discovers that Ray has been unfaithful. Ray tries to apologize to Shari on camera. Ed goes over to her place to comfort her and ends up spilling his guts about how much he's always loved her. They kiss, voyeuristic viewers everywhere cheer madly, and a hit show is born.
Anyone alive in 1999 will find nothing here too far-fetched. This is the filmmaker merely reflecting reality. After all, this messy stuff is the daily fare served up by Jerry Springer, Rikki Lake and the rest of the daytime trash-TV lineup. There seems to be no shortage of people ready for their 15 minutes of fame — or of people eager to see them get it — even if that means discussing the wreckage of their lives in front of a hooting studio of strangers and millions more viewing at home.
Pretty soon everybody's watching EDtv. From one day to the next, Ed, affable video clerk, has become Ed, the star. Small thing that he's famous for exactly nothing except for being on TV. As the programming executive behind EDtv puts it, “He's a Beatle. No, not a Beatle, but a Spice Girl. ... He's a Beanie Baby.” In a word, he's a wildly successful product.
In cutting to shots of EDtv's growing audience around the country, Howard makes sure to show this growing national obsession is shared by all kinds. College students huddle around the tube in their dormitory. An upscale black couple watch from their bed. Sweatshop workers in San Diego stay tuned as they run their sewing machines. Teen-aged boys in Denver watch. Patrons at a diner in Galveston, Texas, watch. Even the president of the United States is watching. Everybody wants to know what will happen next with Ed.
And not only do they want to know, they want to weigh in on the action. If ours is a culture riveted on media and celebrity, Howard reminds us that it is also obsessed with opinions and polls. The filmmaker shows a USA Today poll on whether Shari is good enough for Ed. When 71% say no, he wants to help his fans see her charms. Standing off camera he tries to get her to do a little routine he knows viewers will find endearing. “Is this an audition to be your girlfriend?” she asks, refusing to cooperate.
In the newspaper polls and elsewhere, Howard illustrates how the media machine recycles it's own pale product. Ed turns up on the cover of People magazine. And on a couple of occasions, the film cuts to real-life pundits like Michael Moore, George Plimpton and Bill Maher in cameo roles, analyzing and ridiculing the EDtv phenomenon in round-table discussions. “It's a new low point in our culture,” Moore says on one of the talk shows. Here, Howard reflects just how far we've fallen. In a media-obsessed culture, what's more natural than watching a show about a show that isn't worth watching?
In another cameo spot, The Tonight Show's Jay Leno finds plenty of comedic material in the national obsession with EDtv. But again, it's like Jerry Springer and crew. Everybody agrees what a pitiful spectacle it all is, but everybody's talking about it and everybody's watching it.
It's a dreary state we're in, to be sure, but Howard has a jester's touch in pointing out the folly and that makes a film that could be much darker float right along.
As an idea, it's hard to shake the feeling that EDtv is a little behind the curve. After all, we already have shows about real life teens and real life cops. We've got shows of real life video of plane crashes, robberies and spectacular stunts gone awry. We've already got real people on TV talk shows serving up family secrets without shame. Still, EDtv is a serio-comic reminder of just how deep society's love for media and celebrity runs.
Some of EDtv's actors, by the way, are no strangers themselves to the media's tendency to spill over into the real world. Ellen DeGeneres is famous for mainstreaming her lesbian private life by mirroring it in her TV sitcom Ellen, and Woody Harrelson's role as the cool serial-murderer in Natural Born Killers has inspired deadly copy-cats. Entertainment is a far cry from the days when director Howard played Opie in The Andy Griffith Show.
Larry Montali writes from Miami.
----- EXCERPT: Serio-comic look at a media-saturated culture is slightly behind the times ----- EXTENDED BODY: Larry Montali ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Videos on Release DATE: 04/11/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: April 11-17, 1999 ----- BODY:The Tale of the Bunny Picnic
The memory of the late Jim Henson and the Muppets he created is well-served by The Tale of the Bunny Picnic, from Columbia Tristar Home Video. The Muppet trio at the center of the story are the diminutive Bean, his dismissive older brother Lugsy, and their understanding sister Twitch. All three youngsters are eagerly awaiting the bunny picnic, a special gathering of lettuce-patch neighbors, but Bean is repeatedly told he is too little to help in the preparations. The unhappy rabbit wanders off as ordered and encounters a fearsome dog. When he tries to warn the others, he is dismissed as a tale-teller. Eventually, the older rabbits find themselves following Bean's plan to rid themselves of the hound. The video's moral is that those who hurt others end up hurting themselves, but it teaches other solid lessons about family life.
The Waterboy
Adam Sandler has an astonishing hold on millions of teens who happily take in his dim-bulb, often vulgar comedies. The Waterboy is the actor-writer's latest. This time, Sandler plays the clueless Bobby Boucher who for 18 years has served water to the rough and tumble players of Louisiana's best college football team, the Cougars. Finally, the nasty Coach Beaulieu (Jerry Reed) can't stand him anymore, and fires the sweet young man. Bobby shyly approaches Coach Klein (Henry Winkler), the hapless leader of the state's worst college football team, the Mud Dogs, for a job. Klein agrees and discovers that Bobby is also an astonishing tackle. Bucking the deep disapproval of his mother (Kathy Bates), Bobby joins the team, attends classes and romances the beauteous Vicki (Fairuza Balk). This hardly funny, slapstick comedy, marked by silliness and raunchiness, is not recommended.
U.S. Catholic Conference rating: adults
The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit
Based on a short story and play by Ray Bradbury, The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit is lighthearted and slightly surreal. It is set in a romanticized version of predominantly Latino East Los Angeles, with its colorful wall murals, street population and poverty. But the story is more concerned with the effect that a gleaming white suit has on the aspirations of five Hispanic men who have been beaten down by life. The men, who are of a similar weight and build, pool their resources to buy the suit, and allot a specified time for each to wear it. The outfit broadens their horizons and gives them a new hope. The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit is blessed with the presence of some of the best Hispanic actors working today, who give special vividness to an unusual story.
— Loretta G. Seyer
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Loretta G. Seyer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Bishop James McHugh DATE: 04/11/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: April 11-17, 1999 ----- BODY:A veteran of the Cairo conference, he also represented the Holy See in New York at the U.N. “preparatory committee” population meeting March 24-31, and knows firsthand the importance of giving the Church a voice in this debate. He spoke with Register correspondent Edward Mulholland.
Mulholland: What are the Holy See's priorities in these negotiations at the preparatory committee meeting?
Bishop McHugh: We want to restore emphasis on the theme of the Cairo conference, which was population and development. Development seems to have been lost. The demographers have tried to establish the link between population increase and decrease — the latter is becoming a problem in more and more nations — and development. It is a responsibility of all nations to collaborate in this enterprise. We are here exercising a moral role to urge the developing nations to construct policies in a truly global sense.
What particular items are you insisting on?
First and foremost, on marriage and the family. In these proceedings, sexuality is extrapolated from marriage — a reality apparently unknown and misunderstood. Sexual pleasure, drive and “health” are treated as individual priorities. The emphasis once again falls upon individualism, not mutual responsibility. Marriage has to be reaffirmed as the context of sexuality. We are involved here in a defensive effort to prevent the spread of this individualism and libertarianism.
We then insist on the family as the basic social unit. This is time and again reaffirmed in the U.N. documents. We speak on behalf of socioeconomic policies that support the family.
Another issue is so-called emergency contraception. I explained before a meeting of NGOs [non-governmental organizations] this morning that these methods are potentially abortifacient. If “emergency contraception” becomes universally accepted, they will start promoting more aggressive means. It all has to do with the philosophical debate of when life begins.
Isn't it a medical question?
These questions are not exclusively medical or scientific. There are different philosophical viewpoints on when human life begins. But the burden of proof, I would say, is on those who deny that life begins at conception.
In one of your interventions you spoke of migration. Is this a priority?
Yes. The Church has always served migrants and refugees. Just look at the history of the United States. The Church welcomed the immigrants, schooled them, the newcomers built their communities around the parishes, the Church taught them English while continuing to minister to them in the native tongue many still spoke at home. This was true for the U.S. and is true today in many parts of the world.
Another important issue is aging, because the world is aging. The needs of older persons need to be served. We speak of the dignity of the elderly and of the unborn in the same breath. We are insisting on this. We must highlight this issue in our demographic studies. Our commitment to life includes the elderly, the disabled.
Some would say the Church shouldn't have a voice in this political and international arena.
A cursory glance at the Statistical Yearbook of the Holy See shows how the Church maintains hospitals, clinics, orphanages, homes for the elderly, schools, etc., by the thousands. Priests, religious and dedicated members of the laity have literally given their lives to the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. We have a lot to add to these debates.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A Village of Shrines DATE: 04/11/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: April 11-17, 1999 ----- BODY:Over the years, the picturesque beauty and historic sites of the Allegheny Mountains in western Pennsylvania have proved popular to tourists. But tucked away within the mountains is another great attraction: a village of beautiful shrines.
After 200 years, Loretto is the home of several shrines, fulfilling the dream of its founder, Father Demetrius Gallitzin, the first priest ordained in the United States by its first bishop — and a prince, descended from Lithuanian royalty. In March 1799, Father Gallitzin was officially assigned as permanent pastor of an Allegheny mission, and by late autumn he founded Loretto, a village named after the renowned shrine in Italy.
Today, there stands the Basilica of St. Michael the Archangel; the Prince Gallitzin chapel house; Shrines to Our Lady of Fatima, Loretto and Lourdes; Mount Assisi Monastery meditative gardens; a Carmelite monastery; and a Catholic college.
St. Mary Street
The half-mile string of sites is connected by St. Mary's Street, one of two main roads laid out by Father Gallitzin. A tireless pastor and missionary, he also built churches, a rectory, and a tannery, among other things, spending $150,000. He borrowed most of that princely sum while living in two rooms of St. Mary's Chapel House, often sleeping on the floor as mortification.
Despite the heavy workload, Father Gallitzin took in orphans and even adopted six of them who lived with a housekeeper in the chapel house. Today, this historic building contains offices and museum rooms, as well as St. Mary's Chapel.
Some renovations have been carried out. The altar the humble prince once used is now encased in stone, but other original items remain as they were, including the Communion rail and one row of pews. The house displays items from the life of the founder including articles he used at Mass, and such belonging as his violin and clock, bearing the royal coat of arms, sent by his mother.The Alleghenies' first cemetery is near the chapel house, and a short distance away is the hillside crypt of Father Gallitzin, which features a bronze statue of the priest.
Between the chapel house and St. Michael's basilica, there is the outdoor shrine of Our Lady of the Alleghenies, which was dedicated on Sept. 8, 1951. The shrine is the official Marian shrine of the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown and features a depiction of the Blessed Virgin dressed as a pioneer woman in cap and cloak, reaching out to a child.
St. Michael's Basilica
St. Michael's was dedicated in 1901 and named a basilica in 1996. It was Father Gallitzin's hope that a new diocese would be centered there, but it wasn't to be.
The basilica's round-arched, Gothic edifice with its arcaded belfry was donated by Charles Schwab, who grew up in the town. The organ, which can be heard within a half-mile radius, was donated by Andrew Carnegie.
The basilica itself is built in Latin cruciform and seated 1,100 before recent renovations. It has four Gothic altars of white Carrara marble, and a Mexican onyx Communion rail on top of gleaming brass capitals. It also contains many murals and other major paintings on canvas. The pews are red quartered oak to match the other woodwork in the basilica.
The basilica fits nicely into this small town, which is celebrating the bicentennial of Loretto and its founder with parish and diocesan events. The celebrations will culminate in this year's Christmas midnight Mass.
The Sunken Gardens
A visit to Loretto would not be complete without a visit to the Mount Assisi Monastery Sunken Gardens.
Our Lady of Fatima Shrine, within the north wall of the gardens, was dedicated in May 1950 after years of extensive work to reclaim and restore the gardens. Father Ronald Bodenschatz, a Third Order Regular Franciscan, was a novice at the time. Today, more than a half-century later, he is curator of the gardens, responsible for three separate restoration jobs. He did much of the work and still plants most of the shrubbery.
The statue of Our Lady of Fatima and statues of the three children visionaries stand in front of a bright, 31-foot mural of the Portuguese countryside. A large rosary is displayed on another wall.
The Shrine of Our Lady of Loretto was built beside it in 1996. The statue of Mary is dressed in sparkling white robes and darkened to look aged like the Lebanese cedar statue in the original shrine in Italy.
The garden shrines flank the carved limestone staircases that lead to the upper lawns and the monastery itself (not open to the public). Trellised roofs for grape arbor and wisteria vine shelter the many different walks throughout the gardens. The eastern pergola displays a statue of St. Michael in its rock garden, while the western pergola honors St. Anthony. There is also an Italian Pierra Sanota marble statue of St. Joseph with the Child Jesus.
There is still much more to see. Hidden within the landscape is a grotto to Our Lady of Lourdes and there is also the shrine of St. Joseph the Worker. One day is never enough in this little town in the heart of the mountains.
Joseph Pronechen writes from Trumbull, Connecticut.
The Prince Who Became An Apostle
As a young prince, Demetrius Gallitzin never lived in his home-land where his ancestors were well-known royalty, rulers and statesmen. A direct descendant of King Gediminas, 14th century ruler of Lithuania, he was born in The Hague, in Holland, where his father, Dimitri Alexeievitch Gallitzin, was envoy of Catherine the Great. He grew up under the watchful eye of his mother, Countess Amelia von Schmettau, daughter of Frederick II's Prussian field marshal. His childhood playmates included William of Orange, the future king of Holland.
An expert swordsman and horseman, the prince wasn't particularly religious, because his parents were friends with Enlightenment philosophers. But when his parents separated, his mother returned to the Catholic faith — and brought he and his sister with her. When he sailed to America in 1792 to complete his education, he used the name Augustine Smith because in post-Revolutionary War America, royalty was unfashionable.
He finished seminary training in Baltimore, and retained the name “Smith” even after ordination, keeping it until he restored his family name in 1810. By then, Loretto was established as the fifth Pennsylvania mission, the place where Father Gallitzin earned his title, “Apostle of the Alleghenies.”
—Joseph Pronechen
----- EXCERPT: Loretto, Pa., is celebrating its bicentennial ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Pronechen ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: U.K. Catholic Schools Cancel Red Nose Day DATE: 04/11/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: April 11-17, 1999 ----- BODY:BIRMINGHAM, England—There were red faces among local organizers of Britain's Red Nose Day when it was discovered that the charity event was funding organizations that promote liberal abortion regimes.
On Red Nose Day, promoted by the charity organization Comic Relief, many British raise money for the organization's relief efforts and wear clown-style red noses to show their solidarity with its mission.
But when Catholic headmaster Jim Caffery realized that funds raised for Red Nose Day went to “pro-choice” organizations such as Marie Stopes International, the Brook Advisory Service and the International Planned Parenthood Federation, he banned the popular event from his three primary schools in Birmingham.
For 13 years, Red Nose Day has been a part of national life in the United Kingdom. Members of the public are encouraged to perform silly stunts for charity, with proceeds going toward development projects in Africa and programs in the United Kingdom. The event was prompted by the success of the Live Aid concerts which raised money for the victims of the Ethiopian famine in 1985. Comedians wanted to make a gesture similar to their pop music colleagues, and so founded Comic Relief in 1986.
The event dominates a whole day's television scheduling on BBC1, the U.K.'s main public service channel, and events linked with the charity telethon are supported nationwide. Troops on morning parade wear red noses as part of their uniforms and the prime minister and the leader of the opposition sport red noses during their parliamentary work.
It seems incongruous to us that we should even be thinking of children raising money when it will be channeled into anti-child and anti-woman activities.
Money for the ‘Needy?’
This year, Red Nose Day, held March 13, raised more than $35 million for Comic Relief. Since the first Red Nose Day, Comic Relief has raised about $233 million.
However, when these “needy causes” were investigated by the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child, the group determined that some were not as deserving as others. Marie Stopes International, which offers a “quickie” lunch-time abortion service, received $126,300 in 1992, $42,000 in 1994, $126,776 in 1996 and $66,840 in 1997.
Now, hundreds of other Catholic schools are considering following Caffery's example, and Nuala Scarrisbrick, founder of Britain's largest pro-life organization, LIFE, is calling on dioceses to give schools guidance on which charities they should and should not encourage in the classroom.
The Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child also found that the Brook Advisory Service, which provides the “morning after” pill to under-16-year-olds without their parental consent, received $16,800 in 1994. International Planned Parenthood has received more than $668,000 from Comic Relief since 1992.
Even so, the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child did not call for a boycott of Red Nose Day.
Spokesman Paul Tully said, “We support those who have decided to boycott. Equally, we support those who have committed themselves to the event and need to proceed to ensure that money raised isn't used for promoting or providing abortions.”
The Catholic Herald, Britain's biggest selling Catholic newspaper, spoke against Comic Relief with an editorial on “Why Catholics should boycott Red Nose Day.”
Caffery, who was the first to introduce a ban in a Catholic school, said: “It seems incongruous to us that we should even be thinking of children raising money when it will be channeled into anti-child and anti-woman activities. I take exception to this being regarded as a particularly Catholic stance. I regard it as a human rights issue in defense of and in protection of children and all women. I think Comic Relief is very misguided and is abusing its remit to give money to family planning activities.”
War of the Noses
Comic Relief dismissed that argument, and claimed that this year's event had the support of the charity agency of the English and Welsh Catholic hierarchy.
The organization issued a statement saying, “Every two years when we have Red Nose Day, pro-life campaigners send out misleading and inaccurate information about Comic Relief's support for projects in Africa with a family planning component. We do not pay for abortions. The campaigners know it, but still persist in trying to use us to gain publicity. It is very depressing that they choose this moment to do it.”
However, LIFE founder Scarris-brick said the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child's research was a matter of serious concern to Catholics.
“One doesn't want to be a party pooper, but there is a lot wrong with Comic Relief,” she said. “One of my long-standing objections is that it takes place each year during Lent when Catholic children are already making donations to Catholic charities. Red Nose Day comes along with its spirit of forced jollity that is not really in keeping with the Lenten spirit. It makes things difficult for Catholic children. The pressure from the television to take part in Red Nose Day is enormous, and Comic Relief provides magnificent educational material to schools.”
She said the organization should at least choose a day outside of Lent. But she said that the abortion support is even more serious.
“Why these organizations should benefit from charity, I don't know,” she said. “They are already receiving funding from the British taxpayer.”
She offered one suggestion. “Catholic schools should restrict themselves to helping Catholic charities — there is nothing wrong with picking a good missionary society.”
Cian Molloy writes from Dublin, Ireland
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Cian Molloy ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Life Notes DATE: 04/11/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: April 11-17, 1999 ----- BODY:A Pharmacist Revolt Over Abortion Pills?
“Pharmacist associations in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and numerous other states have responded to concerns about emergency contraception, as well as the specter of assisted-suicide drugs and the abortion pill RU-486, by adopting ‘conscience-clause’ guidelines that affirm pharmacists' right to refuse to fill prescriptions on moral, ethical or religious grounds. They also have pushed for legislation to protect druggists from retribution,” said the report. “Emergency contraceptives” prevent an embryo from implanting in the uterus, thus causing an early abortion.
Abortion supporters argue that pharmacists should be expected to help find alternate providers for pills they won't prescribe, said the report. But it cited one organization, Pharmacists for Life, which retorted, “any accommodation amounts to cooperation in abortion.”
“Pharmacists for Life urges its 1,500 members to refuse to fill not only emergency contraception but all birth-control prescriptions — pills, implants, injections and intrauterine devices — because of the chance, no matter how remote, of disrupting implantation of a fertilized egg,” noted the report.
The Kevorkian Slope
“At long last, a jury got it right,” the New York Post editorial began in its treatment of the Pontiac, Mich. jury's verdict in the death of Thomas Youk, who suffered from Lou Gehrig's Disease . A videotape of his death by injection of fatal drugs was broadcast on the CBS television show “60 Minutes.”
The editorial noted that the case shows the consequences of legalizing assisted suicide. “The first victims will be those who — in a state of depression — declare that life is no longer worth living, whether or not they are terminally ill. The next step on the slippery slope is state-sanctioned murder, as practiced in Nazi Germany, when officials declared that someone's quality of life was impaired. ... “It's a truly frightening prospect, and we can only hope that yesterday's verdict puts a giant roadblock in the way of Kevorkian's murderous parade,” it concluded.
U.N. Conferees Target U.S. ‘Human Rights Abuses’
Said the paper, “The sharpest blow came from ally Germany, whose foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, announced that the 15-member European Union for the first time would submit an anti-death-penalty resolution to the U.N. Human Rights Commission.”
“He told delegates from the 53 member countries that the resolution was intended to prevent ‘the execution of minors, of the mentally ill, enforcement before completion of ongoing procedures, and extradition to countries where the death penalty is in force.’” The paper said, “Fischer did not single out the United States by name, but Germany protested when Arizona executed two German-born men earlier this year.”
“On the commission's opening day, Amnesty International for the first time placed the United States on its list of human rights violators, in the company of Algeria, Cambodia and Turkey, among others, because of police brutality, violations against people in detention and more executions,” said the report.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Facts of Life DATE: 04/11/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: April 11-17, 1999 ----- BODY:A request for assisted suicide is typically a cry for help — for counseling and positive action. It is false charity to kill a person who really needs care and love. In 1998, the National Right to Life prepared a fact sheet on the question which includes these statistics:
• Terminally ill patients who desire death suffer from depression, which is treatable. In one study, 24% of terminally ill patients who desired death had clinical depression.
• Suicidal intent is not a permanent condition. Of those who attempt suicide but are stopped, less than 4% go on to kill themselves in the next five years; less than 11% will commit suicide over the next 35 years.
----- EXCERPT: Did You Know? ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Oregon May Tighten Rules on Assisted Suicide DATE: 04/11/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: April 11-17, 1999 ----- BODY:SALEM, Ore.—A state Senate panel approved a bill to give hospitals that oppose assisted suicide a firmer hand to punish doctors who flout hospital policy and engage in assisted suicides.
Backers of the measure said it tightens language in Oregon's legal assisted suicide law. The measure now moves to the full Senate.
Health groups that oppose assisted suicide, such as Providence Health Systems, a network of Catholic hospitals, have asked for more authority to penalize doctors who assist in suicides in violation of those groups' rules.
Under the bill adopted April 1 by the Senate Judiciary Committee, those hospitals can prohibit doctors from participating in assisted suicide on their property if they clearly forbid it in their contract. Further, doctors who violate that policy could be punished by losing their hospital privileges or office lease.
Backers of assisted suicide supported the changes but were upset that the Legislature was already working to restrict assisted suicides.
Opponents of the assisted suicide law tried unsuccessfully to persuade the panel to adopt language requiring that all patients undergo a mental health evaluation before they could get a lethal prescription from their doctor. The current law allows doctors to order a mental health exam if they see a need for one, but doesn't require it.
“I think that it's a minimum to protect patients who are most naturally depressed after hearing about a terminal illness,” said Gayle Atteberry, head of Oregon Right to Life, which strongly opposes assisted suicide.
On another issue, the panel decided to require patients who decide to have assisted suicides to have an Oregon driver's license.
That was aimed at easing concerns by pro-life critics that Oregon would become a “destination for death” because the current law's residency requirement is so loosely worded.
In earlier discussions, lawmakers had considered amending the law to prohibit patients from taking their lives in a public place — such as a beach or a park. The committee didn't include such language. But it did allow a state agency to charge a person's estate for any costs that might arise if the patient commits suicide on public property.
State officials have said that 15 terminally ill Oregonians used the act to end their lives in 1998, the first full year the law was in effect. (Pro-Life Infonet)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 04/11/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: April 11-17, 1999 ----- BODY:Pope John Paul II called America's pro-life movement “one of the most positive aspects of American public life” in his ad limina remarks to the bishops of Hawaii, Nevada, and California last year (See Battle on Reproductive Issues, this page). But, he pointed out, there is still much to be done.
In the twenty-five years which have passed since the judicial decision legalizing abortion in your country there has been a widespread mobilization of consciences in support of life. The pro-life movement is one of the most positive aspects of American public life, and the support given it by the Bishops is a tribute to your pastoral leadership.
Despite the generous efforts of so many, however, the idea that elective abortion is a “right” continues to be asserted. Moreover, there are signs of an almost unimaginable insensitivity to the reality of what actually happens during an abortion, as evidenced in recent events surrounding so-called “partial-birth” abortion. This is a cause for deep concern. A society with a diminished sense of the value of human life at its earliest stages has already opened the door to a culture of death. As pastors, you must make every effort to ensure that there is no dulling of consciences regarding the seriousness of the crime of abortion, a crime which cannot be morally justified by any circumstance, purpose or law.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: War Tests Religious Loyalties DATE: 04/18/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 18-24, 1999 ----- BODY:WARSAW, Poland—When NATO war-planes attacked Yugoslavia on the evening of March 24, one senior Catholic was calmly defiant.
“Whatever happens, I'll be here to the very end, and so will my priests,” Bishop Marko Sopi, who ministers to ethnic Albanian Catholics in the conflict-torn province of Kosovo, told the Register. “All we can do now is pray to God, who is now the only one who can bring back peace.”
The NATO attack was the ultimate denouement in a year of savage clashes, punctuated by abortive talks and deals. Three weeks on, with dozens of targets blitzed from Vojvodina to Montenegro, Bishop Sopi's pledge is still being tested, along with the war's impact on Yugoslavia's complex religious makeup.
At 65,000, Kosovo's small but vibrant Catholic minority made up just 4% of its population in happier times. But it was also unusually vibrant, and played an important role in the culture of the province's Albanian majority.
The minority's future looks uncertain.
Kosovo's 23 Catholic parishes, served by 37 priests and 76 nuns, formally belong to the Skopje-Prizren Diocese, which is now divided by the Yugoslav-Macedonian border.
Up to two dozen Catholics were known to have died in Serb-Albanian fighting between January and March. But that figure is certain to have risen.
The large Catholic parish in the provincial capital of Pristina was reported dispersed by early April, while no one knows the fate of 80 Catholics who sought refuge at their church in the historic northern town of Pec.
Nuns from a Divine Love convent at Binac were driven out by Serb militias, while several Franciscan monks were left unaccounted for when the Yugoslav Army commandeered their monastery at Djakovica.
The Franciscans have seven other houses in Serbia and Montenegro, the two states making up Yugoslavia. Although five Catholic dioceses still formally exist here, up to three-quarters of the Church's half-million members fled during the country's 1990-91 breakup, leaving mostly the poor and elderly.
Last spring, minority churches warned their rights faced curbs under a new religious law being drawn up by the nationalist Radical Party, which provides half the country's Socialist-led coalition government.
There have been no unusual pressures. But the government hasn't even replied to a request for fuller legal rights by Yugoslavia's Catholic Bishops Conference a year ago.
Reconciliatory calls by 67-year-old Archbishop Franc Perko of Belgrade, six of whose 15 parishes are in the capital, have been attacked more often than applauded.
“Catholics are a minority here, and we're naturally afraid about the future — though we've consistently urged peaceful, humanitarian solutions, the forces opposed to dialogue have proved too hard and strong,” the Slovene-born archbishop told the Register. “In reality, Christians can do very little now but pray that a desire for peace will eventually shine in this part of the Balkans.
“No war is just, and only God can pass judgment on the politicians responsible.”
Where churches are concerned, attitudes were hardened by the NATO strikes.
Support for Milosevic
The predominant Serbian Ortho/dox Church, whose key posts are nationalist-dominated, has generally backed President Slobodan Milosevic.
Yugoslav TV showed pictures of a 14th-century UNESCO-protected Orthodox monastery at Gracanica in Kosovo, which it claimed was badly damaged by NATO shelling. It also showed Patriarch Pavle, whose formal see is in Kosovo, visiting a bomb-damaged monastery at Rakovica in Belgrade.
Though Orthodox bishops have reported a 40% drop in church attendance since war started, they've naturally rallied to the national cause.
Since fellow-Orthodox abroad have lent support too, there, on March 24, a top-level Russian Orthodox delegation, headed by Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk, canceled Vatican talks, explaining it was impossible to “step on land from which bombers were launched to strike Serbia.”
In a letter to world leaders, Patriarch Aleksi II branded the attack a “dangerous precedent” with “unimaginable political and military consequences.”
“More than 10 countries have hit one nation, destroying not just military but also purely civilian targets, and delivering a shattering blow to the peace structure which has protected Europe for over 50 years,” the patriarch added.
“History teaches you cannot deprive a sovereign nation of its history, holy places and right to self-determination,” he continued. “If Western nations fail to understand this, history's judgment will be irreversible.”
Meanwhile, the head of the Orthodox Church of Greece, Archbishop Christodoulos, sent a delegation of hierarchs to Belgrade, and accentuated the war's religious dimension by denouncing NATO's “bloody war against Orthodox believers.”
Romania's Orthodox Church also insisted Kosovo “must continue to belong to Serbia,” and urged its Serbian Orthodox neighbors to withstand a war “whose main victims are its sons and land.”
Some Romanians went even further. The Orthodox Archdiocese of Alba Iulia condemned NATO's “savage aggression,” while the Romanian Orthodox Students Association staged a special prayer meeting.
“We witness in bewilderment this ‘lesson in democracy'being taught with weapons by the U.S., a master of world democracy,” the student's March 31 statement read. “NATO, the guarantor of world security, peace and prosperity, offers us bombs, debris, refugees and guns. The protector and promoter of human rights avoids a ‘humanitarian catastrophe’ with blood and despair.”
Could the threatened interchurch rift be modified by the Vatican's peace initiatives?
Vatican Activity
When airstrikes started, Pope John Paul II warned of a “conflict wounding all Europe,” and offered a four-point plan for suspending hostilities and restarting negotiations. This relied heavily of Orthodox contacts.
The Vatican's Spanish nuncio, Archbishop Santos Abril Castello, stayed at his Belgrade post as a sign of neutrality, and promised to “knock on all doors” during talks with Yugoslav government and Orthodox Church leaders.
A message from Patriarch Pavle was delivered by Russian ex-premier Yegor Gaidar to the Pope, who dispatched his secretary for state relations, Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, to Belgrade on April
1. Besides meeting Milosevic, Archbishop Tauran said he held “long and important” talks with Patriarch Pavle.
Although Milosevic ignored the Pope's calls to end ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, and NATO rejected his appeal for an Easter cease-fire, the Vatican's burst of activity could still yield results.
The Russian Orthodox Church's governing Holy Synod endorsed the cease-fire idea, and insisted it was ready to work with Catholics to achieve a “lasting and just peace.”
“Kosovo remains the Serb nation's integral, ancestral sanctuary,” the synod noted in a statement. “But safety must also be assured for the ethnic Albanians living there, whose national, cultural and religious rights should be independently secured by legitimate representatives of the world community.”
Other Orthodox leaders have since shown signs of modifying their unconditional backing for Yugoslavia.
The Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew I, branded nationalism “heresy” in a March 30 interview with Greece's Eleftherotypia daily, particularly denouncing forms which made use of religion.
Meanwhile, Patriarch Teoctist of Romania warned of the “nefarious consequences” of an Easter-time conflict, deploring the “innocent people mercilessly killed and entire populations seeking refuge.”
In neighboring Bulgaria, where southern church bells have tolled the funeral rhythm on each day of the war, a Holy Synod appeal demanded an end to NATO airstrikes on March 31.
However, a second, on April 7, flatly condemned Milosevic's purging of Kosovo as an “insult to the Orthodox faith,” and denounced attempts to conduct “war and genocide in the name of Christianity.”
Some commentators think the potential for interchurch cooperation will grow rather than fade as the war intensifies.
In Eastern Europe, where currency rates and stock prices fell amid fears of a spreading conflict, Catholic leaders have reiterated the Church's condemnation of force.
Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined NATO on March 12, and were already embroiled in a war two weeks later. Though formally backing the NATO line, their governments are edgy and opinion is divided.
Cardinal Jozef Glemp of Poland has admitted to being “deeply hurt” by the conflict. In nearby Austria, where Serbian Orthodox priests joined protests outside the U.S. Embassy in Vienna, the Catholic Bishops Conference called the NATO strikes a “threat to world peace.”
“This isn't a religious war, but there's a permanent risk that religious symbols will be abused for political ends, thus changing its countenance,” the bishops warned March 25."The fact that the escalating violence in Kosovo has not been stopped is shocking proof of how the warnings of Church organizations in the region, endlessly repeated since 1990, have been ignored.”
Meanwhile, even the Serbian Orthodox Church could tire of Milosevic's stance.
“War is justified only when it's a war of defense: Its aim can never be to beat another country and oppress the people living there,” Patriarch Pavle warned March 29. “We need peace. But so do other nations, as well as the followers of other religions and outlooks who live with us.”
A year ago, several Serbian bishops criticized the rejection of international mediation in a Yugoslav referendum. In Kosovo, Orthodox Bishop Artemije Radosavljevic of Rasko-Prizren demanded equal rights for all citizens, and cautioned that Serbs would suffer, just as they did in Croatia and Bosnia, if the Belgrade government's “undemocratic policy” continued.
Artemije was present when Kosovo's Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim religious leaders met in Vienna on March 16 to draw up a 10-point declaration on the need for mutual support and recognition between communities.
Though the war has upstaged their initiative, it also shows the potential for interreligious understanding exists despite everything.
Ironically, it was the Catholic San Egidio Community in Rome which brokered a key Kosovo agreement in 1996, under which the Yugoslav regime pledged to allow the reopening of Albanian schools and associations, as a partial substitute for the provincial autonomy it had revoked in 1989.
It was the regime's failure to honor even that which spurred the resort to arms by Kosovo's Liberation Army, the UCK, in the latest violent twist in the region's battle-ravaged history.
Just what the outcome will be for Kosovo's 61-year-old Catholic bishop, Marko Sopi, is anyone's guess.
On March 29, NATO warplanes flew over Prizren, where the ethnic Albanian bishop is based, and Serb paramilitaries entered the quiet southern town. More than 20,000 Prizren refugees fled to Albania in the days that followed, and Catholic parish buildings were reported ablaze.
Having done everything to avoid being drawn into the conflict, the bishop and his beleaguered priests face a tough challenge — how to support all efforts at peace, while also backing the just demands of their people.
Jonathan Luxmoore writes from Warsaw, Poland.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jonathan Luxmoore ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Tale of Two Presidents: DATE: 04/18/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 18-24, 1999 ----- BODY:CARACAS, Venezuela—Andrés Pastrana and Hugo Chávez have a lot in common. They both won landslide elections to become president at critical times of their respective, side-by-side countries. And both men are Catholic.
But their similarities stop there.
In the first year of office, each has begun to forge a very different type of relationship with the Catholic Church, prompting a situation that promises to keenly test the role of the Church in Latin America.
Pastrana, whose father was a past president of Colombia, is regarded as a smooth-mannered politician who owes much to the democratic traditions of his country. He has sought out a high degree of Church cooperation so far in his term.
Venezuela's Chávez, in contrast, comes from a poor family. As a colonel of the Venezuelan army he once attempted a coup against the region's oldest democracy. He still dons military fatigues occasionally. And he has so far worked directly against Church policies in his term.
Despite their differences, the two men are on friendly terms. When they met during Pastrana's official visit to Venezuela, they agreed to ease old tensions on their shared border in order to concentrate on their own problems: in Colombia, guerrilla violence and drug trafficking; in Venezuela, economic crisis and social unrest.
Chávez — divorced, remarried and barred from the sacraments — announced that he was a “practicing Catholic” after he was elected. He asked Archbishop Ignacio Velasco of Caracas to celebrate a Mass before his installation, an unusual move in Latin America, which is squeamish about church-and-state ties.
Moreover, during the installation, Chávez again proclaimed his Catholic identity, this time adding he was also “pro-life.”
A more discreet personality, Colombia's Pastrana has never made a public statement about his faith. It is well-known that he comes from a long-standing Catholic family — and rather than speak about his Catholic identity, Pastrana had a chapel built at his campaign's headquarters, and let it be known that he prayed a noon Angelus and 6 p.m. rosary with campaign employees there daily.
Pastrana's installation was attended by a significant Church presence: two Colombian cardinals at the Vatican, Prefect of the Congregation of Clergy Darío Castrillón and President of the Council for the Family Alfonso López Trujillo, shared privileged places with Colombian bishops.
Sterilizing the Poor
After those first moments of their respective rules, Pastrana and Chávez quickly separated ways in their relationships with the Catholic Church.
Early in February, Chávez announced the Bolivar 2000 a national mobilization campaign to fight poverty.
Bolivar 2000, named in honor of Venezuelan liberator Simon Bolivar, has mobilized military forces and state officials to improve food production and distribution, health care and the renewal of infrastructure such as roads, bridges and power lines. The Catholic Church initially supported the project. But then the director of maternity services in Caracas, Dr. Carlos Cabrera, announced that new “improved” health services to low-income mothers will include sterilization. Cabrera said the decision to include sterilizations came from Chávez early on when he launched Bolivar 2000.
Shortly thereafter, Bishop Hernan Sánchez, secretary-general of the Venezuelan Conference of Catholic Bishops, announced the Church's decision to fight against the surprise policy.
Bishop Sánchez expressed the frustration of the Venezuelan episcopate with the policy, “launched under the government of a president that, on his installation day, proclaimed himself ‘pro-life’ and ‘Catholic.’”/p>
Of the sterilizations he said, “Any mutilation, when not prescribed for a vital therapeutic reason, is immoral. It is made even worse when it is officially promoted by the government.”
The bishop said that “each official birth-control campaign targeting the poor always ends up creating more injustice by violating the human rights of the defenseless.”
According to Provive, the largest Venezuelan Catholic pro-life group, the country has one of the lowest rates of inhabitants per square mile and the highest average income in Latin America. “In this moment of deep social crisis, this anti-birth policy is not only inconvenient but unacceptable,” Provive said in a statement.
Chávez has not taken responsibility for the sterilization campaign, and at this writing he has not answered the bishops’ complaints.
Seeking the Bishops'Help
Meanwhile, in Colombia, Pastrana has gained a reputation for operating quietly rather than with splashy initiatives like Bolivar 2000. He also is working closely with the Church.
His challenge: to deal with three different Marxist rebel organizations and one paramilitary group, all of them more or less involved in drug trafficking.
More and more, Pastrana has been relying on the Catholic bishops as mediators in the process of dialogue he started recently.
On March 21, the Colombian president, traveling in Europe in search of support for his peace plan, was given an audience with Pope John Paul II. After the private meeting, Pastrana said he had formally requested the mediation of the Holy See, “of course, conditioned to the acceptance of the other side,” that is to say, the guerrilla groups.
In the meantime, he has requested Archbishop Antonio Giraldo Jaramillo, president of the Colombian bishops’ conference and head of the Commission of National Reconciliation, to play a mediating role.
“The role of the Catholic bishops in this process is decisive,” said Pastrana in March. “The country needs not only their prayers, but the credibility of one of the few institutions in which Colombians still trust.”
A conclusive comparison between the two presidents, their policies, and their relationship with the Catholic Church is still premature.
But in Latin America, where Catholics are the majority in countries with a history of anti-Catholic political activity, they show two opposite approaches to church-state issues.
Alejandro Bermudez writes from Lima, Peru.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Alejandro Bermudez ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: In San Francisco, Church Deploys Charity In Fight With Male 'Sisters' DATE: 04/18/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 18-24, 1999 ----- BODY:SAN FRANCISCO—When more than 7,000 revelers turned out in San Francisco's Castro district Easter Sunday to join in a celebration that included the mocking of the Catholic Church, onlookers had good reason to see it as another public slap at a docile giant.
But those close to the controversy say it may have signaled a new era for Catholics in the public square.
The 20th anniversary party put on by the “transsexual” group Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence followed several weeks of political struggle between the Archdiocese of San Francisco against the city, which granted a permit to close a downtown street on Easter Sunday for the event.
The “Sisters” are men who dress as nuns and refer to themselves as an “order.” Most members are homosexuals. The group calls itself a charitable organization but is most famous for bits that satirize and ridicule Catholic ritual.
When Pope John Paul II visited San Francisco in 1987, for example, the group performed a “raunchy and offensive” mock exorcism and coronation, said arch-diocesan spokesman Maurice Healy.
This year marked the first time the group applied for a permit to close a street for its annual bash — and the first time it met serious opposition. The application was initially denied, but city supervisors voted unanimously to overturn that decision and issue the permit.
Then the Church responded.
Archbishop William Levada was in Rome at the time, but the new diocesan newspaper he started was on top of the story.
“I had always dreamed of Catholic San Francisco making a mark,” said Healy, associate publisher of the paper. “I never thought it would be done in eight weeks.”
His March 12 editorial denouncing the decision was sent to 100,000 Catholic homes, and ignited a media firestorm. Several editorials in the San Francisco papers asked why Catholics couldn't simply ignore the sisters.
On his return, Archbishop Levada answered the question.
“I think the reason for the Catholic community's vocal reaction to this case,” he wrote in the diocesan paper, “is that years of ‘ignoring’ the ridicule from the ‘Sisters’ … has now escalated into focusing this ridicule onto the most holy day of the Christian year — Easter! That's what seems to come from ‘ignoring them.’”/p>
The issue quickly became a political — and media — battle. NBC's Today show to The New York Times weighed in on the supervisors’ unanimous vote, and the ire of the Bay Area's 1.5 million Catholics.
In the face of such an outpouring of Catholic sentiment, Mayor Willie Brown asked that the supervisors reconsider their vote.
The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights took out a half-page ad in the San Francisco Chronicle on March 29, the day the city vote, and threatened a Catholic boycott of the city if the supervisors refused to rescind the permit.
The final vote came in 9-2, with only two supervisors willing to change their stand. But Rick Hinshaw, director of communications for the Catholic League, dismissed the political loss as trivial compared with the other gains Catholics have made.
“We felt that [the effort] was very effective,” he said. “We were able to use this to expose anti-Catholic bias. What hopefully has happened is that Catholics have become sensitized to just how vile this kind of anti-Catholic bigotry becomes.”
Catholic Response: Charity
Adding fuel to the already heated situation was Tom Ammiano, president of the city council. Identifying himself as both Catholic and gay, he told The New York Times that the archdiocese was on a “jihad against gays and lesbians.” Ammiano did not return calls from the Register.
… years of ‘ignoring’ the ridicule from the ‘Sisters’ … has now escalated into focusing this ridicule onto the most holy day of the Christian year — Easter!
Healy remembers the situation differently. He said that despite the supervisors’ refusal to rescind the permit, the portion of the March 29 meeting which was devoted to public comment was “very civil,” and offered some hopeful signs.
“Both sides were able to talk things through with very heartfelt sentiments,” he said. “It was the kind of a dialogue we haven't seen here in San Francisco.”
“Sister Phyllis” Stein of the Perpetual Indulgence group concurred. A five-year member, he asked to be identified only by his taken name.
He told the Register that amid the swirl of controversy, three “sisters” and three members of the archdiocesan staff, including Healy, sat down for a conversation “over tea.”
“I can't tell you how much I appreciated that meeting,” Stein said. “I think it is very important that a dialogue happen.”
“The archbishop has called us and he has said he'd like to have a sit-down meeting with us,” said Stein, who said he was raised Catholic and attended Catholic schools. Archbishop Levada also offered to meet with city supervisors to discuss the fall-out from the controversy.
The Impact
The Catholic League's Hinshaw said the fact that such a dialogue is beginning to take place is evidence of the success of the more forceful public opposition of Catholics to attacks on the Church.
“The fact that they even feel the need to do that is evidence that the Church has begun to assert itself,” he said. “This group has pretty much had free rein out there.”
Healy agreed.
“The longer-term effect in San Francisco is that the supervisors who did not respect the feelings of Catholics are now being held accountable in the public press,” he said, pointing out that at least two area newspapers ran editorials in the days following Easter sharply questioning the leadership of Ammiano and other supervisors.
Press reports also focused on the willingness of Archbishop Levada to enter into dialogue with the “Sisters” and with city officials.
No one in the archdiocese is saying that such dialogue will be easy, however. “What we learned is how deep the divide is,” said Healy. The kind of “bridge-building” it will take, he said, is enormous.
—Cyril Jones-Kellett writes from San Diego.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Cyril Jones-Kellett ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Eastern-rite Litugies Lure Latin-rite Catholics DATE: 04/18/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 18-24, 1999 ----- BODY:McLEAN, Va.—For many Roman Catholics, Eastern-rite churches have a great appeal.
Take William and Connie Marshner, for example. They enthusiastically describe the Divine Liturgy — the Eastern term for the Mass — at Holy Redeemer Church in McLean.
It's crowded with people of all ages and races. Separate choirs for adults and children stand on either siade of the front altar, in front of the iconostasis, the wooden screen separating the congregation from the sanctuary.
Priests, deacons and acolytes resplendent in embroidered robes stand before the gates of the iconostasis, chanting. Everyone sings vigorously, babies cry, children run up and join the children's choir and then slide back to their parents at whim, but no one seems distracted.
“It's so mystical and yet accessible,” said Connie Marshner. She called her first introduction to the Liturgy at her new parish, “the fact the whole congregation sang was just so dynamic. Everyone was 100% there. Automatically, you were part of a community.”
She and her husband, formerly Latin-rite Catholics, have made that parish their own. Across the country, more and more Roman Catholics are looking eastward.
George and Ann Lally are two Irish Catholics who joined Sts. Cyril and Methodius parish in Carey, N.C. They were attracted by “the sense of community, tradition and reverence,” of the Divine Liturgy said George Lally.
“Father Rick [Richard Roher] does an exceptional job of explaining things we'd taken for granted about both rites,” added his wife.
In a typical situation, Stanley Budzinkski became interested in the Eastern churches when he began dating his future wife, a Ruthenian Catholic. He “fell in love” with the rite and even underwent training to become a cantor at his church in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. He added that he treasures the rite's many ancient litanies and devotions to our Lady.
Father Mark Melone of the Melkite parish of St. George in Sacramento, Calif., notes that 50% of the priests in his diocese are former Roman Catholics. He attributes this to Eastern Catholicism's “integrated spirituality” as well as to the fact that they were the first to use English in their liturgies in this country.
“We tend to have smaller communities, and everyone gets involved.”
In Full Communion
The words “Byzantine” and “Greek” in the past have been used to describe these Eastern churches, which consist of 17 various churches, all in full communion with the Pope. The largest ones are the Ruthenian (Eastern Europe), Melkite (many countries of the Middle East), Maronite (Lebannon), Ukrainian (Russia), and Coptic (Egyptian) churches.
Eastern rites usually have a counterpart among the Orthodox churches, which have not been in communion with the Roman Church since the Great Schism of 1054. Some of the Eastern Catholic rites have never been separated from Rome, while others are known as “uniates” for having re-established communion with Rome within the last few centuries.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church sums up the churches and rites this way: “The liturgical traditions or rites presently in use in the Church are the Latin (principally the Roman rite, but also the rites of certain local churches, such as the Ambrosian rite, or those of certain religious orders) and the Byzantine, Alexandrian or Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Maronite and Chaldean rites. In ‘faithful obedience to tradition, the sacred Council declares that Holy Mother Church holds all lawfully recognized rites to be of equal right and dignity, and that she wishes to preserve them in the future and to foster them in every way’” (No. 1202).
The Orthodox and Catholic churches share the same seven sacraments, including a common understanding of the priesthood and of the Eucharist. The liturgies of the Eastern rites are almost identical to their Orthodox counterparts. The rites are characterized by sung liturgies, elaborate vestments, incense and icons.
Changing rites from Roman to Eastern used to be near-impossible. Under the new Code of Canon Law it is somewhat easier, but still an involved process. Most Roman Catholics who switch rites attend an Eastern church for years before considering making the change. And there are others who never switch.
The catechism explains that “the law of prayer is the law of faith: the Church believes as she prays. … For this reason no sacramental rite may be modified or manipulated at the will of the minsiter or the community” (No. 1124-25).
This process can't be called “conversion” because the Catholic Church — whether Eastern or Western — contains the fullness of the truth as revealed by Christ. Catholics who switch rites are embracing a different expression of that fullness.
Malcontented Romans?
While many Eastern priests are enthusiastic about the addition of Westerners to their formerly exclusively ethnic congregations, not everyone sees the situation as positive. Father Joseph Amar, a Maronite priest who teaches classics at Notre Dame University, doubts that the rite-switchers have “an authentic attraction to the Eastern rite.” He suspects that many of them are “discontented traditionalists” yearning for the Tridentine rite. “The Eastern churches aren't some kind of pristine Christianity,” he said. “People who expect that are in for some real surprises.”
Father Richard Roher has encountered some “Roman malcontents” in the early years of his new Ruthenian parish of Sts. Cyril and Methodius in Carey, N.C.
But “they didn't stay,” he reported. “Once they realized the parish wasn't going to ever look like a 1950s Roman Catholic church, they left. We make it clear that we love the Church and they won't find a sympathetic ear.”
John Mallory, director of religious education for the Latin-rite St. Ambrose parish in Annandale, Va., has long been a devotee of the Eastern rites, whose liturgies he still occasionally attends.
But he has no desire to leave the Latin rite, and he said he hopes that those who do will do it “as a sign of love and unity with the whole Church and because it's a real call from God,” and not because of dissatisfaction with the Latin rite.
Mallory, who holds a masters degree in Early Christian Studies, pointed out, “First of all, there's no canonical reason to switch rites. The Roman Catholic is free to partake of the sacraments in any Catholic church freely, without any kind of canonical additions,” he said.
Mallory said that those who do switch might face what he has in his forays into Eastern Catholicism. Speaking of his love for the feast days and celebrations of the liturgical calendar, he said, “Without denigrating the eastern calendar, it would take me some doing to absorb [it].” It's celebrations and “Eastern” saints would be unfamiliar to most Americans.
Besides, the West has riches of its own, he said. “One who loves the Church for the traditions of the Church does not have to leave the Roman Catholic Church to find those traditions. The Latin rite has maintained and preserved traditions that date all the way back to the apostles and even back to Christ.”
—Regina Doman writes from Front Royal, Virginia.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Regina Doman ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: An Unlikely Cardinal from Scotland DATE: 04/18/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 18-24, 1999 ----- BODY:The second cardinal appointed in Scotland since the Reformation, he is called “the people's cardinal,” in part for his championing of workers’ rights. On Mother's Day 1997 he began an international aid program to help women contemplating abortion. So far, 107 mothers have been helped. He spoke with Register correspondent Paul Burnell in a wide-ranging interview.
Paul Burnell: You celebrated your golden jubilee last year. To what do you credit your vocation to the priesthood 50 years ago?
Cardinal Winning:I think, first of all, it was the good home I came from. The Church was everything to us. It was the focal point of our lives. Another influence was the example of the priests from our parish as I was growing up. They were admired for their care and concern for people and they were at the service of the parish. Yet, they were human beings who liked the things we liked, watched soccer matches and went to concerts. [They were] one with the people and enjoyed their company. There was a great community atmosphere in my parish.
You were 17 when you entered the seminary. How did your parents react? Were they very proud or were they surprised?
I seldom talked to them about it. It was quite an embarrassing thing, even in those days. Peer pressure was very strong. They were pleased, all right, and there was no doubt about that. I had a great association with the clergy of the parish, it was almost natural — to be expected, rather.
What was your dad's occupation?
He was working in a factory that produced steel pipes. He lost his job because the firm moved to England in 1925, the year before the general strike. It was a bad time. There was a lot of unemployment. … It made me more aware of the injustices to people. My father was on the dole [welfare] for a number of years.
You are known internationally for your pro-life initiative [begun on Mother's Day 1997].
Nothing I have ever done before has had such global repercussions as this initiative. [It] leads me to believe that it has truly touched a nerve. But it is important to say, first of all, that it is not an original idea. In fact, here in Glasgow, we have one organization called the Society of the Innocents which has been doing exactly the same thing for many years. I suppose that when a Church leader [becomes involved], the media gives [greater] coverage.
It got hostile coverage, which probably made it more attractive to people. The headlines called it “Cash for Babies” and accused [the program] of bribing women to have babies. Germaine Greer flattened that argument by saying you only bribe people to do what they do not want to do. You do not bribe people to do what they want to do. There are some people who claim that the girls who come to us have already made up their minds — that is untrue. Many of them are undecided.
Did it surprise you that you even got support from a well-known feminist like Greer?
Yes. I haven't read any of her books. She is a pioneer feminist and I wouldn't have regarded her as a natural ally. I think people change. She obviously thinks a lot about her philosophy of life and I am pleased to see that she is going along the same road for at least part of the way.
You recently marked the second anniversary of this pro-life initiative by taking a further step. Could you explain this?
What we really did was to emphasize a part of a speech that I made two years ago. We decided to highlight it because all the attention at that time was centered on helping women who were pregnant. In that same speech I also said that, if there were any victims of abortion who felt isolated and upset by this experience and [if] anybody had been involved in the abortion process, we were willing to help them. We felt two years later, especially on the verge of the millennium, we should remind people that help is available to them.
You speak of the women as “victims of abortion.” That is unusual language when so many people call it a “choice.”
Abortion is a very traumatic experience. Nobody would spontaneously desire to kill their baby unless they were under pressure — financial, social, professional [or] marital. It must lead some people to become suicidal.
The woman who has had an abortion is plagued with guilt. Some may be able to throw it off, but many of them are not able to. It ruins their lives and sometimes it ruins their physical [health]. With regard to doctors, sometimes the pressure is on them as well. They may be more able to cope, but nevertheless their future livelihoods can be at stake.
You were in the Scottish College in Rome where, in 1961, you were appointed as spiritual director. Was that a surprise?
It was a shock. I had an ulcer and it started to bleed and I passed out the night before I went away. Six weeks later, I had an operation. That was the kind of shock it was. The two things I had hoped would never come my way was, to be living alone — I thought I couldn't cope with that — and, to be a spiritual director, which I knew I could-n't cope with!
So, how did you cope with the responsibility?
I enjoyed it! It was good for me, too. It put me back into a quieter atmosphere. I went from being busy with pastoral work to spending most of my time looking after students, talking to them and helping them. And the Vatican Council was about to start. It was a tremendous opportunity to be right where the action was.
You were later made a bishop. Were you surprised by that decision?
After my ulcer I thought to myself, there's no point in thinking of anything else. The first thing that [could] happen if my name was mentioned is that somebody [might] say, “He's not in very good health, that guy. Remember the ulcer?” All I wanted to do was to be a parish priest. I'm not just saying that. I loved it.
The bishops had been experiencing difficulties with regard to the problems of dissolving marriages and they decided to have a national marriage tribunal because it would give them more resources. They asked me to be its first president. I had experience of canon law and the [Roman] Rota [the Church's central appellate court] which dealt with that in a big way. We started off in Glasgow. The archbishop had been my bishop in Motherwell and there was a rumor going round that they were going to appoint a coadjutor. I thought nothing of it, believing it would be a priest from the Glasgow Archdiocese. Well, Rome didn't give him a coadjutor bishop. They gave him an auxiliary — and that was me! Three years later, he retired and I was appointed archbishop.
How did you feel when, 20 years later, the Holy Father named you a cardinal?
It just took my breath away. In these countries, people don't usually meet cardinals. Even in Rome, as students, we would see them from a distance. The cardinal protector of the college would come once a year and the nearest you got to him was to kiss his ring. It has been extraordinary, the difference in deference people have shown me here in Scotland. I find it difficult. People have a great regard and a great [respect] which I have to live up to.
How do you manage to take a break from all of the responsibilities and relax?
I watched a great football match [soccer game] last night! Celtic won by five goals to one! That was on TV, but I go to the football matches quite often.
You are known also for your love of your home country. What does the forthcoming election for the first Scottish Parliament later this year mean to you?
I was just thinking about that today. We're trying to prepare a pastoral letter. Everybody in Scotland wants [this country] to be a better place. That is why they want devolution. But it has got to be worked at, hasn't it, over the coming years? I think it's a very exciting time — the analogy would be the Church at the time of Vatican II. In those days we were looking into this new future, this new historical expression of the Church. Now we're looking at a new historical expression of the Scottish nation. There's a lot to be proud of for us Scots in this century.
You're no stranger to controversy. Does the media attention bother you when you say something that hits the headlines?
I have thought about that a lot. They talk about priests realizing they are human beings. Well, a human being is sensitive to what people are saying.
A Church leader cannot be insensitive, but he has to say what he has to say. A bishop is a teacher and a shepherd and he has to protect the flock.
We have also got to lead the flock to rich pastures. I've always believed that the Gospel is not for the museum, it has to apply to the way people are living now and to the issues of the day.
Is there any saint who has inspired you down the years?
I have a great devotion to St. John Bosco for his work with kids. I used to pray that I wouldn't become a Salesian because I wouldn't have the same charism with them. Charles Borromeo appeals to me as a great role model — the saints are all role models in their own ways — but Charles Borromeo was a great bishop. He was a great pastoral man. He initiated the renewals in the Church after the Council of Trent. He hammered away at it himself and he didn't pass it off as a theory. I would regard my Trent as Vatican II and my life's work is to make the Vatican II Church a reality.
— Paul Burnell writes from England.
----- EXCERPT: Among his loves are the unborn, and countrymen who share his blue-collar roots ----- EXTENDED BODY: Cardinal Thomas Winning ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: U.S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 04/18/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 18-24, 1999 ----- BODY:Cardinal Bevilacqua on War
In answer to a question about whether the NATO intervention will do greater harm than good, cardinal Bevilacqua told the Daily News, “The answer appears to be yes, but we can't tell if it could have been foreseen.”
As for recent peace efforts, the cardinal is quoted saying, “every attempt at peaceful negotiations has proved fruitless. But the question is, was everything possible done?” He added: “Something has to be done to end this. It is escalating rather than diminishing.”
The Sheer Joy of Priesthood, at 57
“Something has shifted in me, and I don't know what it is. I can't articulate it yet. Part of it is a great sense of responsibility. Part of it is a sense of being loved by God.”
That was the reaction of Bruce Baker, a father and grandfather following his ordination as a Carmelite priest recently at the age of 57. Baker was raised an Episcopalian and had considered the ministry as a possible career. He later married a Catholic woman, converted, had a large family and supported them through a lucrative career as the producer of TV commercials. He decided to pursue the priesthood following the death of his wife.
Baker recounted his first day as a priest for the Times staff writer Patricia Ward Biederman: “I'm a priest! I'm a priest, after all these years. … To be God's man, that's what I always wanted to be.”
Movie Attacks Church
That's understandable. The story, which follows two fallen angels trying to get back into heaven through a loophole, is bound to further anger Catholics, said the Post.
“They think they've found their solution in the conduct of an oily cardinal who is offering a plenary indulgence — that is, a complete remission of punishment due for one's sins — to anyone who passes through a special arch he's built outside his New Jersey cathedral,” reported the paper.
The filmmaker should check his catechism. Such indulgences are given for genuine acts of piety, and require confession and Mass. Fallen angels need not apply.
The film then goes on an anti-Catholic rampage, reports the Post, maligning the perpetual virginity of Mary, the apostles, and God himself, played here by pop-singer Alanis Morrisette, whose concert repertoire includes a song about her own jaded vision of her former Church.
The good news? Reports the Post, “no one old enough to order a cocktail will see [Dogma] as a serious challenge to Catholicism.”
----- EXCERPT: From selected publications ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Envoy Magazine Announces 1999 Evangelization Awards DATE: 04/18/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 18-24, 1999 ----- BODY:SAN DIEGO—On April 9, the Catholic apologetics magazine Envoy announced the winners of its “Envoy Awards” for 1999. The magazine makes the awards each year to individuals and apostolates engaged in evangelization and apologetics.
The winners of the awards were:
• Envoy of the Year: Marcus Grodi, founder and director of the Coming Home Network and host of the television show The Journey Home.
• Lifetime Achievement Award: Benedictine Father Paul Marx, founder and chairman of Human Life International.
• Best New Evangelist: Curtis Martin, president of Catholics United for the Faith.
• Best Apostolate of the Year: Catholic Answers, a San Diego-based apologetics ministry.
• Website of the Year: Biblical Evidence for Catholicism, an interactive apologetics site created and administered by Catholic writer Dave Armstrong.
• New Apostolate of the Year: Catholic Marketing Network, an association of Catholic marketing and retail professionals.
Envoy president, Matthew J. Pinto said, “We want to recognize and congratulate the many unsung heroes who day in and day out are bringing Christ to the world.” (Staff)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Price of European Union Has the East Guessing DATE: 04/18/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 18-24, 1999 ----- BODY:WARSAW, Poland —When a team of Hungarian religious leaders visited Brussels, Belgium, in February, it was just the latest step in a campaign to gain Church support for the eastward expansion of the European Union.
Last October, Hungary joined Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Estonia in E.U. membership negotiations that are expected to last five years. And during that time, deep changes will be needed in how these ex-communist countries are organized and governed.
Yet, though stability and prosperity could be the ultimate rewards, not everyone is sure the price is worth paying.
On March 16, the European Union's governing commission, headed by Jacques Santer, resigned amid corruption charges, highlighting the urgent need to rethink the 15-country bloc's future.
The appointment of Italian Romano Prodi to take charge augurs well.
For one thing, he's won unanimous approval for his pledges to clean up the E.U. Commission. For another, he is a practicing Catholic at a time when demands are growing for Europe's churches to exert a stronger influence in E.U. affairs.
“Although our governments are negotiating our integration, E.U. officials have had doubts if this is really popular,” explained Father Laszlo Lukacs, spokesman for Hungary's Catholic Bishops Conference. “During our Brussels trip, we told them Hungary had joined Europe a thousand years ago, when the Magyars became Christian.
“But we all agreed the E.U. should-n't be only a forum for economic interests. It has to uphold common values, and this is where religious communities are important.”
The Hungarian visit was the third from Eastern Europe after delegations from the Polish and Czech Bishops Conferences in 1997 and 1998. Like the Hungarians, they too returned from E.U. headquarters convinced their countries’ prospects lay with Europe.
But much work will be needed before the dream of European unity becomes a reality.
When Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined NATO on March 12, the breakthrough was welcomed overwhelmingly as the fruit of a historic yearning for national security.
But joining the European Union is more controversial, since it concerns complex economic, political and social issues. If the East Europeans join at the right time, they'll reap great benefits. If they join prematurely, their economies could be crushed by richer neighbors.
Opening their borders to full integration will also have a profound impact on social and moral habits. It's this aspect which most concerns Church leaders — and not only Catholics.
Religious Impact
“E.U. officials know the traditional status of churches differs widely between member-states — the E.U.'s legislation also states clearly that our identity must be preserved, “said Lutheran Bishop Bela Harmati, who was on the Hungarian delegation to Brussels. “But it's frequently protested that our parliaments must surrender sovereignty to Brussels, as well as our national unity and self-understanding. This misgiving will take a lot of shifting.”
In surveys, more than half of Polish citizens have predicted E.U. membership won't affect religious beliefs and might even deepen them. But another third fears they'll be eroded, and that figure includes many Catholics.
Four decades ago, they point out, when the first E.U. prototype institutions were formed, the churches of Spain and Italy were as full as Poland's are today, while the Dutch Church sent more priests abroad as missionaries than it even employed at home.
Churches weren't even mentioned in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, under which E.U. member-states agreed to closer political and economic links.
A brief statement recognizing the “status enjoyed by churches and religious associations and communities” was accepted by E.U. foreign ministers at their June 1997 Amsterdam summit.
Since then, there's been talk of recognizing a deeper spiritual dimension to European life.
“The debate is widening over where the whole E.U. project is going, and just what it represents in relation to its founders’ intentions,” explained Father Noel Treannor, the Irish secretary-general of the Commission of Episcopal Conferences of Europe.
Catholic bishops from the European Union's 15-member-states has met twice yearly since the episcopal commission's foundation in 1980. Besides consulting regularly with Brussels officials, commission bishops monitor E.U. legislation and have permanent working groups on law, bioethics and social affairs.
They've also vigorously backed the European Union's eastward expansion, insisting it will offer West Europeans a chance to extend democracy and stability to the whole continent.
The Vatican established diplomatic ties with the European Union in the early 1970s, and appointed a head of mission to the Union two years ago.
But as a E.U.-centered organization, the episcopal commission's views are taken note of. “Throughout the 1990s, we've seen a growing acceptance of the need for involvement by Churches,” Father Treannor told the Register.
Fears of ‘Euro-regions’
Yet the uncertainties look set to persist.
Critics say the European Union's guiding principle of “subsidiarity,” a concept taken from Catholic teaching, will erode historic nation-states by transferring power locally to “Euro-regions,” as well as federally to E.U. departments.
If true, that will pose problems for the new democracies of Eastern Europe, which are only just rebuilding their national institutions from the wreckage of the past.
Catholic nationalists, especially in Poland, have kept up a broadside against the European Union, claiming closer links will destroy the country's religious and moral culture.
Their views aren't representative. In an unprecedented 1998 survey of Polish priests by the Warsaw-based CBOS agency, 84% supported their country's E.U. accession.
Well over a third said E.U. institutions should be doing more to “support churches and religious life.” But two-thirds felt confident E.U. membership wouldn't affect the Church's position.
In the West, too, however, opinions are divided between richer and poorer states over the desirability of E.U. enlargement. Opposition to new members could grow if unemployment — already at a record 12% in Germany — continues to increase.
But in a March declaration, the episcopal commission said Europe's unification was premised on the maintenance of peace. And that, in turn, depended on implementing solidarity and justice.
“Like the Western Church, East European Catholics will have to find their places in a pluralist society,” Father Treannor said. “This is a definitive challenge, which will add value to the Catholic identity.
“It's impossible to quantify their likely contribution, but their presence will certainly enlarge the historical experience and heritage of Christian churches already operating in the E.U., and help build up the Catholic Church's platform for championing the concerns which all European citizens share.”
That's a view most East European Church leaders would readily concur with.
“The E.U. isn't the Kingdom of God, but belonging to it will bring our country a better future,” said Bela Harmati, the Hungarian Lutheran. “Our churches still need to learn a lot more about it. But we know we can't stand alone and must join a larger community, if we're to avoid being trapped in the former Soviet Bloc which was our destiny for 40 years.”
A 1998 survey demonstrated that a majority of Poles believe that their future was now tied, for better or worse, to the European Union. With that in mind, Church leaders are determined to make their voices heard, and make the region's Catholic culture accepted.
Created during the Cold War, when Europe was divided between hostile blocs, the European Union could still realize the hopes and dreams of medieval Christendom, and become a fountainhead for the freedom and tolerance which countless generations never knew. But that depends on many things, especially, wise leadership and deep conviction.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jonathan Luxmoore ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 04/18/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 18-24, 1999 ----- BODY:Even God Was Sad
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, April 6 — This month marks the fifth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide that left more than half a million Tutsi dead at the hands of the majority Hutu tribe.
“For Bishop Frederic Rubwejangaof Ibungo a recounting of the 1994 Rwandan genocide has become a teaching moment,” reports the AP. “He is keen to brace the battered souls of his flock.”
“Rwandans have a right to say that what God allowed is evil, yet still say, ‘I believe in you anyway,’” said Rubwejanga. “They have a right to say, ‘I don't understand but I believe, because faith is beyond understanding.’”/p>
About 4.8 million people, or 62% of the pre-genocide population of 7.8 million was Catholic, making Rwanda was the most Catholic country in Africa. Scores of priests and nuns were killed in the 100-day violent spree. After the reburial of many victims from his own parish, Bishop Rubwejanga told AP, “We were all sad. Even God was sad.”
Reporter Shows True Colors on General Absolution
Writes Daly: “But what of the anguish among Catholics who see the Vatican as interfering with their strong, genuine faith through man-made laws that are out of touch with the people in a Church that is supposed to interpret teachings in tune with contemporary times?”
To his credit, Daly provides some of the answer elsewhere in the story when he quotes the Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Melbourne, Bishop Denis Hart, who explained that the practice “grew with the mentality of the time” following Vatican II, and was never official church policy.
Bishop Hart said that Australians cannot simply make up their Catholic Faith as they go along. “When Jesus said, ‘Whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven them, whose sins you shall retain they are retained,’ he entrusted to the church the whole discipline of forgiveness of sins.”
We Want Our Catholic Schools, Thank You
His report recommends that the long era of distinguishing public schools as Catholic and Protestant, and instead identifying them as English- or French-speaking. “The group's proposal is being greeted on phone-in shows and elsewhere with all the subtlety of a blast from hell,” reported the Gazette's Yvonne Zacharias.
Proulx, who has a doctorate in Catholic theology, and who was educated in a Catholic public school in Sherbrooke, understands the sentiments of the vast majority who oppose him. “Not for a moment would he deny Catholics their place of glory on the street or in the church,” reported Zacharias. “But not in the school.”
Concludes the article: “Both Proulx and Education Minister Francois Legault have pleaded for calm.”
----- EXCERPT: From selected publications ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 04/18/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 18-24, 1999 ----- BODY:Darkness Yields to Vigil's Light
“The only hint of the Balkan bloodshed was symbolic, in the selection of faithful from many nations for baptism in the ceremony — this year, including one from Albania, as well as Cape Verde, China, France, Morocco and Hungary,” continued the paper.
The Pope also scrapped a prepared Good Friday text that referred to Kosovo, although he did deplore the triumph of “the culture of death.”
Norms for Colleges Deemed Not Necessary
The juridcal norms are called for under Pope John Paul II's apostolic constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae, which outlines standards necessary for a college to be truly Catholic.
The Catholic journal of religion, public affairs and culture made its plea in a special six-article supplement, “Keeping Colleges Catholic.” Commonweal said the juridical norms before the bishops “would irredeemably alter the character and mission of U.S. Catholic higher education, both for those schools who accept the canonical requirements and for those who demur.”
----- EXCERPT: From selected publications ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Latin America Roundup DATE: 04/18/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 18-24, 1999 ----- BODY:CHILE: What's Next After Pinochet?
The Catholic bishops in Chile seized an opportunity to try to unite the sharply divided country when the British Chamber of Lords announced that they would keep former dictator Augusto Pinochet in London. This would also sharply reduce the chances of the former president being extradited to Spain, where he faces charges of human rights violations and genocide.
“It is now time to concentrate on reconciliation, unity and the desire to build a new country,” said Bishop Sergio Valech, the vicar of social pastoral work for the Archdiocese of Santiago.
Bishop Valech said that a document by the Chilean Bishop Conference called Chileans to “justice, reconciliation and forgiveness.” In the document, the bishops acknowledged the deep divisions brought about by the arrest of Pinochet, and said that the way to unite the country is to achieve justice “in pending cases of human rights violations,” but it also called Chileans who felt victimized to “forgive sinners.”
The bishops also renewed their offer to keep the confidentiality of retired military officers who would give information on the whereabouts of secret graveyards in order to return the bodies of the people who had disappeared back to their relatives.
GUATEMALA: Military Is No Longer the Untouchable Class
At the request of the Archdiocese of Guatemala City, President Alvaru Arzu has requested all top-ranking army officials to undergo DNA testing in the investigation into Auxiliary Bishop Juan Gerardi's murder on April 26, 1998.
According to human rights organizations, Arzu's decision marks a “breakthrough in Guatemala's history,” since the military have never been held accountable for any crime — either corruption or human rights violations. The DNA tests would be matched against the blood traces found at the crime scene by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“I want to make clear that the government will not [obstruct] justice in the investigations to find [the person] responsible for the murder of Bishop Gerardi,” said Arzu.
Judges involved in the case have, on two occasions, been changed and all suspects have been released. It has left the investigation almost at its starting point.
The Catholic Church argues that the theory of military involvement in the bishop's murder has not been sufficiently investigated.
MEXICO: A New Stage in Church-State Relations
It may be normal for a president to attend the dedication of a cathedral in Latin American countries, but not in Mexico. Nevertheless, it became reality in late March when President Ernesto Zedillo attended the dedication of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Cathedral at Ecatepec.
The bishop of Ecatepec, Onesimo Cepeda, presided at the ceremony, which was attended by 40 Mexican bishops, including Cardinals Norberto Rivera and Juan Sandoval. More than 30 state and federal authorities, including Zedillo, attended the ceremony. At the end of the dedication ceremony, the Mexican president unveiled a bronze plaque at the cathedral's entrance. He said the relationship between the Church and state “has entered into an stage of mutual respect and better understanding.”
Bishop Cepeda, once a wealthy stockbroker who shocked Mexico's elite when he decided to become a priest, said that “the [dedication] of this, the largest Latin American cathedral and last one of the second millennium, has been the occasion to start a totally new stage in the relationship between the Church and the government.”
The cathedral, which can seat 1,600 people, took less than two years to build.
PARAGUAY: “New Era” After Political Crisis
Members of the Paraguayan Bishops’ Conference recently celebrated a Mass “inaugurating a new era,” after the appointment of a new president ended the political crisis and social turmoil sparked by the murder of vice-president Luis Argana.
Argana, despite being vice president, became a strong critic of President Raul Cubas, after he decided to release retired Gen. Lino Oviedo, imprisoned for attempting a military coup.
Both Oviedo and Cubas were held responsible for the murder of Argana which sparked widespread demonstrations that left six dead and hundreds of people injured.
Cubas renounced his presidency and sought political asylum in Brazil, while Cubas sought asylum in Argentina.
Ten bishops, led by the president of the Paraguayan episcopate, Archbishop Felipe Santiago Benitez, celebrated Mass in Asuncion's Cathedral, to mark “a new time of hope and a new era for the country.” During the Mass, which was attended by the new interim president Luis Gonzalez Macchi and several other leading figures from the congress and judiciary, Archbishop Benitez read the bishops’ letter calling Paraguayans to “leave the dark era behind” and “commit their efforts in the building of a better country.”
The bishops called also for “a more civilized political system in which institutions are respected and the opinion of others are listened [to].” They also requested political leaders to “defend the country's democratic system,” the youngest in Latin America.
“This will only be possible if we remember that faith is the only strength capable of preserving and strengthening the moral and social fabric of our country.”
BRAZIL: Ecumenical Program Called ‘Unworkable’
Several Church authorities have said a plan to create an ecumenical licentiate in theology is “unworkable,” because its validity could not be extended to Catholic faculties.
In late March, a spokesman of the Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, which belongs to the La Salle Brothers, announced a joint initiative with the Lutheran theological school, aimed at providing a graduate program that would provide a licentiate in ecumenical theology.
The program, designed to accept students from all denominations, has already been sent to the Ministry of Education in Brasilia for legal approval.
According to the Bishop Joseph Romer, the auxiliary of Rio and professor at the Catholic University, the initiative “is strange and not practical, since it is unworkable, at least from a Catholic point of view.”
Bishop Romer explained that, in order to follow postgraduate studies or apply for a teaching position in a Catholic school or university, “a degree in ecumenical theology [would have] no value at all.”
He also said, “It would be interesting to see how the program would solve irreconcilable theological points [between Catholics and Lutherans] such as a means of salvation, the interpretation of Scripture and the transformation of human nature as a consequence of redemption, just to mention a few.”
— Alejandro Bermudez
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Alejandro Bermudez ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Gospel of the Cross DATE: 04/18/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 18-24, 1999 ----- BODY:Following is the speech of John Paul II on the occasion of the Stations of the Cross for Good Friday 1999. The Pope's remarks were widely broadcast because he was expected to speak on Kosovo. He surprised many journalists by adding poignant, impromptu remarks in place of those that had been prepared.
“Christus factus est pro nobis oboediens usque ad mortem, mortem autem crucis.“ “Christ became for us obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Antiphon from the Breviary; cf. Philippians 2:8). With these words, the liturgy of Good Friday summarizes what was accomplished on Golgotha 2,000 years ago. The evangelist John, who was an eyewitness, recounts the sorrowful events of Christ's Passion. He tells of his cruel agony, his last words: “All is accomplished!” (John 19:30), and the piercing of his side with a spear by a Roman soldier. From the wounded side of the Redeemer there came forth blood and water, certain proof that he was dead (cf. John 19:34), and the supreme gift of his merciful love.
Keeping John's testimony in mind, what the prophet Isaiah says in the Song of the Suffering Servant becomes even more remarkable. He writes some centuries before Christ and his words seem in perfect harmony with those of the fourth Evangelist. They constitute a true “Gospel of the Cross":
“Despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows … / Pierced through for our faults, crushed for our sins. … / We had all gone astray like sheep, each taking his own way; and the Lord burdened him with the sins of us all. … / Yes, he was torn away from the land of the living, for our faults struck down in death. / They gave him a grave with the wicked. … / His soul's anguish over, he shall see the light and be content; / by his sufferings shall my servant justify many, taking their faults on himself” (53:3, 5, 6, 8-9, 11).
These considerations, so rich in detail, are all the more surprising because they are the words of one who could not see with his own eyes the drama of Calvary, having lived long before. They are words which foreshadow the theology of the sacrifice of Christ's Cross. In a wonderful synthesis, they contain the entire mysterium passionis et resurrectionis, which go to make the great mysterium paschale.
The prophetic words of the Book of Isaiah resound in our hearts this evening, at the end of the Way of the Cross, here at the Colosseum, eloquent reminder of the suffering and martyrdom of many believers who paid with their blood for their faithfulness to the Gospel. They are words which echo the Passion of Jesus “in agony until the end of the world” (Pascal, Pensées, Le mystère de Jésus, 553). Christ is “despised and rejected” in those reviled and killed in the war in Kosovo and wherever the culture of death triumphs; the Messiah is “crushed for our sins” in the victims of hatred and evil in every time and place. Peoples divided and struck by incomprehension and indifference seem at times to have “gone astray like sheep.”
Yet on the horizon of this scene of suffering and death, hope shines for humanity: “his soul's anguish over, he shall see the light and be content; / … my servant shall justify many.” In the night of sorrow and depression, the Cross is a torch which keeps alive the expectation of the new day of the resurrection. We look to the Cross of Christ with faith this evening, and through the Cross we want to proclaim to the world the Father's merciful love for every human being.
Yes, this is the day of mercy and love; the day on which the redemption of the world is accomplished, because sin and death have been defeated by the saving death of the Redeemer. O crucified heavenly King, may the mystery of your glorious death triumph in the world. Grant that we never lose the courage and boldness of hope in the face of the tragedies afflicting humanity and in the face of every situation of injustice that humiliates the human being, the creature redeemed by your precious blood. Grant indeed that we may proclaim this evening with even greater force: Your Cross is victory and salvation, ”quia per sanctam crucem tuam redemisti mundum,” because by your blood and your Passion you have redeemed the world!
The Holy Father added the following extemporaneous remarks to his prepared text:
“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”
Today we would like to put these same words on the lips of all humanity at the end of the second millennium, at the end of the 20th century.
We would like to put them on the lips of all those who have been citizens of our 20th century, of our second millennium. … This cry of the crucified Christ not only closes a life, but it is also an opening.
----- EXCERPT: Editorial ----- EXTENDED BODY: Pope John Paul II ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Why Priests Are Single DATE: 04/18/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 18-24, 1999 ----- BODY:by Father Thomas McGovern
(Scepter Publishers, 1998, 248 pages, $12.95)
Father Thomas McGovern, an Opus Dei priest from Ireland, begins this excellent volume by noting that writing a book on celibacy could be regarded as a foolhardy undertaking.
The wider culture, after all, has little room for chastity and thinks celibacy positively perverse, while within the Church itself there has been a lot of talk about the “burden of celibacy” and repeated calls to allow for a married clergy in the Latin rite. Given this, to come forward and energetically defend celibacy, which is what Father McGovern ably does, might seem out of step with the times. But Father McGovern is surely right in thinking otherwise, and in seeing signs of a recovery of the ideal of celibacy.
This timely book is much more than a defense of celibacy. It goes beyond points of controversy deeply into the heart of the Church's long tradition of celibate priesthood.
Central to Father McGovern's presentation is the contention that there is a direct and profound congruence between the charism of celibacy and the exercise of priestly ministry. This congruence is founded in the theology of priesthood and in a Christian anthropology that have been progressively maintained and elucidated through two thousand years, and have been recently and beautifully expressed by Pope John Paul II.
It has become common to speak of priestly celibacy as nothing more than a disciplinary law, first mentioned in the fourth century, and only definitively imposed upon the Western Church at the Second Lateran Council in 1139. As such, so this line of reasoning goes, priestly celibacy, not being of ancient origin and concerned primarily with pastoral matters, might be relaxed at any time. The Eastern Churches are often called as witnesses to what would seem to be the true ancient practice of having both a married and a celibate clergy, in the light of which the Western insistence on celibacy seems unnecessary at best, and rigorist and unhealthy at worst. Especially in light of changing pastoral realities, including a shortage of priests, it is high time for the Latin Church to do away with an outmoded practice that places unreasonable burdens on its clergy — so the argument goes.
In dealing with these questions Father McGovern wants to show that the Church has always recognized the inner congruence between celibacy and priesthood. To do so he notes that a crucial distinction often goes unnoticed. True, a married clergy existed in both East and West in patristic and into medieval times, but it was expected of a married priest that once he was ordained, he would practice sexual abstinence and live with his wife as with a sister — an arrangement to which she had also to agree! This practice of abstinence, or continence as it was often called, was held by the patristic Church to have come directly from the apostles themselves. It was confirmed at the Council of Elvira in 303, which proclaimed that sexual abstinence was necessary for all clergy whether married or celibate, and that those who had neglected this rule were to be excluded from the clerical state.
Clement of Jerusalem, Augustine, Jerome, the Council of Carthage (390) all witnessed to the same understanding. Only at the Council of Trullo in 691 did the East allow married priests to “use” their marriages, a ruling that was rejected by the Western Church as out of keeping with apostolic and traditional teaching. Even so, the Eastern Churches reserved the office of bishop to those who practiced perfect continence, and demanded temporary abstinence (eventually a three-day period) as preparation for priestly service at the altar. The East also maintained the tradition that a clergyman once ordained could not marry, a stipulation which originally had to do with the inability of a priest to consummate such a marriage.
In the West married clergy gradually died out as a celibate clergy came to the fore. But the practice of perfect sexual abstinence was expected of both, however much this ideal was decayed in certain times and places. The Second Lateran Council thus confirmed the long tradition of priestly abstinence from sex, and imposed celibacy as the best and most fitting way to secure it, a ruling upheld and expanded by the Council of Trent in the 16th century, and kept in the Latin Church down to our own day. Father McGovern contends that it is the Western Church in this case that has preserved most faithfully the ancient practice of the Church. But more importantly still he explains why: that there is an intimate inner affinity between celibacy and priestly service.
This affinity has been at the heart of John Paul II's theology of priesthood. Far from being a mere negation of marriage or sexuality, priestly celibacy according to John Paul is itself an expression of spousal love. “In virtue of his configuration to Christ, the Head and Shepherd, the priest stands in a spousal relationship with regard to the community” (Pastores Dabo Vobis). Father McGovern points to this as the fundamental theological reason for priest-ly celibacy. “The priest's total self-giving to the Church finds its justification in the fact that she is the Body and the Bride of Christ. Following Christ, the Church as Bride is the only woman the priest can be wedded to, the only Body over which he can have nuptial rights (105-6). He exercises a kind of spiritual paternity over his flock.”
Celibacy is thus not just an external constraint imposed on priestly ministry, nor is it a merely human institution established by law. It is rather a sign and a means by which this fundamental conformity of the priest to Christ is expressed. Father McGovern, refreshingly, sees celibacy not as a burden but as a gift. The priest who lives “for Christ and from Christ,” while not immune from difficulty, will find great joy in his vocation, and will have no insurmountable difficulties in living out his celibacy.
Seminarian Michael Keating writes from St. Paul, Minnesota.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Michael Keating ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: A Silence That Speaks Volumes DATE: 04/18/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 18-24, 1999 ----- BODY:St. Joseph, Foster Father of Jesus
By Father John A. Hardon, SJ
(The Catholic Faith, March/April 1999)
Jesuit Father John A. Hardon, executive editor of Catholic Faith magazine, writes: “It is remarkable, how little the Holy Spirit says about famous people in the Bible. The classic example of this is Saint Joseph. He is the most prominent saint in the Catholic liturgy after the Blessed Virgin Mary. Yet there is not a single word in the Scriptures quoting Saint Joseph.
“Humility, we know, is the truth. It is the virtue that enables us to recognize and act on the recognition of our true relationship to God first, and to other persons.
“By this standard, Saint Joseph was a very humble man.
“He recognized his place with respect to Mary and Jesus. He knew that he was inferior to them both in the order of grace. Yet he accepted his role as spouse of Mary and guardian of the Son of God.
“The lesson for us is that genuine humility prevents us from claiming to be better or more than we really are. … Humility is the moral virtue that keeps a person from reaching beyond himself. It is the virtue that restrains the unruly desire for personal greatness and leads people to an orderly love of themselves based on a true appreciation of their position with respect to God and their neighbor. Religious humility recognizes one's total dependence on God. Moral humility recognizes one's creaturely equality with other human beings.
“The Church's constant tradition holds that Saint Joseph lived a life of consecrated chastity. Some of the apocryphal gospels picture him as an old man, even a widower. This is not the Church's teaching.
“We are rather to believe that he was a virgin, who entered into a virginal marriage with Mary. This was to protect Mary's reputation and safeguard the dignity of her Son.
“What is the lesson for us? That chastity has an apostolic purpose. It is meant to help us win souls.
“Joseph's obedience covers every aspect of his life.
“He was obedient in entering into a marriage with the Blessed Virgin Mary.
“He was obedient in his willingness to put her away when, though he knew she was innocent, he found her with child.
“He was obedient when he went to Bethlehem to be registered with Mary, and accepted the humiliation of having Jesus born in a stable cave.
“He was obedient in taking the Child and His Mother by night and fleeing to Egypt.
“What are the lessons for us? Obedience is the test of our love of God. His laws are God's way of enabling us to prove our love for Him.
“There is not a single recorded word of Saint Joseph which he spoke during his years of caring for Jesus and Mary. … We may say that Joseph obeyed not because he was told to but because his mind was always conformed to the mind of God.
“The prudence of Saint Joseph is part of our Catholic faith. It is especially shown in his remarkable practice of silence. Of course, Joseph talked. Yet … we practice charity by our self-control. … For some people talk and more talk is an excuse for doing God's will, but speech is no substitute for actions.
“Prudence is the intellectual virtue by which a human being recognizes in any matter at hand what is good and what is evil. … As an act of virtue, prudence involves three stages of mental cooperation: to take counsel carefully with oneself and from others; to judge correctly on the basis of the evidence at hand; and to direct the rest of one's activity according to the norms determined after a prudent judgment has been made.
“Joseph deserves our admiration for his other virtues, but he is to be especially imitated in his love for Jesus and Mary.”
Ellen Wilson Fielding writes from Davidson, Maryland.
----- EXCERPT: Article Digest ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: Letters DATE: 04/18/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 18-24, 1999 ----- BODY:Death Penalty
As expected, your editorial, Opposing the Death of the Guilty (March 7-13), supports abolition of capital punishment.
Nevertheless, it is refreshing to hear a voice for church loyalty and orthodoxy state that some call for capital punishment for “commendable motives and not simply revenge.”
It must be disheartening to many loyal Catholics to constantly hear Church and civic leaders suggest that revenge alone motivates supporters of capital punishment when, in fact, love and high regard for innocent life is often what commands their convictions.
Father Joseph M. O'Meara
Baltimore
Peter Singer
Your recent coverage of Princeton University's appointment of [infanticide-supporter] Peter Singer to its Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics post was an epiphany of sorts for me as it just confirmed the cancerous tentacles of the phenomenon of infanticide in this country.
While dining in a ristorante in Latham, New York, recently, I was confronted with a similar insight. My dining partners were discussing the possible next commissioner of a municipal department of health. One of them stated their opinion nonchalantly that no one who was pro-life would ever be selected. As the discussion continued, I sat in momentary silence, digesting what I had just heard: the head of a health department should not be pro-life; the chief officer of a public health department with the mission of making all its citizens healthier should be pro-death? …
Can we imagine the supporters of unrestrained abortion wanting to be appropriately labeled pro-death, even though that is exactly what they are? Of course not, so they came up with clever misnomers to deceive and propagate and rationalize their message of death: abortion is an acceptable form of birth control and must be allowed. It must be allowed because we at the doorstep of the new millennium lack adequate self control; we at the doorstep of the new millennium are so consumed with ourselves and instant gratification that morality and ethics get in the way. Infanticide becomes a natural next step in our throwaway culture. Discard the babies with the trash.
D. Bruce Malito
Westbury, New York
Feminine Genius
Father Thomas Williams touched my heart with his beautiful article “‘Feminine Genius’ Revealed on Good Friday” (March 28-April 3). One of the most endearing and enduring legacies to be left by Pope John Paul II will be his profound understanding and love for women. His clarion call for all women is to aspire to feminine holiness — to that transparent spiritual beauty which enables women to lead others to know the love of God.
Jesus had friendships with strong, holy women. His masculine, human experience was made even more manly, if you will, because he treated women with tenderness and sensitivity — which are usually thought of as more feminine virtues. Yet he showed these feelings without restraint and at a time when women were not treated very compassionately by men.
Pope John Paul II reflects that Christ looks to women for the accomplishment of the “royal priest-hood.” As Father Williams so eloquently pointed out, the most faithful companions Jesus had were women and He loved them — so why would his Church love them any less? More proof for the feminists that the Church, founded by Christ and molded by His life, reveres the vocation of femininity.
I pray that all of my sisters in Christ may strive to imitate the love of our Lady, to show the courage and compassion of St. Veronica, and to shed the redemptive tears of the daughters of Jerusalem.
Patricia Price Lebanon, Pennsylvania
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Christ's Cross and the Strength of John Paul II DATE: 04/18/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 18-24, 1999 ----- BODY:Take up your Cross, let not its weight Fill your weak spirit with vain alarm;
His strength shall bear your spirit up, Shall brace your heart and nerve your arm.
(Charles William Everest, hymn adapted by Anthony G. Petti)
Few who saw it will ever forget it. On rare occasions a simple action becomes a perfect symbol, capturing the essence of a man or a moment. Good Friday in St. Peter's Basilica was one such occasion. During the Liturgy of the Lord's Passion, a large wooden crucifix was placed before the papal altar of St. Peter's for veneration. After intoning three times the Ecce lignum Crucis (Behold, the wood of the Cross) behind the crucifix, Pope John Paul II slowly made his way around to the front of the crucifix, to lead the faithful in veneration. And then … he genuflected.
Growing frailty has made genuflecting very difficult for the Holy Father. Usually it is only required at the altar, e.g., after the consecration, and he is able to hold on to the altar for support. But to genuflect without any support is an altogether different thing.
After raising his stooped head to gaze on the crucified Christ, he began to go down on one knee, ever so slowly. Carefully keeping his balance, he lowered himself closer to the ground, until unable to support himself any longer, he dropped down on one knee.
After pausing a moment in veneration, the Holy Father attempted to raise himself. In need of support, he reached out to the only thing within his grasp: the Cross. Clasping the vertical beam of the Cross, first with one hand, and then the other, he pulled himself back up.
It was tremendously moving. Words fail to describe the sight of the Vicar of Christ grasping the wood of the Cross for help. The lesson that John Paul II is teaching with his frailty was never more clear.
When the Holy Father broke his hip five years ago, he said simply, “The Pope must suffer.” In a world terribly afraid of suffering and the frailty of a beckoning mortality, the Holy Father's suffering and physical decline are a powerful witness. It is not possible for the world's most photographed man to hide his weakness without hiding himself altogether. He will not do that. He is not too proud to show himself as he is, for he trusts in God's will. Nearly four years ago, on his seventy-fifth birthday, he recommitted himself to his Petrine ministry, and said that he would leave it to the Lord to determine the timing and circumstances of how he would complete that ministry.
George Weigel, a papal biographer, has observed that the aged John Paul is a more compelling public figure than the young and vigorous one of years past. Perhaps that is so because weakness manifests virtues that can be hidden by strength. The Holy Father's veneration of the Cross this year illustrated his piety, courage and humility in a way that was not possible when he could lift the cross aloft as a standard, rather than lean upon it for support.
John Paul II is in the evening of his life. After twenty years of unprecedented activity, no one would judge him harshly if he retreated to the papal residence to conserve his energy for the Jubilee of the Year 2000. Yet he daily empties himself in making himself available to his flock.
Every morning he allows people to attend his private Mass and greets them afterward. He continues his audiences, both on Wednesdays for the thousands who come each week, and daily for various groups. This past Lent he visited a different Roman parish every Sunday, as he does many Sundays throughout the year. He is preparing to preside over the Synod of Bishops for Europe, even as he did last year for Asia and for Oceania, and the year before for America. Teaching documents continue to be written. And he is preparing for trips to Romania next month, for a twenty-city tour of Poland in June, and perhaps the Holy Land next year. The fact that his current schedule is no longer as full as it was is a sign not of laxity, but of the truly astonishing schedule he used keep.
When Karol Wojtyla was a young seminarian, he thought about joining the Carmelites. He writes of that decision in his autobiography, Gift and Mystery: “My uncertainties were resolved by the Archbishop, Cardinal Sapieha, who in his typical manner said tersely: ‘First you have to finish what you have begun.’ And that is what happened.”
Karol Wojtyla could not have known that finishing what he had begun would take him to the Cross in St. Peter's Basilica all these years later. But that is what happened. It happened because he was obedient all those years ago to his archbishop, and now, out of continuing obedience to the mission that Christ gave to St. Peter first, and subsequently to him on October 16, 1978.
What Karol Wojtyla probably knew then, and certainly knows better now, is that perseverance in the Christian life must embrace the Cross, even as he did so graphically last Good Friday.
“To accept the Gospel's demands means to affirm all of our humanity, to see in it the beauty desired by God, while at the same time recognizing, in the light of the power of God Himself, our weaknesses,” he wrote in Crossing the Threshold of Hope. ”It is very important to cross the threshold of hope, not to stop before it, but to let oneself be led. I believe that the great Polish poet Cyprian Norwid had this in mind when he expressed the ultimate meaning of the Christian life in these words: ‘Not with the Cross of the Savior behind you, but with your own cross behind the Savior.’”/p>
And when that personal cross becomes too heavy, then it is time to reach out to the Cross of Christ ahead of you, to grasp it, and to hoist yourself up. That was the lesson the Holy Father taught — a priest in adoration of the sacrifice of the one High Priest — on Good Friday at St. Peter's.
Raymond de Souza, a seminarian, writes from Rome.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond de Souza ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: An Albanian Meets America DATE: 04/18/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 18-24, 1999 ----- BODY:It was 1990. For two years, Eastern Europe had been smashing the symbols and structures of communist oppression one by one. In the Eastern Bloc, one country remained militantly communist: Albania, the only nation in recorded history that proclaimed itself officially atheist.
Father Simon Jubani (u-BAHN-ee) played a key role in changing that. He was baptizing his brother-in-law's baby on Nov. 4, 1990, when a friend rushed in to tell him that a congregation of 5,000 had gathered at a cemetery demanding Mass. It would be the first public Mass in Albania for decades, and the authorities were liable to punish — or kill — participants in it.
“We were — how do you say? — sitting ducks,” Father Jubani told me five months later.
I spoke with Father Jubani in an oddly shaped room tucked behind the dome of St. Ignatius Church in San Francisco. I had a National Catholic Register in my lap. The paper had assigned me to interview the Albanian priest who had been imprisoned for 26 years in Albanian gulags. The Albanian Catholic Institute had arranged for me to be his guide on a three-day journey to Hollywood after the interview.
The breakthrough Mass was in the Shkoder, he said, considered the most Catholic city in Albania. Its cemetery had been frequented by Catholics, at their peril, throughout the communist rule there. But its cathedral had been gutted and turned first into a puppet theater, and then into a “museum of atheism.” All Christian symbols had been stripped from the graves, the crosses ripped out and the statues shattered.
On a makeshift altar set up among the graves, wearing old vestments that had been hidden away throughout the communist rule, he began the Mass. A group of young men circled him closely, to protect him. Soldiers surrounded the defiant congregation and held their guns, ready to fire.
Father Jubani told me that the police didn't get orders to stop the Mass this time, however, and he was allowed to walk away when it was finished. The following Sunday, word had gotten around about what happened — and some 50,000 people, Catholics and Muslims alike, came to the cemetery for another Mass.
This time, Father Jubani was arrested. But many in the congregation followed him and surrounded the local jail where he was held, demanding his release. The authorities relented. This public victory fueled a new revolutionary spirit in the Albanian people. In the months that followed, mobs tore down statues of the late Albanian president Enver Hoxha and Stalin in town squares.
Faith Under Fire
And so, in a sense, the liberation of Albania from communist rule began with a Mass — appropriately, in a country first evangelized by St. Paul, and whose most famous daughter is Mother Teresa.
But for all their influence, Catholics are a minority of 10% in Albania. Orthodox Christians make up 20%, and Muslims, who have been the majority since the Ottoman Turks invaded centuries ago, make up 70% of the population.
Another, nonreligious presence is felt just as strongly. It is the presence of a tribal culture of vendettas and blood oaths and brutality. In these circumstances, Catholics like Jubani have had their faiths tested in fire.
I asked him about prison conditions.
“Beneath the animals,” he said. “In a room 4 meters by 4 meters, 30 people on a dirt floor. We had to sleep side by side. We had restroom all in the same room. Three times we left per day for nature. Every three months somebody attempted to commit suicide. We stopped them. One man a year succeeded. Everyone had a desire for death to liberate him. They would fight with one another in prison every day.”
I asked him if he ever could ever celebrate Mass. He said he was pastor in “the parish of prison.” Prisoners would take flour from the refectory to make hosts — they patted them together with saliva and left them in the sun to dry — and, with more difficulty, a prisoner would steal a wine-based concoction from the infirmary for the cup.
President Hoxha, who died in 1985, was a man as brutal as Slobodan Milosevic. His regime killed most of the priests and religious in Albania. They targeted bishops for especially harsh treatment, forcing them to dress as clowns and clean public toilets before executing them. I knew Father Jubani had been singled out for torture in prison, and that he was personally known and loathed by the Albanian dictator. I asked him why.
“I wrote thousands of pages to Enver Hoxha. I was condemned eight times for the letters. I prophesied the death of the communist empire. I was condemned and segregated for about four years in a condition worse than beasts, with only bread and water. I would pray all day. I passed through the prison with prayer and a secret Bible.”
I asked him about the tortures he received. How did he persevere?
“The gates of hell will not prevail against the door of heaven. If I died, I was always sure of the triumph of my ideas,” he said.
When Americans look at the situation in Kosovo, it is very difficult for us to grasp the dynamic at play in the entrenched ethnic, religious and territorial passions of a people who have endured constant turmoil for centuries and who have few modern comforts.
Perhaps it is easier to see the cultural gulf between our countries through the eyes of an Albanian priest, who spent much of his life in brutal gulags, and then spent a day touring Hollywood.
Universal Studios
I traveled by plane with Father Jubani from San Francisco to Los Angeles, where our first stop was the rectory of a parish where we were to stay. The first day we were there, an associate pastor took us to Universal Studios for lunch and the tour.
We climbed into a tram where a young Californian in sunglasses and shorts began a rapid-fire commentary on the history of Universal Studios, peppered with jokes from the comedy routine he said he performed off-hours in nightclubs.
Father Jubani looked confused and uninterested, until the tram encountered the first of the special-effects assaults that rocked it throughout the tour. We were crossing a bridge that suddenly cracked and dropped. Father Jubani jumped up, and would have crawled out of our car to safety if he hadn't noticed the complacent posture of his American hosts. He looked angry that nobody had taken the danger seriously.
Soon, the tram entered a tunnel and what the guide announced was an earthquake began to shake the cars. Water began pouring through the walls. With a bang, a semi truck that appeared to be traveling on a road above us came skidding sideways right on top of us, jarring to a halt only a few yards away.
I turned to Father Jubani. He was white with fright, with tears in his eyes. He appeared to be praying.
After surviving that, he seemed to realize that it was all a put-on, and even began to enjoy it. When the tram drove past the two-story-tall face of King Kong (his breath is made to smell like bananas) the priest pointed and laughed, shouting, “Monkey! Monkey!” and then “Darwin! Darwin!”
At the end of our trip, Father Jubani told me, “You are my Virgil,” and I am certain that the experience did seem to him, in many respects, like Dante's tour of hell.
The Real Superpower
His favorite phrase on our trip was “the paradox of America!” which he would repeat with great enthusiasm but no explanation. After that tour, he revealed more of what he meant.
Americans have so much, he said — natural resources, prosperity and freedom — and we have used it to produce something as sophisticated and advanced — and frivolous — as the Universal Studios tour. In Albania, he said, some people have cars. But not gasoline. They hitch their cars to horses, and pull them through the streets.
When God has blessed us the most, he said, we take his blessings most for granted. When God gives the gift of suffering, the human spirit restlessly searches him out.
Certainly, Americans must be as out of place in the Balkans as this living martyr was at Universal Studios. Pope John Paul II called for peace from the beginning in Kosovo. He knows the region well (Father Jubani assured me of this; he had been given an audience after being released from prison). The Pope saw from the beginning that American bombs would do nothing in this ancient place but unwittingly aid the violent at the expense of the just.
Father Jubani could have told you that. In 1990, he had a lot to say to America.
When we visited a Studio City elementary school, he told the students, “America is the champion of democracy, peace and progress. Europe had all the wars. The American people are peaceful. Peace-loving. You must be peaceful and love one another — forgive and forget.”
When he found the students didn't know it, he proudly named the year America was discovered. “I knew it when I was your age. It was 1492. It was named America for Amerigo Vespuchi. He was from Albania. The Christian faith is the model of civilization. Before America celebrated its five centuries, there was Montezuma. They were pagans. They sacrificed men. They were primitive. It was the Christian faith which civilized America. You must pray.”
He ended by summing up the “paradox of America” and the paradox of the faith.
“America is the military, scientific and technological superpower. It is the Christians who are the real superpower: in religion, art, philosophy and literature. We are super. We are super for our faith.”
Tom Hoopes is executive editor of the Register.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Tom Hoopes ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: What's Wrong with the Liturgy? DATE: 04/18/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 18-24, 1999 ----- BODY:The state of the liturgy is on the minds of many Catholics these days. There is a general sense that things are not quite right. Some complain about the music, others complain about priests who act like stand-up comedians, still others look at the Latin of the New Rite and wish that the English version were more accurate and elevating.
It can be a shock to read the actual conciliar and post-conciliar documents of Vatican II on the liturgy. There is not a word about altar tables, guitar Masses, liturgical dances, pastoral voice-overs, handholding or popular jingles. Nor was there ever a demand for these things from the laity; these changes were initiated by a sector of the clergy and its retinue of liturgists. Their stated reason for these changes is that Vatican II wanted the laity to more fully “participate” in the sacrifice of the Mass. This is true, but not in the sense that these liturgists suggest.
The Tridentine liturgy prior to the Council had many strengths and beauties. A problem — not intrinsic to it, but an abuse nonetheless, which the Council addressed — was the non-participation of many of the faithful. People in the pews would say their rosaries or do private devotions during the Mass. The Council Fathers wanted to change this; they wanted “full, conscious and active participation” in the sacrifice of the Mass.
What did the Council mean by “participation”? The Instruction on Music in the Liturgy, issued to implement the Council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, states that participation should “be above all internal, in the sense that by it the faithful join their mind to what they pronounce or hear, and cooperate with heavenly grace.” Secondarily, participation should be “external … to show the internal participation by gestures and bodily attitudes, by the acclamations, responses and singing.”
Many liturgists (and pastors) seem to forget that participation by the congregation is supposed to be mainly internal. And for this to happen there has to be an envelope of silence and not constant commotion. Speaking for myself, I find this internal participation disrupted when the celebrant makes a running personal commentary on the sacred rite or I am asked to sing hymns like On Eagle's Wings that make me feel I am stuck inside a Delta Airlines commercial. On the other hand, if I am lucky enough to be in a parish with a good choir and a music director who appreciates the rich musical patrimony of the Church, I find that listening to beautiful music helps elevate my mind to God.
The Instruction on Music in the Liturgy confirms that this is the way the liturgy ought to be. It reiterates the Council's decree that pride of place be given to Gregorian chant; it also encourages polyphony and the use of the “heritage of sacred music, written in previous centuries for Latin texts.” This more sophisticated (and beautiful) music must, perforce, be reserved for the choir.
While the choir is singing, the document goes on, “all should reserve a reverent silence.
Through it the faithful are not only not considered as extraneous or dumb spectators at the liturgical service, but are associated more intimately in the mystery that is being celebrated, thanks to that interior disposition which derives from the word of God that they have heard.” Modern liturgists do not seem to favor this form of worship. Do they realize that their disagreement is not so much with “Tridentine restorationists” as with the directives of the Second Vatican Council?
What the conciliar and post-conciliar documents clearly call for is a hierarchy of services on Sunday in which the more difficult and traditional music is reserved for the sung or solemn Mass. Accordingly, the balance of active singing at High Mass is in the direction of the choir and not the congregation. At the other Masses the musical balance is clearly supposed to be in the direction of the congregation. This arrangement accommodates those who like to sing and those who value interior silence and the Church's “musical heritage of inestimable value.”
The liturgical experiments in the American Church since the Council, done under the guidance of “experts” who paid precious little attention to what the Second Vatican Council actually decreed, have not been entirely successful. Many would agree with Father Avery Dulles that these experiments — especially the banal music — were a step backward. He writes: “It was difficult for me to accept the virtual banishment of Latin from the liturgy and the substitution of new popular tunes for the imposing Gregorian chant or the mellifluous Renaissance polyphony. It might be necessary, I concluded, to live through a barren season of slovenly improvisation until the Church could experience some kind of cultural revival.”
Interestingly, younger Catholics seem to agree with Father Dulles. A few years ago, the liturgical committee in my parish did a survey of younger people attending the Sunday Masses and discovered that they liked the more traditional music. This finding would seem to be supported by the millions of CD's of Gregorian chant which young people have snapped up in recent years. Maybe the liturgical establishment should try being genuinely “populist” and pay attention to what many young (and older) parishioners actually want.
George Sim Johnston, a New York-based writer, is author of Did Darwin Get It Right?
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: George Sim Johnston ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Indeed, Catholics May Apply DATE: 04/18/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 18-24, 1999 ----- BODY:It is tempting for many to read Pope John Paul II's apostolic constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae, shake their head sadly, and dismiss the document's call for the preferential hiring of Catholics as applicable for Catholic countries in Europe, maybe, but not at all applicable for America. We have laws against that kind of thing.
Ex Corde Ecclesiae calls for the juridical implementation of Canon 810, which requires universities to hire faculty who demonstrate “integrity of doctrine and probity of life.” College officials say they are unable to comply with this and other canons because of the constraints imposed by American law, including the claim that employment discrimination laws prevent them from favoring Catholics.
No Basis in Law
But these fears have no basis in the law, though they may be out of favor with secular colleagues. It is much easier to hide behind the prevailing language of inclusiveness and pluralism than to build a genuine Christian community through pro-active hiring practices in favor of Catholics.
The pertinent law is found in Title VII of the 1964 U.S. Civil Rights Act which prohibits employment discrimination on various bases, including race, ethnicity and religion (gender and marital status were added as amendments later).
However, one of the exemptions to nondiscrimination was for “religious educational institutions.” This leaves Catholic colleges perfectly free to choose Catholic candidates for teaching and administrative positions over others — even if those candidates have superior technical qualifications.
The exemptions have been challenged on the grounds that they contradict the Constitution's prohibition against the establishment of religion. No challenge has succeeded.
Canon 810 could not be used to break, or interfere with, current contracts. However, those contracts, including good-character clauses, should be interpreted in the light of the canon, and Ex Corde Ecclesiae.
Options for Theologians
As for theologians — the most important category of faculty covered by Ex Corde Ecclesiae — there is no reason in law to delay full implementation of Canon 812, which states that “it is necessary that those who teach theological disciplines in any institute of higher studies have a mandate from the competent ecclesiastical authority,” usually understood to be the local bishop.
First, not everyone teaching theology must have a mandate, but only those teaching one of the “theological disciplines.” These are the subjects in which the content of the Catholic faith is the central subject matter of the course, including fundamental and systematic theology, moral theology, liturgy, ecclesiology, sacred Scripture and perhaps others. There is no canonical reason why a Protestant (who would be ineligible for a mandate) could not teach a course on the “Theology of the Reformers” or on “Pacifism in the Christian Tradition.” In fact, it might be better if a Protestant handled those courses.
Instead of dismissing those who are not able or willing to pursue the mandate, theology departments should find a place where they may not be expected to teach the Catholic position or (at least) will not scandalize students if they do. It might even be more efficient to create a new department of “Catholic Theology” or “Church Theology,” that is distinguishable from the older “Academic Theology” department.
Even the contracts of tenured professors are not likely to require more than this. At the same time, it is not likely that a college would be able to fire a tenured professor of theology because of his inability or unwillingness to pursue the mandate to teach subjects like moral theology. In that case, courses in theology — but not in a “theological discipline” — should be assigned.
Possible Challenges
Implementation of Canon 812 could lead to extensive reassignment of teachers and courses. A few professors would probably claim that they have a contractual right to teach a particular course, notwithstanding a different assignment by the university in light of Canon 812.
This could even become known as the “Curran defense” in honor of Father Charles Curran, who was stripped of his ecclesiastical mission to teach theology at The Catholic University of America in the 1980s because of his dissenting views.
Although Father Curran filed suit against Catholic University in civil court, his claim was denied. A key factor in the decision was the centrality of faith to theology. The court understood itself as being asked to rule against the Church on the question of who speaks for the faith. Quite rightly, the court found that Father Curran's contract with Catholic University implicitly included a condition that he be licensed by the Church in order to teach Catholic theology on a pontifical faculty. Indeed, in my view, the First Amendment could hardly tolerate such a usurpation of the Church's religious liberty.
If the reassignment of theology teachers is defended as essential to the integrity of the doctrine of the faith and as central to the preservation of the bishop's role as teacher of the faith, the courts would surely back off. In fact, the mandate requirement of Canon 812 and Ex Corde Ecclesiae establishes an even stronger nexus between teaching assignments and the prerogatives of the Church itself — a link that judges will not want to rule on.
Laxness by the colleges would serve the arguments of lawyers for the rare professor with a plausible basis for asserting a vested right to teach a particular theology course. They would try to exploit a college's lack of firmness on this point and treat gaps in implementation and flaccid enforcement as evidence that the Church authorities, including the bishops, do not hold such an integral view. If they did, courts will reason, it is likely that Church authorities would take greater care to preserve their prerogative.
No court is going to actually reinstate a professor to the course he has been excluded from because the remedy he seeks, called in the law “specific performance,” is generally disfavored in employment situations. (Though mostly for the employee's protection, this would, in cases involving Canon 812, work more in favor of the employee's university.)
And no court is going to make an exception to the general rule in a case where the doctrinal authority of a bishop is at issue. To do so would make a judge the arbiter of who speaks for the Catholic Church. And that is hardly a result compatible with the First Amendment.
The probable finding in such cases would hold that the professor has a right to be paid at the contract rate, but no claim to a course now off limits to him by dint of Canon 8l2.
The college would have the obligation to mitigate damages by obliging him to teach other courses, closer to his specialty but still outside the scope of Canon 812.
The Impect
One effect of implementing Canon 812 will be a reduction at most schools in the number of courses offered in the theological disciplines. At most colleges, the present faculty will not contain enough members able or willing to get mandates to teach the courses now offered. Financial constraints on the colleges will likely delay recruitment of replacements with mandates. This result would be unfortunate.
At the present time, most professors at Catholic colleges are unable or unwilling to confirm their adherence to the very truths of the faith that are the substance of the courses they are teaching.
It will not come as a surprise to many if it turns out that critics of juridical implementation of Ex Corde Ecclesiae reject the features identified by the document as essential to a Catholic university. But we will not know that until the camouflage of concern about adverse legal consequences is cleared away, and a discussion on the document's merits can finally begin.
—Gerard V. Bradley writes from South Bend, Indiana.
----- EXCERPT: U.S. law looks with favor upon preferential hiring by Church-related colleges ----- EXTENDED BODY: Gerard V. Bradley ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Education Notebook DATE: 04/18/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 18-24, 1999 ----- BODY:For-Profit Schools Claim Academic Success
Reporter Tamar Lewin described the data as “a hodgepodge, some following a group of students from fall to spring, or grade to grade, while others compare one year's third graders with the next year's.”
Edison has been at the center of the debate over school choice and privatization since the maverick entrepreneur Chris Whittle founded it in the early 1990s.
Good News Down Under
The newspaper reports the latest figures compiled by the Catholic Education Commission show that enrollments for New South Wales have steadily grown over the past five years to 239,610 in 1998, 2,645 more than in 1997. Retention rates to 12th grade in the 622 Catholic schools in the state have risen from 55% in 1987 to 74.6 last year.
Staff writer Nadia Jamal also reports that better retention, lower class sizes, and the decline in the number of religious order teachers have led to a rapid rise in the number of lay teachers, who now make up 98% of all Catholic schools.
Campus Awakening Over Sweatshops
The target of student wrath over the last several months has been their own campus bookstores, which routinely offer clothing lines made in the Third World countries under licensing agreements.
The universities of Michigan and Wisconsin, among others, have vowed to push licensing companies to disclose locations of textile factories and then guarantee certain wages and conditions for workers.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Beware of CBS's Angle on 'Arc' DATE: 04/18/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 18-24, 1999 ----- BODY:Anyone who has ever spent much time in front of a TV set quickly learns this harsh lesson: The world of television is particularly hostile to the spiritual life.
But that does not mean that there are not programs which are suitable — indeed, even recommended — for families, or programs that putatively deal with matters of the spirit (who, after all, would argue that CBS's popular “Touched by an Angel” does not touch on at least some issues that are of interest to Christians?). To be sure, these programs are hard to find, but they are there, nonetheless.
With this column, the Register begins a feature that looks briefly at shows, documentaries, series or movies that are, or claim to be, suitable for families. But first, some words of warning: Not everything here was available for review (including major network miniseries based on the lives of Noah and Joan of Arc).
Because network entertainment programming — particularly movies and miniseries — often have a preponderance of violence or sexual situations, viewers should be advised that even programs with religious material may not be suitable for the youngest members of a family. Networks provide so-called ratings which advise viewers on matters of content; in most instances, those ratings are not determined until the week or day before air, so viewers should also consult listings in their local newspapers if they plan to watch something.
Here's a look at some of the major programs over the coming month:
CBS
CBS will air ”Joan of Arc“ (May 16 and May 18, 9-11 p.m.; all times listed are Eastern Daylight Time), a four-hour miniseries based on the life of the 15th century “peasant girl … whose boundless faith, courage and determination enable her to help unite and save France from its English enemy — before she is burned at the stake,” according to CBS notes. This one boasts an all-star cast (Jacqueline Bisset, Powers Boothe, Olympia Dukakis, Neil Patrick Harris, Robert Loggia, Peter O'Toole, Maximilian Schell and Peter Strauss), and the producers also promise historical veri-similitude — but then, they always do. One fact is certain: Producers will take certain liberties to heighten drama and action, and that alone will cause purists — not to mention historians — some anguish. It remains unclear how Joan, a canonized saint, will be portrayed: as a postmodern feminist engaged in a titanic struggle with Catholic Church leaders? or as a more complex figure whose actions are guided by profoundly spiritual motives?
This is television, so expect the former. There are, in fact, hints that CBS is leading the entire story toward a climactic showdown between Joan and Brother John Le'Maitre (Schell), who is described by press releases as “the dreaded deputy of France's Holy Inquisition.” During the trial she is also “prodded” by Bishop Cauchon (O'Toole). After ultimately refusing to deny her voices and beliefs, the 19-year-old Joan is burned for heresy, ending her short life but not her extraordinary place in history.
This happens to be one of network television's two major miniseries in May; the other is “Noah's Ark” (see below). But some additional words of warning: The brief promotional clip CBS has provided the press on “Joan of Arc” features battlefield violence. Expect plenty of that in the four hours.
“The Legacy of Love“ will be broadcast later this week (Sunday, April 18, 11 a.m.). It's about Erin Tierney Kramp, a Dallas wife and mother, who wrote of her near-death experiences (and would later succumb to cancer). The book she co-wrote, according to press note, was “about preparing for death practically, emotionally, and spiritually.”
NBC
“Noah's Ark“ has been accorded more pre-broadcast publicity than just about any miniseries this season, so expectations are high. The four hour mini (May 2 and 3, 9-11 p.m. each night) lies at the heart of NBC's fairly new strategy to bring the “classics” — either secular or based, however loosely, on religious texts — to the small screen. In recent past productions of this sort (“Crime & Punishment,” “Gulliver's Travels”), NBC's been criticized for taking significant liberties with the original material, and one can certainly expect departures from the biblical story in this production as well. What will they be? Our guess: Expect major liberties at every turn of the story; but the basic outline will remain intact (how could it not be?) The good news: This will be produced by Robert Halmi, one of television's outstanding producers. Cast includes Jon Voight and Mary Steenburgen.
PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service has a bounty of new programming coming up within the next few weeks, though admittedly little of a spiritual nature. Foremost, it began airing ”Great Composers“ (Wednesdays, 9 p.m.) on April 14, starting with Mozart and Beethoven, followed by Wagner and Mahler (April 21), and Tchaikovsky and Puccini (April 28). Narrated by actor Kenneth Branagh, this promises a cut-above-the-superficial examination of some of the majors.
On the nature front, ”The Living Edens“ will air a spectacular presentation on April 28 at 10, entitled “Bornea: Island in the Clouds.” For the uninitiated, “Living Edens” is one of the finest nature programs on television, combining good storytelling with breathtaking photography. “Bornea” is an interesting contrast with cable network Animal Planet's “Bornea Burning: Orangutan Rescue,” which airs Saturday, April 24, at 9. This one's in stark contrast to the PBS program, and examines horrific destruction of one of the world's most intricate ecosystems.
On April 16, PBS will also premiere a brand new news series, entitled ”National Desk.” Narrators include conservative commentator and evangelical Christian Fred Barnes. This show promises a look at how the minds of young Americans are formed. It began last week, but two additional episodes (Fridays, at 10) will look at women in the military and women in sports.
Lifetime
Lifetime: This cable network occasionally features documentaries on modern American life, and there are a couple of note in the coming days. First, ”Confronting the Crisis: Children in America“ (April 20, 10-11 p.m.) is a look at how families are coping with child care. Next up is “Different Moms,” about mentally retarded mothers who are raising children who are not similarly disabled. (Monday, May 10, 11 p.m.) This was produced and written by Liz Garbus and Rory Kennedy.
The History Channel
Anyone who liked ABC's “The Century,” which began airing recently, will want to see ”The Century: America's Time.” This 15-and-a-half-hour will appeal more to the historical purists at heart and to those who felt that “The Century” was all-too-brief (it was: in only 10 hours, ABC tried to cover only a few major events in the 20th century). The History Channel series is the cable companion to the ABC News broadcast, and both also share the same anchor (Peter Jennings) and, in some cases, producers. But “America's Time” is a distinct departure. This telecast is a chronological study of the century; ABC's was not. It also covers a far wider range of historical events than the ABC program, with much more archival footage, though from a Catholic's perspective, “America's Time” will be lacking.
It is even unclear whether the program will make mention of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) — one of the most significant landmarks of the century. The series offers a distinctly secular retrospective of the century; for some, certainly too secular. The program began airing April 12 and will air nightly (except April 17 and 18) until April 28. The program begins each night at 9.
Verne Gay writes about television for Newsday.
----- EXCERPT: A look at major programs over the coming month ----- EXTENDED BODY: Verne Gay ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day Story DATE: 04/18/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 18-24, 1999 ----- BODY:Paulist Father Ellwood Kieser of Paulist Productions had long wanted to bring the life of Dorothy Day, a possible candidate for beatification, to the screen. Eventually, he oversaw the production of Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day Story. Starring Moira Kelly as Day and Martin Sheen as philosopher Peter Maurin, the movie has now reached video stores. As Entertaining Angels makes clear, Day didn't have an easy life. As a young woman, she joined the socialist movement, working as a journalist in New York's leftist circles. She had affairs, had an abortion and then got pregnant again. This time, she bore a daughter and began a deep spiritual search. This led to her conversion, the establishment of numerous homeless shelters, the foundation of the Catholic Worker newspaper and the organization of a social-justice movement that continues to this day. Although Entertaining Angels isn't a brilliant film, it's a more-than-adequate introduction to one of America's most influential Catholics.
The Rugrats Movie
Young fans of “The Rugrats” will be delighted with The Rugrats Movie, and their parents should get a chuckle or two out of it as well. The film stars the usual toddler denizens of the animated Nickelodeon show the brave Tommy Pickles, the anxious Chuckie, the twins Phil and Lil, and the bossy Angelica — but it adds a new character, baby Dylan Pickles. Although Tommy's parents have carefully encouraged his acceptance of Dylan, the wailing newborn is a distinct annoyance. The twins offer to return Dylan to the hospital, but Tommy knows that he has to keep his brother. Then fate intervenes in the form of a large toy dragon. The motorized dragon carries the pack of “dumb babies,” as Angelica calls them, into the local woods where the toddlers face a series of perils and learn a series of lessons. The Rugrats Movie operates on two distinct levels: One is a relatively simple adventure tale for children (though some sensitive children may find the action too tense); the other is a clever critique of the fads and fancies that obsess the parents of today's young children.
U.S. Catholic Conference rating:
Tarzan and the Lost City
Based on stories created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan and the Lost City is an old-fashioned film of jungle adventure updated with a few late-20th-century concerns such as environmental correctness and racial equality. The tale begins after Tarzan (Caspar Van Dien) has returned to Edwardian England to take up his life as a lord and begin preparing for his wedding to Jane (Jane March). A week before the big day, he has a vision of destruction in his beloved jungle. Nigel Ravens (Steven Waddington), an explorer-scholar, has turned violent in his search for the lost city of Opar, the cradle of civilization. He and his henchmen are killing natives, setting fire to villages and decimating the jungle life. Tarzan abandons civilization and Jane, and heads for Africa. He soon puts a spanner in the explorer's works, but Ravens is too tough to let the white ape stop him. Then Jane arrives. The movie is mediocre, but it has plenty of action.
U.S. Catholic Conference rating:
— Loretta G. Seyer
----- EXCERPT: Videos on Release ----- EXTENDED BODY: Loretta G. Seyer ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: A Reluctant Bishop's Final Home DATE: 04/18/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 18-24, 1999 ----- BODY:The cathedral of Gniezno is ranked among the most popular sanctuaries of Poland. It receives more than 1 million visitors and tourists every year and has served as the ultimate destination of pilgrimages for the past millennium. Inside is the elaborate tomb of the sacred relics of St. Adalbert — one of Poland's patron saints.
St. Adalbert was born of nobility in Bohemia in 956. From his earliest years, he was a child of extreme piety and saintliness and during his youth, he spent much of his time not only educating himself, but also performing works of charity such as secretly making visits to the poor and sick. Heeding God's call to enter the religious life, Adalbert entered the seminary and was ordained a priest in 983.
In the same year, at the age of 27, Adalbert was named archbishop of Prague. The prelate traveled from church to church proclaiming the mercy of God and spent much of his time visiting the poor and prisoners. Asked about his grueling schedule and steadfast dedication, the prelate would simply respond: “It is an easy thing to wear the miter and a cross; but it is a most dreadful circumstance to have to give an account of a bishopric to Christ — the judge of the living and the dead.”
Despite his never-ending work of spreading the Gospel, much of his diocese continued to dabble in exercises of idolatry and paganism. So, finding the people fixed in their ways, Adalbert decided to renounce his position as bishop and subsequently traveled to Rome to ask the Pope to release him from his duties. His request was granted and Adalbert entered a monastery.
Five years later, however, at the demand of the archbishop of Mentz, the Pope ordered him to return to his bishopric.
The young man agreed to go after the Pope gave him the freedom to leave a second time. Adalbert returned to Prague where the people received him with great joy. But the people continued in their ways and once again, Adalbert exercised his license to leave and traveled to Hungary where he tutored the future king of the country, St. Stephen.
Adalbert later traveled with two companions to Poland and Prussia and all three evangelized the local people.
Despite their great success, there was also much suffering. The men were physically beaten on several occasions and ultimately killed. On April 23, 997, Adalbert died of stab wounds to the heart.
When Boleslas, the duke of Poland, heard about the martyrdom of Adalbert, he ordered that the corpse be brought to the abbey of Tremezno.
A year later, with great pomp and ceremony, Boleslas transferred the sacred relics to the cathedral in Gniezno. In 999 Pope Sylvester canonized the martyr. Thereafter, miracles at the tomb of the celebrated saint became commonplace and it quickly developed into one of the greatest religious sites in the country.
Today, the shrine is visited by pilgrims and tourists from Europe and abroad.
One of the sanctuary's most recent extraordinary moments occurred in 1997, when Pope John Paul II made a pilgrimage to the cathedral in Gniezno to celebrate the 1,000th anniversary of the saint's martyrdom.
The cathedral lies in the heart of the city of Gniezno and is also home to some of the most magnificent art and architecture. Inside the cathedral, near the high altar, is the sanctuary's most prized possession — the elaborate silver reliquary of St. Adalbert.
Another precious object is the cathedral's 12th-century bronze doors in the back of the right-hand aisle, at the entrance from the porch. Depicting 18 scenes from the life of St. Adalbert, the doors are one of the best examples of Romanesque art in Europe. Information phones are also available inside the shrine and provide an excellent, but brief, description and history of the pilgrimage Church in various languages (including English).
Guided tours are usually conducted in Polish but arrangements can be made at the chapel next to the bronze doors for tours in English (or other languages).
Another nearby attraction in Gniezno is the archdiocesan museum which features a number of sacred objects from the past — including a 10th-century chalice believed to have been used by St. Adalbert himself.
Kevin Wright, author of Catholic
Shrines of Western Europe, writes from Bellevue, Washington.
----- EXCERPT: The Cathedral of Gniezno, Poland, guards St. Adalbert's relics ----- EXTENDED BODY: Kevin Wright ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Pro-Lifers Still Feel the Heat in Canada DATE: 04/18/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 18-24, 1999 ----- BODY:TORONTO—These aren't the best of times for Human Life International in Canada.
At its 18th annual conference in Toronto, hundreds of protesters turned out in force threatening to upstage the regular conference proceedings.
The conference, held April 7-11, attracted more than 1,000 HLI delegates and supporters to a series of workshops and presentations promoting the family and the culture of life.
But it also drew about 300 feminists, abortion advocates and assorted social and political activists who staged a noisy rally outside the west-end Toronto convention site on the opening night of the conference. They gathered to protest what they claimed is HLI's intolerance of homosexuality, reproductive rights and contraception.
Among the protesters were representatives of the Catholics for a Free Choice organization. Spokeswoman Kathleen Howes told fellow demonstrators that the Church opposes the “bigotry” practiced by those attending the conference.
Anti-HLI protesters had been attracting media attention in the weeks leading up to the conference. A number of posters appeared in downtown Toronto urging activists to “fight the HLI bigots.” In addition, two prominent Toronto newspaper columnists attacked HLI's aims and accused the pro-life organization of bringing “hate and intolerance” into Canada. A homosexual weekly in Toronto even described HLI supporters as “nut-bars.”
Much of the demonstrators’ invective was directed against HLI founder Father Paul Marx, who in the past has written that a high proportion of Jewish doctors work as abortionists and support pro-choice aims. These comments are cited to support claims of anti-Semitism against HLI. Defenders, however, say the comments are taken out of context. They point to Father Marx's many assertions that traditional Judaism is among the most pro-life of organized religions. Nonetheless it did not prevent some Jewish and Muslim groups from taking part in a late March press conference describing Father Marx and HLI as anti-Semitic.
The recent protests, however, have been a far cry from the scene in November 1995 when a HLI conference in Montreal was disrupted by a violent protest of nearly 1,000 pro-abortion demonstrators. Then, a procession of HLI delegates from a Montreal cathedral was pelted with eggs, glass-filled condoms and other objects.
The lack of a procession at this year's convention, coupled with the presence of 250 police officers, helped keep this year's protest from getting out of hand. Nonetheless HLI supporters are concerned that the intensity of the protest underscores the difficulty pro-life groups face in bringing their message to the public.
Father Alphonse de Valk, editor of the Toronto-based Catholic Insight magazine, suggested that the mounting protest against pro-life activities is part of a wider campaign to link organized religion with the increase of violence in society. Father de Valk, who led a workshop at the HLI conference on the 1968 papal encyclical Humanae Vitae, said the tendency to attack religion is an attempt to impose a new moral order.
“With this kind of perspective, the entire moral order is distorted,” Father de Valk said. “Virtue becomes vice, and vice becomes virtue. Witness the media coverage of pro-life events.”
Father de Valk also reacted to insinuations that pro-life supporters and people who hold to a traditional faith promote intolerance and violence. “Why the fury of this crowd?” he asked. “Because deep down, they know they are fighting on the wrong side. The violence is theirs, not prolife's.”
These views were echoed by HLI president Father Richard Welch. Speaking to reporters on the opening night of the conference, Father Welch said the protest greeting HLI activity is a sign of new cultural struggle.
“This is a classic confrontation of what goes on in society between a respect for life and a sterile culture of death,” he said.
Father Welch also said the emotion and bitterness exhibited by protesters suggests that abortion supporters and radical feminists are losing ground on life issues. “This kind of reaction is really a sign of fear,” he said.
For their part, Canada's abortion advocates hold firmly to the view that U.S.-based HLI and its ideals should not enjoy a platform in Canada.
Carolyn Egan, a spokeswoman for the Ontario Coalition of Abortion Clinics, attended the anti-HLI rally April 7. She told the Register, “HLI is an organization that wants to legislate an end to the reproductive rights advances Canadian women have won.” Egan, who also attended the HLI protests in Montreal in 1995, said HLI is diametrically opposed to the pluralistic ideals of Canadian society.
Similarly, Marilyn Wilson, executive director of the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League, suggested some HLI supporters should not have been allowed to enter Canada. “Canadian immigration must prevent members of HLI with criminal records from entering Canada,” Wilson said, adding that “the preachings of HLI are an attempt to take away women's rights to choice in terms of contraception and abortion.”
HLI has a membership of more than 15,000 in the country.
Prior to the conference, Wilson's group sent a letter to all members of Parliament in Canada, denouncing HLI as an anti-Semitic organization that is opposed to the aims of the country's Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The letter also hinted at — but offered no evidence for — a link between HLI and the shooting death of Buffalo, N.Y., abortionist Dr. Barnett Slepian last October.
The letter drew a quick rebuttal from HLI-Canada's executive director Theresa Bell who said the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League and other pro-abortion groups have distorted HLI's work.
“CARAL has consistently refused to accept invitations by members of the public to join with HLI and other leading religious and civil leaders to defend the lives of all babies in the womb and all women from the tragedy of abortion,” Bell said. “Instead, groups like CARAL seemingly need to resort to tactics such as innuendo, deception and downright lies in order to deflect public attention from the important issues at hand. We invite CARAL to deal in the facts and with truthfulness.”
To many pro-life supporters, the HLI conference protest mirrors a pattern in the pro-life and pro-abortion debate. Many have noted a tendency, on the part of abortion advocates, to link pro-life work with extremism and violence. Furthermore, traditional religious belief, which often goes hand in hand with respect-for-life values, is dismissed as supportive of intolerance and bigotry.
One person who rejected that line of reasoning was Father Tom Lynch, professor of moral theology at St. Augustine's Seminary in Toronto, who was the homilist at the HLI conference's opening Mass.
“How often have people told you, ‘No more pro-life talk!’ How many times are we told to shut up and lie down? How often are we legally or socially or physically gagged?” Father Lynch said. “What threats, injunctions, lawsuits, howling mobs, steely indifference and suffocating apathy have you endured? But we are still called to be witnesses.”
Father Lynch compared the current struggle to the “battle for Mount Sinai” where Moses received the Ten Commandments as an effort to impose a moral order on society. “The people who follow this now — Jews, Catholics, Evangelicals and others — have found themselves standing shoulder to shoulder to defend a common and life-giving heritage and a blueprint for a sane and rational society,” he said.
Among the speakers at the five-day conference were renowned pro-life activist Joan Andrews-Bell; William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights; and Dr. Joel Brind, a leading authority on the abortion-breast cancer link.
Topics discussed included pro-life journalism, population control efforts, euthanasia, and the future of the pro-life movement. The conference also featured special events such as a chastity education forum, a medical professionals day and a seminar on post-abortion syndrome.
Mike Mastromatteo writes from Toronto.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mike Mastromatteo ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: 19 European Nations OK Ban on Human Cloning DATE: 04/18/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 18-24, 1999 ----- BODY:PARIS—According to a CNN report, 19 European nations on April 12 signed an agreement to prohibit the cloning of humans.
Representatives from 19 members of the Council of Europe signed a protocol that would commit their countries to ban by law “any intervention seeking to create human beings genetically identical to another human being, whether living or dead.” It rules out any exception to the ban, even in the case of a completely sterile couple.
“At a time when occasional voices are being raised to assert the acceptability of human cloning and even to put it more rapidly into practice, it is important for Europe solemnly to declare its determination to defend human dignity against the abuse of scientific techniques,” Council Secretary-General Daniel Tarchys said.
The text, which is to become a part of the European Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine, would permit cloning of cells for research purposes. The accord will become binding on the signatories as soon as it has been ratified in five states.
Countries signing are: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Moldova, Norway, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Macedonia and Turkey.
Britain and Germany — two of Europe's biggest nations — did not sign the protocol.
Germany claims the measure is weaker than a current German law that forbids all research on human embryos — a reaction to Nazi genetic engineering experiments.
Britain, where scientists are at the forefront of cloning, has a strong tradition of defending the so-called freedoms of scientific research.
Responding, French President Jacques Chirac, at a conference of Europe's national ethics committees, said: “Nothing will be resolved by banning certain practices in one country if scientists and doctors can simply work on them elsewhere.
“It is only at the international level that we will be able to prohibit cloning and genetic manipulation that could alter the characteristics of the human race,” he said in opening the conference.
Fears about the dangers of genetic engineering are on the rise as cloning, the exact reproduction of a living being via the replication of the individual's genetic structure, appears to be at hand.
Researchers in Scotland ignited the debate over cloning last March with the announcement that they had cloned a sheep, which they named Dolly. Britain's Independent newspaper said on April 11 that experiments in human cloning could begin in the United Kingdom as early as next year.
Richard Seed, a Harvard University-educated physicist, caused an uproar last week when he said he was ready to set up a clinic to clone human babies and predicted that as many as 200,000 human clones a year would be produced once his process was perfected. He boasted that he could produce a human clone within 18 months.
In reaction to this, President Clinton called on April 10 for a five-year ban on human cloning experiments. (Pro-Life Infonet)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 04/18/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 18-24, 1999 ----- BODY:Pope John Paul II, in his ad limina remarks to the bishops of Hawaii, Nevada and California, has called on the American public to actively become involved in making alternatives to abortion available. Many Church leaders, by their example, teach us that we have a duty to protect life at every stage (See Inperson, Page 1).
Those who would defend life must make alternatives to abortion increasingly visible and available. Your recent pastoral statement, Lights and Shadows, draws attention to the need to support women in crisis pregnancies, and to provide counseling services for those who have had an abortion and must cope with its psychological and spiritual effects. Likewise, the unconditional defense of life must always include the message that true healing is possible, through reconciliation with the Body of Christ. In the spirit of the coming Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, American Catholics should be more than ever willing to open their hearts and their homes to “unwanted” and abandoned children, to young people in difficulty, to the handicapped and those who have no one to care for them.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: Life Notes DATE: 04/18/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 18-24, 1999 ----- BODY:Suicide Is Not a Treatment
LOS ANGELES TIMES, April 4—The paper reported that an earnest debate had begun in the state legislature over physician-assisted suicide with the introduction of Assembly Bill 1592.
“Unfortunately,” the article stated, “although this measure is born out of a sincere desire to help suffering people, it does so in the worst possible way.”
The paper described the assembly bill as not only leading society down the dangerous slippery slope of euthanasia but undermining California's accomplishments in addressing individuals suffering from pain.
The Times reported that Derek Humphrey, a leading proponent of euthanasia, has just released a book titled Freedom to Die in which he admits cost containment is an ultimate goal: “A rational argument can be made for allowing [assisted suicide] in order to offset the amount society and family spend on the ill, as long as it is the voluntary wish of the mentally competent terminally ill adult . … The hastened demise of people with only a short time left would free up resources for others. Hundreds of billions of dollars could benefit those patients who not only can be cured but who want to live.”
However, the paper said, “California must continue down the humanitarian path of treating pain in suffering individuals — not authorizing HMO administrators to end lives to bolster their bottom line.”
Freshmen Reveal Surprisingly Conservative Views
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, April 6—College students are no longer showing up at home with more than just their usual baggage. The paper reported that this year's college freshmen may have also brought home some surprises for spring break. “They include conservative views on casual sex, abortion and other issues,” said an article in the News.
“A comprehensive survey of this year's college freshmen finds a host of areas where young adults are taking decidedly different turns on issues than previous generations of students. From the lowest support ever for casual sex and keeping abortion legal, to questions of law and order and even their goals in life, the differences are sometimes wide,” said the article.
The paper reported that Chris Gillott, chairman of Pennsylvania State University's Young Americans for Freedom, said “their members are more conservative than their parents.”
The paper added that he said young adults are looking for a return to religious or more traditional moral values after the legacy left by the baby boomers.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: Facts of Life DATE: 04/18/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 18-24, 1999 ----- BODY:Did You Know?
Words which a few years ago were used to show care such as “treatment,” “compassion,” “comfort care” and “terminal” — now mean something far different than they did then. In the debate over euthanasia, these words are used to do more than hurt — they are used to kill. For example:
“Following the abortive attempts in Washington and California, euthanasia advocates went back to the drawing board to reframe their rhetoric. In preparation for a new initiative campaign then being formulated for Oregon, a poll was commissioned in 1993 by the newly formed Euthanasia Research and Guidance Organization. The poll — which was the organization's first activity — was designed to determine ‘if euphemisms allow people to come to grips with brutal facts which, stated another way, would be repugnant to them.’
“Not surprisingly, results indicated that people would be more inclined to vote for laws that were couched in euphemisms. The poll indicated that the greatest number of respondents (65%) would favor a law using the terminology ‘to die with dignity.’ As the drafting process of what would eventually be known as Measure 16, Oregon's ‘Death with Dignity Act,’ went on, information from the poll was incorporated to ensure the greatest possible chance of passage.”
Results of Roper Poll cited in ERGO! magazine in August 1993.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: Pickets Protest 'Professor Death' DATE: 04/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 25 - May 1, 1999 ----- BODY:PRINCETON, N.J. — Carrying posters decrying Nazi-style eugenics and extreme notions of academic freedom, more than 100 pro-life and handicapped-rights advocates assembled on a quiet Princeton University campus to protest the hiring of Peter Singer to a prestigious chair in ethics.
Singer, 52, a university professor in Melbourne, Australia, is internationally known for his work in utilitarian ethics and famous for his promotion of animal rights. He says that parents should have the right to kill their newborn children if they are handicapped and that babies less than a month old lack the consciousness necessary for personhood and have no claim to human rights. (See Indepth, Page 10.) He is called “Professor Death” and compared to Dr. Jack Kevorkian by opponents.
“This is getting close to Hitler's policies. He did the same thing in Nazi Germany to the deformed and disabled with the support of academics,” John Scaturro, a New Jersey police officer, told the Register during the April 17 protest.
He and his wife, Maureen, came with their 3-year-old daughter, Marian Grace. They held a sign which read: “Singer's Quality of Life Test: You Fail, You Die!”
Scaturro said, “This hiring is an indication of society's acceptance of these kind of ideas. The public is influenced by the opinions of those in respectable positions.”
Singer was appointed last year to the Ira W. DeCamp Professorship of Bioethics at the university's Center for Human Values and is scheduled to take his tenured position July 1.
Despite the protest and a number of critical statements in media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, and from religious leaders, including Cardinal John O'Connor, Princeton's administration says that it will not withdraw Singer's appointment.
Speaking at a campus rally, Marca Bristo, a handicapped-rights activist who is confined to a wheelchair, said, “It is sad that just as Jack Kevorkian has been jailed for acting on the ethics that are very similar to those of Peter Singer's, Princeton has chosen to hire the proponent of infanticide to teach undergraduates ethics.”
She is chairwoman of the National Council on Disability, which advises President Clinton and Congress on issues affecting disabled persons, and a member of the group “Not Dead Yet,” which lobbies against discriminatory practices against handicapped persons in public policies and health care. A dozen other members of the group attended.
“The plain truth is that Peter Singer thinks that people with disabilities have lives not worth living,” she said.
Bristo called Singer's utilitarian theories “dangerous” and stated that if he advocated the killing of infant girls so that society could have more strong males, or the extermination of poor children to keep them from placing a burden on society, “this university would draw a line and say that such ideas belong outside the marketplace of respectable ideas.”
Dangerous Views
Key to Singer's ideas is a utilitarian notion of the quality of life and the total good of a population. This notion leads him conclude that parents of a severely deformed infant may rightfully kill the child if they will then seek to have a more healthy child.
In “Practical Ethics,” a text for his course at Princeton, Singer writes, “[I]f killing the hemophiliac infant has no adverse affects on others, it would, according to the total view, be right to kill him … killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all.”
He rejects the inherent superiority of human over other species and argues that the life of an animal could be preferred of the life of an infant.
Mary Jane Owen, national director of the National Catholic Office for Persons with Disabilities, said that her study of Singer's works found them to be intellectually bankrupt.
“I think he is not a good scholar. He is very cavalier in his analysis of what society needs,” she told the Register. “How does he determine the total good of a society while disposing of the life of certain individuals whom he says are disposable? You cannot read his books without being struck by his push to do away with what he calls the ‘totalitarianism’ of the Catholic view about the sanctity of life. In his world, there is no absolute right or wrong.”
Holding pictures of her son who has Down syndrome, Frances Kelly said at the rally, “Would you want him killed?” She said her son, now 23, could not attend because he works as an assistant chef in a nearby hotel.
Hidden from the Nazis
In a letter to Princeton's president, Harold Shapiro, Kelly wrote that no parent can predict the potential or future happiness of a handicapped newborn and accused the university of replacing respect for individuals with “measurements and statistics.”
In a moving rally speech, Traude Barbiero said that at birth her life was in danger in Nazi-occupied Austria, where a eugenics campaign was targeting low-weight and deformed infants. Her parents hid her from authorities in a neigh-bor's house, said Barbiero, president of New Jersey Right to Life Committee.
“As someone who has lived to tell the story, I can attest to the fact that Dr. Peter Singer has a long legacy,” she said. “His so-called new ethic is not new. He complains that we quote him out of context. But we know that we quote him in context, and the context is murder.”
She said that his talks have drawn large protests in Switzerland, Austria and Germany because the people of those countries know firsthand where his Nazi-type ethics can lead.
The campus rally was organized by Princeton Students Against Infanticide, a small group of graduate and undergraduate students who banded together to oppose Singer's appointment. Also taking part were representatives from New Jersey Right to Life, New Jersey Concerned Citizens for Life and local councils of the Knights of Columbus.
Although few students turned out for the rally, the hiring of Singer has been a hot issue in Princeton's daily newspaper. Few students have expressed direct support for the professor's ideas, but a number have argued for “academic freedom” and a free flow of ideas.
Kathryn Getek, a member of the Princeton Students Against Infanticide board, told the Register that in conversations with students on campus, she has found many apathetic and others employing tortured logic to defend Singer's appointment.
“They have to maintain a ‘pro-choice’position and we have to show them that if they follow the logic all the way through, they'll wind up in a place they don't want to be. They'll find themselves defending infanticide, which they never thought they would do at the start.”
Brian Caulfield writes from New York.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian Caulfield ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Abortion Doctors as 'Heroes' DATE: 04/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 25 - May 1, 1999 ----- BODY:MILWAUKEE—Mary Matuska remembers when “abortionist” was a dirty word.
“It was a word immediately associated with shame,” she said. “Abortion was a shameful business and abortionist was a dirty word.”
So she was shocked when she opened her Sunday newspaper April 11 to find a major story extolling the heroism of one of Wisconsin's major abortionists.
“I couldn't believe my eyes,” recalled Matuska, a 26-year veteran of the pro-life movement and the state director of Pro-Life Wisconsin. “Here is a man who admits to killing babies up to 24 weeks of development and they're painting him as a hero who provides a ‘service’to women in need. It sickened me.”
The article appeared in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the largest-circulation newspaper in Wisconsin. On the front page of the paper's Lifestyle section, abortionist Dennis Christensen proudly proclaims how he “has ended 70,000 pregnancies” during his medical career in spite of pickets and occasional clinic blockades. He tells stories of regular pickets of his home, his car's locks being glued shut and being accosted at a local theater.
Interviews with supporters of Christensen painted the picture of a man dedicated to assisting those in need. Another Wisconsin abortionist lauds Christensen as “an excellent provider” who taught him how to perform second-trimester abortions. A clinic nurse and pro-abortion lobbyist says, “He's as normal as apple pie, a good family man.”
Several pictures accompany the massive article as well. One features Christensen displaying a photo of his 18-month-old grandson of which he is quoted as saying, “Newborn babies are great, if you want them.” The other shows Christensen carrying a tray of abortion instruments out of a room after performing an abortion at his Madison clinic.
Stories like this are appearing more frequently. In March, The New York Times Magazine ran a story entitled “The Making of a Fugitive.” The story focused on a man being sought in connection with the murder of a Buffalo abortion doctor, and also portrayed those who do abortions as victims. On April 14, the TV newsmagazine 60 Minutes II featured a story on Michael Bray, a convicted abortion-clinic bomber who now publicly supports the use of lethal force to stop abortion.
“The media seems to be going out of their way to paint abortionists as martyrs and pro-lifers as villains,” said Matuska. “I see it as part of the agenda to legitimize abortion and those who perform abortions because so many physicians are refusing to enter the abortion business.”
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Deputy Editor Michael Ruby objected to Matuska's assertion that the mainstream media are trying to legitimize abortion and portray abortionists as heroes. He said the April 11 article focusing on Christensen was “very balanced.”
“Abortion remains one of, if not the, most divisive in the country,” Ruby noted. “Our article was evenhanded, fair-minded and did not take a position on abortion.”
Ruby said even if some people believe abortion is murder, the procedure is still legal and those who perform abortions are newsworthy.
“Christensen is not doing anything illegal under the laws of this country, so he is providing a legal service,” Ruby added. “This article was a fair-minded, accurate profile of this one person who is at the center of a storm.”
A Shrinking Breed
One thing that seems beyond dispute is that the number of abortion doctors is shrinking. Planned Parenthood has reported that 86% of counties in the United States don't have physicians willing to perform abortions. In 1982, there were 2,908 known abortionists. By 1996, the number had declined to 2,042, the fewest since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
The number of surgical abortions has also declined over the past 15 years. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Alan Guttmacher Institute, 1,577,200 surgical abortions were reportedly performed in 1984. In 1996, the last year for complete figures, there were 1,221,585 surgical abortions reported.
Vicki Saporta, executive director of the National Abortion Federation, disagreed. The Abortion Federation is a professional association for abortionists practicing in the United States and Canada. Saporta told the Register that abortionists are simply receiving the credit they deserve for making abortion the safest surgical procedure in the nation while risking their lives to provide what she calls a “health-care service for women.”
Saporta said she's not worried about the declining number of physicians willing to perform abortion. The Abortion Federation, she said, established a group called Medical Students for Choice in 1990 to recruit students to the abortion business. She said the organization has more than 4,000 members on 100 medical school campuses across the nation.
“Medical Students for Choice is preparing a new generation of physicians to replace those who will retire,” she said. “If just half of them [the students] added abortion to their practice, we would almost double the number of providers within four years.”
She added, “Violence is certainly an issue physicians address in making a decision [whether or not to perform abortions]. But it doesn't necessarily dissuade people who are committed to providing abortions.”
Focus on Violence
Like Pro-Life Wisconsin's Matuska, Kristin Hansen of the Washington, D.C.-based Family Research Council, said she has also seen more attempts by the mainstream media to “glorify” abortion and abortion providers by focusing on isolated acts of violence and the pro-violence views of those like Michael Bray.
“Michael Bray really isn't news,” Hansen said. “What is news is that the mainstream media is choosing not to report about the women dying at the hands of these abortionists.”
Family Research Council issued a press release prior to the 60 Minutes II segment featuring Bray, calling on the show's producers to present the issue of abortion-related violence in a fair and balanced manner, including the views of pro-life leaders who condemn such views as the antithesis of “pro-life.” No pro-life leaders were included in the 60 Minutes II segment to balance out Bray's views.
“It is more than ironic that CBS chooses to cover violence and abortion, but apparently not say one word about the killing of Lou Ann Herron, whose death occurred exactly one year ago this week. Herron was a 33-year-old mother who died by a botched abortion at the Women's A to Z Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona. She is one of an alarming number of women to have died from abortion in our country in recent years. You would never know this from national news sources, however,” Teresa Wagner, Family Research Council policy analyst, said in a press release.
Hansen said that while the media may try to portray abortionists as heroes, the strategy won't work.
“You cannot make the practice of abortion honorable or respectable,” she said. “The media will try to portray abortion doctors as heroic in the face of incredible opposition, but you can never make the practice acceptable.”
While the media seems to be jumping on the abortion bandwagon at an increasing level, Matuska says pro-lifers need to continue to be on the front lines, non-violently.
“The sad thing is that when some misguided person perpetrates violence in the name of ‘pro-life,’it only adds fuel to the fire,” she said. “But what the pro-abortionists and some members of the media really want pro-lifers to do is to hide in their homes and not speak out for the babies. That we cannot do.”
Greg Chesmore writes from Bloomington, Indiana.
----- EXCERPT: Media are redefining roles in pro-life fight ----- EXTENDED BODY: Greg Chesmore ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Seminarians Shine in a Favorable News Light DATE: 04/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 25 - May 1, 1999 ----- BODY:A positive message about priestly vocations has come out of a surprising source: The New York Times Magazine, on Easter Sunday no less.
The article by free-lance writer Jennifer Egan explored the state of vocations in the Catholic Church and what it portends for the future. By focusing on seminarians at Mount Saint Mary's Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md., she offered a bullish portrait of what lies ahead.
Egan had been told by her Times editors simply to do “something” on the Catholic priesthood.
“I thought the seminary would be an interesting environment,” she told the Register. The result was “The Last Counterculture,” a piece that focuses on a group of seminarians who will serve the Church of the 21st century.
The teaser on the cover told much of the story: “No one lives at further remove from consumerist, sexualized, technocratic America than its Catholic priests. And nobody feels the disjunction more acutely than young seminarians.”
Egan, who calls herself an “inactive” Catholic, said she didn't start off to write a pro-Church piece, but felt the approach she took was correct. “I thought the world [of a seminary] is so alien to most people that it was important to bring it to light.”
In her article, Egan reports that what she found at Mount Saint Mary's was an institution “scrupulously adherent to the Magisterium of the Pope.” But “conservative does not mean grim,” she added.
She reported that “a mood of buoyant optimism surges among the men — a sense, accurate or not, that the bad times are over for the priest-hood, and something new and momentous is in the making.”
Father Kevin Rhoades, rector at Mount Saint Mary's, told Egan: “We've had 20 years of a very strong pontificate. I think we're at a new era, and these men represent it.”
The article more than touched on issues confronting seminarians and the Church at the close of the millennium, from the lack of vocations to homosexuality and pedophilia among priests.
Flying in the face of popular assumptions, Egan pointed out: “Despite the high profile of the scandals involving the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests, there is no evidence that the incidence … is greater among priests than among clergy of other denominations or the population at large.”
In its anecdotal opening, the Times feature takes the reader to a diner in Maryland, where three Mount Saint Mary's seminarians have stopped for coffee and dessert. At the sight of the seminarians, who are in clerical garb, some people look up, while others deliberately avoid eye contact. The various reactions express the ambivalence that many Americans now feel about religion, especially as personified by a Catholic priest.
The article goes with an in-depth look at the seminarians and how they came to their vocations. For starters, they tend to be older, mostly in their late 20s and 30s, even older.
Brian Bashista, for example, was an architect and had contemplated marrying his girlfriend before answering God's call. His biggest problem was facing the prospect of a life of celibacy, something that initially turned him off.
“I really felt I was called to be a father and husband,” he said. “I thought that was why I was placed on earth.”
Tom Fesen, now a deacon, commuted to work on two buses, the first of which dropped him across the street from a church. He started attending Mass while waiting for his connection. One day, a priest asked him to read at Mass, and Fesen declined. The priest immediately asked, “Well, do you want to become a priest?”
Initially angry, Fesen could not get the question out of his head. It was the beginning of his vocational journey.
Deacon Michael Dobbins had fallen away from the Church and attended a Baptist church. But one day he read a passage from John's Gospel which reported that many of Jesus’disciples, after being told that they must eat the very body of Christ and drink his blood, “returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him.” He said the words struck him “like a big brick. And I was, like, holy cow — that's me. I cried like a baby.”
Father Rhoades, whom Egan described as “the cheerful rector of Mount Saint Mary's,” said the article revealed that “men entering the seminary today are zealous and excited about their faith and about prayer. They're good, healthy and understanding of the celibacy requirement.”
He added: “The article showed where the Church is going. The article didn't stereotype us. It's a secular newspaper, but they did a fine job.”
Equally enthusiastic was Paulist Father James Lloyd of New York. “For a change, seminarians were not presented as screwballs and wimps,” he said. “I really liked the fact that those seminarians are not bending to the secular agendas.”
Father Lloyd said there is a “fascism among the intellectual left. They have closed minds. When those on the left talk about ‘diversity,’ that does not include an opposing viewpoint. Their minds are closed to the fact that Jesus Christ came to save the people. The Church is not run by polls; it doesn't bend to the times. That never changes.”
Not everyone goes along with Father Lloyd's optimism or enthusiasm.
Sister Maureen Fiedler, a member of the Sisters of Loretto congregation, is co-director of the Quixote Center, a self-described “progressive Catholic organization seeking to encourage reform in the Church.” The group calls for married priests, ordination of women, inclusive language in the liturgy, and a “rethinking” of papal infallibility in matters of faith and morals.
In reading the Times article, Sister Maureen said, she wondered how those seminarians are going to interact with today's parishioners. “Our surveys show today's Catholics are very progressive,” she said. “They want a married clergy and women priests. And, they don't want to hear about contraception.”
She is convinced that the seminarians featured in the article, now very conservative, will change once they begin to serve in a parish. “When they see what the people are thinking, they'll change the way they think,” she said.
Another group that takes a similar stance is Call To Action. Bob McClory, a CTA board member, said he found the article interesting, but biased. “The article is sort of fuzzy in saying this is what priests in general are like,” he said. He cited one of Egan's statement, that the Catholic priesthood “remains becalmed in a zone of otherworldly preoccupations relatively un-buffeted by present day vicissitudes.”
“The statement is nuts,” McClory said. “A good chunk of the Church is scarcely becalmed.” He added that he would have liked to see more opposing viewpoints in the feature.
Father Lloyd counters that the people will follow orthodox teachings, and the Church will experience a new calm when a majority of priests are at peace with the fullness of her doctrine. “If they tell the truth, the people will follow them,” he said. “The spiritual hunger of the people will be fed by those seminarians in the article. I'd like to see their numbers multiplied by a thousand.”
Mount Saint Mary's seminarians know they have a tough road ahead as priests, Egan points out, especially as they work with a laity that is accustomed to a certain amount of dissent and is willing to entertain moral positions contrary to the Church's. She cited a University of Maryland Survey Research Center study that found that two-thirds of American Catholics say that, when their conscience is at odds with the Pope, they should follow their conscience.
Mount Saint Mary's Bashista said his obligation, and that of all seminarians, is to preach and teach the truth in charity and love, and to be patient. Last summer, he preached a homily at a parish in Omaha, Neb. His topic was contraception.
He asked the congregation, “‘What is the nature of marriage? To give oneself.’I didn't use the word ‘contraception’until the end. People came up to me afterward and said, ‘No one ever preaches on that. Thank you.’”
Jim Malerba writes from North Haven, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jim Malerba ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Sex-Ed Books Set Off A Parental Firestorm DATE: 04/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 25 - May 1, 1999 ----- BODY:COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—The New Creation life series, a sex education course for kids in parish religion classes, may be causing controversy elsewhere in the country, but it was supposed to be a dead issue in the Archdiocese of Denver.
Then, late last year, three parishes made an effort to try out the series, which critics claim usurps the parents' role and is inappropriately graphic. The Archdiocese refused to back off its three-year policy banning the course, and sent a letter to all parish families explaining that the series would not be used.
In addition to the Archdiocese of Denver, several dioceses around the country do not include New Creation on their lists of approved catechetical materials. The dioceses of Lincoln, Neb.; Fargo, N.D.; and Sioux Falls, S.D have all reviewed the series in recent years and have chosen not to recommend it.
But many dioceses still allow it. Keith Bower of Cincinnati's Foundation for the Family, the publishing arm of the Couple to Couple League counts on that.
He said he has received “hundreds of phone calls from parents and teachers dissatisfied with New Creation.” Foundation for the Family publishes its own family life series called New Corinthians, which concentrates on virtue education in the classroom and includes a book for parents to help them discuss the more intimate sexual information with their children at home.
“New Creation is probably the No. 1 program that we are being asked to replace,” Bower said. “It seems to use every technique and hit every concern that Cardinal [Alfonso] López Trujillo [of the Pontifical Council for the Family] was concerned about when he wrote Truth and Meaning, with a nice veneer of Catholic teaching on top of it.” Truth and Meaning sets out guidelines for sex education.
Bower said that part of the reason that explicit material is so prevalent in all kinds of schools today is that “our culture is so desensitized.”
“It's not the language itself, it's the fact that somebody feels that these kids need to know it,” Bower explained. “But what really needs to be said in the classroom is how to be virtuous, and about sacrificial love — giving to another person in total self-sacrifice like Christ did.”
The American bishops have instituted a mechanism to review all kinds of catechetical materials, including family life series, for their faithfulness to the teachings of the Church. Publishers are invited to voluntarily submit their materials to a bishops' ad hoc committee. The committee periodically publishes a list of materials found in conformity with the Catechism, and recommends changes for those materials that fail to make the list. Its publisher, Brown-Roa, has not sent New Creation to the bishops'committee for review as yet.
“We have not submitted it to the bishops' Ad Hoc Committee to Oversee the Use of the Catechism,” said Marge Krawczuk of Brown-Roa. “Basically, we're looking at doing a different type of program in the future.”
But to those who believe that New Creation usurps parents' rights as primary educators of their children, Brown-Roa said: “Most parents are grateful for the catechesis in human sexuality that is part of the total program of education and formation in Catholic schools and parish programs.”
But many are not grateful. “If you give a child this information this early, you could take them down the wrong path. And [the school staff] are not going to be here in 10 years when this falls back in my lap,” said Sally, a parent in the Archdiocese of St. Louis, who asked that her last name and the name of the school her children attend not be included in this story.
On the ‘Approved’List
The New Creation Series is not new. It has been widely used around the country for 10 years. A dispute at Sally's daughter's school began in earnest last year when parents of third-graders were asked to review the New Creation student text before signing a permission slip to allow their children to participate in the classroom instruction. In previous years, the books had not been sent home.
She remembered her first reaction to a New Creation Series sex-education book being used with her children.
“I opened it up and — boom! — a Pandora's box. I was shaken to the core.”
The Archdiocese of St. Louis has announced that a committee, including parents, would review the school's family life education curriculum in the future.
Brown-Roa defended the series in a statement given to the Register: “Today, due primarily to better nutrition, children in the United States and other developed countries are experiencing puberty at an earlier age than children did even half a century ago. Children today grow up with an assortment of movies, magazines, TV programs, commercials and ads which present values contrary to Catholic Christian values; these situations must be addressed. …
“The theory of the latency period which originated with Sigmund Freud does not mean the children do not have questions about sex … many schools of psychology question whether the theory is applicable today. … New Creation addresses the questions of children in this culture at this time.”
Parents such as Sally don't seem to be buying that argument.
“There is just too much detail” in the New Creation texts, she said. “They talk about oral sex in fourth grade. They talk about Planned Parenthood in eighth grade … and I have gotten fingers pointed at me, saying I am a prude.”
In its statement, Brown-Roa said, “The position of the Church is consistently presented in the [New Creation] books, and the issues of morality are dealt with in light of Church teaching.”
The publishers cited two U.S. Catholic Conference publications as important resources for their authors concerning conformity to Church teaching on human sexuality education: Education in Human Sexuality for Christians: Guidelines for Discussion and Planning (1983), and Human Sexuality: A Catholic Perspective for Education and Lifelong Learning (1993).
The Guidelines
The most recently published New Creation Series was copyrighted in 1994, a year before The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality was published by the Pontifical Council for the Family. Truth and Meaning was meant to provide further guidelines for sex education in accordance with Church teachings.
Catholics United for the Faith, a Catholic information apostolate in Steubenville, Ohio, has reviewed most of the family life series in circulation for their conformity to the guidelines set forth in Truth and Meaning, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and other pertinent Church documents. In the group's estimation, the New Creation Series falls far short in several areas.
It criticized New Creation for its “graphic illustrations … that offend against modesty and chastity”; for “emphasizing information over formation”; and for “violating the latency period,” meaning that it presents too much sexual information to children before they have reached the stage of being especially curious about it. Catholics United also faulted New Creation for “failing to provide safeguards to ensure that teachers don't dissent from Church teaching in the classroom.”
The review by Catholics United highlights some of the sections in the student texts and teacher manuals in grades one to eight that it believed were too explicit or simply not in good taste. For example: a suggested reproductive-parts bingo game for seventh-graders and for eighth-graders, listing activities which can arouse sexual feelings.
For those parents who don't want their children to be exposed to such material at school or in religious-education class, Mary Beth Bonacci, a nationally known expert on chastity education, has some advice.
“There are two hallmarks that I tell parents to look for: See if the series doesn't present sexually explicit information, especially to young kids and especially in a mixed setting. This is a sacred thing and a private thing, and kids do have a sense of modesty that can be violated.
“And see if the Catholic teaching is presented convincingly.”
Bonacci added, “There are so many parents around the country struggling with this, there needs to be a Web site or something to bring these people together.”
Molly Mulqueen writes from Colorado Springs, Colorado.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Molly Mulqueen ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Plagiarism and Internet: Old Problem, New Face DATE: 04/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 25 - May 1, 1999 ----- BODY:SAN DIEGO—Fred Robinson suspected there was plagiarism afoot.
The English professor at the University of San Diego was recently helping a junior faculty member track down the evidence to prove that a student had used someone else's writing in his paper.
“The diction was very clotted, academic diction,” Robinson recalled. “It just had the allusions … that the student would not know about.” But if the student wouldn't admit to it and the original paper couldn't be found, it would have to be graded as though it were the student's own work, he told the teacher.
“She was angry because the student was stonewalling her,” Robinson said. “She looked all over the library and couldn't find it. We [finally] figured it had come off the Internet.” After conducting an online search on his office computer, they sat stunned. They viewed listings for 75 essays on The Great Gatsby, the subject of the research paper.
“We sat there just looking at the screen,” Robinson said. “It's appalling.”
It's also a sign of the times. Plagiarism has long been a problem on college campuses, but now with Internet, a new tool threatens to increase the unethical practice of students turning in other people's research papers, book reports and essays as their own.
Indeed, a minute's search on the Internet yields dozens of Web sites advertising thousands of academic papers for a price; other essays, generally of low quality, are offered for free. Despite the clear intention to sell papers for busy or pressured students to turn in as their own, many of the sites carry disclaimers indicating the papers are for research only or are offered as examples, thus placing the burden of plagiarism on the student alone. Others, including one with the word “cheat” in the title, make no such pretense.
Professors at various Catholic universities indicate that plagiarism is a small but ongoing problem — in many places there are a few incidents a year — but that the potential for even greater abuse exists through cyberspace.
Easier Than ‘Paper Mills’
“The availability of commercially prepared research papers has surged, and downloading is now far easier than contracting with an old-fashioned ‘paper mill’or visiting a file in a fraternity or sorority,” wrote Patrick Drinan, dean of the University of San Diego's College of Arts and Sciences, in the Winter ‘99 issue of Liberal Education.
Drinan is the past president of the Center for Academic Integrity, headquartered at Duke University. The center's mission is to build a network of institutions of higher education which would deal with the various issues of academic integrity. One of Drinan's proposals to address cheating is being developed now at the University of San Diego, a Catholic institution. It would include a student honor code, such as at the military academies and now at secular campuses like Rice University and Stanford, which would encourage students to hold one another to a standard of honesty.
“It's a whole new generation of students; it really has to be a student-run system [to succeed],” said Drinan. But he added that an honor code would need to have the support of faculty as well. “Faculty have a tendency to be more Lone Rangers or Robinson Crusoes and not pay attention to the communal expectations on plagiarism and cheating,” he said.
Indeed, experienced Catholic professors tend not to dwell on bureaucratic solutions, but rather try to make their best defense a good offense. By crafting an assignment very specifically, a professor can make the lifting of a pre-written paper virtually impossible, according to Robert Jones, chairman of the history department at Fordham University.
“It's no great trick to tailor an assignment in such a way that the kids are going to find it hard to plagiarize,” he said. For example, rather than a broad-brushed assignment of “a biography on George Washington” — which opens the door for a “canned” paper — Jones recently asked students to write a paper on Washington and slavery, and gave them 20 documents from which to do their research. The only way for a student to avoid the work would be for him to pay someone to read the documents and write an original paper, said Jones.
It's also a sign of the times. Plagiarism has long been a problem on college campuses, but now with Internet, a new tool threatens to increase the unethical practice of students turning in other people's research papers, book reports and essays as their own.
At Thomas Aquinas College in Ventura, Calif., no cases of plagiarism have come up because the faculty do not ask for research papers as such, said Dean Glen Coughlin. They also strongly discourage the use of secondary sources, he said.
The undergraduate Catholic liberal arts college uses a Great Books curriculum. It requires students to read the original sources, come to class to “wrestle with the text” and write their own essays, Coughlin said. “And it's not likely that a prefabricated paper would match that.”
Furthermore, he said, “Our students do tend to be very honest. That doesn't mean we don't need to keep aware of [the possibility of cheating], with original sin being everywhere.”
Drinan of the University of San Diego said the trend is that students coming into college have not done a lot of writing. Furthermore, research shows that, “unfortunately, the patterns of cheating in high schools are huge.”
“About 20% of students in higher education cheat somewhat frequently, and probably 20% would never cheat even if you put a gun to their head or a priest at their elbow telling them to do it,” he said. “About 60% are in-between.” Professors agreed that the problem of college plagiarism is primarily an ethical one and not an issue of academic performance.
In the case of the Great Gatsby essay and another paper that a student actually confessed was plagiarized, both students were graduating and had high grade point averages, said San Diego's Robinson.
‘That's My Best Student’
The temptation for academically adept students to cheat is not new. As a graduate student 30 years ago, Robinson had the job of reading term papers for an American literature class. His roommate happened to be doing graduate studies in an area covered by one of the assignments, and he found from his roommate's research an obvious plagiarism in one of the papers he was grading.
“I had the source; it was completely plagiarized,” said Robinson. “When I told the professor, he turned gray and looked at me and said, ‘That's my best student.’”
So why do good students cheat? Professors theorize that it is out of fear, time pressure, arrogance and even the structure of the universities themselves.
“Students don't know how to pick topics, and it scares them,” said Robinson, adding that the fear does not diminish the students' responsibility to be honest. Other students, said Drinan, “are stressed. … They're working part-time and they end up cutting corners.”
Jones of Fordham said students who cheat may rationalize that they need to use their energy in some other area.
“[They think], ‘I'm going to law school. This [course] is not relevant to my life,’” he said. “They want the certificate, the union card, and that's all.”
Mark Lowery, professor of moral theology at the University of Dallas, said that Catholic universities themselves can send a clear message of right and wrong through a return to a core curriculum, formerly a staple of higher education.
“The abandonment of a core curriculum kind of tells the student, ‘We doan't know what's good for you. We don't know what's true. All standards are infinitely malleable,’” he said. “Any student would quickly pick up on that and say, ‘What's wrong with taking a paper off the Internet?’
“Not that we're going to define it neatly for you, but the goal of education is the pursuit of truth and virtue. There's a connection between the intellectual life and how you live.”
Plagiarism is primarily a sin against justice, said Lowery, and it has many effects beyond the student cheating himself out of a good education.
“You're taking the work of somebody else and saying it's your own,” which harms the other person as well, he said. If a paper is bought, “that's like prostitution [where] he's treating her wrong even if she's getting money.”
Additionally, through plagiarism, “the whole university is wronged, it's dishonest to parents who raised him to do what's right, it's an injustice against truth itself and it's an injustice against God,” Lowery said.
At the same time, the Dallas professor said he does not expect perfection, and “wouldn't be shocked” if he ran across a couple of cases of cheating.
Most Catholic campuses address plagiarism in their student handbooks, and they have written policies and procedures for how to handle cases of suspected cheating.
At San Diego, Robinson said he tells his faculty that if plagiarism is admitted or proven, the teacher has two choices: to fail the student's paper or to fail the student in the course outright. But there's one thing they absolutely should not do, he said: “Don't let them write it over. They haven't learned anything except to do it better.”
In the one recent case, the student who was scheduled to graduate will get to walk with the class but will not officially graduate until the end of the summer.
“[Graduation] seems even more a time to be hard [on the rules],” Robinson said. “They are going out into the world.”
Ellen Rossini writes from Dallas.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Rossini ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Grading the Infanticide Professor DATE: 04/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 25 - May 1, 1999 ----- BODY:Raymond Dennehy, professor of philosophy at the University of San Francisco, responds to some of the key ideas of Princeton professor Peter Singer's book The Moral Status of the Embryo.
The Logic of Death: No ‘Right’to Life
Professor Peter Singer: Once we free ourselves from a world view depending on some specifically religious premises, the early embryo has no intrinsic value and does not have a right to life. It may therefore be used, with the consent of those from whose egg and sperm it has been formed, for scientific research.
There is, of course, a standing argument against this view. The argument goes like this:
1. Every human being has a right to life.
2. A human embryo is a human being
3. Therefore the human embryo has a right to life.
To which the standard response is to accept the first premise — that all human beings have a right to life — but to deny the second premise, that the human embryo is a human being. This standard response, however, runs into difficulties, because the embryo is clearly a being, of some sort, and it can't possibly be of any other species than homo sapiens, so it seems to follow that it must be a human being. Attempts to say that it only becomes a human being at viability, or at birth, are not entirely convincing.
So the standard argument for attributing a right to life to the embryo can withstand the standard response. What the argument cannot withstand, however, is a more critical examination of its first premise: the premise that every human being has a right to life.
What is our particular objection to killing human beings, over and above any objections we may have to killing other living beings, such as pigs and cows and dogs and cats, and even trees and lettuces?
The obvious answer is that human beings are different from other animals, and the greater seriousness of killing them is a result of those differences. To take the most extreme of the differences between living things, consider a person who is enjoying life, is part of a network of relationships with other people, is looking forward to what tomorrow may bring, and freely choosing the course her or his life will take for the years to come.
Now think about a lettuce, which, we can safely assume, knows and feels nothing at all. One would have to be quite sad, or morally blind, or warped, not to see that killing the person is far more serious than killing the lettuce.
If this is the sense of the first premise, that every human being has a right to life, then what of the second premise — that a human embryo is a human being? It is immediately clear that in the sense of the term “human being” which is required to make the first premise acceptable, the second premise is false. The embryo, especially the early embryo, is obviously not a being with the mental qualities which generally distinguish members of our species from members of other species. The early embryo has no brain, no nervous system. It is reasonable to assume that, so far as its mental life goes, it has no more awareness than a lettuce.
If the first premise is true when “human” means “a being with certain mental qualities” and the second premise is true when “human” means “member of the species homo sapiens,” the argument is based on a slide between the two meanings, and is invalid.
The Logic of Life: Kind vs. Degree
Professor Dennehy: What Singer does here is to mistake a difference in degree for a difference in kind — because he misunderstands what the essence of a human being is.
A triangle is properly defined as “a figure formed by three lines intersecting by twos in three points, and so forming three angles.” No figure that lacks that essential structure is a triangle. Similarly, if the essence of a human being were “thinking or self-aware human being,” then it would, indeed, follow that any human being that lacked the capacity to think or be self-aware would not be a human being. But, although mental states, like thinking and self-awareness, are parts of our most important faculty, rationality, they are a power of our human nature; they do not constitute our essence. Just because all of a human being's faculties have not yet developed, it does not follow that it is not a human being. Rather, it is just because it is actually a human being that it will develop faculties of rationality and self-awareness.
Stage of development — like race and skin color, economic and social status, and health — is an accidental, not a substantial attribute. So, just as it is as much an act of murder to kill a black man as a white man; a poor man as a rich man; a sickly man as a healthy man, so it is as much an act of murder to kill a human being at its earliest stages of development as at its mature stage. In his attempts to defeat the standard argument against abortion, Singer wants to show that the difference between a thinking, self-aware being is one of kind, when, in fact, it is merely one of degree.
But this is common where one group of people wishes to oppress or destroy another group of people. One must kill them with words in order to justify killing them in deed. Hitler would have the world believe that the Jews were no higher on the scale than monkeys, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that blacks were only three-fifth persons under the Constitution, and now pro-abortionists would have us believe that the unborn are not human beings or persons — not, at least, in the sense that counts.
Singer has a flare for making distinctions between humans that can justifiably be killed and those that can't. Consider, for example, the distinction he and his co-author, Helga Kuhse, make in their book, Should the Baby Live? In its preface, they offer the bald proposal, “We think that some infants with severe disabilities should be killed.” Does this mean that some adults with severe disabilities should be killed also? No. Why not? Because, Singer and Kuhse assure us, “… it is one thing to say, before a life has properly begun, that such a life should not be lived; it is quite different to say that, once a life is being lived, we need not do our best to improve it. We are sometimes prepared to say the former; we are never prepared to say the latter.”
Now, how's that for a distinction for determining who should be killed and who shouldn't: “before a life has properly begun” vs. “a life [that] is being lived”? The word “properly” is the kicker here. What does it mean? Who decides when a life has “properly” begun?
The Logic of Death: A Potential Being
Professor Singer: At this point in the discussion, those who wish to defend the embryo's right to life often switch ground. We should not, they say, base our views on the status of the embryo on the mental qualities it actually has while an embryo; we must, rather, consider what it has the potential to become.
Indeed, we do need to consider the moral relevance of the embryo's potential. But this argument is not as easy to grasp as it may appear. If we attempt to set it out in an argument of standard form, as we did with the previous argument, we get:
1. Every potential human being has a right to life.
2. The embryo is a potential human being.
3. Therefore the embryo has a right to life.
But there is no general rule that a potential X has the rights of an X. If there were, Prince Charles, who is a potential King of England, would now have the rights of a King of England. But he does not.
In short, the destruction of the embryo is wrong because it means that a person who might have existed will now not exist; and since we value people, the destruction of the embryo has caused us to lose something of value.
But this variation is faulty because it proves too much. After all, couples who use contraceptives or simply abstain from sexual intercourse also prevent the existence of people who might have existed. Since these unconceived humans are potential human beings, what's the moral difference between birth control and aborting a potential person?
The Logic of Life: A Being with Potential
Professor Dennehy: Here Singer commits the fallacy of equivocation — he uses a word as if it had the same meaning in both instances when, in fact, it has a different meaning in each instance.
The human embryo is not a potential human being, but an actual human being some of whose faculties have yet to develop. Because of what the human embryo actually is by nature, it has certain natural potentials. Look at it this way: I've never been on a pair of skis in my life. But because I'm a two-legged creature, I have the potential to ski. A snake, on the other hand, because of what it naturally and actually is, does not have the potential to ski.
When used to refer to as yet unconceived human beings, the word “potential” is a synonym for “probable.”
An engineer who proposes a new highway design might say, “This design will reduce accidents.” Nobody would dream of replying (at least not before happy hour), “Which accidents, exactly, will it prevent?” For what the engineer means is that the new design will reduce the probability of accidents. And that's just what periodic abstinence does: It prevents conception by reducing or eliminating its probability. Who would say: “When you abstained from sexual intercourse, exactly which human beings did you prevent from being conceived?” (Contraception, of course, is a different matter because it touches on the nature of the sex act — whereas, in abstinence, there is no sex act.)
Singer sees no moral difference between destroying an embryo that has been fertilized in a petri dish and destroying a sperm and an egg in a dish. If it's not wrong to destroy the former, it can't be wrong to destroy the latter, and no one would say that destroying sperm and egg is equivalent to killing a human being.
Borrowing a phrase, Singer rhapsodizes: If it is cake we want, it doesn't make much difference whether we throw away the ingredients separately, or after they are mixed together.
But no one in his or her right mind takes Singer's attempted comparison seriously. A sperm is part of the male's body, having the same chromosomal structure as every other cell in that body; an egg is part of the female body, having the same chromosomal structure as every other cell in that body. But when sperm and egg unite, they are transmuted, producing a unique being with its own genetic structure. That is why the moral difference between abstinence and abortion is not a good comparison. The one merely prevents the possibility of human life; the other destroys an actually existing human being.
Watson and Crick won a Nobel Prize for showing how the DNA code works. One thing we learned from this was that, from the moment of conception, no constituent part is added; everything unfolds according to the morphological process dictated by the DNA code.
Now, if nothing is added from conception on, answer me this: If the fetus is not a human being and a person at one moment, how does it become a human being and a person at another moment? Do you get the feeling that, if the evidence showed that embryos were self-aware and could think and choose, some people would argue that hankering after a ham-on-rye is the criterion for deciding which humans can justifiably be killed?
Raymond Dennehy is the author of Confessions of an Aging Anti-abortionist which is seeking a publisher.
----- EXCERPT: Style: A Content: F ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond Dennehy ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Capture the Imagination of the World DATE: 04/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 25 - May 1, 1999 ----- BODY:Known for his broad vision, forthright style and lively wit, he came to the University of Dallas during Holy Week to give a public lecture, and hold informal sessions with students on the topics of interreligious dialogue, evangelization and the Jubilee.
What follows is his exchange with the audience on evangelization, which he describes as the Church's mission “to give everyone the opportunity to know about the greatest event that ever happened since the beginning of the world, that the Son of God, the Word of God, remaining always God, came down from heaven, [and] took on human nature for love of us and for our salvation.” Compiled by Register correspondent Ellen Rossini.
Student: You weren't always Catholic. What religion were you brought up with?
Cardinal Arinze: African traditional religion, or ATR for short. The people believe in God, one God, who is creator and great spirit, who lives above, who made the sun and the moon and who gives us children. Secondly, they believe in spirits, good and bad. [There are] good spirits — some of them are spirits of harvest; … others are idiosyncratic or wicked spirits that can do harm to people who have done no wrong at all. Rivers have spirits … mountains have spirits … and so on.
Then, they believe in their ancestors, fathers and mothers who lived well, and who have died, and who have reached the happy spirit land and are with the other spirits, with God and the ancestors.
This religion was realized by the missionary to be a providentially prepared steppingstone for Christianity. Many of their beliefs are good, noble and true. There are also errors.
[ATR] was the religion of most of the people in Africa before the arrival of Christianity or Islam. [It] is still strong in some countries like Ghana and Nigeria. It is very weak, almost nonexistent, in northern Africa, where most people are Muslim. [It still exists in some parts] of eastern Africa, central and south.
You became a Christian at age 9. Would you tell us about that?
The missionaries in our area, the Irish, came in 1885 to the eastern part of Nigeria. They went to the older people to bring the Gospel. Some old people said to them, “Father, don't you see we are old? Why don't you begin with the children?”
The missionaries got the idea, and also they promoted the school, without a colonizing authority. For example, the British were interested in trade and in the government of their colony.
The parents sent their children to school so that later on they would get good jobs and earn good money. In school, if [the children] wished, they could get baptized. [First] they had to pass the examination in catechism with a catechist, and then with a priest.
Most children got baptized. But if any child did not want to become a Catholic, there was no problem and no pressure.
We had a parish priest, a Nigerian priest, Cyprian Michael Iwene Tansi. He baptized me in 1941. It was my second or third year in school. I passed the exam with the catechist. I passed the second exam and was baptized by him. Later on he went to a Trappist monastery in England. He died a Trappist monk in 1964. Last year in March, Pope John Paul II went to Nigeria and beatified him. He's now blessed. My master is now in “headquarters.”
Is there a difference between evangelization and interreligious dialogue? If there is, how do they relate to each other? Is interreligious dialogue a type of evangelization?
Yes, interreligious dialogue is part of evangelization, provided that you understand evangelization not as proclamation, but proclamation as one aspect of evangelization. In short, evangelization is what Christ sent the Church for.
Evangelization is not done in one act alone. It is done in many acts. It is articulated in many ways. The Pope's encyclical Redemptoris Missio speaks of the ways of mission:
• Presence in the name of Christ. Without necessarily talking at all, you are just present in the name of Christ. You live, like Charles de Foucauld, in the desert, among Muslims. He didn't preach. He just lived the Gospel and loved the people.
• Witness. Mother Teresa of Calcutta and her sisters would see somebody who was sick, or hungry, or old, or all three, and they would take them, clean them, give them a house and some food. They didn't go giving the person a lecture in fundamental theology. They just showed the person Christian love and Christian solidarity.
• Proclamation — preaching Christ. [When someone] proposes the message of Christ to people and asks them whether they want to believe. If they adhere to it — faith — then they get baptized, install a Christian community and nourish the community by incorporation. That's evangelization.
Evangelization is also interreligious contact. If some people have another religion — they are not Christians, they don't want to be Christians, they want to remain in their religion — are you, as a Christian, going to say to them, “If you don't want to become a Christian, then I have nothing to do with you?”
They are created by the same God as Christians. They are saved by the same Christ as all of us. Whether they know that or not, it does not change the reality that Christ died on the cross for all, even for those who do not believe in him. Salvation is for all. [Christ's] offer of salvation is for all.
A good member of the Church goes along with the Church and doesn't sing outside the choir. That's what I will say.
Is the theological articulation of the faith more difficult in these countries?
Much more. You need sound philosophy, and without philosophy how are you going to do theology? How are you going to handle the major articulations of Christian faith, such philosophical concepts as person, substance, essence and nature? Because we must talk of three Persons in one God, we must talk of the holy Eucharist in which at the consecration, the substance of bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ, but the “accidents,” what the scholastic would call the appearances, of bread and wine remain: the taste, the weight, the color. But not what the thing is; that has changed. That is more difficult.
[Problems arise] if, for example, in that area the people are not able to learn philosophy and theology in their local language but in English — and in Nigeria we have 240 languages. If we have 500 seminarians in one seminary as we have in some parts of Nigeria, and they come from areas covering about 20 languages, how many languages are you going to do the theology in? These are practical difficulties. So you do the theology in English or in Latin.
But effort has begun. For that, we need theological institutes in the place, and philosophical, and people who have been soaked in the Christian mystery, and who live it. We need monasteries. We need also local theologians; we need also experts in music and in literature and anthropology.
How has inculturation been part of the Church's evangelization in Africa?
Inculturation is bringing the Gospel to people in such a way that whatever is good, noble and true in their religion or culture is saved. Christianity can adopt many of them, adapt them, retouch them, ennoble them or elevate them. Some of the elements need to be purified and some elements have to be rejected. Christianity cannot promise to accept every element of every culture.
In my people's culture before Christianity came, twins were regarded as abnormal. When twins were born, the mother was punished and the children were thrown into a big bush which is regarded as looked after by bad spirits.
Christianity cannot accept such. Every good doctor can explain why there are twins this time instead of just one child. It is not the fault of the mother, nor is it the fault of the children.
They are human beings with human dignity. If you throw them away, it's murder.
Christianity has to challenge this culture. If a culture allows one man to marry two wives, that's not acceptable. There are many other things like that.
Are there any positive elements?
There are elements that are good. For example, how to pray. In some parts of the world, in India for example, the people's way to pray is to sit on the floor and cross the feet. They celebrate Mass like that in India when they want to follow their culture. In Japan, they don't enter a house wearing shoes. So, in Japan, in the churches, all the shoes are left outside and you enter just in your socks. In some countries in Africa, if you left all your shoes outside, after Mass you wouldn't find many of them!
Christians have begun to do carvings on church doors, or in the stained glass windows, in the form of local art that says something to the people … or shows Christ and his Blessed Mother as local people. Sometimes some of the local people protest and say, “That's not how we are accustomed to seeing them. We don't want that sort of thing.” Then others say, “We want that sort of thing.” It's not as easy as it looks.
But theologically, it's all right to show Christ as a local person. After all, the Blessed Virgin Mary, when she appeared in Guadalupe, showed herself as a local Mexican! The real Blessed Virgin Mary was from Palestine! But the theological truth is there, that she is the mother of all and Christ is the savior of all.
[Some people] make vestments with local cloth and in local designs, and yet those designs must be liturgically meaningful, and not just locally authentic, because the Church didn't begin just this century. The Church has been there for 2,000 years. What the Church has led, even from Greco-Roman background, must not be regarded as not there at all.
Looking at the situation of vocations in our country, is it possible that Africa might re-evangelize Europe and North America?
All in all, we have to realize that many parts of Africa still remain areas of primary evangelization. They have just been evangelized in the last 100 years. For the Church, this is a short period.
In parts of Europe and even in North America, it is true that some people have grown cold in the faith. It is also true that many people are very warm in the faith. Appearances can be deceptive. Some people highlight only the negative elements. But there are very good things happening that are not mentioned because “they are not of news value.”
What we need is the Church's collaboration. Sometimes there are more ministers in one place than another. At another time, the situation changes again. We must communicate in the Church.
In some places it happens that people focus on a certain tradition, or rejection of that tradition. Would you talk about dialogue within those communities?
It is needed very much. Sometimes there is unnecessary suffering within the Church because some groups are overinsistent; they exaggerate, they take one truth, but they take it out of context, and they fight … for their point of view, and they forget all the other elements.
The Church should be a good mother that has room in her heart for all the children. The priests and the bishops should be good leaders, so that they accommodate people within the faith, and within that faith allow them reasonable freedom. I think it was St. Augustine who said, “In necessary things, unity. In nonessential things, freedom. In all things, charity.”
Can you also cite some examples of this extremism?
For instance, even within the Catholic Church, do you know that there are some people who believe that the Pope should define three dogmas on the Blessed Virgin Mary within two years? And if he doesn't do that, he has not obeyed our Lady of Fatima and if anything happens to the world the Pope is responsible, together with all his cardinals and theologians. They say the Pope must define that the Blessed Virgin Mary is the mediatrix of all graces and is the co-redemptrix and advocate, and if the Pope doesn't do that, he doesn't love our Lady.
Well, well, well. Take it easy, calm down. Bring him some ice water. This type of exaggeration, taking one truth and running away with it and forgetting all the rest, that's not right.
There are other people who talk of tradition as if it were something fossilized from the Vatican Museum or the Vatican deep freezer, as if the Church were not alive anymore in our age, the Church stopped at one moment in history and didn't move anymore. That is also rigidity. That's not right, either.
A good member of the Church goes along with the Church and doesn't sing outside the choir. That's what I will say.
Cardinal Arinze
Personal: Born in 1932 in Onitsha, Nigeria.
Background: Baptized a Catholic at the age of 9; entered the seminary at the age of 13; ordained in 1958; consecrated a bishop in 1965; named a cardinal by Pope John Paul II in 1985.
Current Position: President of Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue since 1985; member of the Roman Curia; member of the executive committees of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and the Pontifical Council for the Laity; one of five cardinals on the presiding council of the Holy Father's central coordinating committee for the Jubilee year 2000; featured on the Eternal Word Television Network and on other networks.
----- EXCERPT: Wall Street Journal proposed him as a 'papabile,' saying he has a personality that could… ----- EXTENDED BODY: Cardinal Francis Arinze ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: U.S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 04/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 25 - May 1, 1999 ----- BODY:A Tale of Two Religions
ASSOCIATED PRESS, April 6—The conflict in Kosovo has provoked a contrast in reactions by two of Cleveland's faith communities.
“Muslims in this city urged fellow Americans to support NATO's bombings in Yugoslavia while the Cleveland Diocese prayed for peace,’reported A.P.'s M.R. Kropko.
The Cleveland Kosovo Task Force, a coalition of 12 mosques and several other organizations, announced that it is “calling on Americans of all faiths and all backgrounds who stand for justice to support us in this effort.”
Meanwhile, special services at St. John's Cathedral were dedicated to prayers for peace in the region. “Father Theodore Marszal, administrative assistant to Cleveland Bishop Anthony Pilla, said the turnout at the church was slightly more than usual,” reported Kropko. Father Marszal added that the services were not intended as any political statement concerning the NATO attacks.
Detroit's Catholic Roots
THE DETROIT NEWS, April 2—“At the close of the millennium, a renewed interest in spirituality has dawned in Metro Detroit and elsewhere,” opined religion writer George Bullard. He points to growing membership in churches and synagogues, and a renewed sense of purpose and mission within religious communities.
“Always a city of faith,” according to Bullard, Detroit's deepest roots are Catholic. “In 1701, founder Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac brought with him two Catholic priests, a Jesuit and a Franciscan, and named the city's first streets after saints, including St. Anne and St. Joseph. From there, the local Catholic community grew.”
However, by the 1880s Detroit “was a seat of anti-Catholicism, organized as the American Protective Association. One move aimed at Catholics was a proposed state law to ban private grammar schools. Catholics eventually rallied and defeated the measure.”
“And now,” Bullard concluded, “people are looking to the church to reclaim a more important place in their lives.”
Cross Is a Late Christian Symbol
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE, April 10—According to Father Jerome Murphy-O'Connor and other New Testament scholars, the cross was almost never used by early Christians, reported Peggy Fletcher Stack. Today, of course, the cross is the most widely used and easiest to under-sant of Christian symbols.
Stack reported that numerous archaeological finds have been made of early Christian symbols such as the fish, the anchor and various forms of christograms — the first letters of Jesus Christ in Greek superimposed on one another — but the cross does not appear until the fifth century.
The reason is understandable. “The cross at the time was being used for crucifixion and torture,” said Father Murphy-O'Connor. “To wear it around one's neck would be like wearing a miniature electric chair.”
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 04/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 25 - May 1, 1999 ----- BODY:Vatican Says Rwanda Bishop Arrest Wounds Catholics
REUTERS, April 15—Bishop Augustin Misago has been arrested by Rwandan authorities on charges of genocide for his alleged role as a planner and instigator of the killing of more than 150,000 Tutsis in his diocese of Gikongoro.
London-based human rights group Africa Watch last year accused the Catholic Church of protecting clergy suspected of complicity in the 1994 slaughter of some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus by harboring some in European countries or moving them to parishes in other African nations.
Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said the Holy See deeply regretted the arrest of Bishop Misago. “The arrest of a bishop is an extremely grave act which wounds not only the Church in Rwanda but the whole of the Roman Catholic Church,” Navarro-Valls said in a strongly worded statement. “Relations between the Republic of Rwanda and the Holy See are profoundly troubled by this.”
Bishop Narrowly Escapes
AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CO., April 11—Bishop Carlos Belo of Dili escaped harm as the convoy carrying him back to Dili came under attack from a militia group that wants to see East Timor remain part of Indonesia, according to the Australian ABC.
The bishop was coming from celebrating Mass at nearby Liquisa, just days after an alleged massacre occurred at the parish plant. Bishop Belo was quoted by ABC as saying that at least 25 people were hacked to death by the militia in the Liquisa churchyard and in the priest's house last Tuesday. Indonesia put the death toll at five.
The church was deserted when Bishop Belo arrived under heavy police escort to pray for the injured and dead. Between 500 and 600 people finally gathered inside the church for the Mass, as police tried in vain to force the militia members to leave the area, said ABC.
The High Cost of Ireland's ‘Troubles’
THE IRISH TIMES, April 16—More than half the victims of the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland since 1969 have been civilians, according to a new book, whose contents were condensed in an Irish Times article by Suzanne Breen.
A total of 1,868 civilians have been killed, 53% of all those who have died through political violence in the North. The figures are contained in Northern Ireland's Troubles: the Human Cost by Marie-Therese Fay, Mike Morrisey and Marie Smyth.
Other statistics cited by Breen include:
A total of 3,506 people have been killed since 1969. Members of the security forces account for 30% of the victims.
A total of 511 were British soldiers.
Sixteen percent of those killed were paramilitaries.
Four times more republican (Catholic) than loyalist (Protestant) paramilitaries have died: 439 compared to 110.
The victims of the Troubles have been overwhelmingly male. Most were likely to be young men — more than a third were in their 20s.
The book says that more Catholics have died than Protestants and that both communities suffered the highest concentration of deaths from 1971-76.
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 04/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 25 - May 1, 1999 ----- BODY:Pope Receives Menorah From American Jews
JEWISH TELEGRAPHIC AGENCY, April 14—A four-foot tall, six-branched menorah designed to commemorate the 6 million Jews who died in the Nazi Holocaust has been permanently erected in the gardens of the Pontifical North American College in Rome, according to the JTA.
Ruth E. Gruber reported that a 12-inch miniature of the menorah, designed by Israeli sculptor Aaron Bezalel, was presented to Pope John Paul II at his general audience the following day.
The dedication ceremony came on the Jewish feast of Yom Hashoah and was attended by senior Catholic officials and Jewish leaders from the United States, who called the permanent placement of the menorah a further step in continuing Catholic-Jewish dialogue, according to Gruber.
Canonizations May Aid Evangelization
ASSOCIATED PRESS, April 15—A story on the canonization cause of Blessed Katharine Drexel included an interesting and understandalbe theory for why Pope John II has canonized more people than all his predecessors in the 19th and 20th centuries combined, according to the AP. The Pope “sees the canonization of saints as an instrument of evangelization,” Lawrence Cunningham, professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame told the wire service's Joann Loviglio.
The story also indirectly raised the possibility that Blessed Katharine may one day serve as a patron saint of the deaf. In 1988, after the Vatican confirmed that Robert Gutherman was cured of deafness in one ear after praying for the intercession of Mother Drexel, she was declared blessed. The church is now investigating the case of an unidentified 6-year-old from the Philadelphia area whose hearing is also said to have been similarly restored as part of the canonization process.
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian Caulfield ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Editorial DATE: 04/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 25 - May 1, 1999 ----- BODY:Signs of Spring
The signs of spring are everywhere at this time of year. So are the signs of a springtime of the faith — signs so clear that even secular newspapers are speaking up.
“Area Catholics Flock Back to Church,” says one headline. “Many Return to the Fold,” says another.
And then, there is the one that is particularly appropriate for April 25, World Day of Prayer for Vocations: “U.S. Vocations on the Rise.”
Pope John Paul II has said he expects a new springtime of the faith — but only if Christians co-operate with the Holy Spirit.
Apparently dioceses are cooperating. Their initiatives to gather lapsed Catholics back into the Church, or to bring new ones in, generated the first two headlines.
In the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, 83 parishes cooperated in Lent to provide 1,100 priests hearing confessions in a Reconciliation Weekend that filled churches with penitents. In similar events in Denver and in Washington, D.C., representatives from marriage tribunals were on hand to help lapsed Catholics explore a return to the sacraments. In Buffalo, N.Y., a “come home hot line” works with families of fallen-away Catholics.
Young men and women are cooperating as well. Commentators continue to be surprised by the great numbers who flock to meet with the Holy Father wherever he goes, just like they did when he visited St. Louis earlier this year.
And their interest is not just a passing one. The vocation headline above is from USA Today, reporting the results of a study by Georgetown University's pastoral research center. The study showed that more men are seeking entrance to the priesthood — and that more of them are from younger age groups.
And then there was the cover story in the April 4 New York Times Magazine. It was a generally admiring look at today's crop of earnest young seminarians.
There is much to learn form all this.
First is the lesson of unity — a unity that can only come from a shared commitment to faith.
In the face of discouraging trends in the Church and the world, the Holy Father has called for a New Evangelization. It is to be carried out like the old — with positive action. As he said recently to pilgrims in Rome, “The communio Sanctorum speaks more effectively to people than the factors that divide. … Our testimony of unity to the world cannot but foster civil unity, contributing to building a more humane, more just and more harmonious society.”
Second, we know that if a springtime of faith is to lead to a full transformation of the culture, it will have to take root also in our Catholic universities.
The Register has been following events in the debate over how Church norms regarding the teaching of theology will be applied in America's Catholic colleges and universities. There are many hopeful signs here. The beautiful document Ex Corde Ecclesiae, in which John Paul expresses the Church's vision of the Catholic university, has received wide praise. And the efforts of Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, among others, have been opening promising avenues of renewal in the Catholic academic world.
The Association for Catholic Colleges and Universities is due later this month to complete a document laying out its own understanding of how Church norms should be applied in America.
They, too, must read the signs of the times, and we hope the document will reflect the vigor and hope of the Jubilee Church in the spirit of communio that Cardinal George proposed to them.
* * *
Germany Remembers
For two decades, Peter Singer has been a major international voice in biomedical ethics. He is part of an infamous circle of thinkers who advocate not only abortion, but infanticide, particularly in the case of the handicapped. Small wonder then, that his hiring by Princeton University for its bioethics chair set off shock waves on campus and beyond. It's not the first time Singer has triggered an adverse reaction.
In the summer of 1993 a biomedical conference scheduled in Germany had to be canceled when associations for the disabled learned that Singer was one of the conference speakers. They pressured the German hotels and restaurants to refuse accommodations to the conference members. Their fear was that since Singer justified killing disabled infants, it was reasonable to suppose that he justified killing disabled adults as well. And in Germany, they have heard such arguments before.
In the end, the most frightening thing about Singer is not that he is worse than other supporters of abortion, but that he articulates their deepest presuppositions. His argument is that the right to life depends on a religious premise which can now be set aside. This is not an uncommon presupposition behind the thinking of many supporters of abortion and euthanasia.
After all, if a human being is just an incarnated bundle of pleasures and hopes, then when his life lacks these things, it lacks meaning. Philosophy can say much about the importance of the human being apart from his pleasures and personal satisfactions. But the greatest safeguard of human dignity — the strongest case against everything that demeans man, from abortion and euthanasia to racism — is the fact that he is made in the image and likeness of God.
We must argue the case for life in every way possible, but we cannot afford to allow that fundamental argument to be silenced.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Learning to Love Big Brother DATE: 04/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 25 - May 1, 1999 ----- BODY:Plague Journal: A Novel
by Michael D. O'Brien (Ignatius Press, 1999, 275 pages, $19.95)
The most effective revolution,” Nathaniel Delaney writes in his newspaper column, “is one that appears as liberation.”
Delaney, the narrator and main character of the near-futuristic Plague Journal, is a small-town newspaper editor in rural British Columbia. Throughout the 1990s he has fought with little success against a postmodern totalitarianism with a soft face that has seeped into his backwoods hometown. The growing central government, bent on re-educating its citizens in the ways of evil, takes a dim view of his doings, slapping him with “hate literature” fines and even engineering a break-in at his office.
A lapsed Catholic, Delaney nevertheless has a fondness for the Old Faith, and for the traditional way of life once lived by his Canadian Indian, Irish and English grandparents. He sees disaster in the new culture's attitudes toward sexual intercourse, homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia, consumerism and entertainment.
But while he believes himself a right-thinking “realist,” his obsession with his crusade costs him — his wife Maya, an overeducated daughter of the New Age, has left him, taking their youngest son but leaving their two other children behind. The disintegration of his world, large and small, makes him emotionally unstable, at times threatening his sanity.
Plague Journal is the second of a trilogy within Michael D. O'Brien's larger Children of the Last Days series. It touches the hot cultural themes of our time — life-and-death, government, religion, school — and timeless personal themes — loyalty, generosity, love, betrayal, redemption and salvation.
As the story begins, Delaney's daughter Zoe gives him a sort of scrapbook to collect his thoughts and secrets. Eventually he names it “Plague Journal,” after Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year. The entries form breaks-in-the-action of the larger narrative, which Delaney apparently composes near the end of his adventure.
The characters he meets and remembers along the way are interesting, believable people. Delaney's son Tyler, 12, and daughter Zoe, 10, are good kids with lively minds but not angels. There is the chatty English physician who likes chess and sarcasm; the hard-working, friendly Vietnamese father whose family endured eye-popping hardship to escape communism; the loyal oldest son of the Vietnamese father knowledgeable in the ways of survival; Delaney's wise Irish grandfather Stiofain, “the sort of Catholic who goes to the gallows rather than step on a crucifix.”
You have probably met or seen Ms. Parsons-Sinclair, the persnickety school principal bent on “values clarifying” for students who might otherwise come to wrong conclusions about sex, sexual orientation, race and religion. After tangling with the officious bureaucrat to get his kids exempted from the school's social engineering class, Delaney concludes: “This lady has an attitude problem. I would send her to the principal's office, except that she is the principal.”
This is the inmates-running-the-asylum world that Delaney sees closing in on him — faster than he imagines, as events quickly determine. An odd warning and a false charge set Delaney and his kids on a great adventure through the snowy northern wilderness to escape the Thought Police thugs.
Plague Journal's plot is absurd, even for Canada. But reality isn't the driving force of fiction. The story line is interesting and moves the reader along. Though the novel starts a little slow, it speeds up around page 35. From there it becomes a page-turner, impeded only by flashbacks to longish dialogues and commentaries that are rich with analysis and imagery.
Stylistically, the novel sings, though persistent computer and technology metaphors from a Canadian can't help conjure up images of a Rush concert. Unlike that estimable rock band, however, the lyrics in this book are usually both thoughtful and wise.
There is at least one uncut diamond among Delaney's gems. “What is the difference between the capitalists and the socialists?” he asks his atheist father during an intense flashback discussion. “They're both materialists, after all.” Later, Delaney by implication praises his Vietnamese friend Matthew's disgust with “both North American materialism and marxist materialism,” observing he is “one of the few people who knows in essence they're the same thing.”
But they're not. In purely ecclesiastical terms, capitalism is the freedom to make lots and lots of money and then give it all away to a charity. Marxism is theft by the government, robbing a man even of his chance to be charitable. There are no plenary indulgences for donations of this kind.
Yet most of Delaney's insights are sharper. Here he is explaining how intellectuals can delude themselves with sophisticated superstitions: “When educated people are subjective, they can be so in a highly articulate fashion; they can sound eminently reasonable, and thus they become unable to see what the underprivileged have seen so clearly.”
The book is full of original aphorisms. Grandfather Stiofain tells Delaney “our hearts are like stone, and only suffering carves them into bowls big enough to catch the joy.” An old woman, Turid L'Oraison, comments on her Christmas cake: “It has to be all good, or it's no damn good at all.” I made a defensive mental note to myself when I read Delaney's claim that “The use of the word facilitate is the sure sign of an infected brain.”
Little observations are the stuff of great novels. Even on the run, Delaney notes that among the rustic log cabins “with broken-down pickups in the lane,” not one lacks a satellite dish.
Perhaps what's most impressive about Plague Journal is its ability to step outside its ideology and inside the soul of a man. Feminists claim the personal is political. For author O'Brien, the political is not the personal, and perhaps ultimately not as important.
For all Delaney's troubles with the evil other, his main problem is with himself. He allows his justifiable anger to become rage, which wreaks havoc on his soul.
As his grandfather Stiofain once told him: “If you hate them, you'll become like them, and maybe worse than them, no matter how many things you get straight in your mind.”
Delaney's wife Maya's beliefs, for instance, are stupid and are presented in all their silliness. But Delaney eventually realizes he is at fault, too, because their rift was not so much a head problem as a heart problem. She fails any useful head test that could be given; he failed the test of the heart.
“Maya left me because she was pumped full of every distorted perception that our century has been able to produce,” Delaney recalls ruefully. “But she also left me because I was not listening and because I failed to love, and she needed to be loved very, very much in order to resist the distortions. But I was too busy.”
Charity, as they say, begins at home.
Matt McDonald writes from Mashpee, Massachusetts.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Matt Mcdonald ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Blessings That Still Shake the World DATE: 04/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 25 - May 1, 1999 ----- BODY:“The Challenge: Jesus Offers a New Vision for God's People” by Edward P. Sri (Lay Witness, April 1999)
Edward Sri, professor of theology at Benedictine College, writes: “The famous ‘Sermon on the Mount’is known for its beautiful spiritual and moral teachings. Indeed, it would be hard to beat a sermon that had the Beatitudes, the Our Father, and the command to love your enemy and be light to the world all packed into one.
“One thing, however, which is not commonly noted about the Sermon on the Mount is how its explosive message would have shaken the world of many people who heard Jesus’words on the hillside that day.
“The Jews in Jesus'day were living in hard times. … Roman rulers controlled their land, took their money, and raped their women. Many of the Jewish priests and local leaders were assassinated and replaced by handpicked appointments from Rome or Herod. … Then came the question of taxes and tithes. With the Romans imposing heavy tax burdens, it would be quite difficult for many Jews to be able to pay both the taxes to Caesar and the tithe, which their own law required them to give to God. So should one be faithful to Rome or to Yahweh?
“The Jewish people responded to this crisis in different ways. … One burning question in first-century Judaism was: ‘What did it mean to be a true, loyal Jew during this time of oppression?’
“Jesus … began to address His band of followers on the mountainside with a startling surprise. He introduced an unexpected lineup of people who would be blessed in the kingdom He was building: ‘Blessed are the merciful…. Blessed are the peace-makers…. Blessed are those who are persecuted.’
“What a shock. … Jesus seemed to be blessing all the wrong people. … Many Jews would have preferred vengeance over mercy, vindication over persecution, fighting for freedom over making peace.
“Consider a few other famous commands in the Sermon on the Mount. … For example, ‘love your enemy’was not simply an abstract principle to be applied when you had to face someone who wanted to do you harm. … Similarly, the command, ‘If any one forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles’was not simply a lesson on being generous.
“Roman soldiers often forced civilians to carry their gear for one mile. Using this image, Jesus challenged the Jews to view the Romans not as adversaries to be overcome but as brothers and sisters who are to be loved and won over for God.
“Jesus challenged the people to return to their roots and be what Israel was always meant to be — not an exclusive, nationalistic religion isolated from the other nations, but a priestly kingdom serving and leading the gentiles to worship of the one true God.
“Matthew's Gospel highlights how Jesus is a new Moses. Both Jesus and Moses escaped an evil ruler's decree to kill Israelite children by going to the Egyptians. Both came out of Egypt to return to Israel. Both went out into the desert, Moses for 40 years and Jesus for 40 days.
“Moses gave instructions for [the] covenant to be announced and ratified on two mountains after the people entered the land. Half the tribes of Israel shouted out the covenant blessings on Mount Ebal, while the other half proclaimed the curses on Mount Gerizim. … In similar fashion, Jesus announced blessings and curses from two different mountains of His own. He offered seven blessings in the beatitudes on the Galilean mountain at the beginning of His ministry (Mt. 5:3-12). And He announced seven curses on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem near the end of His ministry. There, Jesus pronounced the seven ‘woes’on those scribes and Pharisees who rejected His kingdom program (Mt. 23:13-36).”
Ellen Wilson Fielding writes from Davidson, Maryland.
----- EXCERPT: Article Digest ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Letters DATE: 04/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 25 - May 1, 1999 ----- BODY:Y2K — J2K
I would like to respond to a few points in Kelly Bowring's article “Jan. 1, 2000: Apocalypse or Springtime of the Faith?” (Register, April 4-10).
Firstly, the article quotes well-known Y2K expert Peter de Jager, who has recently expressed the opinion that the dangers posed by the millennium bug have more or less been averted. What the article does not tell us is that de Jager's new optimism is not shared by most other observers in the industry, for essentially two reasons. Firstly, although most government agencies and private corporations are issuing strong statements of confidence that all their key systems will be fixed in time, this confidence is not supported by the existing evidence. Both private and public agencies have consistently missed Y2K project deadlines and have repeatedly raised their project cost estimates, yet without ever changing their estimated completion dates. You don't have to be a computer programmer (as I am) to see that there is something fishy about this. Secondly, de Jager's comments apply only to the United States. Most other countries did not get started on this problem until within the last year. These nations are so far behind that they have little chance of getting all of their essential systems fixed.
Secondly, I object to the use of language such as “terror, hysteria, millennial madness and all-out panic.” It is common in the political sphere for people to vilify and mock those with whom they disagree; but I am surprised and saddened to see a representative of the Church using such tactics. I personally know a number of people who are stocking up on food, batteries and so forth; including some who have actually moved into the countryside. They are neither mad nor panic-stricken. On the contrary, they are intelligent and responsible people, who believe that hard times are approaching, and who are trying to prepare in such a way that they will be able to provide not only for their own needs, but for the needs of others as well. Some have expressed willingness to take others into their homes if things get bad. One may legitimately disagree with their estimation of the situation, but to imply that they are fanatics or lunatics is arrogant and uncharitable.
Finally I would challenge the assumption that belief in a widespread technological breakdown is incompatible with the celebration of the Christian millennium, and with the springtime of evangelization of which the Holy Father has spoken. On the contrary, such a breakdown would give us a golden opportunity to evangelize, such as the world has not seen in a long time. You see, our society has effectively made technology into a god. If Y2K-induced breakdowns occur, it will force people to recognize how foolish they were to put all their trust in the works of their own hands. We Christians can then step in and point them toward the One in Whom trust is never misplaced.
Lewis Kapell Silver Spring, Maryland
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Breaking Open North America's Cultural Shell DATE: 04/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 25 - May 1, 1999 ----- BODY:Sometimes it is hard to see the power of the Resurrection in the cultural divisions that mark our human experience. We know by faith that the living Christ is always prompting a spirit of unity among Christians. Our gifted Pope is nudging, or rather leading, us toward a new unity in the Church and giving us a roadmap for the new millennium. The direction he envisions for Americans, north and south, is that we will discover each other anew in Christ and overcome longstanding indifference and, in some cases, fear.
Thinking of the Church in terms of this hemisphere instead of just our own diocese or parish will be a new and exhilarating experience. Pope John Paul II has given us an example of how to go about it. Listening to the Pope one gets the impression that he would like to see Catholics everywhere expand their horizons and open their hearts. He speaks frequently of a “global Church” and has convened synods of bishops during the last several years from all regions of the world.
The Synod of the Americas held in 1997 had for its theme “Encounter with the living Jesus Christ: the way to conversion, communion and solidarity in America.” The Pope sees that the Church, as part of its religious mission, must stir up a spirit of unity among the people of the American continent. The key to achieving this goal will not be “re-evangelization,” but “new evangelization” — with new ardor, new methods and new expressions of faith.
One of the challenges for us as North American Catholics is to expand our horizon and take an interest in Latin America. We have to break out of a cultural shell created by living as part of an affluent superpower. A certain insularity may well be part of every culture, but in a large developed country like ours it is easy to think that what happens here is more important than what happens in other parts of the world. A certain cultural inertia makes us perfectly satisfied with our agenda and our national interests. An earthquake in Central America or a hurricane in South America can rouse us to respond generously with money and material aid for a little while. But do we have a sense of solidarity with Catholics on the continent of Latin America and see ourselves as one Church with them?
A certain cultural inertia makes us perfectly satisfied with our agenda and our national interests.
One problem is that many Americans know so little about Latin America and not take it seriously. The Latin countries seem remote and we tend to stereotype them as underdeveloped and in a state of constant revolution. We do not distinguish their cultures, music or language. We enjoy tacos, enchiladas and salsa, and associate the Spanish language with day-laborers and migrant workers. Their literature and religious practice are unknown to us. A scholar has written recently that even experts in Latin studies tend to be concerned about Latin countries only as an extension of Washington policies.
The bishops can be important teachers in encouraging Americans to learn about the Church in Latin America. Their synod, according to Father Richard John Neuhaus who attended, was a communal reflection on their hopes and concerns for the Church. In both North and South the new evangelization means a new energy for creating a culture of life in many different settings. In the North we have to work against an aggressive secularism that threatens to undermine the moral basis of our democracy. In South America the Church is beleaguered by the aggressive proselytizing of new religious groups and by the breakup of an old Catholic culture that is encountering religious pluralism for the first time. The Jubilee year can mark the beginning for us of new efforts to learn more about the Church in Latin America and to pray for the unity that God wants.
Another nudge toward the goal of greater unity comes from a worldly source: Advances in communication technology make instant global communication by fax and modem an everyday reality. We have the computers and wireless communication at our fingertips, but do we have the will to be connected “by more than phone lines” with the Church in our own hemisphere, in Central and South America?
The expansion of possibilities of communication must be matched by the expansion of our hearts and minds and spirits. Our Church will then be able to experience its “catholicity” in new ways.
Mary Ellen Bork, a board member of the Catholic Campaign for America and the Institute for Religion in Democracy, writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mary Ellen Bork ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Mother of All Myths DATE: 04/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 25 - May 1, 1999 ----- BODY:The Church takes a lot of heat for its position on the sanctity of marriage. We all know people who have abandoned the Catholic faith because the Church seems unreasonable to them on sexual issues. Social scientists have now accumulated an impressive array of evidence that indicates our Holy Mother has been telling us the truth. Nonetheless, this evidence often falls on deaf ears, exactly as the Church's teaching has.
Consider one aspect of modern life: single-mother families. The evidence is clear that this is not “just an alternative lifestyle,” but a disastrous decision. These families are the poorest of all major demographic groups. Children from mother-only families receive less education and are more likely to be poor as young adults. They are more likely to commit delinquent acts and to use drugs and alcohol than children from two-parent families. The effects of single-motherhood are consistent across a large number of income, racial and ethnic groups.
The overall body of research suggests what the Church has known and taught all along: the best odds for a child's success and happiness are to be born to a married couple.
Why, in the face of this mountain of data from social scientists, are so few people persuaded by the essential reasonableness of the Church's position? St. Thomas Aquinas can help us understand. Thomas observes that human beings are naturally drawn to God, and therefore, to whatever is good. Unfortunately for us, Original Sin and its consequences distort our perception of good and of its consequences. We are drawn to bad things that we mistake as good. Or, we confuse a temporary good with a permanent good, or a partial good with a complete good.
If we can understand that people are drawn to single-motherhood because of some mistaken or distorted idea of what is good, we may have a better chance of reaching them. There are too many such skewed ideas to address in one column. Let me touch on just one.
Some women are drawn to the idea that independence is a good thing. They have come to believe that taking care of a child without any help is a natural extension of the self-reliance so characteristic of Americans.
This argument is misleading, because the job of child rearing is too big for an individual person. The care of a baby requires at least two persons. Someone takes care of the baby, and someone takes care of the one who is taking care of the baby. The dependency of motherhood is by no means a parasitic dependence. The mother is producing something of value to herself, the child's father and the wider society. She is producing — if I may be pardoned for using that rather cold-blooded expression — a civilized adult. Her “dependence” is more accurately described as interdependence. There is nothing undignified or inappropriate about this interdependence.
No mother can be completely independent. There is always a third party in the background. A mother, single or married, who works outside the home is dependent upon her employer and her child-care provider. The child-care provider takes care of the child, and the mother, in cooperation with her employer, takes care of the child-care worker.
Some single mothers depend upon their blood relatives for help. Other single mothers depend upon government assistance. A divorced mother may receive child support payments — if she is lucky. To that extent, she is dependent upon her former husband. If a single mother is independently wealthy, she is actually dependent upon the wealth created by her forebears. Only the single mother who is wealthy by her own earlier efforts can be said to be truly independent.
Thus, nearly all mothers are dependent on someone. There is no social arrangement that can alter this basic fact. Modern arrangements that claim to liberate women from dependency only mask it, by transferring it from the father of the child to some other person or institution.
There is a tragic irony in all this. The attempt to create independence where none is truly possible shifts the dependency of the mother from the person most likely to have an interest in her and her child, namely the father, to a person or institution that has much less commitment to her and to her child. No one knows this better than the women who became single mothers involuntarily when they were abandoned by their husbands.
The various institutions that attempt to substitute for the father's economic support do not, and cannot, go far enough. No employer is committed to the mother and her child the way the father could and should be. No government program is committed to them the same way either. The employer's commitment to the mother is based on her usefulness to the business. Support from the state depends on the vagaries of politics. Working mothers, single or not, are dependent on the good graces of their employers, the competence of their child-care providers, and the energy of their blood relatives. From this perspective, today's mothers are no more independent than mothers in earlier generations.
We are kidding ourselves if we believe that raising a child without a husband is a sign of independence. That vision of good is distorted or mistaken, in the way that St. Thomas taught so long ago.
Jennifer Roback Morse is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Readers can e-mail her at jmorse@jps.net.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jennifer Roback Morse ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A Treasury Takes N.Y. DATE: 04/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 25 - May 1, 1999 ----- BODY:In New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, Park Avenue heiresses, Soho grunge hippies and Japanese tourists are all enjoying the magnificent works of art created to honor St. Francis of Assisi.
One question they might wonder about is the paradox of a “Treasury of St. Francis,” the poverello. If anything, the contrast is more glaring in our own age of unparalleled wealth and conspicuous consumption. Some critics, such as The New York Times, look at works like the gilded silver chalice commissioned by Pope Nicolas IV and see an ironic display of “Riches for a Saint Who Scorned Them.” Others, who perhaps understand Francis more profoundly, such as noted author Father Benedict Groeschel of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, see a “spectacular artistic tribute.”
For the past 700 years, the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi, an artistic treasure house, has simply been one of the most revered shines in Christendom. The building and decoration of the basilica was one of the greatest artistic achievements of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. Its collection of art has inspired tourists and pilgrims alike with wonder and devotion.
But, in the early hours of Sept. 26, 1997, two earthquakes ravaged Assisi. Sections of the basilica's vaulting collapsed in the upper church and 2,000 square feet of fresco masterpieces by Giotto and Cimabue were destroyed.
Most of the public funds available to deal with the disaster were needed for earthquake victims, so an unprecedented exhibit of some 70 items from the Church's artistic treasures has been mounted to call international attention to the importance of the restoration of the basilica itself. Approximately 30 items from Vatican, Italian, other European and American collections were added to those from Assisi. The goal is to aid the restoration so that the basilica can reopen again for pilgrimages in celebration of the Jubilee Year 2000.
It is a project that St. Francis would likely approve, for rebuilding churches was close to his own heart. His first response to Christ's bidding to “rebuild my Church” was to repair the ruined church of San Damiano near Assisi.
Yet some Franciscans of the day were not in favor of building the basil-ica which bears the saint's name. Francis, after all, only wanted a pauper's grave. Yet a great pilgrimage site could help spread his message, so Francis’benefactors had no such qualms. The Basilica of St. Francis became one of the most extensive and ambitious decorative campaigns ever undertaken.
Some of the most significant supporters were King Henry III of England, King Wenceslaus of Bohemia, King Philip of France and the French houses of Anjou and Valois. The French King Louis IX, who was canonized in 1297, donated one of the finest illuminated manuscripts of the 13th century, The Missal of St. Louis.
The first Franciscan pope, Nicholas IV, commissioned the finest surviving example of medieval Italian gold and enamel work, “The Chalice of Nicholas IV” by Guccio di Manaia. A later Franciscan pope, Sixtus IV, commissioned the imposing “Franciscan Tree Tapestry” by Antonio Pollaiuolo, which is perhaps the premier masterpiece of 15th-century Italian textiles. St. Bonaventure, who became the final and official biographer of St. Francis, donated many of the basilica's most important relics of St. Francis.
But perhaps the basilica's greatest artistic legacy was the creation of “The Cantiere of Assisi,” a great artistic workshop centered at the Convent of Assisi during the years of construction from 1230 to 1330. Teams of glassmakers, fresco painters, manuscript scribes and illuminators, panel painters, wood-carvers and goldsmiths from Europe and the Byzantine east converged on Assisi to help create a new artistic vocabulary that eventually paved the way for the Renaissance. There was no greater contributor to this process than Giotto himself. His new realism and the bold sense of shape in his great frescos at Assisi served as textbooks for Michelangelo and da Vinci.
Perhaps it is not such a great irony that Francis, a poet and church builder, would figure so profoundly in the story of art. What The New York Times and so many of our age miss about St. Francis is that, while he repudiated his own inheritance, he was not one “who scorned all wealth.”
According to one of his early biographers, “He wished at one time to send his brothers through the world with precious pyxes, so that wherever they should see the price of our redemption [the Eucharist] kept in an unbecoming manner, they should place it in the very best” vessels. For himself, Francis desired poverty; for Christ, nothing but the best.
Perhaps Father Groeschel puts it best when he quotes St. Francis’testament in his book, In the Presence of Our Lord. “Above everything else, I want this most holy Sacrament to be honored and venerated and reserved in places which are richly ornamented.” One hopes that the restoration work will make the great Basilica of St. Francis just such a place again.
Stephen Hopkins writes from New York.
“The Treasury of St. Francis of Assisi” is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York through June 27. In July the exhibit will move to the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Stephen Hopkins ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: Living Icon of St. ThÈrËse DATE: 04/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 25 - May 1, 1999 ----- BODY:Thérèse: The Story of a Soul is one of the latest plays from Leonardo Defilippis' St. Luke Productions, but its roots actually extend back to 1980, and to the very beginning of that theatrical ministry. At that time, Defilippis and his wife Patti shared a devotion to St. Thérèse of Lisieux and enjoyed a friendly relationship with the Carmelite monastery near their Oregon home. The sisters there encouraged him to write a play about the life of the French saint, Thérèse.
Defilippis liked the idea, but there was one problem: “Patti was to play the role [of Thérèse], but she got pregnant,” he explains. “We couldn't keep having a pregnant Thérèse up there every other year. So we did John of the Cross instead.”
Defilippis'one-man production of that great Carmelite saint first played in 1990. In the years before and since, he would gain acclaim for his solo portrayals of the lives of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Maximilian Kolbe, along with many others. But the Thérèse project still beckoned and so did the nuns.
In 1996, the Carmelite sisters “cornered me again,” says Defilippis, and urged him to produce a play about St. Thérèse in preparation for the centennial celebration of her death. This time both he and his wife followed through, crafting a script based on Thérèse's autobiography The Story of a Soul. They enlisted one of the nuns to write the orchestral score and selected 19-year-old Maggie Mahrt for the title, and only, role.
Opening night was scheduled for Sept. 28, 1997, and by the time the play reached Peoria, Ill., last November, Mahrt had already given more than 100 performances of Thérèse in 22 states. Her depiction of the saint, the overall tenor of the production — script, music and set — is both studied and modest, prayerful and unpretentious.
Three pillars, covered in black cloth, form the only background for the hour-long show. Flanking pillars bear images of the Holy Face and the Child Jesus and a center pillar has a simple cross covered with Thérèse's trademark roses. (The roses were a providential addition, explains Mahrt, used to hide burn marks left by the lights during an early performance.) Some wooden chairs and a blanket complete the spare set.
Thérèse opens with the saint, near death as a result of tuberculosis at the age of 24, preparing the reflections that would become The Story of a Soul. Her life then unfolds as a flashback, recounting well-known episodes like her childhood fast for the soul of a murderer about to be executed and her charitable efforts to befriend a particularly unlovable fellow nun.
Mahrt works well in dialogues with the taped voices of other characters — a trick that demands precision, pace and timing.
Along with the loosely connected flashback scenes, Defilippis has interspersed scriptural meditations drawn from the “suffering servant” passages of Isaiah 42. The combined effect gives the audience a glimpse into the heart of a human being drawn through love and suffering into a profound union with Christ.
Acting As Prayer
Portraying this inner transformation is not easy, and Mahrt insists that she wouldn't have been able to carry it off were Thérèse simply any play and the saint merely another character. “To me, it's a prayer,” she says, a sacred drama in which “contemplation and acting are married together.”
Indeed, three years ago, after she had become dissatisfied with her theater studies at an Illinois junior college, Mahrt began to sense her own inclinations toward a contemplative life. Her spiritual director deflected her (at least temporarily) from the convent, urging her instead to audition for Thérèse. This she did. Her first quick audition was at the Chicago airport terminal while Defilippis was waiting to change planes. She later did a lengthier, more formal audition. Defilippis recalls being impressed by “her concentration and depth of spirituality. … Thérèse is tough as nails, and Maggie has a little bit of that in her.”
Defilippis and Mahrt both agree that the spiritual character of the actress is important because she serves as much the role of missionary as entertainer. Mahrt plays to audiences averaging 400 people but swelling to as high as 1,500. After performances she personally greets all comers. “Everybody is very positive,” she says. “They thank me, tell me they really needed to hear the message of God's merciful love [and] they share stories of how Thérèse has affected their lives.”
The performance in Peoria attracted much attention. The audience thronged around Mahrt, offering her flowers and rosaries, hugging her and shaking her hand. The fact that Peoria is only a short distance from Mahrt's native Metamora may have given her a hometown-girl boost, although this kind of reception isn't too far from the ordinary and fits right into Defilippis'artistic and evangelistic philosophy.
“Maggie is the incarnation of Thérèse,” he says. “In sacred drama, you are entering the realm of being an icon of who you are portraying.” Defilippis says his ministry exists in order to preach the gospel, but in a way that “communicates truth with beauty.” Art communicates truth and when it communicates the highest truth it becomes “an affirmation of Jesus becoming flesh and dwelling among us,” says Defilippis. Art like Thérèse takes on a sacramental character, helping to effect what it represents.
Defilippis is basing his next project on the Gospel of St. John and hopes to have it ready for the millennium. In the meantime, the stage production of Thérèse will run through to July. Eventually there are hopes that the production will be followed by a film version. Defilippis hopes that many people will be moved by the story of Thérèse of Lisieux, whose broad appeal and powerful yet simple message makes her an important witness for this age.
“I hope it goes into the Protestant world, and into the secular arena,” he says. “Wouldn't it be nice if, right next to [the controversial homosexual activist play] Corpus Christi on Broadway, we could have Thérèse?”
Todd M. Aglialoro writes from Peoria, Illinois.
----- EXCERPT: Leonardo and Patti Defilippis found a natural for their current play ----- EXTENDED BODY: Todd M. Aglialoro ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Videos on Release DATE: 04/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 25 - May 1, 1999 ----- BODY:Rescuers: Stories of Courage
Why do ordinary people become heroes? That question is explored in the book Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust by Gay Block and Malka Drucker, the source for Showtime's Rescuers: Stories of Courage. The video recounts the true stories of two couples who rescued Jews from harm's way during World War II. The first segment follows Aart and Johtje Vos, a newly married couple who hid Jews in their country home. The Voses never meant to help Jews fleeing Holland's Nazi occupation, but they felt obliged to rescue people facing execution. They ran their shelter for years, despite repeated searches by the SS. The second segment tells the story of Emile and Marie Taquet, a childless Belgian couple who, despite extreme danger, hid dozens of Jewish boys among students at their Catholic school until the war ended. The Voses and the Taquets weren't saints, but they demonstrated an almost saintly courage. Fascinating viewing.
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Feet of Flames
Last July 25, Irish dancer and impresario Michael Flatley brought a company of singers, musicians and dancers to a massive outdoor stage on the Route of Kings in London's Hyde Park. As day faded into evening, 25,000 spectators watched a spectacular show that featured Irish soloists singing, Irish instrumentalists playing, and Irish solo and group dancers wheeling about in elaborate formations. The show didn't tell a specific story; rather, it was a series of set pieces — elaborately choreographed numbers interspersed with singing and instrumental playing.
The dancers displayed the Flatley touch. A former star of the Riverdance troupe, who had a falling out with its directors, Flatley has taken the traditional, controlled movements of Irish dance and spiced them up with ballet and modern-dance techniques. These alterations have upset some Irish-dance purists, but Flatley's innovations have certainly produced an energetic synthesis. The audience watching his show was enthusiastically appreciative, and most viewers of the video, which was made from footage shot at the July 25 performance, should find the spectacle invigorating as well.
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The Healing Touch of Jesus
This video, which is an episode of the “Topical Bible Series,” is a somewhat unusual production. It combines biblical re-enactments, voice-over narration by actor Richard Kiley as the evangelist Matthew, commentary by singer/songwriter Kathy Troccoli and a music video that uses footage from the biblical re-enactments as background for a Troccoli-sung ballad called “When I Look at You.” The Healing Touch of Jesus focuses on the healing miracles of Christ found in St. Matthew's Gospel. It stars Bruce Marchiano as a smiling Jesus who takes delight in bringing the afflicted back to health. Among those he rescues are the man with leprosy, the servant of the Roman centurion, Saint Peter's mother-in-law, the men afflicted with demons and the Canaanite woman. After the re-enactments, Troccoli comments on the deeper significance of each miracle and describes what it means to her. In some ways, The Healing Touch of Jesus is a confused effort. Is it exegesis? Autobiography? Entertainment? But its heart is in the right place, and most viewers are sure to hear something inspirational from the movie.
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The Little Kidnappers
Based on a short story called Scotch Settlement by Neil Paterson and an acclaimed 1953 film, The Little Kidnappers is a movie with a heart. The film is set in 1903 Nova Scotia, a land still feeling the aftereffects of South Africa's Boer War. To this beautiful Canadian coast come two little boys, the orphaned sons of a Scots-Canadian sergeant killed in the war. The boys are 8-year-old Harry (Leo Wheatley) and his younger brother Davy (Charles Miller). These sweet little fellow have crossed the Atlantic Ocean to take up residence with their MacKensie grandparents. James MacKensie (Charlton Heston) is a dour Scot, with a harsh soul and a hate for his Dutch neighbors. His wife and daughter are kind women, and gladly welcome the boys. But Harry and Davy are lonely, so they take in a lost baby as a pet. Naturally, this leads to complications and the learning of a few important lessons for young and old. The Little Kidnappers is a lovely little movie, just right for a family looking to entertain both adults and children.
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— Loretta G. Seyer
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Loretta G. Seyer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Bringing Philosophy Back from the Brink DATE: 04/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 25 - May 1, 1999 ----- BODY:In the postmodern era, a man of faith is coming to the rescue of reason.
Pope John Paul II has done just that in his recent encyclical, Fides et Ratio on the ability of human reason to comprehend truth.
The document has received wide media coverage and a generally warm reception on Catholic campuses.
Off campus, the encyclical has surprised many, with its focus on reason as a path to the truth, which culminates in the knowledge of God and salvation in Christ.
While faith, a gift from God, yields the highest comprehension of ultimate truth, the Church has always taken great pains to demonstrate that the te-nets of the faith can also be shown to be reasonable and not contrary to sound thinking.
The need for a new and rigorous Catholic defense of reason is a response to the state of modern philosophy and contemporary culture, which has descended from finding “truth” outside of God to questioning the possibility of any objective truth.
Which raises the question: Are things really so bad in philosophy that the Pope has to devote an entire encyclical to its rehabilitation?
Modern philosophy, writes the Holy Father in Fides et Ratio, with its one-sided concern for human subjectivity, “seems to have forgotten that men and women are always called to direct their steps toward a truth which transcends them.”
A philosophy of being, which understands a thing “as it is,” has been abandoned for a philosophy of human knowing, which understands the thing “as it seems to be.” This sort of thinking, the Pope warns, leads swiftly to agnosticism and relativism, which is everywhere evident in contemporary society.
Catholic philosophers have traditionally been grounded in metaphysics, the study of being as being. Metaphysics goes from consideration of the lowest forms of matter up to the reality of God. The metaphysics of Catholic philosophy emphasizes objective truth and substantial reality, whereas much of modern philosophy stresses subjectivity or process.
Small wonder then that Fides et Ratio's championing of being and metaphysics has endeared it to many Catholic thinkers.
At the University of Dallas, where being and metaphysics have been in fashion since the school's founding in 1956, Cistercian Father James Lehrberger reports that the “entire faculty was happy to get the support” of the encyclical.
Last autumn, a Fides et Ratio symposium of three leading Catholic philosophers — Kenneth Schmitz, John Caputo and Ralph McInerny — drew almost 350 participants from the campus community and beyond.
Says Father Lehrberger: “The mind is made for the knowledge of the truth, and the quest to know the truth, especially the truth about the whole of reality; and the zenith of the human mind's searching is the first principle of this whole,” who is God.
The Role of Aquinas
Kevin White, associate professor of philosophy at The Catholic University of America, reports that the Pope's philosophy of being in Fides et Ratio was sympathetically received at the Washington, D.C. school, which also held a symposium on the encyclical.
Metaphysics is central to the depart-ment's work, White says, and it is approached from different points of view: ancient, medieval and modern. St. Thomas Aquinas is central to that discussion.
“Aquinas is recognized as one of the great original thinkers about being,” says White, an avowed Thomist. “He combined Greek and Arabic thought about being with texts from Scripture in a way that was highly original. His presentation of being, or existence, is very novel in the history of philosophical thought.”
The investigation of being is essential, White says. “Who can avoid being?” he asks. He holds that this is practically impossible for Christians who confront a God in Scripture who reveals himself as “I AM.”
“Creation is understood traditionally as a gift of being,” White continues. “It is implicit at the very beginning of the Bible and the Creed.”
The culture and tradition of thought in the United States present particular challenges to this view.
“The great metaphysical approach goes against the grain of American thought,” which is often overly pragmatic, White asserts. “It has been the role of Catholic schools to keep the question alive and remind people in the new world of this great classical question of being.”
White says he thinks that a Catholic philosophy department “should have a mission. It should not prescribe a curriculum — the Pope himself says that the Church does not endorse any one philosophy — but a spirit. The Catholic faith is open to truth wherever it comes from.”
Something Intelligible
The Pope in Fides et Ratio defends reason and truth. “Truth does depend upon being,” White notes.
“If there's an understanding of being, it follows necessarily that there is an understanding of truth. Those are the transcendental properties of being: unity, goodness and truth. Being is understood as something intelligible.
“Intelligibility is important because it precedes our intellect; there is something there in the world before we get to it.”
A respect for truth is founded on respect for being, and the Pope is trying, White believes, to evoke reverence for being. That attempt has drawn great sympathy from students in the Catholic University school of philosophy, who mostly welcomed the encyclical.
At Boston College, associate professor Thomas Hibbs reports that a rising number of philosophy students are specializing in metaphysics.
This trend comes even though the college is oriented toward the history of philosophy, which tends to give equal weight to traditional as well as modern thinkers, Hibbs says.
Hibbs explains that Boston College's particular emphasis on “20th-century Continental philosophers — Heidegger, Husserl and Gadamer — provides a dialogue with the roots of the phenomenological tradition” that formed Edith Stein and the young Karol Wojtyla.
“Both Heidegger and the Pope raise the question of being, which had been suppressed within philosophy for years,” Hibbs contends. “Heidegger's considerations provided an opportunity to recover ancient and medieval notions of being.”
According to Hibbs, being is emphasized in Fides et Ratio for two reasons: “First, the question of being arises with all the ultimate questions about human life: the intelligibility of the world, the meaning of life. Is there a God? Am I free?
Secondly, the Pope talks about recovering reason's comprehensive range.”
John Paul is concerned that people are leading distracted, fragmented lives which prevents them from considering the truth about the whole, Hibbs believes; moreover, the Holy Father wants society and individuals to “recover that sense of wonder.”
“Metaphysics in the ancient world,” Hibbs adds, “began and ended with wonder.”
He thinks a key insight of the encyclical is that the radical critique of reason may have seen its day. The Pope sees reason as being autonomous but not self-sufficient.
In looking toward the future, Hibbs is optimistic. “I am astonished,” he says, “at how many excellent students, really bright young people, come into our philosophy and theology Ph.D. programs interested in the questions posed by Fides et Ratio. And that's a hopeful sign.”
Not All Agree
Support for Fides et Ratio isn't universal, however. Jesuit Father Bill Richardson, a prominent Heideggerian scholar at Boston College, isn't as impressed with the encyclical as others. Fides et Ratio, he says, was a “long document that tried to do everything.”
According to Father Richardson, the Pope “talks about being and metaphysics and a stable universe, but he doesn't take into account the role of history.
“He doesn't ask philosophy to take into account shifts in history and shifts in philosophical thinking, and in concepts of being. … One can't impose a 13th-century standard on a 20th century that doesn't yield easily to transcendence.”
John Crosby, chairman of the philosophy department at Franciscan University at Steubenville, however, says the encyclical's affirmation of the philosophy of being and of metaphysics is welcome at the Ohio school, where these foundational areas of philosophy continue to be taken seriously.
He is also grateful to the Pope for calling philosophers back to the acknowledgment of objective truth. “Besides being supremely important in itself, deferring to the truth of being is profoundly rooted in the Catholic tradition in philosophy,” Crosby said.
Thus, Catholic schools are “particularly well-positioned to give leadership in the work of recovering objective truth today.”
“In schools bearing the Catholic name,” Crosby adds, “the Church is right to require that the teaching in theology and philosophy departments be in harmony with Revelation.”
Philip F. Kelly Jr. writes from Toronto.
----- EXCERPT: An encyclical's call to belief in truth wins acclaim at Catholic colleges ----- EXTENDED BODY: Philip F. Kelly Jr. ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Education Notebook DATE: 04/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 25 - May 1, 1999 ----- BODY:Bishop Calls Scandal by Name
THE CATHOLIC TIMES, Feb. 5—Former Lansing Bishop Kenneth Povish sharply criticized the Jesuits'University of Detroit Mercy in a column in the newspaper of the Michigan diocese.
Bishop Povish said it was a “scandal” that some 60 people heard the Rev. Gloria Albrecht, chair of the university's religious studies program “bemoan the fact that religion is not influential enough in protecting women's legal right to kill children in the womb.”
The bishop wondered how Albrecht, a Presbyterian minister who recently gained tenure at the university, can be “going around Michigan and presenting herself as chairperson of the religious studies department at University of Detroit Mercy.”
According to a statement issued March 25 by the Archdiocese of Detroit, Cardinal Adam Maida contacted the university president, Sister of Mercy Maureen Fay, about Bishop Povish's column “and asked her to take action.
“At this point, he is trusting Sister Maureen and others at UDM to handle the matter.”
Liberals Begin to Praise School Choice
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, April 15—The latest initiative from the business world to give children an alternative to poorly performing public schools — the Children's Scholarship Fund now being organized with the $50 million donations of three Wall Street executives — is gaining liberal support, according to columnist Albert Hunt.
“George Miller, one of the most influential liberals in the House … is fed up: ‘For too long, we've been willing to accept mediocrity and give the educational establishment a pass; we have to ask them what are we getting for the money we invest,’” reported Hunt.
Former Atlanta mayor and civil rights leader Andrew Young goes a step further by sitting on the board of the Children's Scholarship Fund. “I believe in public education,” he told Hunt. “But any monopoly gets stagnant and it takes competition to wake it up.”
‘Zero Tolerance’Under Fire
USA TODAY, April 13—Eighth-grade honor student Lisa Smith “who has never known trouble” faces five months in a military-style boot camp, according to a story in the national daily. Her offense: she violated the school's “zero tolerance” policy by bringing to school a 20-ounce bottle of 7-Up mixed with a few drops of grain alcohol.
Lisa, described by one teacher as a “sweetheart,” is one of “a growing number of examples in which zero-tolerance policies have been attacked as inflexible, harsh and lacking in common sense,” reports USA TODAY's Dennis Cauchon.
Cauchon writes that the criticisms have increased in the past two years as zero-tolerance policies have become standard operating procedures in the nation's 109,000 public schools.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 04/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 25 - May 1, 1999 ----- BODY:The Vatican Council spoke about the media and in particular the great responsibility that journalists have. They must always report the truth and not simply try to create public opinion (See stories on media coverage of abortion and vocations on Page 1). In Inter Mirifica the council said:
A special responsibility for the proper use of the means of social communication rests on journalists, writers, actors, designers, producers exhibitors, distributors, operators, sellers, critics — all those, in a word, who are involved in the making and transmission of communications in any way whatever. It is clear that a very great responsibility rests on all of these people in today's world: they have power to direct mankind along a good path or an evil path by the information they impart and the pressure they exert.
It will be for them to regulate economic, political and artistic values in a way that will not conflict with the common good. To achieve this result more surely, they will do well to form professional organizations capable of imposing on their members — if necessary by a formal pledge to observe a moral code — a respect for the moral law in the problems they encounter and in their activities.
They should always be mindful of the fact that a very large proportion of their readership and audience are young people who are in need of publications and entertainments for wholesome amusement and inspiration. They should ensure that religious features are entrusted to serious and competent persons and are handled with proper respect.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: From Methodist Kid to Catholic Priest DATE: 04/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 25 - May 1, 1999 ----- BODY:Father Andrew McNair, LC, of North Carolina, entered the Legion-aries of Christ novitiate in Cheshire in 1985 and was ordained a priest on December 24, 1997. His account of his vocation follows.
I recall, when I was a child, staring at a priest in a supermarket. Dressed in black and wearing a Roman collar, he stood out. No one else in town wore clothes like that, not even the pastor of my Methodist church. The priest nodded at me and said, “Hello!” This made a strong impression on me — after all, he stood for God.
This encounter set my young mind to thinking. For example, the fact that priests don't marry sets them apart. The Methodist ministers had wives; so did all the other Christian pastors in my North Carolina town. And the Catholic priests — why were they different? Why didn't they have wives like everyone else? I figured there had to be a reason.
God cleared up this question for me during a Sunday-school session in my Methodist church. Our teacher asked if we had questions about the life of Jesus. I raised my hand and asked, “Why didn't Jesus ever get married?” The teacher paused, looking perplexed.
After a few moments she said, “Jesus didn't marry because he wanted to dedicate all his time and energy to the service of God the Father with an undivided heart. If Jesus had a wife and children, how would he have been able to dedicate all his time to God and serving others?”
I thought, Catholic priests are like Jesus. This must be why they don't marry. It seemed to make good sense.
The Sunday-school teacher had out-done herself with such an excellent answer. Little did she know her answer gave me a big push toward the Catholic Church and the priesthood.
Then, another question arose: Was a Catholic Sunday service similar to the Baptist or Methodist services? My curiosity got the better of me. I decided to approach one of my best high-school friends, who was a Catholic. At lunch one day, I asked “John, how do Catholics worship on Sunday?” John threw me a strange look as he bit into his Big Mac. A 6-foot, 3-inch, 215-pound football player, he was unaccustomed to answering questions about religion, but understood what I was getting at. With his mouth half-full he uttered, “Well, Father celebrates Mass. If you like, Andy, you can come with me to Mass on Sunday. No problem.”
Even though years have passed since I attended that first Mass with John, I remember very well what impressed me most: the way the priest prayed the words of consecration over the bread and wine. He prayed very slowly, with reverence and intensity. I don't know why, but when the priest said, “Take this, all of you, and eat it; this is my body,” I felt what he was saying had to be true. Why? The priest seemed totally convinced, and identified with what he was doing. It is the only explanation I could find for the fervor I experienced in that Mass.
How I wanted to receive Communion that Sunday! But I could-n't. John had told me beforehand that only Catholics should receive Communion. Yet, I wanted to be like that priest whom I saw. This desire pushed me to study Catholicism, and the more I studied, the more I felt drawn toward the priesthood. One evening, I read a magazine article about a bishop who was a convert to the Catholic faith. I thought: “Why not write to him?”
In my letter, I explained my situation and asked him how a Methodist becomes a Catholic priest. To my surprise, I received a prompt response. The bishop wrote, “To be a priest, you have to be a Catholic first. Being a priest means living like Jesus Christ. This means praying like Christ, sacrificing yourself for others like Christ, and doing the will of God like Christ. Above all, the priesthood means giving the body and blood of Christ to others. No one can do that but a priest. I had a long road to follow to arrive at the priest-hood, but it was well worth the sacrifice.” This convinced me to take the big step toward being a Catholic and a priest. I saw it as a green light from God.
A few weeks before I left for the seminary, one of my friends accused me of having an idealistic and unreal vision of priests. He asked, “Andy, why do you want to be a priest, when there are many priests who abandon their priest-hood and set a bad example?” I replied, “Because priests are not the priesthood; priests are ordained to live the priest-hood that comes from Christ. Priests have to work at holiness through prayer and sacrifice like everyone else.” At the end of our conversation he said only, “I hope you don't regret this later.”
Now, more than 12 years later, I can say I have not regretted anything. My long journey from the Methodist church to the priesthood is complete. Like the narrow road of the Gospel, this journey has not been easy. At the same time I have never been happier, because being a priest means living like Jesus Christ, the first priest.
Reprinted with permission of Sacerdos, a magazine for priests.
----- EXCERPT: April 25 is World Day of Prayer for Vocations ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Life Notes DATE: 04/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 25 - May 1, 1999 ----- BODY:Dole Urged to Reveal Her Position on Abortion
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE, April 13—Although potential presidential candidate Elizabeth Dole has stated her political position on abortion, she has not to date revealed her moral position, the Tribune reported. “Perhaps that will come when it is sufficiently developed,” said the paper.
“Dole is correct when she says there currently is no hope of passing a constitutional amendment overturning the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision,” reported the paper. “But in 1954, when the Supreme Court decided ‘separate but equal’unconstitutionally segregated the races, full equality for blacks seemed far away.” The article pointed out, “Great strides have been made toward that objective because principled people led opinion instead of following it.”
The paper reported that Dole said “that a constitutional amendment ‘is not going to happen,’and so she doesn't want to be drawn into ‘dead-end debates’over the subject.”
However, the paper added, “It is the babies who are dying. The debate doesn't have to expire with them. And who better than a Republican woman to help keep this issue alive and to shape public opinion in the direction of life?” The paper said that the hesitation of some Republicans to speak of the horror of abortion “has made other categories of life more vulnerable.”
“That's why the health-care debate has brought us to euthanasia's door.”
Post-Abortion Leader Connects Abortion and Crime
THE WASHINGTON TIMES, April 14—Post-abortion expert Sydna Masse says while jail and abortion are two concepts that are rarely linked in the public mind, “they are very much related.” The report in the Times said that Masse “interviewed hundreds of post-abortive women and many post-abortive inmates, and believes ‘abortion can cause guilt-ridden women to commit crimes that land them in jail.’”
Said the paper, “The thought first occurred to her in 1994 when she was visiting a friend in jail who had two abortions.” Her friend told her that “easily 60% to 80% of this prison's population have had abortions.”
The two women had met because Reali had killed Masse's neighbor. The paper said that “in an effort to be obedient to God's calling her [Masse] to release the pain and bitterness over her friend's death, [she] had written a letter to Reali, who was serving a life sentence. The two began a pen-pal friendship and eventually met face to face.”
Masse pondered whether abortion and a women's decision to commit crimes were linked.
The report said that several years after that initial encounter, Masse founded Ramah International, a Christian ministry that conducts training in post-abortion ministry and helps individuals who have had abortions find God's healing hand.” (Pro-Life Infonet)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life ----- TITLE: Did You Know? DATE: 04/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: April 25 - May 1, 1999 ----- BODY:In the United States, legalizing “voluntary active euthanasia” — assisted suicide — will mean legalizing nonvoluntary euthanasia.
• State courts have ruled time and again that if competent people have a right, the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution requires that incompetent people receive the same “right.”
It will probably also be used for those suffering from relatively minor problems.
• In the Netherlands, legalizing voluntary assisted suicide for those with terminal illness has spread to problems such things as mental illness, permanent disability and even simple old age.
—National Right to Life Committee Fact Sheet.
----- EXCERPT: Facts of Life ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life ----- TITLE: Faith and Heroism Transform Tragedy DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:LITTLETON, Colo.—In the days following the murderous rampage of two heavily armed students at Columbine High School, a stunned city and nation drew encouragement from reports of heroism and faith that emerged in the wake of the tragedy.
On April 22 more than 1,200 people who gathered for a prayer service at St. Frances Cabrini Church in Littleton erupted into cheers and applause as Father Kenneth Leone, pastor, and Frank DiAngelis, principal of Columbine, addressed the crowd.
Archbishop Charles Chaput presided at the same church April 25 at the funeral Mass for three of the student victims. Five of the shooting victims were Catholics.
Father Leone told the story of the near-martyrdom of Valerie Schnurr, an 18-year-old senior:
Schnurr was in the library at Columbine when the heavily armed students entered and opened fire. She was hit by a shotgun blast fired at point blank range. As her assailant stood over her, she began to pray.
“Do you believe in God?” asked the young man, a member of a neo-Nazi group known as the trench coat mafia.
Without hesitation, Schnurr replied, “Yes, I do.”
Staring at her, the young man began to reload his weapon. Schnurr was certain he intended to kill her, but he became distracted and left her alone. The two assailants, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, would later commit suicide in the library, but not before killing 13 and injuring 23, police said.
The shotgun blast missed all of Schnurr's vital organs. She was scheduled to be released from Swedish Medical Center in Denver by the following weekend.
During the prayer service April 22, students and friends also remembered Dave Sanders, a longtime coach and teacher, who put himself in the line of fire while shepherding at least 100 students to safety. He was gunned down while saving the lives of the others, authorities said.
School principal DiAngelis, a St. Frances Cabrini parishioner, was asked to speak at the service.
“I feel so sorry and almost want to apologize for all the grief that has descended on our community,” said DiAngelis. “But I realize that the good Lord would not give us anything that we could not handle.
“I'm not sure why things happen. But they happen for a reason — this has unified our community and has unified our school. I have always bragged about how great Columbine High School is, and it is still a great high school.”
In measured and forceful words, DiAngelis then added, “This tragedy is not going to diminish what we have built over the past 25 years,” to which the assembly rose to its feet and broke into applause.
When it was announced that the firefighters and paramedics who were part of the rescue operation had joined the gathering and were standing in the back of church, the congregation sprang to its feet to give them an ear-splitting round of applause.
Archbishop Chaput spent the days following the shooting presiding at prayer services, visiting injured students and spending time with the families of those who had been killed. In a column planned for the Denver Catholic Register, he wrote:
“As time passes, we need to make sense of the Columbine killings. The media are already filled with ‘sound bites’ of shock and disbelief; psychologists, sociologists, grief counselors and law enforcement officers — all with their theories and plans. God bless them for it. We certainly need help. Violence is now pervasive in American society — in our homes, our schools, on our streets, in our cars as we drive home from work, in the news media, in the rhythms and lyrics of our music, in our novels, films and video games. It is so prevalent that we have become largely unconscious of it. But, as we discover in places like the hallways of Columbine High, it is bitterly, urgently real.”
Pope John Paul II and former Denver archbishop, Cardinal J. Francis Stafford, sent messages of condolence in the hours following the shooting.
“His Holiness Pope John Paul II has been deeply shocked by news of the terrible tragedy which has caused many deaths and injuries at a school near Denver and he asks you to convey to the families and school community the assurance of his prayerful closeness at this difficult time,” the Pope said in a message conveyed by Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican secretary of state.
In his message, Cardinal Stafford stated, “Upon hearing the news, I went to St. Peter's Basilica to ask for his intercession for the surviving young people of the high school, especially the wounded, and for the families of the students. Be assured of my deep communion with you in prayer and solidarity with the people of Colorado.”
Peter Droege is the editor of the Denver Catholic Register.
----- EXCERPT: CHURCH HELPING LITTLETON TO COPE ----- EXTENDED BODY: Peter Droege ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: Teens 'Are Running to Our Churches' DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:LITTLETON, Colo.—Jim Beckman looked out onto the crowd of 1,200 people gathered at a prayer service two days after the unthinkable put Columbine High School on the map.
“The whole nation is watching us,” Beckman told his audience. “The whole country is looking at how we are going to push through this.”
“This” was the slayings of 13 people after an hours-long rampage by a pair of students who then apparently turned their weapons on themselves. Five of the victims were Catholic, and St. Frances Cabrini Church in Littleton held a prayer service April 22 for the shocked and grieving community.
Joining the pastor, Father Kenneth Leone, was Beckman, a nationally known youth leader and speaker, who heads the Rockies hub of the apostolate Life Teen and serves as youth conferences chairman for Franciscan University of Steubenville.
“Have you watched the news?” Beckman asked his listeners. “I turned on the television last night and I had to just shake my head. You know what they are talking about? People are talking about a gun control bill!”
“Hello?” he shouted. “This is not about law — this is not about some politician doing something — this is not about finding someone to fire because they didn't do their job.
“This is a spiritual problem — there is a spiritual vacuum in our lives, in our society in our world. And if you don't believe it then you are missing the point.”
He said that when he first heard news of the shootings on April 20, he and his staff immediately began to put together a database of names of the young parishioners who attended Columbine High. They then set out to try to find the students and put them in contact with their parents. By 11:30 p.m., four students were still unaccounted for. Later the staff found out that those four were dead.
Beckman told his audience April 22 he believes that God wants to bring good out of the evil of the shootings. He called it a “wake-up call” to the nation.
“We have got to bring Jesus Christ back into our nation,” he shouted, to wild applause from the assembly.
Beckman pointed out that, for 20 years, Pope John Paul II has been talking about the great Jubilee.
“One of the things he has said we are going to experience is massive conversions,” Beckman said. “He has said there will be an outpouring of people entering our churches.”
“He has launched a campaign to build a hundred new churches in Rome,” he continued. “You ever been to Rome? There's a church on every street corner and there ain't nobody in ‘em.
“Is he crazy? You bet your life he is. He's crazy because he believes God is going to do something wonderful. He has said, ‘Open wide the doors’ and be prepared for serious mass conversions.”
Beckman said that, for more than a year, he had been telling his students to look around their high schools and ask themselves what it would take to get their fellow students into church.
“Look at their faces; many of them don't know God and want nothing to do with God,” Beckman said. “Now tell me, what would it take for you to see those teens come running to church? We have seen it.”
‘… there is an answer, there is a hope you can cling to, there is a hope that gives us a reason to go on.’
“Kids, teens from Columbine High School, are running to churches,” he continued. “Not just to this church, but churches all over this area. They are running to our churches — are we ready? Are we ready to welcome them?
“We as a church have got to stand up right now and say there is an answer, there is a hope you can cling to, there is a hope that gives us a reason to go on. Even in the midst of this terrible tragedy, Jesus Christ can give us the reason to carry on.”
On Sunday nights, up to 400 teens gather for Mass at St. Frances Cabrini Church. The young people are part of the Life Teen movement, which exists in 522 parishes in the United States and Canada.
The heart of the Life Teen program is active participation in the liturgy, followed by a meeting that includes discussions of Church teachings or Bible study. The evening concludes with eucharistic adoration.
Life Teen is a national youth ministry fellowship. The main office is in Mesa, Ariz., and there are hub parishes in Atlanta; Hudson, Ohio; St. Louis; and at St. Frances Cabrini.
“The Life Teen network has been keeping us in prayer ever since [the shootings] started,” said Beckman. “Within a couple of hours, thousands of people were praying for us.”
On April 25, all Life Teen groups canceled their Sunday programs and instead had their youths praying before the Blessed Sacrament for the Columbine students and their families. Beckman told his audience, “We will have 50,000 teens praying for us.”
—Peter Droege
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Peter Droege ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: Colombian Bishops Get Tough on Peace DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:SAN VICENTE, Colombia— At first glance, the small city of San Vicente del Caguan showed a peaceful, even friendly band of guerrillas who were pitching in to fight common crime and to repair streets and irrigation systems in the community.
The country's new peace strategy seemed to be working. President Andres Pastrana had instituted a process that allowed concessions to Marxist guerrillas in return for peace and continued dialogue. The plan had won the strong support and cooperation of Colombia's bishops.
But that was before Bishop Héctor López Hurtado of Ariari decided to get a firsthand view of the situation.
After a pastoral visit to the countryside, Bishop López realized that the tranquil scene was an illusion.
The Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces, a group of guerrillas known by the Spanish-language acronym FARC, were taking control of rural towns, and this, the bishop said, “showed clearly that they are working on their own project of state-building and not looking for peace with the government.”
In a statement broadcast around the country, he added: “We love peace, but we are not fools.”
For more than 10 years, the Catholic Church had been at odds with the then ruling Liberal Party over the party's policy of zero dialogue with the nation's Marxist guerrillas. The Church favored dialogue for the sake of opening avenues toward peace.
When Conservative Party member Pastrana took office as president earlier this year with the promise of opening a process of national reconciliation that would include the guerrillas, the Catholic bishops responded with enthusiasm. In fact, Pastrana's installation ceremony was attended by an unprecedented Church presence, including two Colombian cardinals.
Pastrana, in fact, started two avenues of dialogue with the Marxist rebels, one with the National Liberation Army and the other with the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces, the largest guerrilla group in the country.
The first, directly sponsored by the bishops' conference with the support of the German episcopate, not only brought the National Liberation Army to the negotiation table, but also moved the guerrillas to sign an agreement to respect human rights and to exclude kidnapping as a means of political pressure.
With FARC, Pastrana agreed to engage in a peace dialogue that created a despeje, a demilitarized zone, in San Vicente del Caguan, where the guerrillas would move freely.
Even when FARC perpetrated a number of military attacks, Archbishop Alberto Giraldo Jaramillo, president of the bishops' conference, continued to support the despeje and voiced his “hope in peaceful means.”
The bishop's statement was greeted by jeers. At a soccer match earlier this year, crowds shouted “Fujimori, Fujimori!” to urge Pastrana to imitate the Peruvian president who launched a merciless but successful war against Peru's guerrillas. Politicians began to protest the despeje.
Archbishop Giraldo answered critics at the time, saying, “Colombia has particular circumstances that require dialogue and mutual concessions as part of a realistic peace plan.”
Bishop Isaias Duarte Cansino, nationally regarded as an authority in peace negotiations, echoed the point. “A peace process deserves the best energies of Colombians,” he said.
As prelate of Apartado, one of Colombia's most violent regions, Bishop Duarte had brokered a surprising agreement between landowners and a local guerrilla group that brought peace. His experience convinced him and his fellow bishops that, with effort and patience, a peace agreement could be finally reached.
From
It's no wonder then, that the bold statement of Bishop López, whose diocese includes part of the area of the despeje, surprised all political sectors in the country.
The bishop was clear when he asked for the immediate suspension of the despeje. “FARC is taking political advantage of the government's concessions in the area only to foster its own political and military agenda,” he said.
The bishop also denounced the guerrilla group for forcibly recruiting boy and girls as young as 13 years old. “The people in the region are fed up with the guerrillas, because the group has shown its abusive face. The people feel that the guerrillas are moving from the despeje to the despojo[plundering].
“I strongly suggest that the government end the despeje because of FARC's evident lack of interest for the process of national reconciliation.”
Bishop López's sentiments were immediately echoed. The neighboring Diocese of Uraba, in a statement, demanded that members of the FARC “stay away from peaceful rural communities.”
The document denounced the killings of 13 peasants by the guerrillas, and the forced conscription of several others. “We demand the immediate release of the peasants kidnapped last week,” the document said. “Let them go back to their communities and families!”
Father Leonidas Moreno, head of the diocese's Peace and Justice Commission, added: “The FARC is jeopardizing the distribution of Church aid into the poorest areas, thus creating more misery and unrest in the area.”
Political analyst Fernando Jaramillo warned that the situation would change the dynamic of the current strategy of concessions and talks.
“If FARC thought it was astute to take advantage of the despeje, it should think twice now that it has the Catholic Church in such a critical stand,” he said.
Jaramillo said he believes that several high-ranking officials of the Colombian army are running out of patience. He argued that a strong military action against the guerrillas should be taken.
“The only true force that stands between the hawks at the government and the FARC is the Catholic Church,” Jaramillo said.
A New Direction
The bishops so far have decided to keep their leadership role in the Commission of National Reconciliation, the institution mediating the peace process. But at the same time, they have sent a clear message to the guerrillas.
“We never sought a mediating role in the process,” Archbishop Giraldo said recently. “If we accepted, it is because it was requested by both sides in the conflict, and we decided to do our best to help the peace process. But if one of the sides is clearly showing its lack of interest in the process in itself, we don't see why we should be part of the mockery.”
Sources at the Colombian episcopate in Bogota said the bishops will meet in late May to evaluate the peace process and to reconsider their role in it.
Alejandro Bermudez writes from Lima, Peru.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Alejandro Bermudez ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: Detroit Mercy A Symbol Of Catholic Identity Woes DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:DETROIT—The U.S. Bishops expect a report by college representatives, due in early May, on what universities think Catholic identity should mean on campuses — and what role they think the bishops should play there.
Parents, faculty and alumni of the University of Detroit Mercy await it, too. They say they hope that the report will help give bishops a much stronger role, after what they've been through.
Members of the Detroit Mercy community have been questioning the university's identity as a Catholic institution in the wake of remarks in which the school's chief theologian publicly criticized the Church's defense of the unborn.
The Rev. Gloria Albrecht, Detroit Mercy's religious studies chair and an ordained Presbyterian minister, complained in a public address to a pro-abortion group in East Lansing that abortion services have declined in availability, partly as a result of the Catholic Church's influence on society, according to an account of the January speech in The Lansing State Journal.
Albrecht argued that, by insisting that abortion services be dropped when secular and Catholic hospitals merge, the Church has contributed to the growing shortage of abortion providers and services.
“Our position is quite unstable,” she added. “The influence of religion is not as positive as I would like it to be.”
Detroit Mercy alumni across the state responded to the secular news-paper's report with disbelief and many letters of complaint.
Clarifying Catholic Identity
Retired Diocese of Lansing Bishop Kenneth Povish and Lansing Chancellor Msgr. Steven Raica were among those who spoke out in protest. They said the incident illustrates the need for genuine implementation of Ex Corde Ecclesiae (From the Heart of the Church), Pope John Paul II's 1990 apostolic constitution on Catholic higher education.
The American bishops are currently working on a document that would spell out implementation of the apostolic constitution for this country. In 1996 the Vatican returned an earlier version of the bishops' text, asking that it be reworked to incorporate specifically juridical norms for the implementation of apostolic constitution and the relevant parts of Canon Law.
Canon 810, for example, calls for the “appointment of teachers … who besides their scientific and pedagogical suitability are also outstanding for their integrity of doctrine and probity of life.”
Another canon, 812, states that “it is necessary that those who teach theological disciplines in any institute of higher studies have a mandate from the competent ecclesiastical authority,” usually understood to be the local bishop.
Msgr. Raica, who will take up new duties July 1 as the superior of Casa Santa Maria, a residence for priests engaged in graduate studies in Rome, is an alumnus of Detroit Mercy. He said he was “shocked” by the pro-abortion comments, and has expressed his views in a letter of protest to Detroit Mercy's president, Dominican Sister Maureen Fay.
“If that represents the tenor of the faculty there now, I could not recommend students going there if they desire a good Catholic education,” he said.
Bishop Povish had a similar reaction.
“What is a pro-abortion Presbyterian minister doing, going around Michigan and presenting herself as chairperson of the religious studies department at the University of Detroit Mercy?” he asked in a column published in February in the diocesan newspaper, The Catholic Times.
Rev. Albrecht, reached in her office at Detroit Mercy, declined to comment. Seeming confused by the turmoil surrounding her actions, she said her comments now “will not carry the tone and meaning of what I said [in the January speech].”
Bishop Povish noted that, regarding Canon 812, “The Rev. Ms. Albrecht has no mandate from Cardinal [Adam] Maida [of Detroit] to teach theology at Detroit Mercy, much less head up the department.”
Cardinal Maida released a comment through his archdiocesan spokesman, Ned McGrath: “When the cardinal read the report in the Lansing State Journal, he was very concerned. He immediately contacted Sister Maureen Fay and asked her to take action. At this point, he is trusting Sister Maureen and others at Detroit Mercy to handle the situation.”
Because Albrecht is an associate professor of religion and ethics, it is not certain that she would need the mandate outlined by Canon 812, which would be reserved for those who teach specifically Catholic courses.
Canon 810, with its requirement that all faculty be notable for their “integrity of doctrine,” places responsibility on the institutions to exercise due diligence in the hiring of faculty.
While Detroit Mercy officials are not speaking publicly on the matter, it would not seem that they are complacent about Albrecht's leadership. In a Feb. 25 letter to Detroit Mercy donors, Sister Maureen and Jesuit Father George F. Lundy, Detroit Mercy's provost and vice president for academic affairs, announced that they are working on “a process to recruit new leadership for the Religious Studies Department.”
Father Arthur McGovern, a Detroit Mercy professor of philosophy and a self-described “liberation theologian” told Credo, an Ann Arbor independent Catholic newspaper, that he is working with a committee to develop a specifically Catholic studies program at the university.
“I want them to be more sensitive to Catholic identity,” he said. “I just want to protect Catholic identity. We are trying to correct a difficult situation.”
Challenge for the Bishops
For many, the Albrecht case is exhibit one in the case for faithful implementation of Ex Corde Ecclelsiae and its foundations in canon law.
Ex Corde Ecclesiae will help guide universities in their hiring decisions for certain positions and better establish how bishops are to proceed in situations like the one at Detroit Mercy, said Msgr. Raica. But for now, “the bishops have few means currently available to them.”
“The exact nature of how to promulgate Ex Corde Ecclesiae hasn't been decided,” said Bishop John Leibrecht, chairman of the bishops conference's Ex Corde Ecclesiae Implementation Committee, in an interview with the Register. “That there is to be a mandate is clear from the [document]. How it will be applied in this country is under discussion.”
The bishop pointed out that Ex Corde Ecclesiae also states that “non-Catholic members are required to respect the Catholic character of the university, while the university in turn respects their religious liberty” (Ex Corde Ecclesiae, No. 27).
Bishop Leibrecht said his committee of seven U.S. bishops, eight representatives of Catholic higher education institutions and several consultants expect to receive reports early in May with the findings of various dialogues that have been solicited by the bishops conference. The committee will study these reports over the summer and present the results to the U.S. bishops at their November meeting.
The Catholic Daughters of the Americas, a 115,000-member organization founded in 1903, is supporting the implementation of Ex Corde Ecclesiae.
The organization announced April 14 that it has adopted a legislative resolution stating that it “deplores the erosion of Catholic identity which continues to take place in Catholic education institutions in the United States.” It proclaimed its “firm support” of the work of the bishops in this matter.
“The bishops, in a certain sense, have a difficult task ahead of them,” noted Dr. Janet Smith, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Dallas, a Catholic institution.
“Situations like this one [at Detroit Mercy] are not common, but they are not rare, either,” she added. “Parents don't really have a clue about these incidents. The most egregious examples are being published now, but this erosion of Catholic identity has been going on for about three generations.
“And some leaders of very high-profile Catholic universities have been leading the charge to keep things the way they are.”
Academic Freedom
Those who argue for maintaining the status quo sometimes invoke the need to accommodate to currently accepted notions of academic freedom.
“The claim that academic freedom will be violated is curious, because every discipline has its canons to which those who teach it have to adhere,” Smith said. “A geologist can't advocate the flat-earth theory, for instance.”
The bishops will have to develop an apparatus to more easily determine the acceptability of theology faculty, Smith said. “Ex Corde Ecclesiae talks about an oath of fidelity that would basically be the Creed. No Catholic should have trouble promising to uphold the Creed.”
Kate Ernsting writes from Ann Arbor, Michigan.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Kate Ernsting ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: Vatican Against the Tide DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:On April 21, the Canadian Embassy at the Vatican celebrated its 30th anniversary with a Mass for Peace at a time of heightened diplomatic activity due to the Balkans war. Canada's ambassador witnessed the behind-the-scenes efforts for peace in the Vatican, and is well acquainted with the Holy See's work with Western nations. He spoke to Register correspondent Raymond de Souza in Rome.
De Souza: As an ambassador from a NATO country, what can you tell us about the initiatives of the Holy See as regards the war in Kosovo?
Tanguay: First of all, I would like to state that Canada, as a NATO country, believes in the solidarity of the alliance. Therefore, Canada has been a part of every NATO operation.
As for the Holy See, I believe it was the first time (I am open to correction) that it has called in ambassadors from a military alliance for consultations and to discuss openly a peace initiative. The Holy See called all the ambassadors from the NATO countries together during the first week of the bombing, including the three new members who were formerly members of the Warsaw Pact.
It was a very frank meeting with the secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, and Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, the secretary for relations with foreign states. Each of us made some comments supporting and encouraging the Vatican's position — it was a mission of peace. The Italian ambassador made available to [Archbishop] Tauran a military aircraft so that he could go to meet President Milosevic. And so he went to Belgrade the next day and met with all the key figures.
What can the Holy See do through diplomacy in a time of crisis such as this?
As we can see from conflicts in many parts of the world — the Middle East, Ireland, or the former Yugoslavia, for example — very often conflicts originate between groups of different confessions or religions. The Holy See is in a unique position to be able to deal with both the civil authorities and the religious authorities. My country, for instance, would not have access to or influence on the Orthodox patriarch in Belgrade, whereas the Holy See, on an ecumenical basis, has access to the highest religious authorities. In many countries, particularly Orthodox territories, religious authorities play a very important political role. The Moscow Patriarchate is very influential in foreign policy, and so is the Patriarch Pavle in Belgrade.
At the anniversary celebrations, you spoke about the “convergence” between the international positions taken by Canada and the Holy See.
Relations between the Holy See and Canada are very close because of our traditional humanitarian interests. For example, the Canadian foreign minister, Lloyd Axworthy, is extremely well received here because he has such a great interest in humanitarian affairs. As you know, last December in Ottawa was the signing of the treaty banning land mines. The Vatican sent [Archbishop] Tauran to Ottawa to sign this treaty, and also to contribute to the fund established for the destruction of land mines. Another example is the question of refugees.
The Vatican follows the question of refugees very closely and Canada has been very hospitable for refugees from all over the world. So we have many points of foreign policy in common; there is definitely a convergence between the interests of the Holy See, the doctrine of the Church, and Canadian foreign policy.
What is the origin of this convergence?
The influence of the Catholic Church in Canada on the leadership is probably the origin of this convergence. Many of our leaders have been formed in colleges and seminaries conducted by priests and religious orders such as the Jesuits or Dominicans, so they grew up with the ideals of the Church in mind.
What then about issues where the Holy See has had strong disagreement with Western countries, including Canada? For example, the Gulf War or the Cairo conference on population and development?
Thank you for raising this matter. The demography of our country is that we have 13 million Catholics, 13 million Protestants, and 4 million of other religions or no religion. It would not be possible for any leader to impose the views of one or the other confession. This is understood by everyone in our country, by the officials of the Holy See, and by the Holy Father himself — a question I discussed with him when I presented my credentials in 1997.
Does the Holy See look for other countries to help amplify its voice in international affairs?
It is understood that in a forum like the United Nations or in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, where both Canada and the Holy See are full members, there is bound to be a divergence of opinions and views on various subjects. At international conferences we try to get the support of “like-minded” countries, and more often than not the Holy See and Canada belong to the same group. On certain issues unfortunately that does not happen, but that is understood by everybody.
Before you were appointed as ambassador here you served as a senior official in the Canadian episcopal conference. How does that experience influence your work here as ambassador?
Divine Providence has his own ways, as none of this was predictable — neither my assignment at the episcopal conference, nor my assignment at the Holy See. I was a dedicated foreign service officer, and I served where I was asked to serve. So when the prime minister asked me to come here, I accepted immediately. It was a great honor.
My experience with the bishops was extremely useful; I learned so much about the Church and the Church in Canada, so I came here well-prepared for this post. But in this position I am here representing the government of Canada. …
I find sometimes that the senior officials of the Curia ask me a question, and they already have the answer of the Catholic hierarchy, but they want to have the views of the government. So I speak only as a representative of the government and nothing else.
I am a very convinced Roman Catholic and I never miss an opportunity to testify to my faith in religious ceremonies and so on, but when it comes to foreign policy, I can separate the two very easily.
It is not always easy to understand the role of the Holy See, which is at the same time the Church and also an institution subject to international law and plays a role in international affairs. It is the only institution of its kind and that is why most of my colleagues here want to find out more about it because it is not well understood.
The role of the Holy See in international affairs is sometimes presented as one of intrigue or mystery. What is your impression of the milieu?
Personally, I am not interested in intrigues. Since my arrival here I have not faced anything of that sort. On the contrary I found that everyone has been very open with me. I don't get the feeling when they talk to us that they are hiding something, although in foreign policy you can never expose all your motivations to everybody. The art of diplomacy is based very much on interpersonal relations and the confidence that exists between individuals of different views and from different countries.
Yet the milieu here is so special, it has so much history — it is unique. You could take almost any incident and turn it into a film and it would be a great success because of the uniqueness of the history, the setting, the key figures. There have been many novels written where the Vatican is the venue of such intrigues, but I think we should leave this to the imagination of artists. The reality is not quite so exciting!
Raymond de Souza writes from Rome.
----- EXCERPT: Canada's envoy tells how Holy See deals with NATO and U.N. population forum ----- EXTENDED BODY: J. Fernand Tanguay ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson ----------- TITLE: U. S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:More Men Entering Priesthood
In a sign that the post-Vatican II decline in vocations in the United States may be ending, the number of men studying at the nation's major seminaries has risen to the highest level in five years, according to a study by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, said the article.
CARA found that 3,386 men in the United States were enrolled in graduate-level theological programs for the priesthood in the current academic year, up by 228 from last year and the highest figure since 1993-94.
“This reflects a general stability in enrollment,” CARA's Bryan T. Froehle told the Times. Froehle and others who have studied the issue attribute the development to the expansion of pre-theology programs, a slight rise in the number of college-level seminarians, and stepped-up recruitment efforts by bishops.
Religion Shut Out of TV Debate on Kosovo
“Even though the Balkans conflict is seen by many as largely a question of a moral imperative … the spiritual perspective has been all but excluded from this debate on television,” said Rosenberg. One striking exception, he found, is Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, “a PBS magazine series that has covered the bombing story from its inception.”
The show's executive producer, Gerry Solomon, told Rosenberg, “part of the problem in the current situation is that it is very difficult for religious leaders to clarify their thinking on this war. They're struggling with it.”
“Yet,” Rosenberg asked, “in sorting out their own feelings, wouldn't it be beneficial for viewers to be exposed to that struggle? If not, then talk-show debates over NATO's and America's bombing policy will continue to be framed overwhelmingly in terms of national or strategic interests, as if other considerations were irrelevant.”
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:Vatican Disturbed by Denial of Bail for Bishop
ASSOCIATED PRESS, April 21—The denial of bail for a Catholic bishop by a Rwandan court has added additional stress to the relationship between the Vatican and the government of Rwanda, according to the AP.
The wire service reported that Bishop Augustin Misago, 56, was arrested on genocide charges last week and ordered to remain in the Kigali Central Prison.
The length of his stay will depend on the results of an investigation into his alleged participation in the 1994 killings by Hutu tribesman of more than 500,000 minority Tutsis tribesmen and politically moderate Hutus, reported AP.
Misago's arrest on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity provoked protests from the Vatican and Rwanda's eight other bishops, who led Sunday services to pray for Misago, said AP.
Female Priests in Australia?
AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CO., April 21—“Catholic bishops are seriously considering relaxing church rules and appointing women to the clergy,” Australia's ABC TV network recently reported.
The source of the story, said ABC, is Townsville Bishop Raymond Benjamin, who says the idea of women priests — along with passing on more responsibilities to lay people — is being discussed as a remedy for Australia's declining number of priests.
The only thing wrong with the bishop's idea about women priests is that the Magisterium has consistently held that it is not possible for the Church to ordain women. The priesthood as found in the scriptures and tradition of the Church has always manifested the role as a male one.
Church in Brazil May Apologize for Slavery
Brazil's 280 bishops met recently in Sao Paulo to discuss the Church's yearlong program for the Great Jubilee, which is due to end with a visit by Pope John Paul II in April, 2001.
More than fourmillion slaves were shipped from Africa to Brazil from 1500 until the late 19th century. “Churchmen openly accepted slavery and kept slaves themselves,” reported the Spokesman Review.
It added that the president of the bishops' conference, Bishop Jaime Chemello, was quoted as saying that it would not be “going too far” to apologize for the church's links with slavery.
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:Meeting With Pope Just a ‘Courtesy Call’
“The Unionist Party leader played down the importance of the occasion,” reported the Times' Philip Willan from Rome.
Asked what significance he attached to the meeting, Trimble replied: “Well, none, I think. As I have said before on many occasions, the term ‘historic’ has been much over-used.”
Concluded Willan: “In a brief personal meeting with Pope John Paul, Trimble said he had expressed the hope that peace could be secured in Northern Ireland in the course of this year.”
DJ Sacked for Playing
The radio station indicated that it took the action because its policy prohibits the playing of foreign language recordings. The CD includes spoken and musical passages in Latin, Italian, English, French and Spanish.
Known as Kaptain Kaos, Volpe does not hide the fact that he is an admirer of the Pope, said the Universe.
“They were worried about the content because they couldn't understand it. But it's the Pope, for crying out loud,” said one of Volpe's lawyers, who plan to file suit on the DJ's behalf for wrongful dismissal, reported the Universe.
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican ----------- TITLE: Banishing Fear in Littleton DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:If fear is going to drive out hope, it will have to find a better place than the Denver suburb of Littleton to do it.
The response to the tragic shooting there was remarkable. First, the response in the Columbine High School. At least two students confessed faith in God knowing they might die for it. Coach Dave Sanders rescued 100 kids from harm's way before he was shot trying to rescue more.
Then, the response of the city: 1,200 people gathered in St. Frances Cabrini Church (the parish of four of the five Catholic victims) for a prayer service April 22, where they enthusiastically affirmed their dedication to live lives of hope, and not fear. Many would return April 25 for a scheduled funeral service with Archbishop Charles Chaput presiding — while 50,000 teens around the nation joined them by praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament.
This hope has deep roots in Denver.
In 1994, in a prescient address to a group of Colorado Catholics there in the days leading up to World Youth Day, Pope John Paul II said he recalled speaking with the city's then archbishop.
“Archbishop Stafford has told me of the deep concern of many Americans about urban violence as a negative ‘sign of the times'that needs to be read in light of the Gospel.”
He continued, as if speaking directly to Americans today about the tragic events in Littleton.
“The question which must be asked is, who is responsible? Individuals have a responsibility for what is happening. Families have a responsibility. Society has a heavy responsibility. Everybody must be willing to accept their part of this responsibility, including the media which seem to have become more aware of the effect they can have on their audiences.”
He continued, “And when the question is asked, What is to be done?, everybody must be committed to fostering a profound sense of the value of life and dignity of the human person.”
On Aug. 15, 1994, he spelled out what he meant, concretely.
He didn't ask for more worrying about youth as a problem — he looked to them as a solution.
“Young pilgrims, Christ needs you to enlighten the world to show it the ‘path to life,’” he said. “Have no fear. The outcome of the battle for life is already decided, even though the struggle goes on against great odds and with much suffering.
… Christ in his body — the pilgrim people of God — continually suffers the onslaught of the Evil One and all the evil which sinful humanity is capable of.
“At this stage of history, the liberating message of the Gospel of life has been put into your hands. And the mission of proclaiming it to the ends of the earth is now passing to your generation. … The Church needs your energies, your enthusiasm, your youthful ideals, in order to make the Gospel of life penetrate the fabric of society, transforming people's hearts and the structure of society in order to create a civilization of justice and love.”
Many groups of young people took the Pope's words to heart.
One is the nationwide Catholic apostolate Life Teen, which has a chapter in Littleton headed by Jim Beckman.
The group is dedicated to eucharistic adoration, liturgy and a robust faith. They are also committed to bringing the message of Christ to their community. In the aftermath of the shooting there, Beckman said, “Kids are literally running back to Church.”
He said of the tragedy in Littleton, “It lays a huge responsibility on us not to be blown away by the evil and wickedness of what these two kids did.”
Certainly. And also to do all we can, in the face of great evil, to bring others to the one whose constant refrain in the Gospels is, “Be not afraid.”
* * *
The refugees of Kosovo need many things, but not what's being sent by the United Nations Population Fund, with the help of the International Planned Parenthood Federation.
Their long list of “aid” to 350,000 Kosovar exiles includes contraceptive kits, intrauterine devices, vacuum extraction abortion equipment and condoms.
Also included are several kinds of “emergency contraception” which are chemical abortion kits. One prevents a tiny human life from implanting in the uterus. Another, the pill RU-486, kills after implantation.
The plan has gone forward despite vigorous opposition. In Europe, Bishop Elio Sgreccia of the Pontifical Academy for Life and others argued forcefully in the newspaper Avvenire that the justification for the aid (that it is intended for the victims of rape by soldiers) isn't true — and that even if it were, it is a way to avoid, not solve, the problem. Oxfam and Save the Children stopped supporting the aid after seeing its consequences (Story, “Culture of Life”).
In the United States, Holy See negotiator John Klink drafted an alternative proposal calling for basic services like clean water and safe sanitation. He spent more than 10 years working with refugees for Catholic Relief Services, and knows well what refugees really need. It was denied.
This outrage should serve as a strong reminder of the importance of the continuing sessions, set to begin again in the next few weeks, of the ongoing “Cairo+5” meetings.
These will determine how the United Nations will implement the findings of the Cairo conference of 1994, and whether they will turn their attention to helping people – or continue eliminating them.
----- EXCERPT: Editorial ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion ----------- TITLE: An Exorcist in Rome DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:by Father Gabriele Amorth(Ignatius Press, 1999 205 pages, $14.95)
The most riveting chapter of Father Gabriele Amorth's book, An Exorcist Tells His Story, is the personal testimony of a young man who was freed from demonic possession through the ministry of this priest of the Diocese of Rome.
The freed young man recounts: “I found myself in an unknown part of the city. I do not know how I arrived there. My legs moved on their own; my arms and my body were totally independent from my will. It was a horrible feeling; I would tell my body what to do, and it would not obey me…. [Darkness] engulfed not only my soul but also my body. I saw everything as though it were the middle of the night, even during the middle of the day. … I began to scream, to twist on the ground as though I were on fire….”
The young man says he sought the help of priests and bishops, but was rejected in each case until he found Father Amorth. As the priest began the Church's prayers of exorcism, freedom returned: “Little by little, hope began to live in me. The light of day was returning, the song of birds ceased to sound like the cawing of crows, and the noises around me were not obsessive anymore….
“As soon as I left I felt an overwhelming desire to smile, to sing, to be joyful. ‘How wonderful,’ I told myself, ‘it is over!’ … All my pain had been caused by the rage of ‘someone'who hated me, and I was not crazy.”
We are not informed how long this particular young man suffered, but in another part of the book, Father Amorth says that the 93 people freed from possession through his ministry suffered Satan's ravages for an average of 10 years.
Such length of useless suffering is what motivated Father Amorth to write his book. He makes it abundantly clear that the young man's fruitless search for help is not an exception: “There are very few exorcists in Italy, even fewer who are well prepared, and fewer still in other countries. Therefore, I found myself blessing people from France, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, and England, because — those who came to me assured me — they had not been able to find an exorcist.”
Father Amorth says that by the time he was writing after nine years of this ministry he had “exorcised over 30,000 people.” Allowing for weekly time off and for annual vacation, that works out to at least 11 people per day. Even more astonishingly, he says that his predecessor in the ministry “would see from 60 to 80 people every morning.”
The reason Father Amorth claims 93 people were freed from possession yet he exorcised over 30,000 is that he distinguishes several different levels of Satan's work: oppression, obsession, infestation, and so on. Not everyone who needs the Church's prayers of exorcism is fully possessed. Still the author believes the Church must open its eyes to the level of problem it faces: “Sadly, since most bishops have never performed an exorcism, they are seldom aware of the extent of the need.”
And he wants to change all that: “The first step, the fundamental step, is to reawaken the awareness of bishops and priests, according to sound doctrine. … The principal purpose of my book is to contribute to this reawakening.”
But he does not intend the reawakening to be frightening. He does not want to create exaggerated fears about Satan's powers, who after all is only a creature of God, subject to God's power. In fact, Father Amorth cautions us not to fear the devil's extraordinary works, but to fear falling into sin from his normal activity of temptation. What's more, he says, “The believer … knows that he can always count on the help of the angels and of the saints; therefore, how can he feel alone, abandoned, or oppressed by evil?”
Yet with all this reason for confidence, bishops and priests still shy away from getting involved with exorcism. Father Amorth wants to encourage them to overcome their fears: “Satan is much more enraged when we take souls away from him through confession than when we take away bodies through exorcism. In fact, we cause the devil even greater rage by preaching, because faith sprouts from the word of God. Therefore, a priest who has the courage to preach and hear confessions should not be afraid to exorcise.”
And if one's fears were overcome, where would he begin? According to the author, the Church has taken care of that question. To a bishop who said he would not know what to do, Father Amorth responded: “Start by reading the instructions in the Ritual and recite the prescribed prayers over the person who requested them.”
One potential problem the author seems to overlook should be noted. Practicing exorcists have a tendency to construct theologies that are too dependent on their experiences. Father Amorth is surely correct when he says, “Modern theologians who identify Satan with the abstract idea of evil are completely mistaken.” However, he also may be making some different kinds of mistake. While he mostly stays away from theological speculation, still there are a few places in the book where he does not hold to that line. For example, he accepts something a demon told another exorcist — that it was not God who made hell. “It was us,” says the demon. Whatever the theological value of such an idea, it seems highly questionable to think the matter is settled on the basis of a demon's testimony.
Even though Father Amorth mostly stays away from this kind of speculation, other exorcists are not always so careful.
The solution would seem to be that theologians and exorcists need to attentively confer with each other in order to produce a full and sound theology. Both theology and the healthy practice of exorcism would benefit.
But fundamentally this is not a book of theology. It is on “practical aspects that may be useful to exorcists.” And Father Amorth certainly marshals enough evidence to make his case that there is a need to restore the ministry of exorcism in the Church. We can easily agree with him that “every diocese should have at least one exorcist at the cathedral.”
Gerry Rauch is an assistant editor of the Register
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Gerry Rauch ----- KEYWORDS: Education ----------- TITLE: This Thomas Didn't Doubt DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:“More Apologetics” by James Monti(This Rock, March 1999)
James Monti, author of The King's Good Servant but God's First: The Life and Writings of Saint Thomas More, writes: “In a December 1526 letter exhorting Erasmus of Rotterdam to take up his pen in defense of the Church, More speaks of apologetical writing as a matter of carrying out ‘the cause of God.’ It was More's passionate dedication to the unity of the Church … that inspired all his apologetic works, as he responded forcefully to attacks such as Martin Luther's on the ecclesiology of Catholicism. …
“Thomas More saw … rejections of hierarchical authority as inimical to Christ's intention for his Church ‘that they may be one’(John 17:22). For More this ecclesial unity is in particular the work of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, whom More refers to as the ‘Holy Spirit of unity, concord, and truth,'in stark contrast to the ‘spirit of error and lying, of discord and division, the damned devil of hell.’ More lays as the foundation of his ecclesiology the two promises of Christ in the Gospels that he would send the Holy Spirit to lead the Church into all truth (John 16:13) and that he would remain with us always even until the end of the world (Matthew 28:20).
“Citing Augustine that pride is ‘the very mother of heretics,’ More observes that dissenters ‘make idols of their own false opinions'and would have the people ‘reject and refuse the faith’ that ‘holy martyrs lived and died for.’ … In a 1532 letter to his friend Erasmus, More observes that the popularity of dissent is often a matter of wishful thinking rather than reasoned conviction: ‘[S]ome people like to give an approving eye to novel ideas. … [T]hey assent to what they read not because they believe it is true but because they want it to be true.’
“The bedrock upon which the dissenters of More's own time — the founding fathers of the Protestant Reformation — built so much of their theology is the well-known proposition of sola scriptura, that all revealed truths of Christianity, all teachings of Christ, are found in Scripture alone, to the exclusion of any ecclesiastically transmitted oral tradition. In response to this More reminds his readers that in the Church's beginning there were no written Gospels. …
“More also stresses that the authority of Scripture rests on the same foundation as that of the oral Tradition — the Catholic Church — for it is the Church that has defined the contents of the Bible, establishing what are or are not inspired writings.
“It is in defense of the Church's teachings regarding the Eucharist that Thomas More writes most effusively. … More sees Christ's continuing presence in the Eucharist as the fulfillment of his words at the Last Supper, when he ‘commanded the same to be done forever in his Church … in remembrance of his passion….’ He sees the Real Presence also as the fulfillment of our Lord's promise at the end of the Gospel of Matthew ‘to abide perpetually with us, according to his own words spoken unto his Church, when he said, ‘I am with you all days unto the end of the world.’
“In the course of his apologetical writings More addresses a wide range of other issues. … In the end it would be for his refusal to deny two of these teachings, papal primacy and the indissolubility of marriage, that More was to be imprisoned and put to death. In 1532, already conscious of where events might eventually lead, More writes:
”… ‘What death each man shall die that hangeth in God's hands, and martyrs have died for God, and heretics have died for the devil. But since I know it very well and so doth Tyndale too, that the holy saints dead before these days since Christ's time till our own believed as I do … if God give me the grace to suffer for saying the same, I shall never in my right wit wish to die better.’”
Ellen Wilson Fielding writes from Davidson, Maryland.
A condensed version, in the words of the original author, of an article selected by the Register from the nation's top journals.
----- EXCERPT: ARTICLE DIGEST ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding ----- KEYWORDS: Education ----------- TITLE: LETTERS DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:Academic Institute
I would like to make a point concerning the proposed Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies covered in the March 28-April 3 and following issues (“Academic Institute to Sidestep Bishops”).
My judgment is that those proposing this initiative want freedom and privilege without any corresponding responsibility. They want to raise very large sums of money under Catholic auspices, but without a need to answer to anyone in the Catholic Church. I am convinced that the best theology is done in and with the Church, and under the guidance of the magisterium. I fear the proposal will quickly and easily lead to the institutionalization of dissent from Church teaching. It moves in precisely the opposite direction of the prophetic call of Pope John Paul II in Ex Corde Ecclesiae.
Father Terry J. Tekippe
Professor of Theology Notre Dame Seminary, New Orleans
Sidestepping the Issue
Monika Hellwig's long letter sidesteps the two major charges made by Brian Caulfield's “Academic Institute to Sidestep Bishops.”
First, contrary to Hellwig's assertion, those seeking the new Institute are sidestepping bishops. They want no jurisdictional relation with the bishops and changed the title from “Catholic Institute” to just “Institute” apparently to avoid the requirement of Canon 808 that states any institution of higher study calling itself “Catholic” needs “the consent of competent ecclesiastical authority.”
Second, Hellwig completely fails to address the fact that some theologians on the “Commission on Catholic Scholarship” seeking this Institute are well known for dissenting from authoritative Papal teachings. The Institute will hardly transform American culture when all the non-theological projects Hellwig speaks of appear along with any theological projects legitimating contraception, abortion, homosexual practices, same-sex marriage, and/or the ordination of women. There are Catholic theologians and scholars who have exposed the intellectual and scholarly inadequacies of dissenting positions on these and other matters. But there is not one of them on the “Commission,” so it is patently unfair to the depth and breadth of Catholic Scholarship.
Finally, it is sad to see Father Heft and Dr. Hellwig hide behind appeals to the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities or the United States Catholic Conference or Origins to avoid a needed public debate on an Institute that seeks funding from Catholics to the tune of some $50 million.
In light of your excellent editorial on “Communio and Catholic Colleges” (April 4-10), to be genuinely Catholic this project should bring together the authority of the Church's magisterium, serious Catholic theology, and the interdisciplinary projects Dr. Hellwig mentions.
(P.S. I must decline the honor your reporter bestowed on me. I am not a Dominican but a diocesan priest.)
Father Matthew L. Lamb
Professor of Theology
Boston College
Editor's note: The Register regrets the loss to the Dominican Order.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion ----------- TITLE: How Feminists Are Reversing Meaning of Life DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:At one point in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae (the Gospel of Life), our Holy Father Pope John Paul II tells us the “meaning of life.” I'm not kidding. After describing Jesus on the Cross — “having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” (John 13:1) — he says: “In this way Jesus proclaims that life finds its center, its meaning and its fulfillment when it is given up”(italics original).
In other words, the meaning of life is found in loving. Fast forward about 2,000 years after Christ's death. A new voice claims to answer the question of the meaning of life — for women. The voice is (what passes for) modern feminism; and its answer is a twisted variation of the Christian view: love, but in this case defined narrowly as sex. Furthermore, sex itself is defined broadly to include sex whenever you think you're ready, with whomever you want, of whatever sex, with as many different partners as you want over a lifetime, for as much pleasure as you can wring out of it. Only “procreative” and “unprotected” sex are left out of the definition.
This is not hyperbole, if recent public actions and statements of self-described feminist organizations are taken at face value.
For a long time, we've become accustomed to groups like the National Organization for Women and Planned Parenthood promoting the idea that women would be more equal with men if they had men's sexual experience. This is interpreted to include sexual promiscuity before, and after, marriage(s). (Promotion of sexual promiscuity “during marriage” has largely disappeared in view of strong opposing public opinion.) And sex without the possibility of pregnancy. Thus the obsession with contraception and — inevitably, because contraception fails so often — with abortion. Lately, these obsessions have reached a fever pitch.
At a recent “Cairo + 5” conference — a follow-up to the 1994 U.N. Conference on Population and Development in Cairo — the self-described feminist contingent used almost its entire public voice trying to persuade participants to layer abortion rights' language into existing international agreements about women and development. This included trying to read into these agreements a “right” for minor children as young as 10 to have access to sexual education, counseling and contraceptive devices without their parents knowing it.
The Cairo conference itself was already famous for these same feminist voices spending a disproportionate amount of time on “reproductive rights,” and so little on the bread and butter issues that confront women every day — clean water, education, basic health care and business loans. By the end of that conference, the Holy See and some other delegations pushed hard for an explicit dollar commitment to women's universal education. But the self-described feminist delegations were too busy calculating a precise dollar figure for the cost of contracepting Third World women.
The situation has changed not at all in the intervening years, with the United States sending not only Hillary Rodham Clinton but also the presidents of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the National Abortion Rights Action League to declare “what women really want” at Cairo + 5.
Another recent example. Do you remember several years ago when the entire country was talking about the 30-40 million uninsured Americans in need of health care reform? With women disproportionately among the uninsured? Remember that part of the reason the whole project fell through was feminist insistence that every insurance plan in America cover abortion on demand? Well today, certain feminist groups have decided to make another run at “better insurance coverage for women.” Their agenda? Coverage for poor women? Coverage for single mothers? Nope. Mandatory coverage of contraceptives — including some that are really abortifacient. In state after state, and at the federal level, they are rallying round this flag, and having a fair amount of success, especially by crying foul over insurance coverage of Viagra for men. Essentially the old “equality of women's and men's sex drive” argument all over again.
Finally, there's the almost unbelievable report from the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States. This is a self-declared feminist group with long ties to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and other feminist groups. The group just published the results of its poll of “people who share the group's goal of promoting free-flowing discussions of sex in schools,” and elsewhere. The poll identified “10 people who have brought about a positive change in the way Americans view sexuality.” Some of the winners? The first woman to publicly promote masturbation among teens: former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders; pornographer Hugh Hefner; one of the most famously promiscuous men in America, Magic Johnson; famous lesbian actress Ellen DeGeneres; and last but not least, Dr. Ruth Westheimer.
Even one word more would be superfluous.
Helen Alvaré is director of planning and information,
Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Helen AlvarÈ ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: Blessed Padre Pio DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:In every century God provides special models for Christian living. In our day and age such a servant of God was Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, whose beatification by Pope John Paul II was scheduled for May 2 in St. Peter's Square.
Padre Pio was born Francis Forgione on May 25, 1887. His parents, Orazio and Giuseppe de Nunzio Forgione, were simple hard-working farming people in Pietrelcina in southern Italy, not many miles from Naples. He was the second of eight children. Three died in infancy and two entered religious life. They were God-fearing people — poor in material goods, but rich in the love of God.
His schooling came later than normal because he had to help tend the family's small flock of sheep. At school, he learned diligently and possessed a lively intelligence. Even as a little child he expressed the wish to become a priest. For this reason, his father traveled twice to America to earn the necessary funds for his seminary studies. Early in life, Francis was also the object of the devil's attacks, but on the other hand, he was consoled by heavenly graces and blessings.
When his father returned from America the first time, he took his son to enter the Capuchin order at Marcone in the province of Foggia in 1903. Here Francis received the Capuchin habit and the religious name Pio (in English, Pius). Despite the rigorous penance, prayer and fasting of the novitiate, he persevered and made his first vows Jan. 22, 1904.
During his philosophical and theological studies, his poor health and the Capuchin penitential life often made it impossible for him to keep pace with his classmates. Thus, he had to be sent home to his parents to recuperate. The local parish pastor of the church in Pietrelcina tutored him privately. Finally Padre Pio was ordained a priest Aug. 10, 1910, in the cathedral of Benevento. After ordination he still had to remain in Pietrelcina to rest. The doctors diagnosed his condition as tuberculosis and anemia.
“…in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions”
Collosians 1:24
His ailing health was perhaps the first sign of his vocation to “co-redeem” — to suffer with Christ as a victim for sinners. He admitted that he had consecrated himself to the Lord and had beseeched him to give him the punishment prepared for sinners and for souls in a state of purgation. Thus, it so happened that he became the first stigmatized priest in the history of the Church. On Sept. 20, 1918, during his thanksgiving after Mass, he was marked with the five wounds of our Lord's crucifixion. He was 31 years old and the wounds were to remain with him until death.
Despite the loss of a cupful of blood each day, the wounds miraculously never closed or festered. No one really knew how much he suffered from them. However, his rather halting gait, swollen feet, and his slow genuflections at the altar gave plenty of evidence of the pain he suffered.
Padre Pio became one of the most remarkable confessors of this century. Thousands of sinners were reconciled to God and many more were led to holiness through him. God blessed him with many extraordinary charisms, or gifts, for his mission as a “victim for sin,” including bilocation, prophecy, healing, reading of hearts, the gift of tongues, and a fragrance that emanated from his wounds. Sometimes the fragrance revealed his unseen presence. It was proof that he was responding to a prayer of petition, warning someone to proceed with or to desist from an action, or to pray and to hope.
“The apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders among the people.”
Acts 5:12
Padre Pio's ability to read hearts was particularly useful in the confessional, where so many people returned to the sacraments. Many were astonished at his revelation of their hidden sins, sometimes long forgotten. In the sacrament, he counseled everyone who came, and they came in droves from all parts of the world. All classes of people felt welcome — the sick and the poor, the notable and the unknown.
On one occasion in the confessional, Padre Pio told a penitent named Frederick Abresch that he had omitted certain grave sins in previous confessions. He sent him away to make a better preparation. When Abresch returned, Padre Pio told him that his last good confession had taken place during his honeymoon, many years previous. After this reminder, Abresch recalled that his new wife had indeed expressed a desire for them to approach the sacrament during their honeymoon, and that he had not made a good confession since then.
He also received over 500 letters a day, and was often aware of their contents before the envelopes were opened.
Bilocation was another manifestation of his great love for people in need. There were times when he was able to be in, and to act in, two different places at the same time. Even though the Church authorities seriously forbade him ever to leave San Giovanni Rotondo, he was able to extend himself beyond its confines. It is well-known that he was seen in Rome, in America and many other parts of the world, although he never left his friary.
Another special gift of Padre Pio was his ability to prophesy and look into the future. He could tell, for example, the need for a medical operation, the sex of an unborn child, a vocation to the priesthood, religious life or married state. At times he knew whether a soldier was really “missing in action” as reported. Thirty years ahead of time, he foretold the building of a Capuchin friary and seminary in his own birthplace.
Fifteen years ahead, he knew a hospital would be built in San Giovanni Rotondo — La Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza (House for the Relief of Suffering). Opened and inaugurated May 5, 1955, it became his greatest memorial of charity. It is a very modern hospital of 1,200 beds, staffed with distinguished medical personnel and furnished with the most efficient up-to-date equipment. Many doctors and personnel offer their service free to meet the needs of the poor in southern Italy.
In addition to the medical care he inspired, Padre Pio also aided the afflicted through miracles. One spectacular cure took place in 1947. A young girl named Gemma di Giorgi lived in Sicily. She was born Christmas night 1939 without pupils in her eyes. Competent doctors and specialists declared that nothing could be done about her blindness. Gemma's grandmother took her to Padre Pio for help. She went to confession with the friar and received her first Holy Communion from him. He touched and blessed each of her eyes. From that day she has been able to see clearly, although she still has no pupils — a phenomenon verified by many eye specialists.
Yet, it is not for all these charisms that Padre Pio is being beatified, but for his holiness of life. He was a man of great prayer. Despite his daily time-consuming duties in the confessional, he always found time to turn to God. He needed only a few hours of sleep each night and arose at 2 a.m. to spend the quiet hours before Mass in silent prayer.
He once wrote: “Prayer is the best weapon I have; it is the key to God's heart. Speak to Jesus not only with your lips, but also with your heart; in fact, on certain occasions you should speak to him only with your heart.” He also said: “One searches for God in books, but will find him especially in prayer.”
Padre Pio stressed the importance of prayer with all his penitents and spiritual children. In fact, he had established more than 700 prayer groups all over the world. By now there are over 2,000 of these prayer groups.
“If I have the gift of prophecy and … faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.”
1 Corinthians 13:2
His love for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament was unparalleled. To fully appreciate the source of his strength, we must look to his Mass. To have witnessed his Mass was an unforgettable experience. In his lifetime people flocked from all parts of the world to attend and to receive holy Communion from him, and to participate with him in the afternoon Benediction. What everyone admired and witnessed was his living faith and love for his Lord and Savior in the Blessed Sacrament.
Another source of strength and encouragement was our Blessed Lady, to whom he ascribed all the success of his priestly life.
His deep devotion to her manifested itself principally through his continual recitation of the rosary throughout every day of his long life. He called the rosary his “weapon” against Satan and the world.
His love for Mary was not the result of an exaggerated Marian devotion. It sprang from a deep and abiding faith in Christ and his Mother.
He concluded each day, for example, with the rosary and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, because his whole life and all his activities were centered around Jesus and Mary.
Mary protected him during the attacks of the devil and consoled him in all his sufferings and trials. He always sought her intercession and was never left unaided. When he was seriously ill in 1959, he was cured miraculously when the pilgrim statue of Our Lady of Fatima visited San Giovanni Rotondo. He died Sept. 23, 1968, with the names of Jesus and Mary on his lips.
Padre Pio remains with us in spirit! His intercession is extremely powerful. His prayer still gives health back to the gravely ill, makes cripples walk and the blind see, restores peace and serenity to tormented souls and to converts, atheists and sinners.
His message for all of us is one of hope, joy and comfort. His exemplary charity for souls can be summed up in his own words: “I can refuse no one. How can I, when the Lord never refuses me a grace?” He is still the good Samaritan, always ready to carry the cross for others and to be of service, especially as a victim for sinners.
Father Armand Dasseville, national spiritual director of U.S. Padre Pio prayer groups, writes from New York.
----- EXCERPT: The remarkable life and gifts of Francis Forgione ----- EXTENDED BODY: Armand Dasseville ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: Weighing the Importance of Liturgical Finery DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:Clothes don't make the man — or do they?
Humanity seems unable to make up its collective mind. Here we have one of those rare cases of two conflicting expressions of conventional wisdom, both of which are venerated as proverbs. Should precedence be accorded to substance or to form, to essentials or to the trappings that envelop them?
A laicized version of the medieval adage “Habitus non facit monachum” (“The habit doesn't make the monk”) has trickled down to our own time as “Clothes don't make the man.” We know in our hearts this is true, since a person's real worth flows from within. Still, we can't help admitting that Shakespeare was also right to say that clothes, at least sometimes, do make the man — a streamlined version of the Bard's expression “The apparel oft proclaims the man.”
In short, substance reigns, but appearances must also be reckoned with.
Similar reflections may shed light on disputes regarding the liturgy. Here, too, we must establish a proper relationship between essentials and accidentals. Some months ago I was party to an animated postprandial exchange with a group of theologians concerning the relative importance of form versus substance in the celebration of the Eucharist. One group echoed typical lamentations about the state of Catholic worship in the United States, while the other maintained that the objective value of the Mass itself so dwarfs such considerations as to render them practically immaterial.
One particularly articulate fellow offered an impassioned defense of the absolute value of the Catholic Eucharist. This man's argument carried special weight because he had converted from Protestantism, convinced as he was of the real presence of Christ in the Sacrament. No aesthetic considerations, said he, no quality of preaching, singing or church architecture can light a candle — if you will — to the overwhelming reality of the Mass, which is truly Christ's sacrifice, his self-offering on Calvary made present sacramentally. No other Church or Sunday “service” can make that claim.
Our friend went on to present an analogy. The Mass — he mused — is like his wife. Sometimes she may sport a dress he is particularly fond of, other times she wears clothing he doesn't care for. At times she applies make-up, other times she doesn't. All this doesn't affect our man's deep-seated affection for and devotion to his spouse. He easily overlooks her appearance to take account of the essentials. He doesn't love her for her wardrobe or her cosmetics, but for who she is. So too, the Mass. Liturgical flourish is nice, but remains just an adornment, and its presence — or absence — doesn't change the value of the Mass a whit.
While this argument elicited nods of approval, some were clearly uncomfortable with this insouciant dismissal of the liturgy's aesthetic dimension. The rejoinder wasn't long in coming. Another companion at table picked up on the wife image, and took the argument a step further: What if your wife stops taking showers as she should, he proposed, and neglects her clothing to the point of unseemliness? Your natural (at least interior) response would be: “But darling, you're so lovely — why must you disfigure your beauty by such unpleasant wrappings?” They are indeed accidentals, but when so flagrantly disregarded they make one forget the essentials.
In the same way, though the essence of the Mass is untouched by slovenly liturgies, similar neglect can offend sensibilities to the point of destroying the devotion and recollection that are so helpful for fruitful celebration.
I must admit I'm spoiled. Here in Rome the very grandeur of the churches instills a sense of the sacred and lifts the souls of worshippers. (Alas, the same cannot be said for some modern American ecclesial amphitheaters.) The solemn celebrations at St. Peter's Basilica, for instance, move us by their sheer majesty, and the Pope's tremendous capacity for prayer summons everyone present to a deep interior dialogue with their Creator and Redeemer.
True, St. Peter's has distractions, too. The boys of the Sistine Choir — whom one dear friend playfully refers to as the “Vatican Screamers” — sometimes bear a greater likeness to the Little Rascals in graduation gowns than to the celestial cherubim. And the immense shifting throngs with their chitter-chatter, flash guns and fidgeting don't contribute to a prayerful atmosphere. Yet by and large in Rome the Eucharist is celebrated with dignity and devotion, and horror stories of liturgical experimentation sound very foreign indeed.
As a priest, I am consoled to think that in the Mass — as in all the sacraments — Jesus Christ is the protagonist, not I. It is his Mass and his sacrifice, and thus his perfect offering is not compromised by the imperfection of the one who stands, trembling, “in persona Christi.” At the same time, the benefit to those who assist at Mass depends not only on the Divine Giver, but also on the dispositions of the human receiver, which in turn hinge at least partly on liturgical ambiance and even on the bearing and fervor of the minister. A “good liturgy,” especially as regards reverence and a sense of the sacred, can make an enormous difference.
Thus, while clothes may not absolutely “make the man,” we do well to keep him smartly dressed.
Father Thomas Williams is author of Building on Solid Ground.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Thomas Williams ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: A Costly Hijacking DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:In one of its most audacious moves, the National Liberation Army guerrilla group hijacked an airplane from Avianca airlines during a scheduled flight from Bucaramanga to Bogota, taking 45 hostages, including a congressman, a mayor, an Ecuadorean nun and an Italian lay missionary.
The move by the rebel group, commonly referred to by the acronym ELN, attracted the country's attention, but quickly turned into a political hot potato.
The government rejected the possibility of any negotiation, while ELN faced the complication of explaining an unjustified act of violence and somehow ensuring the safety of the hostages in the middle of a dangerous jungle.
The Catholic Church has provided the chance for a way out.
Archbishop Alberto Giraldo Jaramillo, president of the Colombian bishops' conference, offered himself as a mediator, and said he would be willing to travel to the jungle of San Pedro to talk directly with ELN leaders.
The archbishop, however, is taking a firm line and demanding the release of the hostages first.
—Alejandro Bermudez
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Alejandro Bermudez ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: CNN's 'Voices of the Millennium' Attacks Church Beliefs Says Catholic League DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:ATLANTA—The Voices of the Millennium, a series of short clips that CNN has been running during commercial breaks on featured programs are meant to highlight events of the last millennium.
The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights argues that one — “Women in the Pulpit” — suggests that CNN “has a problem” with the Catholic faith.
The brief video presentation features a female minister, a male author and a professor. The author and the professor criticize the Catholic Church, said the Catholic League.
It quoted the Harvard's professor Swanee Hunt saying in the clip that if the Catholic Church was to “live, grow, and thrive” it will have to ordain women.
But the Church is alive, has spread across the world, and has thrived — with growing numbers of converts and vocations — from the beginning, retorted the Catholic League.
When the Catechism of the Catholic Church addresses the question of the all-male priest-hood, it says:
“ The Lord Jesus chose men to form the college of the twelve apostles, and the apostles did the same when they chose collaborators to succeed them in their ministry. The college of bishops, with whom the priests are united in the priesthood, makes the college of the twelve an ever-present and ever-active reality until Christ's return. The Church recognizes herself to be bound by this choice made by the Lord himself. For this reason the ordination of women is not possible (No. 1577).”
Worshipping Maleness?
On Voices of the Millennium, Hunt added, that “As long as God looks like Michelangelo's image of the Sistine Chapel with a long, flowing white beard, we will continue to worship maleness.”
In speaking of language and images of God, the Catechism explains: “God transcends all creatures. We must therefore continually purify our language of everything in it that is limited, image-bound or imperfect, if we are not to confuse our image of God — ‘the inexpressible, the incomprehensible, the invisible, the ungraspable’”—with our human representations. Our human words always fall short of the mystery of God” (No. 42).
On the Fatherhood of God, the Catechism says that Christians follow Christ in calling God Father while remembering that “God transcends the human distinction between the sexes. He is neither man nor woman: he is God. He also transcends human fatherhood and motherhood, although he is their origin and standard: no one is father as God is Father” (No. 239).
The Catholic League has had run-ins with CNN owner Ted Turner in the past. The League reported that:
• In 1990, Turner apologized for saying that “Christianity is the religion for losers.”
• In 1994, CNN apologized to Cardinal Bernardin for running an unsubstantiated story about him, accusing him of sexual abuse.
• In February, Turner apologized for making anti-Catholic remarks at a pro-abortion conference in Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: A Radical and Bold Encyclical DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:NEW YORK—In his most recent encyclical, Fides et Ratio, Pope John Paul II has made an enormous and unique contribution to the tense discussion between theology and philosophy.
The Holy Father charts a course distinct from the major positions outlined by the leading thinkers, non-Christian and Christian, of this century, said Jesuit Father Avery Dulles in his McGinley lecture April 7 at Fordham University in New York.
Against agnostic and atheistic thinkers, the Pope affirms that there is such a thing as Christian philosophy, holding that such philosophy is Christian in its substance and content, not simply in its orientation. He holds that there can be a valid philosophy that is not influenced by revelation, and that the Christian philosopher need not be a theologian, said Father Dulles, a Fordham professor and prolific writer.
The Pope is also at variance with notions prevalent among some recent Catholic thinkers, including St. Thomas Aquinas disciple Jacques Maritain, by contending that Christian philosophy need not necessarily be Thomistic, the Jesuit scholar said.
“Even if John Paul II had done nothing more than to sort out what is and is not acceptable in the earlier positions, his encyclical would be sufficient to establish a new state of the question,” said Father Dulles. “But he also takes a positive step forward.”
A Christian Philosophy?
Fides et Ratio begins with the statement that faith and reason are the two wings on which the human spirit soars to the contemplation of truth. “The entire encyclical is an inspiring summons to the pursuit of a wisdom in which theology and philosophy are harmoniously integrated,” said Father Dulles.
To put the words “Christian” and “philosophy” together seems a contradiction in terms to most modern philosophers, said Father Dulles. The division has been especially acute during this century.
“The possibility of a Christian philosophy was fiercely debated in the late 1920s and the early 1930s … where several distinguished historians of philosophy vigorously denied that there had been, or could be, any such thing,” he said.
While a counterattack has been under way since the 1930s, and there are signs of hope on the present scene, the contemporary university world still “finds the concept of Christian philosophy paradoxical, even nonsensical,” said Father Dulles.
Father Dulles said the Pope “shows himself acutely aware of the present intellectual climate,” and, “with courage,” steers an original course among the “three classical positions” regarding the connection between Christian faith and human understanding.
Those positions include: the notion that the only true and adequate philosophy is Christian — as stressed by thinkers influenced by St. Augustine; the contrary view, held even by some neo-Thomists, that philosophy must proceed rigorously by its own methods; and what Father Dulles calls “several mediating positions.”
The Holy Father builds on the classical positions, said Father Dulles, and distinguishes three states of philosophy in relation to faith: philosophy prior to faith, a philosophy positively influenced by faith, and a philosophy that functions within theology to achieve some understanding of faith.
Preparing for Faith
As something prior to faith, Pope John Paul argues that authentic philosophy can attain conclusions that are true and certain and thereby prepare for the knowledge of revelation, which is also true and certain. “In affirming this position, the Pope would seem to be on solid ground,” with the likes of Plato and Aristotle,” said Father Dulles.
“Plato recognized pressing questions that the philosopher could not answer without the help of a divine revelation, which he himself did not claim to have received,” Father Dulles said. “The journey of philosophy, [John Paul] holds, cannot be completed without faith. Just as faith seeks understanding, so, conversely, understanding seeks faith. Philosophy, in perceiving its own limits, can serve as a preparation for the Gospel.”
Faith Aids Philosophy
In its second state, philosophy is aided by faith as it goes about its distinct mission, said Father Dulles.
John Paul argues that theology “cures philosophy of the pride to which it has at times been subject,” said Father Dulles. “Faith inspires philosophy with courage to tackle certain difficult questions, such as the problem of evil and suffering, that might seem insoluble except for the light cast on them by revelation.”
John Paul refers to the hallowed term “ancilla theologiae,” philosophy as the handmaid of theology, but points out that the phrase, while legitimate, is often misunderstood. “The service rendered by philosophy, he says, is not a matter of servile submission to commands given by theology as a higher discipline,” observed Father Dulles. “Rather, the term means that philosophy, while holding fast to its own principles, can be fruitfully used within theology.”
Philosophy Aids Faith
The Jesuit scholar said the Pope offers a number of analogies for how this might be understood: “Faith and reason, as described by John Paul II, are united like the two natures of Christ, which coexisted without confusion or alteration in a single person. Christian wisdom, similarly, involves a synthesis of theology and philosophy, each supporting and benefiting the other.”
He said the Pope also makes a comparison to Mary: “Just as Mary, without impairment to her humanity, became fruitful by offering herself to the Word of God, so philosophy, he says, can become more fruitful by offering itself to the service of revealed truth.”
Integral Christian wisdom, which sometimes goes by the name of philosophy or theology, draws on the full resources of reason and revelation alike.
Father Dulles concluded: “The program set forth in the encyclical is radical and bold, especially in view of the troubled climate of the academic world today. Philosophers and theologians who wish to implement the Pope's vision must resolutely struggle against mighty odds.”
A revitalized Christian philosophy could reinvigorate culture and also serve as a key element in John Paul's strategy for the new evangelization, argued Father Dulles. “By re-establishing the harmony between faith and reason, it can help to prepare for the new springtime of faith that is envisaged as Christianity enters upon its third millennium.”
Joe Cullen is an assistant editor of the Register.
----- EXCERPT: Father Avery Dulles says he has found something new in Fides et Ratio ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joe Cullen ----- KEYWORDS: Education ----------- TITLE: EDUCATION NOTEBOOK DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:Enrollment Rises At Christian Colleges — Along With Problems
Officials cited by Kleiner offer a number of reasons for the growth, including the increasing demand for values-centered education to a rise in the home-schooled applicant pool. “One thing is certain,” the writer added, “demographic changes like the ‘baby boom echo’ alone don't explain it.”
Kleiner reported that some of the colleges have loosened traditional regulations like dress codes and bans on dancing, and that the CCC&U schools are not immune to the behavioral problems that can afflict college students.
A junior quoted in the story said his Christian college has an underground party scene, “complete with drugs and alcohol.” Another school, Lee University in Tennessee, said the report, has experienced a rise in troublemaking that ranges from the petty to the serious, including the expulsion of four freshmen for breaking into the campus post office — a federal offense.
Catholic Couple Oppose School Clinic
“As Catholics and taxpayers, we should have a say in this,” said Linda Kracht, who with her husband Dave and other area Catholics fought a similar battle six years ago.
The present plan calls for Health Care Inc., a nonprofit group that operates clinics in “St. Paul's seven public high schools, is seeking to be able to dispense birth control directly to students in the schools,” according to Kroks. “Under current policy, the clinic writes prescriptions for students, but the students have to redeem them at free clinics off school grounds.”
New Objection To Scholarship Funds
Newsweek reporter Steve Rhodes answers his own question: “Opponents of publicly funded vouchers who say the private programs are stealthy bait-and-switch tactics to whet the appetites of parents — and get them to put more pressure on politicians to support government vouchers.”
To this he added the more familiar complaints that private scholarship funds lure the best, most active families and cause enrollment drops that diminish state aid.
Scholarship organizers respond that their programs “can actually help public education because schools have to shape up to keep students,” said Rhodes.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education ----------- TITLE: Will Miracles Never Cease? DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:Do miracles still happen today? Christian teaching is that they do, but many sincere believers live out their lives as if God's miraculous interventions were limited to that period of history during which the Old Testament and Gospels were written. This semirationalist point of view is reinforced by the increasingly secularist assumptions of public discourse and by the breathtaking advances of modern science which have accomplished much that would have once been labeled miraculous.
Contemporary filmmakers almost never tackle this subject. Religious faith, if presented at all, is usually depicted as something out of the ordinary, and the issues that accompany it, such as how God enters into our world, are rarely explored.
Ordet, which translates as “The Word,” is an exception. Winner of the Venice Film Festival's highest award in 1955, it examines the possibility of miracles in modern times with originality and intelligence. Danish writer-director Carl Dreyer (The Passion of Joan of Arc) believes that despite the secular intelligentsia's indifference to these questions, most people consider them important, and he dramatizes various ideas about the subject with moral clarity and passion.
Adapted from Kaj Munk's play of the same name, Ordet is an intense, complex family saga in which religion plays an important role. The action takes place in 1930 on a windswept, desolate part of Denmark's Jutland peninsula. The story unfolds in a slow, stately narrative rhythm, the interiors illuminated by a stylized use of light and shadow, with long pans between the different characters in the dialogue scenes. All these techniques work to underline the spiritual issues involved.
Morten Borgren (Henrik Malberg) is a Lutheran farmer of deep religious belief. He attends the local church and always befriends the pastor in residence.
All three of his sons live on his farm but have disappointed him in some way. The oldest, Mikkel (Emil Hass Christiansen), is an atheist who “does-n't have faith in faith.” He has two children, and his wife, Inger (Birgitte Federspiel), is expecting a third.
Joannes (Preben Lerdorff Rye), the middle sibling, has been driven mad by his studies of Danish existentialist Soren Kierkegaard. A former seminarian, he now believes himself to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. He wanders among the nearby dunes, preaching to the empty spaces about mankind's lack of faith.
Morten doesn't expect any help from God in curing Joannes' madness because he thinks “there are no longer any miracles today.” When the new pastor (Ove Rud) expresses a similar skepticism, Joannes proclaims it's because, nowadays, “men don't believe in Jesus Christ,” a statement both Morten and the pastor would deny.
The youngest son, Anders (Kay Christiansen), is in love with Ann Skraedder (Gerda Nielsen), the daughter of Peter (Ejnar Federspiel), the village tailor. Peter is a lay minister in a congregation which, though Lutheran, meets without a seminary-trained pastor in Peter's house rather than in the local church. It is a more evangelical way of worship. His followers often stand up during services and testify how Jesus has changed their lives. Both Peter and Morten oppose the marriage of Ann and Anders because of these religious differences.
But when Peter tells Anders, “You're not good enough; you're not Christian,” Morten's pride is wounded, and he decides to support the young people's union. In an emotional confrontation, he accuses Peter of following a religion that's “an affliction and a chastisement,” whereas his own more earthly brand affirms “the joy of life.” Peter tries to convert Morten to his sect, proclaiming that “God is a God of miracles,” and unless you understand that, “You are lost.”
This hostility seems permanent until Inger goes into premature labor, and her life is in danger. Director Dreyer uses this crisis in a surprising way to resolve both family conflicts and the differing attitudes about miracles.
At first glance Inger seems to be the film's moral center. Practicing a down-to-earth Christianity in which “the only thing that counts is to love one another,” she alone is tolerant of others' ideas. She thinks her husband's good heart will eventually lead him back to the church and that Joannes is “the closest to God.”
But Dreyer, while sympathetic to her notion of a little bit of truth in each character's belief system, doesn't endorse it.
Instead the movie suggests something subtler and more majestic — namely, that God's ways are different from ours and that his truth is larger than any one person's point of view.
Miracles aren't a benevolent form of magic. Although they often suspend nature's laws, they must be more than that. They must also point us to a truer understanding of the faith, and in Ordet, that means a change of heart involving forgiveness and reconciliation.
John Prizer currently writes from Paris.
----- EXCERPT: Danish family saga suggests something subtle about God's ways ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts & Culture ----------- TITLE: Vatican Celebrating Modern Religious Art DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—An exhibition organized by the Vatican Museums opened April 24 paying tribute to Pope Paul VI's love for modern art.
“Paul VI, ALight for Art” was inaugurated by Pope John Paul II, who said it honored Paul, “a little over 100 years after his birth, and on the 25th anniversary of the founding, at his request, of the museums' collection of modern religious art.”
The exhibit displays over 80 works portraying Paul VI – paintings, sculptures in bronze, wood and ceramics, sketches, medallions – all by modern artists. The exhibit is drawn from the Vatican Museums, the Archiepiscopal Gallery in Milan (where Paul VI served as archbishop), the “Art and Spirituality” collection of contemporary art in Brescia (Paul VI's birthplace) and private collections.
In displaying modern portrayals of Paul VI the exhibition aims to pay tribute to the late Pope in the work of the modern artists to whom he gave great encouragement. “Paul VI was not only a lover of art, but a fine connoisseur, a collector,” said Francesco Buranelli, director-general of the Vatican's Museum of Monuments and Pontifical Galleries. “He took up again the tradition of patronage of great pontiffs of the past with competence, farsightedness and goodwill, promoting art which expressed — after a long period of silence — religiosity and spirituality.”
Paul VI addressed contemporary artists in a landmark 1964 address. “We need you,” hesaid. “Our ministry is that of preaching and making accessible and comprehensible, indeed, to make moving, the world of the spirit, of the invisible, of the ineffable, of God. And in the this work, which renders the invisible world in accessible forms, intelligible forms, you are the masters.”
Confident that artists of the 20th century were still capable of this work, Paul VI directed the Vatican Museums to establish the collection of modern religious art that provided many of the pieces in the new exhibit.
—Raymond de Souza
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond de Souza ----- KEYWORDS: Arts ----------- TITLE: Videos on Release DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:Farm: The Life Inside Angola Prison
Nominated for a 1999 Academy Award, Farm: The Life Inside Angola Prison is one of the most riveting films released in years. Shot mostly in 1997, this feature-length documentary examines the stories of six of the more than 5,000 inmates held in America's largest maximum-security prison, the Louisiana State Penitentiary. The site of a former slave plantation named for the country that most of its slaves were born in, Angola was long notorious as a hellhole filled with hardened criminals and guards. Today, the prison still houses murderers, rapists and thieves serving lengthy sentences, but the life inside has changed considerably, as several of the men interviewed make clear. Some of them also clarify the meaning that religion has for them as they pass decade after decade in jail. Their faith in Jesus has been hard-won, arriving only after they faced severe crucibles, in one case including the imminent prospect of execution. Farm is a rare kind of film: It reveals universal and complex lessons about humanity from seemingly limited, even base material.
V 0 P –1 N 0 S 0
Moby Dick
This latest version of Herman Melville's acclaimed novel of adventure and madness on the high seas is alternatively compelling and enervating. Like the novel, the movie follows the neophyte Ishmael (Henry Thomas), a former schoolmaster who deserts his books for a life on board a Nantucket whaling vessel. Accompanying him is Queequog (Piripi Waretini), an experienced South Seas harpoonist. The two sign on to a most melancholy ship. Its master is Captain Ahab (Patrick Stewart), an old salt who is determined to take his revenge on the great white whale that took his leg. Opposing him is Starbuck (Ted Levine), an excellent first mate who wants to go home and leave his dangerous job. Starbuck watches in increasing horror as Ahab spurns his captain's duties, his honor and his common sense in the mad rush to hunt down the whale. Although Moby Dick is filled with thrilling shots of action at sea, all too often it's lumbered with heavy dialogue. This is a classic case of telling the audience, not showing it.
— Loretta G. Seyer
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Loretta G. Seyer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts ----------- TITLE: Rome Celebrates Canada's Inspiring Catholic History DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:The Canadian Embassy to the Holy See celebrated twin anniversaries April 21, marking what Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy called “important landmarks.”
A special Mass marked mark the 30-year anniversary of diplomatic relations between Canada and the Holy See, established by Paul VI in 1969, and the 100-year anniversary of the first Apostolic Delegation to Canada, established by Pope Leo XIII in 1899.
Monsieur Fernand Tanguay, the Canadian ambassador to the Holy See, said that he was “deeply honored” by the high-ranking Vatican delegation to the celebrations, which included the Cardinal-Secretary of State, Angelo Sodano; his deputy, Archbishop Giovanni Battista Re; and the Vatican “foreign minister,” Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran. Cardinal Paul Poupard of the Pontifical Council for Culture, and Archbishop John Foley, of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications were also present.
The presence of the three most senior diplomats of the Holy See, especially during a time of crisis in Kosovo, was noted. Canada, as a member of the NATO alliance, has found itself at odds with the position of the Holy See on the bombing campaign in Kosovo and Serbia.
“I think that the Holy See wished to show its interest and affection for Canada, where almost half the population is Catholic,” said Tanguay. “It is a pluralistic country, but where many of our leaders, such as the Prime Minister [Jean Chretien] and his wife, are dedicated Catholics.”
“In our bilateral relations as well as in multilateral fora, there always seems to be a convergence between Canada's preoccupation for peace, justice and the respect of international humanitarian law with the strong commitment of the Holy Father Pope John Paul II to these fundamental values and freedoms, for the common good of the whole of humankind,” said Tanguay, emphasizing balance of agreement over disagreement in the history of Canadian relations with the Holy See.
The Mass emphasized the French history of the Church in Canada. It was celebrated in the Church of Saint Louis of France, the national Church of France in Rome, and the French ambassador sat alongside the Canadian ambassador in the places of honor. Archbishop Couture mentioned his predecessor, Blessed Francois de Laval, during the eucharistic prayer, the first archbishop of Quebec, a territory that during the late 1600s included much of North America.
Cardinal Turcotte noted, though, that the Mass was celebrated on the feast of St. Anselm, the medieval archbishop of Canterbury, so that echoes of both the English and French founders of Canada were present at the celebration.
The principal celebrant of the Mass was Jean-Claude Cardinal Turcotte, Archbishop of Montreal, and President of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.
“One could write a history of the Church beginning with the persecutions she was subject to [in the first century] until today,” he said in his French-language homily. “As violent and systematic as were the persecutions of the first century, they were not able to stop the spread of the Gospel. Indeed, the contrary happened.”
“The fire which Christ came to enkindle on the earth is not easy to extinguish,” he said. “That is why, despite the difficulties that face the Church today – here in Europe, in my country in the Americas, and in many other places in the world – we must face the future with confidence.”
—Raymond de Souza
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond de Souza ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: Ambassador Tanguay DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:• Born 1932 in Cowansville, Quebec.
• Graduated in philosophy at St. Paul University in Ottawa, political science and law at the University of Ottawa, and international relations at the Free University of Berlin.
• Joined the Diplomatic Service of Canada in July 1963, subsequently serving in Moscow and Bonn, as well as U.N. postings in Geneva and New York.
• In Ottawa he served in various bureaus, becoming director general of International Cultural Relations.
• Served as assistant general secretary of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1993-1996.
• Appointed ambassador to the Holy See on Sept. 22, 1997, and presented his credentials to Pope John Paul II on Oct. 31, 1997.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: Home for Mary's Month DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:Washington, D.C., is always bustling with legislative activity, intense lobbying, and deal-making in the halls of Congress and throughout the city.
But it is also home to “America's Catholic Church,” the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Here, not far from the lawmakers' stomping grounds, is a massive yet serene structure where world-weary people can find spiritual solace and comfort.
Each year, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims journey to the basilica from all corners of the world. They come to worship or simply to tour the shrine and its more than 60 chapels, and return home moved by their experience.
Though the basilica was not completed and dedicated until 1959, it had its beginnings in the early 1900s, when Bishop Thomas J. Shahan, fourth rector of The Catholic University of America, first proposed building a shrine on the school's campus.
During a 1913 private audience with Pope Pius X, Bishop Shahan told him of his dream to build a national shrine to Mary. Pius X greeted the bishop's ambition with great enthusiasm and gave a personal donation of $400. The Holy Father also called on Catholics of America to support this newly sanctioned cause.
Buoyed by the Vatican's stamp of approval, Bishop Shahan convinced the board of trustees at Catholic University to donate land on its campus. He then founded a publication called Salve Regina (now called Mary's Shrine).
Not even a shovelful of earth had been moved when, in 1915, Bishop Shahan appointed Father Bernard McKenna of Philadelphia the first director of the shrine.
Construction was delayed for five years because of World War I. More significant delays would follow, through the Great Depression and World War II. Only the crypt level, the lower part of the shrine, was completed during that long period.
Then, in the early 1950s, Archbishop John Noll of Fort Wayne, Ind., and Archbishop Patrick O'Boyle of Washington led the effort to get construction moving once again. Funds from virtually every parish in the country poured in during the Marian Year of 1954, and construction was resumed.
Since its dedication on Nov. 20, 1959, millions of Catholics and non-Catholics have been enveloped in the basilica's spiritual aura. The shrine, with chapels celebrating the Marian devotion of immigrants from many countries, has become recognized the world over as the story of Catholicism in the United States during this century.
The basilica is the largest church in the Americas. A physically imposing structure, it blends architecture from both the East and West to symbolize the Church's universality. It is 459 feet long (St. Peter's in Rome is 615 feet long) and covers 77,500 square feet. Its Knights' Tower, a gift from the Knights of Columbus, rises to a height of 329 feet (the dome of St. Peter's reaches 448 feet).
The interior of the Great Upper Church is 400 feet long and can hold more than 6,000 worshippers. The lower Crypt Church is 200 feet long and can seat more than 400.
Those who are inspired by great works of art will not lack for them at the shrine. It contains an extensive collection of 20th-century art and the world's largest known mosaic of Jesus, called “Christ in Majesty.”
At the main altar is perhaps the most spectacular work, the Immaculate Conception mosaic. It is a reproduction of the 17th-century work of the Spanish painter Bartolomé Murillo.
A gift from Popes Benedict XV and Pius XI, the mosaic has been described as “the heart of the shrine.” Nearly 35,000 pieces of naturally colored porcelain were used to form the mosaic over a three-year period. These pieces were blended together so carefully that the work closely resembles an oil painting.
Visitors to the shrine will see that many of its 38 chapels and altars, and their artwork and statues, are dedicated to Mary and her various titles. The faithful can pray all 15 decades of the rosary while meditating on the mysteries depicted in separate altars behind the main sanctuary of the Great Upper Church.
There are no altars or chapels dedicated to other saints in the upper church; in the Crypt Church, however, 13 saints are honored. They include St. Joseph, St. Anne and St. Elizabeth; Church martyrs and virgins; and others, such as St. Margaret of Antioch and St. Catherine of Alexandria.
Peace in Large Spaces
Visitors and those making pilgrimages to the shrine will find that this massive structure can be as personal as it is big. The chapels offer a quiet place for reflection and meditation, apart from the activity in the main part of the Great Upper Church.
A gift shop in the basilica opens daily beginning at 8:30 a.m.
The basilica is, in the words of its rector, Msgr. Michael Bransfield, “the story of America. It is the embodiment of our faith and ideals. We look to this church as a national center of our devotion and constant reminder of the love of our Lady and her Son.”
Bishop Shahan's passion in the early years of this century was to establish a “hymn in stone.” He more than succeeded.
Jim Malerba writes from North Haven, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: THE BASILICA OF THE NATIONAL SHRINE OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jim Malerba ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: 'Universal Call to Holiness' Sculpture Soon to Debut DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:The latest addition to the Great Upper Church will be a sculpture called the “Universal Call to Holiness,” among the largest marble reliefs in the world. Soon to be completed, it is 50 feet wide and 15 feet tall and is located along the back wall of the basilica.
The theme for the sculpture was recommended by Cardinal James Hickey, archbishop of Washington. Sculpted by George Carr, the work depicts the human family moving toward holiness, to emphasize that finding holiness is a lifelong process. People from all walks of life are shown on their journey.
The sculpture evokes the central message of Vatican II, that all in the Church are created in the image and likeness of God, are called to holiness, and are destined for eternal life with him.
In designing his sculpture, Carr placed Mary prominently at the center. There, she beckons the faithful to follow in her example of love and selflessness.
Above Mary is the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove. He descends on God's followers, showering them with grace and love.
All the financing for the $1 million sculpture, which will be formally dedicated on Saturday, Nov. 20, came from Dr. and Mrs. Joseph V. Braddock, of Alexandria, Va.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: Hibernians Criticized on Award Recipients DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:MARLBORO, Mass.—The board of directors of the Massachusetts Citizens for Life at their April 9 meeting, unanimously passed a resolution criticizing the Massachusetts State Board of the Ancient Order of Hibernians for their plan to honor two politicians with solid pro-abortion voting records at their May 21 convention.
According to a press release, John O'Gorman, president of Division 16 of the Hibernians in Marlboro, Mass. was pleased with the statement of the Massachusetts Citizens for Life, which is the state affiliate of the National Right to Life Committee. “The proposed honorees, the Tolman brothers, in the state legislature have voted our tax money to destroy our unborn brothers and sisters before they could see the light of day,” said O'Gorman.
Warren Tolman is the former state senator who has just run for lieutenant governor and Steven Tolman is the current state senator for Brighton, Mass.
“In proposing this action, the AOH officers are blatantly ignoring its constitution,” he added.
“The constitution of the AOH states clearly in Article 2: “It [the order] pledges to work in harmony with the doctrines and laws of the Catholic Church.”
There has been a mounting opposition to the split personality that Massachusetts Catholic institutions have observed. Led by Robert Drinan, the ordained Jesuit priest who served in congress several terms, politicians who professed to be of the Catholic faith started compiling solid pro-abortion voting patterns.
U.S. Senators Kennedy and Kerry, both of whom voted against overturning President Clinton's veto of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act are at the forefront of an overwhelming majority of the U.S. Representatives from Massachusetts who did the same.
“We meet with Sen. Kennedy on Irish issues only,” a Hibernian official stated, “but it's just this issue.” In response to whether the Hibernians were overlooking and tacitly approving his pro-abortion voting record, the response was, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”
The Tolman brothers are to be honored for mandating “The Great Hunger” in school curricula in this state, a topic that has always been covered in U.S. history courses — and will still be.
“I was astonished at their intent to honor these two men, one of whom signed the Amicus Curiae brief supporting Planned Parenthood in the Casey v. Planned Parenthood decision, said Ray Neary, the president of the Massachusetts Citizens for Life.
“The Irish Potato Famine and resulting immigration to the United States is well covered in our schools,” added Neary, “and this is no more than a transparent political ploy to dupe Irish American voters.”
“Even the Pope embraced Mary Robinson, and she is “pro-choice,” stated one of the Hibernian officials.
“This type of thinking is scandalous and is what has given cover to these politicians who continue to vote pro-abortion in this state,” responded Maryclare Flynn, executive director of the Citizens for Life. “The irony of it is that we have so many wonderful pro-life members of our Massachusetts State Legislature including Speaker of the House Tome Finneran,” she added.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: Proudly Pro-Life Awards Dinner Honors President of N.Y. Giants DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:The National Right to Life Committee held its sixth Proudly Pro-Life Awards Dinner, April 21, in New York. The dinner, which is a major fund-raising event of the organization, raised more than $1 million and this year's Proudly Pro-Life Award went to Wellington Mara. Mara, president and co-chief executive officer of the New York Football Giants, is founder of Life Athletes.
President of the National Right to Life Committee, Wanda Franz, told guests that the fact that the dinner takes place at all is sad because it means that “our job is not yet finished.” However, she added that, on the other hand, “it is one more indication that the National Right to Life Committee is in this battle for the duration.”
Franz cited a poll conducted by Fortune magazine in December, which ranked the organization No. 9 (up one place) on its list of the 120 most important lobbying groups in Washington, D.C., while the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL) had dropped nearly 20 places from 43 to 61.
“It appears that proclaiming the truth has its rewards, and not just in heaven,” Franz said in the statement. “And being forced to defend the indefensible and having lied once too often ultimately catches up with you, for NARALat least.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ----------- TITLE: Pro-Lifers Say Foes Shy From Debates DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:TORONTO—Pro-lifers in the United States and Canada are noticing one thing missing from their dealings with abortion advocates: meaningful debate.
Whether it involves ignoring invitations to argue the abortion issue on university campuses, or prefacing all remarks with insinuations about “anti-choice” violence, it seems that abortion supporters are beginning to attack religious faith itself in their defense of “reproductive rights.”
Pro-life leaders maintain that “prochoicers” don't want to debate the issue because they fear they'll lose.
Just ask J.T. Finn, director of Pro-Life America in Los Angeles, which oversees an Internet Web site aimed at high school and university students.
“I believe they are afraid to debate today's well-informed, articulate pro-life leaders,” Finn said. “And abortion promoters are especially worried about public debates where pro-lifers are going to show graphic pictures of babies that have been aborted. They also hate to debate women who speak publicly about remorse over their own abortion. Thank God many courageous women are willing to admit that choosing abortion was the worst choice they ever made.”
Marilyn Wilson, director of the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League's Toronto office, disagreed. But she said her organization isn't avoiding debate.
“CARAL does not have a general policy on this as it depends upon the circumstances,” she said. “We do refuse to appear on certain talk shows where the host and entire program is totally biased against abortion. However, in universities it would be sensible to engage in debate as long as it is properly moderated.”
Wilson also said that pro-life supporters' tendency to resort to “extreme measures to make their point” should be kept in mind when attempting to debate the issue in an objective and rational fashion. “CARAL does think the majority should speak out, but unfortunately they are at risk of not being heard by the extreme anti-abortion zealots who engage in such debates.”
Emma Fedor, executive director of the Toronto Right to Life Association, saw things differently. She insisted that there was a clear reluctance to debate life issues that should not be dismissed lightly. Fedor, who has debated the issue several times in Toronto classrooms, said silence and obfuscation can benefit the pro-choice position.
“They always come out badly in a debate because they don't rely on logic, but rather on emotion and name-calling,” Fedor said. “In my experience, abortion advocates used to welcome debate about abortion issues, but they now would rather keep quiet about it.”
What happened recently at the Human Life International Conference, and at two universities, sheds some light on the question.
Toronto Conference
Protests by abortion supporters at the 18th annual Human Life International conference April 7-11 in Toronto showed the perils of debating the pro-life issue. Protesters and pro-abortion groups insinuated that the organization is marked by anti-Semitism, homophobia and violence. But when asked to engage in further debate, none of these groups would substantiate their claims.
Pro-life columnist Michael Coren wrote of the Human Life International incident in the Toronto Sun. Coren, who hosts a community affairs program on cable television in Toronto, said it is next to impossible to refute charges that Human Life International is anti-Semitic when no debate is forthcoming.
“My producer, researcher and myself made the best part of 50 telephone calls and spoke to every Jewish or pro-abortion group we could find, asking them to participate in a discussion,” Coren said. “All refused.
“Nor would any of the [pro-abortion] militants preparing to demonstrate outside of HLI's Toronto conference stop shouting for a few moments and speak with an orthodox rabbi on the subject of Judaism and its foes. So much for freedom of speech.”
University Debates
At universities, such “freedom of speech” is even more expected. But the pro-abortion side has shown signs of avoiding the issue even on campuses.
In one example, a debate at the University of Western Ontario in March, which pitted U.S. pro-life educator Scott Klusendorf against two members of the university's debating society, nearly failed to get off the ground as abortion advocates at the university were unwilling to field an opponent.
Theresa Picard, head of the Western Life group, said finding a pro-abortion speaker to debate Klusendorf became almost as difficult as all the other details combined.
Picard told the Register, “We contacted the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League, the Women's Issues Network, and the National Action Committee for the Status of Women, but with no success. They told us the abortion issue was pointless to debate and that we should rather celebrate the fact that women have the choice to have an abortion.”
Picard and her colleagues eventually arranged to have two members of the University of Western Ontario's professional debating society accept the Klusendorf challenge.
Klusendorf has had trouble with debates in the past. In January, for example, he was invited to a series of debates with professor Eileen McDonagh of the University of Illinois at Champaign.
McDonagh, author of the book Breaking the Abortion Deadline — From Choice to Consent, contends that abortion is justified if a woman does not consent to pregnancy. News of the debate prompted local pro-choice organizations to publicly accuse Klusendorf's Stand to Reason organization of being linked to threats against abortion clinics.
Though there was no evidence to back the accusation, the mere suggestion led to McDonagh's abrupt withdrawal from the debate. McDonagh said taking part in the debate would provide a platform for Klusendorf's “extremist” views.
Klusendorf wrote of the incident later: “Ahard-hitting, factually sound presentation [would have] carried the day. But instead of addressing my facts and arguments, abortion advocates in Champaign attacked me personally. … We will see more of this fainthearted behavior. Proabortionists do not want to defend killing babies, so they do everything possible to shut down debate — including falsely accusing their opponents of clinic violence.”
Mike Mastromatteo writes from Toronto.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mike Mastromatteo ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life ----------- TITLE: Canada Wrestles with Redefining Marriage DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:CALGARY, Alberta—Canada is on the verge of redefining marriage, and Americans should pay close attention.
So says Jason Kenney, leader of the parliamentary pro-life caucus, a Catholic.
“There have been sweeping legal changes made attacking the status of the family over the past three or four years,” in Canada, said Kenney, “and the juggernaut of the homosexual political agenda is picking up momentum, particularly in the courts.”
He said that Americans should pay heed because activists in the United States “see Canada as an ideal.”
He added, “This is a cautionary tale for what can happen if Americans don't restrain their more activist judges.”
Canadian bishops agree, and are taking a dim view of recent charges by homosexual rights activists that Canada's spousal benefits laws discriminate unfairly against those in homosexual relationships — charges that are coming before the nation's highest court.
Bishop Frederick Henry of Calgary, Alberta, says the question should not be framed as a matter of discriminating against anyone.
“As a society,” he said, “I think we should be prepared to discriminate in favor of heterosexual marriage. I think that's putting it more positively.”
A recent series of cases on homosexual benefits promises to occupy Canadian courts for some time. Homosexual rights activists appear to be focusing their attack on federal laws that offer pension benefits to heterosexual spouses, but not to partners in homosexual relationships.
Lawyers for homosexual claimants say the laws are contrary to the equal rights protection guaranteed by Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
In statements issued over the past three years, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, the policy-making arm of the bishops, has presented its position on the matter to federal lawmakers, apparently to no avail.
In 1996 the bishops wrote to Prime Minister Jean Chretien, warning that proposed changes to the federal Canadian Human Rights Act “may result in the redefinition of the historical understanding of marriage, marital status, family status and spouse.” They added, “The Church considers homosexual behavior to be morally unacceptable, while at the same time accepting the homosexual person.”
Nevertheless, shortly thereafter, Parliament made “sexual orientation” a protected ground of discrimination.
Others are following the Canadian bishops'lead. “This whole issue relates to the concept of marriage,” said Victor Doerksen, an evangelical Christian and member of the province of Alberta's governing Progressive Conservatives. “We have to understand why marriage is important to start with. Any alternative to marriage is second-best, whether it's common-law or stepparents, as far as kids are concerned.”
What is a ‘Spouse’?
Kenney said the issue has reached a critical stage: “We're on the verge of a Supreme Court decision that is likely to radically change the legal definition of marriage. It will likely use the constitution to force the federal and provincial legislatures to redefine marriage to include homosexual couples.”
Many cases now moving through Canadian courts concern the legal definition of the term “spouse” which is used to denote who is eligible for benefits from the federal and provincial governments. Is it discrimination to apply it only to opposite-sex couples?
Alberta's Domestic Relations Act, for one, imposes spousal support obligations, but only for opposite-sex spouses.
“I'm certainly willing to concede that the difficulty I have is with the phrase, ‘opposite sex,’” said Julie Lloyd, an Edmonton lawyer and homosexual-rights activist. “I prefer the [Alberta] Liberal [Party] amendment. In it, they don't have the word ‘opposite sex.’ They allow homosexual couples to be included in the provisions for spousal support.”
Brian Rushfeldt, national executive director of the Canada Family Action Coalition, disagrees. “Well, perhaps it is some form of discrimination,” he said. “But we choose to discriminate daily in all kinds of issues, where society simply says ‘this is what we place above that.’ Society, I think, is within its rights to uphold the sanctity and uniqueness of heterosexual marriage.”
At least one Canadian court has agreed. In a 1995 case, Egan v. Canada, an Ontario man sued for a pension allowance on the ground that, as a homosexual in a long-term relationship, he was entitled to be considered a “spouse.” The Supreme Court of Canada ruled, however, that Parliament was within its rights to distinguish between married persons and homosexual partners, and that such a distinction did not necessarily represent discrimination.
Nevertheless, the trend of Canadian court decisions has not been favorable to the principle of the sanctity of marriage. Since sexual orientation is now protected under the Canadian Human Rights Act, many government programs that offer benefits to opposite-sex spouses are being challenged as discriminatory.
Long-Term Damage?
Meanwhile, homosexual activists argue that there will be no long-term damage to the sanctity of matrimony from liberalized marriage laws.
“I believe that it's improper to refuse a justifiable legislative amendment because of some unfounded speculation that there might be some longer-term implications,” said Lloyd.
Bishop Henry, however, disagreed. “The more we have a whittling away of the unique position of heterosexual marriage in society, we're undermining it, obviously. I don't think there's any doubt about that.
“Then you have the gay lobby saying: ‘You're discriminating because you're not giving us the same thing.’ Well, no. We never intended to give you the same thing, because we're discriminating in favor of heterosexual marriages because of their unique contribution to the overall good of society.”
Doerksen, the evangelical Christian, feared that the authentic understanding of marriage is under direct attack by the new moves from homosexual activists: “More than the discrimination argument, I think the homosexual activists are looking for an endorsement or legitimization of a lifestyle: the homosexual lifestyle. They're seeking legitimacy.”
The Court Struggle
The battle is being largely fought in the courts. Among recent decisions was Vriend v. Alberta, a 1998 Supreme Court of Canada decision. Delwin Vriend, a college instructor, was fired by King's College, an Edmonton-based Christian college. Vriend's openly homosexual lifestyle was considered inconsistent with the college's policy on homosexuality.
Vriend appealed his firing to a local court, which ruled in his favor. When the case got to the Supreme Court, it also decided in Vriend's favor, ruling that Alberta's human rights statute did not go far enough to protect homosexuals from employment-related discrimination. Further, the court ordered that the term “sexual orientation” be read into the statute as a protected ground of discrimination.
Reaction to the decision was swift. Critics charged that it amounted to law-making by an unelected judiciary (Canadian judges are appointed). They argued that changes to the law which promised such far-reaching consequences should only be made in a forum, such as the Province's Legislature (equivalent to a state assembly), where lawmakers could be held accountable.
In Alberta, the provincial government, led by Premier Ralph Klein, appeared stunned by public reaction. Many voters demanded that the premier (equivalent to state governor) invoke a provision of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that allows a province to suspend the effect of certain Charter provisions. The premier refused, promising to “build fences” around the Vriend decision, limiting adverse effects.
A year later, many Albertans are still waiting, although the premier recently raised the possibility of allowing for “registered domestic partnerships,” which would include homosexual partnerships.
Brian Rushfeldt of the Family Action coalition described the premier's idea as “totally inadequate.”
“The idea,” he said, “is that that doesn't equate to marriage, but what you're saying is that you're giving the same benefits to a domestic partnership as you would give to a marriage. Yet, you're trying to tell me that that's not going to undermine marriage?”
Some homosexual activists have called critics of their proposals bigots and “homophobes.” Yet, the Church has long emphasized compassion toward, and acceptance of homosexual persons, and distinguished the orientation, on the one hand, from the practice of homosexuality, on the other.
In 1995, the Pontifical Council For the Family, in “The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality,” stated that homosexuals “must be accepted with respect, dignity and delicacy, and all forms of unjust discrimination must be avoided.”
It added, “For most homosexual persons, this condition constitutes a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives, and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.”
James Mahony writes from Calgary, Alberta.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: James Mahony ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life ----------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:When the Italian journalist Vittorio Messori asked Pope John Paul II his response to those who call him “obsessive” about abortion, the Holy Father warned that a society's values would be destroyed by its prevalence.
… I must repeat that I categorically reject every accusation or suspicion concerning the Pope's alleged “obsession” with this issue. We are dealing with a problem of tremendous importance, in which all of us must show the utmost responsibility and vigilance. We cannot afford forms of permissiveness that would lead directly to the trampling of human rights, and also to the complete destruction of values which are fundamental not only for the lives of individuals but for society itself. Isn't there a sad truth in the powerful expression culture of death?
Crossing the Threshold of Hope, Pages 207, 208
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life ----------- TITLE: Life Notes DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:Namibia Drops Move to Legalize Abortion Source
THE NAMIBIAN, April 20—Widespread public opposition has “forced” the Namibian government to abandon plans to introduce a new abortion bill. “Health Minister Libertina Amathila confirmed April 19 that moves to introduce new legislation which would have legalized abortion has been dropped,” the paper said.
The paper reported that Amathila said, “Namibians don't want abortion.” According to the paper, she also said that “wide-ranging consultations with communities such as the churches and radio phone-ins and letters had indicated that 99% of the Namibians did not want abortion legalized.”
“If 99% say no, who am I to impose it on the community?”
Church leaders, who have strongly lobbied President Sam Nujoma against legalizing abortion, welcomed Amathila's announcement, but abortion advocates are upset at how public opinion was gauged reported the paper.
“Bishop Kleopas Dumeni of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia was delighted that ‘the voice of the churches has been heard,’” and added that churches viewed abortion as murder.
The paper reported that former Secretary General for the Council of Churches of Namibia, Ngeno Nakamhela, said, “If it is really because of the voice of the churches, we would like to welcome this decision. It is a good attitude for government to listen to people.”
The proposed law sought to legalize abortion within the first three months of pregnancy.
However, said the paper, “Abortion after 12 weeks could still be carried out if there was a so-called threat to the physical and mental well-being of mother and child. Abortions could also take place in cases of rape, incest or if the would-be mother was mentally unstable.”
(This story has been accessed through the Pro-Life Infonet)
Alexander Offers Look at His Abortion Views
WASHINGTON TIMES, April 22—Republican presidential candidate Lamar Alexander called abortion a “moral issue” and said the party “must find ways to reduce abortions without attempting a constitutional ban,” according to a report in the Washington Times.
”’The Republican Party has the responsibility to fashion a way … for changing our minds and laws, so that we have as few abortions as possible,’ the former Tennessee governor said.”
Said the paper, “Alexander indicated he continues to oppose a human life amendment. In the past he has maintained that his opposition stems from his belief that the Bill of Rights currently affords unborn children the protection they deserve under law. ‘I do not support a human life amendment as a way to get from where we are to where we want to go,’ he said, but added: ‘The government should not support abortions, either in this country or internationally.’”
If elected president, he said he “would lead the states to change their laws and culture to restrict and discourage abortions,” said the report.
(This story has been accessed through the Pro-Life Infonet)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life ----------- TITLE: Did You Know? DATE: 05/02/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 2-8, 1999 ----- BODY:In a 1997-1998 nationwide survey of more than 86,000 high school students, the correlation of marijuana use to violence and hopelessness is significant, the Family Research Council reported.
• Of those who carry guns to school, nearly 76% smoke marijuana at least once a year.
• Of those who take part in gang activities, nearly 70% smoke marijuana at least once a year.
• Of those who threaten to harm another, nearly 48% smoke marijuana at least once a year.
• Of those who get into trouble with the police, nearly 63% smoke marijuana at least once a year.
(Source: PRIDE — Parents' Resource Institute for Drug Education.)
----- EXCERPT: FACTS of LIFE ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life ----------- TITLE: Visit Moves East and West Closer DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:BUCHAREST, Romania—It was the Romanian people's turn May 9 for Pope John Paul II.
That was the day the Holy Father ended his historic three-day trip to Romania, becoming the first Pope to visit an Orthodox land.
After the Holy Father held two days of meetings with top government and Church officials — both Catholic and Orthodox — hundreds of thousands of Romanians thronged the center of their capital as Pope John Paul II and Romanian Orthodox Patriarch Teoctist each attended a worship service conducted by the other.
“I hereby express the wish that in the third millennium, if we are not totally united, we can at least move closer to full communion,” John Paul told his Orthodox hearers shortly before his departure May 9.
The worship services — magnificent pageants of music and liturgy, lavish robes and swaying censers — drew throngs of Catholic and Orthodox faithful despite the wilting sun. Most worshippers were unable to attend the Pope's appearances the first two days of the visit, held in smaller churches.
The visit here marked another milestone in John Paul's efforts to improve relations with other religions, both Christian and non-Christian, and could help pave the way for John Paul's long-sought trip to Russia, home of the world's largest Orthodox community. The Orthodox and Catholic Churches split in 1054 over such doctrinal issues as papal primacy and the Nicene Creed. At that time, their respective leaders excommunicated each other — an action retracted by their successors in 1966.
The visit was also marked by an unusual joint statement by John Paul and Teoctist calling for negotiations to end the war in neighboring Yugoslavia. John Paul also repeatedly paid tribute to the nation's minority Catholics, including hundreds of thousands of Greek Catholics who use the Eastern liturgy but have a strained relationship with the Orthodox.
And while saluting Romanians for freeing themselves from “the nightmare of Communism,” the Holy Father warned at airport departure ceremonies that the “dangerous dreams of consumerism [can] also kill the future.”
But ecumenism, not economics, dominated the day.
At midday Sunday, May 9, the Pope looked on as Teoctist presided over a three-and-a-half-hour Orthodox service in Union Square. About 100,000 worshippers packed in closely to participate in the Divine Liturgy. Teoctist stood on the specially built stage flanked by bishops and cantors who intoned prayers while two choirs sang a nearly continuous succession of full-throated hymns.
“Our Churches here offer a foretaste of the image of the indivisible Church,” said Patriarch Teoctist.
Many Catholics had traveled from regions of the country where they form large minorities, such as Transylvania.
Worshippers gamely endured the strong sun, but dozens fainted and most sheltered themselves with whatever they had with them — headscarves, parasols or newspapers with headlines blaring out the previous day's news of the papal visit.
In the midst of the Easter season of both Churches' liturgical calendar, John Paul and Teoctist separately shouted out the traditional formula, “Christ is risen!” The crowd's hearty-response, “He is risen indeed!” echoed off the walls of the apartment blocks ringing the vast plaza.
The square was built in the former regime of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who arranged for the demolition of historic homes and churches to make way for it. The open square is now the planned site of a future 2,000-seat cathedral, emblematic of the Orthodox Church's resurgence after decades of communist persecution.
Patriarch Teoctist said the Pope had given an unspecified donation — described by an Orthodox spokesman as “substantial” — toward the cathedral's construction. At the start of the service, John Paul blessed a cross marking the cathedral's cornerstone.
Orthodox Metropolitan Daniel of the Romanian regions of Moldavia and Bukovina, considered a possible successor to the 84-year-old Teoctist, gave a sermon alluding to the Pope's effort at reconciliation. Citing the gospel story of Jesus' patient instruction to the woman from foreign Samaria, Daniel said Jesus “crosses earthly boundaries in order to surpass mental boundaries, including the mental boundary of a nation's superiority over another nation.”
But Daniel also cited Jesus' example on the limits of inter-religious dialogue. “Jesus does not confuse religions and does not promote syncretism. He does not relativize truth.”
Later in the afternoon, it was Teoctist's turn to be spectator as the Pope celebrated Mass a few blocks in front of the House of the People, a 3,000-room marble complex left over from the communist era prior to the overthrow and execution of Ceausescu in 1989.
The largely Catholic crowd of about 200,000, sitting or standing in an unkempt, weedy park, roared “Viva Papa” repeatedly throughout the service. Added to the liturgy, celebrated in Romanian, were prayers in Hungarian, German and Polish, representing some of the country's Catholic ethnic minorities.
Many Catholics in the crowd had traveled from regions of the country where they form large minorities, such as Transylvania to the north.
But admiration for the Pope transcended Church divisions at both services.
“We are brothers and we are together,” said Catinca Bordan, 67, an Orthodox retiree from Bucharest who attended the first service.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Peter Smith ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Fatima Has High Hopes For Francisco and Jacinta DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:FATIMA, Portugal—Emila Santos, who had been paralyzed and confined to bed for 22 years, now walks.
Repahadoras Sister Maria Luisa Dias Ferreira, in whose Fatima convent Santos is currently residing, said that the Portuguese woman had made a novena to Francisco and Jacinta Marto for help, “and was cured.”
The medical board of the Congregation of Saints unanimously agreed earlier this spring that there is no medical explanation for the cure.
Now, people all over the world are anticipating the imminent beatification of Francisco and Jacinta, two of the three children who saw the Blessed Virgin Mary appear at Fatima over a six-month period in 1917.
Interest has grown ever since the news of the miracle reached the world, said Mary Ann Sullivan, marketing director of the Blue Army, which is also called the World Apostolate of Fatima, based in Washington, N.J. Phone calls from pilgrims wanting to go to Fatima has tripled, she reported.
Santos could petition the children, who had died in 1919 and 1920 respectively, for help since they had been declared venerable by Pope John Paul II in 1989. This step on the road to canonization meant that they had displayed heroic virtue. The formal recognition of Francisco and Jacinta as venerable marked a significant development in Catholic doctrine.
For centuries, explained Society of the Divine Word Father P. Luis Kandar, vice postulator for the cause of Francisco and Jacinta Marto, the Church hadn't decided if non-martyred children could display the heroic virtue necessary for formal canonization. Although various young people's causes had been forwarded to the Vatican for approval, the causes lay in limbo.
Sister Mary John, of the Handmaids of Mary Immaculate, a congregation that spreads Marian devotion, said that the canonization of the children will be very much in line with the Second Vatican Council's universal call to holiness.
To canonize the children will emphasize “that everyone is called to be a saint,” she said.
Sister Mary John, who is based at the New Jersey Blue Army shrine, added she has seen firsthand the impact the examples of Francisco and Jacinta have on children.
“We give talks to … kids, and we tell them about what the children have done,” she said. “We tell them about the penitential path. We come out, and all the kids are at the shrine … on their knees.”
One young enthusiast, Lizzy Crnkovich, a 7-year-old from McLean, Va., is fascinated with the story of Fatima. Her mother, Liz, said that her favorite books and videos are those telling the story of Fatima.
“I have been reading a lot” about Jacinta, said Lizzy. “I like the part when Mary appears to them. They pray with their older sister [Lucia, their cousin]. We pray a rosary every night,” just like them, she said.
Lizzy said she hopes to go to Fatima herself, one day, to see the place “where Mary saw them.”
Sister Mary John said that the Fatima children show that “the message of the Gospel is simple. … The message is simple enough for children to live.”
In 1937, Pope Pius XI decided that causes for minors shouldn't be accepted because he felt that they couldn't display heroic virtue. He didn't believe that children could fully understand heroic virtue or practice it repeatedly, both of which are essential for canonization. For the next four decades, no sainthood processes for children were pursued.
Then, in 1979, recalled Father Kandar, he took Francisco's and Jacinta's cause to Rome. He and the bishop of Leiria-Fatima believed that Pope John Paul II, who had ascended St. Peter's throne a year earlier, would be more sympathetic to the idea of canonizing children.
Father Kandar was told that their cause was “impossible,” even though the brother and sister had “a universal fame for sanctity.”
Then the bishop of Leiria-Fatima asked all the world's bishops to write a letter to the Pope, petitioning him to make an exception for Francisco, who had died at age 11, and Jacinta, who had died at age 10.
More than 300 bishops sent letters to the Holy Father, noted Father Kandar. They wrote, he said, that “the children were known, admired and attracted people to the way of sanctity. Favors were received through their intercession.” The bishops also stated that the children's canonization was a pastoral necessity for the children and teen-agers of today.
In 1979, the Congregation of Saints convened a general assembly. Cardinals, bishops, theologians and other experts debated whether it was possible for children to display heroic virtue. Eventually, said Father Kandar, they decided that like the very few children who have a genius for music or mathematics, “in some supernatural way, some children could be spiritual prodigies.”
Father Kandar was given permission to continue with Francisco's and Jacinta's cause. The postulators of other children's causes were also given permission to proceed.
On May 13, 1989, Pope John Paul declared Francisco and Jacinta Marto venerable. They were the first non-martyred children to be acknowledged in this fashion. Because they have been recognized as venerable, public Masses can be said in their honor and churches can be named after them.
The next step on the children's road to canonization is beatification.
“One miracle is needed for beatification,” explains Father Kandar.
The Divine Word priest and many others believe that the necessary miracle is provided by Emila Santos' cure. And with the medical board's decision, a critical and difficult step on the road to sainthood for Francisco and Jacinta has been accomplished.
Father Kandar, who lives in Fatima, said the children's cause is now in front of the Congregation of Saints' commission of theologians. “They must prove that the miracle happened because the children were involved,” he noted.
The Divine Word priest said he believes that the commission of theologians will soon confirm the children's involvement and pass their positive conclusion on to the cardinal and bishops who head the Congregation of Saints, perhaps by the end of May. They would send their conclusion to the Pope, who makes the final decision about the mira-cle's validity.
When the Holy Father issues the decree of the miracle, said Father Kandar, “that marks the beatification date.” That could happen this year, he added.
When the Pope arrived in Fatima for the first time, in 1982, he said that he had come “because, on this exact date last year in St. Peter's Square, in Rome, there was an attempt on the life of your Pope, which mysteriously coincided with the anniversary of the first vision at Fatima, that of the 13th of May 1917. The coincidence of these dates was so great that it seemed to be a special invitation for me to come here.”
During this visit, Pope John Paul survived a knife attack by a young Spaniard who was dressed as a priest. He also met Sister Lucia dos Santos, the third and only surviving member of the trio of children who saw the three apparitions of the angel in 1915 and 1916 and the six apparitions of our Lady of Fatima in 1917.
Sister Lucia, now 92, and in good health, lives quietly in a Carmelite convent in Coimbra, Portugal, and continues to spread devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
On the Pope's second pilgrimage to Fatima, in 1991, which commemorated the 10th anniversary of his attempted assassination, he reiterated his gratitude to our Lady of Fatima for her intercession. In front of her statue, he recited the rosary with other pilgrims and placed a bullet that had been removed from his body after the attack in the statue's crown. He then consecrated humanity to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
If Pope John Paul arrives in Fatima for the third time, he is expected to perform an action that would bring great joy to Catholics in Fatima and around the world — the beatification of two modest yet intensely holy children.
Loretta G. Seyer is editor of Catholic Faith & Family.
New Church Is in the Works at Shrine
In addition to the expected beatification of Francisco and Jacinta Marto sometime in 1999, Fatima is looking forward to another significant development.
Plans are being made to build an enormous circular church opposite the Basilica of Our Lady of Fatima. This new structure will hold 10,000 seated people and be half buried in the ground. The road that currently runs across the site will be relocated to a tunnel under the church.
The structure will be built in a modern style, although a decision hasn't been made about the bell tower, explains Msgr. Luciano Guerra, director of the Fatima sanctuary.
He says the church will be named Most Holy Trinity for two reasons.
The first because of what occurred at the third apparition of the angel to Lucia dos Santos and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto, which took place in September or October 1916.
The angel, who had told the children during his second apparition that he was their guardian angel and the angel of Portugal, held a chalice and Host. Drops of blood fell from the Host into the chalice. The angel, a shining white figure, left the Host and chalice in midair, dropped to his knees and began a prayer to the Holy Trinity.
The second reason for naming the new church after the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, says Msgr. Guerra, is because Pope John Paul II wants 2000 to be dedicated to the Holy Trinity.
Most Holy Trinity Church will be only part of a new complex dedicated to making the Fatima experience more reverential for pilgrims. A second church for reconciliation holding about 700 people will be built. A perpetual adoration chapel three times the size of the current one is also part of the plans, as are several small chapels holding congregations ranging in size from 50 to 200 and a series of spaces for examination of conscience, catechetical instruction and preparation for Communion.
The church and its attached complex are being designed by Taom Bazis, an architect from Athens, Greece, who won a two-phase international design contest.
The first phase was held in March 1998 and was open to any architect who cared to enter. This part of the contest asked architects to answer two questions with their designs, says Msgr. Guerra. The first was to determine if the new complex would be built behind the basil-ica or opposite it. The second was to determine if the complex would be fully underground or only partially buried.
Ten architects from Europe entered the competition. From that group, a building committee chose three architects to refine their designs for the second phase of the competition. In December 1998, Bazis was informed that he had won the contest.
His plans have been submitted to Bishop Serafim de Sousa Ferreira e Silva of Leiria-Fatima for final approval. He is expected to make a decision about the proposed project soon, perhaps by the end of May.
If the bishop approves of the plans for the new church and complex, and Msgr. Guerra believes his reaction will be positive, the director of the Fatima sanctuary says he hopes to break ground for the complex in either May or October 2000. He expects that it will take two-and-a-half years to construct.
Msgr. Guerra says the project's building costs will be funded out of pilgrims' contributions. He notes that the shrine has enough money to get the project started, but more will be needed to complete the complex. Msgr. Guerra hopes that the necessary funds will come from pilgrims' normal contributions to the Fatima sanctuary.
The project is expected to cost about $31 million.
— Loretta G. Seyer
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Loretta G. Seyer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Honduras Still Feels The Wrath of Mitch DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Denis Antonio Mendosa Funez lives in a new, small, wooden building with an outdoor courtyard for his kitchen. In his one interior room sits a mattress and a simple wooden desk.
Piled against one wall are boxes of clothing and denim backpacks. Every day, Mendosa, a 17-year-old math and accounting student, volunteers five to eight hours to speak with poverty-stricken neighbors and to distribute aid from a U.S.-based charity to 65 needy children and some 25 elderly people who live in his small community of Betania.
He is one of about two dozen other mostly teen-aged volunteers from his parish, St. Joseph the Worker in Suyapa, just outside Tegucigalpa, who have been working to deliver additional assistance to hurricane victims and to rebuild homes destroyed by floodwaters and landslides since Hurricane Mitch hit Central America last autumn.
The storm left at least 9,000 dead and 13,000 missing in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. In Honduras, 12,000 were still missing, and 1.2 million people were still in need of food, shelter or medical assistance as a result of the storm as of late February, according to Kerry Hodges, communications associate with Catholic Relief Services in Baltimore.
During the hurricane, rivers and streams expanded to 10 times their normal size, wiping out entire blocks of houses and buildings and 90 bridges in Honduras. Some 70 percent of the country's agricultural production was destroyed or severely damaged; public water and sewer systems and electrical systems were disrupted or destroyed.
Throughout this country of about 5.6 million inhabitants, just slightly larger than the state of Tennessee, large swaths of mud, rubble, debris and sand still plague areas surrounding major and minor waterways, leaving a frozen picture of the destruction caused by deep, fast-moving water. Aid officials estimate it will take five to 10 years for Honduras' agriculture industry to regain its 1998 production capacity.
In the aftermath, Catholic organizations like Catholic Relief Service; smaller, independent aid organizations; and individual churches have been working through employees and countless volunteers like Mendosa to rebuild hope, human dignity and social justice along with homes, water systems and bridges.
In Honduras, particularly, much hurricane aid has flowed through organizations like the Catholic Medical Mission Board, Caritas International and Catholic Relief Service, as well as smaller aid groups like the Kansas City, Kan.-based Christian Foundation for Children and Aging.
Before Hurricane Mitch, St. Joseph's parish had been working with Christian Foundation for Children and Aging — the same aid organization which is helping families in Mendosa's neighborhood with food and clothing for children and elderly — for about 10 months. The parish, served by three diocesan Spanish priests and a lay parish council, has 110,000 members who meet at 11 churches in the Suyapa area. They also work with charities in Spain and elsewhere.
The Christian Foundation for Children and Aging has donated more than $23,000.
The ‘Clowns’ Who Help
In a short tour of his small neighborhood, Mendosa gestured to the new homes built with cheap lumber (actually, scrap planks of lumber, with bark intact) and tin roofing, donated through St. Joseph's parish. As of late April, volunteers at the parish have helped build 21 new houses, and are working on 23 more.
Meanwhile, in the U.N.- and Red Cross-operated transitional shelter known as El Trebol, also in Suyapa, parish volunteer Roger Espinale helps deliver aid for about 55 children — up from about 12 children sponsored by Christian Foundation for Children and Aging before the hurricane hit — in his home community of Colonia Kuwait.
“We deliver uniforms, shoes, books, mattresses and school supplies,” said Espinale.
While his volunteers have little more than those they help in terms of money and material resources, “they can still collaborate with their time and their commitment,” Father Patricio Larrosa said. In addition, “many of these young people have also lost everything (in the hurricane), so they have a good understanding of the problems people face.”
Caritas Honduras estimates 76 percent of the country had been living in poverty before the storm. “Now, they are even more poor,” Mendosa said.
Father Larrosa calls his volunteers an inspiration for their community.
“To help here is considered foolish; therefore, these young people are considered clowns,” explained Father Larrosa, a diocesan priest from Spain who has been working in Honduras for six years. “It is hard work, going to school, and then going throughout the neighborhoods and getting a lot of criticism from people saying, ‘you're looking for fleas,’ or ‘you're doing priests’ and nuns' work.'
“It is very hard to find people who want to help others, and above all, to help those who will never thank you.”
No Time for Soccer
Recently, Mendosa took a day off from school to help another Christian Foundation for Children and Aging volunteer, Leanna Kozeliski of Gallup, N.M., distribute 500 pairs of shoes to schoolchildren.
“I like this work,” Mendosa said. “Here, many people have nothing, so it is good to be working for them and with them. I take advantage of all my free time.” Sometimes his friends want Mendosa to join them for a game of soccer. “But I feel like I should be helping people here, instead,” he said.
Espinale, Mendosa and other parish volunteers — mostly secondary school students — keep detailed, handwritten lists describing in as much detail as possible each potential aid recipient. They also help aid recipients to write letters to their sponsors in the United States.
While the volunteers are unpaid now, Christian Foundation for Children and Aging hopes to fund scholarships for those attending school in the near future, group president Robert Hentzen said.
Parish workers help make decisions about who will receive aid. “It's difficult,” said Marco Antonio, treasurer for the parish. “You may have a family living in a house with four beds and 12 people, but another family may not have any beds, so they are more needy.”
Three Moves Since Mitch
Among the 2,130 displaced people living in El Trebol, where Espinale volunteers, are Maria Brigida Espinar Osorio and her four children.
So far, Espinar said, she has had to move three times: once from her home, destroyed by flooding; then, for six months she lived in a tent city in Suyapa. For the past two months she has lived in El Trebol.
“They bring us milk and cornflakes,” Espinar said of the Red Cross. She and other refugee families live in small, fiber-board, dormitory-style rooms. Asked where she cooks, Espinar gestures to a flat-topped rock on the hard-packed, dusty ground, as she and her children sift through a pile of dried corn. She will bring the corn to a neighbor to make into tortillas, she said.
The land where El Trebol was hastily built is being rented from its owners by international aid agencies. The lease expires in February.
The situation of Espinar's family and that of thousands of others has been exacerbated by the storm, said Father German Calix, national director of Caritas and coordinator of the National Social Pastoral Work of Honduras (similar to Catholic Charities in the U.S.).
Most families lived on rented land or were squatters where they lived, Father Calix said.
He estimated that before the hurricane, Honduras was already about 700,000 housing units short. Since the hurricane, those whose homes were destroyed are being asked not to rebuild in the same places where they had lived, compounding an already difficult land distribution problem.
A City Without Homes
The situation is particularly bad in Honduras' crowded capital area, where very little land is available for housing.
According to Father Larrosa, foreign governments have offered aid to build new homes throughout Honduras. “By working through Caritas or some other aid agency, we were hoping the government would give us the land,” he said. “But as far as the government is concerned, there isn't any land (in Tegucigalpa), so they did nothing” to facilitate aid to rebuild homes.
Concerned about homeless parishioners, St. Joseph's parish distributed scrap lumber and tin roofs for about 100 families who wanted to rebuild.
“Unfortunately, in the places where they had been living, it was forbidden to build anything, and the government didn't do anything to solve the problem. So rebuilding homes is very provisional,” Father Larrosa said. “But then, life here is also very provisional.”
In December, priests working in the barrio of El Mogote outside Tegucigalpa distributed 200 tents and about two weeks'worth of food to people who had lost their homes.
The group tried to resettle where they had been living, but police arrived, saying that someone claimed ownership of the land and wanted to evict them, Father Larrosa said. According to parishioners, the police arrived, poured gasoline on the food, set it on fire, and chopped up the tents with machetes.
—Liz Urbanski Farrell, who writes from Buffalo, N.Y., recently returned from Honduras.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Liz Urbanski Farrell ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A Calif. Chaplain Asks, Was Execution Needed? DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:SAN QUENTIN, Calif.—A month after the U.S. bishops issued their Good Friday Appeal to End the Death Penalty, the state of California executed its second prisoner this year.
Manuel (Manny) Babbitt was executed by lethal injection in San Quentin State Prison on May 4, a day after his 50th birthday.
Father Denis McManus, chaplain at San Quentin, told the Register that Babbitt, who had been diagnosed insane and was receiving treatment, was “a gentle, loving, childish man, incapable of committing murder unless an attack from the disorder affected his mind.” He believes his death sentence should have been commuted to life imprisonment without parole.
Father McManus cited Pope John Paul II's repeated denunciation of capital punishment. In his January homily in St. Louis, the Holy Father stated: “Modern society has the means of protecting itself without denying criminals the chance to reform.”
The priest also believes that Babbitt was remorseful. So does Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Gabino Zavala, who said, “He seemed to have a conscience and knew he had committed a crime.” Bishop Zavala met Babbitt when he organized a delegation of 11 clergy, women religious, and Catholic leaders who visited San Quentin's death row March 2.
A Terrible Crime
Babbitt was sentenced to death in 1982 after being convicted of first-degree murder with special circumstances. In 1980, he robbed, beat and sexually assaulted 78-year-old Leah Schendel of Sacramento, who died from the crime-related stress. The following night, Babbitt robbed and beat another Sacramento woman. After his arrest, he did not deny committing the crimes, but said he had no memory of what happened.
Babbitt, a Catholic Vietnam War veteran, suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, incurred during the 77-day siege of Khe Sanh in 1968, according to Los Angeles attorney Charles Patterson, who also fought during this siege and donated nearly 2,000 hours of his firm's time on Babbitt's behalf.
During the siege, Babbitt said he endured the deafening explosions from American B-52 bombers, ground artillery fire, and the stench of napalm and rotting corpses. An explosion once knocked him unconscious after shrapnel from a rocket ripped into his thumb and scalp, he claimed.
After his discharge from the Marines in 1970, he began using drugs and alcohol, served prison sentences for burglary and armed robbery, and was diagnosed as mentally ill in a Rhode Island hospital for the criminally insane.
He later went to live with his brother Bill in Sacramento, where he exhibited bizarre, childish behavior, such as riding a bicycle with flattened beer cans between the spokes, creating a clacking sound.
Patterson believes Babbitt had a “dissociative episode” — reliving combat in Vietnam — when he killed Schendel. The episode was triggered by the foggy night, taking alcohol and marijuana with an Asian, and headlights on cars that resembled aircraft landing at Khe Sanh, Patterson said.
Babbitt's brother linked Manny to the murder and called the police after discovering in his coat pockets two watches and a cigarette lighter with Schendel's initials engraved on it.
Life on Death Row
The Catholics who knew him wished they had been able to spend more time with Babbitt, to help him reconcile with God before his death.
Conversions often occur among the prison's some 500 death row inmates, one-third of whom are Catholics, says Father McManus, the chaplain. “Many have turned to God; some are very devout; nearly all of them read from the Bible,” and some participate in Bible studies. Some Catholics receive the sacraments of reconciliation and the Eucharist in their cells and about 20 attend Mass monthly, he adds.
Deacon Dennis Merino, a member of Bishop Zavala's delegation and chaplain at the California State Prison in Sacramento, says, “Where there is life, there is a possibility of redemption. If we kill them [prisoners], we deprive them of that opportunity.” He was told of a skinhead at the penitentiary who attended Mass on Easter Sunday and said, “‘Jesus will not let me alone.’”
Father McManus says that executing prisoners “causes immense pain to the criminals' families, especially in the last few weeks of their lives.”
Bishop Zavala describes his visit to death row as “a cold, sobering experience. I saw the heinous nature of their crimes and the human beings behind the crimes. … Are we not more than the worst act we have committed?”
Sister Suzanne Jabro, who also visited death row with the leadership delegation, described the octagonal green-walled execution chamber, about 7 1/2 feet in diameter, lined with porthole like windows. The chamber contains a table where the prisoner is strapped and can be turned to face invited family members.
“I felt like I was in Auschwitz,” says the nun, who directs the Los Angeles Archdiocese's Office of Detention Ministry. “You could feel the evil.”
Many death penalty defenders, of course, see things very differently.
One such defender is Ralph Malaker of St. Patrick's Parish in San Diego. Malaker, who describes himself as a concerned pro-life member of his parish, says that executing a convicted murderer should not be compared with killing innocent people at Auschwitz.
“[Murderers] make a choice about taking the life of someone, knowing the consequences could be the death penalty. God knows that sometimes the best thing for us is to experience the consequences of our actions, even if this means death by execution,” he says. “And instead of abolishing the death penalty, executions should be justified on a case-by-case basis.”
In recent years the Church has come out more strongly against the death penalty.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says public authority should limit itself to “bloodless means” if these are “sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons” (No. 2267).
In his encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), the Pope writes: “Today … as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases [where execution is needed] are very rare, if not practically non-existent” (No. 56).
The U.S. bishops also suggest that the death penalty is applied in a discriminatory manner, as poor convicts and minorities are more likely to be condemned to death.
Babbitt, for example, was born to West African immigrants in a poor section of Wareham, Mass. His ramshackle house was heated by wood and insulated with newspaper, with no toilet or hot water. His father drank heavily and beat his mentally ill mother and the five children, leaving welts on their faces and arms, according to Manny's brother Bill. During winter, the Babbitt children slept under piles of coats since the family could not afford sheets and blankets.
Manny's intelligence was average, but he repeated the first, second, and fifth grades. As a muscular teen-aged fifth-grader, he patrolled the playground to prevent bullies from picking on the children.
At age 12, Manny was struck by a car as he was riding a bicycle. He was hurtled onto the pavement and suffered broken shin bones, deep cuts and a severe concussion — wounds that left Manny with “no judgment,” according to his brother Stephen.
Manny quit school at age 17 with a sixth-grade education and worked in a shoe factory. In 1967, he joined the Marines and was assigned to an anti-tank battalion at Khe Sanh. In San Quentin, he continued to have flashbacks of the Khe Sanh siege as he awaited his fate.
He was one of some 3,500 death row prisoners nationwide — a number the bishops call “deeply troubling.” In their Good Friday appeal, they decry the increasing rate of executions, with more than 500 taking place since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
“We urge all people of good will, particularly Catholics, to work to end the use of capital punishment,” they state.
Bishop Zavala says, “We have to find another way of dealing with our violent society — not with violence [of executions]. My faith tells me there is another answer.”
Joyce Carr writes from La Mesa, California.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joyce Carr ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Renewing Religious Life DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:Asked for her curriculum vitae, she said simply, “I am a Little Sister of the Poor.” And how: she is the superior of the Baltimore Province of the Little Sisters of the Poor, and she helped found a group that many call a major sign of hope. Called the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious in the United States, its member orders have some of the fastest-growing and youngest memberships in the country. She spoke with Register correspondent Raymond de Souza recently in Rome.
De Souza: When did you decide to join religious life?
Mother Nettle: In grade school, when I first had religious teachers — they were Dominicans — I felt a great attraction to religious life because of their example. It waned for a while and then came back again. I joined after high school, and that was 41 years ago.
How does your experience compare to the young sisters who are joining the congregations of the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious today?
For us it was an obvious option. We had priests who would come and address the whole student body and talk about vocations to the priesthood and religious life. It was not hidden that somebody might want to join — no one was ashamed of it. Now, you couldn't do it the same way; you do not have those images, those role models to put before young people.
There is still a hunger in the heart of young people to give their lives, to respond to a call. But they have to go about it differently; they have to find the communities. They go on the Internet, or they call a priest, or they go from community to community. They have to go looking, and some want to be very sure before they join.
I remember I had a book I used to go through and see which communities looked the best in the pictures! Now they are not looking at that; they are looking at prayer life, community life, loyalty to the teachings of the Church, love of our Holy Father, the religious habit and external signs, and the quality of formation programs, and the apostolate has a role too. They are much more serious.
I don't remember understanding consecrated life when I entered the community. Young women, especially those who have any theological training, have a much better notion now. They may even ask to see your constitutions right away — I didn't even know they existed before I entered!
Tell us about the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious.
It is a grouping of major superiors in the United States who wanted to promote the renewal of women's religious life.
We weren't able to find that in any other conference, so we grouped together and found that we had many similarities — a love of the Church, a love of the essential elements of religious life. It was thought that a brand new conference of sisters could be formed, that would not be affiliated with any other conference. So we started from scratch. We had to write a draft of the statutes and then petition our Holy Father for approval. We received that approval in June 1992. In October of that year, we had our first national assembly, where we elected our first board of directors and officers. There are now 108 congregations that belong to the CMSWR.
How did you come to the decision that a new conference of major superiors was needed, that the existing conference was not satisfactory?
We did not want to create a rift in the Church. The existing conference had been the canonically approved organization since the late 1950s. But we wanted to do our thing and do it positively, without challenging anyone. We had our problems at the beginning, but they were overcome. We wish to support the Church, collaborate with our bishops, and we welcome any directives that the Church gives us.
Your conference represents a minority of women religious in the United States. How are your relations with the conference that represents the majority of congregations, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious?
We pursue a position of not threatening, not contradicting, and not polarizing. The media did not help us in the beginning, but as time went on we continued to work together. We participate in each other's assemblies. Our relationship is cordial. We have our differences, and we maintain our positive position without compromising.
What is like to be the president of the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious, a position of national responsibility, in addition to being the superior of your province of the Little Sisters of the Poor?
In modern language we would say it's “awesome.” It's an honor, but also a responsibility and challenge that requires a commitment. I can't do the impossible, but I manage as best as I can to do what I can, and what I can't do, I don't do! My own superior general has been very indulgent in allowing me time to do work on the CMSWR.
How does the Council for Major Superiors of Women Religious promote the renewal of religious life?
I remember in 1996 when Vita Consecrata [John Paul II's postsynodal apostolic exhortation on consecrated life] came out, we couldn't wait to get our hands on it. We brought a whole stack of them to our assembly and passed them out. There are some parts that really call for personal meditation. The Transfiguration is a very powerful image for the consecrated life as proposed in Vita Consecrata, which is probably the richest document we have had in modern times on consecrated life.
More concretely, in our assemblies we have taken up the themes of preparation for the Jubilee and worked it out in the light of our vows. So we began in the first year, dedicated to Jesus Christ, with a focus on poverty; in the year of the Holy Spirit, chastity; and now in the year of the Father, obedience. We carry that theme throughout the whole year, presenting it in different ways — regional workshops, speakers, panels, roundtable discussions, and in our newsletter. All this is done in light of Vita Consecrata, which we try to get before the eyes of the people through our newsletters and also pamphlets.
How do you assess the growing number of new charisms, new orders and new movements in the sphere of consecrated life?
The charism comes from God. It is not our creation. It is a gift that is given to our foundresses, approved by the Church, and then passed on to us. We have our little portion to carry forward.
If there are new movements or charisms appearing, it is important that they are approved by the Church, so that we have knowledge of the different expressions of consecrated life. That would be very important, for example, for priests who are trying to help young people discern vocations to consecrated life.
One thing that the CMSWR has done for all of us is that as we come together, we reflect back, one to the other, our own charisms. That enriches us, and makes us appreciate what we have received, without detracting from any particular charism.
What do you see for the future of religious life in the United States?
I am not a prophet, but I do believe that there is going to be a resurgence. We may not see consecrated life come back in the numbers that we had before, but I think we will see the quality increase — a conviction, a dedication and a pursuit of holiness. This will be essential to counter the culture of death.
We have discussed among ourselves the need to have more personal encounters with young people so that they can see that there are women religious who are happy living a life given to God. Hopefully, we will create new images of consecrated life — that we are not a dying group, but that we are alive, that we are happy and that we are confident.
Already there exists a connection with the North American College in Rome here at the Domus Guadalupe, with the priests, deacons and seminarians serving the sisters here for Mass and holy hours.
Yes. This will help the priests and future priests understand consecrated life. We do need confessors, priests to celebrate daily Mass, and priests for spiritual conferences. Sometimes there can be a misunderstanding that we are called to be workers in the vineyard, and not prayers so much. So just the fact that some of them come and pray with the sisters — there is something in that. I don't think there is anything as wonderful as hearing women religious praying the Word of God.
I believe that without priests — and without good bishops to ordain good priests — we do not have the Church, and we do not have consecrated life. But I also believe that for many priests their vocation comes through a woman religious. So we will try to encourage a healthy mutual support.
—Raymond de Souza
New Residence Shows Hope for Nuns
ROME—On April 25, the Vatican welcomed the formal establishment of a major new initiative in the revitalization of U.S. religious life.
Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican secretary of state, solemnly dedicated the chapel and altar of the Domus Guadalupe, a new residence for American women religious studying in Rome, in the presence of the board of directors of the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious in the United States.
“May the risk you have taken inspire the women religious of other nations to undertake similar measures,” noted Cardinal Sodano, acknowledging the difficulties and expense of establishing a house in Rome.
Sisters studying in Rome have many advantages besides the opportunity to study at the city's many pontifical universities.
The Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious has noted that while the Pontifical North American College has served American priests and seminarians studying in Rome for 140 years, there has been no equivalent for American sisters.
“It is a sign of great hope for the Church in United States,” commented Msgr. Timothy M. Dolan, rector of the North American College, who was present at the dedication. “Rome is a classroom in itself, and for a growing number of sisters to study in that classroom is a blessing for the future of the Church in our country.
We welcome the sisters, and share their joy that they too have a home here in Rome.”
The religious council was formed seven years ago by the superiors general of dozens of congregations of women religious in the United States who wished to rededicate themselves to religious life according to the mind of the Church.
The Leadership Conference of Women Religious was the only national organization for American women religious until the formation of the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious, an alternative national organization which counts 108 congregations in its membership.
“The mother superiors who sit on the board of directors of the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious are as different as night and day,” said Mercy Sister Yvonne Mary, the founding superior of the Domus Guadalupe. “Yet they have decided to work together to listen to what the Holy Spirit wants for the renewal of religious life in the United States. It's a powerful witness.”
Domus Guadalupe is one of the first major initiatives of the new council. With growing number of vocations among its members, it has felt the need for more formation of the young women entering religious life. Indeed, in stark contrast to the general pattern in women's religious life in the United States, a full 20% of the sisters in the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious member congregations are new vocations, still in basic formation.
The residence will be able to house 20 sisters. This past year, four sisters have been the “pioneers,” overseeing the material preparations of their new home, a Vatican building in the center of Rome that had fallen into disrepair and required major renovations.
“Our brothers and sisters thirst for sound doctrine,” said Cardinal Sodano. “Higher studies help us to understand the mysteries which Christ has revealed and to hand them on to the men and women of today and, if necessary, to defend them.” Yet studies should never lead to a neglect of the primacy of the spiritual life, he cautioned: “Studies should never be a useless burden, which keep us from running to meet the Lord and our brothers and sisters.”
Domus Guadalupe enjoyed special tokens of affection and support from the Holy Father, as well. The chalice used at the dedication Mass was a gift sent by the Holy Father to the house. He also sent a papal blessing, signed by his own hand.
American Cardinal William Baum, major penitentiary of the Apostolic Penitentiary, also present at the dedication. He emphasized the importance of Domus Guadalupe in instilling in the sisters “a deeper love for the successor of Peter, for the person of the Holy Father.”
—Raymond de Souza
----- EXCERPT: A Little Sister of the Poor has a treasure of hope ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mother Mary Bernard Nettle ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: U.S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:Cardinal George's Team Takes Shape
Tucker reports that Cardinal George has slowly put together a team of collaborators that includes many members of the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin's staff. “The fact there would be a modification is not surprising,'' said Father Michael Place, a theological adviser to Cardinal Bernardin who has moved on to a new position in St. Louis.
Msgr. Kenneth Velo, a close confidant of Cardinal Bernardin who remains on the personal staff of Cardinal George, noted that the current archbishop “seems more recognized than Cardinal Bernardin was at first. Walking through airports, people didn't notice [Cardinal Bernardin] as much as they do Cardinal George,” he was quoted saying.
Msgr. Velo also told Tucker his former boss carefully prepared his remarks while Cardinal George often likes to “speak in the moment.”
Religious Investing Pays
“The number of such mutual funds is growing by leaps and bounds, up over five-fold during the last six years alone,” reported Piskora. “Not only the number of funds growing, but the assets within those funds are also growing faster than for all equity funds.” Since 1989, she said, assets in religious mutual funds rose 191% to $4.5 billion.
“This data underscores the fact that more and more Americans want their money to be invested and saved in accord with their beliefs,” John Liechty, president of a firm that invests in accordance with Mennonite beliefs told the paper. Numerous Catholic funds are also in operation.
Disney Avoids Embarrassment
According to Morris, Dogma, “was unloaded by Disney-owned Miramax” to Miramax's own co-chairmen, Harvey and Bob Weinstein, in a $10 million sale that will see the Weinsteins produce the film as individuals. “Buying it outside of their deal with Disney means that they don't have to conform to Disney strictures. Or as the Weinsteins put it, they spare Disney any embarrassment.”
Another controversial Disney project now in production is Summer of Sam, a Spike Lee film about serial killer David Berkowitz, a k a the Son of Sam, that includes scenes of sex and violence that is already felt by studio executives “to be much more graphic than the script suggested,” said the report.
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:Tireless Hope in Kosovo for American Archbishop
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, MAY 5—Newark, N.J., Archbishop Theodore E. McCarrick, the American bishops' point man on foreign policy, has traveled frequently in Eastern Europe where he has come to know most of the local bishops, said the AP.
That knowledge has come in handy lately. Archbishop McCarrick was in Macedonia before the NATO bombing began, “working with local clerics to find a peaceful resolution,” a spokesman for the relief organization told AP. He will visit a Kosovar refugee camp in Albania run by Catholic Relief Services from May 13 to 15.
Archbishop McCarrick “had hoped that they would be able to offer some hope toward a resolution, but that didn't work out,” said the spokesman. “But he never gives up hope.”
Investigation of Bishop's Murder Turns to DNA
REUTERS, May 5—Prosecutors investigating the slaying of Auxiliary Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi began running DNA tests on May 5 for 12 military officers and Father Mario Orantes, the priest who found the bishop's body, said Reuters.
Bishop Gerardi was killed two days after he presented an exhaustive report blaming the military for most human rights violations committed during the country's 36-year civil war. Church officials and human rights activists have accused Guatemala's security forces of masterminding the killing and of hindering the investigation. The military denies any involvement, said Reuters.
The DNA tests — believed to be the first to be performed on members of Guatemala's military — were sent May 6 to the U.S. for analysis, said Reuters.
Sinéad Starts a Trend
“He said all the women were from (Ireland) and were in their late 30s to early 40s,” said reporter Kitty Holland.
In addition to being certain that the candidates had a thorough knowledge of the Catholic faith, “there would be a series of conversations with each woman before [Cox] decided whether the person had a ‘true vocation,’” said Holland. O'Connor was “ordained” several months after being introduced to the sect.
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:Great Jubilee Offers Something for Everyone
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, May 1—“The Vatican is pushing ahead with Holy Year plans for the new millennium, with an anthem, comic books and a special prayer to be read by the Pope,” reported the AP's Frances D'Emilio.
The Vatican announced April 29 that a hymn to mark the Holy Year has been commissioned but has yet to be completed. A prayer for the Great Jubilee has also been prepared.
In addition, “an Italian church group is preparing comic books and games” for the first main Holy Year gathering in 2000, said the report. It will take place on Jan. 2 and will be dedicated to children. Some 45,000 youngsters are expected in Rome for the day.
Scandal Movies Set for 2000
God's Banker is being developed by Martin Scorsese; Elton John has his company working on St. Peter's Bank; and Ed Pressman is set to go with The Vatican Connection,” said Travis.
An international commission of leading businessmen found that the Vatican had done nothing improper in the case.
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Unity with the East DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:Bishop Eleuterio F. Fortino, undersecretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, was one of Pope John Paul II's key planners for the papal visit to Romania and ongoing dialogue with the Orthodox. In a recent interview with the ZENIT news service, Bishop Fortino expressed the Pope's desire to encourage dialogue between churches and support formation of a sovereign democratic state.
ZENIT: How important is the Orthodox Church in Romania?
Bishop Fortino: After the Patriarchy of Moscow, the Orthodox Church in Romania is the most numerous of the 15 independent and autonomous churches that make up the Orthodox Church. The Romanian Church is the only one of Latin origin and neo-Latin language. This fact is what determined its historical relations with the West. It is composed of 19 dioceses and 19.8 million faithful, extending its jurisdiction over the Romanian faithful in Moldavia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Western Europe, the United States and Canada.
In spite of the restrictions imposed by the communist regime, it was able to continue celebrating its liturgical service without interruption. It has been able to maintain a clergy that is theologically well-formed, in a number of seminaries and in two theological institutes. Following the repression [1958-1964], it reorganized monastic life, which is widespread, both for women as well as men.
Relations between the Holy See and Romania were adversely affected after the fall of communism because of controversies over the Greek Catholics. What is the origin of these differences?
The problem exploded in 1990. After the fall of the communist regime, the new government abrogated the 1948 communist government decree which declared the Catholic Church of the Byzantine rite [Greek Catholic] as nonexistent. The Greek Catholic bishops and many priests were jailed for not wanting to become Orthodox. This unjust and violent measure provoked divisions not only in the government, but also between Orthodox and Catholics. In fact, the Romanian Church was one of the few Orthodox Churches which sent observers to Vatican Council II. The decision of the post-communist government to pass the measure started litigation, especially over the use and ownership of places of worship, which previously belonged to the Greek Catholic Church.
But, how was the problem solved?
From the theological point of view, the question was overcome by the document published in 1993 by the international theological commission on the dialogue between Catholics and Orthodox, entitled: “Uniatism — Past Method of Union and Present Search for Full Unity.” In addition to offering theological principles, the text proposed lines of practical conduct for relations between the Greek Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church.
But, a question of such complex connotations due to sociological and psychological reasons, exasperated by history, could not be easily resolved. Last year a commission of Greek Catholics and Orthodox was established in Romania. The dialogue at the local level became a premise for an agreed solution to the open questions. At present, the question has not been resolved, but this has not created an obstacle to the Pope's trip to Bucharest.
How will the Pope's visit improve relations between the Orthodox and the Catholics?
The visit promotes a dialogue, especially at this time when violence is gaining ground as an instrument for the solution of claims. To leave his own See to go visit brothers in their home implies, without a doubt, a message of reconciliation and fraternal love. After a long period of Romanian dictatorship, the Pope's visit will promote not only relations with the Orthodox Church, but will prove a support to this country which is in a phase of democratic reorganization. The presence of reporters from all over the world will help further this process.
In January 1989, His Beatitude Teoctist, the Patriarch of Romania, with a personal gesture of good will, visited the Pope in Rome. … Now the Holy Father returns the visit, demonstrating that ecumenism is also reciprocal love and service. By visiting an important Orthodox Church, the Pope renders honor, at the same time, to all the Orthodox Churches with which he will have to intensify the dialogue of ecclesial and theological fraternity, in spite of present difficulties, such as the Kosovo war.
Finally, it is important to remember that the climate of prayer will predominate during this visit. The Pope will attend the eucharistic celebration presided [over] by the Orthodox Patriarch, and the Orthodox Patriarch will attend the celebration presided [over] by the Pope. Independent of the rest of the initiatives — contacts, dialogue, cooperation — prayer is the guarantee of success of the ecumenical cause.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: EDITORIAL DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:It was a “stormy period” in the Balkans, “marked by armed conflicts between” neighboring peoples. In Eastern Europe, divisions were mounting between the faith of the West and of the East.
Two great spiritual leaders arose from among the people, marked by “a resolute and vigilant fidelity to right doctrine and to the tradition of the perfectly united Church.” They were able to unite the Slav people in a new way: the way of the Church.
Pope John Paul II sets this scene in his 1985 encyclical Slavorum Apostoli (Apostles to the Slavs, 14). In it, Sts. Cyril and Methodius are presented as examples for Eastern Europe, for the Balkans, and for the whole Church.
The scene could just as well be the Balkans today, and it has been suggested that the encyclical was a prophetic account of things to come — and of how Christians should respond.
Eastern Europe after communism is shackled with intertwining ethnic, regional and religious conflicts. But there is hope, the Pope says. This kind of turmoil has been faced before, and overcome by the Slavs through the unifying power of the faith.
“Ever since the ninth century,” the Holy Father wrote, “when in Christian Europe a new organization was emerging, Saints Cyril and Methodius have held out to us a message clearly of great relevance for our own age, which precisely by reason of the many complex problems of a religious, cultural, civil and international nature, is seeking a vital unity in the real communion of its various elements” (26).
“It can be said of the two evangelizers that characteristic of them was their love for the communion of the universal Church both in the East and in the West, and, within the universal Church, love for the particular Church that was coming into being in the Slav nations. From them also comes for the Christians and people of our time the invitation to build communion together” (26).
The Holy Father's prescription in 1985 for the troubles of Eastern Europe was the new evangelization. It is the same now. His answer is not political because at its root the problem is not political. Most fundamentally, the problem is that people are seeking unity where it cannot be found. Only in faith can unity be re-established — not in nationalism, ideology or ethnicity.
The Pope ends with this prayer for the Slav peoples: “May they live in truth, charity, justice and in the enjoyment of the messianic peace which enfolds human hearts, communities, the earth and the entire universe!
“Aware of their dignity as human beings and children of God, may they have the strength to overcome all hatred and to conquer evil with good”(30).
* * *
Pope John Paul II is fulfilling a role today much like the apostles to the Slavs.
Amid war in Yugoslavia, he has acted boldly to make his first visit as Pope to an Orthodox Eastern European nation, by traveling to Romania May 7-9.
Sts. Cyril and Methodius were able to accomplish so much by being in “full spiritual and canonical unity with the Church of Rome, with the Church of Constantinople and with the new Churches which they had founded among the Slav peoples” (Slavorum Apostoli, 14).
Likewise, the Pope means to do all in his power to accomplish the great task of reunifying East and West. That goal, which has been so close to his heart for years, has seemed recently to be slipping out of reach.
The Orthodox have made it difficult for Catholics in the years after the dissolution of the communist regimes. They have treated Catholic countrymen as religious interlopers and have appropriated property taken from the Church by the previous governments.
Catholics sacrificed a great deal to make the Pope's visit to Romania possible — they gave up their efforts to regain many of the churches they owned before the communists took over. Now, the only way Church property will be restored is through a reunification of the “two lungs” of the Church, Orthodoxy and Catholicism.
It will take a miracle. Pope John Paul hopes for one.
In the encyclical, he quotes St. Methodius' dying words: “Into thy hands I commend my spirit.” He notes that his death took place “at a time when disquieting clouds were gathering above Constantinople and hostile tensions were increasingly threatening the peace and life of the nations, and even threatening the sacred bonds of Christian brotherhood and communion linking the Churches of the East and West” (29).
In his own concluding prayer for unity, the Pope recalls that this communion has been severed; and he repeats, on behalf of the Church: “Into your hands … we trustfully place [the future] in your hands, Heavenly Father” (32).
Will relations improve between East and West? Is peace possible in the Balkans after literally centuries of conflict have begun to boil over?
The prayer “Into your hands I commend my spirit” has been the precursor of astonishing things before.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Scripture Stops Brainwashing DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:Break Point: A True Account of Brainwashing and the Greater Power of the Gospel by Silvester Krèméry, M.D. (The Crossroad Publishing Co., 1998, 315 pages, $19.95)
I came to this book with enthusiasm, prepared to be inspired and instructed by Silvester Krèméry's [pronounced Kirch-mry] story of his 13 years in Soviet-era prisons and labor camps. I came away inspired indeed by the author himself, but more than annoyed that his material did not receive the editorial help necessary to turn it into the cohesive, accessible account it deserves to be.
Break Point begins with Krèméry's July 1951 kidnap-arrest from the Czechoslovakian base where he was fulfilling his compulsory army duty. He was a 26-year-old doctor then, with several published articles on dermatology — up-and-coming in the medical world, though not in the military, where he had already been demoted for frequenting the sacraments and standing up for Catholic bishops falsely accused of treason. Bundled off at midnight by the Czech secret police, Krèméry soon underwent many interrogations designed to ferret out information about his activities in the Catholic Action Movement. Brainwashing was the broader goal — an attempt to destroy personality and replace previously held values and positions with politically correct ones.
Fiendish means of persuasion overseen by “constantly smiling” professionals characterized Krèméry's three years of interrogations. Sleep deprivation, beatings, solitary confinement in cold and damp cells, standing still for up to 50 hours at a stretch — these and other physical sufferings were accompanied by the psychological tortures of propaganda and lies about betrayals by family and friends.
Perhaps because brainwashing necessitates repudiating one's beliefs, the communists attached enormous importance to a prisoner's confession. Like the trial that followed it, however, the confession was a legal fiction, a vehicle for false charges and for implicating others. Realizing this, and realizing, too, that discernment about what to say becomes virtually impossible after sustained interrogation, Krèméry made a courageous decision: He would sign nothing, no matter how harmless-looking, and would keep silence except when his interrogators did not want him to talk (as in the courtroom).
A rotation of 15 to 20 interrogators tried to break Krèméry's resolve, but to no avail. Fortified by prayer and reliance on God, this prisoner had come to terms with death. “From the moment I absolutely repudiated them, I felt that they could not hurt me any more…. The more I depended on my faith, the stronger I became.” In the end, he says, even solitary confinement became bearable (he would eventually endure a total of seven years of it), “since the Lord faithfully accompanied me whenever I was sent there.”
A strong sense of purpose kept Krèméry going when times got especially rough. His medical training and experience, he realized, gave him insights into brainwashing and the prison experience that might one day help others. “I am really God's probe, God's laboratory,” he would tell himself over and over. “I am going through all this so I can help others and the Church.”
Along with a meaning for his sufferings, Krèméry found the practical means by which to bear them and even grow through them: an intense program of spiritual exercises. In a chapter that is the heart of the book, he gives the reader a look at this impressive daily program. It included recitation of the prayers of the Mass from memory; scripturally based meditations with practical application on subjects like death, success and relationships; the rosary, Stations of the Cross, examinations of conscience, hymns and original prayers.
This rich spiritual life grew out of Krèméry's discovery early on that he knew almost all of John's Gospel by heart. Realizing what a valuable treasure this was, he immediately sought to recall as much as he could; over time, he assembled an impressive stockpile of additional verses, gleaning them from smuggled Bibles and the memories of fellow prisoners. This treasure became “the core of my meditations and spiritual life,” Krèméry emphasizes — an unfailing source of strength and “one of the most effective means of defense against brainwashing.”
Unexpected relief from suffering sometimes came as Krèméry meditated on John's Gospel and felt lifted into a higher realm. It was, he reports, “a spiritual state of weightlessness in some ways very similar to the physical weightlessness familiar to astronauts. Sometimes it lasted for several days. When that happened, I was released, not only from contact with time, space, and matter, but also from the underlying but ever present atmosphere of pressure, terror, fear, and uncertainty. The light of supernatural love against which my persecutors vainly struggled radiated and enlightened me. I delighted in astonishment at God's eternal truth and the infinite beauty of the Divine mysteries.”
With so much to admire in Krèméry's story, it is especially unfortunate that Break Point fails to convey its message clearly. The table of contents leaves an impression of raw materials that might go into a book, and its organization is unusual (documents, epilogue, bibliography, and notes occur halfway through the book, after part one).
Throughout, the reader will encounter gaffes unworthy of a major publisher. If, as it seems, this translation is directed primarily toward an American audience, why use Briticisms like “to hospital” (no definite article) and “screws” (prison guards)? Why so many non sequiturs, odd phrasings, and actual mistakes: “ingenuous” instead of “ingenious”; “good-natured from the bone”?
More problematic is the inclusion of material that detracts from the story (gratuitous allusions to unidentified persons or places, for example) and the omission of relevant information. Why exactly has Krèméry been imprisoned? What is the “Catholic apostolate work” in which he was engaged and about which he “knew too much”? What are “the infamous Ruzyn” and “the famous American Ralky handcuffs”?
Krèméry refers to his imprisonment as “the golden years,” a time of special closeness to God for which he is deeply grateful. His is a moving and instructive story. It is still waiting to be adequately told.
Louise Perrotta writes from St. Paul, Minnesota.
----- EXCERPT: Book Review ----- EXTENDED BODY: Louise Perrotta ----- KEYWORDS: Books -------- TITLE: Enraptured by the Rapture DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:“Waiting to Be Raptured: Dispensationalist Thought in America” by Carl E. Olson (This Rock, April 1999)
Carl E. Olson, of Eugene, Ore., writes: “The father of Dispensationalism is John Nelson Darby … [who] left the Anglican priest-hood and by 1831 was among the leaders of the Plymouth Brethren, a non-denominational movement that denounced mainline Christianity. He began to teach that the true church would need to be removed from the earth in order to make way for the completion of God's dealings with the Jews. He named this secret removal of the church the ‘Rapture.’ This belief was something completely new in Christianity. No previous Christian, neither Catholic nor Protestant, had ever proposed or taught such a thing.
“For Darby the Church forms a ‘parenthesis’ between the dispensation of the Gentiles (before Christ) and the coming dispensation of the Kingdom. … Meanwhile, God's real issue in human history is with his earthly people, the Israelites. The Rapture will be the necessary removal of the heavenly people from the world so that God's work with the earthly people might be finished.
“[Dispensationalist Cyrus I.] Scofield taught that Scripture contains passages meant for each respective time period, and therefore many passages had nothing to do with present-day Christians in the Church age. This meant that most of Christ's teachings, including the Sermon on the Mount, were for the future Kingdom age, not for the Church age. This was another radical break from nineteen hundred years of Christian teaching.
“Anticipation of the Rapture and the beginning of the end grew in the 1940s and '50s. The upheaval of the late '60s and early '70s presented a ripe opportunity for someone with a skill for popular writing and a background in Dispensationalism to focus on ‘end times.’ That someone was Hal Lindsey. …
“Lindsey … claimed that many biblical prophecies were being fulfilled right before our eyes: the restoration of Israel as a nation, the ‘apostasy’ of mainline churches, the collapse of morality, and the frightening realities of the Cold War. He interpreted the destructive images of Revelation as scenes of nuclear war.
“With the fall of the Soviet Union and with global politics rapidly changing, people like Lindsey had to revise their futuristic blueprints. … Lindsey continues to put out books and has a regular television program that focuses on the Y2K bug as the most likely trigger for his end-time scenarios.
“In breaking away from the Anglican Church and forming his mistaken doctrines, Darby was following the centuries-old tradition of separatist sects … who could find good only in themselves and their own teachings. … The culmination of this attitude can be seen in this statement by [Charles] Ryrie: ‘The fact that the Church taught something in the first century does not make it true, and likewise if the Church did not teach something until the twentieth century, it is not necessarily false.’
“Ryrie's assertion fails to explain how it is that we can accurately interpret the Bible in a way totally different from the previous eighteen hundred years of the Church's understanding of it. … If Scripture can be read ‘plainly’ and is for all people, why did it take eighteen hundred years for someone to figure out what it really means? In this claim Dispensationalists resemble the Latter-Day Saints, who believe that the truth was lost for eighteen centuries.
“Catholics are not bound to a fatalistic and pessimistic view of history. We have hope for the future, just as Pope John Paul II continually says: ‘Be not afraid!’ … [T]he Church, as the Body of Christ, will not fail or be ‘removed’ but shall one day be revealed as the true Kingdom.”
Ellen Wilson Fielding writes from Davidson, Maryland.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: LETTERS DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:Culture of Violence
Everyone seems to be horrified by the recent, tragic violence in Colorado! Everyone searches and asks why this happened.
I've read and heard various causes: violence on TV, in movies, on the Internet, in music, and media in general; more dangerous weapons today; children come home from school to empty homes; dysfunctional families; psychiatric problems; substance abuse; lack of character education/moral values; cultural decay; lack of human respect for others; etc., etc.
Yet never once did I read or hear about the big contributing cause for more violence at its worst! Americans are blinded and/or callowed to such tragic violence — over 1,000 little fetuses (persons) violently killed daily and over 38,000,000 killed since 1973! Where's the outcry? Such violence is bound to affect the attitude and behavior of children, whether elementary or high school!
Life has been cheapened by adults who accept the violence of legalized abortion and think nothing of the violence. What signal does this send to children today? Too many adults have espoused the “culture of death” and yet deny it.
Many national and state politicians are asking us to help end all forms of violence (which comment was made by Clinton on April 21). Well, abortion is one form of violence, yet our politicians protect this violence! Again, what signal is given to the children?
We in America can't honestly say we are against violence, if we condone and/or promote the violence in abortion. Violence is violence! Our children know it. Do we adults know it?
Father Harold Brown, CPpS Glandorf, Ohio
Christians in the Holy Land
As a Catholic Nazarene living in Pennsylvania, I have been scrutinizing your articles concerning the multifaceted issues of the Holy Land. I find it unfortunate and heartbreaking to see a Catholic newspaper simply repeating news as broadcast by the Israeli propaganda machine. At a time when Catholics and Christians in general in Israel need the support of the Catholic community at large, your articles don't even scratch the surface of our suffering.
As a result of our status as second-class citizens, there are more of us in the diaspora than in the Holy Land and our numbers are declining. …
The mayor of Nazareth is a Christian who belongs to a secular progressive party, not a communist as reported in your newspaper (“Christian-Muslim Violence Erupts in Nazareth on Easter,” Register, April 18-24). The clashes between Muslims and Christians are instigated by outsiders who enjoy seeing us divided. Living under very stressful conditions such as overcrowding due to confiscation of land around Nazareth and to the eradication of hundreds of villages around Nazareth and very high unemployment among Arab youth are at the root of the clashes. The contested land by the Basilica of the Annunciation was only a catalyst igniting the troubles. …
We need to raise awareness in this country to the plight of the first Christians who are becoming extinct in the land of Christ.
Najla Bathish-Muallem via e-mail
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Coming to Grips with Kosovo and Littleton DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:The fragile balance of political and culturalural conditions that make a fully human life possible have been tested in events in Kosovo and Littleton. Among the most basic of these conditions are the rule of law and respect for the human person.
In a perilously short time, the rule of law was overthrown in both places — either in the name of one man's idea of ethnic purity or of two students' uncontrolled desire for revenge. Life's daily normalcy in these communities will never be the same.
When the rule of law is shattered by violence, the other necessary condition for life — respect for the person — is no longer adequately protected.
In Kosovo, the devastation families have suffered is a humanitarian tragedy. It is a sad reminder that basic political realities must be in place in society if families are to be able to live out their vocation as families. Politicians try to find a face-saving strategy to end the violence, but meanwhile families have lost homes, property, jobs, documents and fortunes. They are surviving in temporary shelters, not knowing if they will ever return to their own homes or ever know peace again. War has brought complete chaos and misery to their lives.
In this case, respect for law has been abolished by a tyrannical power that is coercing hundreds of thousands of people to conform to one man's totalitarian vision. The Milosevic approach uses “ethnic cleansing” as a tool for sorting out which groups are more worthy than others to live in Serbia. Power, not law, is calling the shots.
Ironically, in Colorado, where society is predominantly governed by law, and where Littleton residents assumed, until now, a certain level of mutual respect, two seventeen-year-olds disrupted the life of the community in a shooting spree killing thirteen people and then themselves. They violated the most basic law protecting human life and opened a gaping hole in society's sense of security — a sense of security that results when the rule of law is effectively in place.
The boys' behavior was especially dramatic because of their age. This slaughter, perpetrated by two college-bound students, has raised fears that there may be more young people out there growing up with little regard for the law, willing to “express themselves” with anarchic behavior at a moment's notice.
In Kosovo, first ethnic cleansing and then NATO's bombing have decimated a nation's societal structure, a structure that protected family life. In Littleton, two troubled youngsters shattered a community's sense of identity and raised questions about how people are raising their children.
The students, Klebold and Harris, were driven by wounded egos, revenge, a love of death (they were known as “Goths,” a subculture group fascinated with death) and the radical individualism that infects today's culture with excessive self-absorption. After the fact, parents and teachers are asking themselves about the unnoticed behavioral signs of the boys' emotional and moral disturbance, and about their own indifference to the signs they may have seen.
In both places, anarchy destabilized the basic order that is necessary for human life. What is the fragile balance that has been shattered? It is the balance that underlies all democratic societies: respect for law, a working economy that provides jobs and resources for families, and a culture that promotes the good of the individual and encourages virtue, or, at a minimum, decency. Without respect for law, the economy and the culture cannot continue to function, as we have seen in Kosovo, which is now a land emptied of people except for roving bands of Serbian troops. In Littleton, the balance has been shattered by the breaking of the law through a cancer in the culture, a lack of moral virtue in the lives of two students and the community that did not seem to notice.
We fail to realize that political stability is based on law and guaranteed by law. The balance of institutions that form our society is fragile. It is not magical; nor is it everlasting. Without law, and law informed by morality and religion, there can be no democracy, as the Pope has so often warned us.
These events are shock waves that remind us of our individual responsibility for the democratic order we have. We see how easily the veneer of civilization can be lost when respect for law is swept aside by one man or two students.
Mary Ellen Bork, a board member of the Catholic Campaign for America and the Institute for Religion in Democracy, writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mary Ellen Bork ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: The New Lectionary DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:Three years ago, as pastor of Mary, Queen of the Rosary parish in Spencer, Mass., I lifted the Lectio-nary to read the Gospel. As I did, the binding broke and the page with the Gospel I was about to read floated away like an errant angel. I decided it was time for a new Lectionary.
But I wasn't the first. Almost 20 years earlier, the scholars who had translated the New American Bible were contemplating a revision of their work, based upon advances in the study of sacred Scripture. They too decided it was time for a new Lectionary.
And shortly before that, the Congregation for Divine Worship in Rome was reflecting on the experience of 10 years of use of the first postconciliar Lectionary for Mass. Their studies revealed the need for a new introduction and expanded cycles of readings. They also decided it was time for a new Lectionary.
So it was that in 1981, the Holy See published a second typical edition of the Ordo Lectionum Missae, which was subsequently approved by the bishops of our country as the Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States of America. Parishes were permitted to begin reading from it on the First Sunday of Advent 1998. The new Lectionary for the United States incorporates the revised translation of the New Testament from the New American Bible. The Old Testament is still being retranslated by Scripture scholars.
What's in It
The new Lectionary adds many new cycles of readings for particular feasts and includes all the selections from Scripture found in the Roman Ritual (for baptism, confirmation, holy orders, marriage, and the rest). One of the first differences readers will notice is that all readings are broken into sense lines in order to facilitate effective proclamation.
The new Lectionary begins with an extensive introduction, which explains the theology of the Word of God in the life of the Church and in her liturgy. The theological section is followed by a reflection on the roles of the reader, deacon and priest in the Liturgy of the Word and the principles by which the Lectionary for Mass is organized.
Many of the readings from the Lectionary were first assigned to their particular feasts in the first centuries of the life of the Church. Your parish assembly is thus joined in a special way, not only with all who read from the Lectionary today, but with all who have proclaimed the mysteries of our faith throughout the ages.
Each of the readings from Scripture have been translated from the original Greek and Hebrew into English as spoken in the United States today. This is particularly appropriate since “American English” differs somewhat from British or Australian or any sort of English spoken in other parts of the world.
Language About God
Another often-discussed aspect of the translation deals with the question of so-called inclusive language. Inclusive language is either vertical (words referring to God) or horizontal (words referring to people). While some have advocated the changing of the Scriptures to purify them of what they perceive as patriarchal (exclusively male) images of God, neither the bishops nor their translators have ever advocated such an approach. Although the metaphors used in the Scriptures to describe God are predominantly male, this does not, of course, mean that God is a man! God is neither male nor female. He is the totality of all that is good and true and beautiful.
Such a reflection is a good subject for a homily or other type of catechetical reflection. It is not, however, a good reason to change the inspired Word of God. No gendered references to God are changed in this translation of the Lectionary for Mass. All references to God are translated with precision and fidelity.
Language About Man
Horizontal inclusivity usually refers to words used in reference to people. Most of the time this concerns what lexicographers call “universal collectives,” that is, words used to designate “sets” of people. English has a particularly difficult time with such words. It used to be, several centuries ago, that English had a gendered universal collective for each sex: all of the male sex were referred to as “vir,” while all of the female sex were referred to as “vif.” All male and female persons together were, as today, referred to as “man.”
For a variety of complex reasons (which no one seems to fully understand), vir and vif fell out of usage. They were replaced by “man,” which referred to all masculine persons; and “woman,” which referred to all female persons. Confused yet? It gets worse! For this has resulted in a double job for the single word “man”: It means both the universal collective (all persons) and the gendered collective (all masculine persons).
In recent years, some have suggested that the word “man” should be avoided or replaced with other words in order to avoid this confusion. Yet, as contemporary writings, journalistic stylebooks, movies and popular speech demonstrate, the word “man” as a non-gendered universal collective is still widespread across our country.
Thus the new Lectionary for Mass avoids the word “man” when there is the danger of confusing its universal meaning (all persons) with the gendered (all masculine persons) use of the word. Sometimes, however, the only word capable of fully expressing the idea of the non-gendered universal collective is the word “man.” Such is the case in the creation account, where “God created man” is the translation in the revised Lectionary for Mass.
Brothers and Sisters
Another example of this complex question comes in relation to the Greek word adelphoi. In Greek, the term literally means brothers and is often used in the vocative case (forms of address) to greet men and women. Those of us with a few more graying hairs can recall a time when the same situation existed in American English. It is hard to imagine someone beginning a speech to a mixed group today with the phrase, my brothers, but this was not quite so rare just a few short decades ago.
The Revised New American Bible translates St. Paul's vocative use of adelphoi as brothers. This is because Paul uses the word as a “technical term” to referred to the baptized as the adelphoi. It is unfortunate that we do not have a single word in American English that could be used to refer to both brothers and sisters. The fact is, we no longer have such a word.
In the Lectionary for Mass, therefore, whenever the word adelphoi is used in the vocative, it is translated as brothers and sisters. When it is used in the non-vocative sense, the context determines the precise translation.
‘Maximum Possible Fidelity’
Which is precisely the point I wish to make. The principles applied by the Scripture scholars, liturgists, theologians and most all the bishops, in preparing this new Lectionary for Mass was maximum possible fidelity to the sacred Scriptures. Where the Greek or Hebrew text was inclusive, an attempt was made to express that inclusivity in the English translation. Where the Greek or Hebrew text was exclusive, the gendered reference of the original was accurately translated into English. The holy Scriptures were never changed for the sake of inclusivity or any other agenda. The Scriptures were passed on (traditio) as best those involved in this work could accomplish that important task.
The revised Lectionary for Mass that is now proclaimed at Sunday Mass does contain a moderate degree of horizontal inclusivity, just as American English, as it is spoken in our country today, utilizes a moderate degree of horizontal inclusivity. More notably, however, the translation is more accurate, easier to proclaim, and specifically crafted to assist your deacon or reader or priest to effectively proclaim the Word of God.
The Revised New American Bible of the Lectionary for Mass will eventually be the only translation authorized for use in the liturgy in the United States of America. Thanks to the close collaboration of the Holy See and our bishops' conference, it is a Lectionary uniquely enabled to proclaim the Word of God in our day and age. May we receive it with hearts ready to embrace the command that the bishop gives to each newly ordained deacon as he hands him the Book of Gospels: believe what you read and practice what you preach.
Father James P. Moroney is executive director of the Secretariat for the Liturgy of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
----- EXCERPT: 'Maximum Possible Fidelity' ----- EXTENDED BODY: Father James P. Moroney ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: The View from the Other Side of the Rio DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:In his postsynodal apostolic exhortation The Church in America, Pope John Paul II issued a strong appeal for conceiving of the Americas as one united continent — “Not the Americas, but America,” as he stressed. He was not speaking of a dream for sometime in the future. He was giving spiritual backbone to what is already a reality.
Follow me for a moment on this.
Both sides of the Rio Grande share more things that they think. To start with, they share the pervasive U.S. media culture: More than 65% of Latin American TV programs are “canned” — translated from U.S. television. And each day an increasing number of Latin Americans can follow U.S. television in real time through cheap cable providers. At the moment I write this in Peru, I am watching the Colorado Rockies beat the Pittsburgh Pirates on Denver WB2.
Since the media not only convey entertainment, but culture, Latin Americans, especially the young ones, are sharing with North Americans more than just TV programs; they are sharing common cultural icons. So, the Pope's call to Catholics on both sides of the Rio Grande is not to create a common ground — one already exists — but to make sure that the new common culture is not dominated by secularism and relativism, but based on strong spiritual values.
Among other things, the Pope's “American dream” requires us to overcome mutual stereotypes and ensure a more balanced, two-way exchange of cultural values. For many North Americans, the region south of the Rio Grande is little more than a blend of fiesta, siesta and mañana. Meanwhile, for Latin Americans who perceive the United States only through the media, Uncle Sam is somewhere between Jerry Springer and MTV.
Catholics are in a position to help eliminate these oversimplifications, not only because the Holy Father asks us to, but because the universal nature of the Church gives us the best resources for building a global culture with a human, and therefore spiritual, face.
This openness to the universal will give Catholics on both sides of the continent opportunities to share perspectives that can help the other side understand and face local challenges and problems.
The killings at Littleton provide a dramatic example. The horrific news caught me while I was in Miami; and though I live in Peru, the images of Columbine High School and its surroundings are more familiar to me than to many Americans because one of my best friends, who I visit frequently, lives in Littleton.
But, still, I am not from the United States and many things that are taken for granted there are surprising for me — sometimes even shocking.
Television programs, particularly those channels or shows addressed to kids and teen-agers, have always left me with the eerie feeling that if I were a North American teen-ager I would have a hard time resisting the pressure of the media culture.
From TV commercials to music videos, from cartoons to soap operas, the same message is constantly hammered: You have to be successful, powerful and pretty if you want to be cool. U.S. teen-agers are aggressively told how to dress, how to act, how to treat parents, what to eat and drink, what to have and what to pursue if they want to be “in.” Their emotional strings are constantly being pulled by highly sophisticated messages that “teach” them how to be “free.”
But what weapons are they given to confront this bombardment with messages? From the eyes of a Latin American “regular Juan,” it seems that they basically receive useless cotton candy.
Since my days as a high school exchange student, each time I come back to the United States, I am surprised to see that moral messages are more watered down than the last time — in order not to offend an indefinable, and sometimes imaginary, “someone.” And objective criteria, which in the recent past were undisputed certainties based on common sense, are now merely one possible alternative among many others equally valid — just because of what is now politically correct.
So here is the contradiction: kids are left “free” from moral influences, while they are carpet-bombed with the message that they can be “cool” only if they have specific things that are usually out of their reach — a beautiful face, a lean body, fancy possessions and so on. Their value does not come from the unchangeable dignity of being human, but from their looks and their possessions. So if a kid is not lucky enough, or skilled enough, to get this “added value,” he or she will feel an outcast. As outcast as Erik Harris and Dylan Klebold felt.
And while Littleton's killing rampage becomes a bloody ditto to what has already happened in Arkansas, Kentucky and Oregon, the quest for an explanation brings the most absurd theories, raising questions about how sensible the quest is in the first place.
In March 1998, President Clinton promised to call the best experts in the country together to fix the problem of school shootings. His misplaced confidence was based on the erroneous conviction that technological society can address human problems as if they were so many malfunctions of a machine.
But, why are these social calamities occurring? It is not for this regular Juan to say. But I can share an impression: Despite its power and wealth, the United States seems to be falling into the spiritual darkness and the moral relativism that preceded the decline of other great empires in history.
However, current history is not yet written. And the Holy Father, with his call to a united American continent, with a common spiritual ground, is hoping that Catholics can provide a new evangelization and a springtime of the faith.
Alejandro Bermudez is the Register's Latin America correspondent.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Alejandro Bermudez ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: Life in Prison, Life in Christ DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:Billy Chad, 45, has spent three years on San Quentin's death row, convicted of murder, robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. Today he evangelizes inmates in the California State Prison in Calipatria, where he is serving life sentences without the possibility of parole.
The San Diego native described his conversion from criminal to Christian in telephone interviews with the Register. An edited version follows:
“In 1974, I lost my job as a machinist with a San Diego shipbuilding company. I was 19 and desperate for money to support my pregnant wife. I robbed a young woman of $50 in her home, got scared she would turn me in, and strangled her to death.
“I ran from the scene and continued to rob in San Diego, where I stabbed another woman to death. In Las Vegas, I robbed and stabbed a homosexual man to death after he made advances at me.
“I was caught in 1978, pleaded guilty to all the charges, and was sent to San Quentin's death row. For two years I was in solitary confinement in a 5-by-9-foot cell. Those on death row put on an ‘I'm-not-afraid’ facade. I expected to be executed and was afraid of dying. I felt empty, like I had lost everything.
“In 1981 my sentence was commuted to life imprisonment without parole because I was considered suicidal. …
“I was then extradited to Nevada. A plea bargain there reduced my charge from first- to second-degree murder, and I received another life sentence without parole.
“In the Las Vegas County Jail, a Christian woman visited me and later brought along two Catholic women, who were clerks in the county court. They could have lost their jobs for visiting me, so I discouraged them from returning. Vivean responded, “God can always get me another job, but he can't get me another Billy.”
“I realized they were living their faith and were sent by God. Before, I didn't know if God was real. Joanne told me to talk to God, so that night I got down on my knees and prayed. God touched me, and for the first time I sensed that God was real and cared for me. I cried like a baby. He would take who I was and make someone he could use.
“I started to read the Bible and pray. I began to tell other prisoners about God and convinced one inmate to attend chapel services instead of following gang members' orders to stab an inmate.
“In 1989, I was transferred to state prisons in Sacramento, Calif., where I attended Mass. I have been in Calipatria since 1994 and was the Catholic chaplain's clerk for two years. Now I lead music for Protestant services.
“As for my crimes, I am very remorseful. What bothers me the most is that I killed three people and wonder if they knew God. My victims' pain stopped at death, but their family's pain continues. I deserve to be locked up the rest of my life.
“I don't believe in the death penalty because it doesn't prevent crime. Those who murder don't think they'll get
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Commanding Relief Efforts DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:Appointed as U.S. ambassador to Honduras in 1996, James F. Creagan was instrumental in organizing massive lifesaving efforts in Honduras during and immediately following Hurricane Mitch in November. Along with Honduras Archbishop Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, Creagan was recently awarded the Caritas Christi Medal by the Archdiocese of Boston. Register correspondent Liz Urbanski Farrell spoke to him with other press in the ambassador's residence in Tegucigalpa about the ongoing need for aid.
Urbanski Farrell: Now that food and drinking water are being supplied and the storm is over, what is the biggest need in Honduras?
Ambassador Creagan: We need about $300 million for Honduras. One of the things we're going to do with the money, about $50 million of it, is to provide [drinking] water and sewage in these different housing projects that need it.
Housing is a real problem. We need about 60,000 permanent housing units just to take care of … those displaced by Mitch and who are unable to find solutions. We put $6 million into [temporary] shelters, because we had to. It's a bad solution, but it's the only one there is. …
After the hurricane we gave $100,000 to [the Pan American School of Agriculture at] Zamorano because that school is providing seeds and training and so forth to farmers all over. This is for new seeds for the new crops, fertilizer, and actually a better variety of beans that produce double or triple of the old variety, and a lot of things. …
We want to put $25 million into a fund that other nations will contribute to … and with that fund there will be enough money to pay the World Bank and the Inter-American [Develoment] Bank the service on Honduras' debt.
With Serbian attacks on Kosovar Albanians threatening hundreds of thousands of people in Europe, how do you hope to gain Congress' attention for Hurricane Mitch relief?
Emergency support is needed for Kosovo. A different type of aid is needed for Honduras and those countries affected by Hurricane Mitch. We need to be careful, with all the tragedy in Kosovo, that we not forget an area of the world impacted by natural disasters, where man has helped man, and leave these folks in, frankly, very poor circumstances — to send aid only to a place where people have been expelled by a man-made disaster, created by man's inhumanity to man.
Honduras' government earned a 1.7 on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index survey on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the most corrupt and 10 being the most trustworthy. The scale, compiled from 12 different surveys of industrialists, politicians and economists, ranks Honduras as the third most corrupt government worldwide, out of 85 nations.
How has the U.S. government worked with Honduras to closely monitor the more than $200 million in aid?
Church and other nonprofit aid organizations like CARE, the Red Cross and the United Nations' World Food Program have administered much of the aid so far.
President [Carlos] Flores [Facusse] said in a meeting with Cardinal [Bernard] Law [of Boston] that corruption is always a problem. Flores … knew he wanted international aid in a big way because he knew there was no way he could do it, but he knew corruption, or the perception of corruption, would ruin it.
So he turned to [Tegucigalpa] Archbishop Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga and said, “I'd like the Church to handle the relief. We don't want the military to handle the relief … because there will be certainly at least charges of corruption, and my government shouldn't do it for the same reason. So let's have the church do it and not just the Catholic Church, but larger nonprofits and other churches.” Well, the archbishop accepted, and we [the U.S.] jumped on that as well. …
There are several different mechanisms for monitoring, auditing and keeping people honest, and it won't be a hundred percent, but it'll be pretty darn good.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: City of the Immaculata DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:The story of St. Maximilian Kolbe and the surrender of his life for a fellow prisoner at Auschwitz is well-known. Less known is the friary and town established by him called Niepokalanow.
As a devout son of the Blessed Mother, he founded this priory in order to spread Marian devotion and defend the Catholic faith through modern communications.
A visit to Niepokalanow takes one back in time. There, in the Polish countryside, far removed from the glitzy new storefronts of Warsaw, the broad fields dotted with modest farmhouses recall a time before World War II when the saint's reputation grew.
The story of St. Maximilian's apostolate began with his early seminary years in Rome, when the Catholic Church suffered many brazen attacks from Masons and communists. The saint witnessed many blasphemous displays such as banners declaring that “Satan must reign in the Vatican. The Pope will be his slave.”
Winning Souls
Steeled by the blows of anti-Catholic rhetoric, the young seminarian became determined to fight back by organizing a spiritual army that would win souls. On Oct. 16, 1917, in the basement of the seminary, he and six companions quietly met and enrolled themselves in his newly founded Knights of the Immaculata. A powerful Marian movement, the Knights would consist of members who consecrated themselves to Jesus through Mary and worked for the salvation of souls. A significant aspect of the apostolate would be the conversion and sanctification of non-Catholics, especially those who were hostile to the faith.
After ordination to the priesthood in 1918, Father Kolbe began to print the monthly magazine The Knight of the Immaculata. He intended the publication to encourage devotion to the Immaculate Virgin Mary and serve as a source of Catholic apologetics. The publication was an instant success, and in a short time circulation increased from 5,000 copies to more than 50,000.
The Apostolate Flourishes
The great acceptance of the apostolate in the late 1920s led the Conventual Franciscan to found the town of Niepokalanow. In Polish, the name means “City of the Immaculata.” The mission of the Franciscan community founded there was to combine prayer with cheerfulness, poverty with modern technology, and to promote devotion to our Lord and the Blessed Mother through mass media.
The friary at Niepokalanow soon became one of the largest in the world, both in size and activity. It grew to include a seminary, mission house, printing establishment and radio station. With each passing year, the Knights of Mary Immaculata experienced such astonishing success that Father Kolbe had to install the most up-to-date machinery in his printing department. By 1935 the friary added a daily Catholic newspaper, which soon became one of Poland's leading newspapers. Father Kolbe then expanded his apostolic work to include a radio station, which proved to be very fruitful.
It was also during this period that he set out for Japan. In 1930, another “City of the Immaculata” was founded, in Nagasaki. After establishing the priory at Japan, he then sailed to Malabar, India, where he founded a third monastery.
Resisting German Occupation
In 1936, Father Kolbe returned to Poland to serve as the spiritual father and superior of Niepokalanow, as well as to head what was then one of the largest Catholic publishing houses in the world. Shortly before World War II, the priory had included more than 900 friars publishing a monthly magazine and a daily newspaper with a circulation of more than 1 million.
Things took a turn for the worse, however, in September 1939. Germany invaded Poland, and the Franciscan priory was ransacked. Father Kolbe, along with 40 other friars, was arrested and taken to a holding camp. They were released Dec. 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception. When Father Kolbe returned to Niepokalanow, he found that his friary had become a refugee camp for thousands of Poles and Jews who had escaped from Nazi persecution.
Father Kolbe soon came under scrutiny by the Gestapo because he allowed his printing press to publish articles critical of the Nazi regime. After refusing German citizenship, he was labeled a “threat” by the Nazis. He seemed aware that his fate was sealed, when he wrote in the December 1940 issue of the Knight of Mary Immaculata:
“No one in the world can change truth; what we can do and should do is to seek it and serve it when it is found. The real conflict is inner conflict. Beyond armies of occupation and the catacombs of concentration camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil, sin and love. And what use are the victories on the battlefield if we ourselves are defeated in our innermost personal selves?”
Surrendering All
On Feb. 17, 1941, Father Kolbe was again arrested, this time on charges of aiding Jews and the Polish underground. Twenty Franciscan brothers offered to go to prison in Father Kolbe's place, but were refused. After being stationed in a prison in Warsaw for three months, he was deported to Auschwitz where he later gave his life for a fellow prisoner.
Visitors to Niepokalanow are struck by the contrast between the humble structures first built by the saint, and the present more modern complex.
After suffering setbacks during the atrocities of the war and the Nazi invasion, this “City of the Immaculata” has since regrouped and today remains a fully functioning monastery.
The friars have maintained the print and radio apostolates, and have pressed on into television as well. On any day of the year, pilgrims can be seen visiting or praying at such sites as the saint's chapel, bedroom and museum.
The faithful come in droves to witness the place where the mission and spirit of the beloved St. Maximilian Kolbe continues to live.
Kevin Wright, author of Catholic Shrines of Western Europe, writes from Bellevue, Washington.
----- EXCERPT: St. Maximilian Kolbe's Niepokalanow ----- EXTENDED BODY: Kevin Wright ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: Time Hasn't Wilted this Delight DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:In movies about saints' lives during Hollywood's golden age (1930-'66), you could always tell when the hero or heroine was about to do something holy. A loud choir of heavenly angels would drown out everything else on the soundtrack, heavily underlining the sanctity of the moment.
This kind of sentimental piety was an important part of the popular culture of the time: an honest and simple attempt to satisfy the religious yearnings of its audience. Although the storytelling methods are easy to ridicule nowadays, at least those movies tried to dramatize the spiritual side of our natures in a Christian manner. Today's mass entertainment doesn't pay as much attention to the subject, and society is poorer for it.
Italian writer-directors Roberto Rossellini (Open City) and Vittorio De Sica (The Bicycle Thief) are considered the fathers of neo-realism, an influential movement which wanted to make movies about ordinary people instead of heroes. Its films have the realistic look of documentaries rather than the sanitized, make-believe gloss of studio-made movies. Whether comedies or dramas, they emphasize the effect of their characters' social and political environment on their destinies.
Rossellini's The Flowers of St. Francis, first released in 1950, applies these innovative ideas to the life of a saint. Nothing about it seems dated today. Shot on location, with a cast which includes real-life peasants and religious, it authentically recreates the 13th-century world in which Francis and his early followers lived.
Its simple, spare style turns the movie into a sincere expression of Franciscan spirituality. The neo-realist point of view communicates the saint's message of humility and sanctified poverty more effectively than the slick techniques of that era's Hollywood films.
Francis, the son of a rich Italian cloth merchant, was born in Assisi in 1181 or 1182. As a young man, he enjoyed hedonistic pursuits and hoped to become a professional soldier. A series of dreams convinced him to follow Jesus Christ instead.
The saint lived like a beggar, giving all he had to the poor. Even though his father disinherited him, he began to attract a small band of followers who called themselves the Penitents of Assisi. When their number reached 11, he drew up a written rule to guide them and traveled to Rome to get the Pope's approval.
The Flowers of St. Francis takes place in 1211 and 1212 after Francis' return from the Holy See. He and his followers settle outside Assisi, building a few small huts made of stone, mud and straw around the tiny chapel of St. Mary of the Angels.
The film was written by several hands: Rossellini, Federico Fellini (La Strada and 8 1/2), Father Antonio Lisandrini and Father Felix Morion. It isn't a conventional drama, with a central conflict which resolves itself in a cathartic climax. Instead, the action unfolds in a series of episodes which show how Franciscan spirituality evolved and what its basic tenets are.
There's no narrative suspense. Each individual section is less than 10 minutes long, introduced by a title card which describes in summary form what will follow. The incidents chosen include some that actually happened outside the given time frame or owe more to legend than to fact.
The first sequence sets the tone. It's a cold, windy, rainy day. As Francis (Brother Nazario Gerardi) and his small band of followers slog their way barefoot through the mud, their coarse woolen robes don't seem adequate to protect them from the elements. The saint is preaching about the connection between joy and peace. “Christians must love the struggle,” he says. “God has permitted us to be useful to others.”
One of the brothers takes a tumble in the middle of a huge puddle. Thoroughly soaked, he picks himself up with the help of the others. But the pratfall hardly seems to register on his consciousness as he enthusiastically joins the rest of the group in a hymn of praise to God.
This combination of innocence and devout fervor characterizes the brothers in all the other episodes as Francis exhorts them to “preach by example rather than words.” The most vivid illustration is the incident involving the barbarian tyrant, Nicholas (Aldo Fabrizzi), who sets siege to a nearby Italian city. Nicholas' soldiers capture one of Francis' followers and savagely beat him. But the brother's courageous and forgiving spirit in the face of humiliation and death touches something deep inside the tyrant. As a result, Nicholas lifts the siege and spares the city's inhabitants.
In another episode, Francis teaches that “perfect joy” cannot be achieved through good works alone but is also a matter of spirit. On a wintry night, when a rich man denies shelter to him and a brother who are proclaiming the Gospel, the saint explains that this rejection brings them closer to “perfect joy” because now they're “suffering for Christ.”
Rossellini doesn't neglect Francis' whimsical side, which includes an appreciation of nature. As the saint recites the Lord's Prayer alone in the woods, the birds become silent. Some rest on his shoulder. In the same spirit, his followers prepare a carpet of freshly picked flowers for the visit of St. Clare (Arabella Lemaitre), his spiritual friend who founds the Second Franciscan Order of Poor Ladies, or Poor Clares, based on his rule.
The Flowers of St. Francis doesn't monized choir of angels on its sound-track to let us know when its characters are close to God. We can tell by the light in the brothers' eyes as they struggle to do God's will through humble acts of charity and compassion.
We witness the peace they find in a life of service and suffering, sustained by worship built on prayer and song.
Rating: general patronage (U.S. Catholic Conference) John Prizer currently writes from Paris.
----- EXCERPT : Realism keeps The Flowers of St. Francis fresh ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Videos on Release DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:From a Far Country (Pope John Paul II)
The docudrama, “From a Far Country (Pope John Paul II),” was first released in 1981, just three years after Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Krakow became Pope John Paul II. Now available on video, it's a curious film. At the time it was made, Poland was still a communist country, and the Pope a relatively unknown man. But the film-makers received permission to film in Poland as they sought to tell the story of the future Pope in conjunction with the fictionalized stories of several people who knew him as a young man. In the 18 years that have passed since the docudrama's release, enormous changes have taken place in Poland, many of them the direct result of John Paul's influence. These historical developments change the film's impact considerably. Now, it's not so much an argument against tyranny as an exploration of Karol Wojtyla's dramatic life up until the moment he became Pope and left behind his beloved country of Poland for the world.
Rescuers: Stories of Courage: Two Women
Directed by Peter Bogdanovich, this video presents two segments from Showtime's “Rescuers: Stories of Courage,” a series based on Rescuers: Stories of Moral Courage in the Holocaust by Gay Block and Malka Drucker. The first segment, “Mamusha,” stars Elizabeth Perkins as Gertruda, the Catholic governess in a wealthy Jewish family living in Warsaw. When the Germans invade Poland, Gertruda flees to Vilna with her 3-year-old charge, Mickey, and his mother, Lydia (Nicky Guadagni). After Lydia dies, Gertruda hides Mickey from the Nazis and helps incarcerated Jews. The second segment, “Woman on a Bicycle,” tells the story of Marie-Rose (Sela Ward), a young woman who works in the secretariat of the bishop of Montauban (Fritz Weaver) in southern France. When the bishop helps French Jews, Marie-Rose aids him, despite extreme danger. Both of the women highlighted in these two stories are seemingly ordinary people. But through a mixture of personal courage, their Catholic faith and a clear sense of justice they find the strength to face down fear.
Fairy Tale: A True Story
In 1917, in the midst of World War I, 10-year-old Frances (Elizabeth Earl) and her cousin, Elsie (Florence Hoath), took several photographs that shocked the world. The girls said their pictures showed real fairies, who lived near them in Cottingley, West Yorkshire. The local media were the first to grab the story, but it soon went international when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Peter O'Toole) saw the photographs. The creator of Sherlock Holmes had spent decades trying to determine if the spiritual world existed. Sir Arthur wanted to know if his dead son was living “beyond.” He viewed the photos as evidence of that reality. Opposing him was Harry Houdini (Harvey Keitel), the great magician, who believed the pictures were fraudulent. Neither man, nor anyone else, could determine the truth for decades. Fairy Tale: A True Story recounts this story in a magical realistic style, thus replicating the quandary that once gripped the world. It also asks intriguing questions about the intersection of truth, fraudulence, reason and faith.
Rating: adults and adolescents (U.S. Catholic Conference)
— Loretta G. Seyer
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Loretta G. Seyer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: The Benefits Of Vouchers - And Fewer Risks DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:Marlene Ruiz never went to Catholic school, but the Bronx, N.Y., resident has always wanted her five boys to have the opportunity to do so. Recently, she got a phone call that made her dream possible.
Ruiz, 37, was one of thousands of parents last month who won a Children's Scholarship Fund grant, a privately funded scholarship or “voucher” program which helps parents choose where to send their children to school. While publicly funded school vouchers are slowly being approved in some cities and states, about 60 private programs, largely the initiatives of business leaders, have sprung up in 25 cities around the country.
The Church has welcomed these programs, believing that children should not be forced by circumstances to attend a public school if it is inadequate, and that parents paying parochial school tuitions should not be burdened with the weight of a full school tax.
In the opinion of Catherine T. Hickey, superintendent of schools in the Archdiocese of New York, the Children's Scholarship Fund addresses a “major justice issue.”
“The poor are being denied adequate education,” she said.
And with 40,000 scholarships awarded, the fund will impact Catholic schools “significantly,” predicted Oblate of St. Francis Father William Davis, representative for Catholic schools and federal assistance for the U.S. Catholic Conference. “I expect a lot of inner-city kids will take these scholarships to Catholic schools,” he told the Register. “We're there. Basically, our schools are in the urban centers.”
Better Than Vouchers
While not without their opponents, the private scholarship programs offers benefits that cannot be assured by government-financed voucher programs. In short, any involvement by Church-run schools with the governments comes with risks that the faith will be compromised.
Some of the public voucher programs include “opt out” clauses that allow non-Catholic students to be excused from religious classes and services. “We're not going to compromise our Catholic values and identity for vouchers,” said Hickey, the superintendent.
Plainly put, her schools will not take children if they want to skip religion classes. When applying for admission, students and parents are told by the principal, “We are not ecumenical schools. Children are expected to learn the Catholic faith and participate in services,” Hickey said.
Besides, schools of the New York Archdiocese have a values-based program where morals are infused into all subjects.
Msgr. Hugh F. McManus, former vicar for education in the archdiocese, sees a threat to the Catholic identity of parochial schools from public vouchers, much as Catholic colleges tended to water down Catholic doctrine after taking federal aid.
“It's important to make sure our schools don't lose their autonomy,” he said. “When government control follows government dollars, you're in trouble.”
But that threat is not likely to come from private initiatives. “I can't understand why a private foundation that is helping kids go to religious schools would tell those schools how they should be run,” said the Catholic Conference's Father Davis, who knows of no private scholarship funds with opt-opt provisions.
Public vouchers face an uphill battle, with powerful teachers unions clamoring that they would take much-needed financial resources from the public schools, and groups like the American Civil Liberties Union launching legal challenges on the basis of church-state separation.
But even private programs have come under attack from groups like the People for the American Way Foundation, which says it “monitors and researches the religious right movement and its political allies.” Carole Shields, president of the foundation, calls private efforts a “Trojan horse” for gaining public money for private schools.
The Business Community
Ted Forstmann, the billionaire senior partner of a leveraged buyout firm who spearheaded the Children's Scholarship Fund, denies that private scholarship funds are a way to get the electorate used to the idea of public voucher programs.
He said he sees the 1.25 million applications that came in for the scholarships as a “thunderous demonstration of dissatisfaction with the present system, and [a] demand for alternatives.” The applicants, he added, were willing to go along with the requirement that they foot part of the bill, up to $1,000 yearly.
Other private scholarship funds have proven just as popular, and Catholic schools — always a presence in the inner cities — stand to receive most of the students. One official at the Children's Scholarship Fund predicted that 60% to 75% will go to Catholic schools.
That was the case with the School Choice Scholarship Foundation, which grew out of an offer by Cardinal John O'Connor of New York to take the city's worst-performing students into parochial schools. It was a group of Wall Street executives who in 1996 raised enough money to put the plan into effect.
The School Choice Scholarship Foundation initially offered three-year scholarships to 1,200 pupils, valued at $1,400 a year, and a year later an additional 1,000 grants were made available. About 75% of scholarship winners attend Catholic schools.
“The kids all walked into school the first day with uniforms, and nobody knew who were the [scholarship] kids,” Hickey said.
Under most of the private scholarship programs, businessmen sponsor individual students in poor neighborhoods.
It is not surprise that members of the business community were among the first to spot the problems with public education. After all, business has a serious stake in the matter. A well-prepared work force — starting at the elementary level — are essential to compete in today's technologically advanced marketplace. At the College Scholarship Fund, for example, 28 of the 51 members of the board of advisers are business leaders.
The Results
How are the scholarship recipients faring academically?
After its first year, Harvard University's Paul Peterson compared students who received School Choice scholarships to students who applied but did not receive one. He found that test scores improved 4 percentage points in reading and 6 points in math, which he called a “significant” rise for one year.
In addition, he said, parents reported that the private and parochial schools were generally better environments for their children: the youngsters got more homework; classes were less disruptive; there was less cheating, tardiness and fighting; the schools were somewhat more racially integrated; schools and classes were smaller, and there was better communication between parents and teachers.
Those are the things Marlene Ruiz expects at Blessed Sacrament, where she plans to register her sons next fall. She wants her boys not only to learn enough to get them through high school and “become good citizens”; she also wants them to learn about their faith.
“We are very God-centered at Blessed Sacrament,” said Grace Chemi, principal. “Religion is a part of everything we do. We take an interest in the child and help where we can.”
One thing the boys won't see at Blessed Sacrament is a van which Planned Parenthood parks outside public schools around the city, dispensing information on contraceptives. One son brought home condoms from such a van one day. Blessed Sacrament teaches about AIDS, according to archdiocesan guidelines, but stresses the importance of abstinence.
Meanwhile, Catherine Hickey has something of a happy dilemma. While most of the students who signed up at Catholic schools in New York with School Choice Scholarship Foundation grants have stayed, the Forstmann initiative will likely fill up the few available seats. But, she said, “We're happy to have the kids.”
John Burger, correspondent for the Register, writes from New York.
----- EXCERPT: Business leaders are reaching out to the inner city ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Burger ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Fla. Governor Says He'll Sign Statewide Voucher Program DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:TALLAHASSEE, Fla.—The Florida Legislature has given final approval to a statewide voucher program, which a Florida Catholic education leader called “a significant breakthrough.''
Gov. Jeb Bush, who campaigned on the issue last year in the Florida gubernatorial race, said he would sign the measure, which was approved by the state Senate April 30. The House approved the proposal two days earlier. Critics have said they will file suit to block its implementation.
Under the bill, all students in Florida's worst public schools will be eligible for vouchers of about $4,000 a year to help pay for tuition at private or parochial schools, or parents could choose to send their children to another public school.
The language of the bill “specifies that parents will be afforded the right to choose the schools — be it public, private or parochial — they deem are best suited for their children who are in chronically low performing schools,'' said Larry D. Keough, education coordinator for the Florida Catholic Conference..
Under the program all public schools would be rated annually by the state on a grade scale from “A'' to “F.''
The voucher is eligible to students whose school has received an F grade in the past year and it has received that designation for the second time in four years.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Education Notebook DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:Profile in Political Courage
Johnson ignored political advisors who warned him not to use the “v” word during his reelection bid last year. “Instead,” reports the Journal, “he talked up vouchers” and captured 54% of the vote “in a state where Democrats dominate.”
With public opinion polls mixed, Johnson promised to veto any education budgets that do not include his voucher plan — a promise that he has twice fulfilled — and to mount an “understand the voucher” campaign.
Even though poll numbers are now in Johnson's favor, that might not be enough to convince opponents that it is in their interest to include vouchers in the budget. “Legislators will have to be convinced that voters would punish them if they continued to oppose reform,” said the Journal.
Anti-violence Spending Scrutinized
Rees cautions that lawmakers and taxpayers should take a careful look at how anti-violence moneys — usually part of anti-drug programs — have been used in the past before undertaking any new efforts. The results are not encouraging, he found.
“The Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado has surveyed more than 400 violence-prevention programs used in schools and communities and found that most had not been subjected to credible evaluations or had no record of effectiveness,” said Rees.
“This includes such fashionable approaches as conflict resolution, peer mediation and individual counseling.”
Boost For American Competitiveness
The result is that American eighth graders rank near the bottom on international math tests, thanks largely to watered-down math classes dedicated to treadmill reviews of basic math. In other countries, students the same age have long since moved forward.
The paper reported that IBM is willing to finance the development of a national exam for eighth graders calibrated to international standards. But only Maryland and Wisconsin have signed up to devise such a test.
USA Today reported a general lack of interest in the program because most states are “still happy with their state-based math tests, which typically show that most hometown schools are doing fairly well. What parents aren't told is that their kids are passing a dumbed-down test that doesn't pass international muster.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: May Negotiations in Cairo+5 Bogging Down Over Old Rifts DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:NEW YORK—Negotiations resumed May 5 in the ongoing Cairo+5 conference on population and development. However, following two acrimonious days at U.N. headquarters in New York, delegates were barely any closer than when they began.
The final preparatory committee meeting of this five-year review of the International Conference on Population and Development ended March 30 without a completed document. The delegations of the United States, Canada and the European Union promoted aggressive positions in the area of “reproductive health” and “emergency contraception” that angered members of the Group of 77 (133 nations of the developing world).
The negotiations in May bogged down over questions of financing and programmatic priorities. Five years ago the “donor” countries, the U.S., E.U., Canada and others, promised poor countries more than $17 billion in support of population and development programs. The G-77 agreed at Cairo to accept “reproductive health” language in exchange for this development assistance, but most of it has not materialized. As a result the G-77 has grown wary of the increasingly vociferous “reproductive health” agenda of the west.
The ongoing negotiations are supposed to cover questions of population and development, but G-77 diplomats complain the liberal industrial nations are increasingly focusing on “reproductive health,” a general phrase that includes contraceptives, abortifacients, and abortion itself. G-77 diplomats point out that the negotiating document hardly mentions the concept of “basic health.” Pro-life lobbyists say the document mentions “reproductive health” 57 times while “basic health” is mentioned only three times.
The debate over paragraph 73 of the draft document demonstrates the divide separating rich and poor nations over these questions. The paragraph originally stated that “governments” should encourage and promote additional ways ”to increase funding for population and sexual health and reproductive health programs.” The G-77 attempted to add a single reference to development, but the U.S. and the E.U. flatly refused.
During a debate on financial assistance for the AIDS epidemic, the G-77 attempted to add a reference to malaria, a disease that kills more in Africa than AIDS does. The U.S. and the E.U. resisted. Kathryn Balmforth, a pro-life civil rights attorney from Utah, suggested this was because “you cannot cure malaria with a condom and you cannot undermine belief systems in the name of malaria education.”
Negotiations continued until midnight May 5 and 6 as the G-77 tried time and again to convince the U.S. and the E.U. to assist them in the area of development. The head of the Sudanese delegation said he did not agree that reproductive health is a priority for a country like his.
A final prepcom will be convened at the end of June to be followed by a special session of the U.N. General Assembly on Population and Development.
(Catholic and Family Human Rights Institute)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: 5th Pro-Life Walk Goes Coast to Coast DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:STEUBENVILLE, Ohio—As two groups of students prepared to set out across the country to promote the pro-life message of Crossroads, Steve Sanborn, the group's founder, said, “Almost all of the students with us were born after 1973, and that means that they could have been ‘legally’ destroyed while living in their mothers' wombs.”
“It's time people in our generation understand this horrendous fact,” he added.
This summer, in its fifth year of existence, Crossroads, a student organization based in Steubenville, Ohio, will send the two groups on three-month journeys from California to Washington, D.C. Both groups will start in mid-May, one from Los Angeles and one from San Francisco.
“The walks are a witness to the sacredness of human life and the truth that abortion is murder,” Sanborn said.
As the students walk across America they give talks on chastity, abortion and the cultures of life and death. This year they have pre-arranged speaking events in 28 cities during their trek; and they will appear on TV and radio as opportunities arise. They also anticipate that newspapers across the country will chronicle their progress as they have in past years,
The students who walk from San Francisco will begin at the West end of the Golden Gate bridge on May 17. Those leaving from the Los Angeles area will begin on May 20 from Oxnard, California. The two groups together will cover a total of nearly seven thousand miles. Their journey is scheduled to end on the steps of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. August 14.
“Our focus is the youth of this country,” Sanborn said. “We're out there to peacefully gain attention for the pro-life movement, and to let everyone know that they have and obligation to make right what has been wrong in our nation for so long.” (Staff)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Cloning Side-Effects Raise New Concerns DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—Concerns over the serious health risks discovered in animal cloning have raised new moral and ethical questions about human cloning, reported American Life League in a press release.
Researchers at the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center have consistently found that cloned animals, and often mothers pregnant with the clones, die during gestation or just weeks after birth due, in part, to a lack of needed DNAnormally provided by the male and female parents of the offspring, said the report.
The release quoted Gerald Schatten, head of the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center's cloning lab as saying that “a lot of fetal and neonatal deaths” have resulted from experiments
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: God's Heroine at Columbine DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:Valeen Schnurr was one of two girls who were wounded by a shotgun blast and lived during the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., in April. She and a friend, Cassie Bunell, had their faith in God challenged by two gunmen and were shot at near point-blank range. Cassie was mortally wounded and died instantly. Valeen was seriously wounded but lived. Some say her story is a miracle. Her mother, Sherri Schnurr, spoke with Register Radio correspondent Rich Rinaldi.
Rinaldi: When did you first hear of the tragic events at Columbine?
Schnurr: I was at work and a good friend called and said that there was a gunman at Columbine High School. I was getting close to coming home from work that day. I work part time in a Christian office. I wasn't too upset at that point — I thought it was maybe, you know, two kids fighting over a girl because that had their prom that weekend. Then, shortly after she had gotten off the phone I heard that some children had been wounded. At that point I started realizing my daughter Val, being a peer counselor, and always trying to be helpful to the other students, may have been in a situation where she could have been in danger trying to help people out.
Did you try to get in touch with Val?
I wanted to get home to be there for Val. I knew that she would be totally upset by the whole situation, so I called and left a message on our recorder at home and said, “Val, I'm on my way home I want you to sit on the sofa in the living room and stay right there and I will be home in five minutes.” I came driving down the highway basically freaking out. You know, everybody drives so slow when you're in such a hurry.
I basically hoped and prayed that I would have her little white car in the driveway when I pulled down my street — and it wasn't there. So I got home and I got in the house and some people from the bank that she works at, First Bank, had called and were worried about Val. I turned on the news and I saw the major catastrophe going on. I got a phone call from my office and they said that Val had been wounded and taken to Swedish Hospital.
Did they hear that from the news?
No. They heard that from Val directly. She gave them my work phone number and the hospital called my workplace.
That announcement must have been horrendous.
It was. [I felt] panic, yet hopeful that when I got to the emergency room she would just have a scratch on her arm or that she had been helping somebody who had been taken to the hospital and they were both kind of just scratched up.
You didn't know the full impact at this point.
No, No. I was very shaken, and my good friend Bailey came and picked me up and took me to the hospital and in that emergency room when I got there they did not know anything. Nobody would give me any information and when they finally did, they said she was in surgery. At that point I was freaking out trying to find out what was wrong, and then the anesthesiologist had come in and told me that she had been shot nine times.
Your heart breaks. You know you just can't fathom what's going on.
Did they tell you what happened?
She has told me. She was in the library and she told me they had a shotgun, a sawed-off one. It wasn't as long as a normal one was, and so that is what she was shot with. There were also pipe bombs going off….
She was shot at least nine times. We believe that the doctors are having a hard time figuring it out because there are enter and exit wounds. She left the hospital with four bullets in her abdomen, two of which have come out on Friday. We had to have them removed because they came towards the surface and they were very painful and one was infected.
There was a faith connection. Can you tell us about the shooting itself? Some say she said she believed in God.
She was in the library at one of the tables studying with some of her friends. One of them was Loren Townsend. At that time, they heard explosions and gunshots coming from the cafeteria and a teacher ran in and basically screamed for the kids to get under the table, so she and her friends huddled under one of the tables towards the entrance of the library and basically waited.
The gunman came in and walked past the area that the girls were at, Val and her friends, and went in further into the library.
At that time she believed they threw some pipe bombs, 'cause the books and things were flying off the shelves, there were gunshots with some of the victims being killed, which at that point sent the girls into hysterics and they started screaming which drew the gunmen's attention back to them and they came back to that table.
Val basically had been hit at that point and fell forward out from under the table and was holding herself and was saying, “Oh my God, Oh my God.” And they asked her if she believed in God.
At that point they were reloading their gun and she was half-scared to say, “Yes, I do believe in God,” but afraid that she was dying and would not want to say no.
She said, “Yes, I believe in God.”
And they said, “Why?”
She said, “Because I do, and because my mom and dad have taught me.” And she looked down at her self and she was gushing blood.
At that point she said, “I think I'm dying,” and she crawled back under the table to be with her friend Loren and her other friends.
The gunman, for whatever reason, turned and left. Whether they thought she truly was dying and left her alone, we don't know.
That must have been traumatic. What did she do next?
Val had the sense enough to grab a sweat shirt that had been tied around her waist and push it against her stomach to help stop the bleeding and she also knew that if she went to sleep she would not make it.
And so she kept praying to God that God would help keep her awake. She tried very hard to wake her friend Loren up. She said, “I rubbed her face and I rubbed her hand and I kept asking Loren to wake up, that we had to go.”
She says, “Mommy, I tried so hard but she wouldn't wake up and I felt like I was going to pass out and I knew I had to leave.”
That was Loren Townsend. Loren did not make it; she died. That has been a difficult thing for Val. She said, “If I could have carried her I would have, but I was so weak.”
How is Val handling all of this?
She is a very strong girl and her faith is very strong. I don't even think she realized just how strong it really was until this incident.
I know that ourselves have been praying and have been so overwhelmed by the outpouring of the whole world and the prayers and love that they have shown not only us but the other families as well.
Is this a miracle?
That is basically what we have called it. Many of the doctors, the EMTs, the police department have all said it is a miracle. She was hit, and nothing had hit any vital organs.
They opened her up and expected to see damage due to the amount of blood loss, and everything was OK, and it was like nothing had hit anything vital.
We know that the Lord was looking out for her, and we know that God has a special plan for her. We don't know for sure what it is yet.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Canadians Edgy Over Child Pornography Case DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:TORONTO—Church and civic leaders think a disaster is brewing if a Canadian court decides to make possession of child pornography legal.
At issue is a January ruling in the Supreme Court of British Columbia in which Justice Duncan Shaw ruled that possession of child pornography should not be considered a crime. The ruling was handed down in the case of a Vancouver man who had been charged with possession of child pornography under Section 163 of the Canadian Criminal Code.
Shaw ruled that the current law violates freedom of expression guarantees under Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and that there is no evidence that simple possession of child pornography is harmful to children. The judge also ruled that police violated John Sharpe's right to privacy when they entered his Vancouver apartment and seized pornographic material, much of it written by Sharpe himself.
The decision sparked widespread protest across Canada and even led to a death threat against the judge. Meanwhile, 18 other cases were suspended pending clarification of the Criminal Code on possession of child pornography. Within days of ruling, the British Columbia attorney general and Canada's federal justice minister said they would launch an appeal.
The British Columbia appeal court heard arguments April 26-28. A ruling is expected within the next several weeks.
The appeal has pitted civil libertarians against church groups, family organizations and anti-pornography experts. Canadian police officials are also keeping a close eye on the case. Police believe their investigation of pornography-related criminal activity will be severely hindered if possession is no longer considered illegal.
Lawyers representing Sharpe argued that the current law is much too broad in its scope. They argue that the law was rushed through Parliament in 1993 without proper regard for its full implications, and they claimed the law is a form of thought control. They also suggested the current law would allow police to arrest individuals for such things as keeping a private journal to indulge in private fantasies.
In a statement for the Register, however, Archbishop Adam Exner of Vancouver said the original ruling by Justice Shaw demanded an appeal.
“I am concerned that left unchallenged, this decision might open the door to greater exploitation of children,” Archbishop Exner said. “We've seen it before in society where an exception quickly becomes the rule, leading to more and more exceptions for yet more serious matters.”
The archbishop, who also serves as chairman of the Canadian Catholic bishops' life and family committee, wrote to Canada's federal Justice Minister Anne McLellan, praising the decision to appeal the original court ruling.
“Like many Canadians, we were outraged by the decision of the trial judge that appeared to distort the authentic meaning of freedom of expression and minimize the profound harm that is done to children in the production and possession of this hateful material,” Archbishop Exner said. “We hope and pray that the appeal will be successful and thank you again for your vigorous action on behalf of our country's children.”
Just as the appeal began, an organization called the Canadian Family Action Coalition presented a 100,000-name petition to the Canadian Parliament, urging law-makers to uphold the law against possession of child pornography. The coalition, composed of church, family and police organizations, called on federal politicians to be aware of the “distress of Canadians on this issue.”
Nonetheless, civil libertarians remain opposed to more-stringent guidelines against the possession of child pornography.
Alan Borovoy, director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, told the Register that the legislation dealing with privacy and freedom of expression issues must be carefully evaluated.
“If this law had been confined to situations in which actual children had been abused, we wouldn't have much to say about it,” Borovoy said. “But the current law in Canada is capable of imperiling legitimate expressions of art, and as a result there is no excuse for it.”
A similar view was put forward on the first day of the appeal by the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association. This group described the present law as “an exercise in legislative cynicism.”
However, Detective Inspector Robert Matthews of the Toronto police force's anti-pornography unit, said any move to eliminate legal prohibitions of possession of child pornography would be disastrous for police in North America.
“Possession of this material is what is required to investigate cases of production and distribution,” Matthews told the Register. “If the possession component of the law is struck down, it would severely handcuff our efforts at investigation.” He said that possession restrictions are especially needed at a time when the Internet has made child pornography more readily available.
Matthews rejected arguments that the law is too broad in its application and that it would hinder legitimate artistic expression or scientific research.
“The artistic merit question is adequately addressed in the existing legislation,” Matthews said.
He added: “Any child porn is like a picture of a crime in progress. The young people who have been involved in the production of this material find that their lives are in complete disarray. As far as I am concerned, there is no form of child porn that is not harmful.”
Removing legal prohibitions against possession of child pornography is especially troubling to officials with the National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families. The Cincinnati-based coalition of church and anti-pornography associations contends that pornography, violence and other irresponsible use of pubic media seriously weaken families and society in general.
Coalition president Rick Schatz told the Register that possession of child pornography is harmful because it is often used to manipulate and seduce other children.
“Pedophiles use child pornography to break down a child's inhibitions, to desensitize the child and normalize the abuse, as a teaching tool for the child to perform sexual acts, and they use it as blackmail against the child to force them into abusive situations,” Schatz said.
“What makes the mere possession of child pornography wrong is that it took the sexual abuse of a child to make the production of that material possible,” he added. “Simply possessing child pornography contributes to the market demand for child pornography which propagates the sexual abuse of children. Child pornography is a crime in progress, it is a permanent record of a child's sexually abuse.”
Canadian anti-pornography activists are also concerned about a possible relaxation of criminal prohibitions on possession.
Dolina Smith, president of the Toronto-based Canadians Addressing Sexual Exploitation group, flew to Vancouver to attend the appeal April 26-28. She said overturning the current law on the grounds of censorship would be misguided.
“This ‘thought police’ idea is a complete exaggeration,” she said. “It would be next to impossible for police to investigate this activity if they can't act on possession.”
Smith said she has heard from many parents whose children have been lured into appearing in pornographic photographs, film and videos.
“The impact on these families is just tremendous,” she said. “The parents go through a whole range of emotions, including shock, anger and helplessness.”
Legal experts also have also been critical of the original decision in the British Columbia child pornography case. Iain Benson, legal adviser of the Ottawa-based Center for Renewal in Public Policy, said legal decisions regarding privacy and freedom of expression should not be separated from a moral framework.
“How a debased and deviant version of freedom of expression can be used to override Parliament's legislative scheme to combat the risk (of child pornography) to the state's children is a mystery,” Benson said. “What the [Shaw] decision shows beyond a doubt is that contemporary approaches to ‘rights’ unhinged from any concomitant moral vision of the person or community are capable of furthering fragmentation on the personal and social level.”
Mike Mastromatteo is based in Toronto.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mike Mastromatteo ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:During a recent address to European Parliamentarians on March 29, Pope John Paul II spoke in support of abolishing the death penalty and the basic right of all peoples to a life of peace (See Kosovo in World News, and Joyce Carr story, Page 1).
“Here I would like to mention the war being waged at our doorstep, in Kosovo, which is wounding Europe as a whole. I urgently ask that everything be done so that peace can be established in the region and that the civilian populations can live in fraternity on their land. In response to violence, further violence is never a promising way to exit from a crisis. It is thus fitting to silence arms and acts of vengeance in order to engage in negotiations that oblige the parties, with their desire to reach as soon as possible an agreement that will respect the different peoples and diverse cultures, which are called to build a common society respectful of basic liberties. Such a development can then be recorded in history as a new element promoting the construction of Europe.
“Moreover, I join my voice to the Council of Europe's in asking that the most basic right, the right to life, be recognized throughout Europe and that the death penalty be abolished. This first and inalienable right to live does not only imply that every human being should be able to survive, but that he should be able to live in just and worthy conditions.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Life Notes DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:Voters in 2000 Will be More Pro-Life
USA TODAY, May 5—A new USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll includes a variety of opinions concerning abortion that paper says may affect the year 2000 election.
It reported that public opinion is shifting in part because of President Bill Clinton's two-time veto of a ban on partial-birth abortion. Sixty-one percent favor banning the procedure, the highest percentage since it first became an issue.
USA Today also offered these statistics:
• 71% support “some or total restrictions on abortion.”
• 19% agree that “a candidate's views on abortion must match theirs to get their vote.”
The poll was split evenly between those who consider abortion to be a key issue for them in voting and those who consider it “just another” issue they consider.
In a statement about the poll, the National Right to Life Committee said it believes that national educational programs and the national reaction to the partial birth abortion issue caused the shift.
“We applaud the efforts of our state affiliates and their countless volunteers across the nation who have worked tirelessly to expose the truth about the brutal partial birth abortion and protect unborn babies from this brutal procedure,” said National Right to Life executive director David N. O'Steen in a statement. He added, “We have always said that the more Americans learn about abortion the more they reject it.”
Governor Vetoes Partial Birth Abortion Ban
The Kansas City Star, May 5-Governor Mel Carnahan will veto a bill that would make it a felony to perform the partial birth abortion procedure except when necessary to preserve the mother's life, reported the paper.
Planned Parenthood officials in the area told the paper that the bill would erode abortion rights, while doctors who use the procedure said the bill would hold them responsible for taking the life of a child.
Governor Carnahan is quoted saying, “The very idea we would be finding women culpable and charging them with murder, putting them in jail, for making a health decision is very disturbing.”
Partial birth abortion is the name given to a procedure in which a late-term child is delivered feet first to the neck before a doctor punctures the skull and removes the contents.
“Mel Carnahan is trying once again to impose his extreme abortion views on Missouri, extending even to the horrible practice of partial-birth abortion,” Steve Hilton, a spokesman for U.S. Senator John Ashcroft, told the paper.
The report noted that the veto will probably be over-ridden by the legislature, and that seven other states have banned partial birth abortion.
Quindlen Cancels Villanova Speech
PRO-LIFE INFONET, May 9—Last year, novelist and columnist Anna Quindlen was the featured speaker at the National Abortion Rights Action League's celebration of 25 years of legal abortion.
This year, she was the scheduled graduation speaker at Villanova University, a Catholic college in Pennsylvania, according to the Pro-Life Infonet. The news-watching service said activists demanded that the University choose another speaker.
On May 10, pro-life groups announced that Quindlen had voluntarily canceled her plans to speak at the graduation.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: Did You Know? DATE: 05/16/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: May 16-22, 1999 ----- BODY:Organizations purporting to speak for women don't always. A recent report by the Family Research Council, cited these examples:
• Feminist author Jesse Bernard: “Perhaps girls could be given an electric shock whenever they see a picture of an adorable baby until the very thought of motherhood becomes anathema to them.”
(Babette Francis report citing the books Family Questions [Transaction Books1998] and Enemies of Eros [Bonus Books,1989])
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: Pornography's Grip Tightens by Way of Internet DATE: 06/13/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 13-19, 1999 ----- BODY:CINCINNATI — When Jeff Cavins, producer and host of Eternal Word Television Network's “Life on the Rock,” began speaking about pornography at men's retreats, he found that he opened a hornet's nest.
All of a sudden, men came forward for help. They were “very wounded, weeping, in their bondage [to pornography], but they can't seem to break it,” Cavins recalled. When he would tell audiences about the moral problems with pornography, confession lines at the retreats increased dramatically, sometimes doubling.
“What a lot of men don't realize is that they are created to love in an integrated way with intellect and heart, expressing it through the body,” Cavins said.
By using pornography, “they turn love inward; they are selfish with their love. They become dis-integrated men, less effective with their children” and depriving their wives of part of themselves, he said. “Their relationship with Christ is cut off.”
Pornography has been around for a long time. Vestiges of it have been found in ancient cultures. But what characterizes contemporary society is a constant bombardment of visual images — “a lot of flesh,” as Cavins put it — and easy accessibility to the sex industry. Pornographic bookstores, strip clubs, prostitution and 1–900 sex-talk lines are now joined by an outlet that reaches into homes, schools, libraries and businesses: Internet pornography.
U.S. News & World Report estimated that the pornography industry grossed $8 billion in 1997. The Industry Standard, a magazine covering the Internet economy, said Internet porn last year pulled in at least $1 billion or one-tenth of all money made by business over the Internet. This might invoke images of men lurking around their home computers at 3 a.m. while the wife and kids are asleep. But, in fact, The Industry Standard reports that 70% of porn traffic occurs between 9 and 5, and people in the Eastern time zone account for the largest number of porn-site hits — 30.3%.
Privacy of the Home
Not all pornographic users are adult men. Father John Rizzo, a youth minister with the Fraternity of St. Peter in Sacramento, Calif., sometimes counsels teen-agers — male and female — who are involved in pornography. Often, he said, the youths use pornography to fill an emotional need, whether they're from dysfunctional families or devout Catholic homes.
“They sometimes feel depressed and try to find some avenue to rid themselves of it,” Father Rizzo explained. But the porn-induced good feelings are transient. “Pornography ultimately ends up making them feel more depressed, and some of them end up feeling it's so addictive, they can't get away,” he said.
One boy told him it was “easier hiding pornography on the computer than a magazine in his room.”
While Father Rizzo initially counsels the youths privately, he eventually encourages them to come clean with their parents so the parents can help. “They do feel relieved when their parents find out about it,” but the revelation often stuns the parents: “A lot of time the parents are completely shocked and unaware of it.”
Darcy Taylor, vice president of computer pornography with the National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families in Cincinnati (www.nationalcoalition.org), said the Internet is also an open arena for adults to prey on children. He cited one recent case of a 47-year-old man who reportedly induced a 14-year-old girl to send him nude photos of herself and arrange a meeting with him. The parents caught on and when he tried to meet the girl, he ran into the FBI.
Young people may access Internet pornography unintentionally if they type in the wrong name for a site. Taylor said the best way parents can protect their children is to first become educated in computer technology. He also advised them to subscribe to an Internet service provider that filters out porn and to add software filters to their computers as double protection. Parents should also find out what their schools and public libraries are doing to protect children from Internet pornography and push for adequate safeguards, if they're not there.
Catholic teaching has always condemned pornography. “It offends against chastity because it perverts the conjugal act, the intimate giving of spouses to each other,” according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (No. 2354). “It does grave injury to the dignity of its participants (actors, vendors, the public), since each one becomes an object of base pleasure and illicit profit for others. … Civil authorities should prevent the production and distribution of pornographic materials.”
Father Peter Damian Fehlner, a dogmatic theologian and superior of Our Lady's Chapel, New Bedford, Mass., run by the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, observed, “When you taste the forbidden fruit, it's hard to get off of it. The saints over the centuries have taught that the vast majority of people go to hell because they are unwilling to give up this kind of indulgence.”
Father Fehlner added, “Pornog-raphy does to the soul what drugs do to the body. It's dangerous to 100% of the population.”
Cavins is blunt with men about pornography. “If you can't handle the Internet, then pull it,” he tells them. “Better to enter heaven without your PC than spend eternity in hell clutching your Macintosh.” He tells them to act like men in the confessional, to fully own up to their sins, not minimize them.
Taylor said pornography gradually desensitizes its users: so-called soft pornography can lead to hard-core varieties, such as depiction of sexual activity and child molestation.
An Addiction
Just as alcohol, drug and gambling addiction have gained visibility in the psychology community and in the public's eye, the issue of sexual addiction has come to the fore in recent years.
Pat Mellody is executive director of The Meadows in Wickenburg, Ariz., which treats sexual addiction. He said a person's reaction to pornography can range from repulsion to obsessive-compulsive behavior that a person persists in “despite harmful consequences,” marital, financial, legal, and so on.
An obsessive-compulsive pornography user may repeatedly battle the urge to use pornography but lose, providing temporary relief followed by guilt and shame, Mellody said. He recalled a man who would go to pornography shops to buy films and a projector, use it, then become disgusted with himself and throw everything out. But the cycle kept repeating itself.
Such obsessive-compulsive behavior can result in adultery and marital conflict, incest, termination at work, squandering the family's money on pornography, and arrest, he said.
Father Fehlner said the self-indulgence that pornography promotes can lead to cruelty and violence. “A person who no longer guides his life on principles of fidelity treats people any way he wants,” he said.
Women Become Objects
Pornography and the whole sex industry debase women, observers say. The National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families said studies have shown a correlation between the presence of sexually oriented business and an increase in sex offenses, violent crimes, and robberies in the surrounding area.
Gene McConnell, a Protestant minister and former porn addict, and now the Coalition's vice president for victim services, said pornography depicts women as “devoid of personhood” and frequently “weaves violence with sex.”
He called it “sexualized anger” when women are shown being brutalized during sex acts.
No one has to go far to enter the bizarre world of pornography. Today, “It's available in the privacy of your own home,” said McConnell.
Eric Retzlaff writes from Rotterdam, New York.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Eric Retzlaff ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Senate Vote Set to Target U.N. Abuses DATE: 06/13/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 13-19, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON-They sound like something from a dark phase in history: stories of Western nations exploiting Third World women.
But the stories U.S. Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., tells come from recent news reports about the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.N. Population Fund.
• In Bangladesh, “women consent to sterilization out of desperation for food,” said a statement from Tiahrt's office.
• In Honduras, USAID funds go to experiments with Ovrette, an unapproved contraceptive pill, said the fact sheet. Nursing mothers aren't told of the pill's known side effects, it claimed.
• In India, USAID funds sterilizations using Quinacrine, which is illegal there and works by burning and scarring the fallopian tubes. The report says, “Family planning programs depend on quotas, targets, bribes and coercion. … Conditions are miserable at the USAID-funded sterilization camps, there are primitive unsanitary conditions and appalling mortality rates.”
Similar quotas and coercive population control methods were outlined in Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Peru and the Philippines.
A bill proposed by Tiahrt to curtail some of the most egregious abuses received near unani mous approval in the House in March, passing on a voice vote and bypassing committee hearings altogether.
U.S. Senator Sam Brownback, RKan., hopes it will pass in the Senate and go to President Clinton's desk for signing in time for a five-year review of the U.N. Cairo Conference on Population and Development. That conference will be held in New York from June 30 to July 2. “We couldn't be happier about it,” Brownback said. “This is one of the few points of family planning advocacy both sides can agree on.”
Senate Resolution 100 will be reviewed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when it returns from recess June 15.
USAID, the largest U.S.-funded provider of family planning services worldwide, denies that the quotas and coercive policies exist.
A USAID contractor, Population Action International, told the Register, that despite the agency's efforts to prevent abuse on the ground, non-governmental organizations that depend on outside funding are under pressure to meet set objectives.
“It is possible that aggressive marketing of family planning methods could result in negligence,” said Population Action International spokesman Craig Lasher.
Lasher said he didn't think the Senate bill was necessary, adding that it “simply enshrines as law principles USAID has always held.”
Brownback called the bill's final draft a compromise between Population Action International and himself.
“I guess it was one definition of compromise,” Lasher said, adding that a clause was dropped from the original bill that would have allowed medics to refuse treatment on moral grounds.
“The important person here is the woman or man, not the health-care worker,” Lasher said. “Our objective is to ensure the widest possible access to care … [and] to the extent that this bill affirms voluntarism and informed consent, we support it. We just wish its sponsors would support family planning.”
Asked if he thought women in the Third World were particularly vulnerable to coercive practices, Lasher said, “No, they are not. There are safeguards there to prevent abuses and pages upon pages of regulations contained in cooperative agreements.”
Dave Hannah, a spokesman for Rep. Tiahrt, defended the bill against the charge of redundancy. “Advocates of population control may say that they're for the principles outlined in the U.N. Program of Action — that they're all for voluntarism, but ‘voluntary’ had yet to be defined,” he said. “Unfortunately, in many cases, ‘voluntary’ means offering a bribe to a poor woman in exchange for her consent. This is not voluntarism. This is coercion.”
Brownback downplayed USAID's role in coercion. “The way these programs are implemented encourages abuse,” he contended. “The quota system is the problem.
It's not Americans implementing the programs, but indigenous people, often as poor as their patients. They are desperate to meet their quotas and care little about the women they treat … this is really a women's rights issue.”
Joining the Vatican
Some senators and congressmen have joined the Vatican in opposing many of these programs, but see this bill as small way to limit their potential for harm.
Hannah attributed the bill's broad-base support in the House to its being presented positively, as a women's rights issue, rather than as an attack on family planning programs. “If this will help women and save babies, then we're happy,” Hannah said.
Brownback aide Sharon Payt agrees. She told us that taking a positive tack held greater appeal for senators who were uneasy about Brownback's overall opposition to U.S.-funded family planning programs abroad.
“We're not going to compromise our stance on the programs, but the bottom line of this bill is simple: not killing women,” Payt said. She said Brownback's concern on this was not to slip something by family planning proponents, but to build a bridge between both parties.
“This bill is about the abuse of women,” Brownback maintained, “and it expresses the need to protect the poorest of the poor among them, when they're at their most vulnerable. We expect this to be a bipartisan effort, and we think we are in an excellent position to get this thing passed.”
Brian McGuire writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: Population Control in Third World Scrutinized ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian Mcguire ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Yugoslavia: The Facts Behind the Spin DATE: 06/13/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 13-19, 1999 ----- BODY:Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic's acceptance of an international peace plan to end the Kosovo conflict and allow the return of Albanian refugees to their homes was greeted with cautious optimism in the West.
Yet for many in the West, the roots and reasons that triggered NATO's air war remain vague.
In a May 6 Wall Street Journal article, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher reprised the rationale for NATO's war against Yugoslavia in a way that is worth examining because it is shared by so many.
She draws an exact parallel between “Milosevic's Serbia” and the “madness of Nazism,” and insists that an appeasement policy failed in both instances. Thatcher has been joined in invoking Hitler's name by many NATO leaders, including President Clinton. They have used it to explain the morality and purpose of the current military campaign. Also, George Melloan, in his May 11 “Global View” column in The Wall Street Journal, identified Milosevic's government as “just such a murderous regime as Hitler headed.”
Such statements evoke Winston Churchill's pronouncements about Nazism and the insatiable ideology that drove its onslaught. Is this what existed in nascent form in Yugoslavia eight years ago, and is this what had come to fruition in the brutal ethnic cleansing in Kosovo?
The use of Nazism to explain events in the Balkans is a visceral response to the horrible atrocities there. But selectively concentrating on atrocities can incapacitate the kind of thinking needed to discern the underlying political reasons that gave rise to them in the first place.
This article is not meant to exculpate Serb authorities for their barbaric acts, but to examine the political conditions behind the conflicts and the Western role in igniting them. Also, the military means employed by NATO must be used to further political ends. If we mistake the political origins of the problems in the Balkans, we can bomb forever and miss the real target.
On the face of it, the Nazi analogy immediately runs into problems. Nazi Germany steadily grew through its acts of aggression until it nearly conquered the Soviet Union, and thus all of Eurasia. Yet throughout every act of “Serbian” aggression that Thatcher lists, Yugoslavia has become smaller. What kind of Hitler could this be, if through “unop-posed” aggression his country has been successive ly diminished over the past eight years?
By 1993, there were already 600,000 Serb refugees who had fled to Serbia and Montenegro from other parts of Yugoslavia. Also, no one has produced a Serbian document faintly resembling Mein Kampf, spelling out an insidious totalitarian ideology of unlimited goals.
Rather than implementing a master plan of Serbian race supremacy, Milosevic, a clever Leninist tactician, has been improvising in the midst of the disintegration of Yugoslavia. That disintegration, aided and abetted by Western powers, set off a contest over sovereignty. In the ensuing struggle, it is difficult to assign blame to only one side. Without a framework within which to decide it otherwise, that contest has been conducted by force of arms. To understand it otherwise invites further disaster than has already been caused by Western intervention.
‘Why should I be a minority in your state when you can be a minority in mine?’
Before the Balkans Were a Verb
Thatcher starts with the proposition that “the West could have stopped Milosevic in Slovenia” in 1991.
This would have been difficult since, in 1991, the collective presidency of Yugoslavia was in disarray and the prime minister was a Croat, Ante Markovich. Milosevic, then the new president of Serbia, was not in the chain of command.
The Yugoslav federal parliament ordered Defense Minister Veljko Kodijevic to secure the country's borders with Italy and Austria. For 10 days, the Yugoslav People's Army offered what was essentially symbolic resistance to Slovenia's secession from the Yugoslav Federal Republic.
After encountering armed resistance from the Slovene home defense forces, Yugoslavia called it a day and withdrew. There were fewer than 70 fatalities. Slovenia had invoked its constitutional right to secede. The Yugoslav People's Army had exercised its constitutional duty to preserve the territorial integrity of the country.
Who was right? Since the right and the duty collide within the same constitution, the legality of the secession and the action against it are both legally ambiguous. In any case, it is hard to imagine how Serbia could have been “stopped” here, as Thatcher suggests, since it had not yet started anything.
Blood and Power
The bloodier case of Croatia more clearly illustrates what has driven the fighting since the beginning of Yugoslavia's breakup — something far more parochial and less ambitious than a thousand-year Reich. Yugoslav political theorist Vladimir Gligorov expressed this driving force succinctly in the form of a question: “Why should I be a minority in your state when you can be a minority in mine?”
Croats no longer wished to be a minority in the larger Yugoslav state, so Croatia declared its independence in 1991. If one accepted the unilateral Croatian declaration, the Yugoslav People's Army forces stationed in Zagreb were already, by definition, “aggressors” on the territory of a sovereign state. But what of the nearly 600,000 Serb civilians living in Croatia and their wish to remain part of Yugoslavia? Was Croatia only for the Croats?
Changes in the Croatian constitution in December 1990 led the Serbs to think so, as did the purges of Serbs from police and other civil functions. In reaction, the Serbs in the Krajina area of Croatia attempted what the Kosovar Albanians would themselves try to do — to establish autonomy. While the Croats declared that no Yugoslav federal law conflicting with Croatian law would be enforced on its territory, the Krajina Serbs declared the opposite, that no Croatian law in conflict with federal law would be enforced in their domain.
Here were the makings of the civil war that ensued.
The final outcome of that struggle came in 1995, when Croatian military forces cleansed 150,000 Serb civilians from Croatia by roughly the same means the Serbs are now employing in Kosovo. According to The Hague war crimes tribunal report on “Operation Storm,” these included indiscriminate shelling of the Serb civilian population, looting, burning, summary executions and numerous disappearances. In all, since 1991, Croatia purged over 10% of its population. It is hard to comprehend this conflict simply as an act of Serb aggression.
The Gligorov Principle
Thatcher also states that the West could have stopped Milosevic in Bosnia in 1992. However, this tragedy can also be understood as a struggle over sovereignty, though it is far more complex, because no nationality in Bosnia enjoyed a majority.
The fundamental political problem in Bosnia was that the majority of its people did not accept it as a sovereign entity. Nonetheless, it was constituted as one by a unilateral declaration of independence and by international recognition. The question then arose: On what basis could those Bosnians who did not accept the sovereignty of Bosnia be forced to accept it? And who would do the forcing?
To put the case abstractly, let us say a territory had gained its independence from a foreign power. Within its territory, one-third of the people said they would consent to a joint confederation only if provided local autonomy and the possibility of some form of future association with a neighboring country. Let us say that, without the consent of this one-third, the other two-thirds declared the existence of a unitary state that included all of them.
This newly declared state is then recognized as sovereign by some supranational power and by other nations. If the one-third then takes up arms in the name of its own independence, by what moral right can external powers force it to become part of a state to which it had never given its consent?
After all, political legitimacy is morally constituted by consent, not by the recognition of foreign powers. If foreign powers then attacked the recalcitrant one-third for its refusal to submit to the new state, who would be the aggressor?
Before Bosnia was declared an independent, unitary state, the Bosnian Serbs made the above-mentioned demands. If these conditions were not met, the Bosnian Serbs warned that they would fight for their independence.
The trip wire for such a fight would be a Bosnian declaration of independence without Bosnian Serb consent. Some may argue that the March 1, 1992, referendum in Bosnia democratically decided the issue of its independence since the vote was overwhelmingly in favor.
However, the Bosnian Serbs did not participate in this vote because it presumed the existence of a state that they had not yet agreed to be part of. They also knew the Bosnian Croats and Muslims, who at that time were allied, could easily outvote them.
The democratic principle of one man, one vote, does not help much here because the argument is over the legitimate entity in which it is to be exercised.
Is it Yugoslavia, or only part of Yugoslavia? Is it Bosnia, which had never before existed as a state, or only part of Bosnia? Is it all right for Yugoslavia to disintegrate into ethnically denominated republics, but not all right for one of its regions to fracture further into smaller ethnically designated entities?
As stated to a U.S. correspondent before the breakup of the Yugoslav federation, Alija Izetbegovic, the Bosnian Muslim leader, said he was willing to apply one man, one vote, within Bosnia. But he was not willing to accept this principle within the larger Yugoslavia. According to the Gligorov principle, the reason is simple. In Yugoslavia, the Serbs enjoyed a plurality, while in Bosnia the Muslims do.
The Leverage of Recognition
However, Izetbegovic, as well as the Macedonians, made a futile attempt to persuade the Europeans not to recognize Croatia and Slovenia because that would oblige Bosnia and Macedonia to seek independence, and that, in turn, would provoke Serbia. They knew their real safety lay in being part of a multinational state. Recognition of anyone in the former Yugoslavia should have been withheld until the Serbs and Croats stopped fighting and agreed to leave Bosnia alone.
The leverage of recognition should have been used to promote a comprehensive settlement. This was the explicit understanding with which Lord Peter Carrington began his mediation efforts for the European Community in 1991. This chance was squandered when Germany went ahead in December 1991 and recognized Slovenia and Croatia, even though Croatia had not met the minority rights test required by the European Community for such recognition.
The other European Community governments followed, and then the United States. As Carrington said of the effect of the recognition, “I had no leverage at all.” He told Le Figaro(July 13, 1993), “I warned the responsible Europeans against this decision which ruined all efforts for peace.”
After the recognition of Slovenia and Croatia, Izetbegovic told Carrington, “I must demand the independence of Bosnia. If I do not, I will have my throat cut. But I must tell you that such a declaration will end in civil war.”
Izetbegovic was right. It did.
Robert Reilly, a former special assistant to President Reagan, writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Robert R. Reilly ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: More College Presidents Opting to Trust Bishops DATE: 06/13/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 13-19, 1999 ----- BODY:CHICAGO-The tide may be turning in the debate about the Catholic identity of universities.
In May, the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities sent its proposal to the U.S. bishops for what they think Catholic identity should mean on university campuses.
Now, a number of college and Church officials doubt that the association's proposal will be taken seriously by U.S. bishops or the Vatican because it fails to seriously address a key canon of Church law.
Meanwhile, Jesuit Father John J. Piderit, president of Loyola University in Chicago, and eight other presidents of Catholic colleges and universities in the Chicago area have suggested a simple amendment to the association's proposal, signed it, and sent it May 12 to the U.S. bishops' offices in Washington, D.C.
It addresses the “mandate” that canon law requires university theologians receive. It would change the directive about how theologians should teach from “should do so in fidelity to the magisterium,” to “should do so in accordance with Canon 812.”
It's a change the college association won't accept, said the group's executive director, Monika Hellwig.
She said a majority of the college presidents fear that Canon 812 threatens academic freedom and autonomy. And anything that limits the freedom of a faculty theologian will erode a school's standing as an “academically accepted institution of authentic higher education and research,” the former Georgetown University theology professor said.
Father Piderit said he understands that view of Canon 812: He once shared it. Now, he says he has changed his mind.
“The mandate sets up a relationship between the bishop and a theologian, period,” Father Piderit said. “It intentionally does not set up a formal relationship between the bishop and the university administration, so as not to entangle a bishop in the everyday affairs of a college. I don't see how any of this undermines the appropriate autonomy of an academic institution at all.”
He added, “Some college presidents who are wary of this see it as the camel getting its nose under the tent. I'd say, if we incorporated this mandate, the camel's nose would still be at least one foot away from the tent, and it is entirely appropriate the camel be close to the tent. These are Catholic institutions, after all.”
Countdown to November
This and other aspects of campus Catholic identity are at issue as bishops and university faculty discuss how Pope John Paul II's apostolic constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae (“From the Heart of the Church”) should be applied to American schools.
The document articulates the Church's vision of the ways higher education, faith, Christian culture and the Church should be linked together.
National bishops' conferences are expected to implement the constitution and corresponding sections of canon law, including Canon 812.
That canon states that “it is necessary that those who teach theological disciplines in any institute of higher studies have a mandate from the competent ecclesiastical authority,” usually understood to be the local bishop.
The U.S. National Conference of Catholic Bishops submitted a plan to Rome in 1996 that was returned two years later because it did not contain explicit juridical norms for the canon's implementation.
“They basically said ‘way to go guys, it's a nice first draft but you still have work to do.’ And there is no doubt about it, Canon 812 is supposed to be part of the next proposal,” said Jesuit Father Terrence Toland. He is project director for the Ex Corde Ecclesiae Implementation Committee which will begin formal discussions of a new implementation plan on June 28 in Washington.
The full bishops'conference is scheduled to vote on a final implementation plan in November.
Drafting that plan is the work of a subcommittee headed by Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, archbishop of Philadelphia, to draft a new proposal that includes the mandate.
The subcommittee invited outside input from individuals and interested organizations, including the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, which includes 236 institutions in the United States.
The association, however, has persisted in its resistance to Ex Corde Ecclesiae and Canon 812 — an attitude that was reflected in alternate implementation plan submitted to the subcommittee May 1.
Rather than provide for a juridical mandate, the association's proposal states: “The administration has the immediate responsibility to see that the principles and values of a Catholic institution are respected by all. In particular, those who teach Catholic theology should do so in fidelity to the magisterium.”
“Their wording is only slightly different from what was in the 1996 proposal submitted to the Holy See and rejected,” said Father Kevin Quirk, a canon lawyer and judicial vicar for the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, W.Va. “It's a nice attempt to compromise, but it's not juridical and it does not incorporate Canon 812.” (See Father Quirk's article on Page 14.)
Father Piderit agreed that the association's proposal falls short, and fails to address the desires of the Pope and the Holy See. “It attempts to address the issues raised in Ex Corde, but it avoids all juridical language.” (See related item in the Education Notebook, Page 14.)
The Debate
Hellwig, at the Association of Catholic Colleges, said the mandate is unacceptable at a credible modern university.
“If we move in that direction our institutions will be seen on a par with fundamentalist Bible schools, which clearly aren't accepted for their standards of authentic higher education, because they seal students off from anything that does-n't fit their theology,” Hellwig said.
“It's a major preoccupation of the Holy Father that Catholics have standing in society to engage the culture from a perspective of faith,” she added. “He does not want us enclosed, only talking to ourselves because then we have no standing in the greater community.”
Critics of the association argued that it ought not consider being faithful and being relevant mutually exclusive.
“It's very sad they feel that way, because it shows just how behind the times the association really is,” said Father Matthew Lamb, professor of theology at Boston College. “I don't think they're aware of the fact that bright young Catholic students are longing for higher standards in religious education today, because clearly the quality of Catholic education has only declined as it has become more secular.
“We have thousands of Catholics getting master's degrees today from Catholic colleges and universities, and hundreds getting doctorates, who can't read a single sentence of Latin, Greek or Hebrew. They graduate with very sketchy foundations in Catholic tradition and theology. Today's young students see this, and they want to do better. To fear Ex Corde Ecclesiae isn't avant-garde, it's rear-guard.”
Loyola's Father Piderit said the mandate would do nothing other than certify theologians as fully qualified to teach about the Catholic faith.
Students, young theologians and prospective theologians will welcome it, he believes. It will, he said, serve as a “stamp of approval,” and bring about “truth in advertising” for Catholic theology courses.
“Catholic courses are becoming more popular even at secular universities, and theologians are being hired at [those] universities because they are trained in Catholic theology,” Father Piderit said. “Given this ‘market pressure,’ I anticipate that many theologians will apply for the mandate, and will accept it with pride.”
Hellwig disagreed that the Holy See will not accept any version of an implementation plan that doesn't spell out enforcement of Canon 812. She took the association's proposal to Rome in April and said it was well received by Cardinal Pio Laghi, prefect of the Sacred Congregation of Catholic Education. Only one staff person, she said, was insistent on a “literal interpretation” of Ex Corde Ecclesiae.
“We were told repeatedly that Americans take law too literally,” said Hellwig, a lawyer. “We were told the reply to the 1996 proposal was considered an ideal that should be incorporated insofar as it's possible and compatible with the local culture.”
That argument, said Father Toland, does nothing to convince him the Vatican will accept any future proposal that does-n't contain strict, juridical implementation of Canon 812. He said Hellwig might be optimistically misinterpreting polite diplomacy that's typically extended to Vatican visitors.
Wayne Laugesen writes from Boulder, Colorado.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Wayne Laugesen ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Point Man for the John Paul Center DATE: 06/13/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 13-19, 1999 ----- BODY:Cardinal Adam Maida of Detroit appointed the monsignor who is pastor of Our Lady of Sorrows parish in Farmington, Mich., to be his “delegate” for the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center project. In that capacity, he serves as a general project manager, handling many of the day-to-day matters of planning and building the center on behalf of the cardinal. On a recent visit to Rome, he spoke about the cultural center with Register correspondent Raymond de Souza.
De Souza: Was this appointment a surprise for you? It seems to be something altogether different from what you were doing before, namely, running a big parish in Detroit.
Msgr. Hurley: It's different, but throughout my entire ministry as a priest I've always had other things that I have been involved in at the invitation of the archbishop. I have found that very enriching for my life within the parish and also having something to contribute to the larger picture as well.
When were you ordained?
I was ordained at the end of the Council, and those 38 years have been a time of high adventure. It's been a time of excitement and of just wonderful opportunities to be part of many things within the Church. I served as judicial vicar in the archdiocese, as moderator of the curia and have been involved in a number of other projects too. Each one, and especially the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center, has really served to expand the envelope, if you will, of what priestly ministry has been about as I have lived it and experienced it.
What does it mean to you to be involved in the John Paul II Cultural Center?
With the John Paul II Cultural Center, in addition to accepting the direction of the cardinal, it was an opportunity to be part of something close to my heart, namely something for the Holy Father, for whom I have such great respect. The work has given me the opportunity to meet some wonderful people that I would not have met before, to explore some ideas that I would not have had the opportunity to do and to be challenged in ways that I would never have expected to be challenged in trying to help to bring about this monumental project.
Could you tell us how the cultural center project began?
It began when Cardinal Maida was the bishop of Green Bay. The cardinal began to reflect on the possibility of having a center that might be dedicated to the life and ministry of the Holy Father. It would be modeled somewhat after the presidential libraries in our own country, where you seek to capture a period of time in history. He proposed the idea to the Holy Father and the Holy Father expressed a willingness to support it. The Holy Father's interest was not of course in a personal monument to himself, but rather it was simply an interest in exploring and presenting the beliefs and the teachings of the Church and capturing those for a moment in time. With that in mind, Cardinal Maida returned to the United States and began to explore among the bishops of the country and among some other people to determine if there would be some interest in such a project. He was assured that there would be interest!
Then he began to look for some funding for this center. Initially, because of the Holy Father's Polish background, he began to explore the interest within the Polish community. Again, he discovered tremendous interest within the Polish community. Once having done that, there were further contacts made with other dioceses that had participated in various fund-raising efforts, and then efforts were made to contact major donors throughout the country. We have probably close to 50,000 individual donors that have provided support to the center.
You noted that the project was started on the model of a presidential library which is really focused on the work of one man. Now the center is going to be more of a Catholic center presenting the faith as illuminated by John Paul's pontificate. Could you trace the decision to change from the former to what it is now?
I don't know that you would really describe it as a decision to change — it was more of an evolution. I think that as the cardinal began to reflect more carefully about the center itself, it became clear that the life and ministry of the Holy Father is not something that is just captured in a given moment of time. It's deeply rooted in those who have gone before him, and what happens during this period of time, this special moment in history, is something that will impact tremendously on the future. It needs to be looked at as a total package and so it becomes a place where Catholic life is truly celebrated and proclaimed.
Will the center be a place of pilgrimage or simply a museum experience?
First, I think there is no question that the cultural center is a Catholic institution in the fullest sense of that word and is deeply committed to being an instrument of evangelization in the coming century.
At the same time, many of those who come there will be Catholic and will find it to be a very deeply religious experience as they reflect on and explore issues of faith. Other people may come who are not Catholic, who are not so much looking for a religious experience but are looking simply to observe and to explore certain questions and interests, and so for those people, it may be more of a museum-type experience, if you will. We certainly see this as a place where Catholic school children from all over the country, who come to Washington, will come to be part of this experience and hopefully their faith will be enriched. In many ways, I think it will be our hope that Catholics going through the Pope John Paul II cultural center will come away with a deep sense of pride in the fact that they are Catholics, and they will have been uplifted by the experience.
The center will present a juxtaposition of the old with the new, the papacy with modern technology.
Well, if we reflect back, even as we sit here in Rome, and we look to the various things that surround us, the artwork, the magnificent churches, the monuments and so on, all of those basically teach us something about what we believe in and who we are as a Catholic people. So traditionally, the great cathedrals of the past have been a great catechizing instrument for the Church and they certainly continue to be that for us today. In today's world, with the technology that's available to us, it would be unfortunate if the Church did not use the tools of today to evangelize, to proclaim the message of the Church in the same way that the Church of the past has used the tools that were available at that time.
It's not a question of relying exclusively upon technology. But not to use the latest technology puts us in the position of not utilizing the best that is available to us. Some of the people we have been meeting with — some of our major supporters — tend to be a bit older, and we have sometimes said that we can all be somewhat frightened by the technology. For younger people though, it's very much a part of their life and if we wish to speak to younger people then we need to speak in a manner and in a way that they will more easily understand. So we said to some of our donors, “Your grandchildren will appreciate this probably more that you do because they will know how to use it and it will be part of their life experience.”
That certainly is reflected even in the architecture of the building. Many of the initial conceptual drawings that were presented tended to be fairly traditional in orientation. But as we thought more about it and as we looked to some of the things that the Holy Father did as archbishop of Krakow — the Church at Nowa Huta for example, was a very contemporary building — we felt that the building itself ought to reflect the forward-looking vision that seems to be so much a part of his life and ministry.
Why was it decided to include a scholarly center in addition to a place for visitors?
The very heart of the center is the “intercultural forum,” the research center, in which the scholars will come together to study the relationship between faith and culture, and the impact of the papacy in particular in shaping our culture and the various cultures of the world. The Holy Father's own personal interest is in the intercultural forum where the theology of the Church can be explored. We hope that people who are looking for spokespeople for the Church would automatically turn to the cultural center as a place that speaks in the name of the Church or that can speak on behalf of the Church and in a manner that certainly presents Church doctrine and practice. The scholars in the research center and the intercultural forum will interact with visitors as well.
You are confident then that the center will have a strong Catholic identity?
Certainly, the John Paul II Cultural Center is going to be an institution that will be faithful to the teachings of the Church and the Holy Father. We will see in the teachings of the Holy Father what the Church believes, and will celebrate and proclaim that. It's clearly a Catholic center in the fullest sense of that word. The center itself will have an overall board of bishops who will provide the direction and leadership for it, while a board of directors will oversee day-to-day operations. The nature of the center is a center dedicated to the Holy Father and the impact of the papacy; obviously papal teaching will be a very significant part of that center.
Do you foresee a role for the center to be in conversation with the vast range of opinions to be found in Washington?
The center will be in dialogue with other institutions. But because one is in dialogue doesn't meant that you don't believe in something very specific. You have convictions and you believe in those and you come to the dialogue with those convictions. Dialogue is something that takes place between people of conviction. Issues can be explored, but for us, as a Catholic people, we explore issues in the framework of our Catholic tradition.
— Raymond de Souza
More information on the John Paul II center is available on its Web site (www.jp2culturalcenter.com).
----- EXCERPT: Landmark-in-the-making was an unexpected mission ----- EXTENDED BODY: Msgr. Walter A. Hurley ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: Friars of the Renewal Win Approval of Rome DATE: 06/13/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 13-19, 1999 ----- BODY:The Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, a community that was begun in the South Bronx in 1987, was raised to the status of a diocesan religious institute by Cardinal John J. O'Connor during a May 28 Mass in St. Patrick's Cathedral, following approval by Rome. It was the cardinal who had established the group as a public association of the faithful in 1990.
Father Benedict J. Groeschel, an author and preacher who appears regularly on Eternal Word Television Network, was one of the eight Capuchin Franciscans who started the community and he was its first superior. He spoke to the Register following the community's general chapter June 1 at St. Josaphat's Retreat House in Glen Cove, Long Island, where Father Glenn Sudano, CFR, was elected to succeed Father Andrew Apostoli, CFR, as superior. There are 50 friars in the community.
Register: What is the community's new status and what does it mean?
Father Groeschel: When a religious community begins, it is established as a public association of the faithful, but then, after there are approximately 40 members and evidence of stability and future growth, the association is made into a diocesan religious community. Both the association and religious community are under the authority of the local bishop, but the step of making it a diocesan community can only be done with the approval of the Holy See. The friars received that approval in about nine years because we grew rapidly and because many people, both religious and lay, supported us enthusiastically.
After you become a diocesan religious congregation, the next step is to become a religious order of pontifical right, which puts you directly under the Holy See. That is the highest designation and usually requires that there are 150 members and that the community is represented in a number of different dioceses.
Is the community eyeing that now?
We never have our eyes set on anything. We always go where the Lord leads us. We always try to be led, not to plan. I saw all the damage done to religious communities by planning, so we allow ourselves to be led by divine providence. And it works.
What were the reasons the community was started?
The original friars wanted to follow a more literal observance of the Rule of St. Francis and the old constitutions of the Capuchins. The Capuchins are a Franciscan reform begun as part of the Catholic Reformation in the 16th century. Their original work was the care of the poor and the homeless and evangelical preaching. Their first house in Rome was what was called a hospital at that time — really a shelter for homeless and sick.
Also, we found ourselves in some conflict with the general direction religious life was taking at that time in the United States, during the 1970s and 1980s. The particular things we wanted to emphasize were religious devotion, especially to Christ, the Blessed Virgin and the saints, with a special emphasis on Eucharistic devotion. Also, we wanted a firm commitment to traditional Catholic theology and the teachings of the Pope in the spirit of Vatican II. There is a spirit of Vatican II which I think has become a poltergeist, not the real spirit of Vatican II at all.
We wanted to be particularly loyal to Pope John Paul II, both in his office as supreme shepherd of the Church and his own personal teachings and approach to the Catholic faith. We particularly wanted to have a literal and authentic observance of the three vows — poverty, chastity and obedience. I think the pop psychology that was around in the '70s tragically undermined the religious commitment of many religious, and time has borne this pop psychology away, leaving a great deal of damage. All of this is discussed in my book, The Reform of Renewal.
Do you see other signs of hope, such as other new communities springing up?
Oh yes. In France, we are in touch with groups such as the Community of St. Jean, the Beatitudes, the Community of Emmanuel, the Community of Jerusalem and Taize. This has had a tremendous influence on the life of the Church in France. In the U.S., new communities are attracting most of the vocations. Eventually, I hope, this will put pressure on existing communities to re-examine the past two decades in light of the disastrous results that have occurred and also in light of the discrediting or disappearance of a great deal of pop psychology. People who will not return to any authentic interpretation of religious life now find themselves simply stuck in the doldrums or, what's worse, much involved in the New Age.
Do you think religious life will go back to what it was in the past?
I hope not. Although religious life was strong 40 years ago, it tended to be oppressive, not creative. If you visited us you would not see religious life as it was 40 years ago but as we think it was with the Capuchins 400 years ago. We like to be friendly, outgoing and at same time authentic and austere. I don't think the two are contradictory. If you came to visit you'd be startled by the amount of laughter and boisterousness. But our liturgies and prayer life are long and intense.
Are young people of our time able to respond to the call to religious life?
How many is not my problem; that's God's decision. But I do see a surprising, enthusiastic response, not only to traditional religious life but to authentic Catholicism, which is prayerful and filled with faith. Many young people associate with us who do not have a religious or priestly vocation but are obviously called to be part of a devout, believing Catholic minority in these unbelieving times. They are countercultural. In our out-reach to youth, such as through Youth 2000 retreats, young people seem to know what we're doing. We have a tremendous reaction from them precisely because of our traditional ways and devotion to the Eucharist.
What are your feelings on the recent election of a new superior?
Father Glenn was quite young when we began. He's 46 now. I'm absolutely delighted and have full confidence in the young friars to enthusiastically and faithfully continue the original inspiration of the community. As the old man — I'm 66 and looking forward to Purgatory — I have to say I think they do it better than we did. They're moving in the right direction.
Do the Franciscans of the Renewal have plans to expand into other territories?
We are going to England because we have a number of English brothers and hope to open a house in the slums of London — in an area Charles Dickens made famous. We also have several outreaches in Latin America. This summer, we will have several brothers working in Central America.
—John Burger
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Burger ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: U.S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 06/13/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 13-19, 1999 ----- BODY:Al Gore: Look Not on My Record, But on My Faith
Gore recently met with seven religion editors from around the country, including the Times' Peter Steinfels to talk about a “new partnership” between government and “faith-based organizations.”
The veep took the opportunity to talk about the central role of faith in his life and the bias of many educated, science-oriented people against religion. Gore said the attitude “peaked some time ago,” but still endures in intellectual circles.
Growing up, Gore alternated between attending his father's Southern Baptist church and the Church of Christ to which his mother belonged. He graduated from an Episcopalian high school and attended Divinity School for a year after returning from military duty in Vietnam. “His wife Tipper was an Episcopalian although she switched to his Baptist congregation after marriage at the National Episcopal National Cathedral in Washington,” said Seinfels.
But, he added, “What one sensed in the White House conversation was a Christianity that is ethical and intellectual but not especially doctrinal.”
What Nuns' Brains Can Tell Us
Continued Thompson: “The nuns and their carefully preserved brains have proved to be an Alzheimer's research treasure. From it, Snowdon has already found that tiny strokes may be the switch that flips a mildly deteriorating brain into full-fledged dementia and, bizarrely, that the density of ideas in the writings of a 20-year-old novice may be, for reasons nobody can fathom, a predictor of Alzheimer's at age 80.”
However, Snowdon has been short on breakthroughs in understanding how to prevent the disease. “Until now,” said Thompson. “Snowdon's latest discovery … shows a strong relationship between the severe brain atrophy of Alzheimer's and low levels of the common B vitamin known as folic acid or folate. Furthermore, nuns with the highest levels of folate suffered the lowest levels of cognitive decline.”
Multi-Tasking Franciscan Friar
Weeks described a typical scene: “The soft-spoken friar arranges three-way conference calls. While on hold he watches TV news, checks his pager and faxes letters to friends. Pretty much all at the same time, he also prays for families pictured on his prayer board.”
Brother Sebastian was one of many subjects in Weeks' story on multi-tasking, a phenomenon that “has become part of our culture. It's who we are,” said Brother Sebastian, 38.
Said Weeks: “Call it what you will — multi-tasking, multi-processing, doing tons of things at once. We have become a nation of jugglers. Out of necessity, yes, but also out of choice.”
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A Lover of Cultural and Liturgical Beauty May Become Puerto Rico's First Beatified DATE: 06/13/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 13-19, 1999 ----- BODY:Among Latin American nations, Puerto Rico stands out for great beach resorts, feisty music, and its tradition of boxers and dancers — but not for anything especially noteworthy in relation to the Catholic faith.
Puerto Rico's fame as a secular territory may be changing, thanks to the events of the last year surrounding the frail figure of Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, a man who died of cancer in 1963 at age 45.
He may also become the first Puerto Rican to be declared blessed.
In 1997, Pope John Paul II proclaimed the heroic nature of the virtues possessed by Rodríguez, and last April the medical team of the Vatican's Congregation for the Cause of Saints determined the “inexplicable character” of the healing attributed to his intercession.
Thousands of Puerto Ricans are now hoping to see the frail figure of their native son raised to the altars as a canonized saint during the Great Jubilee year 2000.
While Rodríguez has never faded from the memory of those who knew him, a new wave of interest in his life was ignited earlier this year when a feature story in the newspaper Nuevo Dia offered details of a miraculous cure performed through the apparent intercession of the Puerto Rican layman who was known to all as “Charlie.”
The coverage not only sparked the curiosity of the public in general, it revived the faith of former companions from his days at the University of Puerto Rico, and gave a boost to current pastoral activities at the campus — a further sign that Rodríguez was, indeed, a holy man.
Devout Since Youth
Who was this man who may become the first “Boricua” — a native Puerto Rican — saint?
Carlos Rodríguez was born on Nov. 22, 1918 to a family of small entrepreneurs from the city of Caguas. Second of five children, Charlie was strongly drawn to the liturgy. From his earliest days, he loved nothing better than to wake up early to serve Mass at his parish church.
“Charlie was a man in love with Christ,” recalled his brother, Jose, a 77-year-old Benedictine monk. “His apostolate started at home, where he would lead the family in prayer and devotions. With both simplicity and sharpness, he instructed us in the meaning of liturgical symbols, a field in which he was extremely knowledgeable.”
Haydee, a younger sister, is also a religious. She remembered her brother as “always involved in plans to make people happy. The year I studied at [New York's] Fordham University, the first time I left home to spend a year abroad, he would write me a newsletter, La Chismosa — The Gossip — to keep me up to date with news from the family, the town and the Church,” said Sister Haydee.
“His funny, sharp comments were always smartly combined with spiritual recommendations and reflections,” she said.
At age 12, Charlie was attacked by a dog and was left with a severe intestinal problem that would later force him to leave aside formal studies. Some of his doctors also believe that the original condition provoked the intestinal cancer that would kill Carlos Rodríguez 32 years later.
An Educated Man
Although he did not complete university, Charlie became a highly educated man. His self-acquired knowledge in the liberal arts and humanities impressed officials from the University of Puerto Rico enough that they hired him to coordinate campus cultural activities.
Once established in a role at the university, Rodríguez created and promoted a successful campus ministry that was centered on cultural activities and an intense liturgical life.
He later added the role of student counselor to his responsibilities at the university's Catholic Center, increasing an already intense apostolic life.
“By his erudition, he easily gained the attention of his audience. His affability and friendly manner gained the confidence and the esteem of those with whom he came in contact,” said Fernando Aguilo, a former protege.
“Above all, he was always available — almost without condition — to those who sought his knowledge and his counsel,” said Aquilo.
A lover of music, opera and the films, Rodríguez became a skilled youth apostle, capable of attracting students by combining culture, entertainment, friendship and a strong spiritual life.
But not even his closest friends knew how much he suffered from the medical problems that often prevented him from eating.
“The only thing we ever criticized him for was that he worked too hard and that he would forget to eat,” said Norma Diaz, another student from Rodríguez' days at the Catholic Center. “We would take turns inviting him to lunch or dinner to make sure that he would get something to eat.”
According to his relatives, even small amounts of food could cause terrible pain. Nevertheless, Rodríguez frequently complied with his friends' concerns for his eating habits without letting them know how much he suffered once out of their sight.
Love of the Liturgy
If anything particularly characterized Charlie Rodríguez, his relatives and friends agreed, it was his deep love and incredible knowledge of Catholic liturgy. The solemn and mystical qualities of the Latin liturgy of the time held a deep attraction for him. This was especially noteworthy since the language and ceremonies of the old Mass were not as accessible to the average Catholic as is the contemporary Mass, usually offered in the vernacular and in a more simplified manner.
Following the decision of Pope Pius XII to restore the Holy Saturday Easter Vigil in all its fullness to the liturgical life of the Church, Rodríguez dedicated himself to understanding the liturgy and helping to achieve its skillful celebration. His concern moved him to write respectful but direct letters to bishops about how to encourage a reverent celebration of the Holy Saturday liturgy while also promoting greater attendance and participation by the faithful.
He was a tireless promoter and teacher of the rich meaning of the Catholic liturgy. “I especially remember his diminutive figure working enthusiastically, typing and mimeographing his liturgical manuscripts,” said Rafael Irizarry, a university alumnus. “He was completely committed in his desire to renew the liturgical traditions in the Church,” Irizarry said.
Despite his lean, small figure, say those who remember him, Rodríguez was capable of transmitting a strong sense of his commitment to the Catholic faith, and to generate admiration among friends and disciples.
The Cure
It was the memory and fond admiration of these qualities that encouraged a 42-year-old married woman and mother to pray for Rodríguez's intercession after being diagnosed with lung cancer.
Doctors in Puerto Rico and the United States agreed that the woman's lymphoma was terminal. “We always remembered Charlie as a close friend, but as an even closer friend of God. So we decided to ask him to give us a hand,” said the woman, who asked not be identified by name in order not to interfere with the beatification process.
Two weeks later, a new analysis revealed that the lymphoma had totally disappeared. A later surgery to discard another possible cancer confirmed that not a trace of the deadly tumor remained. “Charlie devoted all his life to the apostolate and to serve others. He fervently dedicated his time to the students, acting with patience, without ever expressing anger, bad humor or sadness,” she told the Register.
“From the very beginning we knew he was trying hard to become a holy person, so before he died, I decided to keep a cotton [ball] with his blood, because I was sure this would some day become a saint's relic,” she said.
According to Capuchin Father Mario Meza, postulator of Rodríguez' cause, “he was convinced that his vocation was to be a lay person, a lay saint devoted to promote the love of Christ in the midst of daily life.” He was a forerunner to many of today's lay movements and “what Pope John Paul II calls the evangelization of culture,” said Father Meza.
Father Meza conducts a weekly radio program with a growing audience that includes reports about the progress of Rodríguez' cause. “Each time we announce something new, the enthusiasm grows and we have even more people reporting favors,” the Capuchin said.
Alejandro Bermudez, Latin America correspondent, writes from Lima, Peru.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Alejandro Bermudez ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 06/13/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 13-19, 1999 ----- BODY:Kosovo: Bishop's Bravery; Priest's Protest
First, an ethnic Albanian bishop has chosen to remain in Kosovo to give comfort to residents left in the devastated Yugoslav province, reported the paper.
Auxiliary Bishop Marko Sopi of Skopje-Prizren was staying in the city of Prizren, along with the local seminary rector and a small group of sisters, said the paper, citing a “moderate Kosovar leader.”
Before the war began, Catholics in Kosovo numbered about 60,000, a minority among the Muslim population.
In a separate development, a priest in Italy burned a model of an American Apache helicopter during a children's First Communion Mass in order to protest the war. The priest, Don Tarcisio Guarnieri, said he would have also burned a model of a Serb tank if he had one available, said the newspaper.
China: Birthday Wishes From a Hidden Church
“It is not possible for me to go to see him, and it is very difficult for him to come to China,” said Bishop Matthias Duan Yinming of Wanxian in the Sichuan province. The 91-year-old prelate, who was telephoned by the news agency on the Pope's 79th birthday, said, “I only want to pray that God bless the Pope and grant him good health and wisdom to guide the Church.”
Ordained a priest in 1937, Bishop Duan said he has “experienced several popes” in his long life. Catholics in Wanxian Diocese will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Bishop Duan's episcopal ordination on Oct. 18. He was appointed a bishop by Pope Pius XII in 1949.
As for Vatican-China relations, the bishop's office said, “We don't worry too much; God has his time and his plans.”
Orthodox Priests Freed in Russia
Bandits took Fathers Piotr Makaroy and Sergei Potapov hostage earlier this year during a raid on their village in Ingushetia, a republic near the border of Chechenya, the French news organization said. Security forces raided the hideout where the priests and five soldiers were being held for ransom.
There are reports of from 500 to 700 other hostages being held for ransom in the rebel republic.
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 06/13/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 13-19, 1999 ----- BODY:Pope Blesses Parking Lot for Jubilee
REUTERS, June 2-The Vatican, bracing for a flood of pilgrims coming to mark the Great Jubilee Year 2000, unveiled an underground car parking lot that will ease congestion, according to the wire service.
“Pope John Paul II personally blessed the state-of-the-art parking lot, which will be open to Holy See staff and residents of the tiny city state,” said Reuters.
In an address to the Pope to mark the inauguration, Cardinal Edmund Szoka, president of the Pontifical Council for the State of the Vatican City, thanked God for allowing work to proceed without problems.
Cardinal Szoka said the new car parking lot was not intended to encourage more motorists to drive into the clogged streets of Vatican City, said Reuters.
Even Poles Can Mispronounce Polish
“At one point in Elblag, [the Pope] playfully told the crowd that was shouting ‘Niech Zyje Papiez!’ or ‘Long Live the Pope!’ that their chant reminded him of a time when a follower mistakenly cried out, ‘Eupiez,’ which in Polish rhymes with ‘Papiez,’ but which is actually the word for dandruff.”
Stanley reported that the Polish visit was also the occasion for “a rare public mention of the Pope's [physical] suffering.” In an address of welcome to Pelpin, Bishop Jan Bernard Szalga said, “The faithful came here to be together with you, Holy Father, who have been bearing a cross every day.”
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Giving Christ a Place in the Public Square DATE: 06/13/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 13-19, 1999 ----- BODY:Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights president William Donohue was on CNN's “Crossfire” program recently discussing what the nation should learn in the wake of the Columbine High shooting. Register Radio News correspondent Rich Rinaldi interviewed him on the separation of religion from public and private life in America today.
Rich Rinaldi: The Constitution of the United States doesn't say anything specific about having prayer in school nor does it say anything about Christian symbols on public property as a memorial. What can you tell us about that?
William Donohue: Prayer in the school was legal in this country up until 1962 when Madelyn Murray O'Hare of Long Island got it thrown out in the Supreme Court of the United States in a rather remarkable decision.
What's remarkable about it still is that the Congress opens every day with a prayer with the Ten Commandments right there in the Supreme Court building and they open every day at 10 am in prayer. We still have the chaplains to the Congress that were appointed by the first Congress that we ever had after they had already written the first amendment on separation of church and state.
By the way, separation of church doesn't appear in the Constitution either. What the Constitution, specifically the first amendment, says is that Congress shall pass no laws respecting an establishment of religion and prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
The so-called establishment clause essentially meant that you could not have a national religion a national church, like the Church of England and that the federal government cannot give preferential treatment to one religion over another.
That's not my opinion. That's the opinion of James Madison. We know his opinion because he was asked and we have his response.
Why does his opinion matter? Because he wrote the First Amendment. What we have today are a lot of spinmeisters, many of them intellectually dishonest men and women, some of whom are teaching in the law schools, some of whom are actually on the bench.
Many of them are working for organizations like Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the American Civil Liberties Union and People for the American Way, who would like to promote a rather twisted interpretation of the Constitution to fit in with their contemporary politics.
I can see that a lawyer can spin this as you say to make an issue out of it.
That is what the danger is when you get away from the original intent. What we all should do is look at the original intent of the people who framed the law. If we don't like the law, there is a process. You can amend the law. The Congress can pass a law. What we should-n't have are judges, either liberal or conservative, it makes no difference who are going to sit there and say well here's what I think should be the case.
No, they are not elected to do that they are usually appointed to begin with and they are appointed to faithfully interpret the Constitution according to the people who wrote it. You can amend the Constitution, the Congress can pass laws or change laws at the federal level. The state legislature can change laws at their level. What we can't have are judges who look at the Constitution as kind of a nutty-putty situation where you can mold it to be anything you want it to be. You are not supposed to be able to substitute what you think the law ought to be for the way it's actually written .
Islam, Judaism and Christianity make up the majority of the world population. The God they all worship has a law that seems to be reasonable even complimentary for our human society but we have laws that prohibit any religious symbols in public display.
It's true, 94% of the American people believe in God; 86% of those people are Christian, 2% are Jewish and 3 % are Muslim. Most people in this country believe in God. The other ones are teaching in the academies. What we have in our society is a situation where this 6% of this society, which has a secular bent, many of whom are located disproportionately in those areas where opinions are disseminated.
In other words if you were to take a look at people who work in the publishing industry or teach in the colleges and universities or who are in the media disproportionately you will find from the studies of Robert Lister and Stanley Ross and others that these are people who believe in absolutely nothing. They represent a very small percentage of the American people.
We've gone a long way now into this society where we pretend as if everything has to be neutered — as if we live in a society where we should scrub clean all religious symbols.
Every year in Central Park, the Jewish community put up the world's largest menorah. I congratulate them for that. As a matter of fact, when I came back from Pittsburgh to New York to back home in '93 I looked up there and I said ‘Where is the crëche? What's wrong with the Catholics and the Protestants?’ And I said to myself well I'll see to it I've got a job full-time here at the Catholic League. And that is exactly what I did. We put up a nice big crëche right there in central park right on 59th Street and 5th Avenue, and we have not been sued by anybody. The Muslims followed a couple of years later they put up their crescent and star.
I think that's perfectly fine. That's what diversity is supposed to mean, but we have these people in the ACLU whose understanding of freedom of religion is freedom from religion.
Rich Rinaldi is director of Register Radio News.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Rich Rinaldi ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Rebels for Religion DATE: 06/13/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 13-19, 1999 ----- BODY:Northern High School in Calvert County, Md., has been known locally for years as a place where prayer was allowed at graduation ceremonies. But that was before Nick Becker became a student there.
Now it is known nationally as a place where students champion their right to pray.
Becker, now 18, was conspicuous at Northern for his independent streak — he once sculpted his hair like the Statue of Liberty's crown and was asked by school officials to wash it out in a sink. He was also conspicuous for his familiarity with the ACLU.
The American Civil Liberties Union first came to Becker's defense when he refused to stand when his class recited the Pledge of Allegiance, The Washington Post reported May 28. The group backed him again this year when he decided that he didn't want anybody to pray at his graduation ceremony.
The school, threatened with a lawsuit, asked graduating senior Julie Schenk to break a 17-year tradition and not deliver an invocation at the ceremony. She struck a compromise: On graduation day, Schenk asked that the audience pause for 30 seconds of silent reflection. The Post describes what happened next:
“It started with a loud, clear voice, a man's voice. And it spread quickly through the hall, picking up the tenors of teenage boys, whispers of young girls and throaty voices of grandmothers. With each word, it grew more determined:
“‘Our Father, who art in Heaven …
’ “The defiant group,” said the report, “insisted that God be part of” the ceremony.
Becker was so upset he left the auditorium where the graduation was taking place. When he tried to re-enter, he was stopped by police. The school had a policy against students leaving and re-entering the auditorium during ceremonies.
That's life in public high schools in the 1990s. Graduation ceremonies ban God but find a compelling need to have police guards on hand. Students, meanwhile, rebel by praying out loud.
America was founded, in large part, by people who wanted to find a place where they could pray in public without harassment by the authorities. They sacrificed a great deal to win those liberties. It's encouraging to see that the students at Northern High aren't giving up those liberties too easily.
* * *
It is worth noting that 10 years after the massacre of freedom lovers in Tiananmen Square, the Clinton administration, with Congress'likely support, announced June 3 that it wants to continue favored status trade relations with the People's Republic of China.
Chinese students built a model of the Statue of Liberty in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Confronted by approaching government tanks on June 4, 1989, the young demonstrators shouted for democracy as they waved copies of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. Hundreds were killed and thousands injured that day.
At his May 29 commencement address to Columbia School of Law at The Catholic University of America, U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) recalled his recent visits to China, where he saw fresh incidents of disregard for human rights:
“One Christian woman, with tears in her eyes, told me how her child had been forcibly aborted by crude and rough family-planning cadres as part of the People's Republic of China's one-child-per-couple policy, and that she prayed that her baby was in heaven. … Another told how a public security policeman beat, harassed and robbed Christians.”
Smith continued, “Still another underground Roman Catholic, Bishop Zhimin Su of Baoding Province, China, spent more than a dozen years in prison and endured torture.
During a brief time of release, he said Mass in a dingy apartment for our human rights delegation. … Bishop Su was thrown back into prison by the Chinese dictatorship soon after we left.”
In story after story, the West has heard again and again about the terrible human rights abuses in China. Even those who support normal trade relations status for China admit that these abuses occur. They make a real and strong case that more trade, and with it more contact with the West, can have a profound, democratizing effect on China.
But, in the end, the strongest motive for trading with China is the financial boon of trade with the world's largest market, not the stray moral side-effects that trade may cause. And that financial gain is itself jeopardized by recent developments.
The Chinese government has snubbed Westerners with its arms proliferation, its theft of intellectual property and its violations of human rights, which the U.S. State Department says has worsened in the past year. Such a government can hardly be a reliable trading partner.
Nevertheless, the House Ways and Means Committee was scheduled to hold hearings June 8 on trade with China. Significant opposition to “normal” trade status has been hard to come by in recent years. But the anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre, along with the recent discoveries of nuclear-weapons espionage by the Chinese, make it prudent to take a hard second look at how the United States will deal with China in the future.
----- EXCERPT: Editorial ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Marriage and the Philosopher-Pope DATE: 06/13/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 13-19, 1999 ----- BODY:Crossing the Threshold of Love: A New Vision of Marriage by Mary Shivanandan(The Catholic University of America Press, 1999, 324 pages, $24.95)
Mary Shivanandan's new book Crossing the Threshold of Love should establish her as a recognized scholar, theologian and expert on Pope John Paul II's anthropology.
Don't let the clever title fool you. This is not light reading. Shivanandan, who holds a doctorate in theology from the John Paul II Institute, where she also teaches, offers one of the most scholarly assessments of the Pope's anthropology ever written. A difficult read for most, but a gold mine for students of John Paul's thought.
Beginning with the plays he wrote as a young man, Shivanandan traces the evolution of Karol Wojtyla's anthropology through his life's work. Included are such sources as his dissertation on St. John of the Cross, his critique of philosophers Immanuel Kant and Max Scheler and his book Love and Responsibility. His understanding of man found full flowering in his “theology of the body,” which he presented to the world after becoming Pope John Paul II.
In retracing Wojtyla's steps, one wonders, “Is this really a book about marriage?” But like any full-grown tree, John Paul's new vision of marriage has deep roots. Shivanandan uncovers those roots, allowing the reader to see the masterful mind of this future Pope in the making.
She quotes Henri Bergson: “The great philosophers have only one word to say and spend their whole life saying it.” “For Wojtyla,” she adds, “that one word is person.”
In this century, phenomenology — a philosophical approach which examines human experience in order to understand man as a personal subject - has allowed philosophers such as Wojtyla to extend our understanding of the human person to include relationality.
While medieval philosophers developed a relational notion of the Persons in the Trinity, they did not translate this into their anthropology. With the shift from a philosophical to a theological anthropology inspired by Vatican II, Wojtyla makes this neglected translation with ease. Gaudium et Spes, 24, marks Wojtyla's turning point: “Man can fully discover his true self only in a sincere giving of himself.”
“New horizons closed to human reason” (Gaudium et Spes, 24) are discovered through faith in God's revelation that he created man in his own image as male and female (Genesis 1:27). Here John Paul takes us beyond the traditional understanding that man's imaging of God is seen in the fact that the human person is “an individual substance of a rational nature” (Boethius). For John Paul, “man became the ‘image and likeness of God’ not only through his own humanity, but also through the communion of persons which man and woman form right from the beginning” (General Audience, Nov. 14, 1979).
How can John Paul speak of a theology of the body?
The union in “one flesh” makes visible the invisible mystery hidden since time immemorial in God, and becomes a sign of it. This is the mystery of God's own life and of his plan for man to share in this life through Christ. As St. Paul says, the union of man and wife in “one flesh” is a profound mystery that refers to Christ and the Church (Ephesians 5:32).
This is why John Paul can speak of a theology of the body. As he explains, “Through the fact that the Word of God became flesh the body entered theology through the main door” (General Audience, April 2, 1980). This brings us to the other key text of Vatican II for Wojtyla: “Christ fully reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling” (Gaudium et Spes,22).
As Shivanandan points out, the significance of John Paul's contribution is that he roots this “most high calling” of man in the body. The body has a nuptial meaning because we can only fulfill ourselves through the “sincere gift of self.” This is lived out either in the sacrament of marriage, or in celibacy “for the kingdom” (Matthew 19:12). In the resurrection, the nuptial meaning of the body is lived out “in the meeting with the mystery of the living God … ‘face to face’” (General Audience, Dec. 9, 1981).
Tragically, because of original sin this truth of the body has become habitually threatened. Contraception is one such threat. Rather than speaking the truth of God's life and love, contracepted intercourse actually speaks a lie. Shivanandan notes, “the interplay of experience, the human sciences, and biblical and philosophical reflection has enabled John Paul II to place in a whole new context the Church's perennial teaching on the inseparable connection between the procreative and unitive dimensions of conjugal love.”
In part two of her book, Shivanandan demonstrates how the research of social science on the regulation of births is critically affected by differing anthropologies. In a materialist view, such research is not concerned with who man is as a person made in the image of God, but only with the easiest and most effective ways to limit births. Contraception, then, becomes a “logical” solution to a host of social problems.
She contrasts this approach to methods of research that give greater recognition to the subjectivity of the person and the legitimacy of experiential learning. Actual research shows — as Shivanandan demonstrated in her landmark 1979 book, Natural Sex- that the lived experience of natural family planning fosters mutual love. It enables married couples to speak the “language of their bodies” in truth.
This is an exceptional study. Shivanandan not only offers a tour de force of the evolution of John Paul's thought, but also demonstrates its far-reaching implications for the lives of couples, families and whole societies. She unmasks the deception of our “safe-sex” society by demonstrating that only when we come to see the body and sexual intercourse as the expression of the transcendence of the person will we be able to “cross the threshold of love.”
Christopher West is the director of the Office of Marriage — Family Life for the Archdiocese of Denver..
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Christopher West ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Christian Universities Needn't Apologize DATE: 06/13/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 13-19, 1999 ----- BODY:“A Christian University: Defining the Difference” by Mark R. Schwehn(First Things, May 1999)
In Mark R. Schwehn's view, significant changes have occurred in the American intellectual culture since the 1960s which open up the established secular university to challenges of all kinds. Rather than reactively defending themselves from secular educational institutions, Christians should be pursuing their own agendas on their own terms. Schwehn draws on John Henry Newman's idea of a university to establish basic principles.
Schwehn, dean of Christ College in Valparaiso University in Indiana, writes: “Judging by the recent resurgence of interest in and care for church-related colleges and universities of all descriptions, the idea of a Christian university is very much alive. Even so, since the 1960s, most academics have regarded serious Christian universities … as medieval remnants at best and as oxymorons at worst.”
The Christian university must first “have a board of trustees composed of a substantial majority of Christian men and women, clergy and lay, whose primary task is to attend to the Christian character of the institution. They will do this primarily but not exclusively by appointing to the major leadership positions of the school persons who are actively committed to the ideal of a Christian university. These leaders will in turn see to it that all of the following things are present within the life of the institution: first, a department of theology that offers” required courses in the Bible and Christian intellectual history; “second, an active chapel ministry … third, a critical mass of faculty members who, in addition to being excellent teacher-scholars, carry in and among themselves the DNA of the school, [and] care for the perpetuation of its mission … and fourth, a curriculum that includes a large number of courses, required of all students, that are compellingly construed as parts of a larger whole and that taken together constitute a liberal education.”
Schwehn argues that “An informing principle like ‘unity’ really does make the Christian university countercultural in the modern world,” because modernity has fractured and fragmented our understanding of the world. A second “constitutive belief of a Christian university is that all human beings, everywhere and at all times, are made in the image of God and loved in the way that God loves, i.e., in a manner best exemplified in the life and death of Jesus the Christ. …
“My third informing principle, ‘integrity,’ involves the belief that there is an integral connection among the intellectual, moral, and spiritual dimensions of human life. … An arrogant teacher, for example, no matter how well he understands organic chemistry, is apt to be unresponsive to students and impatient with their errors and hesitations. Humility, therefore, is both a spiritual excellence and a pedagogical virtue. … My own practice as a historian has demonstrated to me the cognitive value of such virtues as justice and charity.”
Next is the principle of tradition. “Rival ideas of the university … often construe tradition of any kind as inimical to the kind of free inquiry that is the heart and soul of university life. … [But] an increasing number of students come to the university without any sense of any tradition whatsoever. … Tradition and critical inquiry frequently clash, but it is important to notice that they most often exist in a relationship of dialectical interdependence.” Criticism works upon something already established, while over time, tradition incorporates and reacts to criticism.
Finally, “it should be a primary teaching of a Christian university that work is a social station where human beings use their God-given talents and whatever knowledge they have acquired to serve neighbors in need. … A Christian university should … equip its students to perform well in all of their concurrent callings, and it should teach them to regard human life not primarily as a tragic set of impossible choices between excellence at home or at work or in civil society, but as a striving for the proper balance of exertion and achievement within all of these fields of endeavor.”
Ellen Wilson Fielding writes from Davidson, Maryland.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Letters DATE: 06/13/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 13-19, 1999 ----- BODY:Pius XII
God bless Dr. Eugene Fisher for defending Pope Pius XII against the most recent attack on his World War II actions regarding Hitler and the Jewish people (“Rabbi's Condemnation of Pope Pius XII Criticized” May 30-June 5).
Rabbi Marvin Hier claims that the mere notion of canonizing Pope Pius XII “desecrates the memory of the Holocaust,” because the Pontiff chose to be “stonily silent” and not “lift a finger” to help Jews until it was expediently clear in late 1943 and 1944 that Hitler would lose the war. Rabbi Hier, who works for the prominent Simon Wiesenthal Center, made his remarks in New York recently. In fact, the Rabbi's defamation of Pius XII compounds the injustice of the Holocaust, given that the Pope said and did much to defend and save the Jewish people before and during World War II.
First, Pius XII's opposition to Nazism dates to his days as a papal envoy to Germany from 1917 to 1929. It continued as Vatican Secretary of State from 1930 to 1939. Not surprisingly, then, the Berlin Morgenpost criticized his papal election in March 1939, “because he was always opposed to Nazism and practically determined the policies of the Vatican under his predecessor.”
Long before late 1943–44, The New York Times praised Pius XII's war efforts in its 1941 and 1942 Christmas editorials. The Times saw fit to print that “more than ever [Pius XII] is a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent” (1942). Reacting to the same Christmas message from Pius XII, the Nazi Gestapo lamented, “In a manner never known before, the Pope does not refer to the National Socialists in Germany by name, but his speech is one long attack on everything we stand for. … Here he is clearly speaking on behalf of the Jews.”
Jewish leaders around the world agreed with the Nazis, but chose instead to praise the Pope after the war and again at his death in 1958. In its B'nai B'rith's Bulletin, the Anti-Defamation League summarized the post-mortem praise of Pius XII well: “[H]is opposition to Nazism and his efforts to help Jews in Europe were well-known to the suffering world.”
Regarding Pius XII's knowledge of the “Final Solution,” he actually warned about Hitler's plans in a 1937 encyclical (Mit Brennender Sorge) that he drafted for Pope Pius XI. In the same encyclical (“With Burning Anxiety” in English), it can be argued that he compared Hitler and his allies to the devil. Finally, the Vatican has, in fact, produced an 11-volume report on its activities during World War II. Contrary to what Rabbi Hier says, the evidence vindicates Pius XII.
Those wishing to learn more on this important issue may call us at (740) 283-2484 or (800) MY FAITH (693-2484) for our free FAITH FACT on the subject.
Thomas J. Nash, information specialist Catholics United for the Faith Steubenville, Ohio
In this season of our discontent, mistrust of politicians is rising more rapidly than the pollen count, especially among those who consider themselves religious. Many people think politicians rank just below used-car salesmen and that politics is an ignoble profession involving back-room deals and compromise.
Mistrust, when warranted, is not always negative and can be a healthy reaction to waves of scandal about sex, campaign finances, espionage and lack of congressional leadership. There will always be scandals, but Christians, while wary of politicians, should not flee politics as a profession, as some are suggesting, to retreat behind the doors of church and home.
A better path, I think, is to realize that politics has limits and within those limits it is possible to deal with the temptations of power in order to achieve some important social goods.
Some people lose sight of the fact that politics, like work, family, friends, and voluntary associations — including the Church — is an essential part of our life together. The Church has long taught that political life should be a concern to the believer because it sets the stage for the organization of society in which the human person develops spiritually and temporally. Democracy is to be preferred to totalitarianism because it allows people more freedom to develop their human capacities. But democracy is far from perfect and needs constant watchfulness and adjustment of laws so that responsibilities, benefits and burdens will be shared equitably, and so that all people can participate in governing themselves.
Some of the mistrust of politicians today can be traced to confusion about the roles of politics and culture. Several conservative activists like Paul Weyrich, founder of the Free Congress Foundation, and Cal Thomas, a journalist, are complaining that Christians have tried to use politics to transform society and it has not worked. Religious conservatives have contributed to a few important successes like passing the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act (it was later vetoed by President Clinton), but politics has not turned the culture around. These writers counsel dropping out of some political movements and concentrating on rebuilding religious institutions as a bulwark against the corrupting political environment.
One part of their analysis is correct. The dominant culture is not supportive of many Christian ideals, including, for example, family life and the virtues of purity and self-sacrifice. Passing a few laws is not going to change the culture but it might limit the damage. Real cultural change is beyond the scope of politics. Christians, instead of turning away from politics altogether, need to focus on achievable goals that will further their cultural aspirations.
Opting out of political life in a culture such as ours amounts to handing moral relativists a victory by refusing to resist, refusing to accomplish the good that is possible. The great struggle of the last twenty-five years over the right to life of the unborn is a good example of the need to have a voice in the political conversation about women's moral responsibility as well as rights.
Without that voice, things would be much worse. The arena of political struggle is of utmost importance to us as individuals and to the Church, which is the greatest defender of true human freedom in this century. Without a Christian presence in the political dialogue we risk losing some basic rights and casting aside responsibilities. Few would be left to defend and uphold them.
Maintaining a positive attitude about politics may seem impossible in the present climate. But when we are too world-weary and want to escape to the nearest island, we can recall the positive goods achieved through politics in this century — especially the spread of democracy and the fall of communism, both accomplished at great human cost. We need to support those good people who choose a career in politics and work to strengthen democracy. Our support of such candidates and our knowledge of the issues are important for keeping democracy alive and protecting our freedom by using it.
Protecting the right relationship between the person and the state is no minor matter. Without that balance we are on the slippery slope to totalitarianism, a form of government that has proven to be destructive to the human soul. The political task may seem too insignificant to some, but when considered through the eyes of faith, it becomes a defense of the dignity of the human person.
Mary Ellen Bork, a board member of the Catholic Campaign for America and the Institute for Religion in Democracy, writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mary Ellen Bork ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Crisis Down Under DATE: 06/13/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 13-19, 1999 ----- BODY:The following was excerpted from a March letter that introduced the conclusions of an Australian bishops' meeting concerning their country's crisis of faith.
Being Catholic brings particular consequences, benefits and challenges. It is not the same thing as being good, because some good people have no faith. So too there are many types of faith and belief; even among Christians many do not believe everything which we believe.
However, there are immense advantages to belonging to a single, worldwide Church, whose basic teachings were given by the Son of God and where the deposit of faith is preserved particularly by the successors of Peter and the other apostles, i.e., the Pope and bishops.
One consequence of this unity is that diocesan bishops are to travel to Rome every five years for the ad limina visit to report to the Holy Father on the health of their dioceses and to confer with the Vatican departments (Congregations) responsible for different areas of Church life….
Australia's Ad Limina Visit
Somewhat unusually, the [Australians'] ad limina visit began in November 1998 with a meeting between senior Vatican cardinals and archbishops and fifteen Australia bishops, the archbishops, presidents and secretaries of key Australian Bishops' Conference committees.
The aim of this meeting was to discuss the religious situation in Australia, compare it with other parts of the world and together make recommendations for the future to grasp our opportunities and face up to the local challenges, many of which are common to every part of the Western world. Every situation is at least somewhat different, even in Australia dioceses.
The Statement of Conclusions, which was endorsed by the Holy Father … merits examination and discussion so that together we can confront any problem areas. The aim of the exercise is “to make the face of God visible today” here in Australia.
The Statement of Conclusions does not avoid any significant challenge and is explicit in a way that is not universal in Vatican documents. Australians understand clear and courteous speech and the document is signed as an accurate record of the discussions by representatives of both sides. It is important to remember that it is a joint statement of Australian bishops and curial bishops. All participants realized that the vast majority of our Churchgoers will support the document and cooperate in its implementation. It is precisely the vitality of the Church in Australia and our capacity for growth which enabled such a frank and optimistic agenda to be set out. Certainly the Holy Father's letter and the joint statement confirm the line we are following in Melbourne. These documents very rightly urge that any errors be corrected, not by blunt use of authority, but by persuasion and dialogue. We must not be like a husband and wife who deny the early signs that their marriage is in trouble; not like a bank manager who will not admit that his branch is losing money and customers.
Faith or Agnosticism?
Two of the most significant changes in Australian religious life during the last 30 or 40 years have been the rise in the number of people who say they do not belong to any religious group (most of whom are not ex-Catholics) and the decline in regular worship by Catholics. In Melbourne this decline is running at the rate of 1% to 2% each year. We hope to change this. On occasion I have described this as the rise of the “R.C.'s” — resting, relaxed or reluctant Catholics.
On this basis the Statement of Conclusions claims that the Church in Australia is part of a worldwide crisis of faith, stronger in the Western world than in many other places. This claim is justified, and we can no longer presume that most people, especially the young and middle-aged, will find that belief in the one true God comes easily. Even in our secondary schools teachers regularly have to give reasons and make a case for the existence of God and the divinity of Christ.
However, we should not underestimate our formidable strengths. We are not Holland, nor Austria, nor Eastern Germany. While we are less religious than the United States (their level of regular worship is almost double ours), Australian society is much less anti-religious than the U.S.A. The Australian temptation is not to crucify Christ, but to trivialize him.
Most people don't object to a person having a faith, believing in God. They acknowledge that many grandparents are quite devout, perhaps regular worshippers, and that people of every age group are believers, just like some youngsters ride skateboards or [are] wind-surfers. God is seen as an optional hobby, because religion is seen as a matter of taste, a personal preference which answers individual needs. Only rarely is God's existence seen to be an extremely important issue of truth or falsehood. Even rarer is the conviction that our quality of life here and now and our existence after death might be heavily influenced by how we respond to the God question, where sincere and genuine seeking are minimum requirements.
The Statement of Conclusions commends Australian society on its tolerance. While this strength can be exaggerated, we do compare well with many societies on this issue. However, every strength comes at some cost and tolerance can generate not only a reluctance to condemn other people (generally a good thing), but even an indifference or inability to acknowledge that what is in dispute is a matter of fact, which also has huge personal consequences, when we say yes or no to God's existence.
Most Australians are not atheists, who deny God's existence. Many more are agnostics, people who are not sure about God or not interested. Some have a great reverence for the mighty forces of nature. This is not Christian Faith either, because the one true God is transcendent and personal, i.e., a Mystery, a Spirit far above the beauties and imperfections of nature, who personally calls us into a personal relationship (and makes particular demands).
Faith represents the central religious problem for the Western world today.
Christ Our Redeemer
Apart from the truths about the existence of God, nothing is as basic as the teachings about the nature and person of Jesus Christ, Son of Mary and Son of God, who redeemed and saved us.
The Statement of Conclusions acknowledged that there is “something of crisis” throughout the world on Christology and that we have not entirely escaped this in Australia. In the early '90s Cardinal O'Connor of New York told me that he was sending a young priest for doctoral studies in Christology, because this was fated to become a crucial issue. The cardinal was right.
So much follows from the nature and status of Christ. If Christ is merely another man, perhaps the holiest and wisest in all history, then his teaching and activity might be important but humans would have every right to try to improve on his teaching.
However, if Christ is truly divine, the Second Person of the eternal Trinity, who took on a human nature from his mother Mary, then his teachings have a unique authority. We cannot improve on them, although we must also try to understand them more deeply and spell out their consequences. It is not incongruous to claim that the Son of God rose from the dead and that through his life, death and resurrection he redeemed us, so that our sins can be forgiven and eternal life be our prize.
The doctrines of the Trinity, especially on the Son and the Spirit, were defined in the fourth and fifth centuries after immense upheavals doctrinally and even politically.
Those doctrines are rooted in Scripture, solemnly defined as adequate indications of the nature of the Godhead and therefore essential to Christian theology.
One cannot and must not eliminate the notions of Father and Son in official prayers. The three persons of the Trinity are not an ancient language game, but offer us the best insight into God's nature available to us; the fruit of special revelation and not just our powers of reasoning.
Neither do we merely worship the mighty, unpredictable and sometimes cruel forces of nature. God is much more than that, while the key point, the cornerstone and axis of all creation is humanity. Only humans are made in God's image. The Second Person of the Trinity became a man, not an angel or a cabbage.
These truths are spelled out clearly in the Creeds, and the possibilities of innocent misunderstandings are legion when we speak of God. This is why home-written creeds are forbidden at Mass, even for home or school Masses.
Conclusion
It is in this context, the context of a wide-spread crisis of faith in our society as a whole, and the related crisis of Christology among the community of believers, that these two very important documents should be read and understood. The Pope's letter and the Statement of Conclusions provide us with a guide as to how we should understand our situation in Australia. It is a diagnosis, which I believe is basically accurate. Together we have to discern how we answer these important challenges.
These documents will reward re-reading, and I commend them to your prayerful reflection and discussion.
Archbishop George Pell is the ordinary of Melbourne, Australia
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Archbishop George Pell ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: How the Spirit Used Shoes to Get to Africa DATE: 06/13/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 13-19, 1999 ----- BODY:It would be hard to list all the reasons why it's better to be a believer than a nonbeliever. One reason, perhaps not always fully appreciated, is that it is more fun. Some of us find endless amusement, and edification, in trying to discern the movement of the Holy Spirit in our lives and the lives of others.
What is just coincidence, what is wishful thinking, what are true signs of the presence and working of the Spirit?
My students frequently tell me that they just don't know what God wants of them. This is a completely understandable perplexity in those facing transitions such as moving on from university to whatever is next in their lives. I tell them that as much as we would like it, God doesn't put notes in our mailboxes giving us marching orders. Yet, most of us know what we should be doing today and tomorrow and maybe for some time ahead, and that should be enough. File this application, pay these bills, write this paper, mow the lawn, make this phone call. And then in a few days it is clear what we are supposed to do next. And life goes on.
Yet sometimes God sends us such obvious signs that one would think they could make believers of nonbelievers. Often I refer to these events as “Notes Signed by the Holy Spirit.” A friend of mine recently experienced a rather spectacular example.
Ruth goes the extra mile for anyone and the extra 500 miles for her friends. One of her friends is Father Lancelot McGrath who has won the hearts and devotion of many. Father Lancelot McGrath has the strength of an ox, as Homer would say, but bad knees. There is one particular kind of shoe that gives him some relief.
So, living now in Padua, Italy, he asks the ever-ready-to-help Ruth to buy him a new pair of these knee-saving shoes. (Or soul-saving soles!)
Several difficulties attend this task, one being that the particular style needed is no longer manufactured. Well, for most of us that might seem an insuperable problem, but not for the aptly named Ruth. No, Ruth surfs the Internet and makes a bushel of phone calls and eventually finds some cooperative chap who is willing to go into the bowels of a warehouse and find the last pair in stock.
The next challenge is that the Italian post will not transport shoes made in other countries. (Talk about a powerful lobby!) So Ruth must find a courier to get the shoes to Padua. Weeks go by, until one day, when emerging from a very early morning Mass at St. Luke's in Irving, Texas, Ruth sees a dapper gentleman with attaché case standing at the curbside. Since there are no signs of life anywhere around, Ruth asks if she might assist him. He says he is waiting for a cab.
Hearing a slight accent, Ruth asks him where he is from; “Italy,” he says. She asks where in Italy. “Padua.” “Padua! Would you happen to know a Father Lancelot McGrath?” “Why, yes. He is a very good friend of mine.”
That should be enough to convince us that God “numbers all the hairs of our head” (Luke 12:7), but there's more. The Italian visitor was particularly pleased that this encounter took place at St. Luke's because as a physician, an urolo-gist, he has a particular devotion to St. Luke, patron saint of physicians, and because St. Luke's body is interred in the cathedral at Padua.
Ruth has a special devotion to urologists because one saved her husband from a life-threatening tumor not so long ago.
Ruth, of course, invited her new friend to dinner, along with a couple of her old friends, who are never foolish enough to decline any invitation to her table no matter how last-minute. One of the guests at the dinner was Lupita Assad, a nurse who directs medical missions.
Currently she is planning a mission to Africa and hopes to locate some doctors from Italy to participate. Well, yes, the doctor from Padua was ready to help find willing physicians. Enlisting his help was made all the easier by the fact that Lupita was going to be in Padua only one week from this very day — to visit Father Lancelot, the originator of the medical missions project! Would she stay with the doctor and his wife?
So bad knees led to a need for shoes, whose delivery was facilitated by a meeting outside of St. Luke's, a meeting that led to medical care for ailing folks in Africa.
Hmm. What would a nonbeliever make of such an incident? What would a determinist or a materialist make of it? What happened here was not just a “note” but a Neon Sign, the better to be seen, one supposes, by those mostly groping in the dark — meaning all of us. Can anything but divine intervention explain what happened?
While God only rarely knocks people off their horses or parts the clouds and speaks to us, we should not fail to be attentive to his signs — and to allow ourselves to be dazzled and delighted by them.
Janet Smith is professor of philosophy at the University of Dallas.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Janet Smith ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Two Who Broke Free DATE: 06/13/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 13-19, 1999 ----- BODY:Gene McConnell and a 28-year-old woman who asked to be called “Cheri” were sexually molested as children by people engrossed in pornography.
At age 12, McConnell was abused in a shed containing more than 300 pornographic magazines. Cheri's father made her watch sex videos and then did “some terrible things to me,” so that she can recall “pleading” with God to make it stop. It stopped at about age 14.
Pornography took its toll: McConnell, now with the National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families, became so obsessed with pornography that it almost destroyed his life. Cheri, a Catholic, dropped out of college to become a stripper for four years until she found herself emotionally numb after having aborted a child. Both found grace when a Christian reached out to them.
McConnell's experience with pornography “was like a drug injected into my veins” that induced him to molest a girl. “I was a pastor's kid. I knew it was wrong. I'd repent and cry that I'd never do it again, but I'd go back to it.”
He eventually married and became an assistant pastor. He avoided pornography until stress in his marriage drove him back. He returned to pornography: “I had an intense need to be loved, to be wanted. I was drawn to pornography because the women won't reject you. … I needed more graphic, more explicit, more disgusting stuff to get the same high.” He said he began visiting strip clubs and massage parlors.
Cheri said strip clubs cater to emotional neediness by “establishing a false sense of intimacy” between strippers and patrons. “You give a piece of yourself to each person, until there's nothing left of you.”
McConnell's addiction damaged his marriage, and his wife suffered from bulimia and anorexia and then attempted suicide. He hit bottom after his arrest for attempted rape. He had forced a woman into her car to attack her but was so repulsed by himself that he let her go. He lost his job, and church members shunned him outside of services.
His turnaround came 17 years ago when he poured out his heart to a pastor friend. “He just hugged me and began to weep and say, ‘I'm so sorry,’ and told me how much God the Father loved me. I never experienced love before in my life.”
Cheri said she got drunk before she stripped the first time and continued to drink “to do what I was doing. … You'd have to try to turn off your emotions or you'd go insane. Every night you go in there to face mental, psychological and physical abuse.”
Her turnabout came when she became emotionally numb after her abortion: “I'd just become the most selfish person. I was just disgusted with myself. I could kill my child so I could keep working.”
A member of a citizens group in Memphis, Tenn., offered her a way out. The group would support her financially if she was willing to “make something of herself.”
“She was a genuine person who was reaching out to me in love,” said Cheri, who is now working and studying to become a nurse.
—Eric Retzlaff
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Eric Retzlaff ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Slowing the U.N. Population Juggernaut DATE: 06/13/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 13-19, 1999 ----- BODY:The Senate is expected to vote before June 20 on Resolution 100. The resolution would instruct U.S. delegates to the United Nations to insist on the following eight points in U.N. family planning programs. A U.N. conference on population is scheduled to be held in New York from June 30 to July 2.
Below are excerpts from Senate Resolution 100.
1 No “assistance or benefit to any country should be conditioned upon or linked to that country's adoption or failure to adopt population programs,” and each country must be free to implement U.N. plans “consistent with its own national laws and development priorities, with full respect for the various religious and ethical values and cultural backgrounds of its people” and with basic human rights.
2 “Family planning service providers or referral agents should not implement or be subject to quotas, or other numerical targets, of total number of births, number of family planning acceptors, or a particular method of family planning.”
3 “No family planning project should include payment of incentives, bribes, gratuities, or financial reward to any person in exchange for becoming a family planning acceptor or to program personnel for achieving a numerical target or quota.”
4 “No project should deny any right or benefit, including the right of access to participate in any program of general welfare or the right of access to health care, as a consequence of any person's decision not to accept family planning services.”
5 “Every family planning project should ensure that experimental contraceptive drugs and devices and medical procedures are provided only in the context of a scientific study in which participants are advised of potential risks and benefits.”
6 “The United States should reaffirm the principles described in paragraphs (1) through (6) in the special session of the United Nations General Assembly to be held between June 30 and July 2, and in all preparatory meetings for the special session.
7–8 “The United States should support vigorously with its voice and vote the principle that meetings under the auspices of the United Nations Economic and Social Council, including all meetings relating to the Operational Review and Appraisal of the Implementation of the Program of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development, be open to the public and should oppose vigorously with its voice and vote attempts by the United Nations or any member country to exclude from meetings legitimate nongovernment organizations and private citizens.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: From Transylvania to Youngstown DATE: 06/13/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 13-19, 1999 ----- BODY:In 1964, the Franciscan Friars of Transylvania, displaced by the communist regime of Hungary, inaugurated the Shrine of Our Lady Comforter of the Afflicted in Youngstown, Ohio.
At first, mostly Hungarian immigrants flocked to it. But soon, pilgrims from all ethnic backgrounds embraced this shrine, and they continue to do so today.
The shrine gave the friars an opportunity to establish, in their new country, the devotion to the Madonna of Csiksomlyo (chi-CHOme-oh) that they carried in their hearts when forced to flee their native land. (Transylvania itself has been the focus of border quarrels over the centuries; it is now part of Romania.)
Three strong reminders of the shrine's Hungarian heritage set the spiritual tone here. One of them is the oversize monument honoring St. Stephen of Hungary, that country's first king and its first monarch to be canonized.
Born in 925, he was crowned king by a papal emissary in 1001. After he died on the feast of the Assumption in 1038, miracles were reported at his tomb.
This granite statue and a coat of arms showing Stephen's crown surmounted by a bent cross were the main features in the Hungarian pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Because of the outbreak of World War II, they stayed in this country and were eventually acquired by a Protestant millionaire. Decades later, when he heard the Transylvanian friars were building this shrine to the Madonna of Csiksomlyo, he donated both pieces to them. The coat of arms now decorates the shrine's chapel.
Across from the statue of St. Stephen, another monument honors the Freedom Fighters of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
There, a wide path begins its half-mile semicircle through woods and lawns of Meditation Park, past the Way of the Cross, the Cathedral in the Pines, and some wayside shrines.
These “Iron Curtain Stations of the Cross,” unique in the United States, were erected when Hungary was fully under the yoke of communism.
Topped by redwood crosses, all bear two scenes carved in rose granite. One scene presents Christ's passion and crucifixion; the other portrays something similar from the Hungarian people's struggle — at the same time evoking the sufferings of all innocent people persecuted for their faith.
The Station of the Condemned, for example, pairs Jesus being sentenced and Cardinal Mindszenty being judged.
“The Weight of Communism on the People” (third station) compares Jesus' fall and the people bent under communist oppression. The sixth station depicts Veronica, and a woman holding and shielding her children.
The 12th is the “Station of Crime and Punishment.” Each station becomes a reminder of the Church's modern-day participation in Christ's passion and death.
Along the path's arc, midway through the stations, is the Cathedral in the Pines, which can accommodate well over 1,000 for outdoor Mass. A statue of Our Lady of Fatima stands above the granite altar.
The bishop of Fatima had four copies made of the original in his cathedral and sent them in each direction. This is the one he sent westward, coming here himself to bless and dedicate it.
Near this outdoor altar is the Shrine Monument of the Unborn, donated by the Knights of Columbus in 1996.
The monument's statue of a mother holding her child is intended to aid the spiritual healing of those devastated by abortions.
The woodsy far end of the shrine property adjoins Youngstown's Mill Creek Park, the third largest municipal park in the country.
In the shrine chapel itself, the focal point above the central tabernacle is the statue of Our Lady Comforter of the Afflicted. Mary, crowned, holds a crowned child Jesus.
They are surrounded by radiant glory. An Italian artist sculpted this replica of the Madonna of Csiksomlyo based on descriptions given by the exiled friars.
Within the Mercy Chapel is a large image of Divine Mercy — an important Friday devotion here — and the pilgrim statue of the Blessed Virgin of Fatima. When he visited, the bishop of Fatima also enshrined this traveling statue, which was donated by the Servites of Fatima.
Although the Shrine of Our Lady Comforter of the Afflicted now draws visitors of all nationalities to honor Mary here, there are still two organized Hungarian pilgrimages each year to the shrine the friars call “Mary's Little Portion of Ohio.”
Joseph Pronechen writes from Trumbull, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: Shrine of Our Lady Comforter of the Afflicted ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Pronechen ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: How the Madonna Of Csiksomlyo Came to Youngstown DATE: 06/13/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 13-19, 1999 ----- BODY:When the communists took over Hungary after World War II, they tried to end all practice of religion. Immediately in Transylvania they closed the Shrine of the Madonna of Csiksomlyo and expelled the Hungarian Franciscans, its guardians, from the country. They mistakenly thought the devotion ended there.
From the 14th century that shrine had been a favorite destination, but especially beginning in 1567, a time when its fortress church stood in a dangerous spot in the Carpathian Mountains near the then Romanian border (Transylvania, a contested borderland, is currently part of Romania). The Turkish empire was to the south, the Tartars to the east.
The Hungarians were the only Catholics at this strategic crossroads of culture and religion, and were soon attacked in the Reformation War. Besieged in the shrine for three months, the Catholics decided on the eve of Pentecost to give up the next day. Execution was certain.
But overnight, the attacking armies decided victory was impossible. By sunrise, all troops had vanished. It was called a miracle and attributed to Mary's intervention. Her victory was celebrated at every succeeding Pentecost.
When the communists closed the shrine in this century, the celebration was forbidden and Mary's beloved miraculous statue was sealed away. The friars had to leave empty-handed. But their suppression in Hungary spread their unique devotion to Western shores. In 1957, shortly after these Franciscans arrived in America, Bishop Emmett Walsh invited them to settle in the Diocese of Youngstown, Ohio. After several years they accomplished their goal to build a shrine to the Madonna of Csiksomlyo in this country.
Their vision materialized in the Belle Vista section of Youngstown once they obtained an old mansion and 37 acres. The cornerstone for the chapel of their shrine was laid in 1963 on the feast of the Birth of the Blessed Mother. A year later, the shrine was dedicated on the feast of St. Francis with its English TITLE: Our Lady Comforter of the Afflicted.
The original shrine in Hungary has also opened again and recently revived its traditional celebration of Pentecost, drawing a half-million pilgrims.
—Joseph Pronechen
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Pronechen ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Can Modern Churches Be Beautiful? DATE: 06/13/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 13-19, 1999 ----- BODY:Two years ago the Pope's vicar general for the Diocese of Rome, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, admitted that Pope John Paul II is often “thoroughly perplexed” by contemporary Catholic church architecture.
“There is little sense of the sacred in the new churches,” the cardinal told an international conference on liturgical arts.
Duncan Stroik, associate professor of architecture at the University of Notre Dame, has long shared the cardinal's sentiments. Stroik, a professional architect, contends that few architects in the latter half of this century have been able to achieve a sense of the sacred in their designs of Catholic churches.
Stroik sees a general revival among the laity of interest in sacred architecture, a topic once thought to be the sole domain of liturgical design consultants and parish finance committees.
“More and more, common Catholics are recognizing that a house dedicated to God should have a sense of the sacred,” said Stroik. “That's something we have not been experiencing with our contemporary churches over the last 30-odd years. Consequently, many people have simply lost their appreciation for the sacred.”
In response, the Indiana architect recently formed the Institute for Sacred Architecture, a nonprofit organization comprised of architects, clergy, educators and others, interested in issues relating to contemporary Catholic architecture.
The institute publishes a quarterly journal, Sacred Architecture, and is planning conferences, exhibitions and pilgrimages.
Several members of the institute are also preparing a practical manual that will provide a statement of principles on sacred church architecture. The “catalog” will also provide reflections on these principles as they have been applied historically. The history of Catholic church architecture reveals that its development, until recently, has always been inspired by, and was continuous with, works of the past.
“The trend in contemporary church architecture, however, seems to be a continuous breaking with the past,” Stroik observed.
Misinterpretation
The manner in which many church renovations have been approached and carried out, is a volatile subject.
These renovations have been largely overseen by a new Church professional known as the “liturgical design consultant.” The Association of Consultants for Liturgical Space, the primary sanctioning body for the field, has certified only 103 liturgical design consultants in the United States. One such consultant is Franciscan Sister Sandra Schweitzer.
The basic necessity Sister Schweitzer sees is “a space that speaks of the hospitality of Jesus.” Contemporary church buildings, she believes, must be, above all, “welcoming, from the front doors to the seating.”
The 56-year-old Franciscan served as the design consultant on the renovation of Sts. Peter and Paul Cathedral in Indianapolis a few years ago. “With that project, we replaced the heavy, thick metal doors with interior glass doors that say, ‘You're always welcome in here.’”
The traditional pews with kneelers were replaced by chairs. “That allows for flexibility,” she explained.
The variety of liturgies — weddings, funerals, baptisms — must be honored, she said. “A traditional church arrangement cannot do this.” Traditional churches, she contended, are neither hospitable nor flexible.
Stroik strongly disagreed.
“The supposedly flexible arrangements which are now in vogue encourage the priest to be viewed as an entertainer,” he said. “There is no evidence that shows that the traditional cruciform church plan is unable to accommodate the rituals of the Church. It has done so for the past 1,500 years.”
Stroik said the new “flexible arrangements” actually fight against the seriousness of various rites and rituals of the Church.
Father Giles Dimock, professor of liturgy and sacramental theology at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C., is also concerned with these arrangements.
He said he believes they reflect the “minimalist approach taken by the modernist designers of the day.” Strict adherence to this minimalist approach, he added, results in a “bareness” that places the focus and emphasis of the liturgy on the assembly, rather than worship and the transcendental.
Father Dimock's assessment seems to be confirmed by the Indianapolis cathedral project. Although most of its statues and the Stations of the Cross were removed and sold to a Michigan antique store as part of the renovation project, Sister Schweitzer still maintains that there is room for the traditional objects of devotion, but “placement is key.”
“We don't want anyone to be confused between what happens on the altar and devotion to St. Joseph,” she explained.
Sister Schweitzer justifies her design decisions by appealing to “the principles of Vatican II and the American bishops' document Environment and Art in Catholic Worship” which, she said, provides a blueprint for “hospitable and flexible sacred spaces.”
Environment and Art was, in fact, not voted on by all American bishops. It was issued by a committee as a commentary and not a teaching document; as such, it carries no authority.
The ‘Classical’ Approach
Notre Dame professor Thomas Gordon Smith is also encouraged by what he calls the “strong grass-roots” movement to design churches based on traditional precedents.
Notre Dame's architecture students, who are required to design a Catholic church as a part of their five-year professional program, have been embarking on such projects for the past 10 years. Ten years ago, Smith was hired to renovate the university's architecture program.
Smith chose to revert to a classical curriculum. Notre Dame at that time became the lone architecture program in the country committed to the principles of classicism rather than those of the prevailing modernist, p ostmodernist and deconstruction methods, which either alienate or mock traditional form and function through their merely experimental approaches.
Notre Dame students are exposed to the ancient orders of Greece and Rome, the churches of the Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance, the sturdy buildings of the 19th-century American neo-classical movement and the architecture of the 20th-century beaux-arts, all of which are based on the principles of classicism.
Smith, who is currently designing Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary in Denton, Neb., said there is an inherent connection “between classical architecture and the structures of the Catholic faith.” With both, he asserted, there is a great deal to learn from the past and to apply to the present. The seminary, which will be the new home for North American seminarians of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, is based on an Italian-Romanesque model.
“The results of the new program have been remarkable,” Smith said. It seems to have encouraged not a few young architects to specialize in that area. Much in the same way the Notre Dame program is promoting the classical approach, the new institute hopes to expand the role of tradition and classical principles through its work.
Stroik and Smith seem to have an advocate in Richard Proulx, the celebrated Chicago composer and musician. Proulx welcomes a return to the use of classical principles in church architecture.
“A return to classical models,” he noted, “will mean a return to classical acoustical ambiance.”
Proulx believes that American designers have “drummed out” proper acoustics in the “secularized” churches of the 20th century. Contemporary materials such as carpet and ceiling tile create “acoustical nightmares” for choirs and musicians, he noted.
“These materials deaden the sound and fight against what we say we want — active participation,” he noted. “Without proper acoustics, the individual hears only himself struggling to sing along, or struggling to pray out loud. The living room ambiance that is created prevents each person from hearing the assembly as a unified whole.”
Placement of the choir in church architecture is also important, Proulx said. Using the classical model, which he advocates, the organ and choir will both be located on an axis, usually in the rear gallery of the building. “It is very reinforcing for the organ and the well-trained voices of the choir to lead from above and behind,” he said.
What the Church Says
The Institute for Sacred Architecture would also like to revisit the documents pertinent to architecture from the Second Vatican Council and post-conciliar years, with an eye toward examining more carefully the directives set forth.
When Stroik works with a parish embarking on the design of a new church, he urges both clergy and parishioners to review Vatican documents such as Sacrosanctum Concilium and Opera Artis to find out more about the “singular witness to reverence toward God that is expressed in architectural monuments — sermons in stone.”
Sacrosanctum Concilium, the council's document on sacred liturgy, for instance, makes it clear that while “the Church has not adopted any particular style of art as her own,” she has inherited “a treasury of art which must be preserved with every care” (No. 123).
Said Father Dimock, “Catholics don't naturally want to worship in an empty auditorium.”
Michael S. Rose writes from Cincinnati.
----- EXCERPT: A classical rebel proves they can ----- EXTENDED BODY: Michael S. Rose ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Bishops Drafting Guidelines on Churches DATE: 06/13/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 13-19, 1999 ----- BODY:In November meetings, the U.S. bishops will decide the final form of a new document giving standards for Church buildings, according to Father James Moroney, director of the bishops' Committee on Liturgy.
Many modern churches have been designed to fit standards mentioned in a commentary published by the committee in 1978, Environment and Art in Catholic Worship, asserted architect Duncan Stroik. He said that work includes controversial design solutions such as replacing pews with chairs, locating the tabernacle in a side chapel, and using video projection screens in the sanctuary.
Stroik said the document is used as a guide for many renovations and new church building projects simply due to a lack of any alternative. “It has become a veritable bible,” he said.
But Environment and Art, said Father Moroney, “is not particular law for the U.S. dioceses, but rather a commentary provided by the Committee for the Liturgy.”
Stroik said that the document “is based more on the principles of modernist architecture than on Catholic teaching or the Church's patrimony of sacred architecture.”
The Committee on Liturgy is in the process of drafting the new document which will address design issues for renovations and new church buildings. Father Moroney told the Register that the new document is not a “revision” of Environment and Art but “a completely new document.”
The new document, which has been in the works now for two years and is not yet titled, is slated to be considered by the liturgy committee this month. It will be presented to the full body of bishops in November, and finally voted on in June 2000.
Father Moroney clarified that this new document, unlike Environment and Art, will be issued as a statement from the entire body of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, and therefore will carry the authority of a conference document.
“In church architecture, as in so many aspects of the liturgical reform today,” commented Father Moroney, “it is most important to keep in mind a balanced dialogue. What Duncan Stroik and his colleagues at Notre Dame have been doing over the past few years has been an important part of the dialogue necessary to continuing the improvement of our perspectives on sacred art and architecture.”
—Michael S. Rose
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Michael S. Rose ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Theologians Have Always Needed Mandates to Teach DATE: 06/13/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 13-19, 1999 ----- BODY:To the average American, a “mandate” is that elusive yet often-claimed prize sought by most elected officials, especially presidents.
Franklin Roosevelt held his re-election to be a mandate for the New Deal. Richard Nixon claimed a mandate from the “silent majority” that supported his policies. And President Clinton once argued that the voters had given him a mandate to reform health care.
American Catholics can then be forgiven for wondering just what the “mandate” has to do with the struggle to maintain the Catholic identity of the more than 230 U.S. Catholic colleges and universities.
In his 1990 apostolic constitution on Catholic higher education, Ex Corde Ecclesiae, Pope John Paul II directed that Catholic professors of theology teaching in Church-related institutions are to be “aware that they fulfill a mandate received from the Church” (“General Norms,” Article 4, No. 3).
The document cites a specific point of canon law, Canon 812, which holds that “those who teach theological disciplines subjects in any institute of higher studies must have a mandate from the competent ecclesiastical authority,” understood to be the local bishop.
Earlier attempts by the American bishops to implement Ex Corde Ecclesiae have been rejected by the Vatican primarily because the proposed norms for applying the document in the American context have failed to lay out exactly how canon 812 will be applied in this country.
Indeed, many believe it should not be applied at all, while others hold that it is essential to maintaining the Catholic identity that these institutions claim as their own. The ensuing argument is the reason it has taken so long to implement Ex Corde Ecclesiae in the United States.
A current draft of norms provides for the full implementation of the mandate and establishes a bare-bones procedure for its granting. The bishops will discuss the draft and examine possible revisions at their November meeting in Washington.
Church History
While some argue that the whole notion of a Church mandate to teach is a novelty, coming into existence with the 1983 Code of Canon Law, the Church has been involved in the approval of teachers from the very beginning of its university system.
In fact, the very name Ex Corde Ecclesiae — “From the Heart of the Church” — is an apt one because the modern university is the direct result of the Church's intervention and support of educational initiatives beginning more than a thousand years ago.
The Cathedral School of Paris, an institution under the direct sponsorship of the bishop, served as the foundation for the University of Paris, which became the model for virtually all universities ever since. As universities grew up in Europe, they routinely sought papal charters similar to those first accorded to the University of Paris.
At the great medieval universities, such as Paris and Bologna, only those who had received the licentia, or license, from the chancellor could teach. The license was granted after a public demonstration of knowledge, which began with recitation of the Creed. The office of chancellor was not a high academic or honorary post within the university as it is frequently today. He was almost always a cleric, and served as the bishop's designated representative and functioned as a liaison between the bishop and the university.
By the 14th century, the requirement of the chancellor's license — an ecclesiastical permission to teach — was universal in Christendom, and the chancellors became representatives of the papacy. It was recognized by the universal Church, and not merely by a local secular or private body.
The license built confidence in teaching and created a pool of teachers who could be depended upon by the Catholic faithful. Some 800 years later, these same licenses are still awarded by pontifical universities and faculties.
The mandate as stipulated by Canon 812, a modern form of the license, would continue this time-honored and proven means of Church certification for theology teachers.
Outside Approval?
In rejecting the concept of “outside” approval from the Church, critics of Ex Corde Ecclesiae hold that professors have a right to teach and that the mandate violates that right.
The Code of Canon Law recognizes the right to teach as belonging exclusively to parents and to the Church itself (Canons 794–795). The bishops of the Church are entrusted with the duty of teaching and the equally important duty of ensuring that the faithful receive a Catholic education.
No one else can claim a “right” to teach, though all of the baptized can claim the right to a “Christian education” (Canon 217). One of the ways that bishops fulfill their duty to provide a Catholic education for those entrusted to their care is to commission or approve religion or theology teachers at the various levels of instruction.
Thus, the code provides for episcopal involvement in the approval of catechists, primary and secondary religious education teachers, and college theology professors. The involvement of the bishop is tailored to the specific nature of the level of instruction. A mandate to teach university-level theology is distinct from the approval of an elementary school religion teacher.
Bishop as Teacher
The bishop, and not the educational institution itself, is rightfully the one to grant the mandate.
The bishop alone has been ordained to exercise the role of Christ the Teacher (in addition to the roles of Christ the King and Christ the Priest). Anyone who wishes to teach the faith in a particular diocese must do so in union with the local bishop, who is teacher of the flock.
The mandate ensures unity in teaching; it establishes a relationship between the bishop and the professor, making him part of the local Church's educational mission.
Under the mandate, the professor teaches not in the bishop's name, or even in the name of the Church, but in his own name. The Christian faithful can be assured that the professor has been examined and found capable of teaching Catholic theology.
The mandate cannot ensure that the professor will always teach the faith of the Church. But it does establish a well-founded expectation that the teacher can and will strive to do so. The professor who does depart from the Church's faith destroys this expectation and could loose his mandate to teach.
But such an event would be unlikely if there exists a proper examination prior to the mandate and if the institution is supportive of the relationship it creates.
And while the mandate cannot in itself salvage the Catholic identity of a college or university, it is a first and a good step in that direction.
As in history, so today, the mandate helps to create a pool of Catholic teachers in higher education from whom one can expect to receive an education in the faith of the Church.
Father Kevin M. Quirk earned his doctorate of canon law at the Gregorian University, Rome, where his dissertation was on the mandate to teach.
He serves as judicial vicar for the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Kevin M. Quirk ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Education Notebook DATE: 06/13/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 13-19, 1999 ----- BODY:Loyola President's New Take on
Father Piderit wrote that he has “modified [his] position” since endorsing the first implementation plan offered by the American bishops for Ex Corde Ecclesiae, a plan that was rejected by the Vatican in 1998. The bishops “had left out at least one essential ingredient,” relegating to a footnote Canon 812 of Canon Law, which states that anyone teaching Catholic theology in a Catholic institution is required to have a mandate from a “competent ecclesiastical authority.”
The bishops have since formed a task force under the leadership of Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua of Philadelphia that will draw up a new implementation plan that incorporates Canon 812. While “to date the presidents [of Catholic colleges and universities] have responded negatively to the Bevilacqua proposal,” said Father Piderit, because they believe it will undermine the autonomy of their institutions.
However, wrote the Jesuit, “contrary to many reports in the media, the bishops are not attempting to control the university via the mandate.”
Father Piderit praised the Bevilacqua proposal — still in draft form — for “avoiding entanglement of the bishops in the internal affairs of Catholic universities while still implementing the mandate. It does this by defining the mandate as a relationship between the local bishop and the individual Catholic theologian; it addresses the Catholic theology at the heart of the Catholic university without setting up a formal relationship with the university itself.”
He added that the mandate's “indirect impact on the Catholic university may be substantial,” by prompting doctoral candidates, for example, “to prepare more carefully to teach Catholic theology from the perspective of the Church.”
The Blood of the High School Martyrs
While the shootings have struck a chord with Christians everywhere, Van Biema focused on the particular impact it has had on evangelical Protestant teens in a two-page spread that was included in a special report on “Troubled kids.” One martyred student, Cassie Bernall, has become the focus of interest and attention from a new generation of evangelical teenagers.
“The enthusiasm caps a decade of extraordinary growth for Christian youth groups in middle and high schools,” said Van Biema, who cited a 1990 Supreme Court decision that allows prayer clubs to meet on public school property as a contributing factor.
However, unlike their evangelical parents, who often defined themselves as outsides, today's campus Christians, “are willing to engage the culture on its terms. They understand what's going on and speak the language,” Barnard College religion professor Randall Balmer told Time.
Van Biema noted that martyrdom is not prominent in Protestant theology but “the more emotional evangelical variety honors it, sometimes in connection with murdered missionaries or persecuted Christians … and sometimes to lend strength in the face of indignities suffered at the hands of American secularism.” Cassie, he reported, “has been compared to the early female saints, Perpetua and Felicity.”
A Lack of ‘Grown Up Wisdom’
Bronner sums up the opinion of the majority of experts he interviewed who say that “youthful behavior has deteriorated markedly,” and “there are fewer adults around to influence youngsters. As a result, violent television and video images, instead of older friends or relatives, have become role models.”
Dr. William Damon of Stanford University Center on Adolescence told Bronner that “there has never in the history of the civilized world been a cohort of kids that is so little affected by adult guidance and so attuned to a peer world.
“We have removed grown-up wisdom and allowed them to drift into a self-constructed, highly relativistic world of friendship and peers.”
Bronner said Damon “was stunned when he went to Littleton, Colo., last month to find parents saying they felt they had no business learning what their children were doing on the Internet.”
Dr. Damon said the fact that modern adults have a less than black-and-white view of morality and human behavior, that they have perhaps a more nuanced perspective, seems to be blocking their ability to give clear-cut guidance and make strict rules for their children.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Life Notes DATE: 06/13/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 13-19, 1999 ----- BODY:New Center Serves Expectant Mothers
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE, May 28-A Salt Lake group opposed to abortion plans to open an office in the Park City area. Park City and surrounding Summit County were chosen because of the area's relatively high numbers of abortions, reported The Salt Lake Tribune.
The branch's activities will include counseling and some material support for women who decide against abortion, said the report.
“Our goal is to provide assistance to women, and couples, really, that have unexpected pregnancies and don't know where to turn,” said Dean Velasco Jr., president of the Pregnancy Resources Centers, according to the report.
He added that he doesn't want to be labeled “anti-abortion.”
“It's a term we're not too fond of. While we don't approve of abortion, it's not our focus. … We're not involved in political lobbying or demonstrations. We're not a militant group,” he said.
The group believes in the sanctity of human life, said the paper, adding that they said they would counsel any woman considering abortion to “make sure they're making a decision with all facts and with open eyes … we want these people to avoid making any rash decision they could regret for the rest of their life.”
An Unborn Child Is Not A Human Being, Rules Court
ASSOCIATED PRESS, May 27-A state appeals court ruled May 26 that a woman accused of trying to drink her unborn child to death could not be charged with attempted murder because a fetus is not a human being, reported the Associated Press.
The appeals court ruled in favor of Deborah Zimmerman, whose daughter was born with a blood-alcohol twice the level considered intoxicated under Wisconsin law, said AP.
“The term ‘human being’ was not intended to refer to an unborn child and Deborah's prenatal conduct does not constitute attempted first-degree intentional homicide and first-degree reckless injury,” said the court.
The report said that Zimmerman allegedly told a nurse, “I'm just going to go home and keep drinking and drink myself to death and I'm going to kill this thing because I don't want it anyway.”
Authorities argued that Zimmerman should be charged with attempted murder based on the state's ‘born alive’ rule” which states that “a person can be charged with murder if he or she harms a pregnant woman and her fetus is born alive and then dies,” reported the paper.
“Prosecutors argued that the law should be extended to attempted murder if a fetus is born with injuries but survives,” said the report. Zimmerman's baby — who is now 3 years old and with foster parents — is healthy.
Barbara Lyons, executive director of Wisconsin Right to Life, was reported saying that the appeals court is “behind the times” because Wisconsin has passed laws to protect fetuses.
Yeltsin Move Will End Russian Death Penalty
REUTERS, June 1-Russian President Boris Yeltsin plans to commute all remaining death sentences and empty death row, which in effect will eliminate capital punishment, reported Reuters.
The report said that Robert Tsivilev, head of the presidential Pardons Commission, “expected the president to sign four decrees this week which would commute all Russia's remaining death sentences to lengthy prison terms.
“In practice, Russia will join those countries that do not have the death penalty. I think this is a big step in the direction of democracy and civilization for our country.”
Earlier in the year, Yeltsin commuted the sentences of 400 of the 716 prisoners on death row and the decrees commuting the remaining prisoners were already written and awaiting the president's signature, said the report.
In 1996 Yeltsin placed a moratorium on the death penalty “as part of Russia's bid to join the Council of Europe, which forbids member states to execute prisoners in peace time,” said the report.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joshuamercer ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: The Bishops' Point Man in Nebraska DATE: 06/13/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 13-19, 1999 ----- BODY:Gov. Mike Johanns' recent veto of a moratorium on the death penalty was another chapter in the ongoing debate over capital punishment in the United States.
The death penalty has become increasingly under scrutiny since Pope John Paul II asked for an end to executions as part of the jubilee year 2000. Jay Dunlap of Register Radio News spoke to Jim Cunningham, executive director of the Nebraska Catholic Conference, about the governor's veto.
Jay Dunlap: How could a state like Nebraska with a reputation for being “conservative” end up taking the lead to stop executions, at least for a while?
Jim Cunningham: The bill itself, that was advanced to the legislative floor from the judiciary committee, was not about repealing the death penalty. It actually had two parts to it. The first part was to instruct the Nebraska State Crime Commission to undertake a thorough review and analysis of all the criminal homicide cases since our current death penalty law went into effect in 1973, [and] to study those cases from the perspective of the facts, such things as race, gender, religious preference and economic status of the defendant and of the victim, the types of charges filed, the sentences given out as a result of the judicial proceedings.
The second part was that there would be no executions carried out during a two-year period of the study.
It did not propose to interfere with any of the judicial proceedings already under way. It did not prohibit the filing of charges against any person suspected of first-degree murder.
It didn't affect the judicial process at all, except for telling the judiciary that no execution could be scheduled during that particular period, so that the study could [look] at the fairness of how the death penalty is applied in Nebraska.
From that perspective there were those, most notably the chairman of the judiciary committee, who has made it clear that he does feel the death penalty is appropriate in certain circumstances, but was interested in the issue of fairness and justice and proportionality of sentencing. He was a very strong advocate for this particular proposal and joined forces with one legislator who, year in and year out, has been the most vigorous advocate for seeking to have Nebraska repeal the death penalty.
Those two strong … influential senators, getting together on this particular proposal, was very significant.
The other thing that you can't overlook of course is that we are unique in our legislative process. … We have only one house and we are nonpartisan in our organization. We have 49 legislators who are very independent in their approach to legislation. The process is such that if a committee is strongly behind a particular bill and there are strong forces in support of it, that type of legislation stands a pretty good chance of passing.
You had a combination, I think, of senators who are opposed to Nebraska having capital punishment and some other senators who, while they might not oppose capital punishment, were struck by the nature of the proposal in terms of analyzing and studying the types of criminal homicide convictions and sentences that we've had in Nebraska since 1973.
Certainly that would be very helpful information. I understand that the study will go ahead even though the governor vetoed the moratorium. Is that correct?
That's correct. The underlying legislation, or the exact bill that proposed the two-part approach, that is the moratorium and the study, was passed. It takes 25 votes to pass a bill. This bill passed with 27 votes. And it takes 30 votes to override a governor's veto, so obviously, even at the last stage of action by the Legislature, there were signs that this bill would be in trouble if it was vetoed and in fact, it was.
However, accompanying the bill, there is an appropriations measure. The bill itself was LB 76.
There was the accompanying appropriations measure, LB 76A, which appropriated $160,000 dollars for the upcoming fiscal year, providing funding to the commission on law enforcement and criminal justice to underwrite the costs of the study.
That bill was also vetoed but the , on a vote of 43–0, over-rode that veto, which means that it's a valid appropriation of $160,000 to the commission.
Then the legislature established a very strong legislative record that their intention behind this appropriation is that it would be used for the study that was originally called for in the underlying bill.
And, subsequent to that override by the legislature, the governor did say that he would support the idea of the commission using the Legislature's appropriation for the purpose that the articulated. So, the study will proceed and it will be carried out in the fashion that the legislature wished it to be carried out.
Jay Dunlap is a correspondent with Register Radio News.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jim Cunningham ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: An Insider's Look at the Abortion Industry DATE: 06/13/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 13-19, 1999 ----- BODY:Before she became pro-life, Joan Appleton, a former head nurse at an abortion clinic, assisted in more than 10,000 abortions over a five-year period. Recently, she spoke to Rich Rinaldi of Register Radio News about how deception had led her to assist in the killing of unborn babies.
Rich Rinaldi: Could you tell us about the clinic you worked at?
Joan Appleton: I was head nurse of Commonwealth Woman's Clinic in Falls Church, Va., a suburb of Washington, D.C. We were a full-service abortion clinic. We were owned by two people, an accountant and a physician. I was in charge of all the abortion procedures … of counseling and the recovery room.
I was also in charge of the medical aspects — we did a lot of birth control, counseling … etc. … We were a very busy clinic. The primary income was abortion and we did anywhere from 20 to 30 abortions a day.
You give numbers of about 10,000 babies that you personally assisted in killing.
Over the five-year period, yes.
Women come in disturbed, not able to continue in their pregnancy. Could you speak a little about that?
They [women] came in for a multitude of reasons. They were also from a [wide range] of ages. We saw a great number of minorities. A lot of the women that we saw were young. Again, for economic reasons, they came to have an abortion and … for convenience as well. This is the No. 1 reason for anyone to have an abortion in the United States.
You didn't try to talk them out of it?
Absolutely not. I firmly believed that I was helping to free women — emotionally, psychologically, intellectually.
How did you get involved in this career? You were involved in the anti-war movement first.
I think it was a natural evolvement into the woman's movement, into the feminist movement and then into the abortion issue. We were really convinced that we had to have something that men couldn't take away from us. After losing the equal rights amendment, the logical choice was our reproductive rights. At that time, ultrasound was just coming into use [and] we did not have the window to the womb that we [have] today.
The mind-set among us feminists was not that we were taking a life, it was that we were taking control of our bodies.
As the window opened up more and more [and] medical technology became more advanced, it became clear that this was indeed a human life. This was a child in various stages of development.
At that point a lot of us started to drop out. Those who did not drop out of the field, those who stayed with the pro-choice movement, with the feminist movement and the National Organization for Women, eventually lost their prespective of what they set out to do and what their initial goals were. The pro-choice movement, today, is basically an empty cause. It's certainly empty of femininity and, really, humanity.
What are Planned Parenthood's motives? What keeps them going and causes them to be so relentless in there pursuits?
It's population control but it's also eugenics, creating the perfect society. They want to erase minorities. Erasing the poor, it's a phenomenon of scapegoating. You remember at one time in history, in Germany, they decided that all the social ills of the world would be solved as long as we got rid of the Jews.
Hitler went about dehumanizing the Jews so he could kill them. Margaret Sanger started Planned Parenthood because she firmly believed the world would be a far better place without minorities, without the poor, and she set out dehumanizing them.
Then we talked them into aborting their children and thereby eliminating them. Again, a dehumanization process and scapegoating.
Today, women have decided that the world would be a far better place to live if women had control over their reproductive rights. They feel that if we have legalized abortion, just look at the wonderful things we could solve.
We could solve teen pregnancy; there would be no more child abuse; there would be no more spouse abuse; women would be fulfilling their wants and dreams and desires without the burden of motherhood.
All these fantasies are what we, as feminists, firmly believed when we began. We know now of course, certainly now, that these numbers have not decreased at all. If anything, they have quadrupled.
So it wasn't until after the new technology that you started to see the destruction of human life?
The destruction of human life, yes, but also what was happening was that the women who had an abortion weren't going on and pursuing their wants and their dreams. They were getting pregnant again and, each time they came back to me, they felt worse. They had a low self esteem, certainly lower than it was before the abortion. I came to realize that I was hurting them and that's not what I went into the business to do.
Care for the unborn baby was not part of the picture in your early days?
It wasn't part of the formula. It wasn't part of the thought process that went into this. We could easily deny it because we didn't have the window to the womb that we have today. Now, it's impossible.
The only way someone could stay staunchly pro-choice and kill that child, and stay in the business of killing, is to dehumanize the unborn to a tremendous extent and block out their conscience.
Has it gone beyond their conscience at that point? Is that what we are talking about?
You find more and more clinic employees that are doing drugs and alcohol. They are having emotional problems of their own. You see a lot of that.
You see more and more clinics hiring homosexuals, lesbians primarily, because they cannot or they do not connect with a heterosexual woman in a pregnant state. The burnout is certainly less, and they are very loyal.
Rich Rinaldi is director of Register Radio News.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Rich Rinaldi ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Neb. Won't Halt Death Penalty DATE: 06/13/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 13-19, 1999 ----- BODY:LINCOLN, Neb.-A decision by Republican Gov. Mike Johanns to veto an anti-death penalty bill has sparked a heated debate about what role an elected official's faith should play in their policy decision.
Johanns, a Catholic, vetoed a death penalty moratorium bill May 27 that had passed the state Legislature the week before. The bill called for a halt to executions in Nebraska for two years while a state-sponsored panel could study the fairness of the state's implementation of the death penalty. It was the first anti-death penalty bill to pass the Legislature in two decades. It passed by a vote of 27–21.
Johanns' veto of the bill sparked immediate, and sometimes personal, criticism from some death penalty opponents.
“The governor is a political opportunist and hypocrite,” state Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha told the Register. “He wears his religion on his sleeve when it's politically popular, but turns his back on it at other times.”
Chambers' harsh words for Johanns stem from the fact that the governor is both a Catholic and strongly anti-abortion. To Chambers, an Independent who has led legislative battles to abolish the death penalty since it was reinstated in Nebraska in 1973, Johanns' veto shows disregard for what he sees as the “injustice” of the death penalty. In addition, Chambers called the governor a “hypocrite” for claiming to be “pro-life,” but supportive of the death penalty.
“To be anti-abortion in Nebraska is politically popular, but to be anti-death penalty is not politically popular,” he said. “The governor simply wants to please as many politically active people as possible.”
“My role as governor is to do all that I can to carry out the law for the benefit of the victims and their families”
— Gov. Mike Johanns
In a statement issued to legislators, Johanns defended his decision. “I believe that the two-year moratorium provision contained within the bill is poor public policy,” the governor said. “Second, I believe that the legal issues surrounding enactment of this legislation would, at a minimum, be utilized to advance further unnecessary criminal appeals by those currently sentenced to death row in Nebraska.”
He also argued that the veto was necessary to assist the families of those who have been the victims of violent crimes.
“I focus on the families of the victims and the victims themselves,” he said. “The death penalty is the law of our state. I feel strongly that part of my role as governor is to do all that I can to carry out the law for the benefit of the victims and their families. The moratorium would be just one more roadblock to bringing closure for them.”
Nebraska Catholic Conference Executive Director Jim Cunningham, an opponent of the death penalty, wasn't as harsh on the governor as other critics.
“We're disappointed the moratorium was not enacted,” said Cunningham. “We were hopeful the governor would see fit not to veto the action of the legislative majority.”
Cunningham said he was pleased that even though Johanns vetoed the moratorium bill, the Legislature did override his veto in part, allotting $160,000 to a study to determine if the state's death penalty law is being carried out fairly.
“We're pleased that the study will be carried out,” said Cunningham. “It's certainly better than losing on all aspects of the bill.”
In response to Chambers' sharp attacks on Johanns in regard to his Catholicism and anti-abortion stand, Cunningham was quick to defend the governor.
“Senator Chambers is equally, if not more, inconsistent in his positions than Governor Johanns,” said Cunningham, noting that Chambers is one of the most vocal abortion supporters in the Nebraska Legislature. “It's our hope that both would oppose abortion and capital punishment.”
Cunningham also challenged Chambers' opinion that an opponent of abortion must also oppose the death penalty.
“There is a distinction between abortion and capital punishment,” he said.
“It's the Church's view that direct abortion is an intrinsic evil and always wrong. There is an innocent human being involved who has no due process and no consideration under the law.”
“With capital punishment one has the benefit of the full course of due process,” he said, while noting that the legal system may not always treat individuals fairly during the process.
Cunningham referred to the Catechism of the Catholic Church in explaining the distinction: “The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude, presupposing full ascertainment of the identity and responsibility of the offender, recourse to the death penalty, when this is the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings against the aggressor. … Today, in fact, given the means at the State's disposal to effectively repress crime by rendering inoffensive the one who has committed it, without depriving him definitively of the possibility of redeeming himself, cases of absolute necessity for suppression of the offender today are very rare, if not practically non-existent” (No. 2267).
Cunningham calls this passage a “narrow, limited justification for capital punishment,” contrary to the Church's absolute ban on all direct abortions. For this reason, he said, he gives Johanns the benefit of the doubt.
“We believe that the governor took into account the efforts we made to support all aspects of the bill and that he did weigh the information we provided him,” Cunningham said. “It's not appropriate to criticize the governor on grounds he should be against capital punishment because he's against abortion.”
“The Catechism says there are limited, extremely rare, practically nonexistent cases where capital punishment is permissible,” he said.
“Presumably the governor does-n't agree with that and thinks it [capital punishment] is necessary to protect society and Nebraskans.”
38 Allow Death Penalty
According to statistics from the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, 38 states currently have laws allowing the death penalty, but not all states impose death sentences.
Since 1972, 546 people have been executed in the United States. Of those individuals, 56% were white, 35% were black and 7% were Latino.
Texas leads the nation in executions, followed by Virginia and Missouri. This year alone, 46 people have been executed.
Brian Henninger, program coordinator for the Washington, D.C.-based coalition, said the Nebraska debate over the death penalty is a sign of things to come.
“There's no question that legislatures across the country are taking a closer look at the application of the death penalty,” Henninger told the Register. “Even those who favor the death penalty have an interest in assuring that it's fair and not killing innocent people.”
Pointing out that Johanns is a Catholic, Henninger said the governor took a “big risk” in vetoing the moratorium bill, especially in light of Pope John Paul II's recent statements criticizing the death penalty and his repeated efforts to secure clemency for those awaiting executions.
“It was a ‘no lose’ situation for him,” said Henninger. “What is the hurry? Why not wait and see what the results of the study are?”
Observers on all sides seem to agree that the Pope's increasing vocal opposition to the practice is having an impact on the public policy debate.
“The Pope's strong position has made it possible for Catholic legislators to cast a vote of conscience on this issue,” said Sen. Chambers. “I believe a good number of senators voted in favor of the moratorium bill because of the Pope's position.”
Cunningham agrees with Chambers that the Pope's words are sinking in, although he couldn't cite specific examples of Nebraska senators who voted differently on the bill because of the Pope's recent statements. Cunningham said the Nebraska Catholic Conference made a concerted effort to make legislators aware of the Pope's statements on the subject in Evangelium Vitae and during his recent trip to St. Louis.
“The Pope's very strong comments about the lack of justification for the death penalty in today's day and age does give many public policy makers some pause to reflect on this issue,” said Cunningham.
Greg Chesmore writes from Bloomington, Indiana.
----- EXCERPT: Veto by Catholic governor raises question of faith and public policy ----- EXTENDED BODY: Greg Chesmore ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 06/13/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 13-19, 1999 ----- BODY:From the very first months of his pontificate, Pope John Paul II has urged the pro-life movement to “be not afraid.” Using striking language, he concluded an audience with the Italian “Movement for Life” on Feb. 26, 1979 with these words:
“Do not be discouraged by the difficulties, opposition and failure you may meet with on your way. It is a question of man and, with such a stake, no one can shut himself up in an attitude of resigned passivity without thereby abdicating as a human being. As Vicar of Christ the Word Incarnate, I say to you: have faith in God, the Creator and Father of every human being; have confidence in man, created in the image and likeness of God and called to be His son, in the Son. In Christ, who died and rose again, man's cause has already had its definitive verdict: life will overcome death!”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Pope Points his Homeland to the Future DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:WARSAW, Poland—A decade after the collapse of communism, Pope John Paul II wants his countrymen to redis-cover the meaning of solidarity.
That was a key message he took to his homeland this month in a fresh series of spectacular open-air Masses and liturgies.
Just how his fellow Poles will choose to heed him in this outwardly developed but inwardly fractured post-communist society is anyone's guess. But at 79, the Pope knows it will probably be his last visit, and is determined to ensure his words ring out loud and clear.
Papal visits (this is the eighth) are always a special time in Poland — a period of grace, for swapping the daily humdrum with a super-reality of images and evocations.
When John Paul flew in to Gdansk's Rebiechowo airport on June 5, church bells boomed around the country and the TV pictures were watched by half the population.
The Pope wasted no time making clear his message was in deadly earnest.
“It was in this city that ‘Solidarnosc’ was born 19 years ago,” he told an ecstatic first audience of 700,000 in the nearby hippodrome a few hours later.
“At that time I heard you say in Gdansk, ‘There's no freedom without solidarity.’ Today we need to say, ‘There's no solidarity without love.’”
As to what that love looks like, John Paul left others to drew their own conclusions. But it was the kind of love, he hinted, “which forgives yet does not forget.”
“It was the Pope who laid the foundation for Polish solidarity,” was the verdict of the union's present leader, Marian Krzaklewski, who put $5,000 in the Pope's collection plate for building churches in the former Soviet Union.
“Solidarity can't only be a technique for obtaining aims, even when these have to do with human dignity,” said Krzaklewski. “There are too many quarrels here — we're isolated and alienated. I hope we'll now be able to read our solidarity slogan in a new way.”
Some Poles said the Pope's Gdansk sound bite captured the real dilemma facing this Catholic nation, where the dust has settled on old conflicts but risen on new ones.
When John Paul last came home in 1997, Poland's government, legislature and presidency were in the hands of former communists who were locked in bitter dispute with the Catholic Church leaders over the country's new constitution, as well as over abortion and a stalled Concordat with the Vatican.
Church and State
Just two years later, ex-communists still hold the presidency and remain a powerful opposition force in parliament.
But with a majority government of former Solidarity members now 20 months old, the Church-state battles have abated. Poland is a sovereign, secure NATO member-state. And with a 1998 growth-rate of 6.1%, it is negotiating to join the European Union. Has it achieved what few once expected and become a normal Western democracy?
Not exactly: though virtually everyone agrees Poland's future lies with the West, opinions are divided over how to define that future — and the Church's place within it.
“The truth is Poland is doing well now; we've begun to score successes,” Jolanta Babiuch, a Warsaw sociologist, told the Register. “But it has all happened at a cost.
“People want the Pope to sum up what we've achieved and where we're going. But above all they want religious guidance — guidance in how to be a Christian farmer, factory worker or doctor in the chaotic, uncertain conditions that we've inherited.”
Church Membership
Yet the pilgrimage is intended, first and foremost, to strengthen the Catholic Church to which 95% of Poles belong. And it's the Church which will be the main beneficiary of this 13-day papal progress.
In September 1997, when Solidarity Election Action ousted the Democratic Left Alliance after four years in power, it did so on a pro-Church ticket which drew heavily on Catholic social teaching.
It took Solidarity parliamentarians a matter of weeks to retighten the pro-life law and ratify the Vatican Concordat. Yet for all its political clout, the Church still faces tough challenges.
With half the population still attending Mass regularly, there's no evidence of a decline in religiousness. But Poland's once-pious intellectuals have moved away to seize new chances in business and politics.
Shifting Values
So has the young generation, brought up without the grounding in Solidarity-era values which changed the lives of their parents. Though 75% of Polish schoolchildren called themselves Catholics in a recent Social Opinion Research Center survey; three-quarters saw nothing wrong with premarital sex, while two-thirds said the Church's teachings were “only its own opinion.”
Poland has a flourishing network of Catholic pro-family institutions, as well as an impressive array of Church movements and communities, filled with committed Christians of all ages.
But although the law has cut annually registered abortions to as low as 500 nationwide, this year's population growth is the lowest ever — a fact the Statistical Office attributes to a “change in value systems.”
With the ex-communist President Aleksander Kwasniewski riding high in opinion ratings, the Polish bishops know they have to compete for loyalties, and devise effective ways of influencing democratic opinion.
Yet the fault line between tradition and modernity still yawns wide in the Church. Among 15 documents presented the to Pope on June 11 at the close of a national Church synod, one urges the Church not to identify itself with political parties, while others set out recommendations for implementing Second Vatican Council reforms.
Adam Szostkiewicz, a co-editor of Poland's Tygodnik Powszechny Catholic weekly, thinks the Church shouldn't treat John Paul's visit as an “accelerated course in faith and morality.”
Poland's Catholic clergy will have their hands full again with normal duties, he cautioned, after the Pope's return to Rome.
“Just as today's independent and democratic Polish state shouldn't count on the Pope to solve its social and political conflicts,” the writer added, “the Church should learn it can't count on the Polish Pope to take over the new evangelization of its homeland.”
Stops on the Way
Yet while the Papal pilgrimage is on the road, the Church will be aiming as high as possible — to instill a newfound sense of evangelical possibilities into the hearts and minds of Polish Catholics.
Speaking June 7 in Torun (see story, Page 14), the birthplace of astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), the Pope urged professors and college directors to remember humanity's future would be decided by the “moral conscience” of scientists and educators.
Preaching at Bydgoszcz, he reminded worshippers of Poland's richness in martyrs — from the national patron St. Wojciech, killed by pagan Prussians in 997, to Father Jerzy Popieluszko, murdered by communist agents in 1984.
Meanwhile, on June 13, in a sensational finale to a five-night stopover in Warsaw, he beatified no less than 108 World War II victims — half of whom died at the Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps.
“Today we commemorate the victory of those who in our century have laid down their lives for Christ, all those who gave their earthly lives so they can possess life forever in his glory,” John Paul told an applauding crowd of 1 million in the capital's Pilsudski Square, against a backdrop of city-center hotels and office blocks.
“We join with the Churches of the Western and Eastern tradition, with neighboring peoples who have emerged from the catacombs and are openly carrying out their mission. Their vitality is a magnificent witness to the power of Christ's grace which enables weak men to become capable of heroism, frequently to the point of martyrdom.”
Poles eager to see the Pope took in that message with great enthusiasm. Many faced a difficult challenge of their own — how to catch a last glimpse of this real-life prophet, the one-time simple priest from small-town Wadowice, before he finally slips away into legend — a legend which will be told for a thousand years.
Jonathan Luxmoore writes from Warsaw, Poland.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jonathan Luxmoore ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Senate Says Columbine Memorials Do Not Violate U.S. Constitution DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—The Senate has given symbolic support to the view that Littleton, Colo., residents have a constitutional right to include religious references in memorials to the students slain at Columbine High School.
The Senate on May 18 voted 85-13 in favor of a non-binding amendment to a child crime prevention bill. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., was scheduled to introduce a House version of the amendment by June 17.
The measures are being treated as amendments to the crime prevention bill being pushed by both chambers of Congress in the wake of the April 20 shootings.
Most of the 46 amendments offered by the Senate dealt with limiting access to firearms. Others, such as the amendment on religious references, tried to address problems faced by families and communities after a large-scale juvenile crime is committed.
The amendment was sponsored by Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo. The first part of it states that Congress finds no constitutional bar to “the saying of a prayer, the reading of a scripture, or the performance of religious music, as part of a memorial service that is held on the campus of a public school in order to honor the memory of any person slain” at a school such as Columbine.
The Senate finding also applies to permanent memorials containing religious symbols or motifs that are placed on the campus of a public school.
The second part of the amendment would protect schools from lawsuits brought against it by parties claiming offense at the permanent memorials. Districts may seek the assistance of the attorney general in such cases, and, more significantly, are under no obligation to pay plaintiff attorney fees, a prospect that has dissuaded schools from holding services or erect monuments which contain religious elements.
“The Senate has said, by an overwhelming majority, that local communities should have the final say in how they would like to honor the memory of any student of teacher,” Allard said following the vote. “This amendment simply empowers the local community, and does not tamper with the constitutional separation of church and state.”
Allard told the Register that he believes that local communities should be free to determine, without fear of lawsuits, what constitutes an appropriate memorial for its fallen sons and daughters.
He cited a letter sent to him by the parents of Cassie Bernal, the teen-ager who was shot dead in the Library of Columbine High School after affirming her faith in Christ. Allard said that the concern of Bernal's parents figured prominently in his decision to introduce the bill.
Parents' Plea
In the letter, Brad Bernal wrote, “My wife Misty and I both believe any Columbine incident memorial should memorialize each individual in a personal way. Everyone knows ... that Cassie was a very strong Christian. To leave out this facet of her persona would be to mismemorialize her and others.”
Allard asked, “Why is it that we can speak honestly about sports interests or favorite movies of other slain students ... but for students like Cassie, we must omit the most important part of her life?”
But Robert Boston, of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, objected to both the terms of the bill and the intentions of its author.
“The Allard amendment may make people feel good, but it doesn't do anything else,” Boston told the Register, noting that the language of the amendment is non-binding.
He said that political opportunism was the real driving force behind the measure, and accused Senate Republicans of diverting attention from their initial opposition to gun restrictions by adding amendments like Allard's to the Juvenile Justice Bill.
“The students who did the shooting felt isolated from their peers,” Boston said. “Erecting memorials and holding services which contain religious matter only adds to the divisiveness. ... Such things should be turned over to the churches and synagogues.”
Responding to the charge that the amendment lacked force, Allard aide Sean Conway called it “an opportunity for Congress to express an opinion on the Constitution.”
He acknowledged that if lawsuits are filed, they will be settled by courts, not Congress. But he added that “as a co-equal branch of the national government ... Congress is entitled to interpret the Constitution just as the other two branches do. With the Allard amendment, Congress is interpreting the First Amendment consistent with the best traditions of the American republic and the good sense of the American people.”
Regarding the allegation of political opportunism, Conway said, “Senator Allard raised this issue as a response to a real and pressing concern of the people in Littleton, to call this bill opportunistic is itself the height of political opportunism.”
Clinton Support Expected
Allard expressed confidence that Rep. Tancredo's similar measure would win support in the House, and that President Clinton would sign the bill into the law.
“When the president visited Colorado to console the community out there, he was approached by several people who asked him not to veto it,” Allard said. “The president assured them then that he wouldn't.
“Until then, everyone out there has the good word of the Senate that there is nothing to fear in putting up appropriate memorials or holding suitable ceremonies.”
Conway said that the senator saw the need for a bill while attending memorial services in Colorado.
“One of the services had to be held in the parking lot of a movie theater because authorities at the local park were fearful of facing lawsuits over violations of the First Amendment,” Conway said. “There is no reason for people to have such a fear.”
Eric Treen of the Beckett Fund agrees. He said his organization, an inter-faith bipartisan public interest law firm based in Arlington, Va., sees nothing unconstitutional in Allard's measure.
Public entities are only found guilty of violating the First Amendment when coercion is involved, he said. “The court also assumes that someone entering Columbine High School is informed ... they assume, for instance, that people have the sense to know what's in front of them, and that a memorial to a particular student is appropriate to that person and not an official school endorsement of a particular faith.
“All that Senator Allard's bill tries to ensure is that parents and others will not be deterred from responding in an appropriate way to these tragic events by a fear of having to answer for their actions in court.”
Brian McGuire writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian McGuire ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Yugoslavia: What Next? DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:As the Register went to press, NATO had ended its bombing campaign and Serbs had begun pulling out of Kosovo when new troubling developments arose: Serb soldiers burning homes in their wake, and Russian troops becoming involved in altercations with NATO forces.
In this second of two articles, the Register continues its look at how the conflict reached a crisis point, and where it could go from here.
Earlier in this decade it appeared that a bloody conflict in Bosnia could be avoided by letting the three sides involved negotiate their own settlement under the auspices of a special commission of the European Community.
On Feb. 23, 1992, in Lisbon, Portugal, the three Bosnian leaders — Alija Izetbegovic for the Bosnian Muslims, Radovan Karadzic for the Bosnian Serbs, and Mate Boban for the Bosnian Croats — agreed to a confederation divided into three ethnic regions: the Swiss cantonization of Bosnia. However, returning to Sarajevo, Izetbegovic told U.S. Ambassador Warren Zimmermann that he did not like the agreement.
Zimmermann was quoted as saying, “I told him, if he didn't like it, why sign it?” Izetbegovic then publicly renounced the Lisbon agreement. (In a Sept. 30, 1993, letter to The New York Times, Zimmermann disputes this account.)
On March 16, the three sides signed a new agreement in Rambouillet, France, to divide Bosnia into “three constituent units,” but, once again, Izetbegovic backed out. According to a high-ranking State Department official, quoted in The New York Times, “The U.S. policy was to encourage Izetbegovic to break with the partition plan.”
In March, Karadzic predicted “a civil war between ethnic groups and religions with hundreds of thousands dead and hundreds of towns destroyed. After such a war, we should have completely the same situation: three BosniaHerzegovinas, which we have right now.” By early April, 12 European Community members and the United States granted recognition of Bosnian independence. As predicted, full-scale civil war erupted.
What can account for the role of Western diplomacy on this issue? Ambassador Zimmermann said, “Our view was that we might be able to head off a Serbian power grab by internationalizing the problem.
“Our hope was the Serbs would hold off if it was clear Bosnia had the recognition of Western countries. It turned out we were wrong.”
Instead, the Western powers fired the starting gun for what was an unnecessary war. One of the most basic principles of foreign policy is to keep local problems local, not to internationalize them.
Rule No. 1
If any part of the world speaks to the danger of internationalizing local problems, it is the Balkans. Zimmermann now concedes that “the Lisbon agreement wasn't bad at all.” The Bosnian Muslims must surely agree with him, since they suffered the worst casualties and human rights abuses, and have never since been offered as good an agreement.
Unfortunately, Karadzic's predictions have come true in terms of causalities and the scale of destruction. The only thing he did not foresee was that he would become an indicted war criminal. He was correct, however, that Bosnia would be right back where it started, with three Bosnia-Herzegovinas.
The Kosovo case is also a struggle over sovereignty and nationality. Kosovo is universally recognized, except by many Kosovar Albanians, to be part of Serbia.
The Yugoslav federal government, not Slobodan Milosevic, revoked Albanian autonomy in 1989, after a 14-year period of autonomy granted by then President Josef Tito. Milosevic had made his political reputation in an earlier visit to the region, when he told the Kosovar Serbs that no one would beat them any more.
Ethnic Cleansing
The term, if not the practice, of “ethnic cleansing” was formulated in 1983 by a Kosovar Serb parliamentarian to describe the treatment of Kosovar Serbs by Kosovar Albanians. The Serbs had been cleansed from Kosovo during World War II, and were not allowed to return by Tito. The sizable Serb minority was then eclipsed by the Albanian birthrate. Also, the Kosovar Albanians made it sufficiently uncomfortable for the Serbs that an estimated 130,000 left the region between 1966 and 1989, including 50,000 during the period of autonomy.
One might call it ethnic cleansing in slow motion.
Nonetheless, the Serbs were worse than foolish not to work with Ibrahim Rugova and other moderate Albanians who espoused nonviolent means for their political goals. The Kosovo Liberation Army, with origins in both the fascist and communist pasts, began a series of provocations in the last several years, that included weekly assassinations of Serb postmen and policemen, as well as of moderate Kosovar Albanians.
Serb forces obligingly retaliated with the expected viciousness. When the atrocities reached sufficient proportions, the West was ready with the Hitler analogy to explain events. Through the loss of a relatively small number of people (less than 3,000 in the preceding several years), the Kosovo Liberation Army was able to obtain in its service the finest air force in the world. NATO has been fighting on the side of the Kosovo Liberation Army in its civil war against the Serbs. The fact that NATO thinks it is fighting for democracy in Kosovo is in no way likely to change the consequences of the outcome. The sorry lesson awaiting the West is that Greater Albanian nationalism is not morally superior to Serbian nationalism.
NATO committed an extraordinary blunder in the Rambouillet accords by insisting Serbia agree to de facto independence for Kosovo. No Serb leader could have accepted such terms. By resisting them, Milosevic gained far broader Serbian support than he had ever before enjoyed.
Faced with what appeared to be the inevitable loss of part of his country with the Kosovar Albanians in it, Milosevic came upon the brutal expedient of keeping Kosovo without its people, or at least of driving them out until he could destroy their insurgency. While his behavior is inexcusable, it was folly for NATO to drive him, or any Serb leader, into this position.
Also, Milosevic's ethnic cleansing in Kosovo would have been impossible with the presence of the 1,400 observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe who were withdrawn so NATO could begin its bombing campaign.
NATO's ‘Victory?’
The bombing campaign created the conditions it was meant to prevent. Without a hint of irony, NATO then announced its war objective of returning to their homes hundreds of thousands of refugees who could not have been driven out in the first place had NATO's actions not created the opportunity for their expulsion.
Russian mediation has now brought about a resolution in Kosovo short of the NATO Rambouillet objectives that would have been obtainable before the slaughter began. In other words, another unnecessary war. The Rambouillet requirement that the Yugoslavian government objected to most vehemently — a three-year transition period leading to a referendum on independence in Kosovo — has been dropped, leaving Yugoslavia's sovereignty over Kosovo intact, despite a grant of local autonomy.
The other measure ceded by NATO concerns the composition of the international force overseeing the return of the refugees and the U.N. authorization of that force. Despite these gains, Yugoslavia can hardly be said to have “won” the war since its infrastructure has been largely destroyed. But is this victory for NATO?
NATO's “victory” means either one of two undesirable outcomes: a NATO military protectorate in Kosovo for the next several decades or, absent the political will to maintain a protectorate, the acceptance of an independent Kosovo Liberation Army-controlled Kosovo, whose existence will fire the region toward a Greater Albania that will destabilize Macedonia, Greece, Albania and Montenegro.
Who will be Hitler then?
The peaceful devolution of Yugoslavia was probably the only practical goal for Western policy after 1990. The West consistently mismanaged the disintegration of that state by taking sides in the struggles over sovereignty, and then blamed the results of its own bungling on “Serbian aggression.” At the very least, the West helped to create the conditions and opportunities for that aggression by inciting it, instead of seeking realistic political solutions to the problems. The West missed its opportunity for a comprehensive settlement in the former Yugoslavia. It had better do some hard thinking — outside the analogies it has chosen to understand the very complex problems of the region — before it does more damage, with consequences far outside the Balkans.
Robert Reilly, a former special assistant to President Reagan, writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Robert Reilly ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Extreme Sports DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:SANTA CRUZ, Calif.—Darryl “The Flea” Virostko felt he was telling it all when his explained recently why he risks his life to ride monstrous ocean waves crouched down on a 10-foot surf-board.
“The adrenalin rush,” the amiable 27-year-old surfer explained. “There's nothing like that feeling.”
But what about the danger?
“Knowing it's dangerous is what brings the rush,” replied the short, muscular professional surfer who is a star performer in one of the many activities know as “extreme sports” — which are the fastest growing spectator sports in America today. The risky sports include such daredevil activities as skateboarding, bungee-jumping, snowboarding, rock climbing, inline roller-skating, mountain biking, windsurfing and jet skiing.
However, if extreme sports are winning lavish praise from millions of viewers of the televised and live events, they are drawing a good deal of criticism as well for the reckless endangerment to life and limb that their detractors find in these performances.
Asked about such sports, Mark Ginter, of St. Meinrad School of Theology, a Benedictine seminary in Indiana, quoted directly from the Catechism of the Catholic Church to make his case against the way some of the sports are performed.
“Life and physical health are precious gifts entrusted to us by God. We must take reasonable care of them, taking into account the needs of others and the common good (No. 2288).
“The virtue of temperance disposes us to avoid every kind of excess: the abuse of food, alcohol, tobacco, or medicine. Those incur grave guilt who, by drunkenness or a love of speed, endanger their own and other's safety on the road, at sea or in the air” (No. 2290).
Based on those two statements, would he put the stamp of immorality on many of the sports?
“Yes, you could,” he replied. “And the way you define immoral is to say it is against the virtue of temperance, self control and respect for one's physical life and health.”
Virostko explained that his father had taught him to surf in the treacherous California coastline breakers where he developed into a much sought professional performer in the sport, now earning upward of $50,000 a year.
“There's lots of ways to get killed surfing and realizing that is what gets your adrenalin up,” he admitted. “You can hit your head on the ocean bottom or a board can bang into you. It can be real dangerous. A good friend of mine wiped out on a 30-foot wave that held him underwater until he drowned.”
The risky sports have taken a heavy toll of crippling injuries and deaths since they began to take hold more than a decade ago.
Michael Bamberger, in a 1998 Sports Illustrated article on surfing, said of the Pacific site where Virostko surfs some 20 miles from San Francisco:
“There are immense, jagged rocks, some sticking of the surf, other lurking below it, a cruel wipeout welcoming committee. And there is the sheer magnitude of the swell. Forty-foot waves, measured from trough to crest, are common in the winter months.”
As for parents permitting their children to participate in such sports, Ginter said, “It is the obligation of parents to insist that their children grow in virtue. If the acts are contrary to the virtue of temperance then the parents are cooperating in a vicious activity.”
Extreme Coach?
Jojo Sanders and his wife own and operate an extreme sports summer camp in the Lake Tahoe area of California where children from ages eight to 18 train in extreme sports at a cost of between $1,200 and $1,800 a week.
“What we do is give the youngsters a chance to do things that they have not had a chance to do up to now,” Sanders told the Register, pointing out that his camp is based on the premise that “kids nowadays aren't into canoeing and archery” but instead “they are into jet skiing and bungee jumping and we're just trying to keep up with their demands.”
The Sanders explained that the camp costs are “far from cheap because we're not into arts and crafts. ... We are into sports that are very expensive to set up, such as a $26,000 bungee tower and a go-cart track layout that cost $40,000.”
Germain Grisez, professor of Christian ethics at Mount St. Mary's College, Emmitsburg, Md., like others in his field of study, declined to flatly condemn extreme sports as evil and sinful, but instead gave examples of when and why they sometimes can be immoral and sinful because of the way they are used.
“Providing a performance is skillful and entertaining and precautions are taken to cut risks, I don't see that there is anything inherently wrong with it,” he said.
However, he said “if a person lies about the risk to entice attention [and] actually does put his life in danger for the same reason, he or she is doing wrong.”
“It is wrong to risk death as a means of making more money in entertainment or whatever, or doing it just to show courage,” Grisez asserted. “That is like ‘playing chicken’ on a busy highway and that kind of thing is wrong.
“And, if the person really is intending to die, that is absolutely wrong because that is like committing suicide, which certainly is a sin.”
Asked about the adrenalin-rush motive, he said, “That is a bad motive. It is like someone addicted to drugs and acting for the sake of simply feeling the ‘rush’ experience. It doesn't have any substantive value like exercising a skill that has an inherent value and an entertainment value. The rush is just something you feel and it doesn't of itself require any skill to feel.”
Parents' Views
Dede Spaith of Sonora, Calif., gave her daughter, Chloee, permission to go to the Sanders' extreme sports summer camp two years ago when she was 13.
“She loved the excitement and everything about the camp,” she said of her daughter. “She dropped 85 feet tied to the bungee cord and loved it. She went rock climbing too, and whitewater rafting and go-cart racing.”
Asked if she had any second thoughts after she had agreed to send her to the camp, the mother said: “The only fear for her that I had was that she'd get to like the sports so much she'd want to do them all the time.
“I think doing extreme sports replaces that feeling of wanting to do drugs like some girls do just for the thrill of it and because they want to take risks.”
“I know there have been deaths over the years from bungee-jumping and rock climbing and surfing and other extreme sports,” the mother conceded. “And she does get adrenalin rushes — but she stays in control of herself.”
Asked about the morality of extreme sports, she said she is Catholic and never had a priest question her about the morality of the sports.
“I would be very surprised if a church person would take the position of opposing extreme sports as immoral or in some way against God's teaching,” Spaith said, adding, “I think it is a good thing I am doing for my daughter because she is growing from those experience — taking her down the road to other places as opposed to forcing a child to do something they don't want to do.”
Chloee was asked about her first bungee jump.
“I was kind of scared,” she admitted. “I wanted to do it and I admire Jojo and I knew he would never tell me to do anything that could hurt me.”
On the risks of extreme sports, Chloee said, “I know there have been injuries and even deaths, but accidents happen all the time in life — driving down a road or in a plane crash.”
“All in all, extreme sports are nothing but good, clean fun and lots of excitement,” she insisted.
Joyce Blaksley, of San Francisco, said her son, Brad, 15 and her daughter, Katherine, 14, have engaged in extreme sports over the last two years and enjoyed the ventures.
An avowed believer in the teachings of the Catholic Church in which she was raised, Blaksley said she had “no problem with the morality of what her son and daughter were doing” in the extreme sports field.
“I think there are various things that people do to make them develop their own feelings of self-confidence and self-prestige, and extreme sports do that for my children,” she explained. “Mountain climbing, for instance, is a very dangerous sport, but I don't think that it is immoral. Having done it myself and knowing how I felt when I was finished, I knew that I had a feeling of extreme accomplishment — not immorality.”
Self-Confidence
Virostko says his experience in surfing and a few other extreme sports “is all about confidence in myself.”
“I have confidence in what I am doing because the day I lose that, I will be washed up,” he explained.
But he conceded that the very nature of surfing puts him at risk no matter how much he practices and how much he learns about the surf.
“Yes, it's the excitement of taming a big wave or making some radical maneuver that gets my adrenalin pumping and the excitement you get out of those moments is what makes me want to do more and more surfing.”
Robert Holton writes from Memphis, Tennessee.
----- EXCERPT: Surfing in Dangerous Moral Waters? ----- EXTENDED BODY: Robert Holton ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Radical Changes in Poland DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:During Pope John Paul II's latest visit to Poland, papal protocol placed the leader of the Lublin Archdiocese just a step or two behind him. In many ways, the 51-year-old archbishop has been following in the footsteps of the former Cardinal Karol Wojtyla for a long time. Register correspondent Catherine M. Odell recently interviewed Archbishop Zycinski at the University of Notre Dame.
Catherine Odell: In many ways, your priestly career and interests parallel those of Pope John Paul II. When did you first meet him?
Archbishop Jozef Zycinski: It was in 1966, when I was 18 years old. I had just arrived at the seminary in Krakow. Cardinal Wojtyla came to talk to us and had just returned from the Vatican Council (1962-65). Even at this first meeting, we were fascinated both by his charming personality and by the vision of the Church after the council, which he presented to us.
You had just arrived — what had led you to join the seminary?
When I was growing up, it was the time of ideological brainwashing in the schools under communism. My father passed away when I was 12 years old, and I would say that it was really my mother who formed my younger brother and me as people sensitive to Christian values. If parents teach their children that openness to the other — such an important value — we find many, many vocations. My brother is five years younger and he is also a priest. He is now the dean of theology at the Pontifical Academy of Krakow.
I also read a lot as a young boy. I can't say that I read all kinds of things because there was a censor in Poland at the time. I was particularly attracted to philosophy and to drama.
You have traveled extensively in the United States and even studied here at The Catholic University of America as well as at Louvain in Belgium. How is the Church in the United States like the Church in Poland and how is it different?
They are similar. ... I meet Americans who treat religion seriously. And in Poland, thanks be to God, in our families, we saved the spirit of Catholicism. We have many people who suffered during the communist days when they presented themselves as Catholics, as Christians. At the same time, in other Eastern Bloc countries, the secularization was so extensive that families paid no attention to God.
So, I like those Americans who don't like to be spectacular, but who want to express their faith. They don't agree with those who tell them: “Keep religion in your private life. Religion is a private affair.”
Our countries are different. ... Here, there was always a combining of democracy and religion. Some people will say that in a democratic society, such as you have in the United States, religion plays no important role. They say that state regulations and law are enough to [order society]. But personally, I agree with John Paul II when he says that no stable democratic system can be built without moral foundations. For me, the United States is a country where the faith of the Founding Fathers was the foundation for the American democracy.
What is the biggest challenge facing the Church in Poland?
The cultural transformation. Communism is over already nine years in Poland and we have a radical process of change going on. Sometimes people are attracted to pseudo-values, to false lights. We can't overemphasize the role of tradition and our history. We have to find a symbiosis between the past and the future and to reply in ways suggested by the Gospel to renewed challenges in our time.
There were many predictions that when communism fell in Poland, nobody would attend Church. They said that people came to Church to protest communist indoctrination. But, our churches are full. And the people waiting to go to confession? Maybe the lines are longer now than they used to be 10 years ago.
And the people waiting to go to confession? Maybe the lines are longer now than they used to be 10 years ago.
We have many new international contacts. People are coming from France, Germany and Scandinavia, and bringing their own patterns of life. But when one is mature enough, one chooses what is good in these patterns and adjusts them to his or her own inspirations.
You worry about the misuse of the Internet. Why?
I think that we now face cultural changes because of the Internet. The consequences of such a revolution could be as profound as the changes brought by Gutenberg and the Bible. I am really afraid that it could result in a “virtual mentality,” where the difference between the real and the imaginary is neglected. Intellectual centers, and not just Catholic centers, must assume responsibility for solidarity in defending human values. We have a priceless tradition which has been formed by our civilization's great thinkers and artists — Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Fra Angelico, Leonardo da Vinci and Mozart. There's a risk that our great classics will no longer be appreciated and will introduce a Mickey Mouse substitute for real values.
You see that as a real threat?
Oh yes, the “Mickey Mousation” of values: “Take it easy; keep smiling, don't think too much.”
Pope John Paul II expects great blessings to come from the Jubilee year 2000. What are the plans for this great event in your diocese?
We have preparations going on at various levels. On the family level, we have family visitations. Particular families gather together and bring the cross and the Bible to a designated house. The families pray, meditate upon the cross and Scripture with prepared meditations.
We also have various groups responsible for preparation in the academic centers: for professors, students, various groups, for pastoral action and teen-agers.
In my diocese, there is definitely an academic milieu. At the Catholic University of Lublin, we have 16,000 students and at the four other universities, we have about 35,000. I also created groups for the elderly and for single people. They gather and need this kind of solidarity.
On the second level, we have international cooperation and are trying to bridge divisions between the Eastern Church and the Western Church. My diocese borders on the Ukraine. Next year, we will have about 30,000 youth from the Ukraine come with their bishop to the University of Lublin to pray with us, to discuss, to bridge. In my seminary now, there are 74 Ukrainians of the Byzantine rite. I agreed that they could be students at the Catholic University and have lodging and formation at my seminary because there is no seminary in the Ukraine.
And last year, I was invited to St. Petersburg to the Catholic seminary for Russia to deliver the opening lecture at the beginning of the academic year. For the first time, I lectured in Russian and celebrated a Mass in that language.
The third level of our preparation is an international conference which we will host at Lublin next September. It will be called “Christian Roots of the Future.” We will discuss the challenges of the present and try to find new inspiration for the 21st century. I have invited scholars from Oxford, Germany, France, Russia and Italy.
Speaking of inspiration, which saint has been the most important model on your journey?
Of all the saints, I like St. John the Baptist the most. He was the predecessor of Jesus Christ, pointing always to Christ. And he was a person who was smart enough to face all of his challenges. He left his house. Probably, as the only child, he had a good foundation, but he chose the desert with his pupils. And later, when his pupils left him to follow Jesus, he was clever enough to face that new challenge. When he was killed, it was because of his constancy. So, I like him very much.
----- EXCERPT: Lublin archbishop says religion is thriving in Pope's native land ----- EXTENDED BODY: Archbishop J.M. Zycinski ----- KEYWORD: Inperson -------- TITLE: Psychological Association Backpedals On Its Study Defending Pedophilia DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—The American Psychological Association has distanced itself from a study it published last year finding that sexual relationships with adults and children are positive for “willing” children.
It is also supporting congressional efforts condemning any future attempts at normalizing child sexual abuse.
As reported in the May 30-June 5 Register, the psychological association's study, “A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples,” concluded that the long-term effects of child sexual abuse are not as damaging as earlier presumed. The study said, “A willing encounter with positive reactions would be labeled simply adult-child sex, a value neutral term.”
Association spokeswoman Pamela Willenz said that following the public attention given to this study, the group will take into consideration the effect its publication can have on public policy.
“We acknowledge our social responsibility as a scientific organization to take into account not only the merit of articles published in our journal but the possible implications they may have on future public policy,” Willenz told the Register.
An association press release dated March 23 took the position that the group was not responsible for the content of the studies it published.
“As a publisher of psychological research, APA publishes thousands of research reports every year,” the release said. “But, publication of the findings of a research project within an APA journal is in no way an endorsement of a finding by the association.”
The study became the target of popular radio talk shows. Various pro-family organizations and several congressmen condemned the study, saying it was an attempt to normalize child sexual abuse and could be used in court to soften judgments against sexual predators.
The association is now supporting U.S. Rep. Matt Salmon's efforts to pass a House resolution which was scheduled to come to the floor in June. The resolution urges the president to join Congress in condemning the suggestion that pedophilia may not be harmful to child victims.
Heather Mirjahangir, press secretary for Salmon, called the association's turnaround “a victory in the fight against the normalization of adult child sex.” She added that it is important that the resolution still go to the floor of the House.
“Though we are changing the language to reflect the APA's change in position, we are going ahead with the vote because it is important that Congress and President Clinton go on record saying we cannot allow the normalization of adult child sex,” she told the Register.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen G. Pearson ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: U.S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:The MTV Generation Goes Tridentine
Time's Tim Padgett described one 32-year-old woman as “part of a retro-revolt among U.S. Catholics. The generation that not long ago pushed Gregorian chant into the Top 40 may now plant it back into the Mass.”
“Partly in response to Gen-X interest,” Atlanta is one of a number of dioceses that have established parishes exclusively for Latin Mass celebration. At Chicago's St. John Cantius Church, half the weddings are performed in the old rite.
“All this reflects a back-lash against the earnestly modern Catholic culture that grew out of Vatican II,” said Padgett. The Mass that followed Vatican II “seems rather weak and unclear to the MTV generation,” Father Michael Baxter, a theology professor at Notre Dame University, told Padgett. Concluded Padgett: “The traditional Mass has filled a need for more transcendence through Catholicism that again reaches the soul via the senses.”
Trendsetters Prefer Religion
A recent consumer marketing survey showed that 54% of Americans said “religion plays an important part in my life,” while 59% held that view among an elite category of respondents called “trendsetters.”
Of the 5,916 Americans surveyed by the Brand Futures Group of Young and Rubicam, 10% classified as “trendsetters.” Far more Americans rated religion as important than did other national populations surveyed: The Netherlands, 25 %; United Kingdom, 19%; France and Germany, 14%.
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: ACCU 'Falls Short' on Ex Corde Ecclesiae DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:CHICAGO—It's time for United States bishops to fully embrace and enact Pope John Paul II's request for a juridical mandate for theologians at Catholic colleges and universities, said Cardinal Francis E. George, archbishop of Chicago.
Cardinal George spoke to the Register about the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities' proposal for the implementation of Ex Corde Ecclesiae, the Pope's 1990 document on Catholic higher education.
The U.S. bishops submitted a plan for implementing Ex Corde Ecclesiae to the Vatican in 1996. It was sent back for revision because it did not include provisions for juridical application of the mandate in which bishops would certify teachers as qualified to teach Catholic theology. A subcommittee, under the direction of Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, has drafted a new implementation proposal for review by the full bishops' conference.
“Is she implying all bishops are fundamentalists? Fundamentalist Bible colleges don't even have bishops. The fact is, the good work of our top Catholic institutions will remain the same, whether there's a mandate or not.”
In April, the association devised an alternative proposal for the subcommittee to consider, which calls for theology professors to work “in fidelity with the magisterium,” but did not mention a mandate. The group's work was prompted by Cardinal George who addressed the association and invited its members to suggest their own ideas for juridical implementation.
“It's apparent the ACCU has come to grips with this issue in ways they never have before, and I'm grateful to them for that,” Cardinal George said. “But the fact remains, their proposal does not incorporate the mandate, and therefore it falls short.”
The mandate called for by Ex Corde Ecclesiae is prescribed in Canon 812 of the 1993 Code of Canon Law. Because the Pope has included Canon 812 in Ex Corde Ecclesiae, Cardinal George said, there is no room for compromise.
“It is part of the code of the Church, and the bishops will not get away with a plan to implement Ex Corde Ecclesiae if it does not include the mandate.”
Monika Hellwig, executive director of the colleges association, said anyone who thinks an implementation plan for Ex Corde Ecclesiae must contain Canon 812 is taking the Holy See too literally. She opposes the mandate on grounds it will give bishops too much control over Catholic higher education.
Hellwig said if Catholic colleges lose “any” amount of autonomy to bishops they will be taken less seriously among competing academic institutions. She told the Register the mandate would move Catholic institutions in the direction of fundamentalist Bible schools. Hellwig said the Pope doesn't want colleges and universities to become “Catholic ghettos,” in which students and faculty shut themselves off from the outside world.
“That's not serious criticism,” Cardinal George said. “She really can't be serious. Is she implying all bishops are fundamentalists? Fundamentalist Bible colleges don't even have bishops. The fact is, the good work of our top Catholic institutions will remain the same, whether there's a mandate or not.”
The cardinal suspects a majority of faculty fear the mandate, and said it's possible most college presidents remain confused about it. He said the mandate will in no way give bishops control over schools.
“This would set up a mechanism for bishops to certify theologians,” Cardinal George said. “It's up to each individual university whether they want to require a theologian to have the mandate. A university that opts to require the mandate for a theologian would be no different than a university deciding a theologian needs to obtain a Ph.D. from Yale or Notre Dame.
“All colleges want autonomy and independence, and that is certainly something we should respect. But colleges and universities must conform to state laws, standards of accrediting agencies, and all sorts of things force them to conform in some manner. The idea that they exist in complete autonomy simply isn't true.”
In greater Chicago, six of eight Catholic college presidents signed the Association's proposal, but with a revision that included adherence to Canon 812. They include: William Carroll, Benedictine University; Donna Carroll, Dominican University; Christian Brother James Gaffney, Lewis Univerisity; Richard A. Yanikoski, Xavier Univerity; and James Doppke, University of St. Francis.
The president of DePaul University, Vincentian Father John Minogue, and the president of Barat College, Lucy Morros, declined to sign the revision.
Hellwig said the revision by the six presidents is unacceptable. Cardinal George said he hopes the revision made by the presidents — all who serve within his archdiocese — might reflect a mood that is beginning to catch on throughout the country.
Hellwig countered that most of the 230 college presidents who belong to her organization remain steadfast in their opposition to the mandate.
“I'm sure there is a lot of confusion out there, but we can't wait around until all the confusion clears,” the cardinal said. “We have to have implementation of the code in the next proposal that goes to Rome. So what's needed on campus is a climate of trust for what the bishops need to do.”
The U.S. bishops' conference may be partly to blame for the campus confusion and opposition, observed Cardinal George. Instead of confining their consultations in recent years to hearing from college presidents, he said the bishops could have promoted better communication and understanding by meeting with faculty and staff at Catholic colleges throughout the country.
“I think it was a mistake not to include more people in the discussions, because it has left a large number of faculty and staff to draw conclusions without accurate information about this,” Cardinal George said. “I think if more people had been included, there would be more understanding and a lot less fear about all of this.”
Although Cardinal George finds the college association's proposal inadequate, he's convinced the group genuinely wants colleges and universities to teach in communion with the Church. Overall, said the cardinal, he's pleased with the state of Catholic higher education.
“Of course, just when you think things are looking up, you hear a pile of stories that make you think maybe they're not,” the cardinal conceded.
In May, for example, at least 10 Catholic colleges invited commencement speakers who have been overtly pro-choice on abortion.
“Commencement speakers with pro-choice views are totally inappropriate at any college or university that claims to be Catholic, or to function in the Catholic tradition,” the cardinal said.
“Inviting someone as a commencement speaker is a clear sign of approval. Abortion is literally a life or death issue, so to honor someone who supports it risks compromising that institution's public witness to the Gospel.”
Wayne Laugesen writes from Boulder, Colorado.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Wayne Laugesen ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Colombian Guerrilla Kidnapping Alienates Church DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:The Colombian Marxist National Liberation Army, known by the Spanish acronym ELN, has seriously damaged its standing with the Colombian people and government by antagonizing the Catholic Church — an important third party mediator in negotiations between the government and disaffected groups.
The ELN, long tired of being a poor relation to the more powerful Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces, known as FARC, decided that it was time to be taken seriously by the government of President Pastrana.
With that goal in mind, some 40 heavily armed members of the ELN stormed Cali's La Maria Catholic Church May 30 and forced shocked churchgoers, including the celebrant of the Mass, into two trucks after exchanging fire with some policemen and two private bodyguards.
At least four hostages, one of the bodyguards and three guerrilla members died in the shootout. More than 50 hostages were later released by the ELN in the surrounding mountains, retaining some 40 hostage, including three Americans.
ELN leader “Gabino” was in Europe at the time, drumming up political support for his movement. Disappointed by lackluster response among the Europeans, Gabino is said to have ordered his followers in Colombia to do “something spectacular, that could be noted worldwide.”
At first sight, the ELN commando who carried out the kidnapping seemed to have fulfilled Gabino's order. Gabino would latter say that he never specifically requested the kidnapping of churchgoers, but it is very likely that, at first, he may have though that his men had succeeded in gaining new attention for his movement.
Nevertheless, it did not take long before the public's surprise turned into outrage.
The Colombian bishops, who have been willing to forgive the fact that the ELN has been the only Colombian guerrilla movement to kill a bishop and destroy several Catholic churches, was pushed over the edge by the disruption of a Mass, the knocking of consecrated hosts to the floor and the kidnapping of innocent churchgoers.
“This brutal attack against peaceful churchgoers cannot find any excuse in political or strategic reasons,” said Cali Archbishop Isaias Duarte Cancino, for whom the attack “was an act of pure and senseless brutality.”
The prelate also announced the immediate excommunication of guerrilla commando Gabino, a penalty that hours later he extended to all members of the ELN. “They are out of the life of the Church, its graces and God's blessings,” said Archbishop Duarte in a short official statement.
The Colombian Bishops' Conference issued a statement of support for the archbishop's action, saying that the kidnapping of churchgoers during Mass “is an offense to the Eucharist, a blow to the freedom of religion and a violation of the civil populations' rights.”
According to local analysts, the ELN not only miscalculated the forceful reaction of the Catholic bishops, but erred by choosing Cali as the site for the kidnapping. Archbishop Duarte is known as one of the best and more flexible peace negotiators among the bishops, a reputation he earned while serving as bishop of Apartado, a violent region where he helped to bring peace.
“By enraging Archbishop Duarte, the ELN has lost the possibility of having him and his credibility in favor of the dialogue they want to carry out with the government,” said the daily El Expectador .
The ELN is demanding that President Pastrana create a demilitarized zone, similar to one conceded to the FARC, in which the guerrilla group can enjoy a safe haven from which to start negotiations with the government.
According to El Expectador, the chances for the ELN to get a demilitarized zone “is almost zero, especially as regards Church support.” Archbishop Duarte has not only harshly criticized the ELN and its leadership, but has also asked the Colombian government to stop any dialogue.
Ironically, the ELN is regarded as the “Catholic” guerrilla movement because it was founded by several Catholic priests, including the famous “guerrilla priest” Camilo Torres, who died in a confrontation with the Colombian Army in 1966.
Until last year, the ELN was headed by Spanish priest Manuel Perez Martinez , who was defrocked and excommunicated in 1989, after the ELN murdered the bishop of Arauca, Jesus Emilio Jaramillo. Martinez died last year of hepatitis in the middle of the jungle.
The guerrilla group is also known for attracting more radical supporters of liberation theology.
The ELN has expressed sorrow over the excommunication “because it hurts more than 85% of our members, who consider themselves Catholics,” a statement that fueled the outrage of Archbishop Duarte.
Unfortunately for the ELN, that outrage goes beyond Cali and also beyond mere feelings.
The President of the Colombian bishops' conference, Archbishop Alberto Giraldo Jaramillo, has announced a hardening of the bishops' position toward the guerrilla movement in general. “The bishops want to see something more concrete, more consistent on the part of the guerrillas to demonstrate they are not against the Colombian people and in favor of peace,” said Archbishop Giraldo.
The bishops' ire was also directed at the FARC. It did not go unnoticed when Archbishop Giraldo said that “peace is not made out of theatrical gestures, nice words ,or the release of white doves,” clearly referring to the opening ceremony of the peace talks between the government and FARC.
On behalf of the Colombian bishops, Archbishop Giraldo has asked both the German government and the German bishops to suspend any support for the ELN, thus contributing to the isolation of the ELN and throwing a damper on Gabino's bid for German political support.
The ELN has offered to turn over all hostages to Bishop Victor Manuel Lopez Forero, of Bucaramanga, as a way to ease tensions with the Catholic Church and show that the ELN still considers the Catholic bishops as key players.
But according to local analysts, it will take more than that for the ELN to recover lost ground and regain the bishop's confidence that they really want to end the conflict. “The ELN kidnappings at La Maria has turned into one of its most politically useless and costly acts,” said the daily El Pais. “They had agreed to release the hostages in exchange for nothing, while loosing even more popularity among Colombians.”
ELN will have to take concrete steps to gain the bishops' good will,” the newspaper added. And El Pais seems to be right.
“If the guerrilla wants to express any regret for its savage action, the only credible way to do so is by releasing absolutely all hostages without any precondition and to stop, from now on, the use of kidnapping as a political weapon,” said Cali's Archbishop Duarte. “Only then, we will be at level zero, at the starting point for any preliminary conversation,” he concluded.
Alejandro Bermudez, Latin America correspondent, is based in Lima, Peru.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Alejandro Bermudez ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:Division Deepens Among Greek Orthodox
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, June 9—The oldest American diocese of the Greek Orthodox Church has voted in favor of the removal of Archbishop Spyridon, leader of the U.S. church, the wire service said. Ministers and layworkers from 63 New England parishes voted 58-51 to call for Spyridon's removal. According to AP, “Critics say Spyridon is too traditional and can't relate to American expressions of Greek Orthodoxy.” Dean Popps of the Greek Orthodox American Leaders, Inc., an anti-Spyridon group, said “He's chased anyone with money and credentials out of the church.” More than 10 U.S. churches are withholding funds from the archdiocese because they don't like Spyridon's policies. His defenders say the complaints stem from wealthy members who have a personal grudge against the archbishop, reported AP.
Homosexual Power In Scotland
BRITISH BROADCASTING CORP., June 4—The Bank of Scotland plans to end a proposed deal with evangelical Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson because of televised comments in which Robertson called Scotland a “dark land” for its tolerance of homosexual behavior, a BBC web site reported.
Citing an unidentified source, BBC said the Bank of Scotland would cancel a planned launch of a U.S. telephone banking service in cooperation with the evangelist's financial services company. Robertson, who founded the Christian Coalition, was reported to be paying $50 million for a 25% stake in the venture.
In an editorial, The New York Times approved of the Scots' decision to pull out of the deal, disapproved of Robertson's remarks, and expressed worry that the evangelist may have gained enough information to put together a similar arrangement with another institution.
Ireland Awaits the Little Flower
Declared a doctor of the Church by Pope John Paul II, Thérèse's extraordinary passage from death to such esteem is attributed primarily to the only book she wrote, The Story of a Soul. “In it she taught that holiness is for all and that it is lived through the ups and downs of life rather than by extraordinary methods and measures,” said McGarry.
Irish experts on the life and virtues of the saint told McGarry that St. Thérèse affirmed the place of the body and of sentiment in spiritual life, serving as a further antidote to the austere Jansenism dominant at the time. One of her leading proponents in Ireland, Carmelite Father Linus Ryan, said: “She felt more than she reasoned,” and she pioneered a return to a simple and wholesome living of the Gospel.
Theologian and Carmelite Father Christopher O'Donnell said the correct veneration of relics looks “to the inspiration of the saint's life and to God's good pleasure in confirming the virtue of the saint by signs and cures.”
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: In Surprise Move, Pope to Follow Poland Trip With Visit to Dying Armenian Orthodox Leader DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:LOWICZ, Poland—In an unprecedented personal and ecumenical gesture, Pope John Paul II has decided to fly to Armenia to pray with the dying leader of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Catholicos Karekin of Etchmiadzin.
The one-day visit June 18 will allow the Pope to “express his spiritual closeness to the catholicos in a moment of suffering” and to make a brief ecumenical pilgrimage to the spiritual center of the Armenian Orthodox church, papal spokesman Joaquin NavarroValls said June 14 in Poland.
The Pope, in Poland for 13 days, had been scheduled to fly back to Rome June 17 and visit Armenia in early July.
But when informed that Catholicos Karekin was near death, the Holy Father opted to spend an extra night in Krakow, his last stop in Poland, and fly to Armenia early the next day.
“The ecumenical aspect is very important, but it is also a personal visit to someone who has been very nice to the Pope in previous meetings,” Navarro-Valls said.
The papal spokesman said that during the three-hour stay in Armenia, the Pope would meet the catholicos at his residence in Etchmiadzin and would hold talks with the Armenian president in Yerevan, the nation's capital.
The papal spokesman said he could not recall any precedent in Pope John Paul's 20-year globetrotting pontificate for such an abrupt change in papal travel plans.
A personal representative of Catholicos Karekin briefed Pope John Paul on the Armenian leader's deteriorating health during a June 10 meeting in Warsaw, and it was announced that the Pope's July trip to Armenia was postponed.
“The Holy Father was thinking and thinking and thinking, and he told me on Saturday (June 12), ‘I'm going to Yerevan,’” Navarro-Valls said.
The Pope planned to travel with his entourage and about 50 journalists who accompanied him to Poland.
The Pope had met privately with the catholicos twice at the Vatican and formed a friendship with him, NavarroValls said. The Pope wanted to reciprocate the catholicos's visits.
Doctors monitoring a recurring cancer in the catholicos'mouth advised him not to attend the Pope's July visit; his church announced June 7 that the trip was to be delayed.
The warmth of current relations between Catholic and Armenian Apostolic churches has been attributed to the close personal relationship between Catholicos Karekin and Pope John Paul; the Pope noted this closeness in a speech last March.
In December 1996 the two leaders signed a declaration ending 1,500 years of discord over Jesus' identity by expressing a common understanding of his humanity and divinity. The agreement was one of a series between the Catholic and Oriental Orthodox churches.
The Pope's planned July visit was viewed by many as a chance to demonstrate the recognition accorded by the Vatican to Armenia fewer than 10 years after the country emerged from communism under Soviet rule.
The Armenian Apostolic Church is one of six independent Oriental Orthodox churches. They are in communion with each other but not with the Catholic Church or with the Orthodox churches that split with Rome in the 11th century.
About 90 percent of Armenia's 3.6 million people belong to the Armenian Apostolic Church.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:Detroit Cardinal Now Calls Shots with Pope in Rome
DETROIT NEWS, June 4–Religion writer George Bullard featured the city's former archbishop, Cardinal Edmund Szoka, who has gone on to assume vast responsibilities at the Vatican.
“Szoka — a Detroit guy by way of Grand Rapids and Gaylord — happens to be right in the middle of this major Catholic marker, 2,000 years of world impact,” said Bullard in his regular column.
Bullard focused on Cardinal Szoka's title of “president,” as in, president of the Pontifical Council for the State of Vatican City, describing him as “No. 2 man at the Vatican, second only to you-know-who. He runs the place when Pope John Paul II is out of town.”
Bullard described the cardinal as “a friend of the Pope,” and as “Practical ... He makes things work.” He credited the cardinal “with a mix of discipline, theology and smarts. One of his colleagues says that in seminary, other students in class were afraid to contradict Szoka for fear of speaking heresy.”
A native of Grand Rapids, Mich., Father Szoka was tapped to found the newly created Diocese of Gaylord, Mich. He first bought an abandoned dance hall for a headquarters. It wasn't fancy, “but the [$65,000] price was right,” said Bullard. In 1975, he dedicated a new $1.7 million Gaylord cathedral. “Most of it was paid off by 1981, when John Paul named him archbishop of Detroit,” said Bullard.
Pope Needed 3 Stitches After Fall
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, June 12—Pope John Paul II fell and cut his head while leaving the papal nuncio's residence in Warsaw during his recent trip to Poland, requiring three stitches on his right temple.
Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said there was “no neurological damage” or any other effect on the Pope's health from what he called a “slight contusion.”
The Pope “slipped accidentally” and his head hit the ground, Navarro-Valls said. He said he did not know what caused the Pope to slip.
The A.P. reported that the Pope's voice had been “clear and strong since he arrived in Poland on June 5 to begin a 13-day pilgrimage to his homeland.” Navarro-Valls said there would be “no variations at all” in the Pope's schedule.
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Poland's Economic Road DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:Pope John Paul II knows Poland's national strength isn't ever likely to be expressed in material achievements.
Poles keep their anniversaries. And in the weeks before the papal pilgrimage, they marked 10 years from the Round Table talks and June 1989 election which steered communism to a peaceful end.
For many, the rapid progress of the intervening decade makes those events seem distant history. But as President Aleksander Kwasniewski reminded the Pope, post-communist changes have also left a “broad margin of bitterness.”
Crime and corruption are rampant; and for all the impressive government data, 47% of the country's 39 million citizens, according to Warsaw's Main Statistical Office, are living at the social minimum.
In a survey this April by Poland's Social Opinion Research Center, three-quarters of Poles thought rigorous pro-Western reforms were being mishandled Jerzy Buzek's Solidarity-backed government, while two-thirds voiced dissatisfaction with Polish democracy and said it needed fundamental reshaping.
That sense of unfulfillment and exclusion is what John Paul II has tried to home in on.
Preaching June 8 in the northeastern town of Elk, where joblessness runs at 26%, he urged the crowd of 400,000 not to “harden their hearts to the poor.”
“The poor are in our midst: the homeless, beggars, the hungry, the despised, those forgotten by their own families and by society,” the Pope told his congregation, who included Lithuanians, Ukrainians and Belarusans. “We need people who are poor in spirit — people open to truth and grace, open to the great things of God.”
Though Poland is attractive to investors, average earnings here are still a tenth of those in neighboring Germany, while the country's annual GNP of $100 billion is dwarfed by Germany's $2.14 trillion.
Yet his homeland can be strong in the Christian culture which sustained it through history's hard times. This is what John Paul has been trying to impress in a pilgrimage devoted to the Christian Beatitudes — to showing that holiness can still be aspired to even at the close of the second millennium.
The Pope returned to his solidarity theme June 11 in his first ever address to a national parliament.
The memory of Solidarity's “moral lessons,” he told ministers, legislators and judges in the Sejm lower house, should be having a greater influence on public life. Building up a democratic state needs the “united solidarity of all people of good will,” regardless of politics and ideology. The heroic solidarity which “tore down the Berlin Wall and contributed to the unity of Europe” must be supplanted by a no less heroic solidarity of Christian virtue and self-sacrifice.
“If we want Europe's new unity to last, we must build on the basis of the spiritual values which were once its foundation,” the 79-year-old continued. “It must be a great European Community of the Spirit. Here too I renew my appeal to the Old Continent: ‘Europe, open the doors to Christ!’”
The sale of alcohol was banned by government decree in 11 counties on John Paul's itinerary, while police said crimes have dropped by 30% since his arrival.
Meanwhile, the Pope's words have been welcomed by the left as much as the right — prompting Poland's main ex-communist daily, Trybuna, to ask “Whose Pope?” in its June 10 headline.
—Jonathan Luxmoore
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jonathan Luxmoore ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: A Campus Crusade DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:Register readers have seen story after story about the debate over the identity of Catholic colleges.
The terms surrounding the debate can be confusing at times — Canon 812, mandates, Title XII — but the issue is one of the most important for the Church in American society.
It's not hard to understand why. Pope John Paul II has called for a new evangelization and a recommitment to Christ by every Catholic in time for the Jubilee Year 2000. From these efforts will bring forth a new springtime of the faith, he says. The signs are already emerging: more vocations, more evangelization efforts, the return to authentic tradition by many people, and numerous other hopeful signs.
Maintaining that momentum will require the cooperation of Catholic scholars. Theologians, in particular, will be able to help the Church in its ever deepening understanding of Revelation. Experts in other fields also have a part to play; their assistance is invaluable in helping the Church dialogue with a new brave world of technologies and shifting values. If Catholic universities sidestep this Jubilee spirit, however, the Church's efforts at evangelization will suffer.
Mindful of that, the U.S. bishops are set to vote in November on how the Church's vision of higher education — as spelled out in the Holy Father's apostolic constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae — will be implemented in the United States.
Fortunately, more Catholic university presidents are willing to see that the bishops' cooperation should be welcomed, not feared. As we reported last week, nine presidents of Chicago-area Catholic colleges are moving to strengthen the implementation proposal that their fellows nationwide have made to the bishops.
Unfortunately, there are still many Catholic college presidents who fear the bishops' role — particularly as regards theologians who need an OK from the bishop to teach.
They ought not fear this. The bishops' function is to guard the faith, not run campuses. They would be like the accrediting agencies that monitor a school's other subjects; they would not be like trustees who can hire and fire.
To understand what's at stake, it is helpful to recall the power of ideas and universities to shape the world in this century. The world is very different than it was last century. It has been ravaged by ideologies that first thrived in universities.
In the past, German philosophies of power fueled the Nazis, and economic theories developed in European universities emerged as communist totalitarian systems in the East.
Closer to home, in the last 30 years, relativistic thinking and materialist conceptions of man came to full bloom in American universities and American society. Slogans such as “There is no absolute truth” and “It's my body, I can do what I want” are road signs that helped to point us to a culture of death.
The world was transformed through the universities, and by students who applied those ideas in the fields of the media, education, medicine, and law, and in workplaces of all kinds.
What will it take to transform it through Christ?
The Catholic faith has an enormous and rich body of responses to today's trouble spots.
It shows how self-giving rather than radical individualism can save the family. It explains sin and its psychological consequences. It places the value of every person at the center of medical ethics. It gives us the motives, as stewards, to protect the environment. It speaks love to a culture of violence. And it defends human dignity against racism and other offenses.
These teachings become even more convincing when they are subjected to rigorous study. Our Catholic universities can apply them to our culture with vigor and inventiveness. The failed ideologies of the past took a long time to change the culture. The truth should take far less.
----- EXCERPT: Editorial ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Opinion -------- TITLE: Law and Consequences DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:The U.S. Senate has voted to go on record saying it is constitutional to erect religious memorials for students slain at public schools.
This is an excellent point for the Senate to make. Constitutionality was never intended to be at the sole discretion of the judiciary. The Supreme Court has never been an infallible guardian of what is right and wrong. It wasn't right when it ruled against freedom for Dred Scott, or when it ruled out child labor laws, or when it stopped civil rights laws early in this century. And it isn't right on many issues today.
The next step will be for our representatives in Congress to do what Congresses of old did when faced with those other issues. They must challenge the court by actually making the laws that so many of their constituents want, and passing those laws again and again, if necessary. More than the right, they have the duty to reclaim the ground that has been lost to a mistaken notion of what the Constitution allows.
A bill allowing communities to restore the Ten Commandments to public buildings would be a good place to start.
----- EXCERPT: Editorial ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Opinion -------- TITLE: The Pope's Multitude of Saints DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:by Matthew Bunson, Margaret
Bunson and Stephen Bunson
(Our Sunday Visitor Publishing, 1999, 368 pages, $19.95)
So many new saints! It seems like almost every month Pope John Paul is canonizing or beatifying someone whose name most of us have never heard before. During his latest trip to Poland, the Holy Father beatified more than 100 more men and women — and I, for one, am curious to hear their life stories.
Well, for those new Polish blesseds, we will have to await the second edition of this book by Matthew, Margaret and Stephen Bunson. For now, John Paul II's Book of Saints gives a brief account of the lives of more than 600 men and women previously canonized or beatified by this Pope.
The number jumps up so high because some were honored as groups — for example, more than 80 were beatified as martyrs of the English Reformation. Another 70 were slain together during the Spanish Civil War. While Ernest Hemingway was fighting in, and writing about, that war, these holy men who escaped his notice were dying in testimony to another world. They were members of an order dedicated to caring for the sick and abandoned, the Hospitallers. Aged 19 to 76, they “all died brutally [at the hands of the Spanish revolutionaries], guilty only of being Catholics and devout religious.”
Even the most cynical reader will find stories in this book that cannot fail to captivate the heart. For example, Pope John Paul had the occasion to canonize a friar about whom he also wrote a play — Albert Chmielowski, “the Brother of Our Lord.” After losing a leg while fighting for Poland's freedom in the 1860s, Albert became a beloved artist in his native land. Later, he gave up painting to begin a life of serving the poor, centering “his labors on the poorest and most destitute in Krakow.” He founded men's and women's branches of the Servants of the Poor, also called the “Gray Brothers” and “Gray Sisters” because they held the ideal of “becoming the brothers and sisters of all whom they served.”
Noting an aspect of Albert's life that would probably be the same if he lived today, the Bunsons say, “Albert preached that one of the greatest calamities of the time was the fact that the majority of human beings refused to see the truly wretched state of modern society, thereby absolving themselves of the fundamental obligation to strive to correct these evils.”
Another person beatified by John Paul II was the layman Pier (Peter) Giorgio Frassati. Peter was “an avid skier and mountain climber.” He was outgoing and charming. “Literally thousands came to pay their respects” when he died. Peter's secret? A spirituality of prayer, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, devotion to Mary, thirst for the Word of God in Scripture, uncompromising chastity, charity toward the needy, and faithfulness in the ordinary duties of life. At age 24 he died of polio that he had contracted while visiting an abandoned sick person.
Why so many saints? The answer slowly dawns on the reader.
Peter's father was a senator of Italy, an ambassador to Germany and the founder of La Stampa magazine. That is, he was involved in politics and media. Considering the reputation of these fields today, one may wonder how a saint could arise in such a situation. But one of the lessons of this book is that holiness knows no boundaries — we can find it everywhere.
Some have criticized the Pope for beatifying and canonizing so many. But, throughout this book, the meaning of the John Paul's reason slowly dawns on the reader.
In my case, it became noticeable as I began to recognize several names who were friends — or, in one case, family — of men and women I know. That started me thinking of other friends of friends, not yet listed here, whose cause for beatification has been initiated. There are quite a few. One lived near my last address and another lived near my current address. This brought to mind still others — future saints alive today who I have met, talked with, received Communion from — who will surely be canonized one day.
The Pope's revolution begins to sink in. He has made it apparent that heroic sanctity exists all around us! Anyone who has lived in Europe could easily share my experience because many of the individuals in this book became known through their sufferings at the hands of the Nazis. One is Titus Brandsma, a Dutch Carmelite journalist and professor of mystical theology.
Titus was imprisoned and later killed for openly opposing what the Nazis were doing. Another prisoner serving as a nurse's aide was ordered to execute him by lethal injection. Exemplifying the teaching of Romans 12:17 — “Repay no one evil for evil” — Titus gave the nurse's aid his rosary while she was preparing the injection. Later she testified to his great charity and holiness during the inquiries that led up to his beatification.
Pointing out that such charity “is perhaps the greatest trial of man's moral strength,” Pope John Paul II said, “In the midst of a concentration camp, which remains the shameful blot upon this century, God found Titus Brandsma worthy of himself.”
Cardinal Edouard Gagnon, in his foreword to the book, recounts a conversation at the Vatican with the archbishop of Hanoi at a time when the Church in Vietnam was suffering a serious persecution. The cardinal says, “Knowing the tremendous problems he had to face, we asked him what we could do for him. To our surprise he answered: ‘Send us lives of saints!’ He explained that his people need more than anything else to see that it is possible to follow in Christ's footsteps and to remain faithful even when it requires heroism.”
We could add that we need to read lives of saints like those in this book in order to remain faithful even when it does not require heroism.
Gerry Rauch is an assistant editor of the Register.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Gerry Rauch ----- KEYWORD: Education -------- TITLE: Man and Woman: Created for Love DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:“Marriage in God's Plan”
by David Utsler
(Lay Witness, June 1999)
David Utsler writes: “In order to grasp the full meaning and power of marriage, it is necessary to understand why man was created. ... Man's deepest vocation as a person is to love God. This also entails loving one's neighbor, who is created in the image and likeness of God.
“God Himself ‘lives a mystery of personal loving communion.’ God made man in His image and likeness to share in that loving communion, not out of need, but purely as an act of goodness. Marital love best images the kind of love that God lives in Himself and that which we were created to share with Him.”
Utsler takes up the Catechism's description of “marriage as a sacrament at the service of communion. ... This means that it is directed toward the salvation of others. Other sacraments contribute in various ways to the salvation of the recipient. Those at the service of communion, when one receives them, are given to contribute to the salvation of another.”
Marriage predated the Fall, and since it was meant to reflect God's image, “marriage was restored to the dignity of a sacrament [by Jesus]: to aid in the restoration of that communion of love for which man was first created. Therefore, the single most important duty or task of married love is to be at the service of communion. This clearly means that spouses bear a certain responsibility for each other's salvation and together for that of their children. From this fundamental obligation all other duties and responsibilities of marriage flow.”
Utsler also draws on Pope John Paul II's teaching that “love is the only adequate response to persons. This is what Pope John Paul II calls the ‘personalistic norm.’ A person can never be used as a means to an end, but must be viewed as an end in himself. In marriage, a spouse is loved for his or her own sake.”
It follows that “the nature of marriage requires total self-donation and self-giving to another that is completely indissoluble. Sexual union is intrinsically a part of this, and for this reason, is proper only to marriage. ... The sexual union is not reducible to the satisfying of a bodily instinct, but is part of the mutual self-giving of the spouses. In sexual union, spouses are not merely giving their bodies to one another as if the self could be momentarily suspended, but they are giving their very selves to one another with their bodies. This is why, outside of the indissoluble covenant of marriage, sex is always a lie and is always the use of another person for self-satisfaction.”
Utsler next turns to procreation. “Did God command procreation merely to populate the earth, using man and woman as a means to that end? No. ... The true beauty of procreation lies in the fact that it flows from marital love.
“It is sad when a spouse ignores the value of the other and uses the other for sexual satisfaction alone — even within marriage. When this happens, the value of the child is not reduced, because such value is intrinsic to the child. However, the spouses deprive one another of the full power of their sexual union and may not appreciate the child's incalculable worth. The connection between sex and procreation is far more profound than the mere biology of human reproduction.
“This is why every contraceptive act is an offense against spousal love. Contraception not only frustrates procreation, but it strikes at the very heart of procreation, which is spousal love. It is irredeemably depersonalizing.”
Couples who are aware of the significance of their union, “through their mutual, self-giving love ... actually participate in each other's sanctification. They become a channel through which Christ confers Grace to live the Christian life. The husband is to love his wife as Christ loves the Church and gave Himself up for her, sanctifying her by the washing of water by the word (Ephesians 5:26). This speaks of total self-giving, as Christ gave Himself for us. The submission of wives to husbands in the same passage is not an issue of equality or a designation of value, but a response to that love. As the Bride of Christ, the Church — and thus all her members — are called to love Christ without holding anything back.”
“Marriage and family in God's plan is a ‘civilization of love.’ It is first in the Christian family that new persons are introduced into the world. Through this family, the ‘first herald’ of the Gospel, children are introduced into God's wider family, the Church.”
Ellen Wilson Fielding writes from Davidson, Maryland.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding ----- KEYWORD: Education -------- TITLE: Letters DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:How the Meek will Inherit
Some time toward the end of the next century the remnants of western civilization will loudly curse Planned Parenthood, radical feminists, homosexuals, and all the champions for the culture of death in the media and government who have successfully promoted society's cultural suicide. A viable culture must regenerate itself in order to survive and it is a statistical fact that it takes an average of 2.1 children per woman to maintain this survivability. In Europe and North America the number of children for each western woman is much less than this (1.2 to 1.9 depending on the country) and, at such rates, in the middle of the next century these populations will begin to fade gently into oblivion.
As this is happening, people from Third World countries are being invited to provide the manpower to do the dirty work necessary to clean up after their hosts. It just happens that most of these people have old-fashioned attachments to their clans, spouses and broods of children. The iron law of nature states the future belongs to the fertile and it should be obvious that, if these trends continue, in a very short time these immigrants will have the political power that will serve new cultures, philosophies, and religions, displacing the advantage presently claimed by westerners.
Everywhere in the European community and Anglo-America, real attention focuses on consumption, frequent sex and fun. Very few sophisticated moderns are pestered these days by children. The population controllers and the abortionist have given them the excuses, tools and laws needed to indulge in every meaningless selfish desire and, thanks to the secular humanist philosophies most live by today, our culture now has the power to “party” itself out of existence.
It is said that the Lord works in mysterious ways; perhaps this is his way of blessing future generations.
Rodolf W. Velicky Factoryville, Pennsylvania
Crisis Pregnancy: Just Stand by Me
In a survey of mothers who aborted, when asked “What situation caused you to make the decision to abort?” nearly 90% of the women interviewed said they had had their abortion because of a relationship — because someone they loved, a boyfriend, girlfriend, relative or parent, told them to. When asked what anyone could have done to help them complete the pregnancy, over and over the answer was “Just stand by me.” “I would have had the baby if only I had one person stand by me” was heard so many times. Pregnancy-care centers may run short of diapers, maternity dresses and doctor fees, but as long as they can keep their doors open and the lights on they can do that one necessary thing: be that friend.
We need to restore the sexual balance of power with respect for a woman's need for commitment and security — in short, abstinence before and fidelity within marriage. Nevertheless, it also means supporting a woman who does get pregnant with pregnancy care services and other alternatives.
My friend, we love you and care about you and the precious gift that you are carrying. Give your child a chance. Seek out those who really care about you — to help and support you in this crisis that you have found yourself in.
Joseph M. Wasik Marlton, New Jersey
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Opinion -------- TITLE: Of Burgers, Bishops, and Brand Names DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:The condition of Catholic higher education in America has scandalized many of the faithful for years. Many devout Catholics make considerable financial sacrifices to send their children to schools that present themselves as Catholic institutions. These families are often distressed to find that their children are taught things actively contrary to the faith, and that the schools do little or nothing to provide a wholesome dormitory life or a solid spiritual foundation.
In short, some of these schools are no more Catholic than the local state university. Allow me to offer an economist's perspective on this issue.
Imagine that you are a hungry traveler, looking for a place to stop for lunch. From the highway, you see a large sign with golden arches. You pull off the road, drive up to the restaurant, which displays a sign saying “McDonald's,” a golden arches flag, and a large inflated redheaded clown sitting on the roof. Your mouth is watering for a Big Mac. You go inside, look at the menu, and discover that it is a vegetarian restaurant. You demand to speak to the owner. “I've been misled!” you cry. The owner replies, “My name is Joe McDonald. I can run my restaurant any way I want. It's a free country.”
How long do you think the McDonald's corporation would put up with this? We may be sure that it would have put our hypothetical Joe McDonald out of business long before he had a chance to lure you off the highway to his vegetarian diner. You and I cannot open a restaurant and call it “McDonald's” without signing a franchise agreement and paying a lot of money to the parent corporation. This requirement in no way infringes anyone's economic liberty or freedom to do business.
The law recognizes a company's brand name as a significant, if intangible piece of business property. The consumer's ability to recognize a brand name provides so much value to a company that the company invests heavily in it and in its associated trademarks, logos and images. Courts protect all these forms of corporate property.
Campus consumer fraud?
What does this have to do with Catholic higher education? Some Catholic institutions have become the equivalent of a vegetarian restaurant calling themselves McDonald's.
Of course, faculty at top departments such as Stanford and Yale also teach things contrary to the Church. But everyone expects them to. These institutions do not claim to be representatives of the Catholic tradition. However, when schools represent themselves as Catholic to prospective students and to donors, they have an obligation to deliver the product they promise. Economists have a name for the contrary practice: We call it consumer fraud.
Heaven knows that we do not want the courts interfering in the internal affairs of our Catholic colleges and universities. Not for a moment would I suggest that disgruntled parents call in the Federal Trade Commission to prosecute a “traditionally Catholic school” for misleading advertising.
Fortunately, we don't need to file a lawsuit or “make a federal case out of it.” We Catholics are blessed to have our own institutional structures for protecting the identity of the Church. The Holy Father and the bishops have the responsibility for defending the “brand name” of the Church.
We don't usually describe it in such cold business terms, of course. We usually say that the Holy Father and the bishops in communion with him, defend and define the deposit of the faith handed down to us from the apostles. The hierarchy fulfills this responsibility in part through regulating the institutions that want to call themselves “Catholic.” If a school employs dissident priests or theologians, the local bishop certainly has a right to say something about it.
In practice, the bishops must be guided by prudence in deciding how to address particular issues that arise within their dioceses. Most bishops aren't academics, and have no aspirations to manage the day-to-day life of a university. But there is no doubt that they have the authority to preserve the Catholic identity of the institutions under their jurisdiction.
The Holy Father made this clear in his apostolic constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae. Gently but firmly, as is his way, John Paul II has made it clear that he expects Catholic colleges and universities to conform to canon law. In particular, anyone teaching Catholic theology in a Catholic institution needs to receive some form of approval from “the competent ecclesiastical authority.” The Holy Father has left the bishops in each country considerable leeway in implementing this requirement of canon law.
I have no doubt that universities and colleges did not intend to compromise their Catholic identity. Most often, they find themselves in this situation because they pursued the good of competing with secular institutions. They wanted to emulate the top academic departments in things like faculty publications and credentials. But they now find themselves compromised because they have, in effect, promoted one set of ideals in recruiting faculty and administrators, and a different set of ideals in recruiting students and donors.
Plainly, this is not a stable situation. Implementing Ex Corde Ecclesiae will force these schools to clarify their mission, one way or the other.
Jennifer Roback Morse is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. e-mail: jmorse@jps.net.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jennifer Roback Morse ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: God the Father Knows Best DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven — Matthew 23:9
We have one Father in heaven, to be sure, but we also have fathers here on earth, — fathers that we will rightfully honor this coming Father's Day.
St. Thomas Aquinas comments on the above teaching of Jesus by saying that we must not look to earthly fathers to provide what only our heavenly Father can provide, namely, our inheritance of eternal life with Him. Yet we also have true human fathers to whom we owe respect and affection, as required by the fourth commandment, and also spiritual fathers, as St. Paul calls himself (2 Corinthians 6:13, 17; 1 Thessalonians 2:11).
The key point of Jesus' teaching is that the Father is not the Father because he does things that human fathers do. Rather, the Father is eternally the Father because he begets the Son, and therefore it is human fatherhood that takes as its model God the Father. It is God the Father, “from whom every paternity in heaven and on earth takes its name” (Ephesians 3:15), to whom human fathers must look as their model of father-hood. We do not call God “Father” because he is like us; we call our fathers “Father” because they ought to be like him.
▴ Self-Giving as the ‘Work’ of the Father
The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) warned that between the Creator and creatures it is not possible to note any similarity without noting that the dissimilarity is greater. Nevertheless, with that caution in mind, it is possible to suggest ways in which human fathers can model Matthew 5:48.
What distinguishes God the Father as the Father? It is that he gives himself entirely to the Son, so that the Son is equally divine. Self-giving is what the Father “does” from all eternity, and this self-giving is total and complete (cf. John 16:15). Human fathers are therefore called to give of themselves. But how?
A father first gives of himself completely to his wife, and that mutual self-giving bears fruit in the gift of children. This fruitful self-giving is an image of the inner life of the Trinity — a truly breathtaking assertion, but one made by Pope John Paul II is his catechesis on the book of Genesis.
A man is called to fatherhood by first giving all that he is to his wife, and then to his children, in imitation of the two processions of the Trinity, wherein the Son and the Holy Spirit both proceed from the self-giving of the Father.
Fathers of families know well the sacrifices that are demanded by this self-giving. While mothers quite obviously experience in their own bodies the sacrifices demanded by children, fathers too can know this sacrifice, experiencing in their weariness and toil the blessed burden of being responsible for others.
Due to biology and psychology fathers remain more distant from their children than mothers, but this distance is not intended to invite neglect. Rather that distance, when overcome by the immediacy of love, testifies in a most powerful way to the closeness of the Father to his own creation: For God so loved the world that he sent his only Son (John 3:16).
▴ Delighting in Children
Fruitful self-giving is the paradox at the heart of the Trinity and of the Christian life; only by giving everything away can anything of lasting value be gained. Christian fatherhood, in imitation of the Father, means delighting in what is gained. The Father speaks only twice in the Bible “as Father,” rather than as “the Lord” — at the baptism and transfiguration of Jesus (Matthew 17:5; cf. Matthew 3:17). He speaks on both occasions not of himself, but of the Son: This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.
Christian fathers are also called to point to their children as their beloveds, in whom they are well pleased. This is not difficult to do, for every father naturally wishes to tell others about how proud he is of his children. Indeed, just as the Son testifies to and reveals the Father, so too do children reveal, for good or ill, their own fathers. Today the Christian father is called especially to proclaim that children are a blessing, not a burden, by delighting in his own children, especially if they are numerous. O the happiness of the man who has filled his quiver with these arrows (Psalm 127:5).
▴ Leadership of Service
Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. ... Husbands love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her (Ephesians 5:22-25).
St. Paul's words to the Ephesians are difficult for our contemporary ears to hear, given our instinctive rejection of hierarchies. While here St. Paul exhorts husbands to love their wives as Christ “gave himself” to the Church — meaning to the point of death — the person of the Father also provides a model for Christian fathers.
The Father is the “source” of the Trinity, and to him is “attributed” the work of all creation.
The pre-eminence of the Father is termed in theology the “monarchy” of the Father. Yet the Father does not rule like an earthly king, subjecting others to his domination. He draws close to his creatures, numbering even the hairs of their heads. His rule, as should be the “rule” of a father in his household, is animated only by love and aimed entirely at the good of the others.
“In revealing and in reliving on earth the very fatherhood of God, a man is called upon to ensure the harmonious and united development of all the members of his family,” writes John Paul II. He continues:
“As experience teaches, the absence of a father causes psychological and moral imbalance and notable difficulties in family relationships, as does, in contrary circumstances, the oppressive presence of a father, especially where there still prevails the phenomenon of ‘machismo,’ or a wrong superiority of male prerogatives which humiliates women and inhibits the development of healthy family relationships” (Familiaris Consortio, 25).
▴ The Merciful Father
And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying “Abba! Father!” So through God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir (Galatians 4:6-7).
There can be nothing more opposed to “machismo” than mercy. Not the false mercy that revels in holding power over the weak, as a bully forces his victim to cry for mercy, but the mercy of the Father, which seeks out the lost sheep to return them to the fold.
Mercy flows out of the superabundant love of the Father, who, when rejected by his own creatures, does not stop at condemning them, but sends his Son for their redemption. The entire work of the Trinity in our redemption is aimed at enabling us to say once again, Abba! The Father never stops being a father and always seeks to restore fallen man to sonship.
Likewise, the vocation to show mercy (cf. Matthew 5:7) means that fathers should never stop being fathers. Even when, as happens so often, children turn away from their fathers, rejecting the family and their faith, the merciful father always seeks to restore the bonds of fatherhood. Perhaps there is nothing more difficult for a Christian father to do than to welcome back the prodigal son — not waiting for him to shamefacedly enter the house but rather running out to embrace him.
Whether it be a son who has a child out of wedlock, or a daughter who wastes the money saved for her education, the merciful father must never stop working for the conversion of his child — the return to sonship. In a culture that promotes entitlement and autonomy rather than gratitude, fathers have frequent opportunities to show mercy.
▴ The Priest as Father
My Father is working still, and I am still working (John 5:17).
Priests are called to act in persona Christi — to act in his person and to be “other Christs” in the world, and from that identity comes his mission of revealing the Father, as Jesus himself did.
What can be said about human fathers — self-giving, true authority as service, showing mercy — also applies to the priest. But the priest has a special task in showing forth the image of the Father, for he is united more closely to the work of the Son. The priest therefore must work with the zeal that the Son works — to the point of exhaustion — seeking to dispense the mercy of God and to restore sinners to sonship. The work of the Father is entrusted in a special way to the priest, who is sent into the world to preach the Gospel that reveals God as Father.
The priest, who bears the sacred obligation of praying on behalf of the Church the thrice-daily Abba of the Lord's Prayer, must learn to be a father from the Father that he knows best — God the Father whom he discovers in prayer. And from the Father the priest must learn to open his fatherly embrace wider than the human fathers, who have limited numbers of children. A priest is not called “Father” because he is like a father, but because he ought to be a true father, after the one Father from all father-hood takes its name.
“Father” is not only a title, given to our fathers and to our priests. It is a vocation, shared by the Father through his Son, Jesus Christ: As the Father has sent me, so I send you (John 20:21).
Raymond de Souza writes from Rome.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond de Souza ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: From Conception to Each June's New Tie DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:I am a father. It's one of the most important titles I have — right up there with husband. Despite the lip service of Father's Day, I'm not sure the larger society values the title because it didn't take lots of schooling, lots of overtime or lots of money to obtain. Besides, it's so plebeian; plenty of men have the same honor. But amid all the titles one could earn, “father” is among the tops.
To steal an Army slogan, “it's not just a job.” It's an identity. To look down at another face and see your own. In a world of 6 billion, to know that yours was among the first faces this new person saw. Saw and loved, not for any merit of my own but because I was the father.
Becoming a father brings me face to face with existence: this new face exists, through the grace of God, because of me. This new life, that most likely will see tens of thousands of faces after mine is long gone, is because of me. Fatherhood is not just a physical phenomenon. As Karol Wojtyla pointed out almost 40 years ago in Love and Responsibility, the beginning of life possesses not just biological but also existential value.
Being a father in the United States today is, however, problematic. American society may deem it de rigueur that I get another necktie on the third Sunday of June — which is good, because it will replace the last one that has spaghetti stains either my daughter or I put there. But I would prefer that American society thought it more important that I be able to exercise the rights and responsibilities of a father from the moment I become one.
Unfortunately, in America, I am not allowed to do that.
In the immediate wake of the barbarism of Roe v. Wade, some states tried to pass paternal consent laws predicated on the existential fact that, if it “took two to tango,” a life-and-death decision about this child should also involve its father. The Supreme Court's abortion fanaticism, of course, could not countenance that and the laws were declared unconstitutional.
But what disturbs most is the logic of the decision. The court reasoned that if a state could not veto an abortion, neither could it “delegate” that veto to a father. With all due contempt for a court that thinks in such categories, this father does not regard himself as a surrogate for Virginia, either now or at the time he became a father.
On Father's Day, American society might also insist I should rest. I would much prefer that it gave fatherhood a respite from the constant attack it faces in American society. I am a man. Pace those who believe in conspiracies of “patriarchy,” I do not apologize for being a man. Being a father teaches me everyday that I am a man. I am not a mother. My daughter does not react to me as if I were androgynous. She and I have a different relationship than she and her mother have — not better, different. And I prefer her 2-year-old's sense of how things should be over the ranting of those who would design a humanity in which “male and female he did not create them.”
Yes, I am a man. I do not apologize to those who would want a mea maxima culpa from me. At the same time, I could not have been a father without a wife; and I, for one, thank God that he saw “it is not good for the man to be alone.”
That's why this father is concerned about the social engineers who would redesign fatherhood asexually. I am a male father. I think it's telling that I had to put that in italics.
Even 10 years ago, any good editor would have deleted “male” and thought that such redundancy made me a poor writer. But in a world in which some states allow homosexuals to adopt children, I need to say: “I am not a parent. I am a father.” What my wife and I do cannot be replaced by two men or two women. Only people who don't have day-to-day contact with real children could even have a doubt about that.
There are a few, albeit scant, glimmerings of hope. In recent years there's been a spate of social science literature indicating that our society deprecates fatherhood to its detriment. This Father's Day, I wish some people would read books like David Blankenhorn's Fatherless America or David Popoenoe's Life without Father. While not perfect, these books go a long way to showing how fatherhood and marriage are indispensable for the good of children and society.
Another positive sign: a search of “fatherhood” through some of the commercial Internet booksellers turned up a lot of books, mostly Protestant, about the religious significance of being a dad. I hope some Catholic book publishers will take the lead and issue titles on what it means to be a Catholic father today.Finally, the fact that Bill Cosby's Fatherhood stayed on the best seller list for so long suggests — as long as it doesn't become just another popular Father's Day gift — that there may be some hope left.
Meantime, I'm going back to feed my daughter. In talking to her, washing her, playing with her, and seeing her, I learn every day what St. Paul meant about God and the human condition when he praised God “from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named” (Ephesians 3:15).
John M. Grondelski writes from Arlington, Virginia.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John M. Grondelski ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Where the Rhine Meets the Ohio DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:In Cincinnati, they say Old St. Mary's is “as Catholic as the Creed and as German as the Rhine.” A peek into the city's oldest standing house of worship easily reveals how appropriate this saying is. The interior of the church is richly embellished with works of art and objects of devotion that reflect the deep faith of the Catholic people and the rich patrimony of traditional German craftsmanship.
In fact, Germans have been a significant part of Cincinnati's history from its very beginning when Benjamin Steitz led the first settlers here in 1788.
By 1840, 30% of the city's population was German-speaking, necessitating the publication of ordinances in both German and English. Of the city's 12,000 Catholics, 8,000 were German. Many of these immigrants settled northwest of the Miami-Erie canal, and the German character of the neighborhood earned it the nickname “Over-the-Rhine.”
It was here in 1841 that these German Catholics built St. Mary's. Because the members of the new parish had only recently come to this country, they had little money and did most of the construction themselves. Father John Martin Henni, who later founded both the Diocese of Milwaukee and Marquette University, was given the task of establishing this German parish in Over-the-Rhine. He chose Franz Ignatz, himself a German immigrant to Cincinnati, as architect for the new church.
The women of the parish baked the bricks in their ovens at home, while the men felled and hewed whole trees to form the mammoth beams that still span the church above the painted plaster ceiling. In this way, the immigrants preserved the memory of the great churches of Germany, characterized by their elaborate stained glass windows, massive pipe organs and intricate murals.
The 171-foot tower was built around a huge virgin tree trunk, which was cut out when construction was finished.
When the church was dedicated in the summer of 1842, it was the largest church in the Ohio valley. The dedication ceremonies lasted an impressive 11 hours, beginning with the first Catholic procession ever held in the streets of Cincinnati and including the confirmation of 362 youngsters.
A Mix of Styles
The architectural style of Old St. Mary's has always been a rich eclectic mix. The engaged pilasters and classical entablature are reflective of the popular 19th century Greek revival. The ornate round windows of the façade add a touch of the baroque, while the frames of the window and the quatrefoil openings in the tower show signs of the 19th century's growing interest in the Gothic language. The result is, amazingly, a unified masterpiece of German Catholic art.
In honor of the parish's golden jubilee of 1892, hand-carved wooden statues and several oil paintings were brought from Vienna and Munich as a part of a grand restoration effort.
Especially noteworthy are three oil paintings of the Blessed Virgin Mary above the main altar.
Fifteen feet high, the paintings are changed at appropriate seasons of the year by being hoisted into place by a system of pulleys.
Visible under the high altar below are the bones of a woman martyr discovered in 1844 in the Roman cata-combs and brought to Cincinnati by Father Clemens Hammer, first pastor of Old St. Mary's.
Marian Devotion
Marian devotion, which takes so many different forms, has played a very important part in the life of this parish.
Known as the “mother of the Marian churches” in the area, Old St. Mary's features six elaborate shrines of our Lady under her various titles, and 10 circular murals that depict saints, such as Dominic and Theresa, who were known for their Marian devotion.
In the 1954 Marian Year, Archbishop Karl J. Alter designated the church as the official pilgrimage site for the archdiocese. Each week pilgrims would circle the aisles making the “Pilgrimage of Grace” devotion, reciting prayers at each of the Marian shrines.
Each year the parish continues to celebrate a magnificent May Crowning on Mother's Day. This year the church also hosted the missionary image of Our Lady of Guadalupe during the first two weeks of the Month of Mary.
These Marian devotions complement the church's unique liturgical offerings. The unity of worship is apparent here through the beautiful celebration of the Mass. In fact, St. Mary's is well known for its commitment to preserving the rich liturgical, musical and cultural heritage of Catholic tradition. Each Sunday, for instance, Mass is offered in Latin, German and English.
“Language is not a barrier to participation in the liturgy at Old St. Mary's,” says choirmaster Don Barrett, who has served the parish as music director and organist for the past 15 years. Old St. Mary's 9:15 a.m. Sunday Latin Mass features Gregorian chant and Renaissance music provided by choir members from the University of Cincinnati's acclaimed College Conservatory of Music.
“The music program at Old St. Mary's is all about liturgy in the finest tradition of the Catholic Church,” explains Barrett. “We feature a wide variety of traditional Catholic sacred music in its proper liturgical setting, and there is a high level of congregational participation at each Mass.” The Latin congregation, for instance, chants the familiar Gloria, Credo and Sanctus along with the choir.
The church's formidable organ, installed in 1929, contains 2,275 pipes, including some from the organ once used in Cincinnati's Music Hall. It remains today the city's largest pipe organ.
Old St. Mary's is a living church, an integral part of the spiritual inheritance entrusted to the Catholics of Cincinnati, an enduring statement of faith, hope and thanksgiving bequeathed by past generations as a challenge to those for whom they kept the faith.
In many ways Old St. Mary's Church, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, can be regarded as a shrine of the past, a powerhouse in the present, and a prototype for the future.
It is, and always will be, a unique part of Cincinnati's historical and architectural heritage.
Michael Rose writes from Cincinnati.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Michael S. Rose ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: On the Cathedral and the Twelve Apostles' Successors DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:BROOKLYN, N.Y.—A cathedral has importance as the church where the ministry of a bishop is made visible, Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago said in an address at the Cathedral of St. James in Brooklyn.
Noting that the term “cathedral” is derived from the “cathedra” — or “chair” — of the bishop, he said the placement of the bishop in this church enables people to see “what the purpose of the bishop is.”
Cardinal George said the office of a bishop is to teach, to ensure the availability of valid sacraments and to govern.
Recognizing the principle that the church is where the bishop is, the church becomes “most visible” in the cathedral where the bishop carries out the duties of this office, he said.
“It doesn't matter if some people don't like the bishop,” he said. Whether he is liked personally or not, a bishop still serves as “the place people can come when they want to be one in Christ,” he said.
Cardinal George made his remarks June 4 delivering the annual Compostela Lecture, which was inaugurated by St. James Cathedral in 1997 to mark the 175th anniversary of its founding as a parish church. It was designated a cathedral when the Brooklyn Diocese was established in 1853.
Cathedrals offer a beauty of setting that moves the emotions, mind and will to recognize in visible form the vision of the invisible “new heaven and new earth” and “new Jerusalem” promised in Revelation 21:1-2.
Introduced by Bishop Thomas V. Daily of Brooklyn, Cardinal George addressed “The Cathedral as the Seat of the Episcopal Ministry,” connecting the role of the cathedral to the sacramental principle of transforming material reality.
Although sacraments are available elsewhere, there are moments when they become “most splendidly visible” in cathedrals, he said.
Cathedrals offer a beauty of setting that moves the emotions, mind and will to recognize in visible form the vision of the invisible “new heaven and new earth” and “new Jerusalem” promised in Revelation 21:1-2, he said.
The bishop and the sacraments are not ultimate, but “signs of what is yet to come,” he said.
Cardinal George said cathedrals such as St. James existed “to make the new Jerusalem visible in such a way that we can come to know the invisible.”
Commenting on the role of art, he said cathedrals attract people by their beauty, and that artists created this beauty by transfiguring matter so that it conveyed a sense of the eternal.
But he warned it was possible to become “too much in love with the beauty of a cathedral” and lose awareness of the need to reach out.
Bishops should use cathedrals to respond to the “missionary mandate,” Cardinal George said. A bishop is obligated to reach out to everyone, even if he is aware he will be rejected by some, he said.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: The Silent Passion of D.W. Griffith DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:David Wark Griffith's silent classic, Intolerance, premiered on Sept. 15, 1916. It cost 20 times more than any other movie made up until then and featured many daring photographic and narrative innovations. By that time, Hollywood had already established itself as the one and only production center for star-driven, blockbuster movies with international appeal. Although there have been many important technical improvements since (e.g. sound, color, digital special effects, etc.), the industry's basic formula for success depends on a certain kind of storytelling which remains unchanged.
Griffith, more than any other person, invented the cinematic storytelling techniques that made Hollywood possible. At the height of his career he had more clout than Steven Spielberg and George Lucas put together. But his visionary artistry was often compromised by prejudiced attitudes about race.
When Griffith began directing in 1908, most movies were only 10 to 25 minutes long, and their action was usually confined to a single stagelike set with the actors photographed in head-to-toe shots. He moved the camera closer to the performers, cutting to different angles within a single scene to create dramatic tension. His films were often structured with more than one story line, and he cut back and forth between them to build suspense.
After directing 450 short films with great commercial success, Griffith decided in 1915 to make The Birth of a Nation, which had the length of most feature films today. Based on Thomas Dixon's best seller, The Clansman, it told the story of the Civil War and Reconstruction through parallel narratives about two families, one from the North and the other from the South, whose lives became closely linked. The movie was a box-office smash, the equivalent of The Titanic or The Star Wars sagas today. But African-American groups organized demonstrations against it, protesting its paranoid, racist view of history.
Although defensive about his work, Griffith had an attack of conscience, a situation as rare in Hollywood then as it is now. The son of a Confederate civil-war veteran, he wanted to vindicate himself. He expanded a smaller feature about contemporary social injustice and the working class (The Mother and the Law) to include three new stories set in different time periods. The result was the two-hour, 45-minute epic, Intolerance. The making of it became an act of personal redemption, and the director invested all his profits from The Birth of a Nation in the project.
The message of Intolerance is explained in an opening title card: “Each story shows how hatred and intolerance, through all the ages, have battled against love and charity.” Griffith cuts back and forth between the different time periods more than 50 times to establish thematic links. A recurring image of a mother (Lillian Gish) rocking a cradle, taken from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, is used as a symbolic connecting device to represent the cycle of life and death.
The modern story is the most interesting one. A young Irish Catholic couple (Mae Marsh and Donald Harron) work in a California factory. After a strike that ends in violence, the couple and their infant child are forced to move to the city. The wife remains devout, praying to the Virgin Mary regularly, but her husband falls in with a gang of thieves and is imprisoned. While he's in jail, a group of female reformers, led by the factory owner's unmarried sister (Vera Lewis), unjustly takes the baby away from its mother. Griffith condemns their action and, reflecting a kind of radical populism of the time, depicts progressive reformers as oppressing the workers as much as the factory owners.
Upon his release from jail, the Irish worker is arrested again, this time mistakenly, for the murder of a criminal gang leader (Walter Long). When the young man is sentenced to death, his wife and a Catholic priest continue to pray for him. In a series of oft-imitated scenes, Griffith masterfully builds suspense by crosscutting between the worker's walk to the gallows and his wife's attempts to win a pardon. Commitment to the Catholic faith is shown to make a real difference in the characters' lives.
The Judean story focuses on the persecution of Jesus (Howard Gaye) by the hypocritical Pharisees, whom Griffith links through editing to the modern story's self-righteous female reformers. We see our Lord perform the miracle at the marriage of Cana and protect the woman taken in adultery. The movie crosscuts between his crucifixion and the worker of the modern story on his way to the scaffold.
The French story is set in 16th century France during the persecution of Protestants and the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. A young Protestant couple (Margery Wilson and Eugene Pallette) provide the segment's rooting interest, and, as proof of Griffith's ecumenism, they're linked through editing to the Catholic pair of the modern story. The villains are the French royalty led by Catherine de Medici (Josephine Crowell), not the Catholic clergy who are shown saving Protestant children from slaughter.
The final story takes place in Babylon in the sixth century B.C. A Baal-worshipping priest (Tully Marshall) betrays his country's crown prince (Alfred Paget), “an apostle of tolerance and religious freedom,” to the Persians. Griffith gives his audience a heroine whose virtues he thought had contemporary relevance, an independent-minded female called the Mountain Woman (Constance Talmadge). She fights valiantly with the male warriors against the invaders. The crowd scenes and the battles are some of the most spectacular ever filmed, with strong emotional impact because of their connection to the main characters' personal lives.
Intolerance was a financial flop.
The continuous crosscutting between the various stories confused the audiences of that time. But when screened today by viewers conditioned by MTV, its techniques seem perfectly intelligible if, at times, heavy-handed. The performances appear intimate and subtle, dramatizing the movie's Christian themes with sincerity and passion. Present-day Hollywood could learn something from this neglected old master.
John Prizer writes from Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: The epic Intolerance broke cinematic ground with a Christ-centered theme ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORD: Arts & Culture -------- TITLE: Videos on Release DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:Race for the Record
Assembled by Major League Baseball Productions, Race for the Record documents the thrilling competition between Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals and Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs as they stalked Roger Maris' record of 61 home runs in a single season. From the start of the 1998 season, it looked as though McGwire had a good chance to overtake Maris' 37-year-old record. But Sosa didn't emerge as a potential competitor until June, when he had a HR hot streak. As the summer wore on, a pattern emerged: Sosa would overtake McGwire's home-run total; then, the St. Louis slugger would forge ahead. The final results weren't known until McGwire's final at-bat for the season. On Sept. 27, 1998, he hit his 70th home run. Sosa finished the season with 66 homers. To tell this brilliant chapter of baseball history, Race for the Record relies on TV clips from important games; historic footage of old baseball stars and games; and interviews with players, coaches and sportscasters. The video is an inspiring stroll down memory lane.
The End of the Golden Weather
Set in 1920s New Zealand and based on a stage play by Bruce Mason, The End of the Golden Weather is the bittersweet tale of two misfits — Geoff (Stephen Fulford), a 12-year-old boy, and Firpo (Stephen Papps), a highly eccentric gardener at a nearby seaside estate. Geoff is a dreamer. He loves make-believe, but is afflicted by two prosaic younger siblings (David Taylor and Alexandra Marshall), who delight in sassing him. Geoff's parents (Paul Gittins and Gabrielle Hammond) are much more sympathetic, but they don't really understand their romantic son. In search of solitude, Geoff encounters a derelict cottage that he uses as a retreat. But Firpo soon moves in. The intrigued Geoff makes a friend, but finds the going hard because of Firpo's odd behavior and the strictures of Geoff's father to stay away from the gardener. The End of the Golden Weather is a gentle story about a faraway time and a faraway place, but it has universal lessons for any family striving to rub along without too much conflict among its members.
Breaker Morant
Breaker Morant, an Australian jewel, was recently released in a new video edition. This enthralling anti-war drama, which is based on a real-life incident and a play by Kenneth Ross, assails the kangaroo court that tried Lt. Harry “Breaker” Mo-rant (Edward Woodward) and two fellow officers, Lt. Handcock (Bryan Brown) and Lt. Wilton (Lewis Fitz-Gerald), for murder as the Boer War was ending. The three Australians were members of the Bushveldt Carbineers, irregulars fighting for the British against the Boers in South Africa. Because the Boers used guerrilla tactics, the Carbineers increasingly employed similar techniques. Ugly situations sometimes occurred. One was the murder and mutilation of Morant's commanding officer. The enraged Morant, operating under a tacit code of military conduct, executed Boer prisoners and a German missionary in response. For political reasons, the British military put Morant, Handcock and Wilton on trial, with the expectation that they would be found guilty. Using flashbacks and flashforwards, the movie explores what occurred and asks a series of hard questions about the conduct of modern warfare. A riveting experience.
The Girl with the Crazy Brother
Directed by Diane Keaton as a 1990 TV special, The Girl with the Crazy Brother explores what happens to the McAllister family when the eldest child is diagnosed as a schizophrenic. Based on a novel by Betty Hyland, the story focuses primarily on Dana McAllister (Patricia Arquette), a teen-ager who is worried about fitting in at a new high school. Dana and her family have just moved to California because her father (Stan Ivar) has received a promotion. Everyone in the family is feeling unsettled, but Bill (William Jayne), a brilliant senior, seems to be the most upset. One night, when he and his mother (Shelby Leverington) are home alone, Bill begins hallucinating. After a traumatic scene, he's committed to an asylum, and the McAllisters must begin dealing with their boy's illness. Unlike much Hollywood product about mental illness, The Girl with the Crazy Brother treats the condition as an affliction and not as a whimsy. Although the video doesn't delve deep into the devastation of mental illness, it does touch on schizophrenia's life-altering power.
— Loretta G. Seyer
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Arts & Culture -------- TITLE: Columbine Father Testifies DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:Following is an excerpt from the testimony of Darrell Scott — father of two victims of the Columbine High School shooting in Littleton, Colo. before the subcommittee on crime of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, May 27.
Since the dawn of creation there has been both good and evil in the heart of men and of women. We all contain the seeds of kindness or the seeds of violence.
The death of my wonderful daughter Rachel Joy Scott, and the deaths of that heroic teacher and the other children who died must not be in vain. Their blood cries out for answers.
The first recorded act of violence was when Cain slew his brother Abel out in the field. The villain was not the club he used. Neither was it the NCA, the National Club Association. The true killer was Cain and the reason for the murder could only be found in Cain's heart. ...
I am here today to declare that Columbine was not just a tragedy - it was a spiritual event that should be forcing us to look at where the real blame lies!
Much of that blame lies here in this room. Much of that blame lies behind the pointing fingers of the accusers themselves.
I wrote a poem just four nights ago that express my feelings best. This was written way before I knew l would be speaking here today.
Your laws ignore our deepest needs / Your words are empty air. / You've stripped away our heritage. / You've outlawed simple prayer.
Now gunshots fill our classrooms. / And precious children die. / You seek for answers everywhere. / And ask the question “WHY”?
You regulate restrictive laws / Through legislative creed / And yet you fail to understand / That God is what we need!
Men and women are three-part beings. We all consist of body, soul and spirit. When we refuse to acknowledge a third part of our makeup, we create a void that allows evil, prejudice, and hatred to rush in and wreak havoc.
Spiritual influences were present within our educational systems for most of our nation's history. Many of our major colleges began as theological seminaries. This is a historic fact.
What has happened to us as a nation? We have refused to honor God and in doing so, we open the doors to hatred and violence.
And when something as terrible as Columbine's tragedy occurs — politicians immediately look for a scapegoat such as the NRA. They immediately seek to pass more restrictive laws that continue to erode away our personal and private liberties.
We do not need more restrictive laws. Eric and Dylan would not have been stopped by metal detectors. No amount of gun laws can stop someone who spends months planning this type of massacre.
The real villain lies within our own heart]s. Political posturing and restrictive legislation is not the answers.
The young people of our nation hold the key. There is a spiritual awakening taking place that will not be squelched!
... We do need a change of heart and a humble acknowledgment that this nation was founded on the principle of simple trust in God.
As my son Craig lay under that table in the school library and saw his two friends murdered before his very eyes, he did not hesitate to pray in school. I defy any law or politician to deny him that right!
I challenge every young person in America and around the world to realize that on April 20, 1999 at Columbine High School — prayer was brought back to our schools. Do not let the many prayers offered by those students be in vain.
Dare to move into the new millennium with a sacred disregard for legislation that violates your conscience and denies your God-given right to communicate with Him. ...
My daughter's death will not be in vain. The young people of this country will not allow that to happen.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Sons of Poland, Sons of the Church DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:Karol Wojtyla (now John Paul II) lost his mother and Jozef Zycinski lost his father during childhood. The two were also both raised in southern Poland, grew up in families with modest means and spent many years studying and teaching in Kracow. A brilliant student, Zycinski tutored classmates in math and physics in high school which also helped to subsidize his seminary tuition. In the meantime, his mother cared for a younger son and struggled to survive, financially, in the absence of her husband who died when Jozef was 12 years old.
Like Wojtyla, Zycinski was lively and yet a thoughtful, studious boy. As a teen-ager, he read philosophy and drama as a pastime.
When larger duties called Cardinal Karol Wojtyla away, it was Archbishop Zycinski who replaced him as the head of a club of philosophers, theologians, scientists and historians which meets periodically to discuss fundamental questions — questions of faith, life, the human person and God who oversees it all.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Could There Be Life on Other Planets? DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:During his recent trip to Poland, Pope John Paul II spoke at the University of Torun of the tension between faith and reason. Torun is the cradle of Nicholas Copernicus, one of the most important astronomers in history. What questions would Copernicus be asking today, and how would Christians respond? Register Radio News correspondent Rich Rinaldi recently asked Hugh Ross, who serves in the astrophysics department at California Institute of Technology. Ross is also a former pastor at Sierra Madre Congregational Church in California.
Rich Rinaldi: Some say that the Copernicuses of today are asking if there is life on other planets. How can faith and reason together inform this discussion?
Hugh Ross: I really appreciate what the Pope said about the fact that we need to be open to different interpretations on origins and the history of life here on planet Earth: not to simply look at naturalistic explanation but to look at the supernaturalistic explanation and let the evidence lead us where it should go.
I wrote a book on this a few years ago, The Creator and the Cosmos, where I pointed out that there are dozens of different design characteristics both for the universe and [for] the solar system that demonstrate — if we're appealing to the natural process alone — that there isn't the remotest chance of finding a planet like Earth with the capacity to support any kind of life. The odds that we are calculating currently [are] based on 110 different characteristics. ... However, that does not eliminate the possibility that God performed miracles on more than one planet. The point of all these probabilities is that it shows that it can't happen without supernatural input.
What are some of the more pronounced characteristics needed to have life on a planet?
Well, you need water in great abundance in all three states: frozen, liquid and vapor. Which means you have to have a planet at just the right distance from a just-right star.
If you move Earth a half-million miles closer or farther away from the Sun, the water is going to be put into [an exclusively] frozen state or [an exclusively] vapor state and life won't be possible.
Now, probably more fine-tuned is the fact that you have to have a star almost exactly the mass of our star, the Sun, or you simply won't have a stable enough flame to sustain life on a planet orbiting about it. It must be a bachelor star. It has to be what's called a co-rotation distance from the center of our galaxy.
We had Copernicus hundreds of years ago kind of upset the whole Christian community with his announcement that the Earth is not at the center. What we are now realizing is that both the Earth and the Sun, and our galaxy, are at a very special location — unique locations that permit life to be possible. Life's impossible if its location is the center of everything. Life is only possible if the Sun is about half-way up in the center of the galaxy and if our galaxy is in a very sparsely populated part of the universe.
Rich Rinaldi is director of Register Radio News.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Rich Rinaldi ----- KEYWORD: Education -------- TITLE: EDUCATION NOTEBOOK DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:How Virtues Became ‘Interactive Skills’
THE NEW YORK TIMES, June 1—“The nation's public schools, which taught the Bible routinely for generations but retreated from explicitly moral education in the individual-rights boom of the 1960s, are under growing pressure to offer ethics instruction as a way to promote safe learning free of harassment,” said education writer Ethan Bronner.
He reported that all 50 states have some form of character education being offered or under consideration, often using a mix of private and public money.
Interestingly, “objections about the nature of public moral education used to come most often from liberals who objected to the conservative Christian bent they detected,” said Bronner. But Columbia University's Jay Heubert has come to notice that conservatives have begun to complain in recent years about the promotion of such ideas as feminism and one-world government.
In order to escape criticism, educators seem content to sacrifice honesty. Bonner reported that a public school in La Jolla, Calif., decided not to refer to “values” or “virtues” in their character education program because those words are “too shaded by religion and open to objection by parents. So the program is called ‘interactive skills.’ No one complained.”
Academia Returning to Objective Truth?
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, June 4—It's not so surprising that statistics say a majority of modern philosophers reject any notion of objective truth about morality and such matters as the existence of God. But it probably did shock many to read a Journal editorial that announced a similar development in the field of history and other branches of the liberal arts.
The Journal said that contemporary historians, “rejecting the existence of what even Marxists recognize as objective fact,” dismiss much of what passes for history as coming to us “through the filters of gender, class and race consciousness.”
But the news is not all bad. The editorial is dedicated to announcing the existence of new scholarly organizations that are taking on the politically correct establishments in their respective fields. A newly formed group, known simply as The Historical Society, had hoped to attract perhaps 500 members by now, but already boasts 1,200 members. The group is “dedicated to the proposition that its discipline remains capable of agreeing on standards of evidence and holding civil debate.”
The Historical Society itself was inspired by a group with similar concerns about literature: the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics, which has just published the first issue of its magazine, Literary Imagination. Editor Sarah Spence told the Augusta Chronicle that the organization is not afraid to admit that “a lot of beautiful poetry was written by dead white men.”
Still another group, the Association for Art History, states its purpose as promoting the study of art “free of jargon, ephemeral ideology and doctrinal rigidity.”
Neglected Rural School Districts
USA TODAY, June 2—A computer-assisted analysis by the national newspaper found that, at a time when school construction is a booming $15 billion-a-year business, rural public school districts have been half as likely to build new schools as their city and suburban counterparts.
“Although decaying urban schools have grabbed the most attention — and government studies show that they are in the worst shape — the data suggests that those districts have an easier time raising the tax money needed to build new schools or to substantially renovate old ones,” said staff writers Anthony DeBarros and Tamara Henry. “Rural districts with lower property values are becoming separate and unequal outposts of peeling paint and neglect.”
Gary Keep, a member of a firm that designs new schools, said in the article, “There's a trend in those districts to spend less.” He explained: “Their taxes are lower, and their expectations are lower and they don't feel a need to provide at the level suburban districts do.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Education -------- TITLE: Fargo 'Failure' Holds Lessons for Pro-Lifers DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:FARGO, N.D.—Here on the Great Plains, an abortion battle has been under way for 18 years.
In 1981 the Fargo Women's Health Organization opened as the state's lone abortion clinic. It became the target of regular pickets and prayer vigils by pro-lifers who wanted to force it shut and make North Dakota the only abortion-clinic-free state in the wake of Roe v. Wade.
Today, instead of being clinic-free, the state is home to two abortion facilities.
Last summer, Jane Bovard quit as the longtime director of the Fargo Women's Health Organization, citing management disagreements with the clinic's owners. She then opened a new abortion clinic in downtown Fargo last August.
Pro-life leaders have since regrouped and evaluated their tactics in the failed bid to stop the new clinic from opening.
“We did some things wrong, and we did some things right,” said Tim Lindgren, state director of the Fargo-based North Dakota Life League. “Hopefully others can learn from our experience.”
Lindgren led the campaign against the opening of the second clinic last summer. Almost 6,000 signatures were presented to the Fargo City Commission opposing the new clinic and asking city officials to intervene. The group also held prayer vigils in front of the proposed location of the new clinic in this city of 77,000 people.
In a last-ditch effort to pressure city officials, more than 100 pro-lifers packed a Fargo City Commission meeting. Those testifying included students from the local Catholic high school and Father Peter Hughes, pastor of St. Mary's Cathedral, in whose the parish boundaries the clinic would be located.
The commission contended it could do nothing to stop the clinic, saying its hands were tied. Father Hughes responded, “When you stand before God, will you also say your minds were tied?”
Despite the organized opposition, the Red River Valley Women's Clinic began performing abortions in early August.
Fewest Abortion Providers
To pro-abortion organizations such as Planned Parenthood, the new clinic means more choices for women in North Dakota and western Minnesota. Lisa Marie Wright, communications director of Planned Parenthood of Minnesota-South Dakota, told the Register that access to abortion services in the Dakotas is severely limited.
According to Planned Parenthood, North Dakota and South Dakota are tied for the fewest number of abortion providers per 100,000 women of childbearing age (0.7 vs. the national average of 4). North Dakota (population about 638,000) is also one of only two states with no statewide Planned Parenthood organization or network of clinics.
Wright said only 8% of U.S. counties have abortion providers, with the percentage even lower in the Dakotas. This, she said, results in many abortion-minded women being forced to travel six to eight hours to reach an abortion clinic. The new clinic in Fargo, Wright argued, simply offers more choices but doesn't add to the number of women seeking abortions.
North Dakota Life League's Lindgren disagreed, citing figures from the state Public Health Department. Statistics show the number of abortions in North Dakota increased to 1,242 in 1998 from 1,219 a year earlier. Lindgren noted that the 1998 figures include only five months of abortions performed at the new Red River clinic.
He also said the new clinic's opening sparked a “price war” between the rival facilities: The original clinic dropped its price nearly $100, to $300, in an attempt to attract new customers.
‘Go Public’
North Dakota pro-lifers aren't feeling defeated, however. They said they have learned from their experiences and hope to help those pro-lifers elsewhere who want to stop new clinics from opening.
Lindgren said that it's important for pro-lifers to “go public” immediately with petition drives, press conferences, pickets and prayer vigils. He said Fargo pro-lifers succeeded in dominating the news coverage for several days during their campaign.
The group also organized downtown business people to oppose the clinic's opening. Some business leaders joined prayer vigils and expressed their opposition. He also claims the clinic's presence in the downtown business district contributed to the defeat of a proposed renovation of the area this year.
“Even the pro-choice people recognize that abortion is bad for business,” said Lindgren. “Our campaign is still having an impact, people came out and put pressure on the city.”
Sue Brawn, executive director of the Downtown Business Association, confirmed, “The businesses were very much opposed to it [the opening of the clinic] because of the disruption of business [and] because they would have demonstrations in front of their businesses. Crowds, no matter where you are, intimidate people from coming into an area. That creates some very big concerns for people.”
Lindgren admitted that the new clinic's opening caught pro-lifers off guard in one important aspect: They lacked an appropriate legal strategy.
He said pro-lifers had contemplated introducing a city ordinance banning abortion. Instead, they decided to focus on a statewide abortion ban that was introduced in the state Legislature this year, but did not come up for a vote.
“We mounted the right kind of effort in opposition, but what we didn't do was offer the city commission [another] legitimate legislative proposal,” Lindgren acknowledged.
Apathy Abounds
Those who regularly picket, sidewalk counsel and pray in front of Fargo's abortion mills said the new clinic's location has opened up opportunities for pro-lifers to minister to abortion-bound women and downtown business owners.
Kathy Kirkeby, a pro-life leader in Fargo, has sidewalk counseled outside abortion clinics for more than seven years.
“Obviously the opening of any death camp is a tragedy,” she said of the new clinic. “But we're more visible to the community down there, and people know that abortions go on there.”
Yet, she said the opening of new abortion clinic isn't as disappointing as the apathy she finds in the community and the community's churches.
“There are bars and restaurants downtown and people sit outside at tables and eat lunch while they're killing babies next door,” she said. “I see more and more apathy.”
Kirkeby's advice to pro-lifers fighting abortion clinics is simple: Be visible.
“You've got to get out in the streets in large numbers, pray and speak with lots of people,” she said. “And we need to get our churches to come out to the death camps and pray. If just one entire church would do this, the places wouldn't open in the first place.”
Greg Chesmore is based in Bloomington, Indiana.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Greg Chesmore ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Supreme Court Same-Sex Marriage Decision is 'Basically Unfair' DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:Defying a May 20 Canadian Supreme Court decision, the House of Commons in Canada overwhelmingly adopted a declaration that marriage is a union of a man and a woman. The 216-to-55 vote angered homosexual activists who lobbied for legalized same-sex marriages.
Before the vote, Archbishop Adam Exner of Vancouver spoke to Register correspondent James Mahony about the Court's decision, M. vs. H., which struck down a part of Ontario's Family Law Act that limited “spousal” support obligations to opposite-sex couples.
Mahony: You have no doubt seen news reports about the Supreme Court's recent
Archbishop Exner: I have seen some, not all of them. I think I understand what the Supreme Court did. It's a sad day for Canada, and a step backwards for Canadian society. And I'm saying that because society depends on the strength of the family.
This Supreme Court decision further erodes the strength of family in Canada, and that is sad. When family is strong, society is strong. When the family weakens, the whole society becomes weak, because the family is the smallest social unit of society, and the welfare of society is directly dependent on the health and strength of the family.
Secondly, I think it's a dangerous decision because it could well lead to a re-definition of marriage, which would be a further step backward.
Thirdly, it seems to me that in other instances and particularly in this instance, the Supreme Court seems to be taking on a legislative role, which I find difficult to accept.
You know, we elect a parliament to legislate, and here we have courts knocking down established legislation. That, in effect, is exercising a legislative role, which is not, I think, proper.
And finally, granting spousal benefits to same sex couples, I think, is basically unfair because it excludes other pairs in stable and economically dependent relationships, and to me, that's not fair ball.
And by “other pairs,” what did you have in mind?
A daughter and mother, for example, that are economically codepen-dent and that have lived together for a long time. There are many such groupings. Say, bachelor brothers, who are not sexually active. Why are they excluded? Because they're not sexually active? You know, this raises the question about equity. It just does-n't seem fair.
So, you feel the decision singles out those who are sexually involved for benefits, while excluding other couples?
Yes, it appears that way. Why exclude other pairs that are in stable relationships and are economically dependent on each other?
You know, I don't see why whether or not a couple is sexually active has anything to do with it. Whether with survivor benefits, or benefits of any kind, I think a stable relationship and economic codependence should be the determining factors, not whether or not people are sexually active.
What about those who claim the court's decision is “taking society in a new direction?”
Well, that may be, but I think it's the wrong direction. I have some strong convictions about the nature of marriage, which flow from natural law, I think. It's not just a faith belief, but it's also natural law and factual evidence that shows that children are brought into this world, for the most part, by people who are married, in a stable family relationship. And once that falls apart, I think we're asking for a lot of trouble.
Critics of the court decision say it equates marriage with other non-marital relationships. Does it?
It uses the word “spousal” for same-sex couples, and wrongly does so, because it gives a different meaning to the word. It erodes the very concept of spouse and the concept of marriage. A same-gender couple can't be spouses, and they can't be husband and wife. They're just not biologically equipped to be husband and wife. So why use husband-and-wife terms when referring to same-gender couples? It just doesn't make sense.
Yet, Canadian gay activists say the decision just recognizes equality by giving same-sex couples the same rights that opposite-sex “common law” couples already have.
But there's a difference between opposite-sex “common law” partners, and same gender couples, because even “common law” couples do bring children into the world, which same-sex couples cannot do. There's a fundamental difference there.
But generally, the matter of courts striking down legislation of this kind is of concern to you?
Certainly. This isn't the only case where the Supreme Court has struck down legislation. It's not the first time. I think it's a dangerous and non-democratic way of doing things. Parliament should make those kinds of decisions, and then if the general public doesn't like them, they can vote them out. But what can you do with a Supreme Court decision? Not much.
— James Mahony writes from Calgary, Alberta
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Dolly Is Old Before Her Time DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:Three years ago, Dolly the cloned sheep was born. Now, according to a recent issue of Nature magazine, it seems that Dolly's cells are 9 years old. Which is yet another example of the difference between being able to technologically effect an outcome, and knowing what that outcome will be. Apparently, a cloned mammal begins life with the same degree of cellular deterioration that is present in the donor cell; and Dolly's original cell came from a 6-year-old sheep.
SCIENCE OF LIFE
So much for sheep, but surely nobody is seriously advocating human cloning, are they?
Yes indeed they are, says Edward J. Furton at the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Boston. “The scientific community is moving forward on cloning humans, as long as they are not placed in the womb,” he says.
Cloning is a popular name given for somatic cell nuclear transfer, a process in which the nucleus containing the genetic blueprint of an animal is removed from a non-reproductive or “somatic” cell — an udder cell in Dolly's case — and put in place of the nucleus of an egg cell or ovum.
The teaching of the Catholic Church on cloning is both clear and consistent. The 1987 document Donum Vitae says: “Attempts to produce a human being without any connection with sexuality through twin fission, cloning, or parthenogenesis are to be considered contrary to the moral law, since they are in opposition to the dignity both of human procreation and of the conjugal union” (Nos. 1 and 6).
There are very few public voices in favor of the more bizarre scenarios surrounding the cloning of humans. Yet, the cloning of human embryos for research is currently being promoted. The rationale is that such embryos could be a source of healthy tissue for therapeutic use in diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, and brain and spinal cord disorders, as well as being a means to overcome sterility.
According to Furton, “The National Institutes of Health, the principal distributor of tax dollars in the U.S. for scientific and medical research, is pushing for stem cell research [cells obtained from human embryos] through somatic cell nuclear transfer in order to produce stem cells that will not be rejected by a patient's body.”
A fact sheet issued Jan. 28 by the health agency maintains that the federal ban on funding research using human embryos does not apply to research using human clones. It states: “The use of somatic cell nuclear transfer would be another way to get around the problem of tissue incompatibility for some patients.”
It said cloning has “the potential to revolutionize the practice of medicine and improve the quality and length of life.”
Lee M. Silver, a professor of molecular biology at Princeton University and author of the book Remaking Eden: How Genetic Engineering and Cloning Will Transform the American Family, is a vocal advocate for human cloning.
Asked about the threat to human dignity that cloning poses, Silver answered that “Somatic cell nuclear transfer — what people refer to as cloning — in vitro fertilization, and sexual intercourse, are all methods of creating a baby. When done intentionally, the purpose is always to have a baby to love. If cloning is considered to be treating human beings as a means rather than an end, then so is sexual intercourse with the intention of getting pregnant and having a baby. I don't see the difference because cloning will never create a particular human being. All it will do is allow the birth of an unpredictable boy or girl, who will happen to look like a parent looked a long time ago.”
But, as the Pontifical Academy for Life has maintained, cloning human beings is a very serious threat to human dignity, one danger being that a person's worth will be equated with his or her biological qualities rather than his or her personal identity.
Cloning for the possible therapeutic benefits that some individuals might receive is equally reprehensible, as it “would involve experimentation on embryos and fetuses and would require their suppression before birth — a cruel, exploitative way of treating human beings” (“Reflections on Human Cloning,” L'Osservatore Romano, July 9, 1997).
In general, any technological or medical advances must not usurp the primacy of human life. As put in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “It is an illusion to claim moral neutrality in scientific research and its applications. On the other hand, guiding principles cannot be inferred from simple technical efficiency, or from the usefulness accruing to some at the expense of others or, even worse, from prevailing ideologies. Science and technology by their very nature require unconditional respect for fundamental moral criteria. They must be at the service of the human person, of his inalienable rights, of his true and integral good, in conformity with the plan and the will of God” (No. 2294).
David Beresford of Lakefield, Ontario, is pursuing a doctorate in biology.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: David Beresford ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Assisted-Suicide Foes Cry Foul After Hasty Vote in California DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:SACRAMENTO, Calif.—Law-makers in California have managed to push forward an assisted suicide bill by means of “bald-faced political game playing,” according to a bishops' conference official.
David Pollard, associate director of policy at the California bishops'conference, said, “It has been obvious from the beginning of the process in the Assembly that there were very strong political forces determined to move the bill through irrespective of the mind of the Assembly as a whole.”
The so-called Death with Dignity Act would allow doctors to fulfill requests by terminally ill adults for drugs to end their lives. It was publicly supported by seven organizations and opposed by 28 registered opponents, including the Western Services Workers Association and the California Medical Association.
Pollard said that Assembly hearings were marked by an unusual intensity of feeling against the bill. “Group after group of disabled people, Spanish-speaking farm workers, people from all over the state spoke against the bill and asked them to realize what they were doing when we have 7 million uninsured people and [the health care system] is setting up a way to cut costs,” he said.
Nonetheless, using California Assembly procedural rules, supporters of the measure put the bill on an “inactive list,” after it passed the judiciary committee in April and the appropriations committee in late May.
The bill can be considered again in January. Said Pollard, “There will be a flood of bills that will be trying to move before January 31,” increasing pressure to pass the controversial measure and decreasing the effectiveness of the bill's opposition.
‘There were very strong political forces determined to move the bill through irrespective of the mind of the Assembly as a whole.’
The assisted suicide bill was passed at a special session of the appropriations committee about 6 p.m. May 27, according to Carol Hogan, spokes-woman of the National Catholic Conference in Sacramento. “This occurred in spite of the fact that at about 3 p.m., the committee chair, Assemblywoman Carole Migden [a San Francisco Democrat], informed the lobbyists and media gathered in the hallway that the bill would not be taken up that day.”
“They even replaced committee members with other [legislators] who would be more likely to vote their way,” Pollard said.
Hogan said that the maneuverings were done to accommodate the bill's authors, Dion Aroner, D-Berkeley, and John Longville, D-Rialto, and to ensure its passage through the committees.
Aroner's office defended the procedures used to pass the bill. A spokesman for his office, Hans Hemann, said Migden's announcement of a truncated debate and vote was unexpected.
“We were surprised, too, that it wouldn't be heard,” Hemann said. “We were then told that we could get a rule waiver for the bill to be heard on Monday, since the Republican leadership didn't want it to be heard on Friday. But then the Republicans blocked the rule waiver for Monday. Believing we had the votes to pass [the bill] that day, we convinced the leadership to put the bill back on the Thursday evening agenda, along with about 20 other bills.”
Hemann added that decisions about the schedule of committee meetings and rule waivers are made at the leadership level between Assembly Democrats and Republicans, not committee members.
One strong opponent of the bill is Dr. Joanne Lynn, president of Americans for Better Care of the Dying in Washington, D.C.
“We must change the health care system — not make it easier to ‘choose’ to be dead,” said Lynn, who is an authority on quality improvement for terminal care. “Assisted suicide is a sideshow that is taking our attention away from urgently needed health-care reform. Seriously ill people should be confident of having a comfortable and meaningful time as their lives come to a close.”
A May 26 editorial in the Los Angeles Times pointed out that the California proposal “does far too little to ensure that patients have an essential right: to get quality end-of-life care. Ensuring that right is a task state legislators must face first.”
This view reflects the teaching of the Catholic Church that “the dying should be given attention and care to help them live their last moments in dignity and peace” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 2299).
Dr. Christina Puchalski, an assistant professor at George Washington University School of Medicine and a nationally known proponent on the role of spirituality in health and in end-of-life care, questioned what the Death with Dignity Act would do to doctor-patient relations.
“I've taken the Hippocratic Oath to help people cope with their suffering, not to end their lives,” she told the Register. “I think this act would cause a major shift, a very unhealthy shift, in the doctor-patient relationship. The act is not about compassionate care giving, but rather a technical way to avoid caring for those in pain and depression,” said Puchalski.
She recommended looking at the other problems of the terminally ill. “We need to question how much money health care organizations are spending on the futile prolonging of life with technology and how much money could be spent to improve palliative care for dying patients, to give them good quality of life at the end and help them to find meaning,” Puchalski said.
She added, “My hope for the future is that spiritually assisted deaths will be just as common as physically assisted births are today.”
Said Pollard of the Assembly's maneuverings, “It is a total disregard of the normal process which is meant to be an honest-to-God discussion and voting process, deliberated, weighed and balanced and leading to an objective vote. That simply hasn't happened.”
Martha Lepore is based in Coronado, California.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Martha Lepore ----- KEYWORD: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel of Life DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:In the opening homily of Pope John Paul II's visit to Poland, he said the struggle against the sin and the culture of death must take place first in our own lives, then in the world around us, through love.
Dear brothers and sisters, do not let yourselves be “frightened in anything by your opponents,” as Paul tells us in the First Reading. Do not let yourselves be intimidated by those who point to sin as the way to happiness. You are “engaged in the same conflict which you saw and now hear to be mine” (Philippians 1:30), adds the Apostle to the Nations.
This is the struggle against our personal sins and especially sins against love: these can take on disturbing dimensions in the life of society. Man will never be happy at the expense of another man, destroying his freedom, trampling people's dignity and cultivating selfishness.
Our happiness are our brothers and sisters, whom God has given to us and entrusted to us, and through them, our happiness is God himself. For “he who loves is born of God and knows God, for God is love” (1 John 4:7-8).
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Did You Know? DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:In June, Texas Governor George Bush signed his state's parental notification law requiring minors to have a parent's permission to obtain an abortion, meaning that some 33 states now have such laws. The Child Custody Protection Act, currently being debated in Congress, would make it a federal crime to take another person's minor daughter out of one of those states to obtain an abortion in another state.
A sample of the debate from Judiciary Committee hearings:
• Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) called the bill “a thinly veiled attempt to chip away at constitutionally protected rights.”
• Eileen Roberts testified that she didn't find out about her daughter's abortion until the 14-year-old became depressed and needed hospitalization. Roberts asked Congress to “reject the eccentric notion that any adult stranger has the right to abduct our minor-aged daughters and take them to another state for a secret abortion.”
----- EXCERPT: Facts of Life ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Life Notes DATE: 06/20/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 20-26, 1999 ----- BODY:House Votes Against RU-486
ASSOCIATED PRESS, June 8—The House has voted for the second year to forbid the government to test, develop or approve abortion-inducing drugs such as the French RU-486 pill.
Reported the Associated Press, “Although the 217-214 vote [June 7] was a victory for House abortion foes, the bill's chances for becoming law this year appear dim.”
However, Rep. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said that there is something “terribly wrong” when the Food and Drug Administration uses taxpayers' dollars for “drugs that are designed to kill unborn children.”
Rep. Christopher Smith (R-N.J.) was reported as saying, “Come up with drugs that heal.”
Sex, Lies and Television
PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS, June 7—America has become absorbed in a debate over the epidemic of violence in the media, said the Philadelphia Daily News , but the argument has been going on for decades. “Remember when Congress took on TV Westerns in the early '60s?” it asked.
“But when it comes to an issue that some observers consider to be equally vexing — sexuality on television — these same politicians seem perfectly willing to ignore it.”
The report suggested that that it was perhaps because Hollywood's most vocal critics were “responsible for keeping last year's mature-rated hit, The Bubba and Monica Show, on the air for so long.
However, there are several organizations unwilling to let Washington set the stage and the pace when it comes to TV viewing. Among those the paper cited is the Parent's Television Council.
“L. Brent Bozell's Parents Television Council, which has targeted advertisers of The Howard Stern Radio Show, recently announced the launch of its Green Light Film Review as a resource for parents seeking ‘wholesome’ entertainment fare,” said the Daily News.
“The project promotes family-friendly feature films and made-for-TV movies, including the recent CBS mini-series, Joan of Arc, and hopes to encourage Hollywood to ‘voluntarily refrain from aiming at children those products that glorify sex, drug use and a culture of disrespect and death,’” said the report.
Young Women and Breast Cancer
CHICAGO SUN TIMES, June 6—More than 8,400 women under 40 will, this year, be diagnosed with breast cancer even though it is not usually a young woman's disease, reported the Sun Times.
“More than three-fourths of women diagnosed with breast cancer are over 50 and nearly half are over 65, according to the American Cancer Society. Only 4.7 percent are under 40,” said the report.
Of the women under age 40 who will get cancer, “some will have a family history, or a gene mutation that causes breast cancer. But many have no risk factors.”
Breast cancer is more dangerous in young women, said the report, because it typically is detected at a later stage, and is more aggressive.
This is one reason why survival rates are lower among younger sufferers compared to older women.
The report suggested that beginning at age 20, a woman should examine herself every month, and “have a clinical exam by a doctor or nurse every three years.”
Even though a lump frequently turns out to be benign, or a cyst, it shouldn't be ignored, said the report.
The Sun Times missed one point: An American Life League statement reports that there have been at least four studies between 1977 and 1992 that conclude that the use of birth control pills by young women, before their first pregnancy, increases the incidence of breast cancer by as much as 88%.
“This data clearly shows that providing birth control pills to young girls — one of the chief aims of the Health and Human Services Title X program — contributes to one of the major medical problems for women, breast cancer. We are calling on any member of Congress who votes in favor of ‘Title X’ funding, to justify why they feel it is more important to facilitate teen sex than to protect our young women from breast cancer,” said Judie Brown, president of the American Life League.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Plan for R-rated Movies May Leave Teens Unfazed DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—President Clinton intensified his domestic offensive against Hollywood with a new initiative and a message for theater-owners: Get serious about ID checks.
But media watchdogs and under-17 moviegoers are skeptical of the president's plan to reform theaters. They say it's not likely to keep kids out.
“The movie rating system, adopted by the Motion Picture Association of America in 1968, can be a useful tool for parents, but only if its main restrictive rating, R, is effectively enforced,” the president said June 8.
Robert Regier, a senior policy analyst at the Family Research Council, said that Clinton's moral crusade against the film industry is suspect, given his close relationship with Hollywood's elite.
Regier said the new enforcement of ratings is “a step in the right direction,” but argued that because it doesn't stop kids at theater doors, it falls short. “After buying tickets at the counter, kids can go wherever they want,” Regier said. “Clinton should ask owners to take tickets at theater doors.”
On a recent Saturday evening at the Union Station mall in Washington, D.C., the Register asked young people just how difficult it would be for them to get into an R-rated film.
Fabian Braneli, a 17-year-old exchange student from Germany, has spent the past year living in Texas with a host family.
“In El Paso, I am almost always carded,” Braneli said. But he added, “If [the president] really wants to keep kids out of R-rated movies, he should make sure they are carded at the entrance to theaters, not at ticket counters.” Braneli said that when he and some friends took younger dates to an R-rated movie, they simply bought all four tickets.
One of Fabian's friends, Robert Bettermann, also from Germany, is 16. He says he has picture ID, but is never asked to show it when going to an R-rated movie. After consulting with one-another, his friends agreed that Bettermann looks younger than 17.
Laura, a 14-year-old from Idaho, recounted the time that she and five of her friends went to see an R-rated movie and were turned away. Not a big disappointment, however, since she had already seen the film with her parents at home. Her folks, she said, aren't all that concerned about the movies she sees.
The President's Plan
Movies have been under increased scrutiny since the Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colo., April 20. A recent Gallup poll said that 73% of the Americans surveyed think that movies and television are at least partly to blame for the rampages of teen-agers with guns.
Clinton's plan for stricter enforcement of ID checks is the latest of several recent presidential engagements in the culture wars (see chart). It was explained at the White House when Clinton gathered with executives from the National Association of Theater Owners to announce that the association's members — who control 65% of American screens — have agreed to cooperate, on a voluntary basis, with the president's plan to enforce ratings.
The threefold initiative involves:
• a new national policy under which theater owners will require photo identification for young people seeking admission to R-rated movies;
• an educational program for parents about the ratings system;
• theater owner support for a national study on the causes of violence.
In remarks prepared for the occasion, the president said, “Under the policy announced today, the theater owners association states that from now on, all of its members should require photo identification at the box office of young patrons not accompanied by a parent or guardian seeking admission to R-rated films.”
Brent Bozell, chairman of the Media Research Council in Washington, said of the plan, “It's a good step, but it's symbolic. We have to find a way to confront the real problem, the garbage that's being produced. Even some PG-13- and PG-rated movies contain terrible messages for young people.”
Steve Schwalm, director of operations for the Parents Television Council in Washington, expects little to come from the president's initiative. He pointed to a discrepancy between the way the federal government dealt with tobacco restrictions, where vendors are prosecuted for selling to minors, and initiatives aimed at regulating the film industry. “What they did with cigarettes is quite a bit different, by enforcing it with the power of law,” Schwalm said.
Meanwhile …
Rashid, a freshman at a public school in Maryland, had come to Union Station to see the newest Austin Powers movie. Is he ever asked to show ID?
“Sometimes,” he said, “but usually when I go to see an R-rated movie, they just size me up and let me in. It depends on the place, and what kind of person you are.”
He said, “You won't have a problem if you can come up with excuses like, ‘Oh, I forgot my ID at home,’” and mentioned that when he has been turned down a couple of times, a friend or a stranger in the theater has then bought the ticket for him. He said his parents don't mind what he sees, “as long as they've taught you the difference between reality and fiction.”
What do theater owners and movie distributors think of those who criticize the plans?
National Association of Theater Owners spokeswoman Mary Ann Grasso and other officials at the organization refused to speak to the Register. But one distribution chief, quoted in the June 15 edition of The New York Times, said, “The dirty little secret of the distribution business is that with 16, 18, 24 plexes, kids show up and buy tickets for a PG-13 movie and see the one that's R-rated. The staff is at the concession stand and the ticket office, not the theater door. Kids will see whatever they want to see.”
“This is a Band-Aid solution,” said Schwalm. “The real issue is content.” Schwalm called the plan to enforce age restrictions on filmgoers “a little too little, a little too late.”
“These restrictions have been here since 1968 and only now they are enforcing them,” he said.
Brian McGuire writes from Washington, D.C.
John Prizer contributed to this article
----- EXCERPT: Hollywood Under Fire on Two Fronts ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian McGuire ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Catholic League Scores Victory In Fight With Fox TV DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:LOS ANGELES—Family and religious advocacy groups make a lot of noise about what they don't like on television. But does it do any good?
Judging from the howls from one of the makers of Fox TV's hit animated series, “The Simpsons,” the answer is yes. Mike Scully, the show's executive producer, recently complained to the Los Angeles Times about the network's buckling to pressure from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.
“I'm angry,” Scully told the Times. “People can say hurtful things to each other about their weight, their intelligence, their sexual preference and all that seems up for grabs. But when you get into religion, some people get nervous.”
The incident in question involved a parody of Super Bowl commercials that made fun of the Catholic Church. It ran during a “Simpsons” episode that aired after the real-life Jan. 31 Super Bowl, also televised by Fox.
While mother Marge Simpson and her daughter, Lisa, were watching the game, a commercial came on which showed a rundown gas station where a car drove in, and the driver honked his horn. Three suggestively clad young women appeared and began to service the car. One of them wore a cross around her neck. A voice-over boomed: “The Catholic Church: We've made a few changes.”
“The joke was an observation on crazy Super Bowl commercials, not a comment on the Catholic Church,” Scully told the Times. “We had the idea for the content of the commercial first. Then we pitched several tag lines. One of the writers pitched the Catholic Church line, and it got the biggest laugh.”
Catholic League President William Donohue told the Register he had been “getting nowhere” in persuading Fox to respond to his organization's concerns about anti-Catholic bias. As a last resort, he put on the front page of the March edition of the Catalyst, the group's monthly newsletter, the names and business addresses of Roland McFarland, Fox vice president of broadcast standards, and another network official.
“We got a couple of hundred letters,” said 42-year-old Scully, who calls himself a lapsed Catholic. As a result, when that particular “Simpsons” episode was rerun last month, the word “Catholic” was deleted from the voice-over, leaving only “the church.”
Scully was asked to make the change by McFarland, one of the recipients of the Catholic League's letters. When the producer argued against it, he claims he was told by McFarland to change it to “Methodists, Presbyterians or Baptists,” anything but Catholics.
“When I asked what would be the difference changing it to another religion, he [McFarland] explained that Fox had already had trouble with Catholics earlier this season,” Scully told the Times.
Scully, McFarland and other Fox officials refused to talk to the Register about the incident.
The Catholic League also complained about a gag in a November “Simpsons” episode in which Bart asks Marge: “Mom, can we go Catholic so we can get communion wafers and booze?” She replies: “No one is going Catholic. Three children are enough, thank you.”
Two of this season's episodes of Fox's “Ally McBeal” also attracted the League's attention. Alleged priest pedophilia was the subject of the offending gags.
Donohue told the Register he wants to defend the Catholic Church from “defamation, not criticism.”
The Catholic League president contended that there's a “double standard” used to judge his organization's work. “When other groups like the National Organization for Women, Gay and Lesbian Association of Doctors and Dentists and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People register protest, no one cries censor,” he said.
But if Catholics stand up for themselves like everyone else, people unfailingly claim they're getting preferential treatment. “All we want is a fair hearing,” Donohue maintained.
“Catholics have been target practice for Hollywood because they refused to defend themselves,” Brent Bozell, chairman of the Alexandria, Va.-based Media Research Center, told the Register. “Bill Donohue is a hero of mine. He stood up and declared, ‘Enough is enough.’”
Thirty-five years ago most people's values were formed by churches, schools or families. Nowadays television has become the primary purveyor of morality, and Donohue knows where the Catholic League stands in relation to this new environment. “Our goal is to change the culture,” he says. “Our vehicle is to defend the Catholic Church.”
John Prizer writes from Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: Hollywood Under Fire on Two Fronts ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Pope Bounces Back To Finish Poland Trip DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:WARSAW, Poland—Pope John Paul II bounced back from the flu to end his marathon trip to Poland, a demanding 13-day trip complete with beatifications and 20 stopovers that attracted 10 million of his countrymen.
It looked as if the Pope would be slowed to a stop when he came down with the flu during the packed schedule of the June 5–18. But on June 16, he returned to his tour, surprising many people by his stamina.
The illness did force him to postpone many activities in his trip. The delay also caused him to cancel a trip to Armenia that he had planned for on the way back to Rome. He spent June 15 recovering at the Archbishop's Residence in Krakow — his old home before becoming Pope — but returned to the public spotlight that night.
Joaquin Navarro-Valls, director of the Holy See's Press Office, told reporters, “The Holy Father has not had a fever, so much so that he got out of bed at 9 p.m. and went to a window of the Archbishop's Residence in Krakow to greet the many faithful on the square.”
However, his scheduled visit with the Patriarch Karekin I, Catholicos of all Armenians, who is ill, “will not take place at this time. The Pope hopes he will be able to visit [Armenia] in the near future,” said Navarro Valls.
John Paul's stamina throughout his Polish visit was the subject of much comment in Poland. Dominican Father Jan Kloczowski, director of the Tygodnik Powszechny weekly newspaper, which published many of Karol Wojtyla's poems and essays, said that the Pope draws strength from the crowds.
“In 1991 he shouted at us; in 1997 he caressed us,” wrote Father Kloczowski. “And now happy.”
On the day of his fever, crowds surrounded the residence, playing instruments, singing songs, and calling for the Pope's presence at the window. “Father, Father,” they cried, “Speak, speak.”
Finally, visibly moved, the Pope came to the window and invoked the Virgin Mary.
Youths shouted: “Stay, stay! Get well, get well!”
When he returned to his schedule the next day, John Paul reportedly told some Sisters he had “eternity” to rest.
Sister Eufrosia, one of the Polish nuns who care for the Pope at the Vatican, said she told him, “I am worried about you, Your Holiness.”
“I am also worried about my holiness,” the Pope responded.
Love
Traveling by airplane, helicopter and car, the Pope went from one end of the country to the other in his trip, speaking on several themes along the way.
Throughout the trip, he returned to several themes again and again. The most prominent was that of love — the love of God the Father and love between people.
In Gdansk, birthplace of the Solidarity union that challenged communism, he urged the Poles to love one another. “There is no freedom without solidarity,” he stated, recalling the slogan of his 1987 visit, “but there is no solidarity without love.”
In Elk, one of the poorest zones of the country, he extended this love to the poor. “Let no one be without a roof over his head, or bread on the table; let no one feel alone, abandoned or uncared for,” he told the crowds on June 8.
He added human life issues in his visit to Lowicz, a small city to the west of Warsaw: “Human life is sacred. No one, under any circumstance can claim for himself the right to directly destroy an innocent human being. God is absolute Lord of man's life, created in his image and likeness. Human life, therefore, has a sacred and inviolable character which reflects the very inviolability of the Creator.”
Sanctity and Martyrdom
The other major theme that punctuated the Pope's visit was sanctity and martyrdom, particularly at two separate beatifications of a total of 109 martyrs and the canonization of a Polish princess. The Holy Father also often made reference to the victims of the Nazi and communist regimes.
On June 6, he celebrated Mass at Pelpin, where, during World War II, half of the town's priests were killed by the Nazis. The Pope said their memory lives “because it was from their lips that our generation heard the word of God and, thanks to their sacrifice, experienced its power.”
The next day, in Bydgoszcz, about 100 miles south of Gdansk, John Paul remembered centuries of martyrs from the victims of Roman persecution, to Father Jerzy Popieluszko, a local priest kidnapped and killed by the communists in 1984. He made special mention of mothers who even today die to bring life to their children.
“The world needs people who have the courage to love and do not retreat before any sacrifice, in the hope that one day it will bear abundant fruit,” the Holy Father said.
One of the most dramatic moments of the visit was the beatification of 108 martyrs of the Nazi persecution in Warsaw on June 13. These brave men and women “gave their lives for Christ, in order to possess life forever in his glory,” the Pope said. Many were killed because of their action to help the Jewish people during the war. One mother died in the place of her pregnant daughter. Another martyr, Father Stefan Wincenty Frelichowski, martyred in Dachau, was beatified June 8 in Torun.
The final witness of sanctity in the Pope's visit was St. Kinga, whom he beatified on June 16 in Stary Sacz. Though she wanted to consecrate her life as a virgin, circumstances forced her to marry. This didn't stop her resolve — she convinced her husband to live a chaste life within their marriage. This heroic virtue became the springboard for the Pope's homily: “I speak in a special way to you, young people: Defend your inner freedom! Let no false shame keep you from cultivating chastity!”
The Sacred Heart
On June 11, in Warsaw, the Holy Father signed a document commemorating the 100th anniversary of the consecration of the human race to the Sacred Heart by Pope Leo XIII.
“From the Heart of the Son of God who died on the cross flows the perennial source of life, which gives hope to every man,” John Paul said. “From the Heart of the crucified Christ the new humanity is born, redeemed from sin. The man of 2000 needs the Heart of Christ to know God and to know himself, and to build the civilization of love.”
Mary
The Holy Father ended his pilgrimage with an unplanned stop at the shrine of Jasna Gora, in Czestochowa. There he prayed at the icon of the Black Madonna. “I come to Jasna Gora as a pilgrim in order to bow before Mary, Mother of Christ, to pray to her, and to pray together with her. I wish to thank her for the care extended in these days of my pastoral ministry in the Church of my homeland. Mary has been with us throughout this pilgrimage, interceding to her Son for spiritual gifts for us so that we may be able to ‘do whatever he tells us.’”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Movements and Bishops Urged to Work Together DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:ROME—Ecclesial movements can contribute a lot to the life of parishes and dioceses, but it takes understanding and work from both sides.
That is one of the messages that came out of a major seminar June 16–19 that attracted Church officials and representatives of six of the largest ecclesial movements.
“Being closed in within one's own group can cause one to become estranged from the context of parochial and diocesan life,” Bishop Stanislaw Rylko, secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, told participants. “The risk is to consider the community a sort of refuge where one hides in order to elude the problems of family and social life.”
The seminar, “Church Movements and New Communities and the Pastoral Care of Bishops,” was held at the request of Pope John Paul II and promoted by the Council for the Laity, with the help of the Congregations for Bishops and for the Doctrine of the Faith. It was held at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum, run by the Legionaries of Christ.
The seminar drew more than 100 bishops, cardinals and Vatican officials, as well as representatives of groups such as Emmanuel Community, Neocatechumenal Way, Focolare Movement, and Communion and Liberation.
Guzman Carriquiry, undersecretary of the Council for the Laity, called it an extraordinary event “because it is difficult to be able to gather more that 100 bishops when it is not a question of a synod.”
Bishop Rylko, at one of the seminar talks, said, “The movements are a gift from the Spirit to the whole Church. And a gift always implies work; it challenges the recipient to responsibility. …
“It is well known that in the Pope's pastoral plans, the ecclesial movements occupy a special place — ‘one of the gifts of our time, which from the beginning of my pontificate I have pointed out as a reason for hope for the Church and for men.’”
Bishop Rylko stressed how the birth and growth of the movements “was not free of question marks, uneasiness and tensions; perhaps there was some presumption and intemperance on one hand, and not a few prejudices and reservations on the other. It has been a testing time in fidelity, an important occasion to verify the authenticity of the charisms.”
Among the limitations, defined by some as “teething problems” in the movements, Bishop Rylko referred to “the absoluteness of the movement in terms of membership and a sense of superiority over existing associations, accompanied by the desire to impose their own group on others.”
Bishop Rylko noted too that movements can be hampered by bishops and priests “who are influenced by their lack of knowledge of the movements … or by pastoral prejudices and mistrust. Too often, in fact, isolated experiences are generalized to disqualify the whole.”
Other problems include rigid concepts of ecclesial communion which admit of no diversity within the Church, he said. “Each (move-ment's) charism needs some free space, because only in this way can it achieve at the desired results.”
The bishop added, “The phenomenon of the ecclesial movements, in fact, challenges everyone: pastors and movements. Each one must assume his own responsibility. … The priest, moreover, must be very aware that the movements and other lay associations are not ‘a decorative addition,’ but an integral part of parish life and a significant indicator of the religious vitality of our communities.
“Our experience reveals how the charisms of the movements have helped many priests to live fully the richness of their vocation.”
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said that bishops “have the grace to discern grace.” He stressed their job was “not to extinguish the Spirit” but to help the movements to “purify” their practices.
Cardinal Lucas Moreira Neves, prefect of the Congregation for the Bishops, said of the phenomenon of the ecclesial movements: “Their missionary dynamism, programs and projects, proposals, apostolic formation and spirituality — are all universal. This fact contains richness, but it is very often the reason for much perplexity: How will they behave in the particular churches? Won't they want to impose methods that are not adaptable to different local realities?
“More than a few bishops … have difficulty in accepting the movements. They have the impression that, not being born in the soil of their own particular Church, this movement cannot be an active part of it.”
He added that movements must adapt themselves to the particular needs of their locality. “Without these complementary requirements there will always be crises.”
Antonio Gaspari is based in Rome.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Antonio Gaspari ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Solving the No. 1 Domestic Problem DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:When he saw an answer to the problem he sees at the heart of many of today's social ills, this syndicated columnist and former Time magazine reporter decided to dedicate his time to promoting it. Together with his wife, Harriet, he started a group named Marriage Savers. Recently he spoke with Register Radio correspondent Rich Rinaldi.
Rich Rinaldi: What are the consequences of divorce?
Michael McManus: Well, children of divorces are twice as likely to drop out of school, they are three times as likely to become pregnant out of wedlock, six times as likely to commit suicide. So if we can reduce the divorce rate we can reduce most of these other social problems.
To put it differently, the disintegration of marriage is the central domestic problem of our time and if we can reverse that, we can in fact solve many of the domestic problems of our time.
What is the current divorce rate?
It's about 40% of first marriages and about 60% of second marriages.
Why, in your opinion, is it so high?
The most fundamental reason is poor communication, poor ability to resolve conflict. The good news is we can teach those skills. Those are skills that can be taught just like you teach people to read. The marriage preparation process should be on … teaching those skills.
What is your answer to that problem?
The core idea of it can be summarized in one sentence, that in every church we have couples with strong marriages who can be of help to other couples but have never been asked, never been inspired and never been trained to come along and share their life history, their life experience.
For example, every church has someone who has lived through adultery and survived it and still remains married. Those couples have something to say to those couples that are thinking of getting divorced today because “she found out that he was cheating on her.”
“We know adultery breaks trust. We have been there and done that, but we are here to tell you that trust can be restored. We have been a mother and a father to our children all these years and we even have a better marriage than when we began.”
That kind of advice is not being given routinely to couples whose marriage gets into trouble. The reason is that the clergy have not seen that they have a treasure … sitting in those pews in front of them. These couples with good marriages can be recruited to help other couples make it.
How did you become involved in trying to help other couples with marriages?
I am a syndicated newspaper columnist and I began writing articles about what could be done to cut the divorce rate in the early ‘80s. Eventually newspapers that would publish my column began asking me to speak to local clergy groups, and so I began putting the idea together in a speech and they roundly ignored [me] for a long time.
But finally in 1986, the clergy of Modesto, Calif., decided to accept my suggestions, that it's actually possible to consistently take steps to push down the divorce rate.
We know some things work. For example, Catholics were the first to require couples to take six months before a wedding could take place in a church, they had to go through marriage preparation, and they were the first to require couples to take a premarital inventory. This is a questionnaire that can predict with about 80% accuracy who will divorce and about a tenth of the couples who take the inventory decide, “Whoops, this is not the person I should marry.”
So I challenged Protestants, “Why don't you consider requiring all the couples getting married in your church to take an inventory like this? … Why not also consider some time minimum?” Protestants normally say, “Well, we have three concealing sessions.” But that can all be done in a week or two, I said.
Quickie weddings are in no one's interest and it seems to me that if Catholics can require six months of marriage prep, maybe you Protestants can agree to a four-month minimum — some time element.
Some areas’ Protestants are ahead of Catholics. In my church, which is a Presbyterian church, we have trained 50 mentoring couples to administer this inventory and to talk through the issues with young couples. So they come to our home for five evenings and we talk through 150 issues that the inventory brings up.
How successful has your program been?
We have had, in 109 cities now, the clergy of Catholics and Protestants and in some cases the Jewish faith cooperate to say they were not going to do marriage in the same old way anymore, and were going to require at least a four months of marriage prep, that you take a premarital inventory, that you meet with an older couple and also train couples whose marriages nearly failed to help other couples be successful. Where this has been adopted, the divorce rates are coming down.
Dalton, Ga., is down 21% in a divorce rate in just one year. Kansas City, in its suburbs, is down 35% in two years. Divorces are nationally down only 1% in 12 years, so a place like Eau Claire, Wis., where a Catholic priest and a Protestant signed a covenant there from 30 denominations, they dropped 7% in one year, and that's seven times better than the nation — in a twelfth the time that's 84% better.
How much of a change is this for Catholics?
In Fond du Lac, Wis., there were five Catholic priests who signed the policy. … One of your reporters … out there said, “What's going to be different here?” The priest said the policy isn't changing but they were going to have to train 100 couples. You see, that's the new idea and it really is a good idea. People are willing to serve but they do have to be asked. The training isn't expensive. We've trained couples in our church.
What's involved in the training?
Well, they learn how to give an inventory, a questionnaire and how to talk through the issues with a couple. The inventory focus, which was developed by Sister Barbara Markie at the Archdiocese of Omaha, is so outstanding that Protestants are using it.
It asks questions on not just communications, conflict and money — sort of obvious questions — but for example, questions on marriages as a covenant. Are you committed to this relationship regardless of circumstances? Do you believe that forgiveness is an important part of your relationship? Questions like that. It also asks questions on cohabitation which is the major cancer of marriage, and it enables a mentoring couple or pastor to talk through why couples should consider moving apart.
The study which came out in February shows that people who live together before marriage increase their odds of divorce by 46%. It's the worst possible preparation for marriage. The church, I mean the Catholic and Protestant churches generally, has been rather embarrassed by this issue and have not addressed it.
What kind of support have you found for Marriage Savers?
We have a national advisory board that includes Cardinal Keeler, archbishop of Baltimore; George Gallup Jr., of Gallup Poll; and Joan Brown Campbell of the National Council of Churches. We also work with Southern Baptist LifeWay Christian Resources and the National Association of Evangelicals. So we have conservatives, liberals and Catholics together. This is what you may call the religious middle. …
Your wife also works with you.
We do this together and just in the last month we traveled to Ventura, Calif.; Tallahassee; Boston; Madison; and Culpepper, Va. In Madison, Wis., we were invited by the speaker of the House to address the whole Wisconsin legislature — the Wisconsin Assembly, as it's called up there. What I said was, “Each of you are elected leaders and are well-known in your communities. While your primary job is that of passing laws, you also have a bully pulpit and you can call together the clergy in your community and encourage them to create a marriage policy in you own community and help put down the divorce rate.”
Rich Rinaldi is director of Register Radio.
----- EXCERPT: Marriage Savers creator aims to cut divorce rate ----- EXTENDED BODY: Michael McManus ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: U.S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:Aging Sisters Go Into Elder Care Business
THE OREGONIAN, June 14—In a telling development on the state of women's religious life in America, the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, “rang in a new era” recently by announcing plans to convert much of its provincial headquarters property into a retirement home for both the sisters and, as an income generator, the general public.
“The sisters, whose 240 Oregon Province members average 70 years of age, will share their property with retirees who buy into a development with housing, recreation and health care,” wrote reporter Janet Goetze.
The project, dubbed “Mary's Woods,” will meet a need for senior housing in the area and “enable the province to support its growing number of retirees,” reported Goetze.
The retirement community will include about 265 villas, condominiums and apartments to be built on about 25 acres. The center will have 85 assisted-care units.
The project is a far cry from the child care programs and schools that followed the arrival in Oregon of French-speaking Holy Names sisters from Canada in 1859. They bought the land for what will become the retirement village in 1906.
The Persistence of Faith Over Doubt
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, June 15 — “In the aftermath of the Enlightenment, of modernization, secularization and globalization, we are left with one perennial, religion. This has been a problem for intellectuals, who, so attuned to the spirit of progress, cannot understand this atavistic phenomenon.”
With those words, reviewer Gertrude Himmelfarb takes up God's Funeral, the latest work of biographer, novelist and journalist A.N. Wilson.
The book focuses on 19th-century English “doubters” and “disbelievers,” who are treated favorably by Wilson who seems to be as “God haunted” as “the figures in this book,” wrote Himmelfarb.
She goes on to fault Wilson for omitting some of the most important religious movements of the 19th century, including evangelicalism, opposition to the slave trade and Britain's Labor party.
Observed Himmelfarb: “We are asked to admire Francis Newman, who exposed the ‘vice of Bigotry’ that infects Christianity; but not his far more distinguished brother [Catholic convert and Cardinal] John Henry Newman, who is faulted for being dogmatic and obscurantist.”
Yet, adds the reviewer, “Wilson cannot rest content with his doubts and disbelief. Although not a Catholic, he is drawn to the Catholic modernists at the turn of the century who tried to retain a sense of spirituality and even a respect for the Church while discarding revelation and dogma.” The movement, of course, was condemned by Pope St. Pius X.
In his book, Wilson observes that “most churchgoers today are in some respects Modernists.” The author also concedes that in spite of all the hindrances to belief, “the Christian thing, the Christian idea” persists.
Himmelfarb added: “The news of God's funeral, it turns out, is premature. He may seem to be dying, may even be reported as dead, yet somehow, miraculously, he is always resurrected.”
A Tower of Scriptures
RELIGION TODAY, June 15—Portions of the Bible are now available in more than one-third of the world's languages, reported the Protestant wire service in a story about the United Bible Societies, an umbrella organization for groups dedicated to making the scriptures available in vernacular translations throughout the world.
The figure might seem small, especially in light of the combined missionary activities of all the world's Christian denominations. Yet, the challenge of translating the ancient texts into often obscure tongues is an awesome one, the report noted.
The Bible has been published in 2,212 of the world's 6,500 languages, the organization claimed. It announced that three new translations became available in 1998, said the report. They were prepared for Baoule speakers in Cote d‘Ivoire, the Konkomba people in Ghana, and Kyrgyz speakers in Kyrgyzstan. Four New Testament translations were published in 1998 for the Ari in Ethiopia, the Siriano of Colombia, Loozime speakers in Cameroon, and the Tipperah in Bangladesh, the group found, said the article.
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: California Catholics Reach Out to Prisoners DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:SACRAMENTO, Calif.—A delegation of Catholic leaders, including two bishops, took another step toward its goal of assessing inmates’ pastoral care by visiting its fourth California state prison since December.
Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Gabino Zavala led a 13-member delegation of clergy, women religious, and other lay administrators, who toured two maximum security facilities at the California State Prison in Sacramento June 1.
Bishop Zavala, liaison to the California Catholic Conference of Bishops and Prison Chaplains, told the Register that the delegation hopes to work with local parishes to create a greater Catholic presence inside prison walls. More priests are needed to celebrate Mass and the sacrament of reconciliation, he said.
“We want to meet men and women who are incarcerated. They deserve respect and dignity and adequate education and medical programs,” the bishop said.
Auxiliary Bishop Richard Garcia of Sacramento, who joined the delegation, said that prisoners explained their greatest needs: more frequent family visits, conjugal visits with spouses, a child-friendly area for children, and opportunities to share their talents.
As for their spiritual needs, the prisoners praised the ministry of Deacon Dennis Merino, state prison chaplain. “They would clone him if they could,” Bishop Garcia says, adding, “they need a Dennis in each (of the three) facilities.”
The prisoners can attend weekly Mass celebrated by priests in the Sacramento area, as well as memorial services for family members, Bible studies, devotions, and support groups, if their work schedule permits. Sacramento Bishop William Weigand and Bishop Garcia celebrate Mass at the prison on holidays and special feast days.
However, Bishop Garcia notes the lack of Spanish- and Vietnamese-language Bible studies at the state prison. And Deacon Merino, chaplain, wishes his corps of eight volunteers would expand to 30.
Prisoners also lack adequate medical care at times. The chaplain told of an inmate who broke his ankle, which later became infected by a surgically inserted plate. The infection was not treated, and gangrene set in. Fortunately, the plate was removed before amputation was needed, and the ankle is now healing, he says.
Despite such problems, Deacon Merino believes the visiting delegation gave the inmates “hope that people care about them, and that their oppressive environment,” where gang- and race-related fights are common, will become less violent.
The Diocese of Sacramento has hired Deacon Thomas McGill as a full-time program coordinator to develop prison ministry, recruit and train volunteers, and serve as liaison between parishes, the diocese, and more than 63 detention facilities in the diocese.
Deacon McGill currently volunteers at California State Prison as a facilitator for two support groups, and conducts Communion services, Stations of the Cross, and other services there. He is a retired police officer and former supervisor in the Sacramento County jail system.
Deacon Merino notes the need for more full-time chaplains in state prisons — a problem due to staff reductions made by the California Department of Corrections.
The chaplain also wants the state legislature to amend California's three-strikes law, which has put some felons behind bars for life — sometimes for nonviolent crimes.
The deacon tells of prisoners whose third offenses were stealing a shirt, a pizza, and a bicycle. Another was drug-free for 23 years, then given a life sentence for possessing two ounces of cocaine. For another, the third strike was refusing to pull over his car for a police officer.
Although the long-term effectiveness of the Catholic delegation's efforts to advance inmates’ general welfare is uncertain, the group can already point to improvements in prisoners’ pastoral care.
After the delegation visited the women's prisons in Chowchilla, the staff has allowed priests to distribute the Eucharist there weekly, says Sister of St. Joseph, Suzanne Jabro, who was part of the delegation. The inmates had not seen a Catholic chaplain in a year, she adds. Since their Dec. 1 visit there, members of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious have organized monthly visits to the prison. “The women asked us to return,” says Sister Jabro, who directs the Los Angeles archdiocesan Office for Detention Ministry.
The delegation also visited San Quentin State Prison in March and Lancaster State Prison in December. Future visits are planned for Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City and state prisons in Corcoran and Soledad.
Bishop Garcia anticipates an increased Catholic presence in California's detention facilities and believes more Catholics can be recruited to volunteer for prison ministry. “Prisoners are members of God's family,” he says. “They need more compassion than others.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joyce Carr ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Benefactors of JPII Center Go to Rome to Give Update DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:ROME—Major benefactors of the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center were in Rome in mid-June to present their annual report to the Holy Father. Cardinal Adam Maida, archbishop of Detroit and the driving force behind construction of the new center, led their pilgrimage.
The John Paul II Cultural Center, set to open in Washington, D.C., in November 2000, will be dedicated to presenting the Catholic faith and its impact upon history and culture, especially as seen in the life and teachings of Pope John Paul II.
The center, being constructed on a site near The Catholic University of America and the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, will be a 100,000-square-foot complex, divided into various galleries that will present the faith using the latest in high-technology, interactive museum designs.
Through an arrangement with the Vatican Museums, the center will also present traditional Christian art from the Vatican Museums collection. The center will also house scholars-in-residence who will be involved in various intellectual projects, including lectures, seminars and conferences, to present the Catholic faith, as well as serving as a resource for media inquiries. (See “Point Man for the John Paul Center,” Register, June 13–19.)
The center has a budget of $62 million for construction, initial operations and an endowment. Benefactors who give at least $100,000 are made “trustees” of the center, and were invited to accompany Cardinal Maida on the trip to Rome.
Fund raising to date has gathered almost $47 million from nearly 50,000 individual donors and parishes.
“This center will be a place where Catholics and non-Catholics alike will share, celebrate and deepen their knowledge of our Catholic faith tradition and how it has influenced and shaped our culture and society,” said Cardinal Maida in his address to the Holy Father on behalf of the benefactors.
The Holy Father spoke of the initiative as “advancing dialogue and mutual enrichment between the worlds of faith and culture.”
The benefactors of the center, drawn from across the United States, with a high concentration of Polish-Americans and members of the Detroit Archdiocese, are largely motivated by a desire to contribute to something that will continue the legacy of Pope John Paul II.
One benefactor told of craftsmen approaching the Washington construction site in order to ask to work on the project. “They just want to something for the Pope,” he said.
“I am very proud of my involvement in the center,” said benefactor Richard Janes, together with his wife, from Bloomfield Hills, Mich. “I ask people, ‘Are you Catholic?’ and if they say yes, I say, ‘Let me tell you about the John Paul II Cultural Center.’ As a matter of fact, I even tell non-Catholics about it! This center is not for today or for tomorrow but for centuries, carrying forth the message that John Paul II has been preaching these last 20 years. The world desperately needs to hear that message.”
Other benefactors see the center as strengthening the links between the Church in the United States and Rome. The Menghini family of Kansas City, Mo., spearheaded efforts to raise over a half million dollars for the center in their archdiocese.
“We want to help build a connection to the Vatican right here in the United States, to emphasize the Roman dimension of our faith,” said John Menghini. “We want a place that presents the doctrine of the faith, so that, for example, when people in the media want to ask a question on the Catholic faith, they can go to the cultural center.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond De Souza ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Cardinal Humeís Mourned By Pope and Britons of All Faiths DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:MANCHESTER, England—Pope John Paul II has led tributes to Cardinal George Basil Hume of Westminster, England, who died June 17. He was 76.
In a message to English Catholics, the Holy Father praised the cardinal's “great moral character, significant and unflinching commitment to ecumenism and firm leadership which helped people of all beliefs face the challenges of the latter part of this difficult century.”
The cardinal, who led English and Welsh Catholics for 23 years, was due to be buried in the Cathedral of The Precious Blood, Westminster, following a Requiem Mass on Friday, June 25.
Cardinal Hume stunned his nation in April when he revealed he had cancer, and that it was “not in its early stages.”
He told them, “I have received two wonderful graces. First, I have been given time to prepare for a new future. Secondly, I find myself — uncharacteristically — calm and at peace.” He pledged to work as long as possible and was only confined to a hospital since early June.
One of his last public engagements was a visit to Queen Elizabeth II to receive the Order of Merit, a personal honor. Past recipients included President Eisenhower, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela and Albert Schweitzer.
Five years ago the cardinal welcomed the queen to vespers at his cathedral. It was the first time a British monarch attended a Catholic service since the Reformation.
Queen Elizabeth, who always referred to him as “my cardinal,” said “he would be remembered for his outstanding contribution to the Christian life of this country.”
Labor Prime Minister Tony Blair said: “He was goodness personified, a true holy man with extraordinary humility and an unswerving dedication.”
Anne Widdecombe of the opposition Conservative Party said he had brought the Catholic Church into the mainstream of British life. Widdecombe, who was received into the Church six years ago, said the cardinal was instrumental in her conversion, “My journey had ground to a halt. There were certain doctrines I couldn't accept and in literally 15 minutes he dispelled the doubts of a lifetime.”
Cardinal Thomas Winning of Glasgow, Scotland, praised the cardinal's combination of good sense and abundance of wisdom, adding, “Although he never allowed compromise to enter into his dealings with people, he also gave the Church's teaching as it should be, without alienating those who didn't agree with him.”
Cardinal Hume was born in the North East English city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, March 2, 1923, to a French Catholic mother and a Scottish Protestant father who was a heart surgeon.
Educated at Ampleforth, a Catholic boarding school run by Benedictine monks in the North of England, he entered the order as a novice at the age of 18 and read history at Oxford University. He obtained his licentiate in theology at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.
He was ordained at Ampleforth on July 23, 1950, and 13 years later became abbot.
In 1976 he was the surprise choice to lead the Catholic Church in England and Wales when he was appointed archbishop of Westminster, succeeding the late Cardinal John Heenan.
He was ordained bishop and installed as the ninth archbishop of Westminster on the Feast of the Annunciation, March 25, 1976. Two months later Pope Paul Vl gave him the red hat, making him the 10th English cardinal since the Restoration of the Hierarchy in 1850.
His stewardship was marked by several landmarks. In 1982, it was his diplomacy that ensured that John Paul became the first pope to visit Britain, despite the diplomatic difficulties caused by Britain's war with Argentina over the Falklands-Malvinas Islands.
Responding to the Pope's words “Be generous,” he welcomed many Anglican clerics and people into the Catholic Church after the Church of England voted to ordain women in 1992. Prominent politicians and lay people were also welcomed, including the Duchess of Kent, a member of the British royal family.
Supporters of the cardinal claimed his relationship with the Pope and his balancing act between the Church's “liberal” and “traditional” wings fended off any intervention from Rome into the life of the local Church. His biographer, Peter Stanford, even claimed it was the cardinal who led opposition to the appointment of an 0pus Dei priest as bishop of Northampton in the early 1990s. But others now believe his ecclesial diplomacy has left a dangerous legacy.
Rod Peade, the British-based Australian editor of the international journal Christian Order said, “He has turned a blind eye to a whole series of abuses. I cannot believe that so many English people who were concerned about this, are now saying what a good man he was. It is typically English [that] they don't want to say anything negative about the dead.”
Peade cited the example of Father Jude Bullock who publicly admitted in 1997 that he didn't believe in God, but was left in place as parish priest and school chaplain.
“The superficial feel-good factor attached to the cardinal is enough for many to turn a blind eye to the endless scandals, spiritual corruption and loss of souls which have occurred under him,” said Peade.
In 1996 many Catholics were outraged when it was revealed by the British Catholic weekly, The Universe, that Tony Blair, a committed Anglican and then-leader of the opposition, regularly received the Eucharist while attending Mass with his Catholic wife, Cherie, at a church in the cardinal's diocese.
Blair issued a public apology to Catholics and promised not to receive Holy Communion again.
The cardinal told the newspaper's editor, Joe Kelly, “One wonders what purpose that story served.”
But to others he was a hero. The cardinal is credited with helping to persuade the Thatcher government to reopen several miscarriage of justice cases including “The Guildford Four” and “Maguire Seven” — Irish people based in Britain who were wrongly imprisoned for IRA bombings
Annie Maguire, of the “Maguire Seven” and one of those whose name he helped to clear said, “We will never forget what he did for our family. He is our savior.”
The cardinal was also instrumental in founding “The Passage,” a homeless refuge at his own cathedral. This is the center the late Diana Princess of Wales would visit in secret. But the cardinal was also a regular, despite his heavy schedule, as one homeless man told the BBC this week, “He was the kindest person I ever met.”
Paul Burnell writes from Manchester, England.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Paul Burnell ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Catholic Bishop Welcomes NATO As Orthodox Tell Milosevic to Quit DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—A Catholic bishop in Kosovo said he welcomed the arrival of NATO peacekeeping troops and would continue to promote understanding among people in the region.
Meanwhile, the Serbian Orthodox bishops have a called on Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic and his government to resign.
“Now that NATO troops are here we are released, and I'm expecting that the situation we have today is going to improve even more,” said Auxiliary Bishop Marko Sopi of Skopje-Prizren, through a translator in a June 16 telephone interview from the city of Prizren in southern Kosovo.
Skopje is across the border in Macedonia.
“We have here so many different faiths — Catholic, Orthodox, Muslim and different nationalities — Albanian, Serbian, Croatian … I will try to bring them together and improve understanding among them,” Bishop Sopi said.
“This is the first time I can communicate with anyone by telephone” since the NATO bombing began in late March, Bishop Sopi said. He spoke over a cellular phone because phone lines to the area were cut by Serbian forces early in the conflict.
Bishop Sopi said he had only learned of the peace agreement through the media.
“I expect that it will be implemented with time. We hope and we pray for that,” he said.
Bishop Sopi is responsible for ethnic Albanian Catholics in Macedonia and southern Yugoslavia, including Kosovo. He said he remained in Prizren throughout the conflict, occasionally visiting priests, nuns and lay people at local parishes.
He said. “Personally, my life was never in danger. But for some of the priests from the different parishes, yes.”
Bishop Sopi said during the conflict he had urged the people “to help each other if they had extra food or could take someone into their house. But my biggest prayer was for peace and that peace would come as soon as possible.”
“I can say that more people attended Mass during that time than during the normal times,” he said.
“All the church personnel in different parishes, all of them stayed. None of them left during this time. They were all very busy … caring for the elderly and sick, taking care of people who stayed,” he added.
At one parish, he said, two priests along with members of the Sisters of St. Vincent and the Missionaries of Charity “were working all the time, night and day with the elderly and the sick people.”
In a move that coincided with arrival of NATO's forces in Kosovo, the Serbian Orthodox Church demanded the resignation of President Milosevic at a June 15 meeting of the Church's synod. The bishops called for the change in leadership “in the interest and the salvation of the people, so that new officials, acceptable at home and abroad, can assume responsibility for … ‘national salvation.’”
The bishops’ appeal gained wide coverage in the Western media within hours of its release, but was not immediately reported by Serbia's state-controlled media.
The bishops expressed concern that the withdrawal of Serb troops would leave Serbian Orthodox holy sites — including the historical seat of Serbian Orthodox patriarchs in Pec, western Kosovo — unprotected, and vulnerable to vandalism by ethnic Albanians.
The bishops appealed to Kosovo Serb civilians — thousands of whom who are fleeing in fear of attacks by ethnic Albanians — “to remain in their homes and not abandon their shrines, sustained by the words of Jesus Christ — the one who endures till the end will be saved.”
For Serbs, several parts of Kosovo are the cradle of their national religious and cultural identity. According to many commentators, Milosevic has exploited Serb attachment to Kosovo to strengthen his power in Yugoslavia over the past decade.
While warning that Yugoslavia's “isolation … on the international scene” could not be overcome as long as the Milosevic government remained in place, the Serbian bishops apparently took issue with the recent indictment of President Milosevic by the U.N.'s International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague for crimes against humanity. “The final justice is with Our Lord, and not in the hands of a court in The Hague,” the statement said.
The Orthodox Church is by far the most important institution in Yugoslavia to demand President Milosevic's resignation. (From combined news services)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:Group Says Shroud's Pollen is Middle Eastern
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, June 15—A group of Israeli scientists has concluded that plant imprints and pollen found on the Shroud of Turin — revered by many as Jesus’ burial shroud — support the premise that it originated in the Holy Land, said the AP.
The linen, brought to France by a 14th-century crusader and enshrined since 1578 in the cathedral of Turin, Italy, bears a faint yellowish front and back image of a man with thorn marks on the head, lacerations on the back and bruises on the shoulders. A number of imprints of plants surround the figure.
Traces of pollen taken from the shroud are from plants found in Israel and neighboring countries, including the bean caper and the tumbleweed appearing on the shroud, Uri Baruch, an expert on pollen at the Israel Antiquities Authority, was quoted saying.
AP reported Baruch refused to discuss the authenticity of the shroud, but said the findings of the Israeli scientists show that it was probably from the Holy Land.
Skeptics have used carbon dating to claim that the linen postdates the crucifixion by more than a thousand years — to the 13th or 14th centuries — while others say that carbon tests have sometimes been proven to be inaccurate, and that the testing of the shroud may have been contaminated.
British Magazine ‘Overstepped the Mark’
SELECT MUSIC AND BEYOND, July—The editor of the glossy British music magazine apologized for a cover photo featuring a singer in a mock pose of sanctity, including the stigmata.
Select, edited by Catholic-educated John Harris, pictured Gay Dad lead singer Cliff Jones with a halo and stigmata on his palms on the front page, several times inside the magazine, and on billboards around Britain.
The whole band is also pictured with loaves and fishes, and Harris admitted that the editorial staff had also attempted to depict the band members turning water into wine — a shot that the photographer was not able to pull off.
Harris said in the article, “We did not mean to shock and insult people with these pictures, but we have obviously overstepped the mark.”
The good news to come out of episode is that England's Christians are no longer standing by for the casual, often blasphemous, use of Christian imagery in advertising. Harris reported that in the first week of the current edition, the magazine received 10 times more complaints than ever before.
Another Miracle for Padre Pio
THE UNIVERSE, June 13—Another venerated figure of the 20th century on a rather speedy track to sainthood is the recently beatified Padre Pio.
His cause may have been aided by a 73-year-old Neapolitan man, paralyzed following a stroke, who claims to have been miraculously cured earlier this month thanks to the intervention of Padre Pio.
Antonio Trabucco's doctors were said to be “astounded” by the rapid cure, which is almost unheard of in elderly victims of a severe stroke, according to the British Catholic weekly.
The newspaper reported Trabucco's account of the miracle: “Padre Pio appeared to me at 3 a.m. and asked me, ‘What are you doing here?’ Then he told me to get up and walk! I got up and began to walk. All the time I heard the voice saying, ‘You must walk.’ So I walked … the whole night long.”
Padre Pio, an Italian Capuchin priest who bore the stigmata and was known for his ability to read souls, was credited with many miracles in his lifetime and with one, officially, since his death, which was necessary for beatification. Canonization as a saint requires an additional miracle — which Pio's many supporters hope may have been supplied by the event in Naples.
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Innovations Help Bolster Honduran Aid DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras— Amid the destruction that still plagues Honduras, Father German Calix of Caritas has found “the one positive side of Mitch.”
Along with the floods, death and destruction, the aftermath of last autumn's Hurricane Mitch carries with it an opportunity to focus on the concept of self-development urged by directives of Pope John Paul II, Father Calix said.
It's a theme that has been echoed by the Latin American Bishops in such documents as Nueva Evangelization, the result of the bishops’ 1992 Santo Domingo Conference.
“But there is a fear that because of the situation with Mitch, people will become more dependent,” he added.
“We are also trying to do away with a paternalistic attitude from the Church,” said Father Calix, speaking in his office in downtown Tegucigalpa. “Our philosophy is that people should be working for their own self-development.”
To combat an attitude of dependency, the Church in Honduras supports volunteers working in their own neighborhoods to help others. It also supports the concept of “food for work” programs and long-term, low-interest loan programs being initiated nationwide to help families rebuild their homes, Father Calix said.
For example, in the municipality of Oropoli, a Catholic Relief Services-administered project helped residents break ground for 71 new houses washed out by a nearby river, according to Catholic Relief Services spokes-person Kerry Hodges.
Women were making bricks for the homes, designed to have two bedrooms, a kitchen, a patio and a latrine. Catholic Relief Services hopes to have the homes completed by August, Hodges said.
In El Negrito-Morazan, in the Department of Yoro, Jesuits are working with the Irish government and the aid agency Concern Worldwide in 23 communities to rebuild some 397 homes destroyed by Hurricane Mitch-related flooding and landslides.
Thoughout El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, at least 9,000 were confirmed dead and 13,000 were missing as a result of the storm. In Honduras alone, a country of some 5.6 million, at least 6,000 were killed in the storm and 12,000 remain missing. Two million homes were damaged or destroyed.
Residents are allowed to take out low-interest loans to pay for the legal costs of taking ownership of the land where their homes will stand, said Jesuit Father Patrick Wade, a U.S. native and pastor of the Catholic parish in El Negrito who has worked in Honduras for about 30 years. “There is always the idea that, without guidance, some work for themselves, and not for the good of the community,” Father Wade said.
He agrees with many priests who say that the reliance of foreign governments on church agencies to carry out storm-related aid programs has temporarily derailed the Church's chief occupation. “Since the hurricane,” he said, “we have not had much time to do evangelization with people. We've been too busy dealing with the results of the storm.”
Evangelization of the poor was stressed in the January post-synodal apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in America, the Church's blueprint for today's America, both north and south of the Rio Grande.
In it, Pope John Paul II calls service, “a concrete testimony of the preferential love for the poor which the Church in America nurtures. She does so because of her love for the Lord and because she is aware that ‘Jesus identified himself with the poor.’ In this task which has no limits, the Church in America has been able to create a sense of practical solidarity among the various communities of the continent and of the world, showing in this way the fraternal spirit which must characterize Christians in every time and place.
“For this service of the poor to be both evangelical and evangelizing, it must faithfully reflect the attitude of Jesus, who came ‘to proclaim Good News to the poor.’ When offered in this spirit, the service of the poor shows forth God's infinite love for all people and becomes an effective way of communicating the hope of salvation which Christ has brought to the world, a hope which glows in a special way when it is shared with those abandoned or rejected by society” (No. 18).
A Culture of Interdependency
But along with millions in international aid promised to Honduras, the natural disaster also carried the possibility for greater corruption and the creation of a culture of dependency, Father Calix said.
So far, Caritas International has helped with about $1 million in emergency and reconstruction aid. Another $2 million was in the process of being transferred to Honduras in late April, with the promise of some $4 million in reconstruction aid for the remainder of 1999.
Catholic Relief Services reported in February it had sent about $230,000 to Caritas in Honduras for construction or reconstruction of homes lost and damaged by the hurricane and for administration of that aid; Caritas also distributed about $608,839 worth of medicines and supplies from the Catholic Medical Mission Board to about 77,000 people and programs, according to a Catholic Relief Services report.
After the hurricane, Christian Foundation for Children and Aging received thousands of dollars in unsolicited donations for victims of Hurricane Mitch, said Pedro and Carolyn Ferradas. Based in Costa Rica, the couple oversees Christian Foundation for Children and Aging projects in most of Central and South America.
In May, the group Christian Foundation for Children and Aging planned to send $44,000 to projects affected by Hurricane Mitch, Mrs. Ferradas said. Similar amounts have been sent to affected projects in Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala since December, she said. The private aid agency has also received and is distributing three large shipping containers full of clothing and other material aid, which it does not normally accept.
To combat potential corruption, agencies like Catholic Relief Services and the Christian Foundation have worked to make sure aid is carefully documented.
Catholic Relief Services’ Hodges saw this first-hand. during a visit in February.. “At the warehouses, they have a list of families already shown to have been affected by Mitch, and who need food supplies,” she said. “They had I.D. cards, and when their name was called, they would sign a form and then pick up their rations. It was quite efficient.”
Aid for those assisted by the Christian Foundation for Children and Aging is purchased through the parish, and is delivered with the help of volunteers.
Every liempira (the Honduran national currency) spent is accounted for, said Father Patricio Larrosa, as he displayed a three-ring notebook holding dozens of pages of neatly handwritten lists back at the parish rectory.
Organizers hope to direct as many efforts as possible to solutions that will allow Hondurans to return to a culture of self-sufficiency.
As the Holy Father writes in Ecclesia in America, “This constant dedication to the poor and disadvantaged emerges in the Church's social teaching, which ceaselessly invites the Christian community to a commitment to overcome every form of exploitation and oppression. It is a question not only of alleviating the most serious and urgent needs through individual actions here and there, but of uncovering the roots of evil and proposing initiatives to make social, political and economic structures more just and fraternal” (No. 18).
Liz Urbanski Farrell of Buffalo, N.Y., recently returned from Honduras.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Liz Urbanski Farrell ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:Blessed John XXIII?
NEWSWEEK, June 21—“In the last 900 years, the … Church has found only three popes worthy of veneration as saints,” observed religion editor Kenneth Woodward in an article on the possibility that Pope John XXIII may be the next pope to “make the grade.” John, who was elected in 1958 and called the Second Vatican Council, may be beatified by as early as next year, said Woodward.
John's story is all the more interesting in that “normally, Vatican officials do not consider potential miracles until after the Pope has declared the candidate ‘heroically virtuous.’ In John's case, however, Vatican officials recently announced that a miraculous cure had been attributed to him: a young nun recovered from a life-threatening stomach ailment after a relic of John's was placed on her body.”
While a panel of nine theologians agreed earlier this year that Pope John did exhibit the virtues required in a saint, “their judgment has yet to be ratified by a panel of cardinals — and confirmed by the Pope,” said Woodward
“Never before,” said Jesuit Father Peter Gjmpei of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, “have I seen this happen [in reverse order].”
However, treating the Church as a political entity, Woodward obscured the question. He claimed that “liberal” participants at Vatican II, which was still in session at John XXIII's death in 1963, wanted to canonize him by acclamation, bypassing the usual process. This was checked by “conservatives” who “wanted Pius XII to be the next pope canonized,” said Woodward.
Woodward reported that Pope Paul VI, who succeeded John, “to please both sides,” introduced both causes, thereby “yoking the fate of [John XXIII and Pius XII] together: both would be canonized or neither would.”
While Paul VI might have seen the merit of introducing both causes at the same time, it should be noted that Woodward's comment leaves the impression that an arrangement was made that would have binding consequences into the future. It stretches credulity to think that the two causes could be “yoked” and follow identical tracks.
The premise of Woodward's own report is that the Church has expedited John XXIII's cause due to a miraculous event, and is generally at a more advanced stage than Pius's, which, according to Woodward, still lacks the completion of the third in a three-volume study of his life and virtues. Should it be assumed that the “yoke” has been removed?
The Pope's Mission, Not His Homecoming
THE PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS, June 11—According to Msgr. Bernard Witkowski, 64, of Bridesburg, Pa., the Pope's latest visit to Poland has more to do with pastoral concern for a nation in transition than nostalgia.
“With the fall of communism and the introduction of Western culture, there are things happening I don't think [John Paul] likes,” said the Polish-speaking priest, a pastor in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. “He wants them to remain faithful and avoid some of the pitfalls of freedom.”
Msgr. Witkowski said the Pope had undertaken his latest “extensive pilgrimage” to shore up Catholicism in a 95% Catholic nation where the faith has been weakening, said the Daily News's Ron Goldwyn.
“I'm hoping to spend a little time with the Pope, at least say hello to him and offer the greetings of my people here,” said the priest prior to his departure.
Msgr. Witkowski has been traveling to Poland for such meetings since 1976, when he served as a translator for the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, then serving as president of the American bishops’ conference. It was on that trip that he met the future pope, Cardinal Karol Wojtya of Krakow, for the first time.
“He was an outstanding man, hearing him talk, with his command of language,” said Msgr. Witkowski in the article.
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Opinions Differ on New Movements DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:ROME—Participants at the recent seminar on ecclesial movements have differing views about the place of movements in the Church. ZENIT news agency spoke with some of the participants during breaks at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum.
Guzman Carriquiry, undersecretary of the Pontifical Council for the Laity: Every time the floor is open for questions, dozens of bishops want to speak. There have been times when perplexity and problems have been expressed — one bishop even got angry — but in general, there is an atmosphere of fruitful dialogue. The tension that used to [arise] whenever movements were mentioned seems to have disappeared. Everything has unfolded in a relaxed atmosphere; the participants are keen to discern and go deeply into the debate. We are witnessing a real and profound reflection, in which the diversity of approaches does not limit the possibility of new positions.
Archbishop Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya, president of the Symposium of the Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar: The movements come from outside; they were born in an environment that is culturally and ecclesiastically different. How can these movements be integrated into the local Church, which by nature is also universal? The charism, in fact, is not the exclusive domain of movements. The gifts of the Spirit and particularity are also the heritage of the local Churches. …
From the theological point of view, matters are clear, but in practice, humility and a right disposition are necessary to accept what the Spirit has generated in a certain place. The movements maintain they are universal because the Pope has recognized them and, because of this, they expect total acceptance. But universality is not reduced just to this point. The universal Church is the communion of the Churches, which is experienced in unity. The Church is always universal, even when it is particular.
Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, archbishop of Prague: The new springtime in the Church, forecast by John XXIII at the opening of Vatican Council II, took place in 1998 when John Paul II met with all the ecclesial movements in St. Peter's Square.
The Synod for the Laity was held in 1988; at that time, the movements were discussed. There were a number of criticisms and doubts expressed. The movements were regarded with fear, uncertainty, and a degree of rejection by some bishops. But 10 years later, everything has changed, because, exactly on the 10th anniversary of the Synod for the Laity, the Holy Father convoked a meeting of the movements and stated clearly that they are ‘the fruits of the Holy Spirit.’
The commitment of the leaders of these movements to get to know one another, to come closer to each other, and to act together seems to me an authentic sign of their genuineness. Unity is the sign of the Church. If the movements can achieve this, it means they have overcome their own limits and expressed a sign of their authenticity, because the Holy Spirit favors unity in the Church, even in diversity….
I am convinced that the movements are a result of Vatican Council II. If you study the characteristics of some of the movements and read what the Council requested, you will see the harmony. In my opinion, both phenomena — the council and the movements — are phenomena encouraged by the Holy Spirit.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Cloning the Least Ones DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:On June 17, British Broadcasting Corp. reported the first cloning of human embryos, an event which it said actually happened last November.
The news report seemed unreal. A man's leg and a cow's egg had been used, it said; it was done by an American company, but the report made no mention of the U.S. ban on such experimentation. The only nod toward the moral dimension in the report came from a British Lord who called the cloning “totally ethical.”
Many of the news media the next day were strangely quiet about the event, though the London Daily Mail, The Washington Post and a French news agency did carry reports about it. These outlets reported that more than one embryo had been cloned.
The news was terrible and frightening, going far beyond the serious ethical problems that are always associated with creating human life apart from a human couple. For one thing, the reports’ headlines could have read, “First Human Clones Killed,” as easily as “First Human Embryos Cloned.” The reports said a Massachusetts company, American Cell Technology, cloned the first human embryo and let it develop for 12 days before destroying it.
One article also pointed to the cloning of Dolly the sheep as an example of how tough it must have been to clone a human being. In Dolly's case, “Over 200 embryos were used before Dolly finally appeared.” Apart from the many human embryos that must have been destroyed in the process of the original experiment, “it is believed that many more human embryos have been created and destroyed since November.”
Human embryos may not look like babies, as fetuses do, but they are certainly human lives. Even modernist ethicists like Princeton's Peter Singer admit this. He says that when he argues for killing embryos, he is careful not to claim that they aren't human — he says he can't win that debate. Rather, he finds it necessary to argue that sometimes human beings have no right to life.
And so, the “culture of death” is escalating beyond the millions of abortions reported every year, to countless deaths of embryos in labs around the world.
But there is another reason, apart from the deaths surrounding it, that this first cloning is particularly horrible. Many people conceive the trouble with cloning a human being by imagining the eerie picture of a child who looks exactly like a parent, with exactly the same character traits.
The reality is more frightening still: these clones aren't intended to become adults or even infants. They are created, rather, because the cells of their brain stems “are believed to have the potential” to be part of a transplantation” that is hoped might have some success as a treatment for diseases like Parkinson's, BBC said.
These human lives, in other words, are being harvested for their brains as part of an experimental treatment for living. That's a frightening way to end a century.
Man, however, does not have the last word in human affairs. The Lord of history is Christ, who said, “What you do to one of the least of my brothers, you do unto me.”
We can trust that, as the Church celebrates the Jubilee Year anniversary of his birth next year, prayers for life will flower into effective efforts to build the culture of life.
Congress is now debating, and passing laws about, the causes of youth crime, in the wake of the Columbine High School massacre.
Our representatives seem to have noticed, correctly, two contributors to the problem: secularist laws and the entertainment industry. In response, the House on June 17 declared it constitutional to post the Ten Commandments in public buildings. President Clinton, for his part, initiated a program of new regulations of theaters to enforce age limits at R-rated movies.
The House's Ten Commandments Defense Act could signal that making public displays of religion is acceptable again. The bill now goes to the Senate for a vote.
The pastimes of the American family, however, may not be affected very much by Clinton's proposal that theaters check ID cards at box offices. After all, the problem isn't at the box office — where kids can buy a ticket to any of the PG films offered at the theater. The problem is at the doors to the theaters — where tickets generally are not taken, and kids are allowed to see whatever they wish.
A better solution to the entertainment problem is one recently taken up by a group in Hollywood headed by seasoned screenwriter Barbara Nicolosi. She has developed a program to teach talented writers with a Judeo-Christian outlook to produce professional scripts and to present them successfully to potential producers.
Rather than merely complain about what Hollywood has to offer, this project recognizes that Christians must produce the inspiring stories that will at least give Americans an entertainment option. It's a project that deserves more support.
----- EXCERPT: Editorial ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Mindlessness Meets the Millennium DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:The Post-Christian Mind: Exposing its Destructive Agenda by Harry Blamires (Servant Publications, 1999 209 pages, $10.99)
“The emperor has no clothes on.” The high, child-voice of truth rings out in this book. There is angst — anguish — in the author's confrontation with the post-Christian mind, but there is also the hope of resolution. “We can always reply without any qualms to the person who asks us, ‘How can you believe in a good God in the face of the mess that the world is in?’ We can turn the question back on the questioner: ‘How can you expect the world to be other than in a mess when the good God and his laws are ignored?’” This exchange is a sampling of Harry Blamires’ approach.
Blamires, former head of the English department at King Alfred's College, Winchester, England, and a one time student and disciple of C.S. Lewis, follows up his earlier book, The Christian Mind, with a brilliant study of the post-Christian “mind,” or we might say mindlessness, flourishing at the end of the 20th century. The gap between the Christian outlook and the outlook of most of the people in our world today is both enormous and alarming.
Blamires likens the situation to an episode in Lewis’ final Narnia tale, The Last Battle. In the story, Shift the Ape, the villain of the piece, tries to convince all the beasts that Tash the Cat, Narnia's enemy, is the same as Aslan the Lion, Narnia's hero and defender. He insists that Tash is Aslan, and Aslan is Tash, even going so far as to invent the name “Tashlan” to compound the confusion. But when the two characters appear simultaneously, all the animals realize that they are distinct and utterly different, and pledge their allegiance definitively to Aslan.
Blamires sets out to expose the destructive agenda of the post-Christian mind. “In my previous ventures into this field,” the highly articulate Anglican author explains, “the logical approach has been to make the Christian faith the starting point and to survey the contemporary scene in the light of its doctrinal formulations. My intention now is to start from the other side of the fence … to pinpoint the preconceptions undergirding popular contemporary attitudes and show how they represent positions antagonistic to the Christian faith.
“Current secularist humanism — a mishmash of relativist notions negating traditional values and absolutes — infects the intellectual air we breathe. There is a campaign to undermine all human acknowledgment of the transcendent, to whittle away all human respect for objective restraint on the individualistic self.”
Developing his thesis, the author analyzes current attitudes in the areas of rights, marriage and family life, discrimination, democracy, first principles, relativity, freedom of expression, back-to-nature movements, charity, compassion, and many more. In the course of the analysis, his wit cuts through the confusion of modern secular positions like a two-edged sword. Drawing on a wide spectrum of British and American press clippings and media output, he paints a comprehensive picture of “the post-Christian mind.” Not only do the trends themselves give cause for deep concern, but also the manner in which they are reported is often misleading. The skill of the media's brainwashing tactics is all too familiar to the average consumer.
The common sense and good humor are refreshing.
Blamires discourses brilliantly on the use and abuse of words, in the business of disseminating post-Christian attitudes. “The post-Christian world is not a world of structures but a world of fluidity. … The universal language of reason and morality gives place to a wholly relativistic vocabulary of emotive predilections. … Virtues and vices give place to a strange amalgam of subjective concepts, such as self-esteem and self-realization. … On all sides people are prating about discovering their ‘identity,’ as though one could help having one. A figure famous in the eyes of the media's public will exclaim, ‘I found out who I really am!’ … Most of us acquire this knowledge before the nursery school age … and incidentally, the Christian call to lose oneself stands at the very opposite pole of experience to these meaningless assertions.”
There is much talk today about changing values. “But do values change in respect to human conduct?” asks Blamires. “Is it not wholly illogical? I am tempted, as a Christian, to picture a similar record [similar to that of the stock market]: ‘The Moral Market today: Chastity is down three points and Honesty is up two points. The chartists foresee a further surge in Honesty as the moral climate becomes increasingly indulgent toward admissions of conduct that would once have been regarded as disgraceful or shameful. By the same token, shares in Chastity, which today reached a new low, are expected to fall much further yet. All the experts agree that the bottom has fallen out of the Chastity market. Investors will be wise to rid their portfolios of this now discredited commodity before it is too late.’”
And so with “rights.” Have they lost all relationship to duties? Do we really have rights over our bodies? Our health? Or do we not rather serve their demands? “Discrimination”: Haven't we altered the meaning to be something pejorative, whereas it originally meant a sense of establishing distinctions? “If you ensure that there is a sloping ramp as well as a flight of steps at the entry to a building, so that disabled people in wheelchairs can move in and out just as unafflicted people do, that is an act of true discrimination. Only by the exercise of true discrimination can you put the two groups on a level footing in this respect.”
Refreshed with the common sense and good humor of our guide, we contemplate the topsy-turveydom of our world from wall to wall, and know that we have not only been informed, but also enlightened. The meaning of the meaninglessness comes clear. Faced with the total negativity of the post-Christian mind, and grieving for our utter nakedness, we reach instinctively for the mantle of Christian truth. There is still hope. Our world is ready, with the coming of the third millennium, it is desperately ready, to put on the mind of Christ.
Dominican Sister Mary Thomas Noble writes from Buffalo, New York.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mary Thomas Noble, Op ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: The Churchís Source and Summit DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:“A Eucharistic Prayer”
by Bishop Eugene J. Gerber (Crisis, June 1999)
Bishop Eugene J. Gerber of Wichita, Kan., writes: “Of all the sacraments, only the Eucharist is described by the phrase ‘Real Presence.’ It is not that the other experiences are not real presences of God, but only in the Eucharist do we have the very body and blood, soul and divinity of Christ.
“While the other sacraments have as their origin the Paschal Mystery of Christ, only the Eucharist is the Sacrament of the Paschal Mystery itself. The Eucharist is thus the ‘source and summit’ of the Church — all her activities flow from the Eucharist and lead us to a full participation in it.”
Though baptism is primary because it makes possible participation in the other sacraments, “the greatest benefit of the sacrament of baptism is that it allows one to participate fully in the Mass.”
All the sacraments make use of basic material things, like bread and wine and water and oil, to communicate “God's presence to us in a special way. … Even more, this communication of God's presence to us is necessary for our salvation (as with baptism). Thus we cannot equate our personal experiences of God with that of the sacraments. While we may be reminded of God in a work of art or in the brilliant colors of the setting sun and feel close to God, the sacraments are of a different order of Christ's presence. For, in the sacraments, Christ is immediately present to us.”
In the Eucharist, “we are called to be obedient children of the Father. We are invited to join in Christ's once-and-for-all sacrifice. We do this by enduring faithfully the hardships we encounter in following the way of Jesus … we offer our sacrifices, pains, and joys involved in living the Gospel life in our daily lives with those of Christ. This all takes place through the hands of the priest, who is essential for the Eucharist, and who has given his entire life to the service of helping those in his charge to offer more perfectly this sacrifice of praise. It is for this reason that the lack of priests is such a painful experience. There are no replacements for priests.”
In following Jesus’ paschal example, we are called to be “examples of life-giving brokenness. In imitation of Christ, they sacrificed their own lives for the Good News of God's love for us. When we approach the minister of the Eucharist at Mass for communion, we respond ‘Amen’ not only to the Real Presence that we are about to receive, but also ‘Amen’ to the requirements of this presence in our lives.”
Today, “many Catholics lack faith in the eucharistic presence. … [Some] are tempted not to believe in the Real Presence because we would rather not accept the full reality of God's love for us. Like Adam and Eve, who hid from God after they sinned, I am at times tempted to keep God comfortably at arm's length. I know that if I accept the closeness of God in the Eucharist, if I accept that God does indeed love me to such an extent that He empties Himself to be immediately present to me in such a humble form, then what kind of a response would I be moved to give?
“How might this recognition of God's love for me provoke changes in the way I live my life — changes that I would rather not make? … How are we to stand in God's presence, knowing that we will never be able to love God to the same degree that He loves us?
“In the bleakest moment of Jesus’ earthly life, when He willingly allowed Himself to be put to death by crucifixion, God experienced the greatest rejection of His saving presence in the world. But in the midst of that darkest hour, the mystery of God's love overcame the darkness of the human heart and won salvation for all humanity through the death of His only Son. … As we continue to give the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist all of the ritual displays of glory, honor, and veneration, the reason Christ comes to us in this sacrament must be remembered. We are able to go back into our daily lives, fortified as children of God to share the sacrificial love of Christ with whomever we meet.”
Ellen Wilson Fielding writes from Davidson, Maryland.
A condensed version, in the words of the original author, of an article selected by the Register from the nation's top journals.
----- EXCERPT: Article Digest ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Letters DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:Combatting Apathy
God bless you, Dr. Kahlenborn! It was so good to read about what you are doing in Ohio. (“Prayer Vigil at ‘Ground Zero,’ Register, June 6–12). How good it would be if we could do the same thing here in Washington or Oregon.
My own apathy kept me from being active in pro-life, until I read John Powell's book Abortion, the Silent Holocaust. After reading that I realized I had to do something. Now I pray at a clinic where abortions are done, and I write letters to newspapers and to legislators. But when I try to rev up my friends — good, holy people — I am amazed at how they tend to resist.
Shirley Sexton Vancouver, Washington
A Catholic Goth
I found the article on the gothic scene (“So much about gothdom is dark,” Register, June 6–12) an appalling display of misinformation.
I am a goth, a Catholic goth. I go to church every Sunday and I try to follow God to the best of my ability in this world seething with sin. I even received the pastor's award at my school when I graduated for showing strong Christian character. Yes, the gothic subculture may dwell on the dark aspects of life, but [it] also embraces the light. To me it is more of an acceptance of the fact that the world is riddled with sin and despair, but we can still survive in its midst because we have Jesus. …
I do wear pale powder on my face, draw intricate swirl patterns and flowers on my face and wear dark red lipstick. The patterns are an expression of how I feel, I use my face as canvas. … I can also look “normal” like everyone else: such as when I am working or at church. I am also currently studying to be a paralegal and have received all A's and B's this past year.
The gothic subculture is full of the artistic, the geeks, the overweight, and the underweight who never quite fit in with any of the cliques. This culture is full of compassion and acceptance and offers open arms to all. That is why there is such diversity among goths.
I cannot deny sin in the gothic culture, nor the fact that some follow graven idols, but in any culture you will find sin. Just because goths tend to be eccentric they are pinpointed as the cause of moral decline in today's society. …
The crosses and crucifixes that I wear are not in blasphemy, they are out of respect for the great pain, suffering, and sacrifice our Savior endured to save us from our own undoing.
Regarding the music, Marilyn Manson may claim to be gothic, but to those of us who are real he is nothing more than a little boy playing dress up and smearing our name. His makeup isn't even artistic, it is more of a ridicule. …
[T]hrough these false accounts in the newspapers and on television we are now judged not by who we are, but by the painted face that we wear.
Noelle McKay
Via e-mail
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: A Feminist Has a New Take on Abortion DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:When an icon of the feminist movement writes a book questioning abortion even a teeny-weeny bit, it's cause for a little celebrating, and investigating.
Germaine Greer broke into the ranks of “lifetime-achievement” feminists with the publication in the late 1960s of her book The Female Eunuch. She has just published a new work entitled The Whole Woman, which, while falling prey to much of “old feminism's” shortsightedness, contains some good insights on abortion.
The book's jacket promotes its contents this way: “With passionate rhetoric, unique authority, and outrageous humor, The Whole Woman reveals how women have been side-swiped and sidetracked in the quest for liberation, duped into settling for an ersatz equality.” Certainly, this describes Greer's “take” on the origins and development of the “right” to an abortion. She goes a long way in a good direction. But because of some fundamental errors that even she in all her brightness cannot see, Greer isn't able to get where a woman of her insight ought to go.
The “Abortion” chapter in her book starts off promisingly enough with sarcasm: “Feminism is supposed to be pro-abortion.” And: “The decision in Roe v. Wade did nothing to confront, let alone resolve, the deep moral conflicts surrounding the issue of abortion.”
Greer rightly recognizes that the abortion right was handed to women by a “masculine medical establishment” and a “masculine judiciary.” This comports perfectly with polls taken over the decades showing men more supportive of abortion than women. It also comports with anecdotal stories too numerous to count in which women are coerced by men, overtly or subtly, to have abortions against their instincts and will.
Perhaps most importantly, Greer recognizes that abortion is itself the consequence of “oppression,” and an unwillingness to give women the support they need to bear and raise children in this world: “What women ‘won’ was the ‘right’ to undergo invasive procedures in order to terminate unwanted pregnancies, unwanted not just by them but by their parents, their sexual partners, the governments who would not support mothers, the employers who would not employ mothers, the landlords who would not accept tenants with children, the schools that would not accept students with children. Historically, the only thing pro-abortion agitation achieved was to make an illiberal establishment look far more feminist than it was.”
Greer falls into the feminist error of blindness to any goodness in men.
In this vein, Greer has kind words for a Catholic bishop in Scotland who offers financial support to women who would otherwise feel pressured to choose abortion.
Greer even laughs figuratively at the mighty efforts of pro-life activists in the United States and in Europe in light of the behemoth powers aligned against them. Do they really think, she asks, that governments, pharmaceutical companies, the medical establishment and men generally will allow abortion to be outlawed when all of the above rely on it for financial or other reasons?
At this point, however, she leaps to the defense of legalized abortion: “[T]he media have locked feminists into a position which they define as ‘pro-abortion.’ Feminism is pro-woman rather than pro-abortion.” And: “There can be no gainsaying that women cannot manage their own lives if access to abortion is to be denied.”
So it's the media's fault! And/or, women are so weak and victimized that we cannot “manage our lives” without abortion. It is hard to figure how Greer can be so absolutist on this point. Her chapter on abortion even contains several allusions to post-abortion grief!
The answer lies in a common error of old feminism: blindness to others. First, blindness to the child. Only once does Greer really refer to the fate of the aborted child, and only then to note how such descriptions disturb the woman seeking abortion: “Her agony of mind is increased by the regular publication of results of research to establish whether and when human fetuses become aware, feel pain, and learn. … The evidence was unconvincing in that reaction was being construed as consciousness, but it had the desired effect, which was to worry women.”
Second, Greer falls into the feminist error of blindness to any goodness in men. In her view, men are by their very biological nature, and by their lives, intrinsically assaulting to women.
In Evangelium Vitae, the Holy Father cited as one of the mainsprings of a “culture of death” a notion of freedom which denies solidarity with other human beings, a notion that is wholly individualistic. Greer's writings on abortion are a perfect example of this notion of freedom. She is so wholly focused on one party, the woman, that she cannot see beyond her for a minute to a “community” which includes the woman, the father, their child, and all those whose lives are diminished when the child is aborted.
Helen Alvaré is director of planning and information, Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Helen Alvar… ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Clinic-Access Laws Go Too Far DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:Lately there has been a lot of talk about how to handle acts of violence aimed at abortion providers and their clinics. Among several proposed solutions there has been a great deal of focus on clinic access legislation. Nationally we have such a law, called the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994, better known as the FACE Act.
The FACE Act has been used against pro-lifers on every conceivable level. Last year it was used to prosecute the hosts of a Web site called the Nuremberg Files, with the contention that the information gathered on the Web site incited visitors to target abortion providers with violence. The Web site was shut down in the United States, but is still available through other countries. FACE punishments usually involve heavy fines.
Despite the power wielded by anti-lifers using this law, many states are proposing their own clinic access laws. They claim that a state law will fill in gaps left by FACE and further stiffen the penalties to deter violent offenders.
One such proposal had been put forth in New York by Assemblywoman Susan John, D-Rochester. John's clinic access bill is riddled with generalities that leave many possibilities open for prosecution of peaceful demonstrators. For instance, the bill would make it a crime to “intimidate” those entering an abortion clinic. John has stated that she feels the purpose of protests is “clearly to intimidate and to harass.” In fact, peaceful and legitimate protesters could be treated as criminals under this bill. Clinic workers could claim that people praying outside their clinic are intimidating to patients and themselves. The offending pray-ers could then be heavily fined or even jailed.
Knee-jerk Reactions
John's bill is an example of knee-jerk reactions to violence today. There is no need for such legislation. In New York, for example, current laws of the penal code address the type of conduct this new legislation is ostensibly trying to stop. Criminal law already prohibits acts of harassment, vandalism, arson and murder — no matter where these acts take place. Also, FACE Act already provides stiff penalties for those who obstruct access to facilities
Some of the newly proposed laws target actions that are intended to intimidate a person from obtaining or providing reproductive health services only. For instance, none of these access bills apply to a union member picketing a clinic over a labor issue. New York State Right to Life Committee lobbyist, Lori Hougens, rightfully points out that “only pro-lifers are targeted in this viewpoint-based legislation, which penalizes people for why they act, rather than how they act.”
Is the free expression of the pro-life view the real target of FACE?
These thought-crime bills can do nothing to stop violence. After all, a criminal who is not deterred by the penal code which already covers acts of terrorism, actual threats and violence against any citizen, is not going to be further deterred by clinic access laws.
These bills tend to intimidate pro-lifers and to curtail legitimate protests in front of abortion centers. Access bills threaten law-abiding citizens, who would peacefully and prayerfully gather outside abortion clinics in legitimate protest against the abortions taking place there. Those supporting the bill, knowingly or unknowingly, are slowly squelching all licit, public, pro-life activity, especially demonstrations outside clinics.
The anti-life forces are using the recent isolated incidents of violence to drum up support for legislation that otherwise would not stand a snowball's chance in Hades of being passed. They even title the bills to insinuate that their purpose is to curb violence at clinics — like our New York example called “Reproductive Health Care Services Access and Anti-Violence Act of 1999.” (Now there's a mouthful!)
The problem with tying these bills to the anti-violence theme is that even life-friendly legislators can get caught on the wrong side. Assemblyman John Dinga in New York voted to support the clinic access bill, stating it was important that he make a stand against violence. He was of course way off base and terribly misinformed when he supported this bill. Unfortunately, many may mistakenly support such bills, thinking the same way.
Some support these bills unwittingly. Others support them for political reasons. After all, someone may naturally think that a bill termed “anti-violence act” would be accomplishing what it purports to do. Sick of all the violent acts against abortionists and clinics, pro-life legislators cannot be blamed for wanting to distance themselves from the bloodshed — a legitimate feeling and a correct goal. These individuals mean well, but they are not accurately informed about the redundancies in these bills.
There are others who would support such legislation as a sort of feel-good-and-look-good political measure even though they realize they are supporting dangerous legislation. They may be bowing to pressure from anti-life organizations.
This is, of course, hypocritical since they understand that the proposed access bill can do nothing to curb violence or deter criminal action and that it can infringe the free speech rights of law-abiding citizens. Perhaps in their own minds they justify their position as necessary for making a politically correct public statement.
Non-violent Action
Violence has to be denounced, but not by feel-good legislation that harms the free speech rights of citizens who want to gather and peacefully protest. All acts of violence against abortion clinics and abortionists must be denounced. Mainstream right-to-life organizations have been doing just that at the top of their lungs in press releases and statements that are ignored by the media. After New York abortionist Barnett Slepian was killed, for example, the media printed every kind of denouncement from Planned Parenthood and other anti-lifers, but only printed statements by fringe pro-life groups. Meanwhile, with no success, well-known groups, such as National Right to Life and Human Life International, sent daily press releases rejecting all violence in the pro-life effort and made continual phone calls trying to have their views printed.
The general public needs to take news articles and what they see on TV with a grain of salt. Just ask those who have actually been to Washington for the annual March for Life. They know well the media bias that gives ridiculous and minuscule coverage to this enormous event.
All that pro-life organizations can do is to continue to try to get out the word that they are nonviolent. As individuals in the fight we can do our share by writing letters and by calling legislators whenever we see a threat to our First Amendment rights.
As for the clinic access legislation, the public should beware. These new laws have nothing to do with stopping violence and everything to do with stopping legitimate civil protest. We can hope that, if these bills pass, they will be shot down by the courts as contrary to the Constitution of the United States.
Carla Coon is editor of LifeWorks for the New York State Right to Life Committee.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Carla Coon ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: How Wrongs Became Rights DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:A June 2 news article in the Washington Times recounted the case of a Catholic woman in Lewiston, Maine, who ran a foster home for mentally retarded adults. She forbade the presence of pornography and sexual activity in her establishment. However, it seems that “state rules say that people with mental retardation and autism in group homes have a right to participate in activities of choice, which include using pornographic materials and sexual acts, such as masturbation and consensual sex.”
The Lewiston woman will have to get out of the business if the state removes her license on the grounds of depriving the retarded of their “rights.” Surely this is one case where a good Christian cannot simply obey the positive law.
I do not intend to go into this particular case except to emphasize that the word “right” is not unequivocally a neutral or positively good word in today's usage. What is left of Christian morality is being step-by-step eliminated in the name of human “rights.” “Rights” is the word most used to protect and justify deviant and sinful behavior as perfectly legitimate and “normal.” The “new man” is to be created by naming his “rights.”
Notice that in Maine, and presumably elsewhere, these “rights” come from rules of the state government. These “rights” are invented by the legislative and executive processes of the government and protected by, even invented by, the courts. If we begin simply to list the things that are presently called “rights” — abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia, cloning, income, happiness, and a thousand other “rights” — we see that something is radically wrong with the word and what it connotes.
It is simply not a benign word and cannot be used naively as if it is not the cause of great confusion and disruption in public and private morality.
Yet, the Holy Father uses the word “rights” all the time as if it were perfectly appropriate. The Declaration of Independence uses it. The United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights uses it. It is the fundamental tool by which democracy and human dignity are said to be protected.
A number of philosophers, George Orwell, for instance, imply, however, that the initial wars of a culture are wars over the meaning of words. If we can change the meaning of words, we can more easily get what we want.
In the benign sense, “rights” were held to derive from certain truths that were said to be “self-evident.” They had grounding not simply in themselves nor in human formulations.
Beginning approximately with Hobbes in the 17th century, however, the word “right” took on a meaning that is always implied in modern usage. It no longer meant something rooted in an ordered nature. “Rights” were explained instead as absolutely dependent on human desire or will. “Rights” in this sense is a modern, not medieval or classical, word. We now have “rights” literally to everything. “Rights” are no longer opposed to or correlated with “obligations” or “duties.” Since the resulting multiplicity of “rights” was seen to be chaotic and dangerous, all our rights were turned over to the state. They became what the state willed and enforced.
Thus it has become easy to speak of a “right to choose,” a “right to abortion,” a “right to die.” There is no “natural law” to set a limit to such “rights.” The only “natural right” we presuppose is that which says we can do whatever we want to protect our lives or achieve our purposes. There is no God who has anything different to say. We propose “rights” for ourselves.
Thus when Catholics and others speak today about protecting and fostering human “rights,” they suddenly face this kind of question: What is the difference between a “right” to life and a “right” to abortion? The only thing that justifies either is what we will. If we give ourselves a “right” to abortion, it is no different than if we give ourselves a “right” to life. Both are equally arbitrary. Both are established or abolished by the state.
Thus when the state of Maine tells nursing homes that clients have a “right” to sexual activity and pornography, it is almost impossible to reply — in the name of natural law, the commandments or common sense — that they have no such “rights.” The only thing that counts is what the state enforces.
Sometimes the Vatican newspaper, L‘Osservatore Romano, calls these new modern rights “will-rights,” meaning they were simply legislated by the will of the state, having no further rational standing. Of course, the state can legislate. But if there is nothing higher than the state, then “will-rights” stand as law.
Notice, that in a home for retarded adults, a worker who sexually harasses or abuses one of the patients without consent would be put in jail. Why? Because his act was wrong? No. Rather, because the act violated another person's “rights.” Consensual sex, on the other hand, violates no one's “rights,” and is itself a “right” of the retarded in the state of Maine.
What has happened here? By subtle use of the word “right,” we have passed through the following stages: 1) Sexual acts ought to be ruled by reason. 2) Sexual acts outside of marriage are sinful. 3) Sexual acts outside of marriage, though sinful, are to be tolerated. 4) It is wrong to judge people who participate in sexual acts outside of marriage. 5) We should have compassion for those who perform sexual acts outside of marriage. 6) People have a “right” to sexual acts outside of marriage. 7) Sexual acts outside of marriage ought to be encouraged even for those like the retarded least able to handle them. 8) People who prevent the exercise of sexual “rights” outside of marriage are guilty of violating “human rights.”
The only “crime” is committed by the good woman in Lewiston, Maine, who is violating someone else's “rights.” Circle completed. Culture corrupted.
Jesuit Father James V. Schall teaches philosophy at Georgetown. His most recent book is At the Limits of Political Philosophy, CUA Press.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: James V. Schall Sj ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Ratings Game DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:The content of movies has been growing worse since the beginning of the ratings system, said Steve Schwalm of the Parents Television Council.
“Content has gotten abysmally worse since 1968,” said Schwalm, adding that the same is true for television, “where ratings have been used as a cover to degrade content and push the envelope on what is considered acceptable. … Producers no longer have the responsibility to produce family viewing.”
Schwalm cited a June report from the Parents Television Council. A study of content in six major network shows since TV ratings were introduced three years ago, the report indicates a 30% increase in foul language and a 54% increase in sexual content.
“What we're seeing is a correlation with rating the shows and increased edgy, raw content” he said.
Schwalm said that until now, “ratings have been an absurdist exercise,” and that it is good that they will finally be taken seriously.
But whom does the rating system really serve, parents or filmmakers? Media watchdog David Horowitz, president of the Los Angeles-based Center for the Study of Popular Culture, argues it is the latter. He contended that enforcement is a superficial solution to a deeper problem, and that the ratings system itself has been a cover for producing racier and racier films.
“Film violence and sexuality started as a result of the ratings system,” Horowitz said. “Before, there was an industry code in place which kept violence and sexuality out of films” — a reference to the Hays Production Codes, which, for many years, controlled the content of Hollywood films. “Once (ratings) were introduced producers thought, ‘Well, if I get an R rating for one sex scene, why not put in a hundred?’” Horowitz said.
Despite his distaste for the standard content of Hollywood films, Horowitz discourages government involvement in the issue. “The problem is much deeper,” he said, referring to Clinton's enforcement plan, calling it, “the use of Hollywood as a scapegoat.”
“The president,” Horowitz added, “has set a worse example for our children than Hollywood could ever achieve.”
—Brian McGuire
----- EXCERPT: Did system help make bad content possible? ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Nature Shows for Avid Indoorsmen DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:John Paul II Thematic Biography
So what was the big news in television this past month? From a Catholic viewer's perspective, that would be the little announcement that came out of public television's annual convention in San Francisco in early June. “Frontline” — PBS's premiere news series — has produced what is billed as the most comprehensive television biography ever on Pope John Paul II.
The Sept. 28 program, “Frontline's” season premiere, is expected to air over two and a half hours, and according to a spokeswoman for the show, producers have “talked to everyone in his life.” The only holdout: the Pope himself.
There may be a reason for that. “Frontline's” approach appears to be anything but hagiography. Instead, “The Millennial Pope” — as the “Frontline” portrait is entitled — promises to take a tough look at papal doctrine, including the Pope's stance on a wide range of issues, from feminism to medical ethics.
As the spokeswoman explains, “He seems to be fighting a fight against the century in which he is living,” and “Frontline” is ultimately asking “whether he is lost or we are lost.” (Strictly speaking, this isn't “biography,” but what PBS is calling “thematic biography.”)
A controversial program? That goes without question. Review tapes will be available shortly, and we'll report more fully on this next month.
Meanwhile, another “Frontline” of note: In late November, the program will air “Apocalypse,” exploring the nature and idea of the Apocalypse over 3,000 years.
TUESDAYS July 20-Sept. 28
The Life of the Birds
PBS 8 p.m. Eastern
For reasons not yet known to man, science or TV writers, the month of July is dominated by two kinds of fare on television — nature and tasteless cable programs. We'll bypass the latter and tell you about the former, and there is, thankfully, plenty to talk about. By far the most anticipated nature series on all of television this summer is “The Life of Birds,” produced and written by the prolific Sir David Attenborough (who is, yes, brother to the actor, Richard).
“Birds” has already aired in the United Kingdom, where it was an enormous hit (actually beating a competing soccer telecast one evening). And it is easy to see why: Attenborough's style is both lively and engaging (he is a major celebrity in the United Kingdom), and he bestows on the audience an infectious enthusiasm for his subject matter. You will never look at a warbler's beak in quite the same way after watching this (a superb nut-cracking mechanism). You will never fail to marvel at a bird in flight again. Attenborough, as is his wont, unloads an enormous amount of arcana on viewers in explaining bird communication, bird feeding habits, bird migratory patterns.
The effect of these 10 hours, as such, is both enlightening and hallucinatory — mostly the latter. The reason is that the photography, for the most part, is breathtaking. Attenborough's work over the years — particularly his renowned “Life on Earth,” and “The Living Planet” — rank as some of TV's most memorable nature series. “Birds” instantly joins their ranks.
TUESDAY July 13
To The Moon
PBS 8–10 p.m. Eastern
One of “Nova's” biggest programs of the year is something of a departure — a detailed exploration of the first manned flight to the moon. Marking the 30th anniversary of the landing, the program is suffused with both detail and drama — the bitter arguments, for example, over whether NASA should employ a lunar landing module or whether a rocket should be sent directly to the moon's surface (the proponents for the former, of course, won). No matter how much you know about the Apollo program, this adds a spell-binding dimension — the enormous risk behind the entire enterprise.
WEDNESDAY July 14
The Living Edens, Kakadu: Australia's Ancient Wilderness
PBS 8 p.m. Eastern
“The Living Edens” series is barely 2 years old, but has already secured a place for itself in TV's pantheon of nature series. Certainly part of the reason for this is the photography, which is stunning. But there is also a certain intimacy to an “Edens” telecast — an almost miniaturized sense of place, where life takes on a highly detailed and deliberative pace. Kakadu is thus a perfect subject for the program. It lies in the remote northwestern corner of Australia's Northern Territory, where the cycle of weather is both regular and severe (more surface lightning than any place on earth) and where there are effectively two seasons — wet and dry. But life here is mostly muted — nocturnal or hidden from the sun's intensity.
The broadcast looks deeply into the hidden, and strikingly beautiful, soul of this blighted place.
SUNDAY & MONDAY July 11–12
Savage Seas
PBS 8 p.m. Eastern
Spectacular waves! Deadly ice! Killer sharks! The breathless PBS press release makes this four-hour (putative) nature series sound more like of those reality specials on Fox. And, yes, this series definitely takes its cue from its more sensational brethren. That's part of its problem: There is something numbingly familiar about all of this, as though we have stumbled on some of these stories elsewhere — shipwrecks off South Africa, shark-infested waters off Maui, terrifying tidal bores in China.
Is this a nature program or a true crime one? PBS secretly loves these sensational, and highly promotable, programs. They get plenty of viewers and convince corporate underwriters that PBS isn't perhaps just a lightly viewed marginal TV service. Still, this one seems more appropriate as a “sweeps” stunt on NBC.
MONDAY July 12
The Battle for the Titanic
PBS 10 p.m. Eastern
And on the subject of highly promotable PBS specials, we come to this — yet another televised attempt to exploit modern history's most famous wreck.
Despite its hyped presentation — the scandal over Titanic memorabilia — there's a dated feel to this special, as though we've heard it all before (and we likely have). And while we're on the subject, “Secrets of the Titanic” airs on Sunday, July 11 (8 p.m.). This one's about Robert Ballard's exploration of said ship.
***
The Springer Saga
So why has television largely escaped the escalating debate in Washington over violence in the wake of Littleton, Colo.? The reason is that Congress has leveled its sights on what appear to be far more egregious exemplars of violence — particularly video games.
But the one show which has not failed to escape everyone's attention is possibly the single worst show on television (a difficult call, by the way): “The Jerry Springer Show.” “Springer” has come under increased attack in Washington, and the show's producer, in response, has forced all forms of violence off the show. While it's forced “Springer” to tone down before (and then proceeded to look the other way), many believe it is serious this time.
Moreover, there is a growing expectation that the producer, Studios USA, now intends to sell the show. Would that mean the end of the show?
Some people hope so, but it's not likely: a new producer will simply let “Springer” — the highest-rated talk show in the country — take the gloves off again.
Verne Gay writes about television for Newsday.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Verne Gay ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Videos on Release DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:Alice in Wonderland
First broadcast on NBC in February as a movie special, Alice in Wonderland has just been released in video stores. This latest rendition of Lewis Carroll's 1865 classic for children, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, is a sumptuous production, employing complicated special effects to illustrate Alice's (Tina Majorino) strange experiences in Wonderland. All the book's famous characters are here, ranging from the Mad Hatter (Martin Short) to the Cheshire Cat (Whoopi Goldberg) to Tweedledum (Robbie Coltrane) and Tweedledee (George Wendt). And many of Alice's famous encounters with these highly distinct characters are well illustrated, including the Mad Hatter's tea party and a most unusual chess game. But an odd thing happens as the movie rolls on: The story's very familiarity and the cultural baggage it has acquired over the years start influencing its meaning. No longer is Alice in Wonderland just a marvel-filled tale about a Victorian schoolgirl. Rather, it functions as something of a cultural Rorschach test, revealing viewers’ attitudes toward a variety of subjects, including politics, adolescence, sexuality and drug usage. An unsettling phenomenon.
Denver Broncos — Super Bowl XXXIII
Aboon for football fans and Bronco fans in particular, Denver Broncos — Super Bowl XXXIII is filled with thrilling footage of great plays, interviews with team members and revealing sidelines discussions. The National Football League documentary follows the hard-hitting team during fall 1998 as it tries to win the Super Bowl for the second straight year. Long an also-ran team, the Broncos finally pulled it together during the 1997 season. They won the NFL championship in January 1998 and began preparing for the onerous 1998 season. Guiding them was their head coach, Mike Shanahan, a quietly tough and humorous man. Leading them on the field was John Elway, a quarterback who was probably playing his last season. And inspiring them was Terrell Davis, football's best running back. Together with other great players, they won the division championship and headed to a showdown with the Atlanta Falcons. Although Denver Broncos — Super Bowl XXXIII will appeal mostly to football aficionados, non-fans will also find it surprisingly gripping.
Horton Foote's Alone
John Webb (Hume Cronyn) is a kind man and a highly ethical rancher who is facing bad times on his Texas spread. He's grieving over the loss of his beloved wife; his two married daughters, Grace Ann (Roxanne Hart) and Jackie (Joanna Miles), are facing troubles in their Houston lives; his nephews, Gus (Chris Cooper) and Curt (Frederick Forrest), are suffering from money problems; and his crops aren't bringing in the revenues they once did. John is seriously considering selling his ranch when he gets another chance: An oil company thinks it might contain crude, and is willing to pay John and his nephews, who co-own the mineral rights, a tidy sum to find out. The prospect of riches sets into play a variety of schemes among the family members as they wait for the oil-drilling results. Horton Foote's Alone isn't a brilliant movie; in fact, its plotting is somewhat loose and the acting isn't first-rate across the board. But the film is quietly engrossing as it highlights an honorable man while he deals with hardship.
12 Angry Men
A staple of stage and cinema, 12 Angry Men enjoyed a 1997 revival for MGM Worldwide TV and is now available on video. The script follows the increasingly heated discussions of 12 jury members dispatched by a judge (Mary McDonnell) to decide the fate of an 18-year-old Hispanic man (Douglas Spain) accused of stabbing his father to death. If the jury finds him guilty, he faces the possibility of execution. A first poll of the jurors — all male but representing several ethnic groups and social classes — reveals that 11 of the 12 believe the defendant is guilty. The only holdout (Jack Lemmon) holds forth on several of the problems he has with the prosecution's case. One by one, other jurors join him in voting not guilty. Although 12 Angry Men's dialogue is slightly dated — America's discussion of crime and ethnicity has grown much more complex since the play was first written — the film does pack a punch. Its power is augmented by the presence of a first-rate cast and the claustrophobia of its setting.
— Loretta G. Seyer
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Pilgrimage on a Hilltop DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:A pilgrimage in Stirling, N.J., just 30 miles from New York City, the Shrine of St. Joseph describes itself as a place “where God, people and nature come together.”
Through every decade since it was founded in 1924, even as corporate America took over the farmlands in the vicinity, the hilltop shrine has maintained its rural atmosphere.
The nearby neighborhood developments melt from view once visitors turn into the shrine's entranceway onto roads that have been purposefully left as little country byways.
From the top of the hill, and from the deck of the shrine chapel, the view is breathtaking.
The panorama of Jersey's Watchung Mountains unrolls across the horizon. Closer by, and below the hilltop, the 7,500-acre Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge adjoins the shrine's grounds.
St. Joseph's itself covers nearly 40 carefully developed acres — with lawns, wooded paths and outdoor shrines, all places of meditation and reflection. Alarge crucifix accompanied by a bench, for example, is nestled among pine trees. Another pleasant spot is the area around a statue of St. Joseph's mother-in-law, St. Ann.
It's little surprise that daily visitors and groups of pilgrims call this a spiritual oasis and refuge. The shrine has “all that sense of escape, returning to God in nature,” explains the director, Father Peter Krebs, a member of the Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity who staff the shrine.
Even the large chapel built of light-colored fieldstone in the 1970s tends to remind the visitor of God's presence in nature. Inside the chapel, a glass wall behind the sanctuary continues this theme, giving pilgrims a view that prompts them to meditate on God through the marvels of his creation.
The Roles of St. Joseph
The chapel's rough-hewn pews, with their saw-cut patterns left visible, call to mind that St. Joseph himself was a carpenter.
They also remind the visitor that the original chapel, which was later replaced by the current structure, was originally a hay barn before being transformed into a place of prayer.
In the chapel, the foster father of Jesus and husband of Mary is depicted with the two of them as the Holy Family, appropriately and beautifully carved of wood.
This is the only statue in the chapel so that the focus can be on the Blessed Sacrament, which is reserved here, and on celebrations of the Eucharist.
Off the chapel is the Hallway of the Saints. Here, the foremost among a procession of images is one that portrays Joseph as a handsome young man working with the tools of his trade.
The head of the Holy Family also greets pilgrims in his Worker statue on the front lawn, where he wears a carpenter's apron and planes a piece of wood.
In another of the shrine's several images of the saint, Joseph holds the child Jesus in the Carrarra-marble statue originally dedicated in 1924 by Father Thomas Judge, founder of both the shrine and the Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity.
St. Joseph was a man of silence and contemplation, and also a man of action in the midst of the workaday world, a missionary in his own carpenter shop and small town. Likewise, this shrine is a combination of contemplative and active apostolates. The two foster each other here.
Every Catholic an Apostle
The founder's primary goal was to empower lay people: “Every Catholic to be an apostle,” he said. Father Judge, who died in 1933, also used to ask penitents in the confessional: “Would you like to do more for your God?”
The shrine staff provides the “spark and the opportunity” to do more, explains Father Krebs. Pilgrims are encouraged to become “missionaries in the daily providence of their lives.” They don't have to go off to other places in need, but can be missionaries in their own back yard. “A lot of the programming here is geared to that,” the priest says.
For those who live near and visit regularly, the shrine offers several specific programs to put these ideas into practice.
One is the “Friendly Visitor” out-reach, which matches up volunteers from the shrine with local visiting nurses. The volunteers provide company to people on the nurses’ rounds who can't get out much.
In another backyard missionary effort, the shrine joins with local churches to feed and house homeless families in the area, who, because of abandonment or lost jobs, need help to get back on their feet.
After all, even the Holy Family at times encountered hardships in finding places to stay.
Without fanfare, many simple workers have helped build the shrine. In the 1920s, for example, a group of women from Brooklyn donated the extensive Way of the Cross on the hillside. All were cashiers in the city's subway fare booths and organized themselves as a guild interested in the shrine.
More recently, the large shrine of Our Lady of Fatima, found between the chapel and the wildlife preserve, was constructed complete with statues, stone walls and landscaping by a visitor from Poland.
The brother of a nun who works at the shrine, he did the work single-handedly.
This is a “from-the-people kind of shrine,” says Father Krebs. “The grace, the miracle of the shrine is the love of the people coming here.”
They come for daily Mass, quiet meditation, and a day or evening of renewal.
The popular devotion to St. Joseph begins every Sunday at 3 p.m. and includes a holy hour and Benediction. Among special days, this June 26 the shrine celebrates its 75th anniversary.
Joseph Pronechen is based in Trumbull, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: The Shrine of St. Joseph ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Pronechen ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: The Popeís Prayer for the Great Jubilee DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:Pope John Paul II wrote a different prayer for each of the three years of preparation for the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000.
He addressed the prayers to the three persons of the Trinity one after another depending on which year it was.
Now the Pope has written a prayer for the Church to use throughout the year of the Jubilee itself:
Blessed are you, Father, who, in your infinite love, gave us your only-begotten Son.
By the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate in the spotless womb of the Virgin Mary and was born in Bethlehem two thousand years ago.
He became our companion on life's path and gave new meaning to our history, the journey we make together in toil and suffering, in faithfulness and love, towards the new heaven and the new earth where You, once death has been vanquished, will be all in all.
Praise and glory to You, Most Holy Trinity, you alone are God most high!
By your grace, O Father, may the Jubilee Year be a time of deep conversion and of joyful return to you.
May it be a time of reconciliation between people, and of peace restored among nations, a time when swords are beaten into ploughshares and the clash of arms gives way to songs of peace.
Father, grant that we may live this Jubilee Year docile to the voice of the Spirit, faithful to the way of Christ, diligent in listening to your Word and in approaching the wellsprings of grace.
Praise and glory to You, Most Holy Trinity, you alone are God most high!
Father, by the power of the Spirit, strengthen the Church's commitment to the new evangelization and guide our steps along the pathways of the world, to proclaim Christ by our lives, and to direct our earthly pilgrimage towards the City of heavenly light.
May Christ's followers show forth their love for the poor and the oppressed; may they be one with those in need and abound in works of mercy; may they be compassionate towards all, that they themselves may obtain indulgence and forgiveness from you.
Praise and glory to You, Most Holy Trinity, you alone are God most high!
Father, grant that your Son's disciples, purified in memory and acknowledging their failings, may be one, that the world may believe. May dialogue between the followers of the great religions expand, and may all people discover the joy of being your children.
May the intercession of Mary, Mother of your faithful people, in union with the prayers of the Apostles, the Christian martyrs, and the righteous of every people and every age, make the Holy Year a time of renewed hope and of joy in the Spirit for each of us and for the whole Church.
Praise and glory to You, Most Holy Trinity, you alone are God most high!
To you, Almighty Father, Creator of the universe and of mankind, through Christ, the Living One, Lord of time and history, in the Spirit who makes all things holy, be praise and honor and glory now and forever.
Amen!
— Pope John Paul II
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: ëThe Lesson of Brown Universityí DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:The following is an editorial from the June 3 issue of The Providence Visitor, newspaper of the Diocese of Providence, R.I.
Recently, Brown University President E. Gordon Gee announced a three-year initiative to combine the study of values into the university's curriculum. It marks the first step toward bringing the study of human values, such as social justice and morality, into the curriculum. The curriculum would provide Brown students an education in the elements of a “good” life.
Brown University was founded in 1764 as a Baptist college. But, over the course of its long history, it has become increasingly secular in its outlook and curriculum.
Brown is one of the most prestigious universities in the nation where many future world and national leaders are educated. It is a rather sad commentary that values were not part of the current curriculum. The new program of studies of human values comes at a time when many in the elite world of academics have jettisoned traditional values, instead promoting a “value-free,” politically-correct education.
President Gee is to be commended for this new and innovative program whereby undergraduate students will be taught moral standards that will enable them “to discern and champion the necessary elements of a good life and just society.”
Not unlike Brown University and other Ivy League institutions, some Catholic colleges and universities have also divorced themselves from the philosophies of their founders.
Under the guise of academic freedom and diversity, many of these Catholic colleges have systematically reduced the Catholicity of their institutions.
Catholic values must be at the core of any Catholic academic curriculum; it cannot be displaced in the name of political correctness. The lesson of Brown University is one to which Catholic Universities across the country would do well to attend.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: EDUCATION -------- TITLE: EDUCATION NOTEBOOK DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:College Students Hooked on Credit
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, June 13—University of Central Oklahoma freshman Mitzi Pool — $2,500 in debt — hanged herself in 1997 in her dormitory room, her checkbook and credit-card bills spread out on her bed.
The AP's Marcy Gordon reported that consumer groups are citing Pool's death to underscore their criticism of credit-card companies, which they say are aggressively trying to get college students hooked on credit.
Georgetown University sociologist Robert Manning has also completed a study showing that some students are forced to cut back on their courses or spend more time working to pay off their credit-card debts, said Gordon. About 70% of students at four-year colleges have at least one credit card, and revolving debt on these cards averages more than $2,000.
Consumer groups criticized colleges and universities for allowing what they said was aggressive marketing of credit cards on campuses and benefiting financially from it, including fees to colleges who permit “affinity” cards linked to colleges, said Gordon.
Instructor Banned after Teaching About Darwin's Doubters
THE WASHINGTON TIMES, June 14—A Minnesota high school science teacher who was banned from teaching biology because of his religious beliefs has sued the school district for religious discrimination and violation of his First Amendment rights of free speech, reported Times’ staffer Andrea Billups.
Robert LeVake, 43, brought suit against Independent School District 656 after he was removed from his biology classes last year. Billups said LeVake “is active in his church” but did not identify his denomination.
“He says he repeatedly assured school administrators that he was not interested in teaching creationism, but wanted to make sure his students knew that not all scientists accept the theories of evolution as ‘unquestionable fact,’” said Billups. The fact that a number of theories about the origin of mankind, including creation, are included the textbook used by the school district was cited by LeVake's attorney.
“This is like telling a Democrat who teaches history that he's not able to teach the history of the Reagan administration because of his political views,” said the attorney, Frank Manion.
LeVake's local teachers union declined to take up his initial defense, said the report.
The New Anarchists
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, June 9—“The new anarchists are young people, mostly white, whose violent tendencies are causing increased concern in light of the recent murder spree at Columbine High School,” said staff reporter Peter Waldman.
While still “more ripple than groundswell,” Waldman reports on an old philosophy that is returning in a more virulent form. “Anarchism, advocating that people govern themselves in small, consensual groups with no institutions of authority, peaked as a U.S. political movement with Chicago's Haymarket Riot in 1886. European immigrants revived the philosophy in the 1920s, and it enjoyed another upswing in the 1960s and 70s in places like Eugene.”
Waldman mentions the Oregon city known for its “liberal attitudes” and “environmental sensitivity” because it has seen “a campaign of vandalism and arson attacks on businesses … including a riot at a downtown Nike store.” The perpetrators are “teenage runaways, high-school kids and university hangerson,” said Waldman.
Not a purely local phenomenon, Waldman said “young, self-described anarchists rear up from the core” of “some of the most active social and environmental grass-roots groups today,” usually via internet sites.
Sixty new books on anarchist themes are now on the market and the copies of works of earlier anarchists like Noam Chomsky have quintupled since 1994.
In a telling part of Waldman's story, he notes that “what distinguishes today's young anarchists … is their palpable despair.” That makes more traditional anarchists nervous. Said “Sleeve” Boutin, 32, an anarchist who works for a Eugene pacifist group: “Some of the young people seem to be operating from a place of hate and anger within themselves.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Enactment of Pain Relief Act Is Urged DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:The National Right to Life Committee is urging swift enactment of the Pain Relief Promotion Act, introduced in Congress June 17 by Sen. Don Nickles and Reps. Henry Hyde and Bart Stupak.
“The Pain Relief Promotion Act fosters pain relief and palliative care, essential positive alternatives to euthanasia,” said Burke Baich, director of the National Right to Life's department of medical ethics. “It also ensures that narcotics and other dangerous drugs controlled by the federal government are not used to kill patients.”
According to a poll conducted June 4–8 by Wirthlin Worldwide, Americans by a 64%-31% margin said no when asked whether federal law should allow the use of federally controlled drugs for the purpose of assisted suicide and euthanasia. The poll had a margin of error of 3.1%.
While 36 states have statutes against assisting suicide and seven others arguably prevent it under the common law, Oregon has specifically legalized it and efforts are accelerating in the California Assembly and the Alaska courts to follow its lead. All of the officially reported legally assisted suicides in Oregon have used federally controlled drugs.
“While we must fight the drive to legalize the killing of those deemed to have a poor quality of life wherever the battle presents itself, ultimately only protective laws on the national level can be fully effective in safeguarding the lives of the vulnerable,” Baich said.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Scott Hahn Explains Catholic-Lutheran Dialogue DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:STEUBENVILLE, Ohio—After a year of discussing just how much Catholics and Lutherans concur about the doctrine of justification, Church officials announced they were ready to sign a joint agreement.
Cardinal Edward I. Cassidy, the Vatican's chief ecumenist, and the Rev. Dr. Ishmael Noko, general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, announced the agreement June 11 in Geneva. They said The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification would be signed formally Oct. 31 in Augsburg, Germany.
The joint declaration said Catholics and Lutherans agree that justification and salvation are totally free gifts of God and cannot be earned by performing good works, but rather are reflected in good works.
Jay Dunlap of Register Radio News interviewed Scott Hahn, a former Protestant minister who's now a Catholic professor of biblical theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville, on the meaning of the Catholic-Lutheran dialogue.
Dunlap: Could you explain the differences between Catholics and Lutherans on the question of justification? What does the Bible teach and how could such a conflict arise?
Hahn: What has come out here on June 11 from Geneva has emerged from an ongoing dialogue between Catholics and Lutherans. … And we're not just trying to find strategically worded formulations that have deliberate ambiguities that will enable Lutherans and Catholics both to sign on the propositions that can mean two different things. We've gotten past that. Now we're trying to identify the substantial common ground on which we stand, and then from that platform we can discuss the differences that divide us.
The fact of the matter is that on the issue of justification, we agree on probably 90%, we disagree on 10%. We've been focusing 90% of our time and energy for the last 400 years on that 10% that divides us.
And so this new dialogue, the newness of this dialogue, consists in the accent marks falling on the 90% that we agree upon, so that we can stand on common ground and discuss our differences while acknowledging that we agree on a whole lot more than we disagree on. …
Is the difference with how you read Scripture?
In that light what we're hearing now is, let's get back to Scripture, let's get back to St. Paul, and let's really come to grips with what the Scriptures teach about justification. … Let's understand how the whole New Testament provides diverse teachings on justification, but a diversity that also allows for a deep unity.
So James does not contradict Paul. It isn't the case that the Lutherans have Paul [“For we hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of law,” Romans 3:28] and the Catholics have James [“You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone,” James 2:24] and we're just on opposite sides of a wall lobbing grenades over the top at each other anymore. We're trying to understand how the Holy Spirit is teaching the same unified truth in two distinct ways, through St. Paul on the one hand and St. James on the other. And this is where I think the dialogue is heading and that's what makes it so interesting. …
I'm speaking now as a Catholic who has converted from Protestantism, as someone who once embraced wholeheartedly the Lutheran understanding of justification and now embraces the Catholic view.
Has this been a mainly Protestant debate in the past?
In the last 300 or 400 years, the debate has been carried on mostly by Protestants, with Catholics on the sidelines, because very few Catholics have made justification an issue. It's only the Lutherans who saw this initially as the article on which the Church stands or falls, as Luther described it. For Catholics it was really an issue only because the Lutherans made it one, and it was a matter of study and contemplation only to the extent that we wanted to bridge the gap that divided us.
And I think what we have to do now is retrieve the biblical basis for the Church's teaching and at the same time show the continuity that exists between St. Paul and the Council of Trent. And you can find in this Joint Declaration precisely that kind of thing. … The emphasis is that justification is not only being forgiven but also being made righteous. …
The Catholics have always emphasized that it's more than juridical. We're not only declared righteous, we are made righteous, and that's what I find so significant about this common statement, that it says justification consists not only of our being forgiven of sins but also in our being made righteous.
The second thing that is so incredible about this first section is that it provides the foundation on which we can understand how it is that sinners can be made righteous and not just declared righteous — and it's this: We are made children of God. Quoting 1 John 3:1: “We are called children of God, and that is what we are.”
And so it goes on to describe how we are truly and inwardly renewed by the action of the Holy Spirit. So the Catholic teaching on justification is more than just God showing favor to sinners. It's more than God the Judge just acquitting guilty criminals. It is actually God the Father adopting us as sons and daughters, giving us Christ's son-ship through the power of the Holy Spirit, so that justification means transferring us from spiritual death into the very life of the divine family that we call the Trinity.
Describe what that means practically.
We were in Adam's family. All of the offspring of Adam were born estranged from God. But now through Christ and by justification we are transplanted, we are adopted, we are regenerated so that we become sons and daughters of the living God.
The God of the universe is now Abba, Father. And that's more than a name. It's more than a label. It's more than a juridical decree. It is a mystery that goes down to the very roots of our own personal being. We are as substantially transformed by justification as we were when we were first conceived in our mothers’ wombs.
And to me, tying in the classic teachings of the Church at the Council of Trent with the Apostle Paul, as well as St. James and St. John, is the bridge we need to build. Not only for Lutherans to understand what we believe as Catholics and how biblical it is, but to get Catholics on board as well so that Catholics can discover what Lutherans have known all along, that justification is really central to the Gospel, that it is really the meat on the plate that we should be chewing and digesting, and drawing strength from.
And it's not an issue just because the Lutherans made it an issue back in the 1500s. It really is the heart and the soul of the Gospel because the doctrine of justification is what gives us assurance that we're not just acquitted criminals, we're not just forgiven sinners, we're nothing less than sons and daughters of the most high God.
And that is where the beauty of the coming together in dialogue really can bear the fruit, it would seem.
That's right. And this is why I think the intellectual rigor needs the spiritual passion because the issues that we are talking about matter more than anything else in the world. And so when we sit down at the table we're looking across the table not simply at heretics or even separated brothers, but at the very persons for whom Christ bled and died.
We owe it to our Savior to do everything possible to rectify misunderstandings, to clarify any obscurities, in order to show that the Church that Christ has founded has remained faithful to the Scriptures. But at the same time it's as humble as its Savior in stooping low and stretching out its hands and doing whatever is necessary to clarify and to deepen and to communicate effectively these teachings.
Jay Dunlap is a correspondent with Register Radio News.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Agency Seen Trying to Rewrite Rules on Embryos DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—The National Institutes of Health is scrambling to write directives to get around the current ban on research on live human embryos, a pro-life group said.
The agency is writing new rules in the wake of research which shows the potential to grow new tissues from embryonic cells.
“The real problem with the National Institutes of Health rewriting the rules so that they can evade the ban on using live human embryos in federally funded research is that it further devalues human life,” said Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee.
Johnson told the Register that the health agency, which is the federal government's principal biomedical research arm, would release a report sometime this month, and there would only be a 60-day period to respond to it.
Use of federal funds for embryonic research was banned four years ago by the Dickey-Wicker Amendment. The law specifically forbids the use of such funds for research that harms or manipulates live human embryos, or the creation of human embryos exclusively for research purposes.
However, because privately funded stem-cell research has made scientific headway, the health agency would like to get federal money to further its own stem-cell work.
Richard M. Doerflinger, associate director for the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the researchers are not only showing disregard for human life but for the current law.
“The NIH is so confident that it is willing to put a thumb in the eye of both the president and Congress, as it moves to fund experiments that many members of Congress thought they had banned,” he told the Register.
During the first week of gestation, embryonic stem cells form within human embryos. The stem cell is the first building block of all tissue and organ development.
Stem-cell research involves isolating these cells during this early period of life and directing them to form various tissues of the human body. Researchers hope then to be able to transplant the new cells into patients to replace diseased or damaged tissues. Harvesting stem cells in this way, however, kills the human embryo.
‘a principle that researchersare always tempted to do: to offer that harm can be done here and now to benefit others in the future.’
Alternate Techniques
In recent months there have been reports of new techniques for stem cells that do not lead to the destruction of human embryos.
The New York Times reported earlier this year that Dr. Jonas Frisen and his colleagues at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, isolated adult brain stem cells that divided. Researchers are hoping that these cells can be used as a treatment for damaged neural tissues in patients with Parkinson's disease. Frisen added that the use of the patient's own stem cell would also avoid both “the ethical and immunological problems.”
In December, Ruth Larson, science editor of the Washington Times, explained that doctors are now able to use an anti-aging enzyme, telomerase, to rejuvenate certain cells in the body which “opens up a dazzling array of possibilities.”
Yet, despite the known advances in adult stem cell research, the National Institutes of Health is pushing for the use of live human embryos.
Dr. Harold Varmus, director of the agency, testified in the Senate last December that the development of cell lines was “an unprecedented scientific breakthrough.” He added, “It is not too unrealistic to say that this research has the potential to revolutionize the practice of medicine and improve the quality and length of life.”
(Varmus’ spokesman, Donald Ralbovsky, refused comment for this article.)
At the same hearing, Doerflinger, the associate director of the bishops’ pro-life secretariat, said that the moral problems and the destruction of human embryos “is independent of any possible benefit expected from such research.”
He added that “from the time of the Nuremberg Code, ethical norms on human experimentation have demanded that we never inflict death or disabling injury on any nonconsenting individual of the human species simply for the sake of benefit to others.”
In its 1987 instruction Donum Vitae (“The Gift of Life”), the Catholic Church's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said, “Experimentation on embryos which is not directly therapeutic is illicit. No objective, even though noble in itself, such as a foreseeable advantage to science, to other human beings or to society, can in any way justify experimentation on living human embryos or fetuses, whether viable or not, either inside or outside the mother's womb.”
Doerflinger told the Register that it is “a principle that researchers are always tempted to do: to offer that harm can be done here and now to benefit others in the future.”
Theresa Wagner, legal analyst for the Family Research Council, asked whether science is going to be “in the service of human beings or are human beings going to be in the service of science?”
“This is Tuskegee, Ala., all over again when experiments were performed on terminally ill black men without their permission,” Wagner said. “The justification at that time was that they were going to die anyway. The first and last question must be, ‘Are these human beings?’ … That's all we need to know. Embryos are human beings and they must be protected.”
Ellen Pearson writes from Alexandria, Virginia.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen G. Pearson ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Urging New Doctors to Support the Unborn DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:DALLAS—Medical student Monique Taylor founded an organization this year that she thinks should not have to exist.
A second-year student at the University of Texas’ Southwestern Medical School, Taylor formed Physicians for Life to affirm the life-preserving principles of the medical profession. Despite doctors’ noble goals of improving human health and life, she said, they have become the source of the greatest attacks on human life through legalized abortion on demand and, increasingly, euthanasia.
“It floors me that we need this group — doctors preserve life,” said Taylor, 24, whose mission is to “inform medical students, physicians and staff about various attacks on the dignity of human life.”
She said she realized last summer she needed to do something when she returned to school in the fall to counteract the presence of an active “Medical Students for Choice” organization. Her initial efforts have included showing a 30-minute real-time video of a fetus in the womb at the school's organization fair, a seminar attended by 50 students and some of the school's deans.
Symposium on Life
Humanae Vitae expert Janet Smith spoke to the students about the doctor-patient relationship, natural law and the contraception-abortion connection, and gave a symposium on post-abortion effects in which two women shared their own abortion experiences. Taylor's next project is to provide an educational seminar on euthanasia.
“It's not that it's that active, but it's a presence that has an impact,” said Taylor, who like her 800 fellow Southwestern students has a full schedule even without volunteer activities. She has adopted Mother Teresa as a patroness in the hopes that “miracles will happen and we will speed along her canonization process,” she said.
By changing the name of her organization from Medical Students for Life, to Physicians for Life, Taylor hopes to broaden its scope and involve more practicing physicians in her efforts.
Though for now the group consists of a few loosely organized student members, Robert Best, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Culture of Life Foundation, announced in January plans to help students like Taylor link up on the Internet with one another and with physicians to provide a network of help and information.
Already online is Medical Students Supporting Life, a group based in Charlottesville, Va. Among its aims, it tries to provide a discussion forum “for nonviolent, collegiate discussion of abortion issues in an effort to establish common ground,” to educate about the societal impact of abortion, and “to reframe the abortion discussion in a moral context.”
Along with current articles on life issues, the Web site includes the wording of the Hippocratic oath, formerly the standard for doctors, which explicitly prohibits assisted Suicide and abortion: “I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, now will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman a remedy for an abortion.”
The Opposition
Medical Students for Choice, a national organization that claims more than 4,000 members, is opposition for its pro-life counterpart.
The group, whose director was away on summer vacation when the Register called, said in a statement that it matches its convictions with a practical mission: “In order for reproductive choice to be a reality, future physicians need to be well trained to provide all reproductive health services, including abortion.”
The organization said its goals are to include abortion information in medical school curricula, give students clinical opportunities in abortion, push legislators for more abortion training, and provide a support network for “tomorrow's abortion providers.”
Pro-life students, for their part, concentrate first on changing hearts. Some medical students are taking an evangelistic rather than the intellectual approach to reach fellow students.
One such pro-lifer is Michael Moloney, a family practice physician who is currently in a residency program in preventive medicine at the University of Texas in Houston. He leads a lectionary-based Bible study for between three and 15 medical and dental students and five professors in the city's internationally known medical district.
“I think our goal is to preserve the faith of those who are Catholic in health care, but also to win back Catholics who are going to the Baptist and evangelical Bible studies,” said Moloney, who himself had been “won over” by evangelicals before returning to his Catholic upbringing. Moloney also participates in a group of about 10 residents who read moral theology and discuss life issues, he said.
“I would suggest that Scripture is the way to bring people's faith alive,” he said. “It's very difficult to get people to obey when it's just following a lot of rules. Meeting Christ has to happen first. Getting [to a pro-life position] is a process.
“The problem when you do life ministry, especially on campus, is that people will polarize you and assume you're trying to do something political. Once you get into the moral and ethical debate, all you do is get the other side upset, and they don't want to mess with you anymore.”
Taylor of Dallas said she has received one e-mail from a fellow student asking to be removed from Taylor's campus mailing list, which she uses only to advertise her seminars. She saw it as an opportunity for dialogue.
“She wrote that ‘I found it very offensive to restrict a woman's right,’” said Taylor. “I wrote back … that abortion becomes not a freedom, but a bondage” and encouraged her to find out more at the post-abortion seminar.
Moloney, who has been in practice for 15 years, said he is seeing a new generation more open to a pro-life message. Recently he presented a symposium on natural family planning at St. Joseph Hospital in Houston, which he said drew several thoughtful questions and considerable interest by the chief resident.
“I think there's more hope now than in the last 30 years,” he said.
Ellen Rossini writes from Dallas.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Rossini ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Suicide Law Still Divisive in Oregon DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:PORTLAND, Ore.—In 1997 Oregonians voted to allow physicians to prescribe a lethal dosage of drugs for mentally sound patients who wish to commit suicide.
In 1999 the debate over the issue continues.
Euthanasia advocates contend that nothing has changed in Oregon, except that people are free to commit suicide with the help of their doctors. Not everyone agrees.
Dr. Bill Toffler, a physician from Portland, said that he has seen a definite climate change in health-care practices since the measure became law. “Many people no longer have the level of trust they once did in the doctor-patient relationship,” he told the Register.
A report released earlier this year by the Oregon Health Association revealed that 15 people had taken advantage of the new measure.
Robert DuPriest, regional director of Physicians for Compassionate Care, in Eugene, noted that the state's suicide rate is already 42% higher than the nation's — 63% higher for people over age 75.
In this light, “adding 15 more cases by physician-assisted suicide is a tragedy for Oregon, not a great value,” DuPriest said.
Toffler also pointed out that there is no way of knowing how many people actually committed suicide. Doctors who assist with suicides are asked, but not required, to file reports which list only basic information, such as the patient's name, age, diagnosis and prognosis. Further details are not necessary.
‘People need empathy and support from their physicians, not a lethal prescription.’
He said that the Oregon Medical Association actively opposed the Death with Dignity Act before it was passed, calling it “seriously flawed,” partly because of this lack of accountability.
Toffler added that there is no punishment specified for doctors who fail to report an assisted suicide.
“We know that 59% of the doctors in the Netherlands never report the times when they help their patients to end their lives,” he asserted. “It's very specious to suppose that legalizing assisted suicide will ‘get it out in the open.’”
Even the health association report issued earlier this year admitted, “A 1995 anonymous survey of Oregon physicians found that 7% of surveyed physicians had provided prescriptions for lethal medications to patients prior to legalization. We do not know if covert physician-assisted suicide continued to be practiced in Oregon in 1998.”
Many doctors are also worried that lonely and unconnected patients are at risk because of this law. According to the report, 13 of the 15 victims who ended their lives were divorced, single or never married. These people, Toffler contended, most likely “turned to suicide in isolation and desperation.”
Dr. Gregory Hamilton, a psychiatrist from Portland, said his fear was that identification and treatment of depression in dying patients could be overlooked in these and other cases. “People need empathy and support from their physicians, not a lethal prescription,” he added.
However, Hannah Davidson, director of Oregon Death With Dignity, said she thought it unlikely that a depressed person would be allowed to commit suicide.
“Doctors are aware of any question of depression and are very cautious,” she said. “I've never heard of a person being allowed to commit suicide who was depressed. These people are going to die. So there's undoubtedly sadness. But it's not depression in the way we think of it. This is really the end of their life.”
Yet, Hamilton cited the first case of legal assisted suicide in Oregon, which was reported in several medical journals, including the American Medical News and The American Journal of Psychiatry.
The longtime physician of an 80-year-old woman refused to write her a lethal prescription, and referred her to another doctor who would be more open to the procedure. The doctor examined her and diagnosed her as depressed. He said she was not eligible for assisted suicide and prescribed anti-depressants.
The woman's husband then contacted the euthanasia activist organization Compassion in Dying. A doctor who was working there diagnosed the woman over the phone as mentally competent and referred her to other doctors, one of whom wrote her the prescription. Three weeks later she was dead. “No one challenged this,” Toffler said.
Asked about this case, Davidson, of Oregon Death With Dignity, pointed out, “Four out of five doctors who spoke with her said she was not clinically depressed. One of them did a psychiatric evaluation. There was only one physician who thought she might be depressed.”
‘Handled Very Poorly’
Hamilton, however, saw the facts much differently.
“You have at least four psychiatrists saying in print in reputable journals that this case was handled very poorly,” he said. “At the very least, ask why the three other pro-suicide doctors did not check with the second doctor, who was also pro-suicide, to see why he found grounds for depression.”
Depression may not even be the lone criterion being used to justify suicide nowadays, Toffler warned.
In a recent suicide case, Patrick Matheny, a Coos Bay resident who suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease) received a lethal prescription but kept putting off taking it.
In the end, he couldn't swallow the pills. His brother-in-law told the Oregonian newspaper that “he had to help him to end his life,” but he didn't say how.
“No one bothered to find out,” Toffler said. “All the district attorney asked was, if the victim asked to be killed. No one asked why the brother in law helped to kill him.”
Despite this recent case, Toffler is optimistic. “I think it's possible to re-educate the public on this issue, and I think other states will be more wary of the risks involved in legalizing this practice.”
He hoped that the measure had a chance of being repealed. “We've actually been quite successful in airing the flaws in the law. We'll continue to be vigilant and eventually the truth will set us free.”
Regina Doman is based in Front Royal, Virginia.
Physicians for Compassionate Care can be reached at P.O. Box 6042, Portland, Ore. 97228, (503) 533-8154.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Regina Doman ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:Pope John Paul II made a powerful plea to his countrymen to respect human life June 13 when he spoke out firmly against abortion, euthanasia and prenatal medical intervention, said the Associated Press.
The Pope also referred to “interventions and … experimentation,” said the report, which seemed “to refer to medical procedures such as amniocentesis, which can detect genetic problems in a fetus.”
He told the people to show respect for “the laws of nature” which needed to be “extended to mankind itself.”
Said the Pope, “Is it really possible to oppose the destruction of the environment while allowing, in the name of comfort and convenience, the slaughter of the unborn and the procured death of the elderly and the infirm, and the carrying out, in the name of progress, of unacceptable interventions and forms of experimentation at the very beginning of human life?
“When the good of science or economic interests prevail over the good of the person, and ultimately of whole societies, environmental destruction is a sign of a real contempt for man.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: LIFE NOTES DATE: 06/27/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: June 27 - July 03, 1999 ----- BODY:Gov. Jeb Bush's Faith and the Death Penalty
ST. PETERSBURG TIMES, June 10—Saying “there is no joy in this at all,” Gov. Jeb Bush signed his first two death warrants June 9, reported the St. Petersburg Times.
Executions are scheduled on July 7 for Thomas Provenzano and July 8 for Allen Lee Davis.
The paper reported Bush signed the death warrants less than three weeks after Bishops John Snyder and John Ricard, visited him and “voiced their opposition and concerns about the death penalty.”
Bush, the President's son who converted to Catholicism in 1995, is “anguished about weighing his religious teachings and his duties as governor,” said the report.
“… Bush alluded to his conversion to Catholicism and the conflict surrounding the life-and-death decisions a governor makes,” said the paper.
According to the report, he recently told students, “I am a Catholic. I am conflicted a little bit by my faith. … I would not want to have the Pope call me up and ask about such decisions.”
Supreme Court Says Pro-Lifers Must Pay Fines
ASSOCIATED PRESS, June 14—The Supreme Court ruled June 14 that Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry and other pro-life activists must pay nearly $600,000 in fines stemming from a campaign to blockade abortion clinics in the New York area almost 10 years ago.
“The justices, without comment, rejected an appeal in which seven individuals and two anti-abortion groups challenged the contempt-of-court fines and fee awards,” said an Associated Press report.
“A federal judge and the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals twice have ruled that the fines and fees are justified.”
But Operation Rescue believes that the heavy fines are a way of repressing civil protest, said the report.
“These phenomenally large fines … are a means of repressing civil protest that would have been enthusiastically endorsed by Bull Connor and the Jim Crow South,” the appeal read.
Vermont Could Legalize Homosexual ‘Marriage’
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, June 14—Vermont's Supreme Court is weighing whether or not to redefine marriage to include men who live with other men and have sex, and women who live with other women and have sex, said a “Rule of Law” column in the Journal by Matthew Daniels.
Daniels, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, said that the Court is disregarding public opposition to the move, which would indirectly affect marriage laws in the other 49 states.
“Public opinion polls show that most Americans regard the concept of homosexual ‘marriage’ as an oxymoron. This is the principal reason that proponents are pursuing legalization through the courts in an effort to do an end run around popular opinion and the democratic process,” said the report.
The Court is currently considering Baker vs. Vermont, in which “the plaintiffs … were carefully chosen by attorneys for the national advocacy organizations” trying to put the sexual relationships of homosexuals on a par with marriage, said Daniels.
The plaintiffs include college professors, state employees and a lesbian couple who run a Christmas tree farm.
One judge in the court is quoted by Daniels saying, “Look … some state has to go first.” Commented Daniels: “He made the error of confusing the court with the state of Vermont — which is to say a democratic policy with a democratically elected government.
After courts in Alaska and Hawaii gave marriage status to homosexuals who live together, voter referendums in those states changed the law back, said Daniels.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Catholics and Orthodox In a Surge Toward Unity DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—The unexpected story of Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics moving closer to unity has so far taken place in the Eastern nations of Europe, as Pope John Paul II has reached out to the East in bold ways.
But Roman Catholics and Eastern Christians meeting in Washington, D.C., June 15–18 showed that the effort to unite the two forms of sacramental Christianity are bearing fruit around the world.
“I detected a very positive spirit among everyone, which tells me there is a very intense desire for our different traditions to come together,” Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Isaiah of Denver said about the third Orientale Lumen conference.
The meeting came on the heels of a papal visit to Romania in May, the Pope's first trip to a primarily Orthodox county.
Bishop John Michael Botean, the American leader of Eastern-rite Romanian Catholics, told how Orthodox and Catholics gave the Pope an enthusiastic reception in Bucharest, the capital.
Eastern-rite Catholics and the Orthodox have squabbled over church properties the communists took away from the Catholics and gave to the Orthodox after World War II.
But “from the moment the Pope touched down until he left, the feeling was positive and remains that way,” Bishop Botean said. By the end of the trip, Bishop Botean said, Eastern Catholics were not shouting “Give our churches back,” but “Unity” and “Love.”
The Washington conference emphasized the unifying power of devotion to Mary — even while outlining differences of interpretation.
The conference took place on the campus of The Catholic University of America. One evening, conferees traveled across town to St. Nicholas Cathedral to take part in an Orthodox vespers.
Metropolitan Isaiah spoke before a huge icon of the Virgin Mary in the apse of the Russian Orthodox-style cathedral, whose interior is covered with icons.
It was no typical Orthodox service. Many in the audience wore Roman collars. A Coptic nun was swathed in black. Prelates in attendance included Eastern Catholic bishops and a bishop of the Assyrian Church of the East.
Metropolitan Isaiah spoke on the meaning of the Virgin Mary, the Theotokos, the God-bearer, for Christians of the Eastern tradition.
“The Orthodox Church today adorns the holy Theotokos and ever-virgin Mary, the Panagia (All-Holy) with almost unending titles, lists of titles … and exalted names, which are all beautiful and appropriate jewelry which decorate her person,” Metropolitan Isaiah told conference-goers and others who filled the compact church.
The four-day conference was sponsored by the Eastern Churches Journal , the Society of St. John Chrysostom and the School of Religious Studies at Catholic University. It brought together lay people and religious to explore “the Light from the East,” Orientale Lumen. The title was inspired by the 1995 papal apostolic letter of the same name that encouraged all believers to acquaint themselves with the treasures of the Eastern churches.
That desire was expressed most strongly during the Orthodox Divine Liturgy on the last morning of the conference, held in the crypt chapel of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception beside the university. In a dramatic moment, Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia emerged from behind the icon-screen and turned to kneel facing the altar, just before the distribution of Communion. Everyone knelt and joined Bishop Kallistos in a special prayer he had inserted into the service. It included the following lines:
“Thou dost call all Christians to draw near and partake of thy Body and Blood. But our sin has divided us, and we have no power to partake of thy holy Eucharist together. We confess this our sin and we pray thee, forgive us and help us to serve the ways of reconciliation according to thy will.”
Bishop Kallistos, the conference moderator, is known to many as Timothy Ware, the author of The Orthodox Church.
Most Successful Yet
Conference chairman Jack Figel said the conference was the most successful yet in terms of attendance and representation. Those attending included Roman Catholics and people from many churches in communion with Rome, including the Ukrainian, Romanian, Ruthenian, Melkite, SyroMalankara and Russian Catholic churches.
Orthodox attending the conference included those from the Greek, Russian, Carpatho-Russian, Ukrainian churches, the eastern and western rites of the Antiochian church, and those from the Orthodox Church in America, a church of Russian Orthodox ancestry that has become self-governing.
The archbishop of Baltimore, Cardinal William Keeler, greeted the opening of the conference with a promise that the international theological dialogue, postponed this year because of the war in Kosovo, would go forward next year. He said there would be many events arranged for the laity taking part alongside the theological discussions. The Pope's new ambassador to the United States, Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, also greeted the conference during its proceedings.
Mar Bawai Soro, the first speaker to address the conference, explained that his church, the Assyrian Church of the East, rejected the Council of Ephesus in 431. This council defined Mary as the Theotokos, “Mother of God,” emphasizing that Christ is one person, though both God and man. The Church of the East — in communion with neither the Catholic nor Orthodox churches — refers to Mary as Christotokos, “Mother of Christ.”
In 1994, Pope John Paul II and Mar Dinkha IV, Catholicos-Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East, signed a common declaration that both churches agree that Christ is one person with a divine and human nature, thus putting an end to centuries of dispute.
Father John Berchmans, attending from India, found himself answering lots of questions as he mixed with other people in the lobby or during meal breaks. “They don't know much about Indian Catholic and Orthodox churches,” Father Berchmans said. “When I say I belong to the Catholic Malankara Church, people are perplexed.” His church, in communion with Rome, has believers who live mostly in southwest India.
It is important for Christians of different background to meet each other at such conferences as Orientale Lumen, Father Berchmans asserted.
“They all ask for our sacrifices for making the church one,” he said. The unity of the church is not simply a pious wish, nor is it a philanthropic attitude. It is a New Testament requirement.
“Jesus has prayed for it, as he expressly wished that those who follow him become one body.”
Wesley Young writes from Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Wesley R. Young ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: New Catholic TV Channel Is Planned by Familyland DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:BLOOMINGDALE, Ohio— A new Catholic television channel set to begin airing in September shows how evangelizers can use new technologies to reach more people.
Familyland Television Network — “fl-TV,” for short — will be carried 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and draw on a library of more than 15,000 shows, series and lectures. It will be carried on the Dominion DBS Sky Angel Satellite Television and Radio System. Programming will originate directly from Catholic Familyland in Bloomingdale, Ohio.
Jerome and Gwen Coniker said they are launching fl-TV to promote the enduring virtues of the family and citizenship, and to encourage devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The Conikers are parents of 13 children and grandparents of 45. Television “has been used to tear down the family,” Jerome Coniker said. “We're going to use it to rebuild the family.”
He attributes the Familyland channel to God's providence. “We don't have any money,” he said. “All this is through the grace of God.”
The new channel shows how modern technology is making it easier and cheaper to create channels and programming that would be difficult to air on the major networks.
Coniker says his start-up costs are about the same as the cost of a few minutes of advertising during a major network sporting event. That's because Familyland network has been given exclusive rights to the Catholic satellite channel by the Dominion DBS Sky Angel television and radio system of Naples, Fla., one of only three such satellite direct broadcast systems licensed by the Federal Communications Commission and the pioneer in the field of high-powered DBS technology.
All that viewers virtually anywhere in the continental United States and in some areas in Canada and Mexico need to receive the station is the modest, 18-inch DISH brand antenna (a DBS satellite receiver) available from the company and stores such as Sears and Sam's Club.
The system eliminates the local commercial and cable TV middlemen that can exert controls over religious programming using “must carry” laws. The system thereby eliminates hundreds of millions in operating costs also. Nominal viewer charges to receive the channel (about $4.50 monthly) create revenues so that the air time is free for broadcasters like Familyland TV.
But Familyland Network still needs donations for equipment, for instance. Already there's a 30,000-square-foot conference and TV facility with a seven-camera shoot and acoustics that singer Dana has told them are among the finest she's encountered, said Coniker.
Would Familyland divert contributions from places such as National Conference of Catholic Bishops' Catholic Communications Campaign?
“That's never the attitude and never has been the concern,” said William Ryan, deputy director of communications for the bishops conference.
“The more people see what's being accomplished in a particular field of communications, the more they're likely to support other efforts rather than withhold funds. There's no rivalry emerging out of this new enterprise.”
Sky Angel itself is a pro-life, family-oriented network with a mix of Christian ministry and wholesome family programming, according to Robert Johnson, founder and chairman of Dominion Sky Angel. Fl-TV will be its only Catholic programming and will broaden audience reach, he added.
With Sky Angel's system, parents can block any channels and particular shows. The unique blocking protocol allows “total freedom to pick and choose,” explained Johnson. “If [viewers] want programming strictly from the Catholic doctrinal point of view, they can subscribe to Familyland Network only.” Acquainted with Coniker since 1986, Johnson added, “Jerry has a wonderful ministry there [at Familyland].”
The Programs
As a program host, Coniker knows the power of TV to reach people. Since 1981 he's had several series on Mother Angelica's EWTN, the national Catholic cable channel.
“We welcome anything Jerry is doing,” said EWTN's president, Deacon Bill Steltemeier. “I think his faithfulness to the Church and his reputation will enhance what he's now doing.”
The programming “is designed to reach the masses,” said Coniker. Religious programming will be interspersed with family entertainment. Regular features will include weekly Mass, nature shows, “Be Not Afraid Family Hours” and movies. The channel has obtained rights to such classics as Black Beauty and Little Women; and literary and history films like Oliver Twist and Christopher Columbus. “The Lone Ranger” and “Andy Griffith” shows will also be part of the mix.
“Everything will come back to the spiritual,” said Coniker. Movies “will be used a springboard into faith” because they'll include commentaries and lessons on how they impact Judeo-Christian culture and life.
Much of the programming has been taped for video release starting in 1981, when Mother Teresa of Calcutta was featured in the Coniker's first production. Mother Teresa then inspired the making of the “Be Not Afraid Family Hours” feature and prompted these taped teachings of the faith to be aired in churches before the Blessed Sacrament where she said they could be even more effective.
The many videos Mother Teresa made for the apostolate over the years, including the last major taped appearance she made before she died in 1997, are among 15,000 shows, series, lectures, and teachings stockpiled in the apostolate's library and ready to be aired on the new station. Alone, they can provide unrepeated, nonstop programming for over 20 months.
“We're at a critical turning point for America, and we can't continue to live, to kill the innocent, like we are,” Coniker said. To combat the “culture of death” it is necessary to build a “culture of life and hope,” he said. He hopes the new network does just that.
Joseph Pronechen writes from Trumbull, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Pronechen ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Virtue Comes to Video Games DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:VALLEY FORGE, Pa.—For families worried about what to do about violence in the media, a knight in bright armor has arrived.
The knight is the protagonist of “Saints of Virtue,” a new, fast-paced Catholic video game that aims to give Nintendo a run for the money. The game's cyberhero passes through castle corridors, wages battle with bad guys like pride and envy, and outmaneuvers temptations to become a saint of virtue.
Whether he wins or loses, he might turn out to be a success with video-gamers — if the reaction of teen-agers at the Catholic Marketing Network trade show is any indication.
The fourth annual trade show, held June 8–11, attracted more than 1,000 retailers, marketers and suppliers to the Valley Forge Convention Center outside Philadelphia.
Among the 262 company booths were displays of toys and other games for children and families (see related story). “Saints of Virtue” was unique as the only animated, fast-action video game exhibited. Its producer, Virginia-based Cactus Game Design Inc., extols it as a healthy alternative to the lowbrow fare that floods the mainstream market.
“According to the Catholic Marketing Network 1999 survey of Catholic stores,” said Rob Anderson, president of Cactus Game, “less than 7% of all sales are to customers under 21 years of age. That's tragic. If we're not drawing teens in, producing games that are exciting and fun for them, then we're conceding ground to the enemy.
“People don't realize how dark and horrific many popular secular games are today. Many of them are violent and cult-based. The Christian market needs to be producing games that teens want to buy for themselves, to counteract what's already out there.”
Anderson is confident that “Saints of Virtue” exemplifies the kind of game teens seek out for themselves. The proof is that teenagers were glued to the screen throughout the show, and kept coming back for more.
For younger children, Andre Kalich, owner of Pennsylvania-based Train Up A Child Inc., introduced new Bible Action Figures.
“Retailers are delighted and surprised to discover our booth,” he said. “They keep saying what a great idea these figures are, because they know kids will really get excited about them.”
His crafted plastic figures have movable parts, a scenery backdrop depicting a scene from the character's life, and biblical references about the figure's role in Scripture. The backdrop accompanying each figure can be placed side by side with those of other figures, creating an entire panorama passing from sunrise to sunset.
Another children's item, plush teddy bears that recite favorite Catholic prayers in real children's voices, made its debut. Blue Bell Bear founder Elaine Thompson was on hand to talk with retailers.
More Than Games
But the more than 800 attendees, representing 279 retail stores, had more than games and toys to consider at the trade show. Other exhibitors offered statuaries, popular and classical Catholic music, books, rosaries, medals, crucifixes, olive wood products, night lights, calligraphied verse, magazines, videos, audiotapes and artwork.
“This is the year the Catholic Marketing Network went international,” noted network president Alan Napleton. “We had suppliers, distributors, and retailers from Canada, Mexico, South America, Europe and Australia. As this international segment of Catholic Marketing Network grows, we will be incorporating new elements into future shows for our international participants.”
Already, Canadian retailers held a spontaneous meeting to discuss their unique concerns, and decided to actively help expand the Catholic Marketing Network's outreach to Canada.
“This trade event is a great help to us,” said Charles Casazza of Mary's Garden Catholic Books in Maryland. “We opened our store around the time of the very first show and have been attending ever since. We've found lots of bargains and new suppliers, and we've made a lot of new friends.”
“It's been very beneficial,” agreed Eric Winegart of St. Gregory's Guild book and gift store in Montana. “It's so neat to be around all these great Catholics who are willing to put their livelihood on the line to save souls and spread the Catholic faith.”
Breaks from Business
Retailers and member suppliers also received the results of the first-ever comprehensive Catholic retail survey conducted by the Catholic Marketing Network for 1998, and a Supplier Directory listing member suppliers' company information. In addition, more than 125 attendees participated in a one-day retailer education seminar with Joe Tabers, of Productive Training Services Inc., and guest speaker Anthony DeMasi, editor and co-publisher of Giftware News.
In the retailer educational sessions, retailers swapped tips on how to overcome retailing challenges, improve computer system delivery and better serve customers. A “Springtime 2000 Evening Mission Conference,” coordinated by Father Michael Barrett, highlighted Catholic recording artists, including John Michael Talbot and Irish tenor Mark Forrest. Evening speakers included EWTN's Jeff Cavins, Father John McFadden and authors Bob and Penny Lord.
As the only trade show of its kind in North America, the event was definitively Catholic, with a clear foundation in prayer. An adoration chapel was frequented by attendees, and daily Masses were well attended. Celebrants Bishop James S. Sullivan of Fargo, N.D.; Bishop Joseph Madera, an auxiliary in the Military Services Archdiocese; and Father Andrew Apostoli each exhorted Catholic retailers and suppliers to pursue personal holiness and to stay true to their unique mission of evangelization.
“The light of the Holy Spirit must permeate through each of us,” Bishop Madera said. “Each one of us has a plan in the mind of God.”
According to Napleton, plans include introducing a second trade show in Baltimore on Jan. 25–28, expanding the retail seminars to two days, and co-sponsoring a sacred art component in conjunction with the St. Michael Institute of Sacred Art. The Catholic Marketing Network can be reached at (800) 506-6333.
Karen Walker is based in San Juan Capistrano, California.
----- EXCERPT: CATHOLIC RETAILERS FLOCK TO TRADE SHOW ----- EXTENDED BODY: Karen Walker ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Calif. Bishops Back 'Definition of Marriage'Bill DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:SAN FRANCISCO—The California Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued a statement supporting the Definition of Marriage Initiative that will appear on the ballot for the March 7, 2000, primary.
The initiative would place California's current ban on same-sex marriages in the state constitution by adding a provision to the state's family code, saying that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.
Advocates of the initiative want to add the “or recognize” concept to law as a buffer against the potential of California being forced by federal law to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states by the U.S. Constitution's requiring states give “full faith and credit” to other states' laws.
The bishops join numerous other churches, organizations and individuals voicing support for the initiative which, state the bishops, “reaffirms the profound importance of marriage and the family in contemporary society.”
“Catholic tradition maintains that marriage is a faithful, exclusive and lifelong union between one man and one woman joined in an intimate partnership of life and love,” the bishops wrote in their June 18 statement. “This union was instituted by God and by its very nature exists for the mutual fulfillment of the husband and wife as well as for the procreation and education of children.”
Underscoring that Jesus raised the natural contract of marriage to the dignity of a sacrament, the bishops said, “This special marital union thus becomes for the married couple their fundamental way of attaining holiness of life.”
Their statement affirms the theology of marriage articulated by Pope John Paul II in his 1994 Letter to Families and on many other occasions.
The Pope has emphasized that the marital union between a man and a woman in a “partnership of their whole life” is “ordered to the well-being of the spouses and to the procreation and upbringing of children”
“Other interpersonal unions which do not fulfill the above conditions cannot be recognized, despite certain growing trends which represent a serious threat to the future of the family and of society itself,” the California bishops' statement said.
The bishops also note that in caring for and educating their children, “a mother and father serve not only their family but also expend personal resources and energy for the common good of society. Marriage and family life lived generously anticipates and prevents many of the social problems which plague society today.”
An April poll of 1,200 Californians who said they were “likely” to vote showed that 55% were in support of the Definition of Marriage Initiative. The poll was commissioned by the San Francisco-based Horizons Foundation, which is helping finance opposition to the initiative.
Republican Sen. Pete Knight from Palmdale is the initiative's sponsor. The proposed legislation is called the Knight Initiative by some. Many proponents, however, are calling the ballot measure the Protection of Marriage Initiative, including the state's bishops.
The official ballot title will be Definition of Marriage Initiative. Still others have referred to the initiative by the term used to describe federal legislation on the issue, Defense of Marriage Act.
On June 17 the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce's board of directors voted “by an overwhelming majority” to oppose the measure.
“The Knight Initiative is a mean-spirited attack that is meant to be divisive, not to help California come together to grow and prosper and celebrate its diversity,” said Rhea Serpan, president and CEO of the chamber.
“Because California already prohibits same-gender marriages, the actual legal effect of the initiative would be to deny recognition of same-gender marriages performed in other states or countries, if such marriages were to become legal,” a chamber press release stated.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Sharon Abercrombie ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Yankee GM's Winning Way DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:In 1998, at age 30, he became the s e c o n d -youngest general manager in major league baseball history. Despite the incredible daily pressures, the New York Yankees general manager thrived because of his faith, and the values instilled in him by his parents and others. He spoke recently with Register correspondent Jim Malerba.
Malerba: Who were the greatest influences in your life regarding your spiritual and moral formation?
Cashman: Without question, my mother and father. I was one of five children, and for as long as I can remember, my parents led by example. They didn't sit us down and explain that we had to do this, or we couldn't do that. Their faith, the way they led their lives every day, showed us the right path to being decent, productive people. They wanted the best for all of us, in terms of having us grow up with a sense of doing good for others. None of us ever forgot the valuable moral, spiritual and ethical lessons they taught, again by example.
Were there any other positive role models for you as a young man?
Bob Natoli, the baseball coach at Catholic University of America, was definitely one. He always said, “Don't ever let yourself be cheated.” In other words, we were to do our best every time, whether we were on the field, in the classroom, on the job or with our families. I never forgot those words; in fact, I carry them with me every day of my life and use them to encourage others. Actually, I have Catholic University's athletic director, Bob Talbot, to thank for helping me meet Bob Natoli. I was all set to go to Tulane University, but he prevailed upon me numerous times to go to CUA. I finally decided to do so, and my college years were a tremendous experience. I loved the D.C. area and made a lot of friends. And, of course, I got to play for a baseball coach deeply committed to excellence. He gave it everything he had at all times, never anything less. So, you can say he was a great role model. In fact, all my coaches, in high school and college, were positive role models.
You also set some hitting records at Catholic University.
I was fortunate to set the record for most hits in a season for the school, 52, while playing second base. That record was broken a year or two ago, but it stood for 10 years. I'm glad, though, at the time I didn't know I was breaking a school hitting record. Otherwise, I might have fallen apart at the plate!
How did you come to work for the Yankees at such a young age?
When I was in college, I learned George Steinbrenner, owner of the Yankees, offered summer internships at the stadium. My first was in 1986, in the Minor League and Scouting Department. The internships became a yearly thing. After graduating from college, I was hired by the Yankees as an assistant in Baseball Operations. I kept getting promoted, and in 1992, I was named assistant general manager. I became general manager in 1998. I like to say you will only be as successful as people want you to be. And I'd certainly be the first to say that those for whom I worked for were wonderful people, who wanted to see me get ahead.
Can you cite an individual who was a catalyst to your successful rise?
Absolutely. Gene Michael, who is a former general manager of the Yankees, was like a mentor to me. He taught me to be honest at all times with the media and others, and to deal with people in a professional and empathetic manner. So, when people give me credit for being so open, I in turn give the credit to Gene for his sound advice and for teaching me the value of treating others in the way I want to be treated.
You interact a lot with the players. Do they ever come to you for advice?
They know I am willing and ready to listen at all times, and they are not afraid to come to my office, for any number of reasons. I like to think I'm a good listener, something I learned while at Catholic University. Just recently, one player sat down with me about a situation that was, let's just say, not very positive. All our players wrestle with personal issues that fans and others don't know about. He sees me as a friend, and he knows he can open up to me. At the end of our conversation, he let me know that he and the other players on the team appreciate what I try to do for them. That meant a lot to me. I always give other people, player or not, a straight, honest answer. It might not always be what they want to hear, but it's the truthful one.
How do you balance your job responsibilities with off-work time?
It's tough. The fact is, I don't have much non-work time. And that can be stressful, because my family is very important to me. I'm not alone in this; there are many, many other people whose jobs require long hours. This year, though, I celebrated Father's Day for the first time. My first child, Grace Eva, is now 8 months old. I want to be with her and my wife, Mary, as much as possible, because I want to be able to help Grace as she grows up. If it comes to the point where my job and family life conflict, I'll have a serious decision to make.
Is attending Mass a problem during the season, given all the time demands?
I always have time for Mass. Every Sunday, there is a Mass in the stadium's auxiliary clubhouse. That's the one I attend, when the team is home. Otherwise, Mary, Grace and I attend Mass at St. John's Church in Darien, Conn. We also have one for the players right after batting practice on Sunday, which was started at their request. I did not institute it, but I supported it wholeheartedly. The spiritual component to our team is just as vital as the athletic ability each player has.
Do things get better, time-wise, in the off-season?
Not at all, because during the off-season, you're negotiating new or extended contracts for the players, looking at and competing for free agents, and assembling the club in other ways for the next season. Added to that is the fact that the media are eyeing you every day. During the season there are other pressures, but between November and February you're going full tilt, as well.
Perhaps this is an unfair question, but how do you maintain your sanity through all of the pressures you face?
I am blessed with my faith, but also with a loving wife who is very supportive and understanding, and, as I said, great people with the Yankees. All help make a very difficult job much easier. There's no back-stabbing on the team staff. We care about each other, and that in itself is a big plus. And, I don't separate my Catholic faith from my professional life. It's always there.
Well, there are some fine rewards, such as the 1998 season. You must have been thrilled, knowing you helped put together the world champions of baseball.
To be perfectly honest, I really haven't stopped to smell the roses. I'm excited about the Yankees' record-setting season, but I haven't reflected on it. Let me tell you that even before we won the World Series last year, I was already thinking of how we were going to resign [outfielder] Bernie Williams, [pitcher] David Cone, [infielder] Scott Brosius and others. The question I asked myself was, how are we going to keep this winning way going? It's great to win the series, but then you have to be immediately concerned about next year.
Do you feel baseball players are positive role models for young people?
I think they are tremendous role models. They do so much for so many. I consider baseball players the most unselfish people I know, because they appreciate where they are and they appreciate the fans who support them. They realize they have to be role models on and off the field. The Yankee players, as a group and as individuals, are the types of people, by their actions in baseball and in life, for young people to look up to because of the way they handle themselves.
You are not too many years removed from college. If you were to address college students, what would you say regarding their chances for success?
What I would tell them is that with hard work and dedication, anything can happen. The sky's the limit, if you really want it. I always gave 110% in the classroom and on the field. I still do, whether it's with my family or on the job, or in interacting with others. You have to keep your hopes up and never become discouraged, because — as my parents said — good things will happen. I also would tell college students one other thing, that if you fail to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
----- EXCERPT: Life of faith keeps him on course ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian Cashman ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: Ten Commandments Defense Act: A Good Start DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—The Ten Commandments Defense Act, approved by the U.S. House, has been hailed as a step in the right direction for the nation in the wake of the Columbine High School massacre.
But even the bill's sponsor doesn't think it will be a cultural panacea.
“I understand that simply posting the Ten Commandments will not instantly change the moral character of our nation,” Rep. Robert Aderholt, RAla., said at a recent press briefing. “However, it is an important step to promote morality, and an end of children killing children.”
The House voted 248–180 on June 17 for the measure which would protect public display of the Ten Commandments in schools and other government buildings.
After the Columbine tragedy in April, Congress drafted the Juvenile Justice Reform Act of 1999, which contained strong gun control legislation. But because many House members believed gun legislation alone could not address the issue of the nation's declining moral standards, they attached several cultural amendments to the bill.
A joint committee of House and Senate members will meet to decide on further congressional action on the juvenile crime bill. Sen. Michael Enzi, R-Wyo., is spearheading Senate efforts to keep intact the Ten Commandments provisions.
Aderholt's Ten Commandments Defense Act was one of the cultural amendments attached to the Juvenile Justice Reform Act.
It was drafted long before the Columbine shootings, authorizing individual states to allow the display of the Ten Commandments. The gun legislation portion of the bill died in the House, but the Ten Commandments act passed with a substantial majority.
“We want to emphasize that this amendment does not require that the Ten Commandments be posted in classrooms,” Laura Woolfrey, Aderholt's press secretary, told the Register. “It simply shifts the decision-making process about posting the Ten Commandments from the federal government back to the states.”
Aderholt's interest in defending public display of the Ten Commandments has been a popular issue in his home state of Alabama since 1995, when Circuit Court Judge Roy Moore hung his own handcrafted plaques containing the Ten Commandments in his Gadsden courtroom. The plaques attracted the attention of the American Civil Liberties Union, which demanded they be removed. But Moore stood firm even when a District Court judge issued an order to remove the plaques. When the case came to the Alabama Supreme Court, the justices refused to hear it, saying the issue was political and not judicial. As a result, Moore continues posting the Ten Commandments in his courtroom.
Support on Both Sides
The Ten Commandments Defense Act has not been a one-party issue. Leading in support from the Democratic camp was Ronnie Shows, of Mississippi, whip for the pro-life caucus. According to Phil Alperson, his legislative director, “Congressman Shows believes that we need to promote moral values that are taught at home and in church, and those values should not be left outside of the schoolhouse door.”
Janet Parshall, spokeswoman for Family Research Council, hailed the bill's success. She told the Register, “This is a good step towards healing the brokenness of the human heart that is so pervasive among our youth today.”
Parshall added, “Violence is an issue of the heart. Until we get some heart repair all the gun laws in the world won't stop the problem. Guns are attached to hands, attached to bodies, and attached to the hearts where decisions are made. Let's get to the root of the problem. We have to stop treating the symptoms and go to the cause.”
She also maintained that the bill is not an infringement of the separation of church and state. “The phrase ‘the wall of separation between church and state’ is not in the Constitution but was written in a letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Society. It was not an idea that he wanted to see concretized in the Constitution.”
However, some organizations are already opposing the bill's passage claiming it is a violation of the separation of church and state. Joseph Conn, a spokesman for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, told the Register, “The separation of church and state is the language embodied in the First Amendment to the Constitution and the court has repeatedly ruled that [way] over decades of jurisprudence.”
Conn also said that hanging the Ten Commandments in schools might be confusing to children of various religions if they did not see their version posted.
Robert George, professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University, aided in drafting the Ten Commandments Defense Act. George does not believe the particular biblical translation of the Ten Commandments posted will be a bone of contention between denominations.
“The core understanding of the Ten Commandments is exactly the same for the Jews, Catholics and Protestants,” George said. “That argument is nothing more than a red herring, an attempt to divide religious people into accepting radical secularism.
“Those days of antipathy are over. People of the great Abrahamic traditions of faith are no longer going to fall for that nonsense. As a Catholic, I would be very happy to have a translation acceptable to our Jewish and Protestant brothers and sisters hanging in school classrooms.”
Ellen G. Pearson, writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen G. Pearson ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: U.S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:Girls Are Taking Over the Altar
CHICAGO SUN TIMES, June 21—At St. Ita's Church there are 17 girls and 14 boys in the altar server program.
The church is hardly unique. “Parishes across the Chicago area say the number of female servers has swelled in recent years,” said staff reporter Robert Herguth. “And in many churches, girls now outnumber boys, who historically had a lock on the job.”
“I'd say there are certainly more girls than several years ago,” acknowledged Auxiliary Bishop Edwin Conway.
While statistics are not kept for the entire archdiocese, “a sampling of local churches shows many today are lopsided toward girls,” said Herguth of a trend that began to develop soon after the Vatican gave permission for female servers in 1994.
Mary Kraychy, leader of the national Coalition in Support of Ecclesia Dei, which promotes the celebration of the traditional Latin Mass, told the paper that girls on the altar may keep some boys away, which in turn could hurt vocations to the priesthood.
Sister Joan Chittister's Neb. Visit Draws Fire
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, June 20—The visit of a feminist nun to Schuyler, Neb., “has drawn the ire of a top-ranking official of the Lincoln Diocese, even though Schuyler … is in the Omaha Archdiocese,” reported AP.
Msgr. Timothy Thorburn, chancellor of the Lincoln Diocese, protested the appearance by Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister, a dissenter on many Church teachings, at a retreat center run by a community of Benedictine monks, said the wire service. Chittister spoke on “patriarchal structures within Church and society, and a spirituality for the new millennium,”
While Omaha Archbishop Elden Curtiss “agreed to Chittister's visit if she refrained from criticizing the Church,” according to the AP, Lincoln's Msgr. Thorburn said he will do all he can to discourage young men from seeking a religious vocation with the Schuyler Benedictines and to prevent advertising of the retreat center in the Lincoln diocese.
According to the wire service, Msgr. Thorburn regretted his past support of the Schuyler Benedictines, and added he was speaking only for himself and not for the Lincoln Diocese or its bishop, Fabian Bruskewitz.
Dr. Laura Takes on PBS Kids' Show
THE JEWISH WORLD REVIEW, June 7—It's Elementary, a film by two lesbian women airing currently on PBS, has provoked a critical review by radio talk show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger in the Jewish publication. The film is shown in schools and teacher training programs throughout the country in order to promote understanding of the lesbian lifestyle.
“The point of It's Elementary,” said Schlessinger, “is to indoctrinate children with the belief that homosexuality is normal — not a deviant or morally wrong behavior, nor a personal or societal problem — but rather a totally benign and acceptable variation of heterosexuality, and its equivalent in every way.”
Schlessinger, a psychologist, said that It's Elementary stereotypes Christians as torturers and murderers of homosexuals, as one young student in the film says, and she asks: “If the producers are fighting stereotyping and prejudice, how did [they] justify leaving this child's mistaken characterization of Christians uncorrected in the film? Might this not make Christian children feel bad, or stimulate hate and violence toward Christians?”
----- EXCERPT: From Selected Sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: McCarrick Says Most Bishops Sense The Spirit Behind Ecclesial Movements DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:More than 100 bishops and cardinals have just completed a meeting June 16–19 in Rome on the growing phenomenon of new ecclesial movements and communities, which are groups of Catholics committed to a common spirituality and ministry.
In 1998, Pope John Paul II invited members of the new movements and communities to join him in St. Peter's Square to celebrate the Feast of Pentecost. Hundreds of thousands of people from about 50 different groups responded to his invitation and the Holy Father praised them as a sign of a new springtime in the Church.
But all has not been smooth in the growth of these groups, such as Communion and Liberation, the Charismatic Renewal, Focolare, Regnum Christi and the Neocatechumenal Way. Many dioceses and parishes have struggled to see how such groups can fit into the life of the local Church.
Jay Dunlap of Register Radio News spoke with one of the participants in the Rome meeting, Archbishop Theodore McCarrick of Newark, N.J.
Dunlap: Do most bishops share your positive impression of the new movements?
Archbishop McCarrick: I think so. To a great extent what moves bishops as they look at the movements and the new ecclesial communities, such as the Neocatechumenal Way, is that they see an extraordinary growth of the presence of the Spirit in the people that they serve.
More than anything else, bishops are touched by the fact that there are people who are willing to give their lives in a very special way, as lay people, as husbands and wives, as mothers and fathers, as single people in the world. They are willing to give their lives in a special way to the work of the Lord.
Now these are people who are not full-time priests and religious. But they are brought into the wonderful opportunity of seeing God's presence and God's challenge in their lives to be really people who take ownership of the Church. I think that affects bishops and makes us all more ready to see the work of the Spirit in our time.
Did this bishops' seminar in Rome on the new movements and communities lead to some concrete proposals for working together, or was it more about building relationships?
It was more about building relationships. When I spoke at it, my major theme was to say to the bishops that we have to accompany the movements. We have to acccompany the ecclesial communities in order to make sure that they flourish and they prosper and to make sure that they are always in communion with the larger Church.
It is necessary for the bishop, as it is for the pastor in his own area, to accompany them. To walk with them. To know what's going on. To be a part of their lives. To be willing to accept the challenges that they face. To be willing to correct, to be willing to monitor, to be willing to guide, and to be willing to love them.
So many pastors at the parish level are concerned about added burdens, and in some ways fear the new movements and communities as another meeting they have to attend, another aspect of the parish that they have to keep a close eye on. How would you suggest pastors balance that concern with encouraging the new movements?
That is one of the greatest problems of our time. As we begin to feel the crisis in the numbers of vocations in each of our dioceses, so the pastors and the other priests generally feel an overwhelming burden of being moved from place to place or being wanted everywhere at the same time.
I would approach them by saying it's worth the sacrifice. It's worth the sacrifice of really trying to form these people who have been touched by the Spirit of the Lord and who have been given a desire to be more active in the Church and a desire to take ownership of the Church.
It's a blessing for the pastors to get involved with them because if they do get involved with them at the very beginning, they will find that they have multiplied their own hands. They've multiplied their own voices. They've multiplied their own ears to hear the needs of the people and to reach out to help them.
Though, no question about it … in the beginning it's going to be an added burden. Yet once these people are formed in the faith, once these people realize their potential and realize their opportunity to serve, I think the priests will find that they have unleashed a power in the Church which will help them and make their lives more effective and even more peaceful in the years ahead.
Do you encourage lay members of your flock to join the movements and communities?
The word “encourage” is an interesting one. I certainly am present to the movements and the ecclesial communities in our diocese, and I certainly try to give the impression to our people of their support by the bishop … that this is a good thing.
I have never gone out and made an advertisement, saying, “I think you should all join communities.” I think that's a very personal thing, and that is something that depends on the movements and the communities themselves.
My personal way of looking at it is to make sure that the movements that are in the diocese are really in touch with the Church, in line with the Church. And once I know that they are, to let the people know that I approve of them and am enthusiastic about them. And then the people can make up their own decisions about whether they will go in or not.
I just add that here in the Archdiocese of Newark we've had grave problems with one community, a charismatic covenanted community, years ago, that caused grave difficulties about unity and even theology in the Church. So we've always been careful to monitor whenever we would tell people that we are in favor of a movement or an ecclesial community. We have always been cautious about being the promoters of one specific manifestation of this new apostolate of the Church.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:Chilean Missionaries Reach London
THE UNIVERSE, June 20—“When we think of missionaries, images of exotic countries usually come to mind,” said reporter Greg Watts. “So you don't expect to find a group of Chilean Catholics working as missionaries in East London.”
A group of four young people from Chile are part of the Columban Lay Missionary program set up eight years ago to bring committed lay people to work in partnership with Columban priests around the world.
The group's members work in Newham, “which has become a byword for all the social ills in modern Britain,” said Watts. The culture shock has been significant.
Watts put their work in context: “In line with contemporary pastoral theology, the emphasis of the missionaries is on being with people rather than doing things for them.”
The British Isles are not just on the receiving end of the Columbans' lay program. “In July, five British and Irish men and women, including a solicitor and a nurse, are putting their careers on hold and heading off for a three-year stint … in the Philippines,” said Watts.
Mexican Protestants Freed
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, June 22—Thirteen Mexican evangelical Protestants have been released from custody after being held for trying to construct a church in the southern Mexican village of Mitziton — and angering Catholics in the process, said AP.
The 13 were arrested June 15 and released three days later. The Protestants said they were threatened and ordered to leave the area, which is in the state of Chiapas.
The region, home to large numbers of Mayan Indian groups, has been the scene of increasing conflicts between growing numbers of evangelical Protestants and the majority Catholics. “Protestant converts have been expelled from the area, and violence between the faith groups has escalated,” said AP.
One of the 13 Protestants freed, Carmen Diaz Lopez, said she was not afraid of threats. “We have the right to build our temple, and we demand that our right to worship be respected,” she said.
Australian Churches Oppose Legal Prostitution
THE COURIER MAIL, June 22—Australian religious leaders warned that a Queensland state government plan to legalize brothels would sanction evil and would damage families, according to the Australian publication.
Under the proposed reform, brothels would be legal in industrial areas and subject to strict health conditions and controls about the character of their owners, said the Courier.
Religious leaders who signed the letter condemning the plan included representatives of the Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, Baptist, Lutheran, Salvation Army, Assembly of God and Mormon faiths. “Prostitution brings an increase in sexual activity outside marriage and consequently an increase in family breakdown,” the letter said. “It produces an inevitable escalation in the transmission of sexual diseases and it debases all those involved.”
In a separate statement, the Catholic, Anglican and Uniting Churches said prostitution was a degrading misuse of God-given abilities to express love. “There are few who would choose to be used in such a way by strangers if they were not desperately in need of the money,” the statement said.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: 'Forgotten Wars' Are 'Soaking Africa in Blood' DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—While the eyes of the world were focused on the Balkans, new fighting erupted in June between Ethiopia and its former colony, Eritrea.
A Vatican statement released May 21 made reference to the conflict as one of the world's “forgotten wars.” A number of those struggles, it said, “bear a striking resemblance to the Kosovo conflict but have proved even more deadly.”
Specifically, the Holy See said the brutal conflict between Ethiopia and its northern neighbor Eritrea is one of the conflicts that is “soaking Africa in blood.”
Indeed, fighting from June 13 to 19 between the recently liberated Ethiopia and its former colony, Eritrea, was the bloodiest yet, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department told the Register. The fighting, which began over a border dispute in early May 1998, shows no signs of letting up.
The State Department puts the total number dead from the war at around 60,000. Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the apostolic nuncio to Ethiopia, reported a slightly more conservative death toll, but shared similar figures as the State Department for the number of wounded at around 80,000.
Neither set of estimates accounts for losses incurred in June's devastating clash.
By comparison, the 400,000 combined number of combatants in the war dwarfs the 30,000 Serb regulars and 2,000 ethnic Albanian guerrillas who are at odds in Kosovo.
On Capitol Hill, a small number of congressmen have followed the war in Ethiopia with great interest. “The outbreak of hostilities last May caught many off guard,” said House Subcommittee on African Affairs Chairman Ed Royce, D-Ohio, in a meeting May 25. “To compound this tragedy, these are two of the poorest countries in the world. Hopes for economic progress that were fostered over the last several years have been snuffed out.”
In a statement he gave before Royce's subcommittee, Adotei Akwei, African advocacy director at Amnesty International, described the war as, “mystifying, depressing, and, I would personally argue, a tragic waste. Border disputes should not be allowed to displace over 600,000 people.”
Prime Minister Zenawi Meles has headed the government of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia since 1995 when he stepped in to replace a transitional government put in place after a grueling 30-year civil war which resulted in the overthrow of the ruling Marxist regime. Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki has led his country's ruling party, the People's Front for Democracy and Justice, since Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993.
Paradoxically, the two leaders, now engaged in brutal conflict, were brothers in arms during Ethiopia's civil war.
Freedom House, an international human rights monitoring organization based in New York, reports that mediation efforts by U.S. and African leaders have failed. Moreover, they fear that the current war between Ethiopia and Eritrea will exacerbate regional disputes with other countries.
In its soon to be released report on human rights violations in the Horn of Africa, Freedom House reports that, “the clashes with Ethiopia, added to Eritrea's near state of war with neighboring Sudan, may reinforce [the Eritrean govern-ment's] already authoritarian tendencies.”
Papal Pleas
Pope John Paul II has repeatedly expressed his sorrow over conflict in the Horn of Africa. In an May 11 address given at the Vatican to the bishops of the region, the Pope said, “God has blessed his children with an intelligence and creativity which can resolve tensions and conflict, and which can succeed in building a society whose cornerstone is respect for the inalienable dignity of every human person.”
“The Pope has been practically the only one to consistently call attention to these forgotten wars of Africa,” Archbishop Tomasi, the papal nuncio since 1996, said in response to the Holy Father's encouragement.
Archbishop Tomasi contrasted the Pope's comments with what he called a Western tendency to concentrate on “first world” problems.
“The risk,” he said, “is that humanitarian agencies end up, “channeling resources to one part of the world and forgetting the other.”
In May, when Archbishop Tomasi was asked for his assessment of the war, he said, “We are in a very delicate moment where pessimism seems to be the rule.”
He added that although Ethiopian and Eritrean authorities have rejected proposals for a resolution to the war by the Organization on African Unity, the U.S. State Department, and an interfaith gathering of religious leaders for both countries, there is “a will to keep the talks alive in order to avoid violence.”
A senior State Department official told the Register that U.S. expectations for peace and prosperity in Ethiopia and Eritrea, and for warm U.S. relations with both were “extraordinarily high,” before the war erupted in the border town of Badme last May. Both countries were perceived by the United States as paving the way toward democratization in the long troubled Horn of Africa, the official said.
It came as no less of a shock to the leaders of Eritrea and Ethiopia, who shared the United State's grand expectations for the region, where the civil war within Ethiopia had only recently yielded to peace, economic reform and democratization.
Roughly half of Ethiopia's 61 million people are Orthodox Christians, while the other half are Muslims. The million or so Catholic Ethiopians form what Archbishop Tomasi called a “lively” community. He said the one substantive disagreement between the Catholic minority and the Ethiopian Orthodox is the supremacy of the pope. “We are perfectly the same in doctrine, discipline, the sacraments, monastic traditions and other ways,” added Archbishop Tomasi.
Though food shortages remain a persistent problem in Ethiopia, they do not approach the scale of the famines of the mid-1980s, which, observers say, did not result entirely from natural causes.
According to Archbishop Tomasi, “If the country's resources, including its abundant water supply, were better managed, it could not only feed itself but feed half of Africa.”
The origins of the current conflict are equally frustrating. Referring to the border dispute that triggered the conflict, the State Department official said, “the thing that will make this sticky was that this was a provincial boundary. Because the two leaders thought they were like brothers there had never been any effort to demarcate it.”
Brian McGuire writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian Mcguire ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:There Will Never Be Another Like ‘Our Pope’
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, June 21—Pope John Paul II's absence from one of his scheduled Masses during his recent trip to Poland “showed exactly how much this nation … will lose when history's only Polish Pope is gone,” said correspondent Tom Cohen. “Poles know it, they accept it, but they don't like it,” said Cohen.
“One of history's best-loved popes, certainly its most traveled one, John Paul is considered by Poles to be sent by God to help them regain their freedom — both political and spiritual. His papacy brought Poles the spiritual honor of a native son leading the planet's 1 billion Catholics,” observed Cohen
The pace of positive change in Poland is, “to a great extent, the Pope's and the Church's doing,” said President Aleksander Kwasniewski, a former communist.
The intense love Poles have for the Pope shows in the faces that strain for even the briefest look as his motorcade passes. “More telling are the subtle possessives that creep into discussion,” said Cohen.
“Our Pope will always be remembered for what he has done,” insisted Pawel Maciejewski, a 26-year-old geology student who waited for hours for a spot up front at the opening Mass of the pilgrimage in Gdansk.
“There will surely not be as much excitement as for a Polish Pope,” admitted Zofia Hiro. “We've joined Europe. Communism is over. Many countries have now heard of Poland,” she said. “You can't take that away, all that he's done.”
While Poles accept his time on earth may be limited, they unabashedly demanded the Pope's energy at every chance throughout the 13-day pilgrimage. “It seemed they wanted a final personal connection, particularly young people who have never known any other spiritual leader,” said Cohen.
A new pope “will be a real shock to us,” said Agnieszka Kaliszewska, who was born the year of John Paul's election. “We've gotten used to the fact that the Pope is Polish.”
----- EXCERPT: From Selected Sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: The Immaculate Conception and the Theotokos DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary is practiced and understood in different ways by different churches. That much should have been clear to those attending the recent conference of Catholics and Eastern Christians in Washington, D.C.
One difference is in iconography, where Orthodox icons nearly always show the Virgin holding Christ. That is to emphasize that Mary's greatness derives entirely from her role as the Theotokos, she who bore God.
Above all, Catholics and the Orthodox differ on the Immaculate Conception, the Roman Catholic doctrine that Mary was by a special grace preserved from the stain of original sin at the very moment of her conception. The Orthodox have problems with both the doctrine and the Pope's having declared it as an article of faith in 1854. The Orthodox hold that Mary was purified of all sin at the Annunciation, Metropolitan Isaiah told the conference.
Father Michael Fahey, a Roman Catholic professor of theology at Marquette University in Milwaukee, told the conference that the West's view of the Immaculate Conception was rooted in an understanding of original sin that the Orthodox do not share. Paraphrasing a remark by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Catholic Church's Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, Father Fahey said that East and West could reach agreement on Mary “provided that the East sees the Latin doctrines as legitimate for them … and that they are correct, without feeling any obligation on their part of having to assert the formulations in that way.”
But Father Fahey pointed out that both East and West have not held back in extolling the holiness and protection of the Mother of God. “We do in fact believe the same thing,” Father Fahey asserted at the end of the conference.
Archimandrite Robert Taft emphasized that true devotion to Mary for Catholics should also always be rooted in her status as Mother of God.
“We venerate Mary for a holiness and role in salvation history that is totally relative and totally derived,” he observed. “It is inseparably related to her divine Son's saving work, and derived from and dependent on it.”
—Wesley Young
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Wesley Young ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Supporters and Detractors DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:Catholic TV channel like Jerome Coniker's have their supporters and their skeptics.
Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, archbishop of Philadelphia, in a March 12 letter to all U.S. bishops, urged them to join those cardinals and bishops already committed to promoting the “Be Not Afraid Family Hours” video series “in helping make Mother Teresa's ideas a reality.”
The “Family Hours” are scheduled to be broadcast on Coniker's Familyland Television Network which begins in September.
“Mother Teresa repeatedly told Jerry Coniker that if we are going to stop abortion and save family life, we must bring families into churches for Eucharistic ‘Be Not Afraid Family Hours’ on video every week,” Cardinal Bevilacqua wrote.
Bishop Thomas Daily, head of the Diocese of Brooklyn and supreme chaplain for the Knights of Columbus, said in a statement to the Register, “I applaud Catholic Familyland for its initiative in finding an outlet for wholesome television programming for the entire family. … [A]ny effort made to use this powerful medium to reinforce positive values is to be commended.”
Recently Cardinal Jaime Sin of Manila, the second largest Catholic diocese in the world, included the Family Hours as part of the official Jubilee Year 2000 program. And Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera, the archbishop of Mexico City, the largest Catholic diocese in the world, has approved Family Hours to be shown daily at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
But others are more reserved about the new channel.
Father Gregory Coiro, a Capuchin Franciscan and media relations director for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, said that any such Catholic channel should show a sense of diversity in Catholic teaching and not just aim “at a niche audience.”
He cited economic justice or capital punishment as important topics. “People need to be catechized on what the Pope and bishops are saying,” he said.
In Milwaukee, Archbishop Rembert Weakland's office argued that the content of the programming — and the difficulty that local bishops have monitoring it — was a serious concern.
“What doctrine, what theology is being presented? Who makes those decisions?” asked Jerry Topczewski, communications director for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.
He said the archbishop has the responsibility to determine the suitability of programming brought into the diocese. If he “doesn't think it's constructive” or thinks “it's divisive,” he might ask the channel to stop operating, said Topczewski.
Satellite broadcasting will make it difficult for a bishop to control what content is broadcast in his diocese, he added. He said that such private ventures should seek the endorsement of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Familyland Television Network will not be affiliated with any of the 15 TV and nine radio stations now licensed and operated by U.S. dioceses.
William Ryan, deputy director of communications for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, said he saw no conflict with such a privately run Catholic station, especially one faithful to the magisterium and Pope John Paul II. He explained that “the bishops' own media plan was to encourage work being done” by many people. They wouldn't find the channel “in any way a source of stress, anxiety, or competition,” he contended.
The Conikers received a vote of confidence of sorts in May, when they were named to the Pontifical Council for the Family. “It's just providential,” Jerome Coniker said. “I never expected to be appointed to the council.”
Joseph Pronechen
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Pronechen ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Editorial DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:Richard Holbrooke, who played a key diplomatic role in the Kosovo operation, appeared at a Senate hearing June 24 and spoke of the administration's handling of the situation in the Balkans. “We made numerous mistakes,” he said. True enough — but what were those mistakes?
As Holbrook spoke, Slobodan Milosevic was at large, with a $5 million price put on his head by the United States. Newly empowered in Kosovo was Hashim Thaci, the political leader of Kosovo's rebels and a strongman legendary for his assassinations and purges.
Earlier in June, the Register printed two articles by Robert Reilly that looked in detail at the history leading to NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia.
He challenged the common, simplistic, explanation of NATO's Yugoslavian action — the one that paints Milosevic as a Hitler, the Serbs as Nazis, and NATO as a rescue force. He asked: What will happen after a “victory” by NATO? What will happen when new, brutal military leaders in Kosovo have freer reign? Who will be “Hitler” then? Thaci is one strong candidate. Others will probably follow.
Yet, in the face of this, Holbrooke, with conventional wisdom on his side, identified the West's main mistake as … its failure to bomb more and earlier, perhaps even in 1994.
If anything is clear in the aftermath of the Balkans attack, it is that the bombs didn't help. They didn't help relations with the Russians, who became oddly warm with the Serbs, and whose soldiers skirmished with NATO soldiers after the bombing campaign. They didn't particularly help the Kosovar Albanians, whose suffering at the hands of the Serbs only accelerated after the bombings began. And they certainly didn't help peace in the region, which is now battered by new brutalities.
In short, the bombs themselves were the mistake.
There was at least one head of state, in Rome, who said so, early and often during the war. The real lesson of the war is that Pope John Paul II's calls for peace should be taken more seriously next time.
President Clinton recently told NATO troops in Macedonia, “If we can do this here … we can then say to the people of the world, 'Whether you live in Africa or Central Europe or any other place, if somebody comes after innocent civilians and tries to kill them en masse because of their race, their ethnic background or their religion, and it is within our power to stop it, we will stop it.”
Dubbed the Clinton Doctrine, this strategy of “humanitarian war” ignores several important facts. First is that we didn't stop the racial killing in the Balkans: We merely threw matches into a hornet's nest. Second is that innocent civilians were killed by NATO bombs as well as by Milosevic's minions.
Third, and most important, is a fundamental mistake inherent in this doctrine. “Power” will never solve ethnic hatred or end racial tensions. Indeed, a philosophy that sees the exertion of raw power as the answer to human problems itself perpetuates conditions where human beings are treated according to extrinsic factors rather than out of respect for the dignity that God has given them.
The Pope has an answer that better addresses the tensions in the Balkans and elsewhere. He calls it the new evangelization.
But from the middle of such a hopeless looking situation, one clear sign of hope has arisen. War in the Balkans has created abundant new opportunities for the Catholic and Orthodox churches to cooperate, according to Cardinal Achilles Silvestrini, the Vatican's point man for Eastern dialogue.
As the Jubilee Year 2000 approaches, this is good news indeed. The greatest tragedy in two millennia of Christian history is the split between Greek, Russian, Ukranian, and other Orthodox Christians of the East on the one hand; and the Catholics of the West who are in communion with the Pope on the other.
We share the same sacramental system, and our doctrines are identical or very close on most matters. Yes, we differ on some of the finer (but significant) points of theology; particularly on the nature of the primacy that Christ conferred on Peter in the New Testament.
But on these, Pope John Paul II has made surprising and bold moves toward reconciliation, offering even to discuss the way papal authority might be handled in a united Christian Church.
That spirit of unity was fostered by the Pope's first trip to an Orthodox country (Romania, in May). And in the Balkans, Cardinal Silvestrini pointed to “new, more fruitful relations” between the churches, and looked forward to “joint bodies” being created to address problems in the aftermath of the Balkans war. That will help also.
This spirit of unity has also found expression in the United States. In recent years, the biggest news about the unity of the Churches was bad news: The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew visited Baltimore in 1997 and famously referred to an “ontological difference” between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches, reinforcing the rift. But this year, an annual conference held in Washington, D.C., by Catholic and Orthodox leaders to address their differences was better attended, and more upbeat, than any before.
Before Communion at one shared Liturgy at the conference, Greek Orthodox Bishop Kallistos Ware of Diokleia knelt facing the altar and called out these words: “Thou dost call all Christians to draw near and partake of thy Body and Blood. But our sin has divided us, and we have no power to partake of thy holy Eucharist together. We confess this our sin and we pray thee, forgive us and help us to serve the ways of reconciliation according to thy will.”
An important prayer, as the new millennium approaches.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: A Novel Look at Noble Sparta DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae by Steven Pressfield(Doubleday, 1998 352 pages, $23.95)
Portraying the good human life is always hard, especially so in the modern world. We are not well situated to see the essential things, the virtues that make existence something more than mere animal survival followed by a meaningless death. That is why, it is often said, only the military and the Church can still appeal to people who know what life is really about.
But occasionally, someone finds a new way to restate the old truths. A splendid case in point that is both a good story and a vivid reminder of the highest things: Steven Pressfield's Gates of Fire. On the surface, this is a marvelous fictional retelling of how 300 Spartans, aided by a few allies, held off for almost a week the millions of Persians trying to invade Greece through the narrow pass at Thermopylae (in Greek, the “gates of fire” of the title). But Pressfield also makes this immortal story an occasion to demonstrate what we need in order to live full human and spiritual lives.
A large part of his tale has to do with men and the virtues of courage, selflessness and discipline by which men typically find their highest fulfillment in this world. Decades of feminist arguments have led us to believe that women, too, can practice the martial virtues, and there is some truth in this contention, as Pressfield will show. But there are human situations — the physical protection of family and home prominently among them — where sheer male grit is indispensable and noble. Pressfield not only gives the best fictional account of actual battle in the field since Homer, he subtly uncovers the human dynamics of men in close proximity to death.
The Spartans provide good material. They were well known in the ancient world as the most fearless warriors. Plato and, to a lesser extent, Aristotle admired their virtues because they preserved Greek liberty and, therefore, were, temporally speaking, the cradle in which were born and nourished the great Greek achievements in architecture, literature and philosophy.
In Pressfield's version, the Spartans have only one claim to fame. As King Leonidas tells his men on the battlefield at Thermopylae, archaeologists thousands of years later will find no ruins of great temples or splendid artifacts in Sparta. Athens, Corinth and the other great Greek cities will claim those honors. But Sparta produces men, so rare an achievement that, even without physical remains, they will never be forgotten wherever real civilization exists.
Pressfield gives an astonishing account of the Spartan training for war, how they not only drilled themselves in military maneuvers, but sought to overcome the universal fear of death and pain by exercises of the soul. Warriors were taught how to push beyond their normal limits and yet never to succumb to terror and unmanly rage against the enemy. Indeed, one of the signs that all is going well in the ranks is a certain lightness of spirit and rugged humor, a goal that, mutatis mutandis, may be found in all the great spiritual masters of the Catholic tradition.
But Pressfield does not neglect the Spartan women. In fact, in some ways they represent the deepest spiritual truths by which men and women alike act. In an astonishing scene, one woman describes a visit by a veiled goddess. (A Catholic senses in the account pre-Christian intuitions that resemble nothing so much as Marian apparitions.) When the girl prays, the goddess lets fall her veil: “what was revealed, the face beyond the veil, was nothing less than the reality which exists beneath the world of flesh. That higher, nobler creation which the gods know and we mortals are permitted to glimpse only in visions and transports. … Her face was beauty beyond beauty. The embodiments of truth as beauty. And it was human. So human it made the heart break with love and reverence and awe. I perceived without words that this alone was real which I beheld now, not the world we see beneath the sun. And more: that this beauty existed here, about us at every hour. Our eyes were just too blind to see it.”
A historian of religion might object that some Biblical elements are projected back into pagan experiences here. Be that as it may, the fictional lesson remains overwhelming: “I understood that our role as humans was to embody here, upon this shadowed and sorrow-bound side of the Veil, those qualities which arise from beyond and are the same on both sides, ever-sustaining, eternal, and divine.… Courage, selflessness, compassion and love.”
The character mocks herself as “cracked with religion. Like a woman.” But that is neither Pressfield's view, nor the Spartans'. At the end of the story, when Leonidas explains why he chose certain men for the suicide mission against the Persians, he denies that he did so because of individual valor, ability to fight together as a group, or any personal quality. Rather, he chose them because their women — mothers, widows, daughters — are heroic, and their heroism must be an example to others: “If they behold your hearts riven and broken with grief, they, too, will break. And Greece will break with them. But if you bear up, dry-eyed, not alone enduring your loss but seizing it with contempt for its agony and embracing it as the honor that it is in truth, then Sparta will stand. And all Hellas will stand behind her.”
These brief notes can only begin to suggest the nobility and spiritual depth that Pressfield has embodied in Gates of Fire. They are, to be sure, pre-Christian forms, needing the fullness of revelation. But as grace builds on nature, they prepare our coming to a fuller understanding in ways that we desperately need to appreciate at our present moment in this country. If you read one novel this summer, read this.
Robert Royal, who is working on a book about 20th-century Catholic martyrs, writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Robert Royal ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: When God Pushes Us Further DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:“The Second Calling” by Father Ronald Lawler, OFM Cap (New Covenant, June 1999)
Father Lawler writes: “When we are young and inexperienced in the ways of grace, God gives us easier tasks. Then, as we begin to grow up in faith, He gives us more difficult tasks, even trials. … When we first encounter the spring of God's love, everything is fresh and young. We are taught about the Cross, but there is something romantic and even splendid about the Cross.
“When we get older, however, the Cross can startle us. It is not only glorious, it is now also very heavy. We glimpse the Cross as never before — as something frightening and costly. God is moving us from our first call to our second call — a call that is meant to provoke even greater love, generosity and peace.”
Father Lawler traces this pattern of first and second calls in the saints, focusing on St. Francis of Assisi. “St. Francis reveled in the springtime of Franciscanism: in the happy days at Rivo Toto and Our Lady of the Angels Chapel, where there was sharp poverty, care for the lepers and humiliations that led to perfect joy. The Cross, for Francis, seemed robed with joy and grace.
“Then came the second call. The brethren about him seemed to have lost their fervor; the order appeared to crumble; bright dreams became bitterness. Prayer was no longer a joy, but an agony. His bodily pains chased away gladness of spirit. Francis tasted real tears of sadness as the Cross became more earthy and senselessly real. … This time was known as his ‘great temptation’ — the temptation to be sad and give up.” God was offering Francis the choice to “love the brethren even when they seemed unworthy of love. … Only when Francis said yes in this great darkness, when he gave his all, was he rewarded with the sweetness of Greccio and the Stigmata … and the poetry and gladness came alive again.”
Father Lawler also shows us Abraham's response to the two callings. First “Yahweh said to him, ‘Leave your country, your family and your father's house for the land which I will show you.’ surely this called for generosity and faith, to leave all that was familiar and to go on to an unknown land. But this is in the generous bloom of youth: the mood is joy.
“Abraham had a second calling, a very different one. He was old, 100 years old, and the promises made to him seemed impossible to fulfill. Think of how terrible it must have been for Abraham to hear these words: ‘Take your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go into the district of Moriah, and there offer him as a holocaust on the hill which I shall point out to you.’” Abraham obeys “in the darkness of a perfect obedience, an obedience through which all the nations of the world will be blessed.”
Even in Mary's life, we can see two callings. “St. Luke's Gospel speaks of her first acceptance at the Annunciation. Implicitly the Lord asked everything of her then, and she promised all that God would ever require. The atmosphere was one of joy; the sacrifices were suffused with blessings.
“Mary's second call was very different. She stood beneath the cross to see what she most dreaded … the one she loved more than herself being humiliated, crushed, abandoned, in every agony. She is invited to accept this, too, from God. … In this hour, she served God best and reached the peak of greatness.”
Finally, we may see something of the same trajectory in the life of Jesus. “When He became man, taking on our human nature for our salvation, His first human call was a cry of joy. … These are glad years. His food, His energy source, is to do the Father's will. He knows He has a baptism to come, yet He walks steadfastly toward Jerusalem.
“The hour of the second call and the second acceptance must come — the hour of darkness, which is the hour of great love. Betrayed, abandoned, alone — now fully aware of the dreadfulness of sin and its power. Dread, fear, agony … every feeling in Him now wishes to escape. ‘If it is possible, let this chalice pass from Me.’It is in this hour that Jesus is asked to say yes again: ‘Not My will, but Thine be done.’
“What is true of Christ, and of all Christ's closest friends in salvation history, is true also of us. God wants each of us to be great, so there is a second calling when faithfulness is far more sharply tested. …This is the grace of the second calling — to believe and love and say yes when we feel so little like it and all seems so dark. This is the path to the strongest, most saving and most joyful love.”
Ellen Wilson Fielding writes from Davidson, Maryland.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Letters DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:Nebraska Death Penalty
While I believe your article on this subject (“Neb. Won't Halt Death Penalty,” Register, June 13–19) was very well balanced, I believe that it still needs to be reiterated that it is not against Catholic teaching nor hypocritical for a Catholic to believe that the limited use of the death penalty may be necessary.
This has always been the teaching of the Church, and the Baltimore Catechism No. 3 brings this out even more clearly: “The life of another person may lawfully be taken … by a duly appointed executioner of the state when he metes out a just punishment for a crime.” In other words, according to Catholic moral theology, each and every instance of the prospective use of capital punishment must be evaluated on its own merits.
Hence, it is incorrect to state (as many do) that capital punishment is against Church teaching. The more unjust a society becomes, the more likely that capital punishment is not being used fairly and justly. A Catholic in good conscience, and without disobedience to the Church, can believe in the state's right to capital punishment.
Finally, (and you hit upon this, but I believe it needs to be reinforced) equating capital punishment to abortion, despite Cardinal Bernardin's “seamless garment” approach, is not valid. Abortion is always and in all circumstances inherently evil because innocent life is always being taken. Capital punishment may be evil and unjust in certain cases, but is never inherently evil because the life that is deprived is not innocent.
Brian Mershon Taylors, South Carolina
The Heart of Jesus
Father Peter Stravinskas does not think there will be a Feast of Divine Mercy because “generally private devotions are not formally institutionalized by the Church” (“The Fire of Divine Mercy Is Spreading,” Register, April 11–17). This is not always the case. Devotion to Divine Mercy is more than just a private devotion, but a timely, valid and widely spread development of the ancient devotion to the Heart of Jesus. There are other examples of devotions or private revelations that have become Feasts: Corpus Christi from visions to Juliana of Retinnes (1192–1258) and the Sacred Heart from the apparitions to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647–90).
Second, Father Benedict Groeschel (“Sacred Heart Devotion Is Making a Comeback,” Register, June 6–12) traces devotion to the Sacred Heart “back to the 2nd century.”
Devotion to the Heart of Jesus actually is rooted in the New Testament. The Johannine community manifests exceptional reverence for the Heart of Jesus as seen in a number of explicit passages, as well as the important themes of love and unity. It is John that gave the Church the rich theology of the Holy Spirit, the Eucharist and Mary — all farewell gifts of the Heart of Jesus.
Sister Mary Jeremiah, OP Monastery of the Infant Jesus
Lukfin, Texas
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: 'Pill' Skeptics Catching Up With Paul VI DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:When Pope Paul VI issued Humanae Vitae, which reconfirmed a Catholic teaching at least as old as St. Paul's letter to the Galatians, many pundits viewed the encyclical as a sign that the Church had opted out of the real world. In 1968, the sexual revolution was in high gear. We had finally entered the paradise promised to us by Sigmund Freud. Who was this celibate priest in Rome telling us that the birth control pill would be bad for society?
A generation later, there are signs of second thoughts among our intelligentsia. This past month, two prominent social commentators, Lionel Tiger and Francis Fukuyama, have published books which take a very dim view of the pill. Neither man has any special sympathy for Catholicism. Neither seems to have much use for natural law, the idea that there is an objective moral order that is not subject to our whim and manipulation. Back in 1968, both probably would have been puzzled by Section 17 of Humanae Vitae, in which Pope Paul warned about the effects that the widespread use of contraception would have on the social order. But both have now written books which confirm Pope Paul's predictions.
Tiger, a famous anthropologist who teaches at Rutgers University, comes right out with it in The Decline of Males: “It is impossible to overestimate the impact of the contraceptive pill on human arrangements.” He thinks that in the advanced industrial countries, widespread use of the pill has created “an unprecedented and not-so-hidden nihilism about reproduction” that has made relationships between men and women far more difficult. He thinks that by driving a wedge between sex and babies, between sex and commitment, the pill has alienated men and women from their own fertility and thus from one another.
Tiger's book is a kind of admission that people in the social sciences, whose stock in trade is making predictions about human behavior, had no idea how the pill would affect society. He admits to being “baffled” by the fact that after the pill became available, the demand for abortions went up and not down. And he is struck by the fact that among the industrial nations, Japan, the one country that (until last month) prohibited the pill, has the lowest out-of-wedlock birthrate: 1.1%, compared to 31% in America. The fact that you can chart the explosion of all sorts of undesirable results — illegitimacy, abortion, divorce — from the introduction of the pill seems to Tiger profoundly “counterintuitive.”
Francis Fukuyama is equally puzzled by the statistics. In his new book, The Great Disruption, he writes that “if the effect of birth control is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, it is hard to explain why its advent should have been accompanied by an explosion of illegitimacy and a rise in the rate of abortions.”
Fukuyama thinks that one very bad effect of contraceptives has been to turn men into irresponsible predators in the sexual marketplace. “Since the pill and abortion permitted women for the first time to have sex without worrying about the consequences, men felt liberated from norms requiring them to look after the women whom they had gotten pregnant.” To those social conservatives who don't like the idea of women spending their child-bearing years in the workplace, Fukuyama points out that the growing irresponsibility of males reinforced the need for women to arm themselves with job skills to not be dependent on husbands who are prone to disappear.
Fukuyama also confirms what anyone might gather from listening to an honest account of the dating scene these days: Contrary to the promises of radical feminists, women have been the big losers in the sexual revolution. One of the great frauds, he writes, is the notion that the sexual revolution is “gender neutral, benefiting women and men equally. … In fact, the sexual revolution served the interests of men.”
May I make a modest suggestion? If, as Pat Fagan of the Heritage Foundation suggests, the test of a first-rate sociologist is an ability to make accurate predictions about social behavior, then the most successful sociologist of the late sixties was Paul VI. And since Pope Paul was reading Love and Responsibility, by the future John Paul II, at the time he was writing Humanae Vitae, we can award that accolade to the current pope as well. Might it not be time for our social thinkers, who can no longer ignore the wreckage caused by the sexual revolution, to show some curiosity about why the Church teaches what it does about contraception?
What they will find is a body of thought that is both rich and profound. They will find that for good reason the Church teaches that sex and babies are not like Lego blocks. You cannot with impunity yank them apart when you feel like it. And they will find that John Paul II's prognosis in Evangelium Vitae is correct: The culture of death will not be reversed until society rediscovers that our fertility is not a thing to be manipulated but a gift to be cherished.
George Sim Johnston, a New York-based writer, is author of Did Darwin Get It Right?
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: George Sim Johnston ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Fourth of July, 1999 DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:Flags, parades, barbecues and fireworks are great fun on the Fourth of July. However, it should also be an occasion to recall what constitutes us as a people. America is so “diverse” today that it is difficult to discern the basic principles that made America's birth possible. In fact, a number of things are being done in the name of the United States that seem at variance with an even rudimentary understanding of those founding principles.
News Reports from America
Consider, for instance, these curious current events.
“Gay Pride Day.” In June, the office of civil rights at federal government agencies proclaimed the observance and celebration of “National Gay and Lesbian Pride Month.” One such announcement at the U.S. Information Agency said the purpose of the observation was to “provide our work-force with opportunities to be informed and educated about our similarities and our differences.”
The similarities are fairly easy to grasp: We are all, as the Declaration of Independence teaches us, human beings. But what of our differences in terms of sexual “preferences” On this the Declaration is silent. The only thing that differentiates a heterosexual from a homosexual is the act of sodomy. For those who have chosen sodomy, the posters announce “A Prideful Past and a Powerful Future.” Is it really the task of a federal office of civil rights to inform federal employees about the nature of such acts, and to approve of them as an object of pride?
The Columbine Massacre. The two students who massacred their classmates in Littleton, Colo., earlier this year were not the only ones breaking the law that fateful day at Columbine High School. Several students hiding under tables and elsewhere inside the school were praying. None of them have been prosecuted, probably because, technically speaking, they were not praying together, which would have been a clear infraction of the rules against state-sponsored religion. Since the Ten Commandments provide an effective inner sanction against murder, one must think long and hard as to why murder and the public display of the biblical injunction against it are both illegal. Of the two laws, only the ban against the Ten Commandments has been successfully enforced.
The “Right” to Pornography. According to The Washington Times June 2, the U.S. Department of Human Services plans to cancel the license of the Jaricot Foster Home for mentally retarded adults in Maine unless its proprietor, Monique Dostie, agrees to allow pornography and sexual activity among her wards. The guardians of her clients, whose mental ages vary from 3 to 5, chose the Jaricot Home precisely because of its policies. But state rules say people with mental retardation and autism in group homes have a right to participate in activities of choice, including the pornographic and the sexual.
Dostie, a devout Catholic, is refusing to comply, saying her residents “are not the ones asking for sex or pornography. It's the state that's mandating it.” Instead, she says, “I teach them their faith and bring God into their lives.” Since democracy depends for its existence upon the virtue of its citizens, why would a democratic state insist upon the dissemination of materials designed to undermine chastity, especially among those who are mentally minors?
Hormel Nomination. Despite “Gay and Lesbian Pride Month,” President Clinton was unable to get the U.S. Senate to confirm a wealthy homosexual activist, James Hormel, as American ambassador to Luxembourg, a Catholic country.Therefore, Clinton, using his power to make recess appointments when the Senate is not in session, sent Hormel on his way as ambassador anyway.
Coincidentally, a project that Hormel helped to fund, along with the taxpayer-funded National Endowment for the Arts, reached the U.S. airways at about the same time. The documentary, called It's Elementary, is aimed at advancing homosexuality through public education curricula. It shows how elementary school teachers can introduce their students to the subjects of homosexuality and lesbianism.
As one teacher announces to her peers, “What we're trying to have people do is to understand that people are. And we have to respect the right of all of us to just be, and be who we are, and we do that in the classroom when we teach so that everyone can learn. There isn't a right way, there isn't a wrong way, there isn't a good way, there isn't a bad way.”
This teaching has been amazingly effective with many students. But then again, if it is illegal to display the Ten Commandments, it cannot be that hard to convince students that there really is not a right way or a wrong way.
Army witches. The chaplain's office at U.S. Army Forces Command headquarters in Atlanta has now approved the inclusion of witches in its ranks. The chaplain handbook at Fort Hood, Texas, explains that practitioners of what is called Wicca are harkening back to “the Nature worship of tribal Europe.” Wicca witches, on behalf of their military congregations, propitiate the animist powers inhabiting the material world by casting various spells and summoning spirits. Lt. Col. Benjamin Santos, Fort Hood's spokesman, said of these activities that, “for us, it's not a religious issue. It's a quality-of-life issue.” Is that what it was for the early martyrs?
The purpose of recounting these events is not to titillate with horror stories, but to illustrate the extent to which this country has lost its bearings. Fifty years ago, sodomy was a criminal offense, the Ten Commandments were posted in public schools, pornography was outlawed, tribal paganism had been stamped out in Europe, and homosexuality was grounds for dismissal from the U.S. foreign service. What happened?\
Understanding Liberty
All of the above instances can be explained by a point of view that found its fruition in the 1992 Planned Parenthood vs. Casey Supreme Court ruling regarding abortion. The justices opined that, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” In other words, we are not a polity formed around universal truths that we hold in common concerning the ultimate meaning of life. Rather, we can each decide upon the “meaning” of the universe that individually suits us. Our freedom is no longer dependent upon conforming ourselves to a reality that exists independent of our desires. Rather, we will conform reality to our desires. The ideal of liberty has changed from the freedom to do what one ought, to the license to do whatever one wishes.
The problem with the Casey formulation is that, were it true, the United States could never have come into existence 223 years ago. Liberty and constitutional order are not the product of simply any conception of the universe, but of only one. If all men can make up their own meaning, then there is no one meaning that should rule them. This makes democracy impossible. As G.K. Chesterton wrote, “Men will more and more realize that there is no meaning in democracy if there is no meaning in anything.” As Chesterton continued, “There is no meaning in anything if the universe has not a center of significance and an authority that is the author of our rights. … There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man.”
Our Declaration of Independence announced this dogma in a rather magisterial way. According to it, we have a Creator who endows us with inalienable rights. We do not get to make up these rights, they are given to us. They have meaning only in reference to their Author. As one of our founders, John Adams, wrote of the idea of equality, “there is no such thing without a supposition of God. There is no right or wrong in the universe without the supposition of a moral government and an intellectual and moral Governor.”
Forward to 1776!
But more needs to be said. Man has worshipped many gods, and has lived in many different political orders, most of them tyrannical. Not just any god will do as the ultimate source of constitutional order: not Moloch, not Baal, not Thor, not Vishnu, not Quetzalcoatl, nor the Great White Spirit. Only one form of worship, the Judeo-Christian one, has given rise to a concept of ordered liberty in which the individual is inviolable.
The primacy of the person, unthinkable without the foundation of Judeo-Christian truth, defines the very order of the Constitution. Our Constitution is incomprehensible without certain presuppositions garnered from Judeo-Christian revelation: monotheism; the fundamental goodness and reliability of creation; a rational universe created by a rational, transcendent God; the existence of immutable human nature and the immortality of the human soul; salvation history and a Savior.
John Adams, writing about the basic principles upon which independence was achieved, asked, “And what were these principles? I answer, the general principles of Christianity in which all those sects were united. … Now I will avow that I then believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God. And that these principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature.”
A 20th century president very strongly agreed with Adams. Using words for our time, Calvin Coolidge wrote, “It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusion for something more modern. But that reasoning cannot be applied to [the Declaration of Independence].
If all men are created equal, that is final. If governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward.”
Our path, then, is clear. Forward to 1776!
Robert Reilly writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: How America looks on its 223rd birthday ----- EXTENDED BODY: Robert Reilly ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Court May Shake Off Some of Its Silliness DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:It looks as though we're about to lose a good source of great jokes. The U.S. Supreme Court, after spending 30 years imagining hilarious distinctions among different types of public aid to parochial schools, seems about to come to its senses.
It recently announced that it would hear argument in the case of Helms vs. Picard, which involves the constitutionality of a federal aid program known as Chapter 2. Under the Chapter 2 program, states receive “block” grants from the federal government to support schools. The states then buy slide projectors, television sets, tape recorders, maps, globes and computers and lend them to all types of schools — public, private and parochial.
It sounds perfectly unobjectionable, and it is.But the usual groups of radical secularists sued, arguing that lending such things to parochial schools was unconstitutional. A federal appeals court reluctantly agreed. Never mind that 70% of the government money went to public schools and only 30% went to private schools.
Never mind that the state monitored the private schools to ensure that they weren't misusing the materials. And never mind that no one had ever shown that any teacher anywhere had ever attempted to use any of the materials to teach religion. Under the Supreme Court's previous decisions, the Court of Appeals explained, Chapter 2 was unconstitutional.
In agreeing to review the appellate court's decision the Supreme Court seems to be signaling that it is willing to rethink those precedents. That's very good news. Those precedents have deprived an entire generation of parochial school students and their tax-paying parents of badly needed help. They have also distorted the law of Church and state.
In a line of cases beginning in the 1960s, the Supreme Court wrestled with the question of whether government aid could be given to religious schools. The court couldn't quite bring itself to say “never,” so, in true Gilbert and Sullivan fashion, it responded “hardly ever.”
For example, the court managed to hold that the state could give parochial school students free bus-rides to and from school, but not to and from school field trips. It also held the state could lend parochial school students (although not their schools) textbooks, but it couldn't lend either one maps. That led Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., to quip that a future case would have to be about atlases, which are books of maps.
These distinctions, of course, make no sense at all. Even the lower court judge in Helms described the Supreme Court's precedent as a “vast, perplexing desert,” and noted with considerable judicial understatement that “it is tempting to complain that the High Court has instructed us confusingly.”
But with the Helms case, that may be about to end. There is precedent for it.
A couple of years ago, in a case called Agostini vs. Felton, a 5–4 majority of the court overruled another one of its silly decisions. The court in Agostini held that remedial math and reading education could be taught to disadvantaged kids by public school personnel on religious school property. Before that there had been a slapstick rule, under which parochial school kids who needed extra help put on their coats and hats, traipsed out the door and were taught by public school teachers in vans parked just off parochial school property.
The reason? The Supreme Court decided there was too great a risk of public school teachers going into parochial schools, being overcome by the religious atmosphere, and beginning to slip religious teachings into their math and reading lessons. So, to avoid that risk, the government had to spend far more money to teach kids who had difficulty learning even in conventional classrooms, in RVs parked on the street.
That was the law for more than a decade until a bare majority of the court overruled it and held that as long as the same remedial instruction was equally available to all schoolchildren, both public and private, it could be given inside parochial schools.
The same five justices who brought common sense to bear in Agostini vs. Felton can do it again in Helms vs. Picard. They could well hold that as long as the government is providing a neutral benefit — materials that are not chosen with regard to religion or lack of religion — to all types of schools, the First Amendment is satisfied. That would be a big step forward for the law of church and state. It would also be a great help to lots of disadvantaged kids whose schools may not be able to afford computers of their own.
As important as this case is by itself, however, it is even more important as an indicator of how the court may rule on a future issue: the constitutionality of school choice vouchers.
Count on the administration, which is defending the Chapter 2 program, but which opposes vouchers, to argue that there is a difference between lending kids maps and giving their parents vouchers.
Let's hope the court is not in the mood for any more funny distinctions.
Kevin J. Hasson is president of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty,
Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Kevin Hasson ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Where a U.S. Saint Started DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:Yearly, more than 3 million people visit the Statue of Liberty. Just across the street from Battery Park, where they catch the ferry to Liberty Island, there is a landmark of U.S. Catholic history. It's the Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, first native-born American saint, located in the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary.
Her national shrine is in Emmitsburg, Md., where she is buried in the Chapel of St. Joseph's Provincial House of the Sisters of Charity.
She arrived in Emmitsburg in 1809, the year after opening a successful school in Baltimore.
These were the years when St. Elizabeth laid the foundation for the parochial school system in the United States and founded the first American religious order, the Sisters of Charity.
Elizabeth was born on Aug. 28, 1774, in New York. She was 14 when George Washington was inaugurated in New York in April 1789, at Federal Hall, close to where she was growing up.
Elizabeth's wealthy family was highly regarded. Her father, Dr. Richard Bayley, was the Port of New York's first health officer and a professor at King's College, now Columbia University.
In January 1794, she married William Seton, son of a wealthy shipping merchant, and they had five children by 1802.
In May 1801, the Setons moved into a handsome federal-style brick house at 8 State St., a street which follows the curve of the southern tip of Manhattan and borders Battery Park.
They had panoramic views of New York Bay and happy sights of their children playing in the park. No one, least of all Elizabeth, dreamed that one day a Catholic church containing a shrine in her honor would stand on this site.
Shifting Fortunes
The Seton's happy marriage lasted only eight years, during which time there were family deaths, sickness, a declining business and a lost fortune.
A sea journey was suggested to help restore William's failing health, and friends in Italy, the Filicchi family, offered to put them up. They arrived in November 1803; six weeks later William died.
Only 29, Elizabeth remained in Italy for three months with the Filicchis. A devout Episcopalian, she became immersed in Catholicism and the strong faith of her hosts.
For the next year, back in New York, she prayed intensely about converting, and on March 14, 1805, made the journey from Old St. Paul's Chapel to St. Peter's Church, just a few blocks away. At this first parish in New York, she embraced Catholicism. Because the climate of the time was hostile to Catholics, her conversion meant loss of family and friends.
Other hardships compounded, and Elizabeth was even thwarted from earning a livelihood because of her new faith.
When the opportunity came to open a school in Baltimore, she left New York in June 1808.
Today the shrine church on the site, built after her beatification in 1963, joins a larger, brick structure nearby.
The two together now serve as Our Lady of the Rosary parish church and its rectory.
Mission Site
In the late 19th century a mansion on the site had become New York's best-known mission. It was initiated in 1885 by an Irish visitor named Charlotte O'Brien, who was aided by Cardinal John McCloskey of New York. Our Lady of the Rosary mission was designed to shelter and aid the young Irish immigrant girls arriving in large numbers.
Because terrible situations often befell those who could not immediately find jobs, the mission was for them a safety net and charitable haven. Until 1935, it welcomed and sheltered nearly 175,000 young immigrants, often up to 300 at a time.
Today, the church actively serves tourists and workers in the office districts of lower Manhattan. The interior recalls Elizabeth's times with its classic Federal-Georgian-Palladian lines. Behind the altar, a large stained glass window portrays St. Elizabeth instructing attentive pupils. To either side, smaller colonial-style panes present scenes from her life.
The shrine itself is in the back of the church, which is where the front of the Setons' house looking toward Battery Park would have been. The focus of the shrine is a life-sized sculpture of Mother Seton, as she was called, with her hand around a little girl. The child holds an open book and looks admiringly up at her teacher.
The statue was finished for the occasion of Elizabeth's 1975 canonization by a member of her order, Sister Margaret Beaudette, a sculp-tress whose studio is uptown at Mount St. Vincent College in the Bronx.
From the three sisters Mother Seton first sent to New York in 1917 to work at an orphanage, today's New York contingent of the order has grown to about 550.
Because of her love for the Eucharist and her emphasis on charitable work, which she began even before she founded the Sisters of Charity, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton would feel doubly at home in this church and shrine on the site of her happy family home.
Joseph Pronechen is based in Trumbull, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: The National Shrine Of ST. Elizabeth Ann Seton ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Pronechen ----- KEYWORDS: Traveler -------- TITLE: Monasteries That Take in Travelers DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:If you are interested in the more spiritual aspects of a pilgrimage to Italy, this may be the best travel book you could find.
The Guide to Lodging in Italy's Monasteries gives practical and religious information about hundreds of monasteries and convents, and their guest houses, where travelers can “awaken each morning to church bells ringing out over sleepy villages and hill towns,” where saints walked in past centuries.
The book's first section describes places that offer hospitality to everyone “regardless of religion, with or without a spiritual purpose.” A second section describes places that welcome guests only “for retreat, vocational or other spiritual purposes.”
Actually, the second section is simply a list of institutions and their contact information. The first section, on the other hand, gives a lot of information about each monastery or convent. In some cases, especially when the location is in one of Italy's larger cities, the book adds information on the surrounding area. For example, after listing nine places you can stay in Venice, the book describes the canals, palaces, museums, and churches of the city.
My first choice of places to visit would be the Capuchin monastery in Manoppello in the Abruzzo region. Jesuit Father Heinrich Pfeiffer recently announced his research that establishes the true identity of this friary's Volto Santo (Holy Face), which the book calls “a sacred image of Christ's face.” Father Pfeiffer says the cloth, with its image of a man's face resembling the face on the Shroud of Turin, is Veronica's Veil (See “Veil of Veronica Found in Italian Abbey,” Register, June 20–26). The veil was lost from the Vatican during renovations in the 17th century.
The book adds that this monastery “is idyllically situated at the base of the forested Maiella Mountains in Maiella National Park. The Maiella is a massif of peaks and valleys that are often blanketed with wildflowers and pungent herbs. It is home to more than forty hermitages and primitive chapels.”
The Volto Santo is on display under glass at the monastery, which also has “a number of exquisite 17th century paintings,” according to the book.
The other place I would love to visit is Assisi, and there are several possibilities of places to stay. One is a hotel in Assisi called Domus Pacis, which is run by Franciscan friars. A second place is about 2.5 miles outside Assisi, the Hotel Cenacolo Fran-cescano “in the tiny town of Santa Maria degli Angeli.” This is the famous St. Mary of the Angels where Francis first established his order in 1211. The hotel “stands beside the enormous church of St. Mary of the Angels,” which houses the Potiuncula, the simple structure that was the first home for Francis and his earliest companions.
Wherever you go, the book notes that a great advantage of staying in Italy's monasteries and convents is the low price: “Rates range from a voluntary donation to about $30 per night. And many monasteries serve meals for just a few dollars more.”
The author also cautions potential travelers about the spiritual nature of these places: “It is important to remember that they are not hotels and should be regarded accordingly.” Even though they welcome any travelers who ask for a place to stay, still these monasteries are best approached as places of pilgrimage.
Gerry Rauch is an assistant editor of the Register.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Gerry Rauch ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: For Justice, or for Pride? DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:The Winslow Boy takes us back to a time when honor was important and a family's good name was something worth fighting for.
Based on Terence Rattigan's classically constructed 1946 play, it's set in middle-class Edwardian London whose culture is often depicted today as hypocritical and psychologically repressive. Surprisingly, cutting-edge playwright and filmmaker David Mamet (The Spanish Prisoner) rejects these clichés and presents both the positive aspects of a traditional moral code as well as the often difficult costs of adhering to it.
The movie also intelligently examines contemporary issues such as the power of the media in promoting a cause and the relationship of individual rights to the public good.
Rattigan based his play on a real incident, and Mamet makes few changes from the original. The action is set in 1912, just before World War I when the prosperous, ordered life of Britain's middle classes seems threatened at home and abroad. Trade unions are striking, and women want the vote. Germany's Kaiser is building up his army, and the Balkans are ready to explode.
Against this ominous background, the Winslow family's personal drama unfolds. The opening lines set the tone. It's Sunday, and the Winslows are returning from church. The banker patriarch, Arthur (Nigel Hawthorne), is depicted as culturally somewhat behind the times.
“A gramophone is out of place in a civilized home,” he tells his pleasure-seeking older son, Dickie (Matthew Pidgeon). Arthur goes on to praise the sermon. He believes that “everything is a problem of ethics.”
His convictions are immediately put to the test. His younger son, 13-year-old Ronnie (Guy Edwards), makes an unexpected appearance after hiding out in the garden in the rain.
He's been kicked out of the Royal Naval Academy at Osbourne for allegedly stealing a 5-shilling postal order and cashing it. “If you tell me a lie, I shall know it,” the stern but kindly patriarch warns the child, “because a lie between you and me can't be hidden.”
The boy strongly proclaims his innocence. Arthur is convinced and vows to clear him and the family name no matter what the cost.
The movie establishes the weight of institutional traditions. Winslow's only daughter, Catherine (Rebecca Pidgeon), is engaged to an army officer, John Watherstone (Aden Gillette), who'll accept her working for women's suffrage but so trusts in the wisdom of the British navy that he doubts her younger brother's innocence.
The family solicitor, Desmond Curry (Colin Stinton), a champion cricketer, is also in love with Catherine, creating a genteel romantic triangle. But Curry is an honorable man and places the Winslows' interests above his own. Arthur is determined to challenge the admiralty in court, and the solicitor recommends they hire the country's top barrister, Sir Robert Morton (Jeremy Northam), to plead their cause.
Catherine disapproves of Sir Robert's pro-business politics and considers him too much of a calculating careerist to take such a small case. But after a harsh grilling of the young boy, he surprises her and agrees to do it.
The filmmaker hints that his attraction to Catherine may have been a factor, creating the possibility of further romantic intrigue.
Because of the complexity of British law, Sir Robert must defend the Winslow boy's honor before the admiralty, the Crown and Parliament before coming to trial. All this is expensive, and family resources are limited. To raise the necessary funds, the wastrel son, Dickie, is withdrawn from Oxford, and Catherine's dowry is eliminated, alienating her fiancé.
The case is depicted in the national press as the underdog vs. the establishment.
Cartoonists make fun of the admiralty, and satirical songs about the subject become popular, all of which advances the Winslows' cause.
Arthur and Rebecca continue to be willing to make sacrifices, but Mrs. Winslow (Gemma Jones) is not. She worries about the deterioration of her husband's health and regrets the decline in their standard of living.
“You've given your life,” she tells him. “For what?”
“For justice,” Arthur replies.
“For pride and self-importance,” she counters, suggesting the complexity of motives involved.
Although the family and Sir Robert still believe in Ronnie's innocence, the film, taking its cue from the play, plants some doubts. This means that the most moving moments spring from the emotional effects of the case on the family, not the plight of the boy.
“It's easy to do justice,” Sir Robert remarks. “Hard to do right.” The Winslow Boy makes the connections between these ideas and the concept of honor comes alive for contemporary audiences.
Arts & Culture correspondent John Prizer writes from Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: In The Winslow Boy a family's trust is tested ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Family Films Make More Money DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:Forbes magazine on April 19 carried an article by Father Robert Sirico, president of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty in Grand Rapids, Mich. In it, he points out that Hollywood needs to take a long look at its bottom line. An excerpt follows.
A recent, extensive study of movie profitability shows that movies without graphic violence and sex make the most money. This bears repeating: Family movies are the biggest moneymakers.
The study was commissioned by The Dove Foundation of Grand Rapids, Mich., a nonprofit group, and was conducted by Paul Kagan & Associates.
It looks at the 2,400 rated feature-length films made from 1988 to 1997 and shown in theaters. In absolute terms, G-rated films yielded the highest gross profit — $94 million on average — while R-rated films earned $11 million on average.
The gross profit I'm talking about is the excess of income from theatrical release and the first two years of video sales over the direct cost of the movie—production, prints, advertising.
Take a look at percentage returns, too. G-rated films' average gross profit was 66%. That is, these inoffensive scripts generate revenues equal to 166% of production and distribution costs. Now start adding violence, sex and profanity and see what happens to profitability: PG-rated films returned an average gross of 52% over costs; PG-13 films, 50%; R-rated films, 37%; and NC-17 films (formerly called X-rated), 27%.
Why does Hollywood turn out violent crud when family films make more money?
So what kinds of films get made—the most profitable kind? No. Only 3% of the decade's films were rated G, 22% were rated PG or PG-13, and 55% were rated R.
In the early 1990s another Kagan study, cited in a book by film critic Michael Medved, showed that a PG-rated film, on average, was three times as likely as an R-rated film to earn at least $100 million in ticket sales.
So the results of the latest study aren't startling. What continues to amaze, though, is Hollywood's persistence in turning out violent, sex-drenched crud even though the record clearly shows that wholesome, family movies are better moneymakers.
The Lion King (1994) and Toy Story (1995) were fabulously profitable. And it doesn't take an R-rated movie to entertain adults. Field of Dreams (1989), The Fugitive (1993), Babe (1995) and As Good as It Gets (1997) each beat the investment return of the average R-rated film….
Last year saw the unprecedented release of five highly profitable Grated films by major studios — A Bug's Life, Antz, Prince of Egypt, Mulan and The Rugrats Movie — although there were very few good nonkiddie PG or PG-13 films along the lines of The Truman Show, Life is Beautiful (from Italy) and Waking Ned Devine (from Ireland).
Walt Disney, which has been making four times as many R-rated films as family films, says it plans to even the ratio. And Sony Pictures is atoning for its Terminator shoot-'em-ups by starting a children's division.
Real artistic integrity and profits need not be at odds; to say otherwise is to insult the public. Maybe most producers and directors just aren't smart or creative enough to make good family films. Others, though, are selling themselves short. Roll up your sleeves, Hollywood. The path of least resistance is costing you money.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Videos on Release DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:Baby Geniuses
As a comedy, Baby Geniuses is a misfire with a preposterous plot. The megalomaniacal Dr. Elena Kinder (Kathleen Turner) is the chair of Babyco, the world's largest maker of infant products. In addition to searching for incessant corporate profits, Kinder is bent on cracking the secret language all babies use to communicate with one another. She's hired the tough researcher Dr. Heep (Christopher Lloyd) to conduct a series of language experiments on a collection of orphaned babies. Opposing Kinder is Sly, a 2-year-old genius who is determined to liberate the orphaned babies, as well as her niece (Kim Cattrall) and her niece's researcher husband (Peter MacNicol). This sweet couple runs a baby nursery and conducts research into infant language as a sideline. Complications ensue, and, naturally, everything comes to a preordained end. But few audience members will really care, except for those who adore cute babies.
U.S. Catholic Conference Ratings adults and adolescents
The Seventh Chamber of Edith Stein
Subtitled “An Interpreted Life,” The Seventh Chamber of Edith Stein is a powerful exploration of this newly canonized saint's journey to God. Written and photographed in an evocative, occasionally expressionistic style, this Pauline video release — in French with English subtitles — explores important episodes in this great and still controversial martyr's life. Stein (Maia Morgenstern), who was born to an intellectual Jewish family in Breslau, Germany, followed an extraordinary path. After years of studying philosophy, writing, teaching and professing atheism, she encountered the works of St. Teresa of Avila. This led to Stein's conversion to Catholicism and ultimately to her entry into a German Carmel. But the new Carmelite couldn't remain in the security of her convent. The grim political situation in Nazi Germany forced her and her sister, a fellow Carmelite, to join a Carmel in Holland. From there, in 1942, the two women were sent to Auschwitz. The Seventh Chamber of Edith Stein, which originally appeared on European television in 1995, is a demanding and stark work about a demanding, stark and loving saint.
The Marquise of O
Directed and written by Eric Rohmer, the great French auteur of cinematic morality plays, The Marquise of O is an engrossing look at the meaning of innocence and honor. The screenplay, based on a novel by Heinrich von Kleist, recounts the dreadful dilemma that confronts the Marquise of O (Edith Clever), a virtuous young widow and mother of two, who mysteriously finds herself pregnant during unsettled times in early 19th-century Europe. The marquise, a perfect daughter to the upright governor (Peter Luhr) of a northern Italian town and his loving wife (Edda Seippel), has no idea of how she became pregnant or who the father of her child is.Complicating her predicament is the ardent courtship of the Russian count (Bruno Ganz) who rescued her from a violent rape when her home city was sacked by Russian forces. At first glance, The Marquise of O — in German with English subtitles — is a still and controlled movie, but lying underneath the surface of this new video release are intense emotions and intriguing moral questions.
—Loretta G. Seyer
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Loretta G. Seyer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Break Down Unseen Wall Between Americas, Cardinal Urges DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:CLEVELAND—Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago urged educators, students in Catholic universities and the clergy June 24 to remove the unseen wall separating North America from South America and to work toward creating a unified continent.
Cardinal George, in his keynote address at the opening of “A Dialogue Within U.S. Catholic Higher Education About Latin America” at John Carroll University in Cleveland, called for more exchanges of students and faculties between U.S. and Latin American Catholic universities and colleges.
The June 24–27 event, first of its kind in the country, was attended by about 100 delegates including representatives of 40 U.S. Catholic universities, Archbishop Oscar Rodriguez of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Auxiliary Bishop Julio Teran Dutari of Quito, Ecuador, and educators and representatives from many Latin American countries.
It was sponsored by the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities and the U.S. bishops' Secretariat for Latin America, both based in Washington; the Diocese of Cleveland; and Jesuit-run John Carroll University.
The dialogue was designed to explore ways to improve relationships between the two regions so America will eventually be regarded as “a single entity,” as Pope John Paul II urged in his apostolic exhortation on the Synod of Bishops for America, a document addressed to Catholics in North and South America.
The papal text, which was unveiled during his trip to Mexico City in January, reflected the recommendations of the synod, which was held at the Vatican in late 1997.
The Pope said the bishops should “reflect on America as a single entity, by reason of all that is common to the peoples of the continent, including their shared Christian identity and their genuine attempt to strengthen the bonds of solidarity and communion between the different forms of the continent's rich cultural heritage.”
It is in this context, Cardinal George said, that educators and churches in the United States should develop programs to build solidarity between the two regions.
Citing an example, he said that the archdioceses of “Chicago and Mexico City recently entered into a declaration of intent expressing a desire to increase communication.” Though it is in elementary stages, Cardinal George said he is optimistic that the mutual cooperation will grow.
Among the ideas envisioned by the Chicago Archdiocese is exchange of ministerial staffs, students and volunteers. “Seminarians can work in Latin American churches,” said Cardinal George.
The prelate said creating awareness of Latin America among students would yield long-term benefits because they would be able to shape policies benefiting the United States and Latin America. He encouraged efforts toward “higher learning and knowledge of Latin America, its political, economic and educational system.”
That part of the world, according to Cardinal George, is a victim of what he called “an economic crime” by developed countries. Churches and universities, he said, can play an important role in eliminating economic crime.
The Pope had talked about the need for a free-trade agreement between North America and South America well before its enactment by the United States a few years ago, he said, adding that it has brought economic relief to a few Latin American countries. By and large, they still require economic assistance.
To eliminate economic disparity among developed and underdeveloped nations, Cardinal George said, he wants to explore the possibility of setting up “an international center for equal economic growth to monitor economic crimes.”
The United States and other developed countries often neglect countries with limited economic structure, he said.
“The poor are considered a burden instead of seeing them as opportunities to help them and serve God.”
Several Latin American countries, he said, are reeling under “economic slavery” wrought by previous corrupt regimes that ran up enormous debts. He also called on international banks and lenders to provide relief from these debts.
A partnership with Latin America would benefit the United States as well, especially to learn more about the importance of family ties, he added.
“South Americans come here not simply to better their lives, but also to send money back home to their parents,” he said. “They have such strong commitment to their family. And it's necessary to keep the family intact.
“We can learn much more from them on how they accept God in their lives and in their country,” he added.
Cardinal George said U.S. Catholic universities could establish student and faculty exchanges, share information and data and participate in research.
“We have a great responsibility to make sure that the Church's voice is heard,” he said. “For the first time, the Church is genuinely global.”
Suggestions and recommendations made at the event will be distributed to U.S. Catholic universities as a resource document for initiating Latin American programs and curriculum.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Clifford Anthony ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: EDUCATION NOTEBOOK DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:THE WASHINGTON POST, June 22— “Twenty-five years after court-ordered busing tore this city apart, the parents of four white children and a local advocacy group have filed a lawsuit against Boston public schools alleging reverse discrimination and calling for an immediate end to race-based student admissions,” said the Post.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court “even as federal courts dismantle school desegregation plans nationwide, and as Boston prepares for the possible demise of its own system with the eventual reintroduction of neighborhood-based schools,” reported the paper.
But that day will come too late for those children recently denied admittance to their preferred classrooms, said attorney Chester Darling.
The mother of one 8-year-old boy assigned to his second-choice school was told by school authorities that he was “not sufficiently Native American” to qualify for his first choice, according to the lawsuit. Another child, also white, was placed on a waiting list. “It's a quota system. It's rigidly enforced and constitutionally impermissible,” Darling said. “You cannot withhold or provide a benefit based on race anymore.”
Boston public schools assign children under a “controlled choice” policy that considers school preference and race, among other factors.
“However, the city has adopted a race-blind admissions policy for its three most celebrated high schools following a successful court challenge last year by a student who claimed she was unfairly denied admission to her top choice because she was white,” said the Post.
Florida Vouchers Are Now Law
REUTERS, June 22—Florida Gov. Jeb Bush signed legislation making the state the first in the nation to offer a statewide program of vouchers to help parents of students in failing schools offset the cost of private education.
Florida's House and Senate approved the controversial plan in April. It fulfills a major campaign promise made by Bush during his run for governor last fall. Opponents, which include the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, have promised lawsuits. They say a provision that would allow parents to transfer children into religious schools violates the Constitution.
The measure assigns grades from A to F to each of Florida's public schools, based on standardized test scores. Schools scoring well would qualify for additional state funding. Students in schools rated “F” for two years out of four would be allowed to transfer to another public school or accept vouchers worth up to $4,000 to help offset private tuition.
“Church-run schools accepting voucher students could continue to teach religious courses, but they could not require students to pray,” reported Reuters.
While Florida has ranked near the bottom historically of states in standardized test scores and education funding, only students in Florida's worst schools would qualify for vouchers.
At present, only four schools in the state would qualify, but officials have said that as many as 169 schools could be added to the list as state educators raise the academic bar.
Remembering the '60s — Accurately
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, June 22—One professor who was around at the time disagrees with Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher's boast that the “children of the 60s” strive to honor their “proud heritage by keeping an open mind.”
The claim was made in the May 28 Weekend Journal's wine column, and was responded to by Robert Johnson, professor emeritus of English at Washington State University.
“I remember ‘open-minded’ children of the 1960s shutting down my university with a divisive student strike.
“They occupied the administration building and sat on the floors jammed together to prevent employees from leaving their offices,” said Johnson, who was once asked along with the rest of his faculty to keep watch in campus buildings an entire night because of student threats to fire bomb the structures.
“When they disagreed, many children of the '60s tried to prevent others from speaking,” said Johnson. “An occurrence at Yale stands for all: Protesters jammed streets around the law school and thus kept the commanding general in Vietnam from speaking. Is anyone proud of these actions?”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: America Must Recapture The Vision of 1776 DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:On each of his visits to the United States throughout his pontificate, Pope John Paul II has expressed his admiration for the principles of America's founding documents, and called the nation to return to the moral political vision of 1776.
“To celebrate the origin of the United States is to stress those moral and spiritual principles, those ethical concerns that influenced your Founding Fathers and have been incorporated into the experience of America,” he said during an 1987 address at the White House.
He also quoted Pope Paul VI's words to America during the 1976 bicentennial year of the Declaration of Independence: “We earnestly hope that … this commemoration of your bicentennial will constitute a rededication to those sound moral principles formulated by your Founding Fathers and enshrined forever in your history.”
In St. Louis last Jan. 27, the Holy Father returned to this theme in his homily on a reading of Isaiah (35:1–6, 10).
Dear Friends
We are here together in this striking cathedral basilica to worship God and to let our prayer rise up to him like incense
In singing God's praises, we remember and acknowledge God's dominion over creation and over our lives.
Our prayer this evening reminds us that our true mother tongue is the praise of God, the language of heaven, our true home. …
As we look at the century we are leaving behind, we see that human pride and the power of sin have made it difficult for many people to speak their mother tongue.
In order to be able to sing God's praises we must relearn the language of humility and trust, the language of moral integrity and of sincere commitment to all that is truly good in the sight of the Lord.
We have just heard a moving reading in which the prophet Isaiah envisions a people returning from exile, overwhelmed and discouraged.
We too sometimes experience the parched desert-land: our hands feeble, our knees weak, our hearts frightened. How often the praise of God dies on our lips and a song of lament comes instead! The prophet's message is a call for trust, a call to courage, a call to hope for salvation from the Lord. How compelling, for all of us today, his exhortation: “Be strong, fear not! Here is your God … he comes to save you” (Isaiah 35:3–4)! …
America first proclaimed its independence on the basis of self-evident moral truths. America will remain a beacon of freedom for the world as long as it stands by those moral truths which are the very heart of its historical experience.
Duties of Powerful Nations
“O God, let all the nations praise you!” (Psalm 67:4)
At the end of this century — at once marked by unprecedented progress and by a tragic toll of human suffering — radical changes in world politics leave America with a heightened responsibility to be for the world an example of a genuinely free, democratic, just and humane society. There is a lesson for every powerful nation in the Canticle from the Book of Revelation which we have recited.
It actually refers to the song of freedom which Moses sang after he had led the people through the Red Sea, saving them from the wrath of the Pharaoh. The whole of salvation history has to be read in the perspective of that Exodus: God reveals himself in his actions to defend the humble of the earth and free the oppressed.
In the same way, in her Magnificat canticle, Mary, the Mother of the Redeemer, gives us the key to understanding God's intervention in human history when she says: the Lord “has scattered the proud in the conceit of their hearts … and exalted the lowly” (Luke 1:51–52). From salvation history we learn that power is responsibility: It is service, not privilege. Its exercise is morally justifiable when it is used for the good of all, when it is sensitive to the needs of the poor and defenseless.
Another Charter of Freedom
There is another lesson here: God has given us a moral law to guide us and protect us from falling back into the slavery of sin and falsehood. We are not alone with our responsibility for the great gift of freedom.
The Ten Commandments are the charter of true freedom, for individuals as well as for society as a whole.
America first proclaimed its independence on the basis of self-evident moral truths.
America will remain a beacon of freedom for the world as long as it stands by those moral truths which are the very heart of its historical experience. And so America: If you want peace, work for justice. If you want justice, defend life. If you want life, embrace the truth — the truth revealed by God.
In this way the praise of God, the language of Heaven, will be ever on this people's lips: “The Lord is God, the mighty. … Come then, let us bow down and worship.” Amen.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Fund Attempts to Divide Muslims From Christians at U.N DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:Austin Ruse at the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute released June 24 the following statement about the U.N. population meetings scheduled to take place in New York June 25–29:
Senior U.N. diplomatic sources report that Dr. Nafis Sadik, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund, pressured the heads of six Muslim delegations into a late-night meeting during the final Cairo+5 prepcom at the end of March.
In an apparent effort to split delegates and NGOs along religious lines, Sadik is said to have charged the Muslim diplomats with working closely with the Vatican delegation and Christian NGOs.
Apparently Sadik had grown alarmed at the increased lobbying presence of Christian NGOs, and suspected ongoing communication between them and Muslim delegations. Sadik's initiative was met with diplomatic anger.
This controversial meeting took place when it became obvious that Sadik was not getting all she wanted from the negotiations. On the one hand, Sadik wanted more funding from the west for population programs. On the other hand, she wanted more advanced reproductive rights language from the developing world. She got neither.
As a response to the great number of pro-life lobbyists at the Cairo+5 prepcom, it is also suspected that Sadik played a role in encouraging a number of radical feminist NGOs to apply for participation in this week's “intersessional” that is supposed the break the stalemate between the G-77 and the industrialized west. These NGOs were given special consideration to participate in this final prepcom and at the immediately following Special Session of the UN General Assembly on Population and Development. Almost all the groups are active in promoting abortion and in changing national laws relating to abortion.
Among the groups are Action Canada for Population and Development, National Abortion Rights Action League, National Abortion Federation, U.S. Committee for UNFPA, and the Wallace Global Fund.
Action Canada for Population and Development, founded with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, is an association begun by the Canadian arm of International Planned Parenthood Federation. In recent months, Action Canada ran a series of meetings meant to show support for the Cairo Program of Action. They did not allow pro-life participation.
National Abortion Rights Action League and the National Abortion Federation are among the most radical pro-abortion groups in the United States.
The U.S. Committee for UNFPA, charged with raising public support for UNFPA, has as its president the former director of the Margaret Sanger Center International which is named for the controversial American eugenicist much admired by the Nazis.
When these 24 NGOs were first mentioned for special treatment at the final Cairo+5 prepcom, developing world diplomats objected because of what they saw as increasingly discriminatory treatment by UNFPA against pro-family NGOs.
Diplomats also fear the same kind of intimidating tactics the radical feminists used in March.
One afternoon during those meetings, radical feminists formed a gaunt-let through which diplomats were forced to pass.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Helping Women Grieve After Abortion DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:Many people are not aware of the psychological and emotional damage that is caused after a woman has had an abortion. Theresa Burke spends her time helping women come to terms with their abortions.
Burke, a psychiatrist and founder of Rachel's Vineyard, a Bridgeport, Pa.-based ministry that helps women with post-abortion trauma, recently spoke to Rich Rinaldi of Register Radio News.
Rich Rinaldi: Rachel's Vineyard has helped thousands of women with post-abortion trauma. Could you tell us a little about the retreats they organize?
Dr. Theresa Burke: It's a very beautiful, very intense weekend retreat and we also include men on those retreats and sometimes even grandparents of aborted children. But it's a very beautiful weekend, an opportunity to look back on the abortion decision and to, I guess, take stock of how it may have impacted them — something a lot of women may never have done. They have undergone this loss and have a lot of feelings about it which they bury and repress. They don't really deal with it. That can cause a lot of problems. The weekend retreat is really an opportunity to not only reconcile the abortion with themselves, but also with God and with the child. This happens through a very intense weekend. A lot of pain comes up … and they have an opportunity to tell their story and deal with their anger their loss.
You mention about reconciling with the child. Could you tell us about that?
The Holy Father, in The Gospel of Life, talks about the children being alive in the Lord and he said nothing is definitely lost which means that each child that was aborted has a soul that is very much alive with the Lord and this is the hope we give to women on the weekend. We help to establish a spiritual relationship with their aborted child or children. In order to do this, they first have to acknowledge the life they have lost.
This is part of the denial which keeps a lot of women from even grieving, that they lost something.
A lot of women do realize that, but it's later. Maybe when they are pregnant with a wanted child, they might remember their abortion and say, “My God, I would have had another baby.” All kinds of memories come back about their abortion and this can be a very painful time. So the weekend helps them address all these issues, realize the impact the abortion has had and, certainly, to own that child, to reclaim that child in love which is something important for any mother to do — to reconnect with the baby, name the baby, give honor and dignity to the baby and to realize that this child is alive with Christ. We also, since we believe in eternal life, offer the promise that you will meet that child in heaven. This is a very beautiful, very healing concept for a lot of women that feel it's all over.
You mentioned about the deep depression of mothers who have aborted their children, and suicide attempts. It sounds like there is real anguish there.
Well, abortion is really a trauma, and what happens when we are traumatized by anything — or we lose anything and don't deal with our feelings and process the event — it can come back to haunt you in other ways. Some women don't even connect the emotional difficulties that they have with their loss. They might have depression. A lot of women might have anniversary reactions around the time of their abortion; they might develop eating disorders or try to numb their feelings in their memories with alcohol or substance abuse. A lot of women feel enormous guilt and shame over this act. They find lots of ways to punish themselves. If they are not inflicting abuse on themselves with this self-destructive behavior, they will become involved with relationships that will be unhealthy. …
We see a lot of sabotage behavior from women because the bottom line is that they don't feel worthy, they feel they don't deserve anything good in life. They know they took the life of their child. These are the kind of thoughts that go through a lot of women's heads. They feel a lot of guilt like, “God is going to punish me.” And these in particular are seen around women who are pregnant with one sick child, “The baby is going to be deformed,” or there are fears of that. … That's very common. … And there might be people that they are really angry at. There might be a parent that forced the abortion, a boyfriend; it might be a husband. There are a lot of toxic relationships sometimes. As a result of that, women have difficulty trusting and at times, being intimate. The act of sex can be a painful reminder of the trauma. …
Abortion providers are not warning these women about the consequences of having an abortion, talking to them or counseling them.
Therapy is such a denial of post-traumatic stress disorder, post-abortion trauma, even guilt after abortion. They say that you and I now are causing the guilt because we are the ones making this an issue. I can tell you for certain with my experience — and I run these retreats all over the country training other groups on how to do it — I've heard probably thousands of women and men in deep grief and deep despair. They have never been warned of this. There is a denial in the industry that it's even a reality. They say that post-abortion trauma doesn't even exist.
Rich Rinaldi is director of Register Radio News
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Rich Rinaldi ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel of Life DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:When he received Lindy Boggs as the new American ambassador to the Vatican on Dec. 16, 1997, Pope John Paul II reflected on the founding of America. Noting that not just the Church, but nations, could take the Jubilee Year 2000 as a time of self-examination, he said:
“The United States of America was founded on the conviction that an inalienable right to life was a self-evident moral truth, fidelity to which was a primary criterion of social justice. The moral history of your country is the story of your people's efforts to widen the circle of inclusion in society, so that all Americans might enjoy the protection of law, participate in the responsibilities of citizenship, and have the opportunity to make a contribution to the common good.
“Whenever a certain category of people — the unborn or the sick and old — are excluded from that protection, a deadly anarchy subverts the original understanding of justice. The credibility of the United States will depend more and more on its promotion of a genuine culture of life, and on a renewed commitment to building a world in which the weakest and most vulnerable are welcomed and protected.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Culture Of Life ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Life Notes DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:Federal Ban on Assisted Suicide Proposed
THE OREGONIAN, June 18—U.S. Senate and House members have introduced legislation in Washington June 17 that could challenge Oregon's physician assisted suicide act. They predicted their proposal would become law this year, reported The Oregonian.
“Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.), the assistant Senate majority leader, said he had listened carefully to the medical and patient-care groups that opposed the Lethal Drug Abuse Prevention Act last year, then made changes in the legislation to address their concerns,” said the report.
“The bill stresses that doctors may use federally controlled drugs to treat a patient's pain, even when it may increase the risk of death. At the same time, however, it specifies that assisted suicide is not a permitted use of controlled substances.”
Nickles told the paper that he wanted to make sure that such drugs “are used for legitimate medical purposes … to alleviate pain.”
Supporters of the new legislation include several medical and patient-care groups and also the American Academy of Pain Management.
The paper reported that Physicians for Compassionate Care, which is based in Oregon and opposes assisted suicide, is supporting the bill.
Nickles said the legislation would make a clear separation between treating pain and intentionally assisting in a suicide.
Legislators Act to Abolish N.J. Death Penalty
ASSOCIATED PRESS, June 22—Two Democrats have begun “an uphill battle” June 21 as they try to repeal New Jersey's 20-year-old death penalty law.
Assemblyman Alfred E. Steele said in the report that “it is the beginning of a long crusade to inject some moral and pragmatic reasoning into this state's approach to criminal punishment.”
“This bill may not pass this year or next year, but I firmly believe it will make everyone take a harder look at New Jersey's embrace of the death penalty.”
Assemblyman Wilfredo Caraballo said, “The government does not have a right to kill. Capital punishment is nothing less than a cowardly and lackadaisical approach to fighting crime.”
If the bill is passed, it would abolish the state's death penalty law and give prosecutors the right to request a sentence of life imprisonment without parole in capital-murder cases.
Supporters of the bill include the New Jersey chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, the New Jersey Association on Correction and The Coalition for Peace Action.
They argue that the assumption that it is more cost effective to kill a convict rather than keep them in prison for life is not true, and in fact “the death penalty can cost taxpayers more than life in prison because of excessive legal costs for appeals,” said the report.
One father whose daughter was murdered was quoted by the paper. “We believe that those who call for the death penalty are seeking to satisfy the calls for revenge from the victims' family members,” said Lorry Post of Cape May. “We know the agony of those who have suffered as we have and who feel they need this second killing in order to get on with their lives. However, we also know that there is nothing the state can do that can relieve our pain. Killing the murderer just brings more bloodshed and pain to another family.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Did You Know? DATE: 07/04/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 4-10, 1999 ----- BODY:Statistics show a strong correlation between fatherless homes and a host of other domestic problems. A Father's Day editorial in the Boston Herald credited the Massachusetts Family Institute for gathering these statistics:
In Massachusetts, the percentage of fatherless families has more than quadrupled since 1960.
In the same period, its crime rate tripled and homicides increased 100%
Since 1979, the number of juveniles in trouble in its justice system has grown 90%. The adult prison population tripled.
“It's not just his financial contribution” that is important, said the Herald, “but the discipline and the model of love, understanding and guidance a father provides.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Vatican Reins in Part of U.N. Population Plan DATE: 7/11/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 11-17,1999 ----- BODY:NEW YORK—Delegates from the United States, Canada and Western Europe came to the “Cairo+5” meetings at the United Nations headquarters here intending to make the rules on world population control.
But the Vatican, along with a coalition of Muslim and developing countries, stopped many of their efforts at the conference, which was originally scheduled for June 24-29.
At press time, the meetings were still under way, pitting an active and record sized pro-family lobby, including a new contingent of youth (see Page 7), against the most powerful nations in the world.
At stake in the debate was the U.N. Population Fund's Program of Action that was agreed to five years ago at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt.
Holy See adviser John Klink, an American, told the Register that delegates from the United States, Canada, the European Union, and Norway remain determined to make “reproductive and sexual health” the centerpiece of every discussion on population and development.
Delegates have been gathering on and off since January to review progress since Cairo and recommend initiatives for implementing Cairo's directives. Once completed, the plan will be submitted to the U.N. General Assembly and likely rubber-stamped for action. Since no changes were to be made to the original program, the conferences were expected to move swiftly.
In one early move in the June meeting, Muslim nations like Libya and Egypt, pro-life lobbyists, and the Vatican aggressively countered proposals that would give children as young as 10 U.N.-backed “sexual reproductive rights.” By midweek of the June preparatory meetings, the provision for emergency contraceptives was no longer a point of discussion. The debate then focused on parental rights.
At one point in the meetings, Klink locked horns with U.S. delegate Margaret Pollack during a tense round of deliberations over the question of whether to include the reference to parental rights and responsibilities. Klink said the Holy See would not budge on the point.
A compromise was eventually reached which “was basically acceptable in that one reference,” said Austin Ruse, director of the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute, a pro-life lobby. “But overall, parental rights in the document died, and this was led by the U.S.”
In his defense of the parental rights language before the U.N. delegates, Klink focused on the responsibilities that parents have in directing the religious and moral education of children.
When U.S. delegate Pollack proposed deleting the sentence on parental rights, Klink quoted from speeches made recently by her boss, President Clinton, on the irreplaceable and invaluable role that parents have in guiding and nurturing their children. Groans filled the crowded conference room as he read Clinton's words.
“We have worked at great length over the last several months to ensure that this is not simply a conference on population issues, but, as its title not only implies but mandates, a conference on population and development,” Klink said. “In that very title is reflected the social teaching of the Church — that your major goal should be the development of peoples in every way: spiritually, economically, and socially.”
A Western Agenda?
For years, Vatican insiders and pro-life lobbyists feared that population control groups like the U.N. Population Fund and International Planned Parenthood were taking steps toward naming abortion as a “fundamental human right,” but lacked the evidence to prove it.
They say their suspicions were confirmed, however, during the original Cairo convention in 1994 when a private communication that was issued from then Secretary of State Warren Christopher's office to U.S. embassies abroad was leaked to pro-life delegates.
The communication made it clear that the Clinton administration wished to pursue the goal of making abortion a universal fundamental human right, Klink told the Register. And pro-life delegations have been increasingly vigilant ever since.
Pollack wouldn't confirm that the United States had any intention of promoting a universal right to abortion. “That's not what we're here to discuss,” she told the Register.
During a recess at the Cairo+5 conference, Planned Parenthood Director-General Ingar Brueggemann would not say whether her organization, with U.N. help, intended to make abortion a universal human right.
“I can only tell you what our position is,” Brueggemann told the Register. “Abortion is not a means of family planning. Abortion is what anyone, with everything possible, should try to prevent, in order to allow women to have access to contraception so that it doesn't lead to an unwanted or risky pregnancy.”
“However, if there is a case where for all sorts of reasons — whether it was rape or it was unwanted or it was a failure of contraception, then, where it is legal, women should at least have a chance to have a safe abortion,” Brueggemann said.
Asked about statistics which suggesting that wherever abortion is legalized, the number of abortions rises fivefold, Brueggemann replied, “I doubt that,” adding, “that could be an interim phase.”
Jean Head, of National Right to Life in New York, pointed out that the statistics come from the Alan Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood's research arm.
”In most countries,” according to a study published in 1994, “it is common after abortion is legalized for abortion rates to sharply increase for several years … just as we have seen in the U.S.”
Brueggemann “must not read her own organization's literature,” said Head.
The Next Step
Like many of the pro-life lobbyists at the United Nations building during the June meetings, Head began her career never intending to be involved in international diplomacy. She delivered babies for over 40 years before becoming involved in U.N. efforts.
Now, she is eager to see changes made in international rules.
Exhausted from late night strategizing at the Cairo+5 conference, she took some time out to explain why it is so crucial for the pro-life effort to step up efforts inform Third World delegates of the real intentions of the U.N. Population Fund and International Planned Parenthood.
“Many countries don't make these conferences a priority,” Head said. “They have laws against abortion which they don't think can be overridden. I tell them what happened in the U.S. [with Roe v. Wade]. If the U.N. declared abortion a fundamental human right, non-governmental organizations would be able to bypass the sovereignty of nations, just as the Roe decision … [was able] to bypass state's rights.”
Brian McGuire writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian McGuire ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: House Backs Parental Consent DATE: 7/11/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 11-17,1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—Adults taking underage girls across state lines for abortions without parental consent will run into new legal roadblocks, if a U.S. House bill becomes law.
The House on June 30 voted 270-159 to pass the Child Custody Protection Act. The bill, introduced by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, RFla., would make it a federal offense for an adult to circumvent the authority of a parent or guardian by helping a minor child cross state lines to obtain an abortion.
The bill now moves to the Senate, where Sen. Spencer Abraham, R-Fla., has introduced the measure. Ros-Lehtinen was hopeful about its prospects there.
She told the Register, “We need to protect young, vulnerable, teenaged girls. This bill also ensures parental involvement and parental rights. … The continued support from … grass-roots organizations will guarantee the Child Custody Protection Act's success in the Senate.”
Opponents of the act argued that the bill will harm some girls if it is made law.
Roger Rathman, vice president of media relations at Planned Parenthood in Washington, told the Register, “This bill reflects the huge disconnect in the House of Representatives. They must think everyone comes from a functional family. This law will hurt victims of child abuse or incest because it makes criminals out of adult non-family members trying to help these girls.”
But National Right to Life spokesman Doug Johnson said that teen-age girls are in far more danger of abuse without the bill.
“This legislation is needed because it is a common practice for older men who have impregnated a minor to take the girl across state lines where parental notification is not needed,” he said.
Gail Quinn, executive director of the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities at the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, agreed.
“Too often,” Quinn said in a statement, “those who are not parents circumvent state laws by taking young girls across state lines for secret abortions. … The Child Custody Protection Act will help remedy this usurpation of parental rights and responsibilities.”
The office of Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., provided the Register with examples of the problem the bill is addressing.
In testimony before Smith's House committee last year, Joyce Farley told the story of her daughter's rape and abortion.
“My daughter was provided alcohol, raped and then taken out of state by a stranger to have an abortion,” Farley said. “This stranger turned out to be the mother of the adult male who provided the alcohol and then raped my 12-year-old daughter while she was unconscious. The rapist's mother arranged and paid for an abortion to be performed on my child.”
Smith also provided the Register with an advertisement by a New Jersey company advertising its abortion services in the Scranton, Pa., Yellow Pages. The ad announces, “No Waiting Period. No Parental Consent Required.”
Clinton Veto Looms
The bill would give federal support to parental consent laws, requirements in 25 states that parents must be told of and agree to abortions performed on their children.
Quinn noted that parents are normally required to consent to medical procedures for their children. “Something as serious as abortion — a harmful, life-changing procedure — should not be an exception,” she said.
Johnson of National Right to Life added that the Supreme Court has upheld all laws recognizing that parental involvement in abortion should be encouraged, not discouraged, by state legislation.
If the bill passes the Senate, Johnson said its biggest threat will be President Clinton, who wants to add a measure which would exempt close family members, professionals and clergy from prosecution.
The White House confirmed that Clinton would probably veto the measure if it doesn't exempt other family members from prosecution.
If that happens, said Johnson, “The general presumption that parents have the best interests at heart for their children would be set aside. … All these other people would be given license from Congress to ignore state laws without impunity.”
Ellen Pearson writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen G.Pearson ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Catholic League Dogging Dogma DATE: 7/11/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 11-17,1999 ----- BODY:NEW YORK—The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Liberties ratcheted up the pressure on Harvey and Bob Weinstein, owners of the soon-to-be released anti-Catholic film, Dogma, by challenging first lady Hillary Clinton and Disney Chairman Michael Eisner to sever their associations with the Academy Award-winning distributors.
The controversy began when the Weinsteins' distribution company, Miramax, acquired the rights last year to Dogma, written and directed by critically acclaimed Kevin Smith (Clerks and Chasing Amy).
The film ridicules Catholic beliefs about the Virgin Mary, indulgences, the Twelve Apostles, and God himself, played by pop singer Alanis Morrisette, whose concert repertoire is peppered with profanity and her own critical view of the Church.
After pressure from the Catholic League, Disney, which owns Miramax, persuaded the distributor not to release the film. But the Weinsteins decided to find another distribution outlet or release it themselves personally.
This wasn't good enough for the Catholic League. On June 22 league president William Donohue issued a challenge to the first lady who has close ties to the Weinsteins. The New York-based distributors have given $20,000 to the president's Legal Expense Trust and are putting Hillary Clinton on the cover of Talk, their new magazine which is hitting the newsstands this summer. She's considering running for the U.S. Senate from New York in 2000.
“The Catholic League calls on her to break her association with the Weinsteins by refusing to accept another dime from them,” Donohue declared. “In 1997, Hillary slammed the movie, My Best Friend's Wedding, simply because Julia Roberts smoked too much. Can she now summon the courage to slam Dogma? Catholics — and this is especially true of New York Catholics — need to know whether Hillary Clinton is as exercised about Catholic bashing as she is about smoking.”
Counterproductive?
Brent Bozell, chairman of Media Research Council, applauds the Catholic League's action.
“It shows the hypocrisy of Hillary and Bill Clinton claiming to talk about moral values and criticizing Hollywood while coddling people like the Weinsteins and taking money from them,” he told the Register.
But some in the entertainment industry who support the Catholic League's goals question the wisdom of this new tactic. “Guilt by association and calls for repudiation don't help us in promoting a rational dialogue about what we do in Hollywood,” veteran writer-director Lionel Chetwynd (Hanoi Hilton) told the Register.
Chetwynd, who often supports such causes, describes himself as “one of the growing number of people out here who have a daily concern about the images Hollywood sends out and their impact on fellow citizens.” He says, “The Catholic League should know better.”
Both the Weinsteins and Hillary Clinton refused to comment to the Register.
Undaunted, the Catholic League decided to apply a different kind of pressure. In a June 23 New York Times advertisement, it called on Disney to end its corporate relationship with Miramax. “If Disney wants to recapture its family friendly image, there is no better way to do this than by severing all ties with the Weinsteins,” says the ad. “Catholics, and people of all religions, are sick and tired of these kinds or assaults. To that end, the Catholic League will commence a petition drive, sending the results directly to Michael Eisner.”
Industry insiders sympathetic to the Catholic League's anger about Dogma wonder how effective a petition drive will be. “The filmmaker clearly selected the subject to shock, offend, titillate and generate publicity,” experienced writer-producer Rob Long (NBC-TV's Cheers!) told the Register. “But it's rare this kind of action works.”
“It's the appropriate thing to do,” said Bozell. “But I don't hold much hope for it.”
Donohue said he believes the Catholic League has to keep pushing. “If you don't put the heat on, you get nowhere,” he contended.
As proof, he cited an earlier campaign against Miramax and Disney which got results. In 1995 Miramax released Priest, a British-made film about a homosexual priest. The Catholic League protested by organizing a boycott of other Disney products. “Priest bombed,” says Donohue. “Without applying similar pressure we wouldn't have gotten Disney to get Miramax to drop Dogma.”
Bozell thinks the entertainment conglomerate has other divisions with similar problems. “What Disney did in dropping Dogma was damage control. If they drop the Weinsteins completely, next they'll have to sever themselves from ABC,” he adds, alluding to the network's questionable programming in series like Nothing Sacred, which dealt with an urban priest's problems in a highly controversial manner.
Neither Disney nor Miramax would comment to the Register about the petition drive or Dogma.
Dogma, starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, is about a pair of angels trying to get back into heaven by circumventing Church rules. One of them hangs out at abortion clinics because he thinks it's a good place to meet women. He has a relationship with a female Catholic clinic worker whom the film claims is descended from Jesus.
The movie also suggests that Mary was no virgin. God is portrayed by female alternative rock star Alanis Morrisette, and a foul-mouthed 13th apostle is introduced. “The film is punctuated by four-letter words and toilet humor,” says London's Daily Telegraph.
Dogma also shows a nun leaving her vocation to pursue the pleasures of the flesh, and a man thumbing a pornographic magazine in church.
The June 28 issue of Time reports that director Smith is considering re-editing certain scenes in response to the outcry after the Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colo. The sequences include one in which the pair of angels bullet-spray a board meeting of a large corporation and another in which they kill a group of people outside a church.
“Smith is rethinking the violence. But he's not willing to rethink the anti-Catholic material,” said Donohue, who has read the script. “It obviously isn't of great interest to him.
John Prizer writes from Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Gov. Bush Leaves Pro-Lifers Guessing DATE: 7/11/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 11-17,1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—How the rights of the unborn in America will be treated as the new millennium begins will depend in large part on whom the country chooses as the next president.
That's why pro-lifers have a watchful eye on Texas Gov. George W. Bush, called “the anointed one” by Washington media for his seemingly unstoppable front-runner status in the race for the Republican Party's nomination.
In a speech June 29 before the National Right to Life Committee, Bush said, “I do not believe the promises of the Declaration of Independence are just for the strong, the independent, the healthy. They are for everyone — including unborn children.”
“I am pro-life,” Bush declared. “I believe my party should keep its pro-life commitments. … I support the goal of a constitutional amendment.”
Bush also said that he would only appoint judges to the Supreme Court “who share my conservative philosophy, and will strictly interpret the Constitution rather than legislating from the bench.”
The comments were overshadowed by earlier indications of a less than hard-line pro-life stance. While campaigning in Pennsylvania, Bush was challenged about whom he would choose to share his ticket in a presidential campaign. Bush said he “would rule nothing out.” In another comment, Bush said he would not require that nominees for the Supreme Court declare themselves to be pro-life.
Rivals for the Republican nomination immediately seized upon the statements as a warning that Bush is drifting from the party's pro-life stance, and media reports, such as The New York Times on June 29, fueled the debate.
Bay Buchanan, sister and top political adviser of former GOP presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, said that if Bush added a pro-choice candidate on the GOP ticket, it might spur her brother to make an independent run for the White House. “We don't expect that to happen, but if it does, he will have to make that decision at that time,” Bay Buchanan said. “We expect the ticket to be pro-life.”
U.S. Sen. Bob Smith of New Hampshire, known for his pro-life efforts, is also seeking the GOP nomination. After Bush's comments, he openly mused a third-party run himself.
David O'steen, executive director of the National Right to Life Committee, urged a less dramatic approach to questions about Bush.
He recommended that pro-lifers stop attacking fellow Republicans and begin focusing on their likely Democratic rival, Vice President Al Gore. “There has been zero focus on Gore's possible running mates, Gore's possible Supreme Court nominees and Gore's overall abortion positions.”
He pointed out that a third party would split likely Republican voters into two camps, and help Gore — a vigorous supporter of abortion — win. Said O'steen, “Anything that helps elect Al Gore president hurts the pro-life cause. He is certain to give us pro-choice judges. People need to focus on Gore and show how extremist his positions are on abortion.”
Importance of Judges
Pro-life political watchers say a key reason to have a strong presidential candidate is the effect the president has on the number of pro-life federal judges, whose decisions significantly effect the status of the unborn.
In addition to the federal judiciary, the Supreme Court may be a big factor in the upcoming presidential election. Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot noted that the winner could appoint up to three judges to the highest court in the land. “If we lose the presidency,” overturning Roe v. Wade will have “no chance at all for 50 years or at least a generation,” Gigot speculated.
If new federal judges say they are pro-life, they will need a committed president to back them up, syndicated columnist Robert Novak, who recently converted to Catholicism, told the Register. They will need all the help they can get as “they will face tough confirmation battles” in the Senate. If they declare their pro-life leanings, it will be even tougher, he said.
That's why another comment of Bush's has received a lot of attention by pro-life activists. Bush told reporters in Texas that he refused to adopt what is known as a “litmus test,” whereby a president would only appoint explicitly pro-life judges to the Supreme Court.
Media-watchdog and pro-lifer Brent Bozell II said that pro-life groups should demand further commitment from front-runner Bush. “It's mind-boggling how the pro-life community is rolling on” the Supreme Court issue, he said.
But O'steen again defended Bush. The “litmus test,” he said, is a “secular media ploy.”
“The media only focus on Republican candidates and characterize them in one of two ways: They care only about abortion or they picture them as weakening the party's positions,” O'steen said. “Either way the pro-abortion Democratic candidate benefits.”
Ann Stone, national chairman of Republicans for Choice, said she thinks that Bush's comments reflect a more honest assessment of American attitudes on abortion than the past platforms. “What he's doing is focusing on what will bring abortion rates down.”
“Calling for a Human Life Amendment is a dead end, has no support, and wouldn't work,” Stone said. Stone herself favors ending third-trimester abortions as well as a parental notification bill.
Vice President Who?
Another issue of contention is a potential vice presidential candidate.
Donald Lambro, chief political correspondent for The Washington Times, was critical of Bush's signals of openness to pro-choice running mates.
“Bush said he's wide open on VP,” Lambro observed. “I don't think that's wise. Coalition politics, from Roosevelt to Reagan, is critical to winning. [Pro-lifers] are part of the coalition. To say you're wide open only gives fodder to people like [pro-life presidential candidate Gary] Bauer and Buchanan.”
But Gigot said that Bush should be allowed to consider some pro-choice running mates without drawing wrath from pro-lifers. “I don't think that the VP is a deal breaker.” What matters is how pro-choice the running mate would be, Gigot contended.
“There's a difference between [New Jersey Gov.] Christine Whitman and a [Pennsylvania Gov.] Tom Ridge,” he said. “Whitman is an in-your-face, pro-choice Republican. … She vetoes the partial-birth abortion ban. She sounds like The New York Times editorial page.”
In contrast, Gigot said that Ridge would support a partial-birth abortion ban, a parental notification bill, but draw the line at first-trimester abortions. “There's an accommodation that can be reached with Tom Ridge that can't be reached with Chris Whitman,” Gigot said.
Columnist Novak disagreed. Bush should be “strongly advised that a pro-choice running mate would be disastrous.”
Are Republicans Pro-Life?
In the face of such back-and-forth arguments, some pro-life activists are so fed up with both Republicans and Democrats that they have abandoned both parties for a little-known third party called the U.S. Taxpayers Party. Syndicated columnist Joseph Sobran said of the Republican Party, “It's been 27 years. What have they done? … [The Republican establishment] all want the issue to go away.”
Gigot called talk of a third-party “suicidal.”
“It's ‘rule or ruin’ politics,” he maintained. “The people speaking out on this — Bauer, Buchanan and Smith — they aren't getting a lot of help from the Right to Life Committee, [evangelical Pat] Robertson, even [Jerry] Falwell.”
Instead, Gigot said, leading conservatives have adopted Bush's gradual approach on abortion. “What's changing is the pro-life section of the party's view of what is an effective strategy,” Gigot said. They have decided, “that the incremental-ist strategy is better to get what they want.”
With the incremental approach, Republicans can pass certain curbs on abortion, Lambro said. “Bush said he'd sign a partial-birth abortion ban. He said he would end federal funding of abortions. The key is that the national pro-life organizations say he's got a good record.”
Lambro also said he thinks that the Republican “shift” on abortion represents only a change in tactics. “The base of the party is not drifting.” He said that Republicans have “cemented their position” over the last five presidential elections. “I don't think they'll move away quickly.”
Josh Mercer writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Josh Mercer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: How the Pope Won Romania DATE: 7/11/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 11-17,1999 ----- BODY:There is another side to the story of Pope John Paul II's visit to Romania, and the great impact it made on relations between Orthodox Christians and Catholics. A Romanian priest and senator tells how the power of the Pope's personal witness was able to overcome the mistrust and misunderstanding of the Romanian people. For decades they had been fiercely persecuted, and propagandized, by communist rulers bent on discrediting the Church and the Pope. Register correspondents Eleanor Kennelly and Victor Gaetan interviewed the Greek Catholic leader in Bucharest.
Kennelly: What effect did the Pope's visit to Romania have?
Father Matei Boila: It had the effect of strengthening our faith — of Greek Catholics, Roman Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Protestants, everyone. And this effect is most important to us.
In 1948, when the communists came to power in Romania, they engaged in an effort to stifle and suppress our faith. They arrested our priests, closed our churches, harassed believers and simply didn't allow us to practice our faith.
For some 45 years, the propaganda against Catholics in Romania was very intense, especially among the Orthodox in the countryside. They were told that the Pope was not a good Christian, even anti-Christ, and he was ridiculed with all kinds of slogans. The propaganda even had some results, like all propaganda. After the Pope's visit, I ran into ordinary people in Bucharest who were so happy to say, “It is true that the Pope is so faithful!” This effect counts for us more than anything else.
Why do you think the presence of the Pope and his words have such an extraordinary impact?
He says nice and good things, but they are said by many other people. The Romanian patriarch says these things and so do other priests. But the strong, incredible effect comes from the fact that the Pope really believes. Faith is a mysterious act in which the grace of God meets our free will. No one knows exactly how this happens, but it has a beautiful effect. This is what the Pope exhibits and inspires.
What is the difference between Greek Catholics and Roman Catholics?
Within the Roman Catholic Church there are about 24 different rites, which means they have different ways of expressing their faith, but the faith is the same. We, the Greek Catholics, are Catholics of the Byzantine rite. The Vatican has encouraged this diversity because it is part of the Catholic Church's strength.
In Romania, the Greek Catholic Church is centered in Transylvania in the northwestern part of the country. Some 300 years ago, when the Austrians expanded their rule into this area, they allowed passage to Catholicism by allowing Orthodox Christians to keep their practices while providing schools and education in Catholicism, and allowing priests to go to Rome. The so-called Greek Catholic Church developed. Today there are over 800,000 Greek Catholics in the Ardeal region [Transylvania]. Outside Romania, there are Greek Catholics in Slovakia and Ukraine [some 5 million].
What is the difference between the Orthodox religion and Greek Catholicism?
First, the Orthodox do not accept Communion with bread that is not risen. This is their tradition, but most likely, Jesus gave the apostles unrisen bread at their last, sacred meeting.
Second, with regard to the Holy Trinity, the Orthodox do not accept that the Holy Spirit emanates from both the Father and the Son but only from the Father. I just want to point out one thing: The Trinity is a mystery which none of us can completely understand.
Third, the Orthodox don't believe in purgatory. Yet, they make many prayers to the dead, offering pomana, or gifts on behalf of the dead, and would they do that if the dead were simply in heaven or hell?
The only important difference between Greek Catholics and the Orthodox is the fourth difference which is, we believe in the primacy of the Pope and the Orthodox do not.
Tell us about some particularly memorable moments during the Pope's visit to Romania.
The whole country was amazed at how well he spoke Romanian. He spoke our language the whole time he was here and his accent was so exact, it was extraordinary. That combined with uncanny references to the Greek Catholic experience in Romania made his visit such a moving — I'll even say, miraculous — one.
For example, at the liturgy at St. Joseph's Cathedral in Bucharest, the Pope finished with two verses: “Nu ne lasa maicuta sa pierim pe cale, Caci noi suntem fii lacrimilor tale,” which means, “Don't allow us, Mother Mary, to disappear on the road because we are the sons of your tears.” It is a Greek Catholic song and something we said every time we met secretly during those years [under communism].
Certainly, in Rome we [Romanian Greek Catholics] have theologians and connections to the nuncio who could tell the Pope our stories, but it is a great thing that he knew this. And throughout his three-day visit, which was full of public appearances and homilies, he spoke to us as one who understood our great suffering.
He said, “They tried to silence your liberty, to suffocate it, but they didn't succeed. Thank the Lord that after the terrible winter of communist reign, the spring of hope has begun,” speaking directly to our experience.
In the 45 years of terror, we made 12 bishops. They were each put in jail, pressured, tortured and killed, and not one left his faith. All of them died in jail, or immediately after getting out. Only one survived, Alexandru Todea, who spent 43 years in jail or under house arrest. In 1991, the Vatican made him a cardinal — the second Greek Catholic cardinal after Cardinal Iuliu Hosu who was appointed secretly in 1970 but soon after, died.
Six years ago, Cardinal Todea suffered a cerebral attack. He can't walk or talk. The only thing he can still do is participate in the Mass and say the Our Father, although he says a childhood version. He has been extraordinarily faithful to the Pope, and his comportment has inspired us.
I never thought Cardinal Todea, now 86, could make it to Bucharest for the Pope's visit, so when I saw him carried into St. Joseph's Cathedral I was extremely moved. When Pope John Paul walked up to the altar, the first thing he did was to greet Cardinal Todea, wrapping his arms around the bishop's head, kissing him with warmth and love like God's gratitude. The cardinal, who looked healthy and 20 years younger, cried with joy. This scene was an emblem of the reward of faith and, again, an extraordinary example of the Pope's felt knowledge of our experience.
You play an unusual role in Romania as an elected member of the Romanian Senate and as a practicing priest. How did you come to be involved in politics?
Of course, canon law stipulates that a priest is not allowed to be involved in politics, but the same canon law adds that there are special situations when a priest can help the Church and his community by being politically active. I was given permission from the cardinal and from my bishop to run for office in order to represent our faith community in political circles. I was elected in the first democratic elections after the defeat of communism, in 1990.
I was elected as a member of the National Peasant Party — Christian Democrat — but I am now independent because I helped form a new party, the National Christian Democratic Alliance.
Were you jailed under communism?
Yes. I was first arrested in 1947 for being anti-communist. I spent 10 years in jail and got out in 1964 under a general amnesty.
In jail, I was a Greek Catholic but not yet a priest. Orthodox Christians would occasionally come to me and say, “What do I have to do to convert to Greek Catholicism?” and I would reply, “You have to be a very good Orthodox because then we will be together,” because, again, the differences between us are minor.
As I was coming out of jail, a bishop I was with begged me to accept to become a priest because of the situation, because of the great need for priests to teach and say Mass on the outside. I told him, “I prepared myself for other things,” because I studied law and economics, but I understood the need and I accepted.
I was made a priest clandestinely in 1977 by Cardinal Todea. I'm afraid I didn't have strong theological preparation but I did my best. I had Mass at home every Sunday, with five people some weeks, with 50 people other weeks. We had catechism with young people. I didn't have a parish but my house served as a church. Even now, I have Mass at home as in the past.
We know there has been an ongoing dispute between the Orthodox Church and the Greek Catholics regarding Church property. What is the status of this problem?
Under communism, some 2,000 churches were taken from us and given to the Orthodox. That's why we had Mass in our homes. With the end of communism, we asked for the return of our churches but it has not been easy. The Orthodox hierarchy has been very unreasonable. Now, we don't even want to talk about properties, we just want to use the churches in our communities for our people. Even this proposal is resisted by Orthodox leaders on the local level, even though, officially, the Orthodox Church has recognized our claims.
Throughout his visit, Romanian crowds greeting Pope John Paul chanted “unitate,” meaning unity. Do you think the notion of unity between the Orthodox and Catholics was advanced by the Pope's visit? Is unity possible?
It's possible. It is the faith of the people who, in the end, will ask for unity and impose on the hierarchy this idea.
----- EXCERPT: A priest-politician tells of John Paul's empathy ----- EXTENDED BODY: Matel Boila ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: U.S.Notes & Quotes DATE: 7/11/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 11-17,1999 ----- BODY:Actor's Roots Are in the Pious Life
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, June 21—Actor LeVar Burton is still remembered for his performance as Kunta Kinte in the now-classic film Roots, and younger fans know him as Lt. Geordi LaForge in Star Trek: The Next Generation. With his own film production company, Eagle Nation Film, Burton is also host and co-executive producer of Reading Rainbow, a PBS children's television show that has garnered five Emmys in its 16 seasons.
In an interview with the Times' Candace Wedlan, Burton also revealed much about his own spiritual life, including his early interest in the priest-hood.
“I was educated by Catholic nuns. In sixth grade I had a teacher who was a staunch disciplinarian,” Burton remembered with affection. “‘Don't be a lazy lump,’ Sister Mary Philip would say, and she would strut around with her ruler clasped behind her back …”
Burton decided to become a priest “when I was 8 or so. I entered the seminary when I was 13. Even then I had some sense that one's life must contribute something. I stayed at St. Pius until I was 17.”
While it was an experience he cherishes, Burton said the seminary served to reveal that he was not meant to be a priest. He decided “it was possible for me to be a spiritual warrior without … a collar.”
Religious and secular plays at the seminary inspired a love for the theater. “A large part of what I was attracted to in that job was the mystery, the spectacle and the performance in addition to the opportunity to be a part of the spiritual life, a community of people,” he observed. “The Catholic liturgy is incredibly theatrical.“
While not speaking in a pejorative sense, Burton explained that “the best priests are very gifted actors. The most prominent spiritual leaders are all charismatic personalities. They're all performers.”
Protestants Help Bring Back Orthodox CCD
RELIGION TODAY, July 1—American Protestants are helping Russian Orthodox Christians teach Sunday school, according to the ecumenical news service.
Ontario, Calif.-based Gospel Literature International created a curriculum for Russia's 15,000 Orthodox parishes. Orthodox leaders approved it and are making it available to their parishes for $1 per book, said Religion Today.
The nonprofit group was established by Gospel Light Publications, a Christian publishing house. The partnership is “nothing short of a miracle” in view of the Orthodox Church's negative views of the West and theology that is often at odds with that of Protestantism, Gospel Literature's Zhanna Berezkina said.
When Gospel Light President Bill Greig told Orthodox leaders he wanted to develop a curriculum for Russia's children, “it took us about two years to win them over,” Berezkina said. Suspicions faded when the Orthodox saw the care taken to adapt the literature to Russian Orthodox liturgy and tradition, said Religion Today.
“We did not want to promote our own ideas or theology,” Berezkina said. Lessons use Byzantine illustrations and follow Scripture readings in the Orthodox calendar.
The Communist government that ruled from 1917-1989 disallowed Christian education for young people, creating the need for a comprehensive Bible curriculum for children. Gospel Literature worked with the Orthodox Church in America to write the curriculum. Printing is funded by churches from many denominations in the West.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: In Holy Land, Priests Get a Pre-Jubilee Spiritual Boost DATE: 7/11/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 11-17,1999 ----- BODY:JERUSALEM—More than 500 priests from around the world converged on the Holy Land in June to take part in a pre-millennium spiritual retreat. They were joined by 250 local priests from Israel and the Palestinian-ruled territories.
For many, this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the land where Christianity was born. Bibles in hand, they retraced Jesus' life in Bethlehem, Galilee and Jerusalem.
Although the visit was not officially linked to the Holy See's Jubilee activities, the participants said the timing of the retreat — the fourth such event in as many years — added a sense of excitement and purpose to the gathering.
This excitement was palpable during the group's visit to the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, the site where Jesus took his last steps. Retracing the final journey, some of the priests brushed tears from their eyes.
Another moving experience for many was the celebration of Sunday Mass at the Pater Noster Church on the Mount of Olives. The old stone church, which is located in Arab East Jerusalem, has an expansive courtyard shaded by cedar and pine trees. There, in a sea of long white robes, the priests looked on as three young men were ordained before the assembly.
At the end of the proceedings, Pope John Paul blessed the gathering via a live radio feed. Sitting in the stately courtyard, many of the priests said that the retreat had given them a new sense of faith and wonderment.
“It's been inspiring to see scenes from the Bible, things you've read in the Gospel, come alive,” said Father Gus Acob from the Philippines. “It's an inspiration to see the places where Jesus was traveling and teaching.”
Referring to the many priests he had met during the conference, Father Acob marveled at how “the power of God can erase all differences.
At times it seems as if we are one, as if there is something inherent inside us that unifies us. Despite our different colors and languages and places of origin, there is no divisiveness among us.”
For Father Acob, the best part of the visit was walking through Jerusalem's ancient walled city, which is home to Christians, Jews and Muslims.
“When we went to Calvary and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, to the cross where Christ stood and was buried, it was so moving. We really felt the death and resurrection.” Given the opportunity, Father Acob said, “I think every Christian should visit the Holy Land once in his lifetime.”
Father Charles Decker, from the West African nation of Sierre Leone, called the retreat “a very Christ-full experience. I've been envisioning things in the Bible for so many years, and now I've had a chance to see them in reality. It's really wonderful.”
For Father Decker who, like Father Acob had never before visited the Holy Land, the trip was a spiritual shot in the arm. “I'll never forget our trip to Bethlehem, where Christ was born, to Shepherds' field. That was special.”
Father Decker said the retreat also enabled him to share his country's many problems with priests who were eager to listen. “I've met so many people from so many different countries,” the priest said. “I told them about the war in Sierre Leone and they showed signs of sympathy for us.”
He also learned about the Church in other countries. “Prior to the retreat,” he said, “I hadn't known that all of the bishops in Mozambique are black — that they're all local clergy. In Sierre Leone, only one of our bishops is local. The rest are expatriates.”
Msgr. Rey Monsanto, from the Philippines, said that this, his second visit to the Holy Land, was an eye-opener. “I'm happy to be back, and especially to see the progress that has taken place in the area. Most of what I know about the peoples here is garnered from the radio, the newspapers and CNN. There's nothing like meeting the people face to face.”
Pleased though he was to be in the land of the Bible, Monsanto noted that “there is something sad about it. It seems kind of ironic that in the place most sacred to the three monotheistic religions — and where Jesus pursued the search for peace — that our Savior is not so accepted here as God. The Jews and Muslims don't see him that way.”
Yet Msgr. Monsanto called the retreat “a faith-strengthening experience. I'm happy to be at the holy places not only as a Christian, but as a priest.”
Michele Chabin writes from Israel
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Michele Chabin ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 7/11/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 11-17,1999 ----- BODY:The Politics of Religion in Cuba
LOS ANGELES TIMES, June 26—A massive Protestant rally in Havana, Cuba, on June 20 may have been designed with a couple of objectives in mind, according to staff writers Margaret Ramirez and Alex Garcia.
The rally, attended by President Fidel Castro and other government leaders, was held in the same place where an estimated 500,000 people gathered in January 1998 for a Mass celebrated by Pope John Paul II.
“Church leaders … said the celebration signaled a religious reinvigo-ration on the island nation that is reaching beyond Catholicism into Cuba's other faith communities,” said the Times.
It was also meant to have a social impact. “As the economic situation has worsened in Cuba, religious scholars say that there has been an increased turning to faith … In a 1994 poll conducted by CID-Gallup of Costa Rica, 20% of Cubans said they had attended church in the past month,” said the Times reporters.
They added: “Several Cuban church leaders also believe the Communist government is using religious rallies as a way of lobbying the United States government to end the U.S. trade embargo, which religious leaders in many faiths have criticized.
Brazilian Priest is a Controversial Star
THE NEW YORK TIMES, June 25—“At age 32, Padre Marcelo, as the faithful here call him, has emerged as the driving force and main symbol of the Charismatic [Renewal] that is transforming the face of Catholicism in the world's most populous Catholic nation,” reported Larry Rohter from Sao Paolo.
A former weight lifter and gym instructor, Father Marcelo Rossi is famous for his exuberant charismatic liturgies and his gift for singing. “His debut CD has sold more than three million copies,” said Rohter. “He also has his own daily TV program and is one of the most sought-after guests on Sunday television variety programs because his appearance automatically drives ratings up.”
Rossi discovered a desire for the priesthood following the death of a cousin and an aunt's diagnosis with cancer. “And once I came back I fell in love with Catholicism and my faith grew and grew,” said Father Rossi. That love was fed by his admiration for Pope John Paul II, “who had been an actor and athlete as young man, full of strength and vigor.”
Fundamentalist Protestants — whose numbers are growing rapidly in Brazil — “complain vociferously that he has copied their preaching style and even their musical repertory,” said Rohter.
“Liberation theology advocates with the Church here have criticized him too, though most indirectly,” added Rohter. Sao Felix do Araguaia Bishop Pedro Casaldaliga, whom Rohter described as “combatively progressive,” chose to make his comments along liturgical lines. “The Eucharist is not a show,” said the bishop.
Britain Discriminates Against Religious Radio
NEWSROOM, June 15—The United Christian Broadcasters are upset over a policy that bans mainland religious stations — but not secular broadcasters — from transmitting programming to the entire nation, according to the British trade publication.
Local religious stations are allowed to transmit from Britain, but national religious stations must broadcast by satellite from offshore locations, such as the Isle of Man.
Cars and portable radios can't pick up those transmissions, severely limiting the number of listeners, said the Christian Broadcasters.
They say the 10-year-old policy puts Britain in the same league as China and Saudi Arabia regarding religious freedom. The group failed earlier this month to persuade Broadcast Minister Janet Anderson to lift the restrictions, and now plan to take the case before the European Court of Human Rights.
Britain is a signatory of the European Convention of Human Rights, which guarantees freedom of expression and religion.
Britain's Department of Culture says the policy is fair because new stations should be aimed at the tastes of the majority. “We believe our position is valid and right, and we are satisfied that the present broadcasting acts are compliant with the European Convention of Human Rights.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quutes DATE: 7/11/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 11-17,1999 ----- BODY:The Fatherhood Crisis
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, June 25—Christine de Vollmer, the mother of seven, “arguably stole the show” at a Vatican conference in June on “The paternity of God and Paternity in the Family” according to an op-ed piece by William R. Mattox Jr.
In what Mattox called a “remarkable speech” on the mutual dependency of motherhood and fatherhood, Vollmer told the group of more than 200 church leaders, scholars and family advocates that the crisis of fatherhood in the modern world is ultimately a crisis of masculinity that stems from “an all-pervading confusion about the differences of men and women and their tasks in life.” She summed up the problem in one word: “unisex.”
Vollmer, a United Nations adviser on family policy, “believes androgyny is both a cause and an effect of father absence,” said Mattox. “She says that many people today perceive that a uniquely paternal contribution to childrea-ring is ‘unnecessary’ and, at times, ‘even harmful.’”
The problem is taking a toll, said Mattox, because too many people do not have “the full experience of mother and father in harmonious contrast.” Vollmer “considers it a ‘great detriment’ to children that ‘fathers today are being asked to be as much like mothers as possible’ — especially since a growing body of research shows that fathers make a unique contribution in their children's lives.”
Some of the manifestations of adolescent problems due to the absence of a father can be seen in boys who “engage in violent crime and other hyper-masculine aggressive behavior (in an attempt to prove their manhood), while adolescent girls are particularly apt to engage in premarital sexual activity (in an attempt to compensate for the absence of masculine affirmation at home),” said Mattox.
Papal Products
NEWSWEEK, July 5—In response to international demand, the Vatican has entered into licensing agreements for the sale of merchandise with papal insignia and other items with connections to the Church, including art replicas, reported the national news magazine.
“Prepping for Holy Jubilee Year 2000,” the Vatican will soon open a … store in New York that will sell a wide variety of items, including sheets and china as well as religious items and depictions of Italian art treasures, said Newsweek. “Eventually, the Church hopes to have 400 outlets worldwide,” said the magazine's fashion section. “There's no better brand in the world,” said a Vatican licensing official
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: John Klink DATE: 7/11/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 11-17,1999 ----- BODY:Holy See Negotiator at the United Nations
In breaks between sessions of the U.N. Cairo+5 population control meetings in New York, Register correspondent Brian McGuire asked the Vatican's point man at the conference about the Vatican's plans.
“The Holy See stated very clearly that if [Western nations] were to proceed down [its current] path, they would be very unsuccessful, since they would be giving out condoms to a lot of dead refugees who had since died of hunger, who had no shelter, and who had no clothes,” John Klink said.
As to the reason for the West's apparent fixation on “reproductive health and on widening the availability of ‘contraceptive services,’” Klink said that what these nations ultimately desire is to see that abortion is made an international fundamental human right.
“There have been strong indications that one of the desires of Western states is to create human rights and to reinterpret current human rights in such a way that even constitutions are no longer sacred, our source at the Holy See told us.
“Meetings funded by U.N. agencies advocate this approach,” he said, adding that because these indications of a hidden agenda exist, negotiations at the U.N. regarding the precise wording of U.N. documents on population must be handled with extreme caution and vigilance.
“Every change in language has to be viewed with caution and suspicion, despite the fact that there is a mandate (at the Cairo+5 convention) not to renegotiate the text that was agreed to in Cairo.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Pro-Life Youth Presence Strong at United Nations DATE: 7/11/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 11-17,1999 ----- BODY:A new independent youth group has formed to promote pro-family policies at the United Nations. It comes on the heels of a failed youth effort that demanded “sexual reproductive rights” for children as young as 10.
The World Youth Alliance, a pro-family group led by Americans Anna Halpine and Diana Kilarjian, and Charlie Hoare of Britain, grew “by necessity,” Halpine said, in response to the radical demands of the pro-abortion Youth Coalition on Cairo+5.
In March, the rival Youth Coalition had demanded that U.N. delegates take up the “reproductive health” concerns of the world's youth, declaring at a press conference that their “sexual reproductive rights are the same rights as those for adults, because sexual and reproductive rights are human rights, and therefore universal, indivisible, interdependent, interrelated, and enjoyed by young and old alike.”
Working closely with the U.N. Population Fund, the Youth Coalition called on delegates to mandate that a host of health “services” and contraceptives — including abortion-causing “emergency” contraceptives — be made available to adolescents from age 10 without requiring parental consent.
Halpine, 21, said the World Youth Alliance began its counteroffensive by drawing up a statement, disseminating literature, and lobbying on the floor of the United Nations.
“We presented the same old facts and arguments that abstinence and chastity are not only 100% safe and effective, but they allow youth, especially adolescents, to explore other areas and develop as full human beings at that age, without the worry of all these things that they are discussing which, of course, come from sexually active lifestyles,” Halpine told the Register.
Her June 30 speech delivered at the United Nations follows:
Iam speaking today on behalf of the World Youth Alliance, which represents millions of the world's youth from different religious, cultural and geographic areas of the world. We do not claim to speak for all of the estimated 3 billion youth in the world today; but nor should the other youth caucus assembled here claim to speak for them. Rather, we speak to you today about the true concerns and desires of the majority of the world's youth.
The youth of the world support parental rights duties and responsibilities. They see these rights not as a competing threat to their own rights or freedom, but as complementary elements in which their parents provide security and direction, guiding their children to adulthood and maturity.
The primary concern of the world's youth is not achieving complete and total sexual liberation and sexual and reproductive health and rights, nor do they desire to erase the ties which they have with their parents. The primary concern of adolescents and young people is their family and the community that they are a part of. Parental discipline and guidance is crucial to the adolescent's successful life decisions at this vital stage of their lives.
We have witnessed some incredible proposals in the negotiations this week and throughout the Cairo+5 Prepcom [preparatory committee]. There has been a direct assault on fundamental human rights documents, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which gives parents the prior right to choose their child's education and direct their development.
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights give parents the specific right to direct the moral and religious upbringing of their children. What is the reason for ignoring and contravening U.N. treaties ratified by state parties?
More than this, these proposals to remove parental rights language make no sense and would achieve no support amongst those who have invested their lives in the study of the development of children and adolescents. In every culture, research shows that adolescents are engaged in the fewest risk behaviors when parental bonds remain intact and when parents exercise their supervisory roles.
Academic research shows conclusively that adolescents are still developing the cognitive skills required to make decisions outside of their own personal frame of reference, and to fully consider the long term consequences of their actions and decisions which they make.
Because the adolescent is still developing cognitively, intellectually and physically, sex education without parental involvement in the developed world has repeatedly failed.
It is no coincidence that the introduction of sex education at earlier and earlier stages of a child's development, has led to increased rates of teen-age sexual activity, contraceptive use, pregnancy, STD's [sexually transmitted diseases] and HIV/AIDS. The link between sex education and the epidemic levels to which these consequences have soared can no longer be ignored.
It is unconscionable for us to continue to promote these lifestyles and actions to the world's youth. Neither should the developed world impose these failed ideals upon the developing world.
Our solution is to be found in the ICPD Program of Action. Section 7.45 clearly outlines the language which we need to use — carefully crafted language which balances the needs of the developing adolescent with the adolescent's need for guidance and direction. Parental rights are for the protection of children and youth, not for the benefit of parents. Removing parental rights, duties and responsibilities from the Cairo+5 document will jeopardize, rather than benefit youth.
The majority of the world's youth, particularly youth in the developing nations, are concerned about issues other than their sexual and reproductive rights. Youth are concerned about their families, their friends, their education, and their physical and mental well-being and development.
The day-to-day lives of millions of youth around the world depend so much more upon the adequate resources in areas of basic development. Clean water, sanitation, nutrition, basic health care and education are not just a wish list: They are the immediate and crucial concerns of the world's youth.
Parental rights promote youth rights. The World Youth Alliance urges all of the delegates to recognize the importance of parental rights for the world's youth. Please retain and endorse language recognizing the rights, duties and responsibilities of parents in the final document.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Cardinal's Vigil DATE: 7/11/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 11-17,1999 ----- BODY:With his characteristic directness and warmth, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago announced recently that he would be joining in a prayer vigil outside an abortion clinic.
“I encourage those who wish to pray in a peaceful way to join me,” the archbishop was quoted saying in the June 26 Chicago Sun Times. “Please do not bring signs or pickets — bring only your desire to give peaceful witness to our love and deep respect for mothers and their children.”
Who could object to such a peaceful vigil for mothers and their children? The National Organization for Women, for openers.
Michelle Devine, president of the group's Chicago chapter, was quoted saying, “It's the wrong place at the wrong time. Their position on [abortion] is offensive, but it would be less offensive in front of their own church.”
Rabbi Gary S. Gerson, of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice in Illinois, joined in: “A clinic is absolutely not an appropriate setting for a march or prayer vigil. While I honor his right to free speech, I find that setting confrontational.”
Does a prayer vigil outside a clinic really constitute a “wrong place” and a “wrong time” to express views on abortion, as Devine argues? Or is free speech “appropriate” everywhere in America … except outside abortion clinics, as Rabbi Gerson suggests?
Frances Kissling, who calls her organization “Catholics for a Free Choice” even though it has no standing within the Church, may have inadvertently touched on the real reason for the opposition.
“No matter how peaceful,” she was quoted saying, “the cardinal seems to be unaware this [vigil] will cause great pain to the women … and will subject them to intrusion.”
So there it is: It is wrong to pray outside of an abortion clinic because it causes women great pain. In fact, the very presence of the vigil is a difficult “intrusion” on them.
Kissling has a point. People praying outside an emergency room at a hospital would not cause “great pain” or be an “intrusion” on patients rushing in; in fact, they would probably be welcomed. But people praying outside an abortion clinic will cause emotional pain to the aborting mothers, because abortion is the killing of a human being, and the vigil will remind them of that.
Even so, when Cardinal George claims the vigil will be kept because of love and respect for those mothers, he is not being ironic. After all, the pain of abortion is known to haunt mothers for the rest of their lives. By its silent and peaceful witness to God's love for his infants, a vigil reminds all involved in the abortion industry of what they are doing —and it can save lives and prevent that greater pain.
Those who oppose vigils like the cardinal's have already seen their objections codified by law. Participants must keep a distance from abortion clinics, under federal rules.
But abortion supporters should be careful when they curtail the free speech of their opponents. In their zeal to silence these painful voices of conscience, they are setting federal precedents against the very idea of freedom itself.
The U.S. House on June 30 passed the Child Custody Protection Act, a bill which would make it illegal for anyone to transport a minor to another state to obtain an abortion without permission of her parents. The bill, if it becomes law, would be an important federal safeguard to the pro-life initiatives of the 25 states that have passed similar “parental notification” laws.
The news from the House is encouraging for several reasons. First, it shows that a pro-life issue is still very much alive, despite the Republicans' smaller majority after last fall's election losses. The bill passed easily by a 270-159 vote, less that last year's 276-150 vote, but still an encouraging tally.Second, the bill shows a willingness to support the rights of states to govern themselves — a particularly important concept in the case of abortion. By federalizing the abortion question, the U.S. Supreme Court had effectively limited the ability of pro-lifers to make a political impact at the state level. The House vote shows the federal government may be leaning once again toward protecting the sovereignty of states.
Third, the House has rejected the extreme views of abortion proponents, particularly those in high places. The National Right to Life Committee has reported that the Clinton-Gore administration, behind the scenes, has threatened to veto the bill, demanding the measure give rights to other relatives of the girl — uncles, in-laws, brothers or sisters, etc. — to take them over state lines for abortions without parental permission.
This ignores the role that parents have in their children's lives, not to mention the traumatic burdens that they would have to help their daughters bear in the wake of an abortion.
The bill now goes to the Senate. You can give your senators your opinion on the matter by asking for their offices at (202) 224-3121.
----- EXCERPT: Editorial ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: How 'Failure' Transformed the World DATE: 7/11/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 11-17,1999 ----- BODY:The Inner Life of Jesus: Pattern of All Holiness by Romano Guardini (Sophia Institute Press, 1998 134 pages, $12.95)
Blessed Are You: Mother Teresa and the Beatitudes edited by Eileen and Kathleen Eagan, OSB (Ignatius Press 1999 152 pages, $9.95)
Since the first day of his papacy, John Paul II has asked the world to “open the doors to Christ,” always reminding contemporary men and women that in Jesus Christ we find the highest expression of human life as God intended it. Jesus “reveals humanity to itself,” the Pope says. “He is the norm by which the Christian life, and indeed all human life, is to be judged” (Redemptoris Hominis, No. 1).
Encountering Jesus Christ and finding in him the norm for life is precisely the point of two significant books reprinted recently.
Father Romano Guardini's The Inner Life of Jesus first appeared in German in 1957 and in English in 1959. Now Sophia Institute Press has given us these 13 meditations anew and they still seem as fresh as if they were written yesterday.
Wanting to bring us face to face with Jesus, Father Guardini says, “We do not know very much if we carry a picture of Him in our mind as a ceremonial, somewhat unreal, indefinite figure with long hair and a robe of many folds.” There is something else quite different to meet in this God-man. “His whole being must ring in our hearts with blood and bone. We must follow Him. We must strive to penetrate into the heart of His mystery, to what He really is.”
To take us to that encounter Father Guardini first imagines a different story for Jesus: “Suppose … we were to see Him as a man of eighty, or a hundred. How wonderful that would have been! Jesus as full of years as Abraham; Jesus as old as Moses. What a fullness of wisdom, what a mighty power of love, what capacity to act, what majesty would there be personified!”
But that's not the real Jesus. His is another story: “Instead of all that, just two short years. All those tremendous possibilities ruined. This marvelous being constantly thwarted, closed in. And finally, when His active career had hardly begun, He was destroyed.”
To meet Jesus as he is, Father Guardini wants us to see what he looked like to his contemporaries. “The abiding figure of Jesus'life is failure, defeat. … Unless we open ourselves to this fact, the figure of our Lord and His earthly life may appear trivial and idyllic, and its immense majesty will escape us.”
But it's not as if some colossal mistake has happened. Jesus'failure from a human perspective “signifies a choice already made for a particular mode of being.” But why would Christ choose a life of failure? Father Guardini answers that it is precisely Christ's failure that “points the way … to the understanding of His intimate self.”
It is in his failure that we find the “most interior part of Jesus' identity … [that] Jesus is love.” For when real love comes into our fallen and unloving world it must first appear here as failure. Then, and only then, can love be seen in the depths of its mystery.
When Jesus himself sought to open our eyes to this real love, he taught the beatitudes, those curious words that everyone finds so inspiring yet so “unrealistic” for everyday life. Is there anyone who dares say the opposite — that these words are, after all, “realistic?” Enter Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity.
Eileen and Kathleen Eagan succeed in unfolding the life of the Missionaries of Charity as a display of the beatitudes in Blessed Are You, Ignatius Press' updated reprint of the 1992 original.
Eileen Eagan first encountered Mother Teresa in October 1955, five years after the founding of the Missionaries of Charity. Using words with which people often describe an encounter with Christ, Eagan says, “After that day my life was never the same.” She had met someone who embraced the beatitudes as the way to life as God meant it to be lived.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” Jesus said. And by now most people know what Eagan found — Mother Teresa and her followers were seeking to be as close as they could to “the poorest of the poor.”
“Daily, forsaken human beings were brought to the home to have the filth and spittle of the gutter washed away, to have their sores cleaned and dressed,” Eagan reports. “I saw with what infinite patience the Missionaries of Charity nursed the spark of life in near-corpses,” she said.
“‘How can you do this day after day?’ I asked Mother Teresa.”
“They are Jesus,” she replied. “Each one is Jesus in a distressing disguise.”
The poverty of the Missionaries of Charity was meeting the poverty of the streets of Calcutta, both sides showing the face of Christ to each other.
One by one, the Eagans unfold the rest of the beatitudes in the lives of the Missionaries of Charity. Each of the stories they tell, and each of the words they quote from Mother Teresa, take the reader more deeply into the “most interior part of Jesus' identity.”
In 1990 Mother Teresa and Eileen Eagan were thinking back on the progress of the Missionaries of Charity, who by then had opened over 400 houses around the world. Eagan was struck by Mother Teresa's summary of all that had happened. “What wonders God has done with nothingness,” she said.
Here we come full circle. It is Jesus' chosen life of nothingness and failure that opens us up to divine love. In the same way, the world in our times has been privileged to see divine love in the chosen life of nothingness of Mother Teresa and her followers.
Gerry Rauch is an assistant editor of the Register.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Gerry Rauch ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: The Papacy, Defender of Christian Spirituality DATE: 7/11/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 11-17,1999 ----- BODY:“The Roman Primacy and the Spiritual Life” by John A. Hardon, SJ (The Catholic Faith, May/June 1999)
Jesuit Father John Hardon writes: “We now know, more clearly than before, that not only progress in the spiritual life depends on people's faith in the supreme authority of the Bishop of Rome. The very survival of Christian spirituality is at stake.
“Since the early days of the Church, religious communities of men and women have dedicated themselves to the practice of more than ordinary virtue. Their members bind themselves under vow to practice what we now call the evangelical counsels, notably consecrated chastity in the sacrifice of marriage, poverty in the dispossession of material goods, and obedience in submission, under rule, to the authority of appointed or elected superiors.”
Father Hardon explains that the great founders of Catholic religious orders needed the ecclesiastical authority to validate their visions and launch their orders into the influential mainstream of Catholic life. “Remove the papacy and you dissolve the value of Franciscan or Dominican or Ignatian spirituality.” In addition, the Church's authority is required to set before us examined and approved lives to emulate. “By now, there are thousands of men, women, and even children whom the Church has raised to the honors of the altar. … They have been declared saints by the Catholic Church on two counts: that they are certainly in heavenly glory, and that their lives are to be imitated by the faithful as exemplars of sanctity.”
“Apart from the writings of canonized saints, whole libraries have been written by Catholic authors dealing with every facet of Christian perfection. The accumulated value of this writing is in thousands of books, some of which have become standards of spiritual literature for the whole world. Here again, the Church's authority, finally vested in the pope, has had to sift and screen this ocean of spiritual literature. And the screening is constantly going on. By now, a Catholic can well know what spiritual writers are faithful to the Church's Magisterium, and which ones — and to what extent — are not.”
Father Hardon explains the importance of 2,000 years of documented commentary on “every aspect of the spiritual life. The popes themselves have published a treasury on the meaning of holiness, on the means of attaining sanctity, and on the measures to be taken to follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ.”
The author notes, “as St. Paul tells us, where sin abounds, there grace is even more abundant. The modern world abounds in sin — like the legalized murder of millions of unborn children every year. Faith tells us that grace is correspondingly, and more than ever, bountiful. Our age needs nothing more than saints, to be the channels of grace in a world that is intoxicated with itself. But to insure the guidance of the Holy Spirit in leading souls to sanctity, we need — indispensably — the guidance of the papal primacy.”
But “there is more implied in this statement than meets the eye. We commonly, and correctly, associate the papal primacy with the exercise of authority in governing the Church. The question is what is the most important exercise of authority in the Catholic Church? It is nothing less than to insure that the Church founded by Christ is truly holy. … Without a Church that can infallibly declare that a person had lived a truly saintly life, there is nothing which the Church could teach without danger of error. Everything depends on whether the Catholic Church not only can, but actually has produced saints.”
Ellen Wilson Fielding writes from Davidson, Maryland.
A condensed version, in the words of the original author, of an article selected by the Register from the nation's top journals.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: LETTERS DATE: 7/11/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 11-17,1999 ----- BODY:The FACE Act
Carla Coon is right on target about Clinic-Access Laws enacted to suppress the freedom of speech and assembly rights of pro-life demonstrators (“Clinic-Access Laws Go Too Far,” Register, June 27–July 3). The precedent for this is from pre-Civil War days when slave states enacted laws allowing mail to be opened and anti-slavery papers and other publications to be interdicted in order to protect the “peculiar institution” of that era.
There's an important feature in the federal FACE Act, however, that should also be mentioned. Senator Orrin Hatch amended FACE so that the same protections it provides to abortion clinics extend to houses of worship. Today any person intimidated by protesters near a church need not wait for the Justice Department to prosecute; he or she may bring a civil suit just as pro-abortionists have done to pro-life groups.
Think of the ACT-UP protesters who interrupted Mass and desecrated the Eucharist at St. Patrick's a few years ago. Or the decapitated statues in church Gardens of the Innocents.
And if FACE can be enforced to close down anti-abortion Web sites, it can also shut down anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish, or other anti-religious hate sites that abound on the Web. Where is the courageous pro-life organization preparing to seek out these Web sites, follow up on church disruptions and desecrations, and demand harsh punishment under the FACE Act?
“I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves,” Jesus advises, “so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves.” Certainly pro-lifers should oppose new Clinic-Access laws. But nothing will chill pro-abortionist ardor for these repressive measures like a few lawsuits using FACE against anti-religious bigots.
Dennis Teti Alexandria, Virginia
Gun Control
I agree with the conclusion of Father Schall's recent column (“Guns Are Wrong Target After Littleton,” Register, June 6-12) that if we were a virtuous people we wouldn't need to be concerned about gun control. How about a piece on how to instill virtues in children (and adults) and how to try to remain virtuous?
Please ask Father Schall to give more discernment to his parables, however. If my 15-year-old grandson were to get information about planned violence at his high school I hope he'd have the common sense to tell his parents so they could inform authorities. In his story about gun-toting Zeke, Father Schall seemed to be advocating that teens take the law into their own hands!
Dot Boyle Bristol, Connecticut
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: 'Virtual' Faith Isn't Enough In Real World DATE: 7/11/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 11-17,1999 ----- BODY:Catholicism is deeply embedded in Latin American culture. A quick look at city or street names, or at holidays in the calendar would show how openly religious Latin American culture is in many aspects, and how different it is from the sharp division between private faith and the secular public square in the United States.
Nevertheless, rank-and-file Catholics in the greater Latin American cities would not hesitate to say that trying to bring Christ's presence to daily urban life is not much different or less challenging than it seems to be in the United States. In other words, making faith present in the public arena is as hard in Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires or Caracas, as it can be in New York or Los Angeles.
According to Pedro Morande, a sociologist who is vice rector of the Chilean Catholic University, the task is even harder if we realize that there is always the temptation to confuse a “virtual” Catholic presence with the real thing.
Morande, one of the most brilliant Catholic intellectuals in Latin America, who describes himself as “a parent of two trying to raise Catholic children in Santiago,” has always insisted on distinguishing the “virtual” from the “real” Catholic presence in the public square.
Morande says many people believe the Catholic Church is present when it is only virtually present. They think the Church is advancing because bishops, or even Catholic lay leaders, appear frequently in mass media, speaking about social or political issues. Or they think it is enough that Catholics are shown as “model citizens” backing trendy, plausible initiatives — like a Peruvian bishop who recently promoted the planting of 15,000 trees in his diocese.
Don't get Morande wrong. He is not against bishops going public on TV, or against planting trees. He just points out that real Catholic presence is achieved only when Christian values, the values preached by Jesus Christ, find a place in social organization, in the economy, in legislation, in family life.
It is important to understand that when Church leaders appear on TV or are quoted in the media that does not mean the Gospel is being more accepted in society. In my experience, there are many more bishops appearing on TV on this side of the continent than in North America. But at the same time I see respect for Christian values fading in almost all areas of public life. TV broadcasters do not respect Good Friday in their programming. Abortion is being proposed by a greater number of politicians. Such things would never have occurred when I was a boy.
But the challenge is not to get back to a nostalgic Catholicism. In Ecclesia in America (“The Church in America”), Pope John Paul II asks Catholics in the continent to bring a Christian presence into the society and culture of the new millennium, not to reproduce the past in today's world.
The Pope also makes another point: Despite the fact that the Church is always the same and that the bishops bear ever-greater responsibilities, still, in today's world marked by an increasing secularism, the role of the layperson is unique and his contribution to the new evangelization irreplaceable.
Of course, Jesus himself demonstrated that the advance of the Gospel is not necessarily tied to the world's enthusiastic acceptance of Christian values. “The equation that associates success with acceptance is a secular, not a Christian one,” Morande says. In fact, success for Christians can come with a great deal of rejection. Which does not mean that rejection, as such, has to be looked for. On the contrary, pastoral creativity can make Christian practices not only more understandable, but attractive alternatives to an ever-increasing void.
Argentinean Bishop Bernardo Witte recently gave an example of such pastoral creativity when he called Catholics in the city of Concepcion — one of the areas most affected by Argentina's economic recession — to fast on bread and water each Friday to pray for employment and social justice. “In the face of our dramatic social reality, a journey of prayer and penance, of reflection and sacrifice is needed as an expression of solidarity with the needy,” the bishop said.
“Spiritually, it must be taken as a moment of conversion and prayer; socially, it must become an expression of solidarity with our workers — especially with farmers, workers, and administrative personnel of the sugar industry,” he added. “Our sacrifice and prayers must be raised up to increase the good and decrease the evil.”
Bishop Witte also asked Catholics to put together the food saved in each home during the days of fasting and to give it to a needy family. “In this way, we will share with others the same generosity God has shown to us and will make a symbolic gesture of our willingness to achieve a more just, balanced society and to work for the globalization of solidarity.”
The reaction to Bishop Witte's call was surprisingly positive. He showed how a true Christian life of prayer, testimony and even fasting, can be deeply embedded in society and culture if it is interwoven with daily life.
Alejandro Bermudez writes from Lima, Peru.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Alejandro Bermudez ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Authority as a Gift of God DATE: 7/11/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 11-17,1999 ----- BODY:When we say the Church is apostolic we are referring, first of all, to the Church's foundation on the faith of those who Christ chose to be his witnesses. But the Church is also apostolic in its continued office of authority that, for the good of the Church, guards the faith given to those first witnesses.
These twin themes of faith and authority merit special attention this year in light of a recent declaration published by the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (See “New Report On Authority Opens Doors,” Register, June 6-12). The declaration issued May 12, The Gift of Authority, examined the question of the authority in the Church, focusing on the papal primacy — a question acknowledged by the authors to be “at the heart of our sad divisions.”
How the document will contribute to advance of communion between Anglicans and Roman Catholics remains to be seen, but it has already highlighted the issue of authority in the Church and, in particular, the authority of the bishop of Rome as successor of St. Peter.
“There is an extensive debate about the nature and exercise of authority both in the churches and in wider society,” states The Gift of Authority. “Anglicans and Roman Catholics want to witness, both to the churches and to the world, that authority is a gift of God to bring reconciliation and peace to humankind.”
This authority, to be exercised after the fashion of Jesus, who taught “as one who had authority” (Matthew 7:29), is a gift in service of proclaiming the faith and preserving the unity of the body of believers. St. Paul speaks clearly about this: “For even if I boast a little too much of our authority, which the Lord gave for building you up and not for destroying you, I shall not be put to shame” (2 Corinthians 10:8).
Authority in the Church then is not to be understood as something that oppresses or constrains — to the contrary, properly used it preserves the possibility of embracing the freedom of the Gospel. Whereas worldly rulers seek to divide and conquer, the Church seeks to unite and liberate. For even when Church authority needs to correct and condemn, it does so in service of preserving the truths of the faith revealed in Jesus Christ. Authority is necessary in order to allow the faith to be handed on from one generation to the next. Without that authoritative tradition, it would be impossible to profess the same faith in Jesus Christ that the apostles did. After the apostolic age, authority is what makes faith in Jesus Christ possible.
Inseparable from Faith
Authority is therefore inseparable from faith. The key section of the joint declaration, on the office of the Bishop of Rome, makes this clear. It lays to rest the popular Protestant complaint that the papal office “adds” things to the faith that are not part of the Gospel that Jesus preached and handed on to the apostles. It is worth quoting at length, for it connects the teaching office of the pope — his authority — to the faith of the whole Church:
“Within his wider ministry, the Bishop of Rome offers a specific ministry concerning the discernment of truth, as an expression of universal primacy. This particular service has been the source of difficulties and misunderstandings among the churches.
Every solemn definition pronounced from the chair of Peter in the church of Peter and Paul may, however, express only the faith of the Church. Any such definition is pronounced within the college of those who exercise [the episcopal ministry] and not outside that college. Such authoritative teaching is a particular exercise of the calling and responsibility of the body of bishops to teach and affirm the faith.
When the faith is articulated in this way, the Bishop of Rome proclaims the faith of the local churches. It is thus the wholly reliable teaching of the whole Church that is operative in the judgment of the universal primate. In solemnly formulating such teaching, the universal primate must discern and declare, with the assured assistance and guidance of the Holy Spirit, in fidelity to Scripture and Tradition, the authentic faith of the whole Church, that is, the faith proclaimed from the beginning. … It is this faith which the Bishop of Rome in certain circumstances has a duty to discern and make explicit. … The reception of the primacy of the Bishop of Rome entails the recognition of this specific ministry of the universal primate. We believe that this is a gift to be received by all the churches.”
The obligation to “discern and declare … the faith proclaimed from the beginning” is what Catholics have long held to be the ministry of Peter. To have a joint Anglican-Catholic declaration affirm the same is something to be celebrated.
The Gift of Authority points to two great examples in history of the bishop of Rome exercising his authority on behalf of the apostolic faith. Pope St. Leo the Great (440-461), in a time of turmoil, insisted that the bishop of Rome had universal jurisdiction according to the divine constitution of the Church. Against the heresy that Christ only had one nature, he wrote an important letter (the Tome to Flavian) defending the Church's doctrine on the person of Christ. This year marks the 1,550th anniversary of that early exercise of papal teaching authority. Leo's authority was recognized in a marvelous way at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 when the Tome was read, explaining that Christ was one person with two natures. The council fathers made Leo's teaching their own, exclaiming: “Peter has spoken through Leo.”
Leo and Gregory
While Leo the Great defended the doctrine of the universal Church, Pope St. Gregory the Great (590-604) as bishop of Rome exercised his ministry to nourish the faith of a local church. It was Gregory who sent St. Augustine (of Canterbury) to preach the Gospel in England. Through Augustine, Gregory established the Church in England, and created the strong links between Canterbury and Rome that endured for nearly a millennium until Henry VIII. It was Gregory who took upon himself the title servus servorum Dei — servant of the servants of God — that the pope still uses to this day.
Leo and Gregory are illustrious examples of authority exercised in the teaching and propagation of the faith. The success of their ministry is due to the fact that it is Christ's will that it be Peter who strengthens the faith of the Church. The Gift of Authority notes that papal authority “is exercised by fragile Christians for the sake of other fragile Christians,” quoting the words of Christ to Peter: “Simon, Simon, behold Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed that your own faith may not fail; and once you have turned back, you must strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:31-32).
Satan attacks the faith of the whole Church, but Christ prays for Peter, so that through Peter's confession and conversion the whole Church might remain steadfast. Pope St. Martin I (649-655), exiled and martyred for defending the full humanity of Christ, expressed this claim most boldly from his imprisonment: “God wishes all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth through the prayers of Peter. Hence I pray that God will strengthen [them] in the orthodox faith, help them stand firm against every heretic and enemy of the Church, and guard them unshaken.”
Christ prays for Peter, and Peter prays for the Church. It would be an incredible claim if it were not for the words of Christ, giving to his Church the authority to bind and loose, and giving to Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 16:18). It is necessary that the Church pray also for Peter, even as Christ prays for him, for he bears a blessed burden.
In 1978, an 80-year-old Pope Paul VI, less than 40 days before his death, celebrating his 15th anniversary as pope, preached a homily which speaks beautifully of his own experience of exercising authority in the service of the faith.
“Our office is the same as that of Peter, to whom Christ gave the mandate of strengthening the brethren. … It is the office of serving the truth of the faith, and of offering this truth to all who seek it,” he said, exhausted from years of a very difficult pontificate. “Such is the untiring, watchful and consuming purpose that has carried us forward during 15 years of our pontificate. ‘I have kept the faith!’ we can say today, with the humble but firm consciousness of never having betrayed the holy truth. … This commitment to teaching in the service and defense of truth, we have offered at the cost of much suffering.”
“I have kept the faith,” Paul VI could say truthfully. So too could Leo and Gregory before him, and likewise Peter before them. The prayer of Christ for his Vicar on earth does not go unheard.
Raymond de Souza writes from Rome.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond J.Desouza ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Do We Need a Divine Father's Day? DATE: 7/11/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 11-17,1999 ----- BODY:Every dog has his day, or so it is said. And not only dogs. We also fête groundhogs (Feb. 2), trees (last Friday in April), and even the earth itself (April 22). More importantly, we set aside days to honor particularly deserving persons. Thus we rightly celebrate Mother's Day, Father's Day, Teachers Day, Veterans Day, Firefighters Day, and so forth, making sure no one feels left out of the merrymaking and general appreciation. Hallmark Cards, in particular, has demonstrated a remarkably refined sense of distributive justice, ensuring that every group from secretaries to farmers now have their own special day, with an endless array of greeting cards to accommodate the miraculous multiplication of feasts.
Long before the invention of Flag Day or Presidents Day, however, the Christian Church dedicated special days to venerate the saints, and even God himself. Jesus' foster father, St. Joseph, has two big feasts celebrated in his honor, on March 19 and May 1. The Blessed Virgin Mary's feasts dot the entire calendar from January to December, and include everything from her immaculate conception to her assumption into heaven and coronation as queen. The Church celebrates the grand solemnity of Pentecost for the Holy Spirit, and numerous feasts for God the Son, such as his birthday on Christmas, Christ the King, and collateral feasts for the Eucharist (Corpus Christi) and the Sacred Heart. All worthy figures are present and accounted for — almost.
Some alert theologians and pious souls have recently discovered a worrisome exception. It seems that after nearly 2,000 years of Christianity it has finally come to light that there is no feast for God the Father. There is, of course, the solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, observed on the Sunday after Pentecost, but here the Father shares billing with the other two divine persons, and this feast somehow seems to commemorate a dogma or a mystery more than the persons themselves.
Somehow in his infinite patience God the Father has put up with being overlooked up till now — though some see a possible connection with global warming — but many feel it is high time to rectify this unpardonable omission. And what better moment than the year 1999 to make such a proclamation? In his 1994 apostolic letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente (“As the Third Millennium Draws Near”), Pope John Paul II declared 1999 to be the year of the Father, following on the two prior years which honored respectively Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, as a triennial preparation for the Great Jubilee of the year 2000. Supporters also claim that such a feast day would serve to bolster the flagging institution of fatherhood, which languishes in a crisis that began with the sexual revolution of the '60s.
Lest anyone be concerned whether the Pope has been informed about this embarrassing liturgical oversight, fear not. One of the more illustrious advocates for God the Father's Day is none other than Father Raniero Cantalamessa who, as preacher of the papal household, could surely be said to have the Pope's ear. But as yet there are no signs of papal ear twitching or hand itching to sign such a feast into existence. Which is not to say, of course, that such a proclamation could not happen. There are precedents, after all, and Pope John Paul has shown little aversion to circumventing protocol when he has felt the need. His own devotion to the Father is, of course, unimpeachable. In fact, John Paul dedicated the second encyclical of his pontificate, Dives in Misericordia (“Rich in Mercy”) (1980), to God the Father.
Why the reluctance, then, to declare a feast for the Father? It hasn't been for want of consideration. The question was apparently presented for consultation to Vatican theologians who mulled over the matter and subsequently responded in the negative. Pundits say the creation of such a feast would be ill-advised for two main reasons. First, the very fact that in 2,000 years the Church has seen no need to reserve a particular day to honor the Father is enough to give one pause. Fatherhood has undoubtedly suffered major setbacks in the last 30 years, both in concept and practice, but one wonders whether in the larger scheme of things the situation warrants the creation of a new liturgical feast.
The second reason goes deeper still, and touches on a vital theological point. According to Christian doctrine, all prayer and all liturgy is ultimately directed to God the Father. In a very real sense, every day is God the Father's day. Through, with, and in Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor belong to God the Father. Thus theologians like patristic expert Father Lorenzo Rossetti see a hazard in setting aside just one day for the Father, when by rights he should occupy the center of all worship, as Christ himself taught.
One thing is certain. Though the Church may not deem it prudent to establish a special liturgical feast for the Father — now or ever — a recovery of devotion to the Father is long overdue. As Pope John Paul has written, the whole of the Christian life is “like a great pilgrimage to the house of the Father, whose unconditional love for every human creature … we discover anew each day.” In these final months of preparation for the Great Jubilee, the Church invites us to direct our gaze to the Father and to transform our reflection into an act of praise: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 1:3-4).
Father Thomas Williams is author of Building on Solid Ground.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Thomas Williams Lc ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A Harvest of Relics Amid Cornfields DATE: 7/11/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 11-17,1999 ----- BODY:A trek through rural Ohio's Mercer County will lead the pilgrim through what has come to be known as “the land of the cross-tipped churches.” The rural landscape here is marked by a continuous skyline of Catholic churches — large Gothic and Romanesque structures with soaring towers between 150 and 200 feet high, standing out in the midst of cornfields.
Towns with names such as St. Peter, St. Joseph, St. Henry, St. Sebastian, St. Rose, St. Anthony, St. Wendelin and St. Patrick, each named after the parish church, attest to the Catholic heritage of this bucolic region.
A vast number of churches, rectories, convents and schools were built in this area of west central Ohio between 1869 and 1915. By 1979, 64 of these buildings were placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The National Marian Shrine of the Holy Relics, owned and operated by the Sisters of the Precious Blood, serves as a prominent focal point for the vicinity, officially called the Cross-Tipped Churches of Ohio historical region. The shrine is located in a former convent of the sisters.
Settlers in this area were largely of German descent, most of them Catholic. In 1844 the Precious Blood Sisters came here from Switzerland. The square gatehouse to their property, built from locally fired brick, is recorded as the oldest building in Mercer County. This was also the site of their motherhouse until 1923 when they moved to urban Dayton, Ohio.
The first motherhouse, whose cornerstone was laid Nov. 16, 1845, was named Maria Stein in memory of the Swiss Benedictine Convent of that name. Maria Stein, translated from the German, means “Mary of the Rock.”
In 1843, Father Francis de Sales Brunner left Switzerland with his Precious Blood Missionaries for the New World, bringing along a beautiful painting of our Lady of the Rock, which had been given to him by the abbot of the Benedictine shrine in Switzerland.
During that trip, accompanied by Bishop John Baptist Purcell of Cincinnati, the ship was threatened by terrific storms at sea. When Father Brunner presented the painting for veneration the winds immediately subsided and the seas grew calm. Bishop Purcell attributed their rescue to the intervention of our Lady of the Rock.
The painting, which Father Brunner later placed above the high altar in the adoration chapel of the motherhouse, is now venerated in the relic shrine. The sisters say that during the last 150 years numerous miracles have been granted to pilgrims coming here to pray before the painting. It is a replica of a painting venerated at Mariastein, Switzerland, a famous pilgrim shrine in the Jura Mountains, near the city of Basel.
The Swiss shrine became a place of pilgrimage as a result of a 13th-century miracle. A young boy was accompanying his mother while she tended her sheep in the high Alpine mountains of the Jura. Full of curiosity, the boy peered over a precipice, lost his footing and fell some 130 feet into the ravine below.
Horrified, his mother set out to find her son's body, which she expected to find broken on the jagged rocks below. Instead she found him knitting a wreath of flowers, apparently uninjured.
The boy explained to his mother that when he fell a beautiful lady, shining like the sun, held her arms out and caught him, bringing him to safety below. She told him that she was the Mother of God and wanted a shrine to be built there in her honor.
Consequently, in 1636 a Benedictine priest built a monastery on the spot and called it Mariastein. The monastery quickly became a popular pilgrimage spot.
The Relic Collection
The shrine was founded in 1875 when Father J.M. Gartner, vicar general for the Milwaukee Diocese, entrusted his collection of relics to the sisters at Maria Stein.
In 1872 Father Gartner was sent to Rome on business. While there he learned that the churches of the Eternal City were being plundered by Italian banditti. Church articles, vessels, relics and other sacred objects could be found in pawn shops and street markets, sold to the highest bidder. Thus, Father Gartner thought it opportune to acquire a collection of sacred relics for the Church in America. Saving these relics from profane use and even desecration, he searched the shops of Rome for precious gems of the Catholic faith.
Returning to the United States, he first displayed his collection for veneration in New York, then Baltimore and Cincinnati. Father Gartner finally selected the convent chapel of the Precious Blood sisters in Maria Stein, Ohio, because of their practice of perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.
The first relic chapel, built at the convent there in 1875, was dedicated on the octave of the feast of All Saints, in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The shrine's collection includes 1,100 relics, 500 of which are currently on display in beautiful Gothic-inspired reliquaries. The remaining 600 are stored in the sacristy.
The primary displays of relics are centered around the high altar and two side altars, all of which were hand-carved especially for this purpose. The relics are arranged within a number of niches, each containing several individually encased relics grouped around a central relic that is displayed in a monstrance.
The bones of the martyr St. Honoratus are displayed beneath the high altar. Four bones of St. Ursula and her companions, also displayed beneath the high altar, were given to Maria Stein by the cardinal archbishop of Cologne, Germany, in 1895.
Father Brunner donated the body of St. Victoria, which is now encased in wax and lying in a glass case beneath the side altar dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.Five beautiful stained-glass windows imported from Munich, Germany, and hand-carved altarpieces and railing also adorn the relic chapel.
When the present chapel was dedicated by Archbishop William Henry Elder in 1892, in the name of the Church he invoked the “cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1) whose remains are here, to erect in this shrine a “throne of grace to which pilgrims could bring their prayers.”
Michael Rose writes from Cincinnati.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Michael S.Rose ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Church Has Always Venerated The Relics of Its Holy Men and Women DATE: 7/11/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 11-17,1999 ----- BODY:The tradition of venerating the relics of martyrs and other saints dates from the earliest years of Christianity. In the fourth century, St. Basil wrote that “by touching a martyr's relics one partakes of the sanctity and the grace they contain.” The Second Vatican Council restated this ancient tradition of the Church: “The saints have been traditionally honored in the Church and their authentic relics and images held in veneration” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, No. 111).
The Church recognizes three classes of relics. A first-class relic is defined as ex ossibus, from the bones of the saint. Second-class relics are clothes and items which belonged to the saint — e.g. a scapular, missal, or rosary. Relics of the third class are pieces of cloth which have been touched against the sacred remains of a saint.
In Rome, during the first century, the tombs of martyrs were kept in the catacombs, a series of underground cemeteries.
The Church required that they not be moved. Later, during the eighth century when the Lombards and the Saracens invaded Rome and set out to destroy the catacombs, it became necessary to transport the remains of the martyrs to safety. The Pope then permitted moving the remains from the catacombs to within the walls of the city.
One of the martyrs' bodies to be moved was that of St. Stephen, who was the first Christian martyr. His relics, which were discovered in Jerusalem around the year 415, began to occasion miracles as soon as they arrived in different European and African cities where they were venerated by the local Christians. Beginning at this time, churches were dedicated to a particular martyr with his or her relics placed under the altar.
Later, the Church placed relics of the saints under every altar where the priest offered Christ's sacrifice. Since 1977, however, the use of relics is not required in the dedication of new churches, although it is highly recommended.
Authenticity of Relics
The Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints determines whether or not a relic is authentic. When a saint is canonized, parts of the saint's body are given over to the Vatican, accompanied by a statement of authenticity by the diocesan bishop or religious superior of the order to which the saint belonged.
Two Augustinian priests are in charge of preparing the small relics for veneration from the remains donated to the Vatican. The Augustinian order has served the papal relic archives since 1352 when Pope Innocent VII created the position. He specified that the position was to be filled by Augustinians because the order had been such great defenders of the papacy.
Until that time some bishops did not investigate the authenticity of relics as thoroughly as they should have. This enabled dishonest men to sell the bones of the ordinary faithful as relics of the early Roman martyrs. Because of these abuses, the authenticity of old relics were subjected to a trial. They were placed under the judgment of God and dropped into a fire. If the relic miraculously survived, then it was held to be authentic.
In addition to the Vatican relic archives, the Holy Father maintains a personal collection, which contains all the relics donated to the popes since the time when Pope Urban VIII started the collection in the 1600s.
— Michael Rose
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Third Man and the Seductiveness of Evil DATE: 7/11/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 11-17,1999 ----- BODY:Certain people have a special talent for leading others astray. Through charm and manipulation they can persuade essentially decent folk to be party to terrible things. They present evil as exciting and the good as boring and bland.
The devil is often depicted as this kind of tempter, and an essential part of a person's moral education is the development of the ability to resist such blandishments.
The Third Man, winner or the Cannes Film Festival's Palme D'Or in 1949, has one of cinema's most appealing villains — Harry Lime (Orson Welles). “He made everything seem like fun,” says one of his admirers. British director Sir Carol Reed (Odd Man Out) and screenwriter Graham Greene (author of The Power and the Glory and The Quiet American) have constructed a moody, atmospheric thriller which is also a morality tale about Lime and his misguided friends.
This classic is being re-released in selected theaters around the country on the occasion of its 50th anniversary.
A newly edited director's cut restores 11 minutes removed by co-producer David O. Selznick (Gone With the Wind) for its initial American exhibition. Ranked 57th in the American Film Institute's 100 greatest movies poll, it also was named one of the 10 best shot films of the first half of the century by American Cinematographer magazine. The original version is available in most video stores.
The setting is cold-war Vienna which is divided into four zones, each occupied by one of the great European powers. It's a dangerous vortex of espionage, smuggling and black-market intrigue. “Amateurs can't stay the course,” warns the opening narration, delivered in this version by Reed over an image of a corpse floating in the river.
The pervasive evil of the place is suggested by a skillful melange of expressionistic and semidocumentary techniques. Exaggerated camera angles and a heightened contrast between light and shadow are deployed against a background of monumental Baroque buildings, either heavily damaged or standing free next to bombed-out ruins. The haunting sounds of Anton Karas' multistringed zither imbue the action with a doomed romanticism.
Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) is an American writer of hack Westerns with titles like The Lone Rider of Santa Fe and Death at Double X Ranch. Down on his luck, he travels to Vienna because his old buddy, Harry Lime, has promised him a job.
Upon arrival at Lime's luxurious apartment, Martins learns that his hoped-for employer is dead. Lime was hit by a truck in front of his flat, and, by strange coincidence, his two closest Viennese associates, the seedy, violin-playing Baron Kurtz (Ernst Deutsch) and the shifty Dr. Winkel (Erich Ponto), were present at the accident.
The novelist suspects murder and sets out to find a key witness, the unidentified third man who helped Kurtz and Winkel carry Lime's body over to the sidewalk.
Present at his friend's funeral is a stern British military cop, Maj. Calloway (Trevor Howard), who claims that Lime was a racketeer trafficking in watered-down penicillin stolen from a local hospital. “Death's at the bottom of everything,” the major tells Martins. “Leave death to the professionals.”
“I'll use that line in my next Western,” the novelist replies. He vows to prove Calloway wrong. “You were born to be murdered,” the major warns.
Only Lime's shady actress-girlfriend, Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli), truly mourns him. “I want to be dead too,” she confides to Martins in a fit of attractive melancholy. The novelist falls for her and complicates his investigation.
Modeling himself on one of his own six-gun heroes, Martins blunders ahead, confident that his gumshoe skills and sense of justice will carry him through. But his actions muck up Calloway's painstaking police work and cause the death of an important witness.
Martins' arrogant bumbling is considered more than an individual character flaw.
The filmmakers see his behavior as representative of the naive, self-righteous way the United States throws its weight around the international stage. The Third Man is strongly anti-Soviet, but it prefers the reasoned rectitude of its very British major to what it believes are the typically American methods of Martins.
“You've got everything upside down,” Anna tells him. As if to prove her point, another Viennese says of Lime's present whereabouts: “He's either in heaven [pointing down] or in hell [pointing up].” Martins finds himself increasingly confused.
Lime glides through nocturnal Vienna like a disembodied spirit, visible at first only in a shadow here and a flash of light there.
The filmmakers convincingly dramatize how his easygoing, cynical hedonism masks a contempt for other people and the sanctity of life. Eventually, the major puts Martins to the test, and the novelist is forced to choose between loyalty to his friend and doing the right thing.
His decision is clouded by Anna's continuing devotion to Lime which no one can shake. Her willingness to sacrifice herself for her beloved is deeply moving, and in this way the filmmakers make us viscerally understand how seductive evil can be.
Martins' moral education is a dark, ironic journey. He learns that the truth may set you free, but it can also uproot everything you think you stand for.
John Prizer writes from Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Videos in Release DATE: 7/11/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 11-17,1999 ----- BODY:Devil's Arithmetic
Based on a popular children's novel by Jane Yolen, this Showtime film opens in New Rochelle, N.Y., as Hannah (Kirsten Dunst) and some teen-age buddies visit a tattoo shop. Before she can decide which tattoo would suit her, she has to dash. Hannah's parents are expecting the reluctant teen to join them at a family seder. During the seder, Hannah is asked to open the door to the prophet Elijah. When she does so, she finds herself in 1940s Poland. The bewildered Hannah is taken up by the gentle Rivkah (Brittany Murphy) and introduced to the customs of Polish Jews. Within hours Hannah, Rivkah and the other Jews are arrested by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp. Hannah's dreadful experiences there give her a new and deep appreciation of her religious heritage and spiritual strength. While Devil's Arithmetic is clearly meant for a teen-age audience, older viewers might find the movie interesting for its depiction of family love and historic religious customs.
Gabbeh
For an illuminating example of storytelling in another culture, consult director Mohsen Makhmalbaf's lyrical Gabbeh. This Iranian film, in Farsi with English subtitles, mixes aspects of contemporary Iranian culture with some venerable Persian customs to produce an intriguing tale. The gabbeh of the title is a finely crafted rug. It has been specially woven to tell the story of a man and woman who flee on horseback across a blue expanse. When an elderly couple washes the gabbeh in a spring, the woman in the rug magically comes to life and proceeds to recount her highly romantic tale. Apparently, she was a love-struck young woman who desperately wanted to marry her suitor, but her forbidding father continually found reasons why she could not. So, for months, she traveled reluctantly with her rug-weaving tribe, helping her family, herding sheep and preparing rugs. Eventually, her predicament is resolved in a most dramatic way. Gabbeh is a beautifully shot film, filled with lush and colorful imagery. It's also a highly imaginative film, with a decidedly non-Western point of view.
Loretta G. Seyer is editor of Catholic Faith & Family.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Salvo at SATs Triggers Fears in Academia DATE: 7/11/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 11-17,1999 ----- BODY:A proposal that may stifle use of the Scholastic Aptitude Test as a tool in college admissions has ignited a furor in academia.
In May a copy of draft guidelines from the U.S. Department of Education document was leaked and published by the Chronicle of Higher Education. According to the guidelines, colleges would be in danger of violating federal discrimination law simply by employing students' SAT scores as part of their admissions procedures.
The Chronicle said the guidelines, if implemented, “would put colleges and universities in legal jeopardy if they make SAT or ACT scores the primary basis for admissions and financial-aid decisions.”
SATs have been used for more than 40 years as a predictor of student success in college. Since the 1970s, studies have shown that minority students generally perform less well on the tests than whites do.
“That a certain group of students do poorly on the SATs reflects more their preparation in schools than to their being deliberately set up for exclusion by color or culture,” said Jeffrey Penn, a spokesman for the College Board, which sponsors the SATs nationwide.
Diagnostic Tool
Penn contended that tests such as the SAT and American College Test (ACT) actually help diagnose problems in school curricula and provide an important measure for maintaining accountability to students and their parents.
Jennifer Marshall, an educational policy expert at the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., contended that there is no other standardized test that is a better predictor than the SAT.
“The guidelines seem to blame the diagnostic tool for causing the problem, rather than looking beyond to the prism of education over 12 years leading to the test,” she said.
The guidelines in the Education Department's Nondiscrimination in High-Stakes Testing “constitute a direct threat to colleges who make use of SATs as part of the admissions process,” said Bill Evers, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
“Colleges blindfold themselves if they don't make use of this predictor of college success, and students who do well would be cheated,” he said. “However, because of the government origin of the guidelines, colleges who diverge from them could be in jeopardy of losing federal funding for their programs.”
Merely a Resource
Arthur Coleman, deputy assistant secretary in the Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, maintained that the document is not an attack on SATs. “We produced the guidelines in response to requests from educators for a resource guide related to legal settlements about the use of certain tests, not only SATs, in making educational high-stakes decisions,” he said.
Such decisions range from referrals of students to special education services, student promotions from one grade to another, and student placements in gifted programs to higher education admissions decisions and scholarship awards.
Coleman continued, “We tried to capture up front what the long-term implications for schools are if they use standardized tests inappropriately, based on equal opportunity case law today. The guidelines represent our effort to assist educators minimize the risk of litigation as they design policies regarding the use of tests with high-stakes consequences for students.”
Julie Underwood, a general counsel for the National School Board Association, said the purpose of the guidelines is to explain to lay people the legal parameters of high-stakes testing such as the SAT. The guidelines, she added, are designed to help educators understand where the pitfalls are in using standardized tests for important educational decisions, and to act accordingly.
“The document has information based on 15 years of legal opinions in federal courts related to discrimination in education,” Underwood said.
‘Shooting the Messenger’
Edward Blum and Marc Levin of the Campaign for a Color-Blind America Legal Defense and Educational Foundation criticized the guidelines as “shooting the messenger.”
In an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal, Blum and Levin wrote that “Poor minority performance on standardized tests is a reflection of poor primary and secondary education in minority neighborhoods,” which could be addressed “by reforming teaching methods and curricula at primary and secondary schools.”
Catholic colleges and universities are as likely as other private and state institutions to employ SAT results in making admissions decisions. Their place in the process, however, often varies from one college to the next.
At colleges such as Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., where SATs are an important guideline but not a primary part of admissions criteria, officials say they are not as concerned about the guidelines as those who give them greater importance.
At Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, which received 6,300 applications for this fall, the admissions criteria vary from college to college, according to Matt Fissinger, director of admissions. “The university does not apply a particular formula to each applicant because the general parameters are set by representatives of our six individual [schools],” he said. “We have no computer-assisted sorting. The SAT is an important starting point for us, but not the be-all and end-all.”
Major Impact
At larger institutions, especially those who receive federal grants, the impact of the guidelines may be significant. Raelee Siporne, a director of admissions at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the guidelines represent “a very complicated issue” and that the university, along with many others, has asked the Department of Education for more time to respond to the guidelines.
Evers at the Hoover Institution pointed out the difficulty of evaluating an applicant: “In college admissions, you need to draw on several things to get a reasonable prediction of how well students will do. Grades alone are not as good as the SAT and grades. There is a lot of variation from one school to another school as to what constitutes an ‘A.’ Relying on more subjective measures such as an essay or interview is iffy since the attitude of the evaluator can affect decisions. You want to have some objective standard. Of course, the more measures you have, the better off you are.”
The Department of Education guidelines, which are expected to be officially published in September, may dramatically change the landscape of college admissions policy in America.
Marshall of the Family Research Council said, “If this document is implemented, it may make colleges fearful enough that SATs will fall into disuse.”
Blum and Levin predicted that the guidelines have “put the nation's finest universities on an escalator heading down. Students, parents and educators will be the losers in this race to the bottom.”
Martha Lepore is based in Coronado, California.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Martha Lepore ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Education Notebook DATE: 7/11/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 11-17,1999 ----- BODY:The Emptiness of High School ‘Volunteerism’
USA TODAY, June 23—While free-lance writer Robin Henig is willing to admit that “compulsory volunteerism is a ‘startling oxymoron,’” she favors the now-popular high school requirement — when properly done.
But “credit for compulsory volunteering can now be accrued in some truly bizarre ways. In the process, the original idea of creating adults with a sense of civic responsibility is in danger of getting lost.”
What started as a serious program in her daughter's high school soon became an opportunity for kids to take “the easy way out, and school officials were letting them.
“These kids were earning ‘student service learning hours’ for being in the school play or taking a photography class.”
By the time her younger daughter got to high school, students were getting student service credit for graduating from middle school!
“Student service learning is one of the few that can carry over into a lifelong habit. But until the educational bureaucracy puts some muscle behind this requirement … our children will get a message we never intended: that while we as a society give lip service to the importance of taking care of each other, the true spirit of volunteerism is something we just don't value or even understand.”
Reversing Decision, Father Scanlan Will Stay
In a press release, Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, reported that Franciscan Father Michael Scanlan will continue as president “for at least the coming academic year, 1999-2000. His appointment as chancellor will be held in abeyance.”
In announcing the decision, the university said a majority of the members of the nominating and executive committees of the university's board of trustees “honored” a statement by Father Scanlan in which he expressed the belief “that my continuing as president is in the best interest of all, so I will fully and actively serve in the presidency for another year or more at the pleasure of the board.”
The Register reported the university's Feb. 22 announcement that Father Scanlan would step down as president on June 30 and remain active in campus affairs through the newly created position of chancellor. Father Scanlan has served as president since 1974.
New Law School Names Acting Dean
Joseph L. Falvey has been named acting dean of the recently established Ave Maria School of Law in Ann Arbor, Mich. Falvey will serve as acting dean until Dean Bernard Dobranski leaves his current position as dean of the Catholic University School of Law in Washington, D.C. Falvey will then join the Ave Maria faculty.
The Ave Maria project was started by Domino's Pizza founder and Catholic activist Tom Monaghan. It is scheduled to open in the fall of 2000, to become the 26th Catholic law school in the United States. The school says it is set apart from others by its “comprehensive legal curriculum enriched by its grounding in natural law and the enduring teachings of the Catholic Church.”
In his role as acting dean, Falvey is responsible for “the preparation of curriculum, procurement of a facility that exceeds American Bar Association requirements and development of the school's library.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Cardinal Tells Congress: Life Is Not An Experiment Kit DATE: 7/11/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 11-17,1999 ----- BODY:The National Bioethics Advisory Commission has said they find it acceptable to destroy human embryos in the process of scientific research. However, Cardinal William Keeler of Baltimore has made public a letter he wrote May 27 to all members of the U.S. Congress stating that embryos are not disposable cells, but human beings made in the image and likeness of God.
Recently Register Radio correspondent Jay Dunlap spoke to the cardinal who said that the commission's rationale is frighteningly similar to the supreme court's Roe v. Wade decision.
Dunlap: What do you think has led to the decision that it is acceptable to go ahead with research on human embryos and go against the consciences of many Americans? What are the implications?
Cardinal Keeler: Fuzzy reasoning puts us in a position where our government is on a collision course with the consciences of many many people in the United States, who say it's wrong to take the life of an innocent human being. In this case, it's possible that these infants could be conceived simply to be destroyed. And that's what it looks like.
Is it not chilling that this could turn human beings into commodities simply for exploitation by the scientific community?
That's right. As I said in my letter to Congress, the little embryos are seen as disposable cells in the body politic. And again, this is turning things upside down, making human life and the destruction of human life almost a goal in itself without regard for the intrinsic value of every single human being made in the image and likeness of God.
It's just amazing to many of us that the commission admits that this amounts to killing human embryos and yet it still recommends it. How can one comprehend this rationale?
They're running against something that has been clearly manifested as the will of the legislators in the original legislation of Congress. So they're trying to get around that, trying to circumvent a law that reflected the convictions of so many Americans, that when there's division on a major moral issue, an issue as to what's right and what's wrong, one should go on the safer direction rather than in the direction that's less safe. And in this case, it's a direction that clearly involves the taking of human life.
And the other thing that I find really surprising is that there are other ways that do not directly endanger human life that can be used for similar research to achieve similar goals. While the commission admits that it would be preferable to go that way, they don't endorse that as the way to go. This I find also quite astounding.
Clearly the argument needs to be made here that there is no need to commit these injustices no matter what the goal because, as you're pointing out, there are other ways to achieve these same beneficial scientific ends. Is that the case?
That's exactly it. And that's where our priorities should be. That certainly was the intent of Congress when it passed the original legislation. And I'm hopeful that the letter that I've written will help remind the members of Congress of their original commitment and keep them on course.
Congress has been steadfast in opposing funding for fetal research, hasn't it?
To my knowledge, yes.
In your reading of the commission's report, you find an analogy to abortion. This seems like we're on the slippery slope that began when abortion became legal in this country. Could you explain that analogy?
[After the Supreme Court ruling on abortion] legislatures began to say there are some abortions that are necessary — they're necessary to save the life of the mother and other cases. Here they seem to be moving to say research for a good purpose makes the killing of human embryos necessary. I think that's a pretty relativistic way to proceed. Therefore, it's very clear we have to speak up and urge our Congress to hold it's ground.
You have written this letter in your position as chairman of the Committee for Pro-Life Activities at the National Council of Catholic Bishops. Are you asking Catholics as well to voice their opinions to their representatives so that they don't have to have their tax dollars spent this way?
We released the letter on purpose, so that we would hope that others who would read it, whether Catholic or of other faith backgrounds, or no faith background, who believe that human life is something special, would also lend their support to this position.
Have you had any feedback from the Congressmen who have received your letter?
Not yet. It probably reached them just before the Memorial Day holiday and many, if not most, were back in their home districts so it will be a while before we see some responses.
Is this an opportunity for some of those Catholic members of Congress who have not been in line with the Church's teaching to show some good faith?
I think it's not just a question of Catholics, I think it's people of all backgrounds who have a concern for human life to maybe take another look and maybe to see where one goes if one follows this approach to logical conclusions, and to see the difficulties that this proposes for a society that's ordered on law.
Jay Dunlap is a Register Radio correspondent.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jay Dunlap ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 7/11/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 11-17,1999 ----- BODY:Pope John Paul II met with Irish bishops for their ad limina visit on June 26. Along with other themes, he stressed the need to protect human life, and to help mothers facing difficult situations. His words follow:
New ideas and new energies are required to meet the needs of couples in difficulty, and in particular to reach out promptly and efficaciously to women facing pressures to reject the unborn life they bear. The new evangelization involves a strenuous defense of the right to life, the most basic of all human rights — more basic than any individual's, group's or government's “right to choose”. It calls for the faithful to be ever more aware of the Church's social teaching, ever more active in promoting truth and justice in public life and interpersonal relations. It demands practical solidarity with the weaker sectors of society and all those who are left at the margin of economic development (No. 5).
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Did You Know? DATE: 7/11/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 11-17,1999 ----- BODY:Kosovar refugees in dire need of assistance turned to the United Nations for assistance in the past months and received — abortion and contraceptive kits. The kits include oral contraceptives, condoms, manual vacuum extraction devices used for early term abortions and IUDs. Meanwhile, the biggest needs in Kosovo continue to be for the basic necessities of life, particularly food.
The April/May Population Research Institute Review reported that the United Nations could not afford to meet its goals for food for a time, but could afford the more expensive kits.
● In April, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees released a budget calling for $12 per refugee for food. It had raised about 34% of the budget, or $4.08 per person. Meanwhile, the United Nations Population Fund was spending $4.60 per woman for the contraceptive kits it was sending.
----- EXCERPT: FACTS of LIFE ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: 2 Barred From Work With Homosexuals DATE: 07/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 25-31, 1999 ----- BODY:SILVER SPRING, Md.—A homosexual man who said the Catholic Church led him into a chaste life says the Vatican did “the right thing” when it ordered a priest and nun to end their longtime New Ways ministry with homosexuals.
At the same time, David Morrison told the Register, “It was kind of sad that they had to be told that — basically, they had been teaching error for a good long time.”
He spoke of Salvatorian Father Robert Nugent and Sister Jeannine Gramick of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, who founded the Silver Spring, Md., New Ways ministry for homosexuals and continued to counsel homosexuals apart from the ministry when they were barred from it in 1984.
On July 13, the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ordered the two to stop counseling homosexuals on the grounds that the pair's teaching was “doctrinally unacceptable because they do not faithfully convey the clear and constant teaching of the Catholic Church” (full text appears on Page 9).
“As sad as it is, I think it is good that the Vatican came out and affirmed its own teaching in a public way,” Morrison said. “My feeling is that if you are going to teach Catholics in our name, then you must teach clearly what the Church teaches.”
Although findings of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith usually command little public attention, the topic of homosexuality brought worldwide notice to this case.
Cardinal James Hickey, archbishop of Washington, D.C., first raised questions about the ministry of Father Nugent and Sister Gramick in 1981. In 1984 he barred the priest and nun from working in his archdiocese, where its headquarters is located. A Vatican commission headed by Cardinal Adam Maida, archbishop of Detroit, convened in 1988 to study the writings and activities of the two, including their book, Building Bridges: Gay and Lesbian Reality and the Catholic Church. Other Vatican panels continued to investigate the matter in the years since.
Cardinal Hickey said in a July 13 statement that the final decision from the Vatican came only after “extensive dialogues with the two individuals and representatives from their religious orders” and “numerous opportunities” for the two to “clarify their beliefs and assent to the Church's full teaching on homosexuality.”
Bishop Joseph A. Fiorenza, president of the National Catholic Conference of Bishops, said in a statement that the decision “prohibits them [Father Nugent and Sister Gramick] from any pastoral work involving homosexual persons” and forbids them from holding any offices in their respective religious orders “for an undetermined period of time.”
Father Nugent Responds
Father Nugent and Sister Gramick were unavailable for comment as this story went to press, but the priest did issue a lengthy statement July 15.
In it, Father Nugent said that “as a son of the Church, a presbyter and a member of a religious congregation with a vow of obedience, I accepted the decisions of the CDF and expressed my intention to implement [the order] accordingly.”
After thanking his order and friends, he said he was “blessed with the friendship of so many gay and lesbian Catholics and their parents and families who have supported my ministry both before and during this protracted and painful process.”
Father Nugent, who will be allowed to continue his normal sacramental ministry, ended his statement with a promise to “continue to pray, hope and believe that, ultimately, my decision will be for the greater good of the Church and for the people I have been privileged to minister to with much joy for so many years.”
Commission Members
Father Nugent's conciliatory tone was echoed by Janet Smith, a professor of philosophy at the University of Dallas, who served on a Vatican panel that convened in 1993 to study and report its findings on the matter.
“I feel pleased that the process has worked through to an honest decision,” she told the Register. “The Vatican handled this matter in a very deliberate and fair fashion.”
She added, “Certainly it is sad that it had to go this way. We had a great many meetings with both of them and I came away convinced that they both had a genuine feeling for reaching out to help the homosexual community and their families. But they just didn't do it according to Church teaching.”
Like others close to the deliberations over the years, Smith was careful to make it clear that the Catholic Church remains interested in ministering to homosexual people.
“I think that obviously the Catholic Church needs an outreach to homosexuals who might feel that they have been rejected by the Church,” she said, adding, such programs would be “helpful in our calling for a change in the lifestyles of active homosexuals.”
Counseling Homosexuals
Father John F. Harvey agreed. An Oblate of St. Francis de Sales, he founded the Courage ministry for homosexuals who are seeking Church teaching and other help in their efforts to lead chaste lives.
Father Harvey called the Vatican order “actually a very exact, and at the same time very kind document to Father Nugent and Sister Jeannine.”
He recalled that over a period of more than a decade of continuing special hearings on their ministry, the Vatican had asked the priest and nun to make only two admissions about homosexuality.
“The Vatican asked Father Nugent and Sister Gramick to admit that homosexual acts are intrinsically evil and that the inclination itself was an objective disorder,” Father Harvey told the Register. “They refused to accept either one of those things, and that is the reason why the Vatican had to act as it did. The Vatican had no other way out.”
One example of the approach Sister Gramick and Father Nugent take to discussing homosexual acts was reported in May by the St. Catherine Review.
The report quoted Sister Gramick speaking to a Dayton, Ohio audience and claiming that there is an “official Church teaching which says that a homosexual may follow his conscience after he has prayed with God about acting on his or her same-sex desires, even if the decision reached is not in accord with Church teaching on homosexual acts.”
The same article quotes Father Nugent saying that “Chastity does not mean celibacy; it means living in your proper state. Gays need celibate chastity, which means that they must always act according to their conscience.”
But the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved” (No. 2357).
‘Welcome News’
Msgr. John Gallagher, pastor of St. Paul the Apostle Church and moderator for the Courage group in Yonkers, N.Y., interpreted the Vatican order as “a highlighting of the need we have for the Courage program today more than ever before.”
Other Catholic leaders predicted the censure would be beneficial to the Church in America.
Msgr. William Smith, professor of moral theology at St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, closely followed the investigation from its early days. “It's welcome,” he said of the Vatican order. “In large part, something of a shell game has been going on here ever since 1984.”
Saying the Vatican took pains to clear the matter up, he claimed the process was slowed when the priest and nun “followed the usual line of ‘No, no, we're with the Church.’”
Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua of Philadelphia also said he “welcomed the notification” from the Vatican, adding, “I am certain that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was most sensitive to the many good works in which Father Nugent and Sister Gramick have been engaged.
“Nonetheless, the wide dissemination of their doctrinal errors through publications and pastoral activities has become a growing concern for many bishops throughout the United States.”
Robert Holton writes from Memphis, Tennessee.
----- EXCERPT: NEW WAYS PRIESTACCEPTS VATICAN CENSURE ----- Extended BODY: Robert Holton ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Embryo Research Gets Nod Despite 'Nuremberg' Warning DATE: 07/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 25-31, 1999 ----- BODY:SAN FRANCISCO — After a recommendation by Clinton administration advisers, the debate in Washington over using live embryos in medical experiments has changed from whether the federal government should be involved to how it will be involved.
Next, the recommendation by the 17-member National Bioethics Advisory Commission will go to the White House and the National Institutes of Health for consideration.
The commission made its July 13 recommendation despite being told by a U.S. bishops spokesman that such a practice would fail the standards of the Nuremberg Code created in response to Nazi use of Jews in medical experiments during World War II.
The commission document suggests restricting the use of embryos to those donated by fertility clinics with informed consent from couples, and calls for a tracking system to trace the origins of embryos. The commission did not approve of the cloning of embryos for federally funded research.
Dak Vega of the White House press office told the Register that the tracking of embryo sources, not the experimentation itself, is now the key ethical question.
“We have no control over the research in the private sector,” Vega said. “However, the National Institutes of Health is putting into place an oversight procedure that will ensure that the cells [in federally funded procedures] are obtained in an ethical manner.”
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., countered that regardless of the process used, embryo research is wrong — and said that any such National Institutes of Health guidelines would be illegal under a 1995 law banning embryo research.
“A two-step process does not make it any more ethical or legal,” he said. “The research is still illegal because it requires the destruction of human life.”
But Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who says he is in favor of such research for its purported potential to remedy diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, predicted that the Senate would likely follow the recommendation and back embryo research.
“I believe we will be saving a lot of lives if we permit NIH to move ahead with this research,” he said at a July 13 press conference. “My sense is the Senate will be in favor of it, but it's going to be controversial.”
Rep. Jay Dickey, R-Ark., vowed to fight any such efforts, and said any such bill would create deep division on Capitol Hill.
He told the Register he opposed such experimentation “because it is immoral to murder, it is immoral to do anything that would harm any human being, regardless of their age or development.”
Dickey sponsored the 1995 law which banned federal funding for human embryo research. Brownback predicted that another such measure, specifying new techniques, could be passed again.
He said a consensus could agree that “the killing of one human for the benefit of another is wrong because it disregards the sanctity of human life.”
The latest wave in the debate about human embryo research began last November, when private researchers discovered how to isolate stem cells from embryos and fetal tissue. The embryos are alleged to be a source of material for potential cell-replacement therapies that could involve growth of replacement body parts and treatment of degenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.
Some medical researchers believe the material, human pluripotent stem cells, has the potential to be turned into any cell type in the body and thus may be used to treat a wide variety of injuries and illnesses.
In April, Richard M. Doerflinger, associate director for policy development at the bishops conference's Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, told the commission, “The moral problem of encouraging the destruction of human embryos for their stem cells is independent of any possible benefit expected from such research.
“From the time of the Nuremberg Code, ethical norms on human experimentation have demanded that we never inflict death or disabling injury on any unconsenting individual of the human species simply for the sake of benefit to others.”
Sen. Brownback added, “The untold story here is that stem cells have been successfully obtained from adult subjects. The use of adult stem cells is very promising for the treatment of several diseases, is safer for the recipients and does not require the destruction of human embryos.”
Doerflinger's testimony agrees. “It is now clearer than ever … that embryonic stem cells may simply be irrelevant to future medical progress,” he told the commission.
The 1987 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith document Donum Vitae (The Gift of Life) spells out the Church's opposition to the generation of human embryos outside the womb.
It also condemns use of such embryos for experimentation: “No objective, even though noble in itself, such as a foreseeable advantage to science, to other human beings or to society, can in any way justify experimentation on living human embryos or fetuses, whether viable or not, either inside or outside the mother's womb.
“The informed consent ordinarily required for clinical experimentation on adults cannot be granted by the parents, who may not freely dispose of the physical integrity or life of the unborn child.”
Ellen Pearson contributed to this report.
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: Wayne Laugesen ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Catholic Officer's Beliefs May Threaten His Career DATE: 07/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 25-31, 1999 ----- BODY:MINOT AIR FORCE BASE, N.D.— A young officer who says he only wants to follow Catholic teaching on purity is in a row with the Air Force that could end his career.
First Lt. Ryan C. Berry's superiors used to accommodate his request to avoid a working in a mixed-sex missile alert crew.
The 1996 West Point graduate believed this was a sensible way to avoid near occasions of sin — that is, situations filled with temptation.
Missile duty entailed his working in an underground Launch Control Center about the size of a school bus, with one bed and one shower between a two-person crew, for up to five days at a time.
Berry, who is 25 and married with one child, had only one reservation: He didn't want to be assigned to the duty alone with a woman.
His previous squadron commanders accommodated his request. But all that has changed in recent months, when a new wing commander ruled otherwise. Berry has since received negative job reviews and his military career is threatened with ruin.
An “unbelievable overreaction” is how Berry's attorney, Henry L. Hamilton, referred to the military superiors' refusal to continue the accommodation.
Hamilton pointed out that the Air Force can make any accommodation that it wants and notes that the Army accepts witchcraft at a base in Fort Hood, Texas (see story on Page 3).
“You understand the signal it sends,” he said. “We can take homosexuals. We can take witches. But we don't take Catholics. What is this nonsense?”
Berry has told his superiors of “his thoughts that working in the silo with a woman was inconsistent with his beliefs,” Hamilton said.
Archbishop Edwin O'Brien, of the Military Services Archdiocese, backed Lt. Berry in an interview with the Register. “I don't think the situation was appropriate to force a Catholic, or any other Christian, at the cost of his job,” he said. “We will defend the right of anyone to avoid a situation like that.”
No lawsuit has been filed in the case. “We will exhaust our administrative remedies within the Air Force” to redress the situation, attorney Hamilton said.
Airman 1st Class John Macmillan, spokesman for the Minot Air Force Base, told the Register that Berry should have quit long ago if he felt unable to do the work based on his religious beliefs.
“Missileers who feel unable to perform their combat crew duties have the opportunity to self-eliminate themselves without prejudice from the training program prior to assuming missile crew duties,” he said. The policy of gender-integrated missile crews has been in place since 1988, according to an Air Force statement.
U.S. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, RMd., disagreed with the treatment of Berry. On July 14, the congressman began circulating a letter urging the Air Force to give Berry a religious accommodation to allow him to continue his work.
‘A Highly Capable Officer’
In an October performance review, Berry had received positive reviews. His superiors called him “a highly capable officer … cool performer under pressure.” He had “boundless potential, will succeed in whatever he does,” the reviews said.
But in April, the glowing review was dismissed by a new wing commander, Col. Ronald Haeckel. In a report, he wrote that Berry had “unacceptable professionalism.” According to Haeckel, Berry had “adversely impacted good order, discipline and morale of both male and female ICBM operators.”
Berry's lawyer attributes the poor review to his refusal to work with women in the silo.
The negative performance review could end Berry's military career. The young officer will have to leave the service if he receives no advancement by 2002. Berry referred all reporter inquiries to his attorney.
“He did no act for which he should be punished,” attorney Hamilton contended. “Three squadron commanders and one wing commander accommodated him. The new wing commander didn't want to accommodate him.”
Close Quarters
Berry had been cross-commissioned into the Air Force and completed missile training and qualification in May 1997. From May 1997 to December 1998, he worked exclusively with men in around-the-clock shifts in the underground silo.
Berry wished to avoid the “unique circumstance of being in isolation with a woman near a toilet, shower, and a bed for an extended period of time,” Hamilton said. Adverse weather like harsh snow, common in Minot, can prolong the 24-hour shift in the silo. “He's been there for up to five days,” Hamilton said.
Archbishop O'Brien sympathized with Berry's fears. “No one would go so far as to advocate common barracks, men and women, side by side,” the archbishop said. “In effect that's what the Air Force is asking. It's the same on Navy submarines.”
“It's not just about religious beliefs, but ethics,” added Archbishop O'Brien, who represents 1.2 million Catholics worldwide in the military, Veterans Affairs hospitals, and in various government agencies overseas. “Some situations are just dangerous.”
Maj. Gen. Thomas H. Neary, who is Catholic, endorses Col. Haeckel's review and wrote a letter to Archbishop O'Brien defending Haeckel's action. Gen. Neary did not return requests for comment, but in a July 14 clarification obtained by the Register, the Air Force defended its moves against Berry.
“The Air Force accommodated Berry's unique personal needs for more than a year,” said the unsigned statement. “However, when this accommodation began to negatively impact morale and good order … [the Air Force] sought the counsel of the Air Force chief of chaplains in resolving the matter.”
The chief of chaplains for the Air Force is Maj. Gen. William J. Dendinger. The statement quoted “the chaplain community” saying that the judgment of sinfulness in this situation was “based on his [Berry's] personal understanding of the biblical directives, and not based on Catholic doctrine.”
But, in a June 23 letter to one of Berry's superiors, Military Archbishop O'Brien said, “nothing could be further from the truth.”
Attorney Hamilton has said that Berry's objection to working in close confines with women for extended periods of time is consistent with sound Catholic teachings on temptation. Hamilton cited the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the New Testament on the Catholic definition of scandal and the imperative to avoid the near occasion of sin.
He noted that No. 2286 of the Catechism reads: “Therefore, they are guilty of scandal who establish laws or social structures leading to the decline of morals and the corruption of religious practice, or to social conditions that, intentionally or not, make Christian conduct and obedience to the Commandments difficult and practically impossible.”
Hamilton also cited 1 Thessalonians 5:22: “Abstain from all appearance of evil.”
Josh Mercer writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: Josh Mercer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Academic Institute Seeks $60 Million DATE: 07/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 25-31, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON — An academic institute intent on operating outside Church control has taken a major step to establish itself by hiring a fund-raiser with a $60 million goal.
The Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies, an organization that describes itself as “free-standing” and “not … jurisdictionally related” to American bishops, has hired Hugh Dempsey, 50, of Greensburg, Pa.
In a July 16 interview with the Register, the academic institute's chairman, Marianist Father James Heft, acknowledged that he hired Dempsey, who is a member of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and a member of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre.
News of the hiring startled critics of the institute.
“It surprises me that someone from the Knights of Malta would raise funds for a project if it maintains its present ‘free-standing’ status that rejects any jurisdictional authority of the magisterium,” said Father Matthew Lamb, a professor at Boston College. The Knights of Malta are a 900-year-old group that run humanitarian institutions worldwide and defend the faith.
Father Heft said Dempsey was a “professional fund raiser” with a “solid connection to the Catholic community and Catholicism.” Dempsey had not returned phone calls to the Register as this story went to press.
The Europe Connection
Another member of the institute, retired University of Notre Dame provost Timothy O'Meara, said that Dempsey's goal will be to help raise money for $10 million in building costs and $50 million for an endowment that offers grants for faculty research and scholarships that fit the group's understanding of the Catholic intellectual tradition.
A private European foundation called Argidius will contribute $10 million to the Washington, D.C.-based institute, provided that the institute shows its fund-raising ability, according to brochures provided to the Register.
“I thought he'd be very effective,” said O'Meara of his decision to support Dempsey. “It was clear he had a sense of what our goals are, and he seemed to be someone who is very rich in Catholic values. He could identify with the need for an institute of advanced studies and advanced Catholic values.”
Controversy has centered on the institute since its existence was first reported in March. American bishops are currently reviewing proposals for how they can safeguard the authenticity of Catholic teaching at Catholic institutions of higher learning, in accordance with Vatican guidelines. The institute would essentially operate outside bishops' jurisdiction.
U.S. bishops are preparing to meet in November to set guidelines governing theology and doctrine at Church-related universities. Many of the recommendations they receive come from the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, which Father Heft also chairs.
According to one fact sheet, Father Heft's new academic institute “will enjoy the support and encouragement of the American hierarchy, but not be jurisdictionally related to them. … Neither will the [institute] be affiliated with or controlled by any single Catholic college or university, precisely to be of service to all of them.”
A ‘Magna Carta’
The controversy over the institute is linked to Pope John Paul II's apostolic constitution for Catholic colleges and institutions called Ex Corde Ecclesiae (From the Heart of the Church). The 1990 document was to serve as a sort of “magna carta” for Catholic higher education, the Pope wrote.
Disagreements about the authority of bishops have prevented the document, and Canon 812 of the Code of Canon Law, from being implemented in the United States.
Canon 812 states: “It is necessary that those who teach theological disciplines in any institute of higher studies have a mandate from the competent ecclesiastical authority.”
Catholic education expert Kenneth D. Whitehead previously said that some of the people connected the institute “want to say, ‘Rome has spoken but we still have freedom to look at what is spoken and judge it on our own terms.’”
Asked to respond to criticisms about the institute, Father Heft said, “I won't go over that again.”
Institute member O'Meara, when asked if the institute were an attempt to circumvent Ex Corde Ecclesiae and Canon 812, said, “I don't see it that way.”
He added that Ex Corde Ecclesiae is “an excellent document, but there are certain aspects of implementation that most Catholic colleges don't think is the way to go.”
Father Lamb, the Boston College professor, and others have had concerns about the institute, which changed its name early on from the Catholic Institute for Advanced Studies, to the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies.
Father Lamb said the change seemed to be an attempt to avoid having to justify the use of the word “Catholic” along canon law lines.
He added, “If this is really going to be a Catholic institute for advanced studies and not just a free-standing independent institute that happens to engage in Catholic studies, it should do three things.”
First, he said, “the magisterium should have a decisive role to play on the board of directors.”
Second, Father Lamb continued, the institute “should not insist upon its being free-standing from Catholic colleges and universities.” He suggested it build a relationship with The Catholic University of America, Boston College or Notre Dame.
“This would show how the intellectual life that it is supporting is modeling for the United States a genuinely Catholic institutional framework.”
Third, he said, the institute should help students and not just faculty.
He suggested “graduate student fellowships so that Catholic students in theology would have the financial support for their studies of Greek and Latin languages as well as for the philosophical formation needed to do serious Catholic doctrinal, systematic and moral theology.”
The Debate
The debate over Ex Corde Ecclesiae has centered in large part on theology.
In the document, the Pope wrote, “Theology plays a particularly important role in the search for a synthesis of knowledge as well as in the dialogue between faith and reason” (No. 19). But it must be “taught in a manner faithful to Scripture, Tradition and the Church's Magisterium” (No. 20).
John Paul also stated that “every Catholic University, as a university … possesses that institutional autonomy necessary to perform its functions effectively and guarantees its members academic freedom” (No. 12).
In January, Holy Cross Father Edward Malloy, president of Notre Dame, and Jesuit Father J. Donald Monan, chancellor of Boston College, wrote an article in America magazine warning that many theologians simply will not apply for the credentials the bishops have been asked to grant.
They went so far as to suggest that their own universities are not “canonically Catholic.”
A spate of newspaper articles followed the treatment in America. A Jan. 4 Associated Press report claimed the doctrinal standards were an attempt “to guarantee the bishops' control over the schools.”
“If bishops stick their noses into this business, they're going to get into trouble,” Jesuit Father Thomas Reese, editor of America, told the Associated Press. A USA Today article on Jan. 26 quoted Father Heft suggesting that bishops are trying to “run schools.”
In May, the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities made another set of recommendations to the bishops' office for implementing the constitution.
But it did not address the canon law issues that caused the previous draft to be rejected in November.
Nevertheless, Church leaders in the United States are working toward the 2000 proposed deadline for producing a satisfactory document will implement Ex Corde Ecclesiae.
In June, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago told the Register, “We have to have implementation of the code in the next proposal that goes to Rome. So what's needed on campus is a climate of trust for what the bishops need to do.”
Wayne Laugesen contributed to this article.
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: Register Staff ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Priests and Nuns Tell Vocation Stories DATE: 07/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 25-31, 1999 ----- BODY:I have been a priest for 40 years. For me it wasn't even a decision. When I was 7 years old I was praying in church in front of a statue of the Blessed Mother and something within me that I didn't hear, but as clear as this, said, “Be a priest.”
I said, “OK, I'll be a priest.” I was going to be a fireman.
I was just a little boy. And I walked out of the church so convinced I was going to be a priest that I started to look at the priests' house which didn't look very inviting.
I went home slightly glum because I didn't want to live in the priests' rectory because it looked kind of glum, but I was called to be a priest.
At 12 I knew I was called to be a member of an order that took care of the poor from reading the beautiful poem by Longfellow called “The Legend Youthful,” about a monk who takes care of the poor.
So I answered a call that was so clear that I have a feeling that if I had not answered it I would have been doing something very wrong.
Sister Emmanuel Maria
Little Sisters of the Poor, Baltimore
I was a high school senior when I first felt called to the religious life. I had grown up Baptist and was still Baptist. I knew about God but I didn't know what a nun was, let alone know any nuns personally.
This is what happened: At one point, I had a conversation with Jesus while looking at his picture on the wall. Inwardly, I heard a voice say, “Become a nun.”
I replied to Christ, “Who would want me? I'M black!”
After leaving the room, I realized that what really mattered was that Jesus wants me. Later, when I went out with my mom, we passed Archbishop Curley High School in Baltimore and I saw a crucifix. It reminded me and I said, “Mom, I want to be a nun.”
My mother replied with, “That isn't the right religion. Better if you go to college.”
After graduating from college, I was still thinking about being a nun. After my mother got cancer, she asked me if my becoming a nun would make me happy. I said yes.
At one point after that I was watching EWTN [cable's Eternal Word Television Network] and a commercial came on for the Carmelites that gave an 800 number. I called the Carmelite monastery. When they found out that I wasn't Catholic but wanted to be a nun, they told me to take Catholic instruction. I did, and became Catholic.
I didn't know what order I should join, but I wanted an order that prays.
I saw brochures about many orders but, since I really liked the elderly, I chose the Little Sisters of Poor and began volunteering. I took a nurse'saide course and began to work there as lay person on a regular basis, even began to live there. I entered the following September.
Mother Agnus Mary Donovan
Sisters of Life, New York
I lived a life I loved. Everything was organized and planned. But then, after I lived it, I offered it to God.
It began when I had an experience on a retreat. I had been giving God the good things I had done in my life as an offering after they were done. On that retreat, I realized that what God desired was not all the good works, but my life. He could plan it, because he ultimately had the plan from all eternity.
That was an entirely new perspective. You surrender your life to God trusting that he has the design and will reveal it as you live it out.
Shortly after, I experienced the love of God deeper than ever. What had been previously fearsome, had now become filled with excitement.
I said to a cousin, “I always knew that if I were in love that I would find it hard to wait for the day of my marriage and now I found it just as hard to wait for the day to enter the convent.”
You feel that way because a vocation is a matter of love. It is a matter of who is calling you, God to himself or to a human person in marriage.
Father Thomas Vander Woode
St. Agnes Church, Arlington, Va.
The first time I sensed a call was in eighth grade. I was called Father Tom by classmates.
But it wasn't until later, my senior year in college, that I deliberately gave time to prayer and discernment of God's will through daily Mass, the rosary and personal prayer time before the Blessed Sacrament.
I was dating a girl for a year and a half. When that ended, it was good, allowing me to be more open to God's will.
Everything was wonderful my senior year, but when I spent that extra time before the Lord every day asking for his wisdom to know and follow his will, he began to reveal it to me. I was planning to be a Navy pilot, but God had other plans.
This is when I realized I needed to give God the first shot by entering the seminary. After I entered I realized that as much as the questions and doubts persisted, once the decision was made to enter, I knew this is what the Lord had made me to be: his priest.
One of the Navy's mottoes is, “Join the Navy for adventure.” However, I believe I am having far greater adventures seeing the Lord work with his grace through me in ways that I can't foresee would have ever happened as a Navy pilot. For example, changing bread and wine into our Lord or wiping away sins in the sacrament of confession and baptizing a baby. Often we see the future and think we have the best one planned, and though there are still times of pain and suffering, when you let our Lord guide you, the joy is far beyond anything ever imagined.
Msgr. Kenneth Velo
President, Catholic Church Extension Society
I first heard the call in Room 207 in Chicago's southside St. Barnabas School.
I was just like any other kid, rambling around the halls, studying, waiting for recess. But everything changed one day. Sister Agnes Clare, a Sinsinawa Dominican, pointed to me and two other classmates and said, “You are going to a vocation week at Holy Cross Seminary at the University of Notre Dame.”
Yikes. But that weekend planted a seed. I felt as though I might have a vocation, and both my parents and grandparents supported my feelings. But my grandparents thought I might get homesick in South Bend and they encouraged me to enter the new high school seminary that was built only a few miles from my home. I took their advice and prepared for a diocesan priesthood.
I saw numerous classmates fall away from the seminary in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I respected these people, all of whom had far more talent and ability than I saw in myself.
What may have clinched my decision to continue the priestly studies was the premature death of my sister, the mother of six young children, in the summer of 1969. When I saw the remarkable impact that several priests had on our family during that tragic time, I knew that the priesthood was my calling.
It was that extraordinary sense of missionary work, the apostolate that I witnessed. I knew this was what I wanted to be about. I finally saw what a big city kid — priest — could do.
— Jill Stevens
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: Father Benedict Groeshcel ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: Witches in the Army Toe a Fine Line DATE: 07/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 25-31, 1999 ----- BODY:FORT HOOD, Texas— The night sky of Texas provides a backdrop for an unusual sight in Bible Belt country.
Under a full moon, men and women dance around a bonfire, hand in hand, long robes swirling, voices raised in chant. Flames leap into the dark. The pagan incantations grow louder.
This is not an out-of-season Halloween gathering, still less a fancy-dress cookout. Welcome to the Wicca lunar assembly at Fort Hood Army Base. This coven of witches is made up of U.S. soldiers, active and retired, who say they are practicing their constitutional freedom of religion. Their religion is Wicca — a recent blend of New Age nature worship, pre-Christian paganism, old-fashioned occultism and modern witchcraft.
But they'd like to be thought of as the “witches next door,” just another religion in the land of many religions. They insist they pray to nature gods and they dismiss Satan as a construct of Christianity.
Most people at Fort Hood or in nearby Killeen knew nothing about the coven on base. Then the witches invited a local newspaper, the Austin American-Statesman, to cover their spring rite ceremony in March this year.
After the story ran, the cat was out of the cauldron.
Local Christian groups protested. The Christian Coalition, the Free Congress Foundation, and several other organizations urged Christians not to join the Army. The Rev. Jack Harvey of the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Killeen gave an interview to Time magazine and started a letter-writing campaign. Rep. Robert L. Barr Jr., R-Ga., wrote to Lt. Gen. Leon S. Leponte, the commanding officer at Fort Hood. “Please stop this nonsense now,” he said. U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond threatened legislation.
Bad publicity? Some publicists say there's no such thing. Local Catholic pastor, Holy Cross Father Bill Donahue, of Holy Family Church in Killeen, thinks that the publicity of a campaign against them could attract more people to Wicca.
“A lot is being made out of a small thing,” he says. “Yes, it's wrong, but so are many other things. It's almost best overlooked. … I don't see any need for a crusade that will give them more publicity and perhaps bring in more recruits.”
‘We're Loving People’
“People feel threatened by us,” says Jo Frost, spokeswoman for the Church and School of Wicca in Hinton, W.Va., one of the main training centers for witchcraft in the United States. “But we're really open and loving people. We've been around long enough to be a permanent part of the culture.”
Apparently the Army agrees. While it has not sanctioned Wicca as a religion — something the Army cannot do regarding any belief — it has responded to requests from soldiers to accommodate Wiccan services. In fact, Wiccans have been practicing the Craft (another name for witchcraft) on Army property for at least 20 years.
Fort Hood is the largest U.S. military base. Since Wicca practice was officially approved there two years ago, witches have set up shop on four other military bases: Fort Polk in Louisiana, Fort Wainwright in Alaska, Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa, and Fort Barrancas in Florida.
“This is their First Amendment right,” said Lt. Col. Guy Shields, a spokesman for the Army who is based at the Pentagon. “As long as their ceremonies do not interfere with good order and discipline, they can practice their religion. They are small in number and their presence does not affect the Army's readiness.”
The Army Draws the Line
The Army has regulated certain Wiccan practices, however. Outside military bases, Wiccans often conduct their rituals naked, or “skyclad.” The Army drew the line on that. The “athames,” 9-inch daggers used at the high altar on sabbats, are allowed as long as they're not used to cut anything. Pentagrams must be unobtrusive and no burning of candles in the barracks is allowed.
Catholics make up 30% of active soldiers, and over 70% of the Army is Christian. Wiccan practitioners are a tiny minority, perhaps less than 1%. During the last 20 years, according to the Army's Public Affairs Office, the Wiccans have caused no problems.
Jesuit Father Mitch Pacwa, noted authority on the occult, said, “Under the law, the Army can't discriminate against Wiccans. That's our legal structure. But as Catholics, we cannot approve of Wicca in any way. We're not going to mince words. It's a mortal sin. The government can do what it must do. Fine. But we're still going to say that it's wrong.”
Even though Wiccans have scored a public relations coup, and public tolerance is, for the most part, growing toward witches and occultists in general, the Catholic Church teaching on witchcraft remains unchanged: It is sinful and it is forbidden to Christians.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “All practices of magic or sorcery, by which one attempts to tame occult powers, so as to place them at one's service and have a supernatural power over others — even if this were for the sake of restoring their health — are gravely contrary to the virtue of religion. These practices are even more to be condemned when accompanied by the intention of harming someone, or when they have recourse to the intervention of demons. … Superstition is a departure from the worship that we give to the true God. It is manifested in idolatry, as well as in various forms of divination and magic” (Nos. 2117, 2138).
Are They Constitutional?
Gerard Bradley, professor of law at Notre Dame Law School, agrees that U.S. courts have accepted an interpretation of religion that allows Wiccans to claim legitimacy. “But I think it's actually a misinterpretation of the Constitution,” Bradley told the Register. He said that “the courts, on a limited basis, should engage in a normative evaluation of assertions of religiosity.”
Retired Army Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis, writing for the Family Research Council, said that Christians in the military have demonstrated they can function in the presence of minority religious views. But he thinks there are limits to this basic rule. He claims that behaviors associated with witchcraft, which most religions regard as an abomination, “will cause unit friction, undermine morale and impair recruitment and retention.”
Steeped in Sexuality
According to Father Pacwa, Wicca is a polytheistic nature religion steeped in sexuality.
“Wiccans try to get in contact with the force of the god and goddess,” he said. “They're dealing with sexual power in a paganized form. They want approval of their sexuality and to avoid guilt or feeling bad about themselves.
“Typically, witchcraft groups are orgiastic and sexual promiscuity can lead to disease. I met one couple who were witches but became Catholic. Their whole coven died of AIDS. They were the only ones who didn't contract the virus.”
How great a role sex plays in Wicca varies from coven to coven, according to spokeswoman Frost. In a telephone interview, she said that “private sex” between individual couples is part of some Wiccan fertility rites. “Most covens do not have orgies,” she said, “although some might.”
Dr. David Oringderff, a psychologist who is also a witch, whose coven in San Antonio sponsors the coven at Fort Hood, agreed that the practice of ritual sex varies from group to group.
“In Wicca, some relationships are polyamorous; some are monogamous,” Oringderff said in an interview by phone. He denied that “wild parties or orgies” were central to the practice of Wicca. He added, “That's not to say that there aren't covens that have orgies, but that kind of behavior is not unique to Wicca.”
Oringderff said that the meetings of the coven at Fort Hood adapt the practices of Wicca “to comply with Army rules and regulations.” He said “ritual nudity is not done because the Army has prohibitions against nudity on Army bases.”
Army spokesman Shields agreed. “Wiccan ritual sexual activity has not been a problem on any military post. They have not pushed this issue at all.”
Father Pacwa, nevetheless, encouraged Catholics to speak out against Wicca. “People need to know they're not crazy for thinking Wicca is crazy,” he said. “That's a revelation for a lot of folks.”
Una McManus writes from Columbia, Maryland.
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: Una Mcmanus ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: U.S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 07/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 25-31, 1999 ----- BODY:Charismatic Movement Keeps Latinos Catholic
LOS ANGELES TIMES, July 11— The Catholic charismatic revival is “one of the most important and most misunderstood religious movements in the Church today,” observed religion writer Margaret Ramirez in a report on charismatic strength in the Hispanic community.
“The … movement began three decades ago largely as a white phenomenon, then died down in the middle-class churches during the 1980s,” said Ramirez. “But in Latino communities, the movement — noted for its expressive style — continues to grow and is credited with bringing back many Catholics who left the Church to join Protestant evangelical and Pentecostal denominations. “Charismatic celebrations, including one that took place this month at the Los Angeles Sports Arena, are “among the largest Latino religious gatherings in the nation,” said Ramirez.
The movement “now embraces about 10 million Catholics nationwide, including 300 prayer groups in the Los Angeles archdiocese,” said Ramirez. “Charismatics are loyal to Church teachings,” with “devotion centered on Jesus and the Holy Spirit and worship is ecstatic, stressing spontaneity and effusive emotion.”
The movement continues to attract followers not only among Latinos, but also among Filipinos and Koreans, according to Jesuit Father Allan Deck, a leader of the movement.
Ramirez also recounted the story of Marilyn Kramar, a pivotal figure in the U.S. Latino Charismatic community. Kramar was evangelizing Latin America as an Assemblies of God missionary in the late 1960s when she converted to Catholicism.
The U.S. branch of the movement was still largely confined to English-speaking Catholics when Kramar decided to go to Southern California in 1972 to begin the first Spanish-speaking Catholic charismatic prayer group in Hacienda Heights. That effort has since “mushroomed into the Montebello-based Charisma in Missions, the largest service center in the world for charismatic evangelization services,” said Ramirez.
Victory for Student-Led Prayer
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, July 14— A federal judge wrongly restricted student-instigated prayer at DeKalb County, Ala., schools, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled on July 13, AP reported.
The 3–0 decision reversed a 1997 injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Ira DeMent that curbed the rights of students to pray and lead prayers in public schools, reported AP. “The suppression of student-initiated religious speech is neither necessary to, nor does it achieve, constitutional neutrality toward religion,” the appeals court said.
However, it let stand DeMent's restrictions against school officials leading religious activities, including prayers, said AP.
The case originated over teacher-led devotionals and pre-game prayers at athletic events. Also at issue was the distribution of Bibles on school grounds by Gideons International. Michael Chandler, a former vice principal at Valley Head High School, claimed these school activities unconstitutionally promoted Christianity. The American Civil Liberties Union joined him in his suit.
The ACLU said the decision partially supports its position. “School teachers still can't grab students and ask them to pray in a class, which is what they were doing in DeKalb County,” ACLU attorney Pamela Sumners said. But the organization said it still may appeal the ruling.
“This is a victory for all the school children in the public schools of our state, that they do not surrender their constitutional rights [to religious belief and practice] when they attend a public school in Alabama,” said State Attorney General Bill Pryor. “They do not surrender their religious faith and their religious beliefs.”
----- EXCERPT: From Selected Sources ----- Extended BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 07/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 25-31, 1999 ----- BODY:Saudi Arabia Tops at Persecuting Christians
RELIGION TODAY, July 13— Saudi Arabia has the world's worst record of persecuting Christians, according to the World Watch List published by Open Doors, which that monitors religious persecution.
Saudi Arabia is “closely followed by Afghanistan, Sudan, and China,” Open Doors President Terry Madison told the Religion Today news service. About 600,000 expatriate Christians live in the Islamic kingdom that does not permit any Christian practice.
Afghanistan, controlled by Muslims, is second on the list, Madison said. About 2,500 Christians are known to reside in the country, but strict enforcement of Sharia law means they must remain underground and can't publicly proclaim their faith.
The Hong Kong Human Rights Center reports that since October more than 250 Catholics and Protestants have been arrested in Henan Province, China.
The balance of the “top 10” list of persecutors is made up of Yemen, Morocco, Iran, Libya, Tunisia and Egypt.
Churches on Front Lines Against AIDS
THE ZAMBIA TIMES, July 8— Churches are on the front lines of Zambia's struggle against AIDS and other chronic diseases, according to the Times.
The national newspaper featured the work of the ecumenical Chawama Interfaith Commmunity's home-based care program sponsored by 13 churches, working in cooperation with the Ministry of Health.
Church members visit houses, identify people suffering from tuberculosis, AIDS, and venereal disease, and try to provide care and support, said the newspaper.
The southern African nation is 75% Christian, and President Frederick Chiluba's first act as president earlier this year was to declare Zambia a Christian nation.
Regrets Over the Crusades
REUTERS, July 12— A group of evangelical Christians has repented for the Holy Land Crusades. Reconciliation Walk, a ministry of western Christians, began its apology tour three years ago in Cologne, Germany. Walkers traced the route that the Crusaders took from Europe to the Middle East 900 years ago. On July 15, 1099, thousands of Crusader knights invaded Jerusalem, slaughtering its Muslim, Jewish and Orthodox inhabitants.
Reconciliation Walk members arrived in the city this week and formally apologized for the bloodshed. “We, as physical and cultural descendants of the Crusaders, recognize and renounce the[ir] motives and acts,” said spokesman Matthew Hand.
“We renounce hatred and fear, and condemn all violence done in the name of Jesus Christ,” the group's official statement said. Walk leaders presented framed copies of the apology in English, Arabic, and Hebrew to representatives from the three monotheistic faiths in a public ceremony July 12, Reuters reported.
Muslim, Jewish and Eastern Christian representatives welcomed the apology.
----- EXCERPT: From Selected Sources ----- Extended BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News ----- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 07/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 25-31, 1999 ----- BODY:Some Read the Worst in Pius Xii Letter
THE JERUSALEM POST — The discovery of a previously unpublished letter from an aide of Pope Pius XII to a diplomatic emissary of President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II is being cast in the worst possible light by some Jewish critics of Pius XII, according to a story in Israel's leading English-language newspaper.
The letter, from papal representative Archbishop A.G. Cicognani to U.S. Ambassador Myron Taylor, was “uncovered” by the Simon Wiesenthal Center as part of its ongoing research on Pius XII. The prominent Post coverage treated the discovery as though it almost settled the question of Pius' attitude toward the Jews.
“It is true that at one time Palestine was inhabited by the Hebrew Race, but there is no axiom in history to substantiate the necessity of a people returning to a country they left 19 centuries before,” states the letter, dated June 22, 1943.
The letter continues: “It would not be too difficult to find a more fitting territory than Palestine. With an increase in the Jewish population there, grave, new international projects would arise.”
It is not much of a stretch to conclude that Pius XII was actually concerned about possible conflicts any Jewish settlers might experience in Palestine since it is, of course, Arab territory that is surrounded by hostile Arab neighbors.
Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Wiesenthal Center, described the letter as an “indictment” of Pius XII, adding: “Where is a similar letter to Adolph Hitler telling Hitler that the Vatican finds his policies against the Jews repugnant?” The report failed to note that Pius XII was praised by The New York Times and others at the time for his condemnations of the Nazis.
While a number of newspapers picked up the Post story, including the Los Angeles Times, coverage was muted and did not produce condemnations similar to Rabbi Hier's.
It's Messy Now, But Just Wait …
THE UNIVERSE, July 4— “As the liturgical setting for many Holy Year activities, St. Peter's Basilica is being cleaned, patched and restored as the clock ticks down to the year 2000,” reported Britain's Catholic weekly.
“Unfortunately, visitors in 1999 are paying a price: Christendom's largest church looks like a building site these days,” the newspaper said. “The basilica's facade remains completely shrouded in scaffolding as technicians complete a corporate-sponsored cleaning job on the travertine marble.”
A separate cleaning project that requires the entire atrium to be covered, and roof repairs that forced the temporary removal of Michelangelo's Pieta, were also reported. “Even St. Peter's tomb has been hard to find,” said the newspaper, because the area around the main altar — which rests above the tomb — has been roped off as part of security preparations.
Now for the good news: “The basilica is expected to return to a state of splendor in time for Pope John Paul II's ceremonial opening of the Holy Year on Christmas Eve.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Profit Motives Complicate Embryo and Clone Research DATE: 07/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 25-31, 1999 ----- BODY:Cloning will be the next major temptation of medical science once embryo cells are used routinely to treat diseases, say medical ethicists.
That's because cells derived from donated embryos will likely be rejected by the patient's immune system, just like donated organs. Scientists could most easily overcome that problem by cloning a patient and creating what they call a “pre-embryo” — a new embryo — as a source of stem cells.
. Geron Corp., of Menlo Park, Calif., made the stem cell isolation discovery in November which prompted President Clinton to seek a new recommendation on embryo research. In May, Geron bought the company created by Scotland's Roslin Institute, which cloned Dolly the sheep.
That acquisition gives Geron control of three bold new technologies: Somatic cell nuclear transfer, which was used to clone the sheep; derivation of human pluripotent stem cells from embryos; and telomerase, a technique used by Geron to keep cells alive and dividing beyond their normal life span.
Together, some scientists believe, those three processes could make it possible that within five years humans could be cloning themselves and obtaining stem cells from their own embryos to replace diseased cells. The cells could be used to cure a wide range of disorders, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, spinal cord injury, stroke and congestive heart failure.
Gary Wright, physician ethicist of St. Vincent Hospital and Health Services, has examined declarations of Geron Corp.'s Ethics Advisory Board. He said the excitement over embryonic stem cell research involves blatant hypocrisy regarding the value of human life.
Wright said the company's ethics board has concluded “that it is wrong for couples to sell their embryos” for profit, yet the company's entire future is hinged on exploitation and commercialization of embryos.
“If it is wrong to commercialize embryos because of their nature, then it is wrong for everyone,” Wright said. “It is simply inconsistent to argue that couples should act altruistically because commercializing embryos is wrong, while permitting corporations and scientists to profit financially from cells derived by destroying those embryos.”
Like many other scientists, Wright believes it is impossible to define the union of sperm and egg as anything other than a human being.
God knew that long before science figured it out, said Wright. He quoted Jeremiah 1:5, which says “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.”
Were it not for profit motives, the whole issue of embryo cell harvesting could soon become moot, said Wright and other critics.
Newer research, involving adult stem cells and other advances in repair and regeneration of human tissue, Wright said, offers the promise that embryonic stem cells won't be needed to ensure future medical progress.
Threat of Cloning
Seeing the writing on the wall, leading Catholics have been urging Congress since early 1998 to preclude human cloning with meaningful legislation that has yet to come about.
In February 1998 Cardinal William Keeler of Baltimore told Congress, “Cloning is wrong because cloned human beings lack human dignity. It is wrong because they have human dignity and deserve to come into the world in ways that respect this dignity.”
The cardinal said that each child has a God-given right to be conceived and born as the fruit of a loving union between husband and wife, and to be loved and accepted as a new and distinct individual. While human cloning is presented as a means for creating life, Cardinal Keeler said, “it shows disrespect for human life in the very act of generating it” by completely divorcing its conception from the loving union between a man and a woman.
Two months later, in April 1998, Cardinal Bernard Law, chairman of the bishops'Committee for Pro-Life Activities, also urged Congress to consider a full ban on cloning. Cardinal Law said the National Institutes for Heath, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission and all mainstream scientific literature agreed that from the one-celled stage onward, the being produced by human fertilization or cloning is a “developing human embryo.”
“One proposition receiving almost universal support in years of public policy debate is this: Human embryos must never be created solely as research material, to be experimented on and destroyed,” Cardinal Law said.
— Wayne Laugesen
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: 'Erroneous and Dangerous' DATE: 07/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 25-31, 1999 ----- BODY:The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has curtailed the ministries of Salvatorian Father Robert Nugent and Sister Jeannine Gramick, of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, for “erroneous and dangerous” teaching on homosexual acts, saying the two have repeatedly refused to accept Church doctrine on the subject.
The move has been widely misreported: It has been called a “punishment” of the two simply for their views on “homosexuality” by the “Church's disciplinary arm.” One particularly distasteful quote even compared the decision to ethnic cleansing.
But there was no punishment involved, and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is no more a “disciplinary arm” of the Church than an accrediting agency is a “disciplinary arm” of the university system.
Its job is “to examine new teachings and opinions, promote their study and, if necessary, condemn those opposed to the principles of the faith after hearing the bishops of the region affected,” according to the Canon Law Society of America.
In this case, after a 15-year review in which the Vatican congregation took pains to receive input from Father Nugent, Sister Gramick, Cardinal James Hickey and a panel of experts, it was found necessary to safeguard the faith, and the faithful, from a dangerous teaching.
And it is a dangerous teaching — not about “homosexuality” primarily, but about homosexual acts.
In a May conference in Dayton, Ohio, reported by the St. Catherine Review, Sister Gramick and Father Nugent had astonishing things to say about the Church's teaching on homosexual acts, and about the U.S. bishops.
The report quoted Sister Gramick saying that the bishops in one document “only gave part of the teaching, leaving out the part of official Church teaching which says that a homosexual may follow his conscience after he has prayed with God about acting on his or her same-sex desires, even if the decision reached is not in accord with Church teaching on homosexual acts.” In other words, the Church teaches that individuals are free to violate Church teachings, according to Sister Gramick.
The same article quotes Father Nugent saying that bishops' understanding of homosexual behavior has now gone beyond the “Love the sinner, hate the sin” mentality. Now, he says, a new understanding of conscience frees us to transcend the category of sin.
This teaching is dangerous, first of all, to the faithful. When a priest and a religious sister speak, their hearers have a right to expect that they are propounding the Catholic faith. When they invoke the bishops and “official Catholic teaching” they are even more strongly identifying their views as Catholic.
But the Catholic Church doesn't teach that moral norms are formed by our consciences. If this were the case, no one could be held accountable for anything. The right understanding is that consciences must be formed by objective morality.
This teaching is also dangerous to homosexual Catholics, who need our love and support to be honest and unmitigated.
First, medically. The high-risk behaviors the priest and sister were exonerating also harm the body, and in our day often kill it.
Second, emotionally. Homosexuals, like anyone else, find their greatest solace in a life lived morally. The homosexual lifestyle, on the other hand, has been linked to higher suicide rates and depression.
It's time the world stop kidding itself about homosexuality, and recognize the wisdom of the Vatican's decision.
A presidential advisory committee July 13 recommended that the Clinton administration push for government-funded experimentation on embryos.
This would mean that Americans' taxes would go to experiments that violate medical ethical norms from Hippocrates to the Nuremberg Code.
Though no such plans are yet in place, the Clinton administration is already signaling its willingness to promote them. One White House aide told the Register that, when the government is in charge, embryonic cells will be “obtained in an ethical manner.”
How could they be?
Embryos are human beings. Embryos must be destroyed to obtain their cells. That is the direct killing of a human being.
Witnessing the suffering from those with Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease it will be tempting for legislators to question the prudence of forgoing the use of the cells from a petri dish that can help. But two things should give them pause.
First, the stem cells in question have also been successfully taken from adults. This federal government should take the lead in promoting this ethical method.
Second, it is helpful to remember our own status as former embryos. How can we ignore the humanity of an embryo when we each began our lives in exactly that form?
And, as the Jubilee anniversary of Christ's birth approaches, it might be helpful to remember that the Second Person of the Trinity entered humanity precisely as an embryo.
----- EXCERPT: Editorial ----- Extended BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: How to Be a Real Father DATE: 07/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 25-31, 1999 ----- BODY:In this wonderful, little and affordable hard-bound book, Stephen Gabriel, speaks to Christian fathers — and he knows of what he speaks.
As he says of himself, “At work I am an expert, by profession an economist for the U.S. government. At home no one thinks I am an expert — especially me. My wife, Peggy, and I now have eight children. I regard my work as a father as the most important thing I do, but like most fathers I have no special training for it. … I'M a man who takes his roles as father very seriously. My chief goal is to help my children to be mature, well-adjusted Catholic men and women who take their faith very seriously. I want to help them get to heaven. I'm a man like you.”
Gabriel's approach to this task is to invite the Christian father to make an extended examination of conscience by looking at 20 character traits that he thinks are important to the lives of a father and his children in light of the classical seven virtues. Gabriel quotes a dictionary definition for virtue: “moral excellence and righteousness; goodness” and cites the theological virtues faith, hope and charity, and the cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude.
Each chapter opens with an appropriate quotation from Scripture and secular literature followed by a page-long explanation of a character trait.
He then follows with the considerations for growth in the virtue that develops that trait. As he says, “Some of what you read here will make you uncomfortable. Pay attention to that. Your discomfort is a piece of wisdom. The problems of fathering are not so much the difficulties we face, but the way we handle the difficulties we face. … Failure makes us more humble and dependent on almighty God. Our prayer and effort help us to grow in virtue and become the example that our children need.”
In choosing this approach Gabriel must have been mindful of the advice of another point from the Catechism: “The home is well suited for education in the virtues. This education requires an apprenticeship in self-denial, sound judgment, and self-mastery — the preconditions of all true freedom. They should teach their children to subordinate the ‘material and instinctual dimensions to interior and spiritual ones.’ Parents have a grave responsibility to give good example to their children. By knowing how to acknowledge their own failings to their children, parents will be better able to guide and correct them.”
Give this book to your husband or fiance. Or, if you are a father or father-to-be, buy this book.
The Catechism also tells us that “the fecundity of conjugal love cannot be reduced solely to the procreation of children, but must extend to their moral education and their spiritual formation.”
In these sad times of abortion, small families, child abuse, high rates of illegitimacy and school shootings, people are realizing increasingly that the ultimate answers to resolve these problems which are weakening our society to the point of breakdown can only be grace and virtue. While social factors are important and can provide partial explanations for some of our problems, only a change of heart and mind can over time create a culture where it is easier to be virtuous because one does what one ought and not simply what one wants. It has been said again and again by experts in the field of family dysfunction that such a change must be made in the role of the father, who in our present day society is often absent, weak, distant or abusive.
If you are a father, future or present, buy this book. If you are a wife or an engaged woman, give this book to your husband or fiance. There can be no more fitting present for a father or father-to-be, in the year of God the Father. As the Holy Father put it, “The future of the Church passes through the family.” That future, in part, depends on our personal commitment to better ourselves in the virtues so we can more effectively serve God and others.
Father C.J. McCloskey III is the director of the Catholic Information Center of the Archdiocese of Washington.
----- EXCERPT: BOOK REVIEW ----- Extended BODY: Father C.J. Mccloskey Iii ----- Keywords: Education -------- TITLE: Charles Colson Back in Prison DATE: 07/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 25-31, 1999 ----- BODY:“Ex-Con:The Remarkable Second Career of Chuck Colson” by Joe Loconte (The Weekly Standard, June 28)
Joe Loconte, William E. Simon fellow in religion and a free society at the Heritage Foundation, writes: “while other religious celebrities are exchanging pleasantries with well-groomed congregants” on a recent Easter morning, 67-year-old Chuck Colson “is mixing it up with violent felons. He shakes hands with them, prays with them. Several slip notes into his pocket, thanking him for coming. ‘I'd rather preach in prison than anywhere else,’he says later. ‘You're meeting people at a point of incredible need. You don't have to explain that they're sinners. They know it, and they're hungry.’”
Loconte traces Colson's career from his ambitious political years, when Time magazine called him “the toughest of the Nixon tough guys,” to the moment during Watergate when a friend steered him to C.S. Lewis'Mere Christianity, to his seven months in prison for Watergate-related obstruction of justice, where he embraced his new vocation as founder of Prison Fellowship. “‘Therapy teaches people how to manage their problems,’ he explains. ‘But Christian conversion transforms the human will.’
“Over the next two decades [his efforts on behalf of prisoners] grew almost exponentially: Twenty-six thousand prisoners now meet for Bible studies alone, and there are a dozen different programs for inmates, their families, and crime victims. … Imaginative partnerships with local churches are the key. When prison workers saw, for example, that offenders fared much better if connected to their families, Colson's outfit started the Angel Tree program, which provides Christmas presents for kids who have a parent in jail. … Last year, 14,000 congregations — Catholic, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, Baptist, you name it — participated, buying and wrapping presents requested by inmates for over half a million children. When possible, churches are matched with children in their own neighborhood, and church teenagers organize and host Christmas parties for the families.”
Loconte describes “Colson's most ambitious project so far … the Inner-Change Freedom Initiative,” which “offers Christian education to felons serving the last 18 months of their sentences. State guards provide security, but Colson's staff runs the day-today activities of 125 men. … The men — all volunteers in the program — rise for a 6:00 A.M. worship service and spend most of the day in Bible study, supervised work, or school. Evenings are filled with parenting classes, meetings with crime victims, family nights, and more Bible study.
He scolds his brethren when they rely too much on politics to instigate cultural change …
“Behind Colson's prison programs lie two theological ideas. First, crime is fundamentally an offense not against the state, but against individuals and the God whose image they bear. … A second concept, also drawn from the Bible, is that punishment should be restorative: It should help turn criminals into citizens. Chronic, remorseless, violent offenders must be put away, Colson says. But most inmates don't fit that description; many of them, with God's help, can change. Prison Fellowship stresses supervised work, community service, mentoring, restitution, and even meetings between victims and offender. The unabashed objective is Christian conversion.”
Colson compares his aims and methods to the prison culture, marked by “scheming, scamming, and surviving. It does nothing to hold criminals personally accountable to their victims. And zero accountability usually promotes zero remorse.” Higher incarceration rates have not reduced recidivism rates, so even with our current get-tough crime mode, “nearly all inmates will be released eventually — and return to a neighborhood near you.”
Some studies are beginning to provide statistical evidence that Colson is on the right track, such as the “1997 report by the National Institute for Healthcare Research” that “found that inmates in a Prison Fellowship Bible study in New York were three times less likely to be rearrested than those who weren't.”
Loconte notes that “More than any other event, the great scandal of the Nixon White House chastened [Colson] as to the limits, and the temptations, of power.
“On one hand, Colson argues that Christians are obligated to speak out on the vital issues of the day, whether abortion or education or religious freedom. On the other hand, he scolds his brethren when they sound like ‘medieval crusaders’and rely too much on politics to instigate cultural change. … He holds the classic view of Christian discipleship — that genuine faith always produces ripple effects beyond the individual and into the larger culture. … Moral and cultural renewal may require more than helping the poor, visiting the sick, praying with prisoners — but surely not less. ‘Perhaps civilization will never be safe,’ C.S. Lewis wrote, ‘until we care for something more than we care for it.’”
Ellen Wilson Fielding writes from Davidson, Maryland.
A summary of an article selected by the Register from the nation's top journals.
----- EXCERPT: Article Digest ----- Extended BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Letters DATE: 07/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 25-31, 1999 ----- BODY:Population Action International
Your recent article, “Senate Vote Set to Target U.N. Abuses” (Register, June 13–19 issue), contained several factual errors concerning the organization which I head — Population Action International (PAI) — and its policy positions regarding U.S. support for international family planning and reproductive health programs.
Your article incorrectly described PAI as a “USAID contractor.” As a matter of policy, PAI neither solicits nor receives financial support from any part of the U.S. government, including the Agency for International Development, and never has.
PAI also did not “compromise with [Senator] Brownback” as stated in the article. In fact, PAI and its representatives had no discussions whatsoever with Sen. Brownback or his staff on the substance of his congressional resolution concerning voluntarism and informed consent in international family planning programs. We did, however, respond to requests from House staff members to review the language of their resolution on the same topic.
Above all, it should be made absolutely clear to your readers that PAI, as a matter of bedrock principle, holds that family planning programs should be fully voluntary and based on informed consent. There may be disagreements among people of good will, however, on how best to help ensure adherence to these principles.
But we respectfully submit that reproductive choices can never be truly voluntary unless women and men around the world have access to the broad range of family planning information and services necessary to exercise those choices safely and responsibly.
Amy Coen, president Population Action International
Editor's Note: The Register regrets the error. It should be noted, however, that the cultural norms of Third World countries embrace large families. Efforts such as PAI's to change those norms are efforts against “voluntary reproductive choices.” And policies “based on informed consent” must also include detailed information about the ways in which abortion and chemical treatments kill unborn children and harm women.
Suppressed Information
A seemingly preposterous amount of money, $4.9 billion, for a personal lawsuit was awarded on July 9. The legal action stems from an automobile accident from which a family received severe burns. The victims were suing General Motors for damages simply because G.M. knew that the gas tank in the car they were driving was too close to the bumper. Although the family was rear ended by a drunk driver, the fact that key people at G.M. attempted to hide the safety defect was enough grounds for a lawsuit.
It could happen that lawyers for women will take more pokes at the abortion industry because of suppressed information regarding abortion. Abortion clinics are notorious for keeping women in the dark about the reality of the human life within their womb, the risks involved and the long-term effects on women. …
How many injury and wrongful death lawsuits are possible here? Over 30 million since Roe v. Wade in 1973, and counting.
John F. Turner Lebanon, Connecticut
Internet Patron Saint
No patron saint for the Internet? (See “Internet Still Without Patron Saint,” Register, July 11–17.) Wouldn't that obviously be Maximilian Kolbe, who gave his life to bring the Word to the world through the prevailing social means of communication?
Mark Gross Boise, Idaho
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Mentioning Contraceptives in Polite Company DATE: 07/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 25-31, 1999 ----- BODY:I was reading an aviation magazine. The senior editor contributed a column on “what to do if you bend an airplane.” It was a discussion of the differences between an accident and an incident, the terms having precise meanings under Federal Aviation Administration regulations, and what to do if you find yourself in either one.
One thing pilots who have been in an accident or incident can do is file an Aviation Safety Reporting System report, which is used to gather statistical data. In theory, if you file that report, the FAA can't use information in it to jeopardize your pilot's license. The government wants to gather accurate data and knows that pilots won't fess up if they fear losing their flying privileges. Many occurrences would go unreported if reporting them resulted in penalties.
Filing a report also gets you off the hook with respect to certain disciplinary actions the FAA could take. The key is that you must file the report within 10 days of the accident or incident. If you miss the deadline, you have no easy way to stop an FAA administrative process.
After giving real-life examples of accidents and incidents and what problems can arise when trying to deal with the federal bureaucracy, the editor concluded his otherwise sensible column with this advice for those who bend their airplanes: “I'd file an ASRS report too, just to be on the safe side — sort of like taking a morning-after pill.”
Thud. What was that image doing there?
No doubt the writer thought his metaphor innocent. Let's assume he didn't know that the morning-after pill is abortifacient, and let's hope that, if he were to know, it would make a difference to him. My purpose isn't to complain about him or his column. What bothers me is that we live in a culture in which such off-the-cuff comments raise few eyebrows.
The magazine writer saw nothing wrong with his remark. I presume his editor didn't either. I wonder whether any other readers saw a problem. There used to be a time, not many decades ago, when national magazines frowned on any mention of contraceptives. If contraceptives were available at drugstores, they were hidden behind the counter and had to be asked for, and people asking for them made sure no one else in the store was around when they did the asking. Nearly everyone understood that the use of contraceptives was shameful. Yes, some people used them, but they didn't pretend they were doing something good — or even morally neutral.
There is no such reticence nowadays. Quite the opposite. The shame factor is gone, both for the buyer and the seller. When you are at the drugstore looking for cold remedies, it's hard not to find yourself confronted with whole shelves of contraceptives. Often, both pills and devices are placed at the end of the counters where you — and your kids — can't miss them. I guess they must be fast-moving items.
Standing before the display, you may suffer mild embarrassment and find yourself involuntarily moving aside a few feet, so no one will think you planted yourself there on purpose. But the real embarrassment should be reserved for our culture. What have things come to? It's not just that most people have become desensitized to the public existence and mention of the morning-after pill and its relatives. It's that they actually use them, so of course they see nothing wrong with them or with mentioning them. What once was evil, now is thought a positive good.
We often are cautioned against people who don't practice what they preach. The real problem is people who preach what they practice. If they practice contraception, they will preach it, directly or indirectly. Belief follows action. Engage long enough in a wrong action, and you end up believing it is meritorious. You conform your thinking to your deeds — a fine way to minimize shame — instead of conforming your deeds to your (right) thinking.
As in so much else, our culture has things exactly backward. If we say no more than that, believing Catholics would have cause to feel about as low as possible. But we can take a cue from one Catholic who sees a lot of light at the other end of the tunnel — the Holy Father. He has been talking about a new springtime for the Church. Just in the last few years there has been more and more discussion about the possibility that the 21st will be a “Catholic century.” How can there be such optimism given such dismal news all around us?
It's a matter of trajectories. The sexual revolution has run its course. The revolution has failed and has left a void, and that void will have to be filled by something. What will that something be? The only candidate in the running, say the Holy Father and commentators who follow his lead, is the Catholic faith and the moral structure that goes with it. Aside from conforming to reality — a wonderful plus — Catholic morality is the only one that “works” and that results in long-lasting happiness.
Besides, just think of the shelf space it can free up!
Karl Keating is founding director of Catholic Answers.
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: Karl Keating ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Notification Concerning Sister Jeannine Gramick and Father Robert Nugent DATE: 07/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 25-31, 1999 ----- BODY:In 1984 the Church initiated discussions on the Catholic teaching about homosexuality with Sister Jeannine Gramick, of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, and Father Robert Nugent, of the Society of the Divine Savior. The interchanges led up to a formal process of doctrinal examination by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which began in 1995 and ended with a declaration dated last May 31 and published July 13 at the Vatican.
The congregation's statement outlines the attempts on the part of the Church to reconcile Sister Gramick and Father Nugent with the magisterium. Here is the text of the Vatican document.
Sister Jeannine Gramick, SSND, and Father Robert Nugent, SDS, have been engaged in pastoral activities directed toward homosexual persons for more than twenty years. In 1977, they founded the organization New Ways Ministry within territory of the Archdiocese of Washington in order to promote “justice and reconciliation between lesbian and gay Catholics and the wider Catholic community.” They are the authors of the book Building Bridges: Gay and Lesbian Reality and the Catholic Church (Mystic: Twenty-Third Publications, 1992) and editors of the volume Voices of Hope: A Collection of Positive Catholic Writings on Gay and Lesbian Issues (New York: Center for Homophobia Education, 1995).
From the beginning, in presenting the Church's teaching on homosexuality, Father Nugent and Sister Gramick have continually called central elements of that teaching into question. For this reason, in 1984, James Cardinal Hickey, the archbishop of Washington, following the failure of a number of attempts at clarification, informed them that they could no longer undertake their activities in that archdiocese. At the same time, the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and for Societies of Apostolic Life ordered them to separate themselves totally and completely from New Ways Ministry, adding that they were not to exercise any apostolate without faithfully presenting the Church's teaching regarding the intrinsic evil of homosexual acts.
Despite this action by the Holy See, Father Nugent and Sister Gramick continued their involvement in activities organized by New Ways Ministry, though removing themselves from leadership positions. They also continued to maintain and promote ambiguous positions on homosexuality and explicitly criticized documents of the Church's magisterium on this issue. Because of their statements and activities, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and for Societies of Apostolic Life received numerous complaints and urgent requests for clarification from bishops and others in the United States of America. It was clear that the activities of Sister Gramick and Father Nugent were causing difficulties in not a few dioceses and that they were continuing to present the teaching of the Church as one possible option among others and as open to fundamental change.
In 1988, the Holy See established a commission under the presidency of Adam Cardinal Maida to study and evaluate their public statements and activities and to determine whether these were faithful to Catholic teaching on homosexuality.
After the publication of Building Bridges, the investigation of the commission focused primarily on this book, which summarized their activities and thinking. In 1994, the commission issued its findings, which were communicated to the two authors. When their responses to these findings were received, the commission formulated its final recommendations and forwarded them to the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and for Societies of Apostolic Life. While not overlooking the presence of some positive aspects in the apostolate of Father Nugent and Sister Gramick, the commission found serious deficiencies in their writings and pastoral activities, which were incompatible with the fullness of Christian morality. The commission, therefore, recommended disciplinary measures, including the publication of some form of notification, in order to counteract and repair the harmful confusion caused by the errors and ambiguities in their publications and activities.
As the problems presented by the two authors were primarily of a doctrinal nature, in 1995, the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and for Societies of Apostolic Life transferred the entire case to the competence of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. At this point, with the hope that Father Nugent and Sister Gramick would be willing to express their assent to Catholic teaching on homosexuality and to correct the errors in their writings, the congregation undertook another attempt at resolution by inviting them to respond unequivocally to certain questions regarding their position on the morality of homosexual acts and on the homosexual inclination.
Their responses, dated Feb. 22, 1996, were not sufficiently clear to dispel the serious ambiguities of their position. In these, Sister Gramick and Father Nugent demonstrated a clear conceptual understanding of the Church's teaching on homosexuality, but refrained from professing any adherence to that teaching. Furthermore, the publication, in 1995, of their book Voices of Hope: A Collection of Positive Catholic Writings on Gay and Lesbian Issues had made it clear that there was no change in their opposition to fundamental elements of the Church's teaching.
Given the fact that certain of the statements of Father Nugent and Sister Gramick were clearly incompatible with the teaching of the Church and that the wide dissemination of these errors through their publications and pastoral activities was becoming an increasing source of concern for bishops in the United States of America, the congregation decided that the case should be resolved according to the procedure outlined in its Regulations for Doctrinal Examination (chapter 4).
In the ordinary session of Oct. 8, 1997, the cardinals and bishops who make up the congregation judged that the statements of Father Nugent and Sister Gramick, which had been identified through the above-mentioned procedure of the Regulations for Doctrinal Examination, were in fact erroneous and dangerous. After the Holy Father had approved the formal contestatio of the authors, the above-mentioned erroneous statements were presented to them through their respective superiors general. Each was asked to respond to the contestatio personally and independently from the other, to allow them the greatest freedom in expressing their individual positions.
In February 1998, the two superiors general forwarded the responses to the congregation. In the ordinary sessions of May 6 and May 20, 1998, the members of the congregation carefully evaluated the responses, after having received the opinions of members of the episcopate of the United States and of experts in the field of moral theology. The members of the congregation were unanimous in their decision that the responses of the two, while containing certain positive elements, were unacceptable. In each case, Father Nugent and Sister Gramick had sought to justify the publication of their books and neither had expressed personal adherence to the Church's teaching on homosexuality in sufficiently unequivocal terms. Thus, it was decided that they should be asked to formulate a public declaration, which would be submitted to the judgment of the congregation. In this declaration they were asked to express their interior assent to the teaching of the Catholic Church on homosexuality and to acknowledge that the two above-mentioned books contained errors.
The two declarations which arrived in August 1998 were examined by the congregation in the ordinary session of Oct. 21, 1998. Once again, they were not sufficient to resolve the problems associated with their writings and pastoral activities. Sister Gramick, while expressing her love for the Church, simply refused to express any assent whatsoever to the teaching of the Church on homosexuality. Father Nugent was more responsive, but not unequivocal in his statement of interior assent to the teaching of the Church. It was decided by the members of the congregation, therefore, that Father Nugent should be given yet another opportunity to express unequivocal assent. For this reason, the congregation formulated a declaration of assent and, with its letter of Dec. 15, 1998, forwarded it to Father Nugent, through his superior general, for his acceptance.
His response, dated Jan. 25, 1999, showed that this attempt had not met with success. Father Nugent would not sign the declaration he had received and responded by formulating an alternative text which modified the congregation's declaration on certain important points. In particular, he would not state that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered and he added a section which calls into question the definitive and unchangeable nature of Catholic doctrine in this area.
Given the failure of the repeated attempts of the Church's legitimate authorities to resolve the problems presented by the writings and pastoral activities of the two authors, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is obliged to declare for the good of the Catholic faithful that the positions advanced by Sister Jeannine Gramick and Father Robert Nugent regarding the intrinsic evil of homosexual acts and the objective disorder of the homosexual inclination are doctrinally unacceptable because they do not faithfully convey the clear and constant teaching of the Catholic Church in this area. Father Nugent and Sister Gramick have often stated that they seek, in keeping with the Church's teaching, to treat homosexual persons “with respect, compassion and sensitivity.” However, the promotion of errors and ambiguities is not consistent with a Christian attitude of true respect and compassion: Persons who are struggling with homosexuality no less than any others have the right to receive the authentic teaching of the Church from those who minister to them. The ambiguities and errors of the approach of Father Nugent and Sister Gramick have caused confusion among the Catholic people and have harmed the community of the Church. For these reasons, Sister Jeannine Gramick, SSND, and Father Robert Nugent, SDS, are permanently prohibited from any pastoral work involving homosexual persons and are ineligible, for an undetermined period, for any office in their respective religious institutes.
The Sovereign Pontiff John Paul II, at the audience of May 14, 1999, granted to the undersigned secretary, approved the present notification, adopted in the ordinary session of this congregation, and ordered its publication.
Rome, from the offices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, May 31, 1999.
+ Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect
+ Tarcisio Bertone, SDB, secretary
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Most Common Questions at Pre-Cana DATE: 07/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 25-31, 1999 ----- BODY:Each month, to test my courage, I give a Pre-Cana talk on sexuality to 50 or so couples in Manhattan. Every evening is somehow different from all the others. I find, though, that during the Q&A the same questions invariably get asked. Since July is my month off from Pre-Cana, I thought I would keep in practice by answering a few questions here.
Since artificial contraception and Natural Family Planning have the same goal — to postpone the arrival of a child — I don't see any moral difference between them. What's the big deal?
Natural family planning and artificial contraception do not, strictly speaking, have the same goal, since natural family planning is used by couples to help conceive a child, as well as to space the arrival of children, while artificial contraception is used only to block conception. Even when the “goal” is the same — the spacing of children — everyone would agree that the means used to reach a goal can be either good or bad. For example, if you need a hundred dollars, you can either rob a bank or earn the money.
When it comes to spacing your children, there is all the difference in the world between sex that is non-procreative, because it takes place during the infertile part of the wife's cycle, and sex that is anti-procreative (artificial contraception). In the first case, the couple is accepting their fertility as it is — a great good, but a good which the couple is not going to make use of at this time. In the second case, the couple is treating their fertility as though there were something wrong with it, something to be gotten rid of by medication or a barrier method.
Think about that word “barrier”; it nicely sums up why love and contraception do not go together. The first couple is holding nothing back, while the couple on the pill is violating the language of sex, which is about total self-giving.
My OB-GYN says that natural family planning has a 20% failure rate. He/she must know what he/she is talking about.
Your OB-GYN is confusing natural family planning with the old calendar “rhythm” method, which is history. Unfortunately, the medical profession receives a lot of misinformation about natural family planning, or no information at all. This is partly because nobody makes any money off natural family planning, which is free once you purchase a thermometer and charts. There are plenty of studies showing that if you use natural family planning correctly, it is 99% effective, same as the pill.
You mentioned that the pill has side effects. What are these?
The potential side-effects of the pill include high blood pressure, irritability, weight gain, reduced libido (sex drive), and an increased tendency toward depression. In a few cases, the health effects can be more serious — thrombosis and strokes. Not all women experience these symptoms; but many do go off the pill because they do not like the side effects. We live in an era when people value “natural” foods and fibers, and yet women, whose sexual chemistry is very delicate, fill their bodies with artificial hormones for the sake of sex on demand.
But don't the periods of abstinence observed by couples using natural family planning take the spontaneity out of sex?
On the contrary. Have you ever read in novels about lovers making a tryst for a certain date and location? Nothing dull about that. In fact, periodic continence keeps a couple's sex life interesting. It's like going on a honeymoon twice a month.
I know what the Church teaches, but shouldn't people follow their own conscience?
You should follow your own conscience. But the Church teaches, not unreasonably, that you have the duty to form your conscience according to objective moral truths. A conscience is supposed to detect what is morally good and bad, not manufacture its own rules about right and wrong. “Following one's conscience” can often be an excuse for indulging in self-centered behavior. Consider a simple point: If you reject the argument that people have a duty to obey objective norms of behavior, then you have no basis for condemning any evil act whatsoever. The Church simply proposes — never imposes — the truths about moral behavior, which God has written in every human heart, but which sometimes get lost in the channels.
I still think that the Church's teachings put a limit on my freedom.
Are you sure about that? We live in an age when many people have decided to “free” themselves from objective moral norms. What is striking is how many people consequently become dysfunctional; many suffer from various addictions, which are forms of slavery, not freedom. Also, when you jettison moral norms, you are often hurting people other than yourself. Think about what divorce does to children and to society at large.
Doesn't a trial marriage help you to make the right decision about finally tying the knot?
No. Look at the divorce statistics. Couples who live together before marriage have a much higher divorce rate. One reason perhaps is that you ask yourself an entirely different set of questions when you move in with someone — or no questions at all — than you should when you get married. Do I really share this person's values? Do I want this person to be the parent of my children? Also, sex is such a powerful thing that it can cloud the prudential judgments you should make before getting married.
Then there is my favorite question: What about Galileo? But that is another column.
George Sim Johnston is author of Did Darwin Get It Right?
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A Gem Amid the Spanish Mist DATE: 07/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 25-31, 1999 ----- BODY:Sometime in the 1930s, a newly wed British couple decided to visit Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain.
The husband and wife, both convinced atheists, weren't interested in making a pilgrimage to the cathedral-shrine of St. James the Greater. They wanted to visit the church so they could marvel at the credulity of the local peasants, who believed that the apostle James was buried beneath the cathedral.
Partially following the venerable pilgrims'way to the shrine, the couple traveled overland from the French Pyrenees west across northern Spain, along the Cantabrian coast, to the ancient Celtic province of Galicia, home to Santiago de Compostela.
Finally, they arrived, ready to scoff. They left as converts.
After returning to England, the couple accepted instruction in the faith and entered the Catholic Church.
I heard about their conversion from the couple's daughter, a nun who taught me history in high school. The almost miraculous story affected me deeply, and I promised myself that, at some point, I would visit Santiago de Compostela.
That opportunity finally arrived this past April.
A friend had invited me to join her on a spring trip to Portugal. During the months of our preparation, two other women joined our party and we settled on a side trip to the cathedral-shrine in Spain.
I was particularly pleased to be going in 1999 since it is a jubilee at Santiago. The shrine declares a jubilee year whenever the feast of St. James, July 25, falls on a Sunday. Pilgrims who visit at this time can gain a plenary indulgence by fulfilling the usual conditions.
Santiago de Compostela, unlike many other famous destinations, cannot disappoint. Its hilly location, brilliant architecture, colorful history and deep spirituality give it a complexity and a richness that few other sites can match.
As we approached by car from the south, the sheer thrill of finally reaching such a spiritual and historic locale was nearly overwhelming for me. We had traveled north from Portugal, loosely following the old pilgrimage road from Lisbon.
Narrow Streets, 46 Churches
All four of us were startled by the city's size. We had somehow gained the notion that Santiago was a relatively small town. It isn't. Tens of thousands live in the city, which is the administrative capital of Galicia. Thousands of pilgrims, tourists, students, businessmen and others visit the city every year. All this activity makes for a bustling metropolis.
The city wends its way around a series of ravines and small mountains. Narrow, crooked, cobbled streets dead-end at the edge of cliffs or in front of elegant buildings, making driving a challenge. The city's complexity and 46 churches made it hard to find the shrine.
After a series of false starts, one of us finally noticed an elaborate spire that could only belong to the cathedral. With some difficulty, we drove to the outskirts of the historic district and parked the car.
As we emerged from the underground lot, we faced another difficulty — torrential rain. Galicia is famous throughout Spain for its temperate climate, its greenness, its forests and its eerie mists. The rain demonstrated how this ancient region had earned its reputation.
The torrents were coming down so hard that we decided to make a dash for a restaurant. While we enjoyed the local cuisine, the rain turned into a mist. We immediately set out on foot through narrow streets in search of the cathedral.
Walking through stone-flagged passages, we encountered a variety of architectural styles — the Romanesque and Gothic were mixed with the Renaissance, Baroque and neo-classical.
At one point, we noticed a large, open door. Venturing in, we found a classic Spanish courtyard, carpeted by green grass, dotted with flowering plants and surrounded by exquisite stonework. This serene site belonged to the University of Santiago de Compostela, a centuries-old institution with many buildings scattered around the historic district.
We also noticed many little stone-faced shops selling small silver swords and conch shells, which are the symbols of Santiago. But the cathedral's spire continued to beckon. Finally, we emerged on the Plaza de España.
On all four sides of this enormous square there are beautifully rendered buildings in golden-brown stone. They include the neo-classical Rajoy Palace; the Renaissance Royal Hospital, today the Hostal de los Reyes Catolicos; the 12th-century Diego Gelmirez Episcopal Palace; the Romanesque College of San Jerónimo; and, finally, the main façade of the massive Cathedral of St. James.
The cathedral was built between 1075 and 1112 by Gelmirez, the first archbishop of Santiago. It replaced a sanctuary built in 899 that had been destroyed by the Moorish king Almanzor in 997.
Two even earlier churches had existed on the site, built over what many are convinced was the tomb of St. James.
1st Century Bones
The tomb is at the heart of the current structure, although its remains were removed in the 16th century and hidden. The townspeople were fearful of raids by Sir Francis Drake and they wanted to hide the precious remains.
Fortunately, Drake's threats were groundless, but the remains were hidden so long that no one remembered where they were. In the 19th century, archaeological explorations beneath the cathedral turned up first-century bones that could possibly be those of St. James.
The cathedral itself, which was consecrated in 1211, started as a relatively simple, Romanesque structure in the shape of a Latin cross. Later, the ambulatory and the Gothic chapels of the apse and transept were added. Then came the 15th-century cupola and the 16th-century cloister.
The cathedral's interior has also been subject to extensive alteration. Although the main supports are basically Romanesque, with their massive columns and rounded arches, the chapels, altars and decorations show the influence of many centuries.
Each of the side chapels was fascinating in its own right, replete with altar, statues, special motifs, donors'gifts and banks of candles. Many were devoted to a specific saint or holy virtue. Several times I found myself stopping to pray.
Then we turned to the high altar itself. This elaborate Baroque masterpiece was almost confusing in its complexity. Twists and turns, crenelations and figurines emerged everywhere. All of this golden glory served to highlight the massive statue of St. James that reposed in its own chapel behind the high altar.
An important tradition is attached to this statue. Every pilgrim is supposed to mount the stairs into the chapel and embrace the figure from behind. All four of us were enthusiastic participants in this tradition, mainly because we wanted to take a close look at the jewel-studded cope of gold covering the seated figure.
Days could easily be spent inspecting the items inside the cathedral. We only had several hours, but we spent them exploring everything. Once outside we circled the cathedral repeatedly so that we could absorb its many glories as well as the beautiful plazas and streets surrounding it.
Finally, at midnight, after dinner in the restaurant of the Hostal de los Reyes Catolicos, we crossed the Plaza de EspaÑa. It was raining again, but the floodlights brilliantly illuminated one of the most beautiful sights in Europe. As we entered the narrow street leading to our car, we kept turning around to catch a final glimpse of the Cathedral of St. James.
Santiago de Compostela had won our hearts, and we didn't want to leave.
Loretta G. Seyer is editor of Catholic Faith & Family.
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: Loretta G. Seyer ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: How St. James Came to Compostela DATE: 07/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 25-31, 1999 ----- BODY:Legend, as recorded in the Codex Calixtinus, a famous 12th-century compilation of material about Santiago, says St. James was the apostle to Spain. After many years of missionary activity in the peninsula, the son of Zebedee returned to Jerusalem, where he was martyred in A.D. 44. Nine disciples of James obtained his body and head, and set sail from Jaffa. In only seven miraculous days, they arrived off the Galician coast.
Their first thought was to provide a suitable tomb for the saint. Lupa, a local noblewoman, ultimately provided the disciples with a family tomb. But she sent them on many dangerous adventures before she decided to convert to Christianity and help the saint's disciples.
The tomb was rediscovered in 813. According to medieval legend, a shepherd watching his flock by night saw a star hovering over an oak grove. When he investigated the phenomenon, he saw a ruined building. The shepherd reported what he had seen to Bishop Teodomiro of Iria.
The bishop investigated, and concluded that the ruins were the tomb of St. James and his disciples Theodosius and Anastasius. Thrilled by the discovery, he hastened to the court of King Alfonso II, in Oviedo. The two returned to “the field of the star,” or compostela, thus making them the first two pilgrims to Santiago, or St. James.
Alfonso ordered a church to be built to house the saint's relics. The episcopal see was then transferred from Iria to Santiago, and soon thousands of pilgrims were making their way to the new shrine. Because the crowds were so great, King Alfonso III ordered a much larger church to be built.
That church was destroyed by Almanzor. Fortunately, he allowed the saint's tomb to continue standing because, according to legend, a single elderly monk remained there to pray. Impressed by the monk's courage, the king left the remains in peace.
Today the tomb is at the heart of the cathedral of St. James, which was built around the beginning of the 12th century. The saint's remains were moved into hiding during hostilities in the 16th century and have never been surely recovered.
— Loretta G. Seyer
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: An Unexpected View of Japanese at War DATE: 07/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 25-31, 1999 ----- BODY:War changes people — sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Death and the possibility of serious injury force a person to confront the meaning of his existence. But the thrill of combat and hatred of the enemy can also damage the soul. And losing a war can create bitterness and anger that will haunt a person or even a nation for many years after the conflict has ended.
Japan is rightfully branded the aggressor in World War II's Pacific Theater, but for most Americans this is no longer an issue. However, some here and in Asia believe that the Japanese have refused to recognize the evils for which they are responsible. Unlike their German counterparts, guilt doesn't seem to be part of their moral vocabulary.
The Burmese Harp, first released in 1957, dramatizes this complex subject with subtlety, passion and skill.
The Burmese Harp critiques Japan's militarism, and dramatizes profound doubts about the war's purpose — a perspective unusual among Japanese filmmakers of Ichikawa's generation.
The importance of redemption and regeneration is examined on both a personal and collective level, breaking away from some of the Western stereotypes about the Japanese military but reinforcing others.
Director Kon Ichikawa and writers Natto Wada and Michio Takiyawa focus on a Japanese army unit in Burma in July 1945 whose attitudes about war are different from what we expect. Their captain (Rentaro Mikumi) graduated from music school in civilian life and has taught one of his sergeants,
Mizushima (Shoji Yasui), to play the harp. This wistful instrument accompanies the songs of longing the soldiers sing as they walk through the jungle. These weary veterans treat every Burmese with whom they come into contact with great respect.
In a mountain village near the Thailand border, the unit is received with gracious hospitality. But as soon as British troops are spied sneaking up through the underbrush, they are left to their own devices.
Some wagons of their explosives have been left in an exposed area, and the Japanese, pretending to be unaware of their enemy's presence, walk out singing, “There's No Place Like Home,” in their native tongue. They surround the dangerous material and haul it back to the hut where they are bivouacked.
The Brits surprise them, not with gunfire, but with their own version of the same song. A bond is created between the two sides. It's an electric moment. Then the Japanese are told the war is over.
“What use is it to fight against fate now,” the captain comments to his troops. “We stood together heroically, and we shared our fates together.”
This poetic encounter is not typical of most surrenders. In a mountain cave nearby is another Japanese unit that has refused to give up. Mizushima volunteers to persuade it to change its mind. But if after 30 minutes, the holdouts haven't laid down their arms, the British will shell them with heavy artillery.
“To surrender is an insult to the men who died,” the commander of the dug-in unit proclaims. “Who cares about life? No one will surrender. We will fight to the last.”
This suicidal code of honor is what most Westerners believe is characteristic of Japanese troops, and the movie deliberately affirms the partial truth or this cliché. But by presenting us first with Mizushima's less militaristic unit, we see this samurailike fanaticism through its eyes and realize that not all Japanese soldiers are alike.
Mizushima ties a white flag to his harp and tries to lead the hold-outs to the Brits without a fight. But his fellow countrymen forcibly stop him. The shelling begins, and almost everyone is killed. Mizushima is knocked unconscious.
The sergeant's old unit is shipped off to a prison camp, still in Burma but some distance away. The peasants there are enthralled by its singing and sometimes join in. But Mizushima and his harp are missed. The captain is certain he's still alive. Others assume he's dead and want the captain to forget him.
Mizushima is rescued by a Buddhist monk. “Burma is Buddha's country,” the holy man tells him. “Whether the Japanese or the British conquer us, it is useless.”
As soon as the sergeant is nursed back to health, he steals the monk's robes and heads for the prison camp disguised as a holy man. At the beginning of the journey, there's no indication he has any affinity with the spiritual path, but experiences on the way transform him.
Mizushima is moved by the kindness he receives from the local peasants because of his monk's robes. But when he stumbles upon the disfigured bodies of unburied Japanese soldiers, his sense of purpose is unhinged. The horror of the scene overwhelms him.
He's put up at a monastery close to the prison camp. The next day as he makes his way toward the camp, he hears a beautiful Christian hymn coming from the woods. It's a funeral service attended by British hospital workers who are burying their dead Japanese patients. As he comes closer, he sees that they are mainly nuns in traditional habits and that the hymn is called “Nearer My God to Thee.”
Something inside Mizushima snaps. He walks away from the prison camp and his former comrades to become a “penitent wanderer.” He decides he must behave like the holy man whose clothes he has stolen. He believes his “way is to relieve the suffering of the world.” His first task is go back and bury his dead countrymen.
Mizushima's old unit learns he may be alive. It's scheduled to be shipped back to Japan shortly. The captain wants to contact him and take him home to help with the national reconstruction.
The Burmese Harp doesn't confront directly the issue of Japanese aggression. But in its critique of that country's traditional militarism, it dramatizes profound doubts about the war's purpose — a perspective unusual among Japanese filmmakers of Ichikawa's generation.
Personal redemption through a spiritual path is presented as an alternative. Elements of both Christianity and Buddhism are offered as moral guides.
Arts & Culture correspondent John Prizer writes from Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Videos on Release DATE: 07/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 25-31, 1999 ----- BODY:Nosferatu — The Vampyre
Loosely based on Bram Stoker's Dracula and F.W. Murnau's seminal 1922 film of a similar name, Nosferatu — The Vampyre is a powerful movie by a powerful director. Written and directed by Werner Herzog, it opens in the 19th-century, middle European town of Visma. A loving but somewhat uptight Jonathon Harker (Bruno Ganz) announces to his wife Lucy (Isabelle Adjani) that he's been ordered to visit Count Dracula (Klaus Kinski) in Transylvania to sell him a large house in Visma. The worried Lucy begs him to remain, but Jonathon starts on his travels. As he approaches the count's castle, he is repeatedly warned to stay away. But the intrepid traveler continues until he reaches the partial ruin. There Jonathon is received by the count, who combines gentlemanly manners with an unusual interest in blood. Jonathon tries to remain calm, but a series of unsettling discoveries eventually sends him back to Visma. Nosferatu — The Vampyre, originally released in 1979, is a stark and eerie film. It combines ancient legends with evocative photography to produce a chilling tale.
U.S. Catholic Conference Ratings adults only
The Mighty A2
The Mighty is a buddy movie with a difference. Based on the novel Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick, it tells the story of two misfits who tentatively enter into a symbiotic friendship. The much larger of the pair is Max (Elden Henson), a silent boy who has failed seventh grade twice. Max lives in Cincinnati with his grandparents (Gena Rowlands and Harry Dean Stanton). One day, an unusual boy moves next door. Kevin (Kieran Culkin) suffers from a crippling disease, but the 13-year-old doesn't let that stop him from exercising a highly intelligent mind. He's also supported in his efforts by a loving but practical mother (Sharon Stone). The two boys meet when Kevin is assigned to tutor Max. Slowly, they forge a friendship as each begins to realize that the other has an ability he needs. The boys' friendship is cemented by several trials, including attacks by a local gang and the return of Max's paroled father. Although The Mighty isn't a brilliant movie, it does offer some moving reflections on the meaning of friendship.
U.S. Catholic Conference Ratings adults and adolescents
Return to Glory
Originally produced in 1996 for the Nippon Television Network, Return to Glory is a fascinating documentary about the 20th-century's most important art-restoration project. The film's subtitle, “The 13-year Restoration of the Sistine Chapel,” basically describes its content. Using footage and interviews collected during the cleaning and repairing of Michelangelo's world-famous Vatican masterpiece, the documentary demonstrates how four experts restored frescoes damaged and yellowed by time into something approaching the brilliantly hued originals. The project began in 1981, just in time to prevent irreparable damage to the frescoes. The restorers first cleaned and repaired the walls, then the 40-meter-long ceiling and finally “The Last Judgment,” which serves as an altar backdrop. As they worked, they made numerous discoveries about figures in the frescoes and Michelangelo's techniques. The restorers found, for example, that he painted directly on wet plaster. They finished in April 1994. Their work stunned art historians and ordinary art lovers, who were forced to reconsider their conclusions about Michelangelo's painting. Pope John Paul II celebrated the restoration with a special Mass.
Loretta G. Seyer is editor of Catholic Faith & Family.
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Is the Public School Still Possible? DATE: 07/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 25-31, 1999 ----- BODY:Called by some the “Satan case,” the legal battle in the Bedford, N.Y., public school district earlier this year raises issues of community values and parental control over a child's education. It also calls into question the viability of public education in a nation that has become more diverse in religious views and increasingly divided in approaches to basic moral issues that once united Americans.
As part of a popular trend among public school educators, the Bedford curriculum includes a multicultural emphasis in which students are given extensive information about the cultures of other societies, including religious beliefs and practices.
Some parents wondered why these beliefs — including pagan and occult practices — could be explained in public schools where discussion of the Ten Commandments and Jesus Christ is traditionally discouraged. They were also concerned about the religious aura that was given to some civic observances such as Earth Day.
A group of Catholic parents eventually brought suit, charging that the school district was promoting occult practices and New Age spiritualism, and claimed their First Amendment rights to freedom of religion were violated since Catholic practices were not given equal treatment.
In the wake of the case, some education experts are asking if the “common school,” once hailed as a foundation of good citizenship and national pre-eminence, is possible or even desirable in modern America.
It's Parental Choice
Professor Rosemary Salomone of St. John's University School of Law in New York is writing a book on parental choice and educational values which is due to be published next year by Yale University Press. She considers the Bedford case a focal point for important issues in education today.
Devoting a full chapter in her book to the protracted battle in the suburban Westchester County school district that drew national media attention, she studies the finer legal points and the different views and motivations of parents, students, school administrators and teachers.
Her conclusion is that government-run schools are incapable of educating a large and diverse student body, especially in sensitive areas of values and morality, and that families should be afforded the financial resources through government or private programs to send their children to the schools of their choosing.
The Bedford case is important not because one side was right and the other wrong, she told the Register, but because it highlighted the fact that there are some things in society's structure that government cannot legislate and courts should not decide.
“The truth is, nobody was wrong in this case,” she said. A government-run school system “does not lend itself to parents who march to a different drummer. The real problem is when you have parents locked into a neighborhood school they do not like and have no choice.”
Concluding the Bedford case last May in White Plains, N.Y., federal District Judge Charles L. Brieant ruled in favor of the Catholic parents on three of the 15 charges, describing as “truly bizarre” an Earth Day observance and as “terminally dumb” a field trip to a cemetery. Both sides claimed partial victory and are considering appeal.
The judge prohibited a culture of India study in which elementary students made paper images of an elephant-headed Hindu god, the construction of “worry dolls” by elementary students which were supposed to ward off bad dreams and anxieties, and a high school Earth Day celebration featuring statements that the earth is the mother and the sun the father of all things.
Bruce L. Dennis, superintendent of the Bedford schools, said that he was satisfied that most of district's practices were upheld and called the three proscribed practices “relatively trivial incidents.”
Christopher A. Ferrara, head of the New Jersey-based American Catholic Lawyers Association, which represented some of the parents, called the decision “a vindication.” The parents had been ridiculed and called extremists even by some fellow Catholics, but a federal judge found merit at the heart of their arguments, he said.
He added that if public schools are barred from teaching or promoting Christianity, they should not be allowed to impose the beliefs and practices of other religions.
Mary Ann DiBari, the grandmother and guardian of two students in the case, claimed “a major victory” in that the court recognized a violation of the plaintiffs' First Amendment rights.
People For the American Way, an organization which is openly hostile to what it calls the “religious right” and typically opposes the mixing of religion and public education, filed an amicus curiae brief in behalf of parents who supported the school district. The organization objected to the legal efforts of the Catholic plaintiffs to have parts of the curriculum removed simply because they did not agree with them, said Elliot Mincberg, vice president and general counsel for the Washington-based group.
The group is opposed to the routing of public funds to religious-based schools even if it is by means of vouchers paid to parents.
Mincberg told the Register that public education is viable because there is a broad-based agreement in most school districts about what should be taught. For parents who don't agree with the majority, options such as home-schooling exist, he stated.
It's Bad Pedagogy
Law professor Salomone, who lives in Westchester with her husband and their son, said that as a Catholic she does not see the practices in Bedford as a violation of religious rights. Rather, she considers “worry dolls” and earth-and-sun creeds bad pedagogy that should not be taught for educational reasons.
She also found objectionable some practices the judge did not prohibit, such as the drug-prevention D.A.R.E. program, which she thinks gives students too much information at too young an age, and a card game called “Magic: The Gathering,” which includes images of demons, ghosts and witches.
Her husband, Joseph Viteritti, a political scientist and a research professor of public administration at New York University, has also written extensively on education. His latest book, Choosing Equality, will be published in the fall by the Brookings Institute. He told the Register that supporters of public education who oppose tax vouchers and charter schools generally have a romantic vision of public education and fail to recognize the rate of failure.
“This common school concept doesn't work for everybody. What happens to them?” he said.
Salomone and her husband send their son to a private, nonreligious elementary school even though the public school in their area is highly respected. The school of their choice is superior in academics and promotes golden-rule values. They prefer to leave religious instruction to the home and the parish CCD program.
“Parents' decisions regarding their children are the most important they will make,” Salomone said. “If I'M able to exercise my choice in the matter of education because I have the resources, what of parents who don't have resources? They're stuck. … The system is based on income. If you can buy yourself out, you're free.”
Most adversely affected are those who look especially to education to improve their family's position in society, she observed. Poor parents who are forced to send their children to inferior schools are the biggest supporters of vouchers, she said.
The ability of parents to choose schools for their children is the equality issue for the new millennium, Salomone stated. And it is an issue that will not be resolved easily or quietly.
Brian Caulfield writes from New York.
----- EXCERPT: Lawsuit in Bedford, N.Y., by Catholic parents reveals a deep divide in public education ----- Extended BODY: Brian Caulfield ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Education Notebook DATE: 07/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 25-31, 1999 ----- BODY:Do Old Anti-Catholic Laws Still Count?
ST. PETERSBURG TIMES, July 6— In 1885, a constitutional convention added these words to Florida's Constitution: “No money shall ever be taken from the public treasury directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination, or in aid of any sectarian institution.”
In an evenhanded manner, staff writer Joe Becker looks at the anti-Catholic roots of the amendment, the failed presidential candidate who inspired it, and its implications for Florida's new school voucher program.
The amendment was part of a nationwide effort to stifle attempts to create a kind of Catholic public schools. “Catholics, who tried unsuccessfully to stop the public schools from forcing students to read the King James Bible, recite Protestant prayers and sing Protestant hymns, wanted public money for their own schools,” said Becker. “In some cities with Catholic majorities, they began to indirectly receive it.”
The protagonist who inspired most of the anti-Catholic measures that were sweeping the country was failed presidential candidate and former U.S. House Speaker James Blaine. He introduced a severe separation of church and state federal amendment that did not win passage but succeeded in setting off a flurry of state initiatives that did pass. Legal scholars agree that most of the measures — including Florida's — were inspired by Blaine's original and were clearly anti-Catholic.
In a lawsuit, opponents of Florida's new statewide voucher program, argue that the clause in Florida's Constitution — no matter how unseemly its origins — effectively kills vouchers before they can be used to help a single family.
The motives behind the constitutional language, however, are important because the U.S. Supreme Court has overturned old laws where it found that they had discriminatory intent. “They are relying on language [that legalizes] anti-Catholic bigotry,” said Randy Lewis, a spokesman for Floridians for School Choice.
Voucher opponents counter that the amendment has withstood two constitutional revisions, including one as recent as 1968, proving that its content represents the enduring belief of Floridians.
Pagans Find a Home on College Campuses
THE DETROIT NEWS, July 6— “College retains a special place in the modern pagan movement,” according to a story by Vivi Hoang published by the Scripps Howard syndicate.
At least 75 college pagan groups have Internet Web sites. “They often list officers, answer frequently-asked questions and announce local pagan events,” said Hoang in an upbeat piece that could have been written about any minority religion that is gaining new, enthusiastic adherents. “Many schools now have a registered pagan student group, often with a faculty sponsor.”
Book sales on witchcraft, paganism and other NewAge divisions are rising. “One e-commerce textbook site that targets colleges, varsitybooks.com, lists about 60 books on paganism. Amazon.com yields more than 300,” said Hoang.
“Campuses remain the gateway for many into paganism,” said Hoang, “because of the usual willingness of the young to experiment with the new and unfamiliar.”
Pagan students and advocates are quoted at length, but Hoang does not include critics of modern paganism or any reaction from mainstream religions or cult experts. Not even college officials and teachers were asked to comment on the trend.
Threat of Flunking Motivates Students
US NEWS & WORLD REPORT, July 19— The Waco, Texas schools are featured by the national magazine in a report on “the broad national trend” against social promotion, which reporter Ben Wildasky called “the long entrenched practice of advancing students to the next grade even if they haven't learned what they should have.”
“To be promoted under Waco's two-year-old policy, kids in grades three through eight must pass their classes, have a 90% attendance record, and pass the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills, a standardized test,” Wildasky wrote.
The results so far: “Skyrocketing scores have moved [Waco] off the state's low-performing list and are likely to earn it a top rating this year,” said Wildasky.
The new policy has helped students and parents to concentrate on the goal of promotion and eventual graduation, and Wildasky reports that faculty and staff — right down to the cafeteria workers — have been enlisted to help students succeed.
Some have criticized the program because of the pressure it places on students to succeed and because it has already increased drop-out rates and the number of area youngsters who do not have a high school diploma.
The district is also a poor one with a large number of Latino students, giving rise to charges of racism as the motivation for the schools “crackdown.”
“If I were a racist and wanted to devise an educational system that oppressed minorities, I would have continued with the one we had,” said a former member of the school board.
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Marriage Penalty Tax Under Attack, Again DATE: 07/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 25-31, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON — Sharon Mallory and Darryl Pierce say they want to marry, but the Indiana couple are awaiting word from their elected officials first.
“We seriously considered marriage in 1997,” Mallory said. “We told our accountant to run our taxes through as if we were married. And the tax penalty came to $2,800 and we didn't have that. Thank God we weren't married.”
Most family advocates would prefer, of course, that a couple like them wouldn't forgo marriage for purely economic reasons. And such advocates would strongly deny that the tax code is a moral justification for couples like Mallory and Pierce living together, without benefit of marriage. Nevertheless, many of these advocates cite this case as a dastardly effect of the so-called marriage penalty which taxes some married couples at higher rates than singles.
“Even if it's done that for only one couple, that's one couple too many; it's an immoral decision our government has made,” said Janet Parshall, executive director of the Family Research Council.
That could change. In the weekly Republican radio address July 10, Senate Finance Committee Chairman William Roth announced that his $792 billion tax cut proposal would include provisions eliminating the marriage penalty.
“For too long, husbands and wives who have worked and paid taxes, have been penalized by their dual incomes,” the Delaware Republican said. “This plan will fix that by providing the fair and necessary tax break they deserve.”
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Archer, R-Texas, has less ambitious plans for the marriage penalty. But he also addresses it in his $864 million tax cut bill, which will be put to a vote in the House after its current recess.
In a July 15 letter to Archer, however, 60 Republican lawmakers thought his plan offered only meager support for families. “We believe this bill doesn't go far enough in providing relief to families,” wrote the group, led by Rep. David McIntosh, R-Ind.
The Marriage Penalty
The reason for the marriage penalty is simple: Once working couples decide to marry, their dual income pushes them into a higher tax bracket. According to the Congressional Budget Office, 42% of married couples (21 million couples) received marriage penalties in 1997, averaging about $1,400 in higher taxes per couple.
Parshall said that “$1,400 may only be pennies in Washington but back home it's the difference between making and not making it, between having enough to start a college fund or not.”
Parshall also noted that the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants found 66 specific ways in which the tax code penalizes marriage, including the Earned Income Tax Credit, Retirement Savings and Medical Savings Accounts.
(The entire list is available online at www.frc.org/misc/lf99b1fe.html.)
Prior to 1948, the tax code made no distinctions between married couples and singles. In 1948, the tax code changed to benefit marriage: Married couples paid less taxes than two single people earning the same income.
By 1969, single people clamored for equity, but the resulting tax code started the first, albeit small, marriage penalty. Tax reforms in 1981 and 1986 reduced these tax penalties, but subsequent tax increases in 1990 and 1993 exacerbated the marriage penalty.
Most critics of the marriage penalty acknowledge that Congress would never intentionally discourage matrimony by imposing such a tax. Nonetheless, “from little acorns, big oaks grow,” Parshall said. She said she thinks the elimination of the marriage penalty should be the No. 1 priority for taxes this year.
Congress Slow to Act
Efforts to dump the marriage penalty have faced tough times.
Reps. Jerry Weller, R-Ill., and McIntosh first introduced legislation in 1997 to bring back tax equity between singles and married couples. Their plan would have allowed married couples to choose whether to file jointly or individually, whichever gave them the greatest benefit.
Family advocates initially criticized the plan because it would have ended the financial incentive in the tax code for parents who stay at home with their children.
Currently the tax code allows income splitting, which means that income from the husband and wife are added together and each spouse is taxed on half of the income. Allowing married couples to file as singles would have the effect, columnist Phyllis Schlafly said, of producing an incentive for homemakers to enter the work force. Senator Roth's current tax plan has this same feature.
“They called it a Homemaker Tax,” said John Steele, legislative director for Rep. McIntosh. The criticism effectively killed any chance of ending the penalty in 1997.
A new Weller-McIntosh bill was announced in 1998. This bill would have doubled the standard individual deduction and allowed more people to qualify for the 15% tax bracket, thereby eliminating any marriage penalty as well as avoiding penalties for single-income families.
McIntosh even brought Sharon Mallory and Darryl Pierce to Washington to share their story with the House Ways and Means Committee.
“This Congress can do something that will help millions of families in a real and tangible way,” Mallory told the committee. “I urge you to approve this legislation as soon as possible.”
Her testimony helped pass marriage penalty relief through the House, though the bill died in the Senate.
Now, with the Congressional Budget Office projecting a revenue surplus of $1 trillion over five years, marriage penalty relief will likely be passed from Congress, along with other tax cuts. Observers fear a veto from President Clinton, however. “I think he'll veto, if the tax cut approaches $1 trillion,” Steele said.
In the event of a veto, family advocates would like Congress to vote on the marriage penalty separately from other tax changes. “I think it would be problematic to stand on the floor of the House and vote against this bill,” Parshall said. “They'd have a lot of explaining to do back home.”
Steele would also like such a vote. “We'd love to see that; it's up to the Republican leadership,” he said. “But I don't think it'll happen.” In which case, the marriage penalty would be delayed for yet another year.
Josh Mercer writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: Josh Mercer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A Leading Pro-lifer Quits GOP in 'Decision of Conscience' DATE: 07/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 25-31, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON — Faced with what he termed a choice between party or principle, one presidential candidate has decided to leave the Republican Party.
Sen. Bob Smith, N.H., a leading pro-life legislator and a Catholic, delivered a 50-minute speech before the Senate on July 13 to announce his decision. He blamed Republicans' lack of commitment to their party's platform for forcing him to leave.
“I have come to the cold realization that the Republican Party is more interested in winning elections than supporting the principles of the platform,” Smith said.
Smith highlighted several areas in which Republicans, in his view, have not been true to their party's “contract” with the American people, particularly its commitment to right-to-life principles.
Smith conceded that since 1996 he has played a role in his party's compromises, which, in retrospect, he views as a sort of conservative conspiracy against conservatism. “After a lot of soul searching,” he said, he decided to change his registration from Republican to Independent.
“It is a decision of conscience,” Smith said. “The desire to stay in power caused us to start listening to the pollsters and the consultants again, who are now telling us, for some inexplicable reason, that we need to walk away from the issues that got us here to remain in power.”
Washington Reaction
Some pro-life organizations viewed Smith's move as a much-needed tonic for the party which they say ignores the pro-life activists who support it on a local level.
In a press release issued the day after Smith's speech, Eagle Forum President Phyllis Schlafly said, “Sen. Bob Smith's departure from the Republican Party should be a wakeup call to the Republican establishment. Sen. Smith will not be taking votes away from the Republicans because those votes have already left the Republican Party. It's unfortunate that the Republican establishment is in denial about grass-roots reality.”
But political commentators and other legislators downplayed the effect Smith's decision would have on the future of pro-life activity in Washington.
Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., author of the pro-life Hyde Amendment, issued a statement to the Register July 14 in which he expressed his disappointment over Smith's decision to leave the GOP.
“I deeply regret Sen. Smith's leaving the Republican Party, although I understand and sympathize with his principled reasons,” Hyde said.
He said he feared Smith's move would “aid the opposition” and preferred that ideological differences should be “fought out within the party.”
Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas was also critical of Smith's decision. “Why not wait and work for a Republican House and a Republican Senate and a Republican president? When all the elements are in place, if Republicans still resist the platform — then leave.”
Thomas recommended an incremental approach to changing policy as an alternative to switching party affiliation. “You can't marginalize yourself in politics,” Thomas said. “Politics is about an incremental advancement of your agenda. Conservative Democrats don't leave their party because their party is pro-abortion. Politics is frustrating and it's slow and it doesn't always give you what you want.”
Richard Cohen, a pro-choice columnist for The Washington Post, also said that Smith's move would not change the climate in Washington. “If you want to put the screws to Bush,” Cohen said, “the way to do that is to stay in the Republican Party, make sure you get invited to the Republican debates, and hold his feet to the fire there.”
“I actually line up with Cohen on this one,” said Ramesh Ponnuru from the Washington office of National Review. “If you're concerned about the direction of the Republican Party, the logical thing to do would be to work within it. After all, the Republican Party is more conservative now than it was in 1980, because of the effort of conservatives who didn't pick up their marbles and run home, but stayed in it to change it.”
But former political consultant and longtime Washington observer Fred Mann said that the GOP had better watch out.
“If it was Smith's intention to further his own political career, then it was unwise,” Mann said. “But if you take his intentions at face value, running third party only increases the chance that [pro-life issues] will be given more serious consideration.
“If people don't think Smith can take grass-roots voters away from the Republican nominee, just take a look at what Perot did in the last two elections.”
Brian McGuire writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: Brian McGuire ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Insider DATE: 07/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 25-31, 1999 ----- BODY:Sen. Bob Smith
Pro-Life Presidential Candidate
On July 13 U.S. Sen. Bob Smith of New Hampshire rescinded his membership in the Republican Party. Kicking off his presidential campaign as an independent three days later, Smith was the keynote speaker at a National Men's Conference in Coon Rapids, Minn. He spoke with Register correspondent Barb Ernster at the event.
Barb Ernster: How did you come to this crucial decision to leave the GOP, which you called a “decision of conscience”?
Sen. Bob Smith: With a lot of prayer and difficulty. It was a tough decision. The political establishment really fights back hard. … My view is that if you elected Republicans for the next 20 years, you'd still have abortion and some of the problems we face in America, and it's just not acceptable to me.
You say that the political structure as it stands today is a handicap. Can you explain what you meant by that?
Basically we've put political expediency above principles. … The Republican platform says, for example, that the right of an unborn child to be born is an inherent right under the Constitution. But Republican judges voted to give us Roe v. Wade. Republican judges upheld Roe v. Wade in the Casey case. Republicans didn't override Bill Clinton on partial birth abortion. Republicans refused to co-sponsor my human life bill in Congress. Republicans blocked Reagan's nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, and the same Republicans voted in Clinton's nomination for the pro-abortion Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
What would you say to disenfranchised voters who agree with you on principle but who are afraid they'll waste a vote on you?
I've heard that argument but it makes no sense. If you're going to vote on principles, then you vote on principles. You don't vote for a front-runner unless that person has your principles. I'M giving the election to the American people; I'M not trying to give it to Al Gore by siphoning votes off the Republican candidate. If you vote on principle, your vote is never wasted.
There are a lot of critics who say you're going to split the pro-life vote.
Why am I splitting it? That's the interesting thing. I'm pro-life. There isn't anybody in America who's running for president who's more pro-life than I and who's done more than I have. [They've] never stood on the floor of Congress and taken a beating on partial birth abortion, never offered a bill to end abortion, never been on the floor lobbying to get votes to pass language in a bill to keep foreign countries from committing abortions. I've done that. I've been in this fight now for 15 years. The point is I'll do it. I've stood up on this issue and I've won, year after year, race after race. There are enough pro-lifers out there to win this election.
Are we as a country at a turning point and is this election a crucial deciding point on which direction we're headed?
I honestly believe that it is. We're killing our children. We're killing our posterity. And you know what? We don't care. We're having $1,000-a-plate chicken dinners with red, white and blue balloons, and we're having a grand old time. And babies just keep getting killed every day. Those people who say, “You don't have a chance, Bob. I'm gonna vote for Bush.” Then fine, go ahead. But don't complain to me when babies keep on dying, because they're going to keep on dying. Nothing's going to change.
This is a Bush/Gore ticket. There's not a dime's worth of difference.
Outside of being elected president in 2000, what is your greatest hope of achievement during this election season?
I want to restore hope to the people of America. Less than 40% of the American people vote. … We say, Hey, I'm making money, everything's fine, never mind America. On the contrary, the founders put theirs on the line. It's really interesting to read what those guys went through after they signed the Declaration of Independence. Some of them were harassed. They were really broken. They lost everything, their money, their property, their houses were burned and sacked. A lot of remarkable stories.
I want to instill the passion in these people. I want these people to come out and understand that this is America, the greatest country in the world — and you're going to let it slip away because of a two- party system? Let's build on principle.
Winston Churchill said, and I'm paraphrasing, “Never quit. Never, never, never, never quit.” The odds are long. We're taking on the toughest establishment in the world and they're mean. I didn't even get off the Senate floor and they were already attacking. But I can't go to my grave not trying.
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: What Do Kosovar Women Want? DATE: 07/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 25-31, 1999 ----- BODY:Why would a U.N. group be so concerned about supplying Kosovo refugees with contraceptives and abortion-inducing equipment?
With this question in mind the Population Research Institute, a Virginia-based think tank, sent me to Albania a few weeks ago to tour the Kosovar refugee camps.
Beginning in late March, nearly 800,000 people, running from NATO bombs and Serb atrocities, crossed the border in a few short weeks. International relief soon flooded into the region.
Oddly, the head of the U.N. Population Fund, Nafis Sadik, promised that the fund's single contribution to Kosovar relief would be enough “reproductive health” supplies to last 350,000 people in the field for six months.
These supplies, to be distributed by International Planned Parenthood Federation and Marie Stopes International, included IUDs, abortifacient emergency contraceptives and portable abortion machines. Sadik's announcement came at a time when it was not clear whether enough food, clothing or medicine would reach the refugees.
This “reproductive health” intervention among the Kosovar refugees apparently was based on three premises.
First was the question of rape. The Serbs are charged with using “systematic rape” as an element of war against the Kosovar civilians. The second premise held that the Kosovar women are oppressed by a pro-natal patriarchy and that they would want their “reproductive rights,” if only they weren't too scared to ask. The third premise was that these supplies were desperately needed because, with nothing much to do in the camps, the Kosovars were engaged in massive promiscuity.
Firsthand observation quickly dispelled premises two and three.
Are the Kosovar women struggling to break free of a patriarchal nightmare? I found the Kosovar women to be as strong as my own grandmother back on the farm. Indeed, any Western boy would do well to learn from a Kosovar woman how to shake hands — a very firm double-pump, looking you square in the eye. Not the shy and retiring types, they frequently interrupted and shouted over their sometimes cowed husbands. Kosovar women can get what they want.
An American nurse said that when a Kosovar woman is told she is pregnant, ‘it makes her world.’
Is there promiscuity in the camps? First, the camps are nothing but very unprivate tents, or rooms in ramshackle buildings. Privacy is nil. A frequently heard complaint was that husbands and wives could find no quiet time of their own. When asked about Kosovar promiscuity in the camps, a young Italian relief worker started to laugh. Indeed, the very suggestion seemed to be a slander against a very modest and moral people.
As to rape, it is generally understood that many Kosovar women were raped by the Serb soldiers. Less clear, however, is the number. The charge of “systematic rape” implies an organized and massive attack. Yet, an expert report later released in May by the U.N. Population Fund itself admitted there was no evidence of “systematic rape.”
Respecting their privacy, I did not raise this question directly with the Kosovar women. I did, however, interview dozens of relief workers, including medical personnel. Although much anecdotal evidence exists for cases of rape, the Population Fund's expert report is correct. No evidence exists for the charge of “systematic rape.” In fact, when it came time to charge Serb President Slobodan Milosevic with war crimes, “systematic rape” was not among the charges.
So, why was the Population Fund using this as its lead argument? One reason may be that it knows that when rape is used as a reason for abortion, anti-abortion sentiment drops nearly to zero.
What about the Kosovars and “reproductive rights”? They couldn't be less interested. Kosovars boast of their large families. An American nurse working in the northern town of Shkodrasaid that when a Kosovar woman is told she is pregnant, “it makes her world.”
Was there an interest in sterilization and abortion among this captive population? Slim to none. The regional hospital in Shkodra reported no Kosovar sterilizations and only a few abortions. The regional hospital in the southern port city of Vlora reported only 12 abortions over a three-month period among an enormous refugee population.
It so happened that on one day of my visit, a Kosovar woman had come in for an abortion. I asked her if she had been informed about health risks related to such an invasive procedure. Repeatedly, she said no. Was she told that future pregnancies could be adversely effected by abortion? No. Her uninformed abortion was performed by the Population Fund's partner, the Albanian government.
Meanwhile, the Population Fund's head trouble-shooter in the refugee situation, Roseanne Murphy, told me she intends to place the organization's “flag in all seven regions of Kosovo.” What's more, Sterling Scruggs, head of external communications for the Population Fund, said that the organization had been invited into Kosovo by the Yugoslav government in Belgrade, which means indicted war-criminal Milosevic himself.
That may mean that the Kosovars, who have one of the highest birthrates in Europe, will become a different kind of the target in the future.
Austin Ruse is director of the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute.
----- EXCERPT: Refugees aren't clamoring for contraceptives and abortion, despite U.N. claims ----- Extended BODY: Austin Ruse ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 07/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 25-31, 1999 ----- BODY:On Dec. 19, 1993, Pope John Paul II devoted his Angelus message to the dignity of human beings at all stages of life — including embryos (see story by Wayne Laugesen, Page 1):
In the conception of a human being one does not witness a mere biological fact, but rather the moment in which a man comes into existence. In fact, science demonstrates that in the fruit of conception “the characteristic aspects, already well determined, are established from the first instant.”
From this embryonic existence to full physical and spiritual maturity, there is a continuous organic development. This evident orientation of the embryo toward its future makes it impossible for it to be treated as mere biological matter, since, in God's plan for man, the precise biological “individuality” received in the maternal womb is also welcomed by the ominipotent love of God who intervenes to endow it with an immortal soul.
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: Did You Know? DATE: 07/25/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: July 25-31, 1999 ----- BODY:“Whenever we talk about euthanasia and assisted suicide,” wrote Jesuit Father Robert J. Spitzer, president of Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., in the Priests for Life July-August newsletter, “we must include three fundamental points that are of premium importance to most people.
“First, there is the terrifying subject of pain.
“We have to get across that:
“a) 96% of all pain can be 100% controlled with modern-day medications.
“b) Nearly 100% of suicide requests from patients are reversed the moment pain and depression are treated.
“c) Most types of pain medications and treatments can be administered in the home. Patients need not be afraid that they will have to be locked up in hospitals for long periods of time in order to obtain pain treatment.”
----- EXCERPT: Facts of Life ----- Extended BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: JFK Jr. Buried at Sea DATE: 8/1/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 1-7, 1999 ----- BODY:HYANNIS POINT, Mass. — Off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, an officer in dress whites carried three brass urns of cremated remains, one by one, down a ladder to the waterline by the tail of the destroyer USS Briscoe.
There on a small steel platform, their next of kin committed to the sea the remains of John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and her sister Lauren Bessette into the waves. The ceremony was performed July 22 about three miles from where Kennedy's plane crashed six days earlier as it approached Martha's Vineyard Airport.
“We commit their elements to the deep,” a Navy chaplain prayed at the ceremony, “for we are dust and unto dust we shall return, but the Lord Jesus Christ will change our mortal bodies to be like his in glory, for he is risen, the firstborn from the dead.
“So let us commend our brother and sisters to the Lord, that the Lord may embrace them in peace and raise them up on the last day.”
The Navy-style service was carried out for the civilians by special permission, and at the families' requests, but with a few changes: a Navy brass quintet played Christian hymns in place of the military “Taps.”
There was no singing, but news reports printed the hymns' words. “Abide with me … fast falls the eventide. The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide. When other helpers fail and comforts flee, help of the helpless, O abide with me.”
Until 1963 cremation wasn't allowed by the Catholic Church. More recently the regulations governing cremation have further evolved.
Burial at sea by choice is allowed by the Church, a U.S. Navy chaplain said. “It's perfectly legitimate according to the life of the Church,” said Capt. Stephen Linehan, a Catholic priest who serves as division director for plans and policies of the Navy's Chief of Chaplains office in Arlington, Va.
Father Linehan, who said he has conducted several burials at sea, likened the practice to the traditional committal service at cemeteries, with some adaptations.
Father Linehan said two Catholic Navy chaplains helped conduct the Kennedy-Bessette committal service, Father Bill Petruska and Father Lou Iasiello. Jesuit Father Charles J. O'Byrne, who presided at John Kennedy Jr.'s wedding, also participated.
According to the Code of Canon Law, “The Church earnestly recommends that the pious custom of burial be retained; but it does not forbid cremation, unless it is chosen for reasons which are contrary to Christian teaching” (Canon 1176, Section 3).
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “The Church permits cremation, provided that it does not demonstrate a denial of faith in the resurrection of the body” (No. 2301).
The Church takes a dim view of any practices that it believes do not show proper reverence for human remains, such as scattering cremains to the wind. Several television commentators referred to the Kennedy and Bessette remains being “scattered,” but Father Linehan disputed that description.
“I'm sure they didn't scatter,” Father Linehan said. “What you do is, whether they're in the urn or not in the urn, you just pour them in the sea directly.”
The key is motivation, Father Linehan said. It is important that the disposal of remains not show any contempt for the resurrection of the body, he said, adding, “Body and soul are important in the life of the Church.”
Matt MacDonald is based in Mashpee, Massachusetts.
----- EXCERPT: Navy Chaplain Defends Pouring of Remains ------- EXTENDED BODY: Matt Mcdonald -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Debate Rages Over Remedy for Health-Care Industry DATE: 8/1/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 1-7, 1999 ----- BODY:SAN DIEGO—Americans seem to agree that the health-care industry is in need of treatment. But not everyone believes that recent federal moves to legislate a patients' “bill of rights” is the right medicine.
Such legislation is misnamed, according to Dr. Jack Lewin, president of the California Medical Association.
“The bill passed by the Senate is an HMO Bill of Rights,” he said. “It puts power into the hands of HMOs [health maintenance organizations] and diminishes the power of doctors. As it stands now, patients might be better off if this bill were to go down in flames and President Clinton to veto it.”
Lauretta Sandles of Fairfield, Calif., can attest to an HMO diminishing the powers of her physician. In 1995, she became ill with a virus that attacked and enlarged her heart. She has been fighting HMOs for the last four years to approve the care she has needed. On a heart transplant list for 18 months, she began to improve with a new medication, but the insurer eventually disapproved it in favor of a generic brand.
During this period her original HMO was taken over by another, which in turn was bought out by a third insurer. The new insurer now has told Sandles that she cannot go to the medical center where her cardiologist practices, a mile and a half from home, but must drive to a county hospital 25 miles away.
In addition, the pharmaceutical committee of the HMO has notified her that she will be allowed to take the medicine prescribed by her doctor on a trial basis.
“Before,” said the mother and grandmother, who had worked her way to a top position in local government before her illness, “the only way I could prove I wasn't being helped by the generic drug was to die. It's all about money. It's not right for these companies to sacrifice lives for the bottom line.”
Keeping down the costs was precisely why HMOs had come into vogue. In the 1980s, as health insurance premiums escalated, private companies increasingly turned to managed-care providers to help hold down costs. A situation like Sandles' represents a downside of the managed-care system, critics believe.
Now, as Congress grapples with the problem, an array of issues must be faced. They include how to decide when a treatment is medically necessary, how to gain insurance coverage for treatments or prescriptions denied by health insurers, what legal recourse patients have when denied care or reimbursement for care, and how far the federal govern-ment's protection should extend.
A bill forged by Senate Republicans in mid-July promised to protect patients from health care insurers that skimp on medical coverage, for instance, those that make mastectomies a day-care surgery or refuse a request to consult a specialist. This protection, however, would be extended to fewer than 40% of people in managed care organizations, according to Wendy Mariner of the Boston University School of Public Health.
Further, “there is no enforcement mechanism in this bill,” she said. “There is no incentive for an HMO to abide by the regulation, such as giving patients the right to sue, and so patients will have little recourse if they don't receive the treatment they need.”
House Bill
A House health care bill authored in part by Democrat Reps. John Dingell of Michigan and Richard Gephardt of Missouri holds greater hope of meaningful reform, said Lewin of the California Medical Association. “I think their bill of rights would meet the expectations of both patients and HMOs.”
While still in early stages of garnering House approval, the Dingell bill has provisions relating to a patient's access to care, quality assurance, procedures for appeals and protections for the doctor-patient relationship. In the latter, patients would be assured treatments physicians deem medically necessary, be allowed to hold health plans accountable if its decision to limit care ultimately caused harm and be assured doctors could discuss all treatment options with them.
The major thrust of managed care reform, according to Mariner at Boston University, should be to “improve the accountability of insurers. They will tell you, however, that if patients have the right to sue their HMOs, it will drive up the costs of care because the insurance companies will be flooded with lawsuits. I don't believe this. It just doesn't happen in states where patients are now free to file suits. But by their protests, the insurers make it sound as if they are already guilty of negligence.”
Another factor, yet to be discussed, is quality of care, said Mariner, a professor of health law. “The question for patients is, ‘Are you getting [good health care]?’ And if you are, are you willing to pay for it? People have to realize that quality health care can't be had for cheap.
“A conscientious HMO can be put at a competitive disadvantage if it offers more and better care,” acknowledged Mariner. “That is why regulations can help competition; they level the playing field so that HMOs really can compete on quality as well as price.”
Doctor Knows Best?
John Airola, of Christian Brothers Employee Benefit Services in Romeoville, Ill., said that the patients' bill of rights approach sounds good, but asked, “What does it really mean?”
As a private Catholic health insurer for employees in Catholic institutions, the organization's Benefit Trust division provides its participants with the right to see a specialist without having to be referred by a primary care physician, as those in for-profit HMOs generally do.
“We don't like the concept of one person, a primary care physician, controlling a person's health care,” he said. “We think people know their needs and should be able to go straight to a specialist if they want.”
Some doctors would argue the point.
“Having a patient work with a primary physician provides better quality control for the patient,” said Dr. Jane Boyd, a physician at the Scripps Clinic in San Diego. “The role of a primary care physician is not to limit care but to coordinate it.
“Care can become quite fragmented when provided by multiple specialists without a primary physician acting, in a sense, as a quarterback. Also, many patients do not always know what conditions require specialty care or which specialists would ideally provide that care when needed.”
As legislators haggle over approaches to constructing managed care reform, their work, if Clinton approves it, will primarily affect the relationship between health insurers and their beneficiaries, said Jane Wilson of Catholic Healthcare West. “It won't interfere with the relationship between people and their doctors or hospitals,” she contended.
Her position is based on the work of California Healthcare West, which is a not-for-profit 48-hospital system in Arizona, California and Nevada. “By mission and ministry, we are driven to provide quality care to all patients, regardless of ability to pay,” she said.
The likelihood of any health reform bill passing this year is small, considering the complexity of the issue. According to Lewin of the California Medical Association, the issue will “come back next year and loom large in election year campaigns.”
Martha Lepore is based in Coronado, California.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Martha Lepore -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Latin America Faces 'Population Winter' DATE: 8/1/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 1-7, 1999 ----- BODY:LIMA, Peru—A common view in the West is that Latin America's struggles against poverty is due to too many people trying to live off too few resources.
The United Nations Population Fund, for instance, maintains that the situation calls for nothing less than a concerted effort to dramatically reduce the population. That body has called for, among other measures, aggressively dispensing birth control.
Now a respected Peruvian author and government official has raised his voice to explain that the true problem, and the wisest solutions, lie in the exact opposite direction.
“Health authorities here are so eager to embrace the modern model of progress that they are happy to see the decrease of the population even in areas that are already depopulated,” says Arturo Salazar Larrain, a congressman whose 1994 book, The Great Lie, debunks the overpopulation myth. “They don't seem to worry that people are still poor, and getting poorer in places where manpower is critical.”
Salazar Larrain will point out the challenges of low birthrates at an upcoming meeting of Latin American politicians and legislators sponsored by the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Family, to be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in early August. Not the least of these challenges, he says, is a premature aging of Latin America's population.
Salazar Larrain will support his assertions with empirical data from his book and from a report issued last February by the Latin American Center for Demography, an office of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean in Santiago, Chile. The latter holds substantial credibility among the U.N. Population Fund personnel since it can hardly be accused of pro-life sympathies.
According to the Center for Demography, the Latin American economy has improved steadily since 1980; as a result, life expectancy has increased and standards of living have risen. A corresponding decline in fertility, however, has reduced the number of children, creating an imbalance that could jeopardize the region's economic and social future.
“The demographic tendencies are clearly leading the region to a process of accelerated aging,” admits José Antonio Ocampo, executive secretary of the economic commission in Santiago. “This will force our nations to restructure all our social security provisions, especially those related to the elderly.”
According to the Center for Demography report, in 1970, five children were born for each Latin American woman of child-bearing age. At present, the average is down to 2.9 and the bureau projects that, if the current trend continues, the figure will dip below two children per woman by 2025. At that rate, deaths would exceed births.
The center also acknowledges that the aging problem is already upon some Latin American nations. Next year, Cuba, the only Latin American country in which abortion is legal, will displace Canada as the country with the lowest rate of inhabitants under age 15 (21%). It will be followed closely by Uruguay (24.8%) and Argentina (27.7%).
In Argentina and Uruguay, two countries with markedly improving life expectancy, there will be more people over 65 than under 15 by the year 2020 (17.82% to 17.71%, respectively).
Also, Chile's National Institute of Statistics has revealed that the popularization of birth control in that country is having a dramatic effect on the aging of the population. According to the institute, the average age of the Chilean population was 26 in 1950. At that time, for every 100 Chileans under age 15, there were only 18.7 over age 60. At present, the average age is up to 31, and there are 35.8 elders per each 100 young Chileans.
A primary source of problems may be so few young trying to care for so many elderly. By 2035, there will be just 82.2 Chileans under 15 for every 100 over 60.
More sobering still, these projections are based on current birthrates. If population-control efforts continue to spread and accelerate, what Salazar Larrain calls a “population winter” could come even sooner. According to Giorgio Agostini, a Chilean sociologist and psychologist interviewed by the Santiago daily La Tercera, “This massive aging will imply that our youth will have to bear a greater load, not only socially and economically, but also psychologically.”
If the current trend continues, the figure will dip below two children per woman by 2025. At that rate, deaths would exceed births.
Agostini adds that, since the process of depopulation is linked with the disintegration of the family, youth in the future will have to face the challenge of working harder to sustain elders with no emotional ties to them.
A Sign of ‘Progress’
“The dramatic thing here,” says Hernan Villablanca, a sociologist from the University of Chile also quoted in La Tercera, “is that many people— even authorities—see this phenomenon as a sign of progress, because we are sharing the same fate as the most developed countries.”
Salazar Larrain is dumbfounded by the enthusiasm. “To me, their embracing of [population-control] measures is crazy. It is like celebrating the arrival of a rich cousin who brings several contagious diseases and none of his wealth.”
In Cuba, some members of the communist government are proud that 13% of the populace is older than 60, a figure that, according to them, shows how the revolution has been able to improve health services and increase life expectancy. (These results were achieved, however, through massive birth control and the legalization of abortion, which have combined to give the island country the lowest birthrate in Latin America.)
Meanwhile, some encouraging signs have surfaced. Faced with the facts of dramatically declining population — such as the prospect of one in four Cubans older than 60 by 2020 — other officials seem ready to question their assumptions about progress.
According to Carlos Alfonso Fraga, director of the Cuban Center for the
Studies of Population and Development, Cuba is already in the midst of a population autumn that will bring unexpected and unimaginable challenges to the system. “As early as 2020, Cuba could already become a country of the elderly,” he says.
And Enrique Vega, director of Cuba's National Social Program for the Elderly, noted that Cuba may have just 100 children for every 156 adults as early as 2010.
If that comes to pass, he allows, “we will have to redefine our programs.” That's a communist euphemism for a 180-degree change in policy.
According to Salazar Larrain, even if tentative, these first expressions of alarm may be the first cracks into the previously rock-solid dogma of population control.
“This information must keep flowing in the region,” he says. “If we act now, we still have some time to change course and avoid a stone-age future for our grandchildren.”
Alejandro Bermudez is based in Lima, Peru.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Alejandro Bermudez -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Hate Crimes Are Bad, But Is a Law Needed? DATE: 8/1/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 1-7, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—In July, a serviceman fatally assaulted Pfc. Barry Winchell, believed to be a homosexual, at an Army base in Fort Campbell, Ky. A week earlier, police said, two brothers murdered a homosexual couple in Redding, Calif., and burned three synagogues in the Sacramento area.
The incidents have brought renewed efforts in Washington, D.C., to push the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, despite the deep reservations of many members of Congress. They say that to base federal penalties for crimes on motives, judges and juries will have to judge people's thoughts.
“We should act harshly against all those who murder,” Republican Sen. John Ashcroft, chairman of the subcommittee on the Constitution, told the Register. “[But] government shouldn't sort out why you kill.”
Judiciary Chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch disagrees. In a speech before the Senate on July 21, he announced that he had introduced an alternative to the original Hate Crimes Prevention Act. His similar measure focuses on local enforcement of hate crimes.
“It is no answer for the Senate to sit by silently while these crimes are being committed,” said Hatch, a Republican from Utah who entered the presidential race in June. “A crime committed not just to harm an individual, but out of the motive of sending a message of hatred to an entire community … is appropriately punished more harshly, or in a different manner, than other crimes.”
Hatch's proposal, which includes provisions on race and creed, won the support of most proponents of hate crimes. But it drew fire for not including a classification for homosexuals.
“No one should be a target for bias-moti vated violence because of their real or perceived sexual orientation,” said Kerry Lobel, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. “Hate crimes should no longer have to be a fact of life for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people.”
Ashcroft agreed, but said that punishing the crime, but not guessing the motive, was enough. “I'm personally against elevating relationships of sexual orientation to the level of race or creed,” he said.
His home state of Missouri was the 22nd state to enact hate crime legislation based on sexual orientation. Ashcroft criticized Gov. Mel Carnahan, who signed the bill into law July 1. Ashcroft previously served as governor before his election to the U.S. Senate in 1994.
Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, author of the original Hate Crimes Prevention Act, had been expected to insert his measure into a federal spending bill. But the sudden death of John F. Kennedy Jr. may postpone that action until after the August recess. Another possibility is that Hatch's alternative might be inserted instead.
Controversial bills often get added to the spending bills that must be passed to keep the government operating. If neither bill succeeds during the spending process, it almost certainly will not become law this year.
Senators' support for hate crime legislation generally has divided along party lines, though Republicans Gordon Smith of Oregon and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania have joined Hatch in supporting such a measure.
Deal Hudson, editor of the Catholic monthly magazine Crisis, held a conference last year at the National Press Club on the subject of hate crimes. The recent murders do not justify a fundamental change in laws against homicide, he told the Register.
“I never understood the rationale for hate crimes legislation,” said Hudson. “If you kill someone, regardless of sexual orientation, racial class, you're guilty of the crime of murder.”
Prosecuting someone for hate is a step toward Orwellian-type thought control, Hudson warned. “Hypothetically you could be guilty of a hate crime for saying the Lord's prayer,” he said, because it makes pronouncements of moral truths that leave impressions on people's characters.
Hudson also opposed the legislation because juries might lose their impartiality. “These issues incite such passions in us,” he observed. “Juries need objectivity when weighing evidence.”
Hudson said reducing the barbaric act of murder to only racially motivated behavior is a “superficial look at human nature.”
“There are many multileveled reasons why they kill people,” he noted. “A crime is a crime regardless of why it is committed, regardless of what motivated it.” The law, he added, should focus not on “subjective motivation, but what objectively happens to people.”
Josh Mercer writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Josh Mercer -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Business or Medicine Challenging the Stereotypes DATE: 8/1/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 1-7, 1999 ----- BODY:I first saw the difference on a typical Tuesday afternoon. It was simply a chance convergence of two experiences that brought it together for me, but on reflection it was obvious: Students going into medicine give very different reasons for their career choice than do students going into business. And it wasn't clear to me that they should.
As a college professor, one of my responsibilities is to serve on a committee that reviews prospective medical students. One of the tasks of those who serve on this committee is to interview about a dozen students, typically juniors, who hope to go to medical school. As an interviewer, my job is to ask a range of questions about motivation, academic competence, other abilities, maturity and interpersonal skills. At the end of each interview, I write a report giving my evaluation of the student's promise as a physician.
‘We Want to Help People’
Inevitably, this process involves asking the question, “Why do you want to become a physician?” In almost every case, I get the same answer: “I want to help people.” When I press for an explanation, almost every premed student talks about having done volunteer work. I am often quite impressed with the efforts of these students, volunteering in hospitals, tutoring children in reading or mathematics, helping in soup kitchens and doing a wide variety of community service. Almost every student says, “I like helping people, and I think going to medical school and becoming a physician would be a way for me to help people even more.” When pressed, most students I interview give explicitly moral and even religious reasons for wanting to help people and to make the world a better place.
After hearing this same answer repeatedly, I naturally became a bit suspicious about the true motives of the interviewees. Sometimes I would ask, “If you want to go into health care in order to help people, why not become a nurse? Mightn't there be other reasons that are motivating you as well? What about the large salary that a physician can expect?”
The answers to these questions varied. I heard, “Oh no, I'm not interested in the money.” Or, “Of course I want a stable job where I can support my family, but even more, I want to be able to help people.”
‘We Want to Make Money’
Immediately after finishing one of these interviews on that typical Tuesday afternoon, I went off to teach my class in business ethics. I decided to ask the students there, most of whom were business majors, the same kind of questions. I especially wanted to understand their motivation for going into business. Their answers were altogether different. “We want to make money.” Then I asked, “Why not go to medical school? Don't physicians make more money that most people in business?”
I began to suspect that there were contrary tendencies among premed students and business students. The premed students publicly understand their future careers as community service in which they will use their skills to help others. The business students, who I suppose are typical of people already in business, understand their work primarily in terms of self-interest, seeing any public benefit as an unintended consequence.
Who's Helped Mankind More?
Then I began asking my business students to consider another question. “In the 20th century, which has done more to benefit society and make everyday life better: medicine or business?” At first blush, almost everyone might think the answer is medicine. But think of all of the ways life has improved because of business — the improved buildings we live in, the heating and cooling systems we rely on, electricity and communications, better transportation, food and clothing, and innumerable luxury and entertainment items. Of course, we have greatly benefited from medicine as well, but most of us make use of the advances of medicine less often, perhaps only on a few dramatic occasions in life.
I propose that business has done at least as much as medicine to accomplish what my premed interviewees say they want to do with their lives — to help people and to make the world a better place. But, to a great extent, many Americans — and Catholics in particular — haven't had a philosophy and theology of business activity that gives them a way to understand it in terms of self-transcendence. The Catholic intellectual tradition, especially as expressed in America, has included a theology of labor, but it has also included an antagonism toward business. While many physicians have been socialized to think that everything they do is for others, most business people have been socialized to think they automatically operate solely out of self-interest.
The Church Praises Business
Of course, neither extreme quite captures the complexity of human activity. Our actions include both self-interest and self-transcendence; we can transcend ourselves to benefit others even as we remain bound to our own interests. Among other places, this way of understanding human activity was developed in a book by Pope John Paul II when he was archbishop of Krakow, The Acting Person. This understanding of human action, when applied to economic activity, stands at the heart of a new theology of business. The reason we work can include a motivation that goes beyond self-interest. As John Paul II wrote in Centesimus Annus, work is also “a matter of doing something for someone else.”
Throughout much of this century, business people have been taught to think of their work as ultimately based on self-interest, even though it may have the benefit of helping others. Many people in the Church have also followed this kind of account of human action, decrying business and the market as inherently based on self-interest alone.
During the pontificate of John Paul II, we have seen a new theology of business arise, calling for a deeper understanding of human actions and motivations, along with a recognition that in every human action one can both remain bound to one's own self-interest and transcend it at the same time.
Young people who pursue the life of medicine develop a habit of seeing their lives in terms of self-transcendence and of helping others. In a similar way, we might do well to encourage those who pursue careers in business to see their lives in terms of a vocation of disciplined, honest work that also helps others and serves the community.
Gregory R. Beabout is professor of philosophy at St. Louis University.
----- EXCERPT: Who Makes More Money? ------- EXTENDED BODY: Gregory R. Beabout -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: CEO, Knight, Peacemaker DATE: 8/1/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 1-7, 1999 ----- BODY:President of the American Association of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, he is involved in numerous charitable and international activities, including the peace effort in Northern Ireland. He spoke recently with Register correspondent Jim Malerba.
Malerba: How has your Catholic faith shaped your approach to business life, particularly regarding moral and ethical issues?
Flynn: My parents, who were both immigrants from Ireland, had a very strong sense of family. They were people of great faith. They raised all four of us — I have one brother and two sisters — in a religious household. We went to morning Mass at least two to three times a week and prayed the rosary as a family. We also went to novenas at our church on Long Island. All that, with their unceasing love and their continuing examples, instilled in me tremendous values as a child. In any event, it's always been with me.
Can you give an example or two of major policies you've implemented that resulted from your personal values?
I can tell you that Mutual of America operates like no other company, at least none that I've seen. For example, we instituted a no-layoff policy some years ago, because I wanted to put into practice the Church's teaching about the dignity of all people. The rule is this: Layoffs can occur only if the chief executive and the chief financial officer go first. Another thing we've done is seen to it that we give enormous amounts of money to charity. We have always encouraged our employees to give as well, and we match their contributions dollar for dollar.
Have these policies influenced others?
I believe so, though sometimes in an unusual way. Once, I was asked to debate John Sweeney, who is head of the AFL-CIO union. I spoke first and talked in-depth about how important it is to have high moral and ethical standards in business, and to treat everyone, regardless of standing, the way you would want to be treated. When I finished, John got up and said, “You just gave my speech.” It was quite a compliment.
You must have had the same influence on your family.
I raised my four children the same way I was raised. I'm happy to say they are all practicing Catholics, though some practice more than others. But they all attend Mass and perform other spirituals. My wife, Peggy, deserves a lion's share of the credit for that.
How did you become involved with the Knights of Malta?
It was more than 35 years ago. Some business friends invited me to attend one of their meetings. At the time, I was chairman of a board to help disadvantaged kids. I guess they figured that since the Knights of Malta have a strong charitable presence, I would make a good addition to the ranks.
Is there just one American Association?
There are three, though ours is the largest, with 1,800 members. There are also a Federal and Western associations, though each of those is substantially smaller than the American Association.
Did you move up through the ranks to your current position of president?
Actually, no. I was simply a member and never gave a thought to a leadership role. I was happy just to be part of this great organization. Then, almost out of the blue, some people from Rome met with me and sounded me out about taking a leadership role. About two months later, I was asked to consider being president. Then, in 1994, I was elected to that position.
What was your agenda once you became head of the Knights?
I set three important goals. The first had to do with the governance of the association. The aim was to make it a more democratic institution. The second had to do with mission. The aim was to set for the association a major undertaking to which the Knights, in addition to its regular activities, could devote their principal energies in an area where we were capable of making a very major contribution. The third goal was to substantially improve our communication capabilities, so members could be kept completely aware of all our activities. In addition, I felt it was absolutely necessary that we learn how to communicate to all Catholic and non-Catholic neighbors, so our work could be an inspiration to them.
Please speak of some of the results of your efforts.
I'm happy to do so. With respect to governance, we first of all reduced the board in size from approximately 35 members to 24 members. Second, we placed term limits on membership on the board and on all of the officers, including the president. We instituted three-year terms, renewable once. This gave us the ability for the future to bring in new blood and new ideas to the board. Finally, inspired by a change in the rules decreed by our grand master in Rome, we gave every member of the association the right to vote for the candidates for membership on the board. Henceforth, there would be a management slate offered to the membership. However, each member now had the right to propose a candidate or candidates for election, provided at least nine other Knights supported that candidate. All this, we believe, will make the American Association of the Knights of Malta extremely democratic in its operations. All members will have a voice in the selection of the men and women who will run the association.
How about changes with respect to the Knights' mission?
With respect to that goal, we have already decided to explore very carefully what we can do in a significant way to set up pregnancy crisis centers, as well as homes for those young girls and women, where they can live for a time.
There, they will learn parenting skills and, equally important, job skills. With respect to pregnancy crisis centers, we are considering having a “storefront” location, where women can come to learn about the alternatives to abortion.
We need to educate them about this, and we need to teach them to fish, not just give them a fish, so they can become good mothers, and also productive women in society. These kids are in trouble because of a lack of moral education, and we want to play a major role in changing that.
Let's move to your role in the Northern Ireland peace talks. How did you become part of that effort?
As it happens so many times, it was an indirect route. I was taking a training course with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and at lunch one day, we got into a discussion on the subject. Then, I met Sister Dorothy Ann Kelly, who was president of the College of New Rochelle, and head of an organization called The Peace People. Through her involvement, she got me in touch with others who were part of the peace process.
What was your major accomplishment in this area?
Once I got the lay of the land, I went directly to the Loyalist and Catholic paramilitaries, and spoke at length with them. From that came the idea of inviting both sides to come to the United States and give their views to the American people and to our leaders.
With the help of Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith and Sen. Ted Kennedy, we were able to get through to President Clinton. He gave the green light to Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein leader, to come to America for 48 hours. That in itself was a tremendous breakthrough, since Adams had never been welcome here. People listened to his message and that led to his being invited to the White House later. I was fortunate to join with all those who had helped and accompanied him to the White House.
What was your advice to both sides in Northern Ireland? They appear to have listened to you, at least to some extent.
What I told them, rather pointedly, was that the guy who shoots is really the one who loses. Unfortunately, the peace process has broken down again, though there has been progress. I was in Ireland for the recent march, and I was happy to see that at least there wasn't any violence. No matter how you slice it, there is still the split between Unionists and Catholics. But I don't give up. I am going back to Northern Ireland, to see what I can do to help bring a true peace there.
You also are chairman of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy. When were you appointed, and what is your role?
Terribly helpful to me, with respect to my work in Ireland, was my long association with the National Committee on American Foreign Policy.
The committee is a group of scholars as well as activists in the field of foreign policy. Members generally tend to be specialists in American foreign policy and have involved themselves in many activities, from the expansion of NATO to the Chinese-Taiwanese cross-strait problems.
The board was unanimous in supporting the initiatives taken with respect to Northern Ireland. As a result, we were able to visit and exchange views with every leader in the North of Ireland. Our hope is that we help bring them closer together.
What advice do you have for other business leaders regarding their moral and ethical conduct with employees, other businesses, etc.?
Corporate America traditionally built their companies on, among other things, the presumption of employee loyalty. Corporations instituted retirement plans, health insurance plans, and so forth, all with the intent of developing greater employee loyalty, and the resulting willingness to do a first-class job. Many firms continue to act in this way, always looking out for the best interests of their employees.
However, too many — and this is increasingly so — demand loyalty, but when push comes to shove, they act in their own interests, without regard to the impact on their employees. Loyalty is a two-way street. Unless this trend is corrected, we will enter a no man's land, where it is each man for himself.
I am convinced that if we continue in this direction, we will sooner or later face a doomsday scenario.
We should do everything we can to avoid this and promote the truth that loyalty is, in fact, a two-way street.
—Jim Malerba
WILLIAM FLYNN
Personal: Married to Peggy; has four children and 10 grandchildren.
Education: Graduated from Cathedral College of the Immaculate Conception on Long Island; earned a master's in economics from Fordham University; awarded various honorary doctorates.
Military: Served in the Air Force during the Korean conflict.
Awards: Has received numerous awards from religious, charitable, educational and social groups, including the Elizabeth Ann Seton Award from the National Educational Association and the Federal Law Enforcement Community Leadership Award.
Current position: Chairman and chief executive officer, Mutual of America Life Insurance Co., New York.
----- EXCERPT: Faith shapes executive's life and work ------- EXTENDED BODY: William Flynn -------- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: U.S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 8/1/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 1-7, 1999 ----- BODY:God Used REO Speedwagon to Call Seminarian
THE KANSAS CITY STAR, July 16—“On a hot summer day in 1997, Kent O'Connor, a young actor and dancer then appearing in Gypsy at the New Theater Restaurant, had a strange experience,” wrote columnist Joe Popper.
He was listening to a song by REO Speedwagon that included the repeated line, “I can't fight the feeling anymore.”
“I almost had to stop the car,” O'Connor told the columnist. “For at the moment the song began,” said the column, “O'Connor was pondering the resolution of a quandary that had begun in his childhood.”
That quandary was the feeling that he should become a priest, an idea that first occurred to Kent when he heard his pastor speaking about vocations when he was only 7 or 8 years old.
A performer since his earliest days, O'Connor went to the University of Kansas, where he studied dance and theater. During his senior year in 1997, O'Connor traveled to New York City for a few auditions.
“I went with this funny notion that the theater actually needed me,” he said. His reception was positive. He received a job offer from a ballet company.
Yet, he reached an unexpected conclusion. “I'm not doing anyone a big favor by being here,” he thought. “The theater will do just fine without me.” Frustrated with what he calls the “self-centeredness” of theatrical life, he began to think he was wasting his real talents.
And so he attended a retreat in Atchison, Kan., and then visited Mundelein Seminary near Chicago. “I fell in love with it,” he said. “I knew immediately it was where I needed to be.” O'Connor has now completed his first sequence of seminary course work. “I'm in the right place,” said O'Connor. “And I know that however it turns out, the nagging question will have been answered.”
Al Gore's Gospel
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, July 13—“Critics should not dismiss Vice President Al Gore's recent talk about faith and values as empty presidential sloganeering,” writes Joe Loconte in an opinion piece.
To do so, Loconte said, is to “neglect a profound cultural moment: a repudiation by Democratic leaders of the antireligious mood that has darkened liberal thought for at least a generation.”
Loconte said Gore is not alone among liberals. He pointed to Joel Kotkin, who wrote several years ago in The New Democrat that “no wound has afflicted the Democratic Party so deeply as its divorce from religious experience and community.”
“To be sure,” Loconte said, “Gore himself has not completely escaped his party's secularizing grip. In his May Atlanta speech he claimed that the Founders ‘believed deeply in faith,’ as if the object of that faith may as well be tapioca pudding. He fretted about the imposition of religious values in public life, as if laws embody no moral claims. And he warned against the proselytizing of ‘right-wing religion,’ forgetting that his Salvation Army audience consisted of evangelicals who make faith in Jesus the explicit goal of their programs.”
Nonetheless, Loconte, the William E. Simon fellow in religion and a free society at the Heritage Foundation, concluded that “the Gore rhetoric on religion suggests a watershed. He correctly argues that the real aim of the First Amendment is to protect religious freedom. He says religious approaches are overcoming human problems left unsolved by federal programs.”
The Gore campaign, however, is far from embracing voters with traditional religious views. That was clear from a June 16 Associated Press account of “the capital's first presidential fund-raiser aimed at homosexuals. Tipper Gore [the vice president's wife] scooped up more than $150,000 for her husband's campaign … and promised contributors he would ‘fight for your dreams.’”
Elite Media Go to CCD
THE NEW YORK TIMES, July 18—The nation's political reporters will be learning more about religion, according to a Times story on a program offered by the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Journalists from ABC's Nightline, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, and The Los Angeles Times have signed up for introductory seminars taught by religious experts. The Washington, D.C.-based group received a $925,000 grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts to bring religion to “one of the most godless groups this side of the flaming abyss,” the Times said.
The grant will be used for a series of seminars and luncheons, a content-analysis of 30 years of media coverage of religion, and three summits where reporters spend a day and a half listening to theologians and academic experts. The point is to provide information, not to get reporters to go to church, but “that would be fine if they did,” Michael Cromartie, director of the center's Evangelical Studies Project, said.
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Men and the Moon DATE: 8/1/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 1-7, 1999 ----- BODY:HOUSTON—The Lunar Prospector is scheduled to search for water crystals after it slams into the moon's deepest crater on July 31 on the heals of the 30-year anniversary of the first walk on the moon by Neil Armstrong.
NASA officials say the Apollo missions to the moon, in total, have proved a success. They point out that the program has produced 160,000 inventions, uncovered a new source of materials scarce on earth, and advanced the potential of the moon to serve as a base for exploring deep space. But ethicists wonder: At a time when food distribution and other problems press on earth, has space exploration really been worth the cost?
Father Stephen Happel, temporary dean of religious studies at the Catholic University of America, formerly of the Vatican Observatory, spoke on the matter with Register Radio News correspondent Rich Rinaldi.
Rich Rinaldi: What should we have learned from the anniversary of the first moon landing?
Father Stephen Happel: I found the anniversary itself very moving because I'm old enough to remember when it happened. When I read the remarks of Pope Paul VI about the moon walk, I remember the enormous idealism that we all had about this event. Somehow, we thought, this was going to transform us and transform the world that we lived in. There was a considerable amount of [excitement] during that period and, as Pope Paul VI pointed out, it was a historic day.
Perhaps, as someone I heard earlier today said, when people look back 300 years from now what they will remember about our age will not be the wars or the terrible things that happened; it could conceivably be our having gone off this planet into another realm and taken the first step into space.
So when Pope Paul VI says that [the accomplishment] shows incredible courage and ingenuity, I think what it probably, first of all, shows [is] an extraordinary ability of the human mind and heart to imagine a new way of living and a new way of being.
Can you tell us some of the work you've done in the last ten years with the Vatican Observatory?
Over the last ten years I was invited to become part of a research group, a core research group that the Vatican Observatory and the Pontifical Academy of Science and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences at Berkeley were all involved in. It was examining the positive interaction between science and theology—and science and Christianity particularly.
We began a series of conferences, about every two years, about topics that would be of immense interest. The first one was on what scientists understand by the origins of the universe and what Christians and Jews understand about creation. We brought together some very powerful scientists and theologians and met to discuss that issue. In turn, that prompted a discussion of things like chaos theory.
It produced things like biological evolution and its influence on the understanding of Christianity and, most recently, actually in the Pope's own homeland in Krakow, we had a conference on neuroscience and the way in which the contemporary forms of neuroscience influence our understanding of religion and theology.
So those ten years of very profound effort—supported very, very strongly I must say by not only the Vatican Observatory but by the Pope himselfw have helped get scientists and theologians together so they can see if they can carry on a common conversation of some sort.
So religion is not opposed to “progress,” as some claim.
I think the whole notion of what counts as progress becomes the real issue. Religion is certainly not simply about the status quo or about maintaining some form of nostalgia for the past. I think at the heart of what the cross and resurrection are for Christians, and for Catholic Christians in particular, is that it involves a real transformation of the person and of the Church and of society and that is at the heart of what we understand progress to be.
We make the claim that our faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus transforms the dignity of the human person in such a way that we form communities and societies which should be based on what is good and true and beautiful. That same kind of goal is certainly at the heart of what good science is about.
Scientists are aiming in one way or another to better the lives of human beings, to stave off the disasters and the illnesses that are endemic to the way we live and the way we inhabit our planet. And so, it is important to me to see that the goals of science and the goals of religion and theology certainly can coincide.
I think that's very clear in the apostolic constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae, where the pope provides guidelines for what academic institutions are supposed to be under Catholic auspices. It certainly is in his encyclical on Faith and Reason, which is his most recent.
What of the charge that advances in technology have hurt interpersonal relationships? Are computers taking over more-human communities?
Well, I think they're ambiguous, like all machines. Machines can extend our senses and give us more refined sight or better hearing or allow us to communicate better with one another. The Internet now [helps many] families I know who are spread out all over the world because of their jobs or because they have changed geographical locations. It allows them to keep all sorts of instant communication that we used to have simply by leaning over a back fence. But, on the other hand, it can also become an all-absorbing, manipulative external structure that takes over peoples'lives.
Is there a problem with the enormous costs related to space exploration? We also have very poor and hungry people.
That's a very important question and I think it's one that, for me at least, leads to the larger questions about the relationship between science and religion.
There's a certain sense in which scientific development can hurt us in various ways. So there needs to be built into the discussion about those things some element of value and some norms by which they can be developed more positively for human beings.
I find that in such situations what we need desperately then is socially, conversation on what counts as good positive goals for these machines that we're inventing. Just because I can create a bigger and better machine or a more powerful automobile doesn't necessarily mean that I should.
Rich Rinaldi is director of Register Radio News.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Rich Rinaldi -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Heaven Is an Intimate Relationship With God, Not a Place, Says Pope DATE: 8/1/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 1-7, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITYRich Rinaldi is directorHeaven is not a place, but an intimate relationship with God that can be experienced partially on earth, Pope John Paul II said.
Heaven “is not an abstraction nor a physical place amid the clouds, but a living and personal relationship with the Holy Trinity,” the Pope said at his July 21 general audience.
The audience was held the day after the Pope returned from a two-week vacation in the Italian Alps. After the audience, he was scheduled to go to the papal villa at Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome. Until September, he will stay at the villa, returning briefly on Wednesdays for the audience.
The Pope's last audience talk before vacation had focused on God's judgment and mercy which, he said, is so great that the only people who will be condemned to hell are those who actively turn away from God.
Picking up where he had left off, the Pope said, “When this world has passed away, those who accepted God in their lives and were sincerely open to his love, at least at the moment of death, will enjoy that fullness of communion with God which is the goal of human existence.”
It is possible to get a taste of heaven on earth, he said.
Through the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, and through acts of self-giving in charity, the Pope said, one can experience some of the happiness and peace which will reach its culmination in final, complete communion with God.
“If we are able to enjoy properly the good things that the Lord showers upon us every day of our earthly lives, then we have begun to experience the joy which will be completely ours in the next life,” the Pope said.
Pope John Paul said the idea of heaven as a place in the sky came from metaphorical biblical language contrasting the dwelling place of humanity and the dwelling place of God.
But the Old Testament makes it clear that God “cannot be enclosed in heaven,” that he hears human prayers, intervenes in human history and that, “through grace, believers can ascend” to God's presence, the Pope said.
The New Testament teaches that Jesus is the way to heaven for all men and women. Through his death and resurrection, all who believe in him were made “citizens of heaven,” he said.
“Therefore, after the journey of our earthly life, participation in complete intimacy with the Father passes through the Pascal mystery of Christ,” the Pope said.
Pope John Paul told visitors at the audience that care must be taken when trying to describe heaven because whatever descriptions people come up with “always remain inadequate.” (From combined wire services)
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 8/1/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 1-7, 1999 ----- BODY:Communists Feared Pope from Beginning
DIE WELT, July 10—Former East Germany's secret police files illustrate how communist regimes reacted to Pope John Paul II's “hostile activities,” according to an article in the German daily by historian Michael Wolffsohn
One document from the secret police, known as the Stasi, branded John Paul “a pope, Pole and anti-communist” and predicted his 1979 Polish homecoming would bring a “mixing of religious, political and national interests.”
As a next-door neighbor to Poland, the Stasi reacted to the trip by tightening border controls and dispatching 24 agents to mingle with the crowds at papal Masses.
In a separate story for Poland's Tygodnik Powszechny Catholic weekly, journalist Wojciech Pieciak said files in the Stasi's Polish section showed the secret police made “great organizational efforts” to monitor all the Pope's visits to Poland.
Pieciak said the Pope's activities were also viewed in “nationalist categories” in East Germany, which feared their likely impact on relations with West Germany.
And those fears had merit. “Under Pope Paul VI, [the East Germans] had come close to persuading the Vatican to bring the Church's diocesan borders into line with East Germany's state frontiers,” Pieciak said. “But under John Paul II the talks were frozen.”
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 8/1/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 1-7, 1999 ----- BODY:New Trouble in Chiapas
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, July 20—Gunfire broke out in a village in Chiapas, Mexico, July 17-18 when a group of evangelical Protestants attempted to gain new recruits in the predominately Catholic region, the AP reported.
Three people were wounded in the conflict, which began after three evangelicals began preaching in the Indian village of Icalumtic, the AP said.
“Residents of the village … practice a blend of ancient Mayan religion and Catholicism,” according to the wire service.
Several opened fire on the evangelical preachers and three were wounded in return fire, reports said. The government dispatched troops to the region, which has been the scene of violent religious conflict for about 25 years.
While the AP reported that dozens of evangelicals have been killed and about 25,000 others have been forced to leave their homes in recent years, a dispute earlier this year in another Chiapas community resulted in an accommodation in which Protestants were permitted to build their own place of worship.
American Missionaries on Trial in Zimbabwe
USA TODAY, July 20—Three American men who say they are Protestant missionaries pleaded innocent July 19 to weapons charges in Zimbabwe, USA Today reported.
John Dixon, Joseph Pettijohn and Gary Blanchard face a maximum penalty of life imprisonment if they are convicted of charges of possessing “arms of war” and trying to smuggle firearms aboard an airplane, USA Today reported.
The men, who say they are missionaries for a small Pentecostal church group based in Indianapolis, were arrested March 7 at the international airport in Zimbabwe. Police allegedly found in their luggage and truck: 21 rifles, 22 handguns, 31 bayonets, nine silencers, 70 knives and three devices used to administer electric shocks
Jonathan Wallace, head of Harvestfield Ministries, the Pentecostal group that employs the men, said the weapons were used for protection and hunting, not to supply arms to rebels, as Zimbabwean officials say they suspect.
Irish Bishops Meet St. Egidio Community
THE IRISH TIMES, July 20—On their recent ad limina visit to Rome, Ireland's Catholic bishops visited the small but increasingly influential St. Egidio community — a group that is “trying to change the world.”
In a feature story for the Times, Garry O'Sullivan, a member of the lay community, used the occasion of the bishops' visit to explain the group's purpose and some of its recent accomplishments.
Founded at Rome's Church of St. Egidio in the late 1960s, the lay community is extended throughout Europe and works in mission territories in Africa and Latin America where members do extensive work with the poor and homeless.
The community, however, is best known for its peacekeeping and mediation efforts, and has been credited with brokering a 1992 accord ending a 16-year civil war.
Given the recent difficulties in implementing Northern Ireland's Good Friday agreement, the bishops may have used the occasion to invite the leaders of St. Egidio to join the negotiations.
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Cremation and Burial at Sea DATE: 8/1/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 1-7, 1999 ----- BODY:The following is excerpted from the Newsletter of the National Council of Catholic Bishops' Committee on the Liturgy (July, 1999).
Recent events have brought to the fore questions regarding the practice of the cremation of a body and burial at sea. Diocesan offices for worship might find this an opportune time to renew catechesis on these questions for the benefit of pastors and pastoral ministers. A helpful summary of the Church's teaching on cremation may be found in the 1998 statement of the Bishops' Committee on the Liturgy, “Reflections on the Body, Cremation and Catholic Funeral Rites.”
“The Church's belief in the sacredness of the human body and the resurrection of the dead has traditionally found expression in the care taken to prepare the bodies of the deceased for burial” (Order of Christian Funerals, No. 411).
“This is the body once washed in baptism, anointed with the oil of salvation, and fed with the bread of life. This is the body whose hands clothed the poor and embraced the sorrowing. Indeed, the human body is so inextricably associated with the human person that it is hard to think of a human person apart from his or her body. Thus, the Church's reverence and care for the body grows out of a reverence and concern for the person whom the Church now commends to the care of God” (Order of Christian Funerals, No. 412).
Thus, while “cremation is now permitted, it does not enjoy the same value as burial of the body… The Church clearly prefers and urges that the body of the deceased be present for the funeral rites, since the presence of the human body better expresses the values which the Church affirms in its rites.” (Order of Christian Funerals, No. 413) However, “when extraordinary circumstances make the cremation of a body the only feasible choice, pastoral sensitivity must be exercised by all who minister to the family of the deceased” (Order of Christian Funerals, No. 414).
The rites for burial of the cremated remains of a body may be found in the appendix to the Order of Christian Funerals. This appendix recommends that when cremation is chosen, the body be cremated after the Funeral, thus allowing for the presence of the body at the Funeral Mass.
When pastoral circumstances require it, however, cremation and committal may take place even before the Funeral liturgy.
Any catechesis on the subject of cremation should emphasize that “the cremated remains of a body should be treated with the same respect given to the corporeal remains of a human body. This includes the use of a worthy vessel to contain the ashes, the manner in which they are carried, the care and attention to appropriate placement and transport, and the final disposition” (Order of Christian Funerals, No. 416).
While cremated remains may be buried in a grave, entombed in a mausoleum or columbarium or even buried at sea, “the practice of scattering cremated remains on the sea, from the air, or on the ground, or keeping cremated remains in the home of a relative or friend of the deceased are not the reverent disposition that the Church requires” (Order of Christian Funerals, No. 416).
The cremated remains of the body may be properly buried at sea in the urn, coffin or other container in which they have been carried to the place of committal.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A Glory Greater Than Camelot DATE: 8/1/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 1-7, 1999 ----- BODY:Our prayers go out to the families of John F. Kennedy Jr. and his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and her sister Lauren Bessette who died in the July 16 plane crash off Martha's Vineyard. With sadness, though, we noticed that many of the public tributes to them seemed to emphasize their celebrity status, but little else.
It was difficult, of course, not to be touched by the poignant memories of the only Catholic family ever to occupy the White House. It was first lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, John Jr.'s mother, who introduced many Americans to Vatican protocol, by dressing in black, with headdress, when she met the Pope in Rome. And it was John-John himself who offered an unforgettable salute as his father's coffin passed by, in the sorrowful days after Dallas.
Yet it wasn't for the glory of political power or the celebrity glory of the world that the Kennedys and their kin were created. They, like all of us, were created for an even greater glory in heaven.
The tragedy of July 16 is a reminder that even the rich and famous don't need the attention of our praise so much as the intentions of our prayers.
* * *
The news from the San Francisco Bay area regarding Bishop George Patrick Ziemann's sexual relations with a priest is shocking, deeply disappointing and a grave betrayal of trust to the Church, the people of the Santa Rosa Diocese and the whole body of the faithful. It need-n't, however, be a blow to our faith in Christ or the Church.
That isn't because we don't expect our priests and bishops to be holy. We have every right to. It is because we know, always have known, that sins small and large are part of the human experience.
So what do we mean when we say that the Church, in addition to being “one,” “catholic” and “apostolic,” is also “holy”?
It is clear that we cannot mean the unstained holiness of its members or hierarchy. The bishops are successors to the Twelve Apostles, and the Twelve weren't without fault at some of the most crucial moments for the Church. When Christ was arrested, it was because one apostle betrayed him with a kiss. Another denied him three times. The rest fled from Gethsemane.
Still, the Church's holiness is seen readily in its members, Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II being the most high-profile examples. And then there are the parish priests who minister to us every day, the religious sisters, parish lay leaders and Catholic communities who look after us — all offer an unsung service that witnesses to the Church's holiness.
The Church's holiness also shines in its works: hospitals, labor unions, schools and some of the world's greatest cultural achievements are among the contributions Catholics have made to the world. In recent times, the flowering of the new ecclesial communities testifies to the Church's enduring call to holiness. Its holiness also shines in its sacraments. These are holy and bring holiness, regardless of the personal merits of any one of their ministers, because they carry the grace of Christ.
So, while it is appropriate to be outraged by what happened in Santa Rosa — the scandal it causes, the degraded picture of the Church hierarchy it paints — it is important to remember that Christ can triumph even in the midst of such poor human instruments. He has before.
* * *
We reported last week on the case of Ryan C. Berry, a married Air Force first lieutenant who balked at the prospect of working alone with a woman in a small, underground missile-launching center for extended periods. Beyond the matter of avoiding scandal and near occasions of sin, the case is also about military readiness and safety in the new coed armed forces.
Berry's objections — supported by military Archbishop Edwin O'Brien — clearly have a strong moral case. But they don't necessarily depend on the Catholic faith alone. There was a time when common sense would have dictated separating men and women for lengthy assignments in such close quarters. Berry's fears, moreover, are not unfounded: Rumors of illicit goings-on in such missile silos already abound in the military.
Then there's the national security consideration. Letting a man and woman share such close quarters isn't appropriate in an isolated facility which deals with doomsday weapons. If any military situation demands military officers who are undistracted, it's this one.
Finally, there also seems to be a double standard in play. Wiccan believers (that is, witches) can practice fertility rituals, replete with sexual symbols, on Army bases (see last week's Register, Page 2). So why can't the military also allow its officers to avoid temptations against chastity in missile silos?
----- EXCERPT: Editorial ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: For the Business of Everyman DATE: 8/1/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 1-7, 1999 ----- BODY:Certain events and persistent trends in our culture tend to leave people perplexed. From whence come these periodic bloody rampages in our public schools? What inspires the entertainment industry to abandon true art and to glorify fornication and violence? Why do wonderful advances in technology, like the Internet, become so sullied by the purveyors of obscenity? Why is it that prosperity on a material level does not correlate with advances in ethics and virtuous action? In short, why does the human person appear to become less humane in the face of unprecedented wealth?
Into this sea of questions and concerns comes a welcome guest: The Journal of Markets & Morality. The journal is a scholarly publication begun last year by the Center for Economic Personalism at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty in Grand Rapids, Mich. It wrestles with questions related to economics, free market capitalism, religion and ethics. To my knowledge no other publication has focused its energies on these related fields.
The journal's approach is to gather scholars of diverse specialized disciplines in theology, philosophy, economics and business and to have them engage questions and concerns that straddle and intersect their specializations. The theological-philosophical roots of the publication are Christian. Its mission statement says, “We welcome any attempt to synthesize the principles and concerns of Christian social thought with those of economic science.”
The most recent volume is typical of the journal's sophistication in dealing with the difficult questions of culture, faith and wealth of our day.
Jesuit Father Avery Dulles contributes an article titled “Centesimus Annus and the Renewal of Culture.” The article was originally a speech given at a conference on the encyclical.
Father Dulles argues that most of the human concerns of our century have been posed in the context of two conflicting worldviews held by the East and the West. The East has attempted to improve the condition of man through the politicization of culture. The state becomes man's savior. The West has attempted to cure man's ills through commerce and the increase of wealth. Material comfort will allay man's suffering.
While Father Dulles accepts that both commerce and politics have crucial and irreplaceable roles to play, he argues that culture cannot be reduced to such an impoverished set of alternatives. Educational and research institutions along with literature and arts, promoted by society at large, must operate with a degree of autonomy in order to assist man in answering the questions that have perennially accompanied him.
It wrestles with questions related to economics, free market capitalism, religion and ethics.
Father Dulles also accords a special place to the role of the Church. “As the ‘pillar and bulwark of the truth’ (1 Tim 3:15), the Church can teach the meaning of human existence in light of God's revelation. … A culture without a basis in revealed religion would be incapable of meeting the real needs of individuals and societies in our time or, in fact, in any time.”
One cannot help feeling the force of this statement in the wake of the abolition of God from our public schools and the consequent rise in violence.
The current volume of Markets & Morality also contains an article titled “A Short History of Economics as a Moral Science” by James E. Alvey, a lecturer in economics at Massey University in New Zealand. Alvey offers a historical sketch of the relationship between morality and economics as it developed over the centuries. He points out that only recently has the discipline of economic science been divorced from the field of ethics or moral science. A modern paradigm has emerged in the last century that places the work of the economist in a positivist/materialist perspective. This tendency attempts to make economics more objective by linking it primarily to mathematics and even to the methods of verification in the physical sciences.
Alvey's sketch unfolds the story of an economics that used to be rooted differently than that — rooted in the norms of moral science. Before the modern emphasis, thinkers like Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Adam Smith, and to a lesser degree John Stuart Mill, approached economic science within an ethical perspective. Alvey focuses at length on the work of Adam Smith because he is touted by many as the father of modern economics. Alvey shows, however, that Smith's roots were decidedly ethical and not mathematical.
“We see in Smith,” Alvey says, “an analyst who uses the moral framework to criticize the alienating workings of the commercial economy. Some of the strongest moral criticisms of existing society ever made are to be found in The Wealth of Nations; Smith's economics is not an apologia for the status quo. There is neither the sharp fact/value distinction of the later economists who adopted positivism, nor a ‘divorce between economics and ethics.’” Economics is more than mathematical models. It is about virtue, the production of wealth and the right ordering of our lives once riches are achieved.
The Journal of Markets & Morality does not purport to offer immediate solutions to the difficulties in our public schools, the entertainment industry or cyberspace. In fact, the journal goes beyond daily events and headlines to focus with scholarly precision on the ideas that undergird oaur culture, especially in the domains of commerce and ethics. Anyone with a more than casual interest in these topics should pay attention to this new publication. lts intellectual contribution may take us beyond the unsatisfactory solutions to today's problems that are proposed by so many others.
Father Christopher Meade writes from Cheshire, Connecticutt.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Father Christopher Meade -------- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Did the Tide Turn on April 20? DATE: 8/1/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 1-7, 1999 ----- BODY:“Awakening at Littleton”
by Jody Bottum (First Things, August/September)
Jody Bottum, books and arts editor of the Weekly Standard and poetry editor of First Things, writes on the religious fallout from the Columbine High School murders: “And then at last they reached a bright-eyed seventeen-year-old named Cassie Bernall. Either Harris or Klebold (none of the cowering students could see which it was) put a gun to her head and asked, ‘Do you believe in God?’ She paused for a second, according to her classmates. And then she answered, ‘Yes.’ ‘She was scared, but she sounded strong,’ said her Bible-study friend Joshua Lapp, a sophomore who was hiding nearby, ‘like she knew what she was going to answer.’ Staring at her, the gunman asked, ‘Why?’ Before she could reply, he pulled the trigger and shot her through the temple, killing her instantly.
“In the weeks immediately following the killings in Littleton, newspaper columnists and magazine pundits — conservative and liberal alike — spent page and page trying to decide whether Harris and Klebold were somehow representative of America's teenagers. … But there's a far more important question than whether or not Harris and Klebold symbolize what out children have become, and it's whether or not Cassie Bernall symbolizes what our children will become. … If the fourth Great Awakening [of religious fervor] that people have been predicting since the 1970s actually occurs, it will have begun on April 20, 1999, and Cassie Bernall will be its martyr, its catalyst, and its patron saint.”
Bottum describes the mood of the onlooking crowds in the weeks after the Columbine killings as “like that of a citywide, outdoor revival meeting. … The praying crowds seemed to have no special desire to hear politicians come to town and demand gun control, or television commentators denounce pornography on the Internet and violence in popular music and the failure of the public schools, or Hillary Clinton call from the White House for increased government spending on counselors and therapists to help children solve their problems ‘with words instead of weapons.’ … The mourners wanted instead to hear the story of teenage girls with guns to their heads being asked to deny the Lord.”
Bottum sees this as not only spiritually sound, but plainly healthier than the fixation on the sick killers on the part of many secular commentators. “Which question is better put to an average sixteen-year-old: Can you imagine taking a gun and killing everyone who's ever made you mad? Or, Can you imagine refusing to deny God at the cost of your life? To be a teenager is to fit every profile, to imagine oneself capable of anything. For such children, Harris and Klebold must be literally maddening, and Cassie Bernall literally inspiring. …
“Cassie Bernall died a death so archetypal, it is almost an adolescent's fantasy of martyrdom. She had no time to calculate the probabilities; she simply had a gun put to her head and the question of her faith posed in a context of life and death. It's like a fourteen-year-old boy's daydream of being martyred: a sudden rolling of life to a single point and an instantaneous fulfillment of Christ's promise in Matthew 10:32: ‘Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father.’ This is an image to move a child to enormous heroism and sacrifice, while Harris and Klebold form an image to engender insanity.
“The evil of Harris and Klebold has at least discredited the hip adolescent pose of Marilyn Manson. … It's discredited the pretend violence of the comic book culture and the supposed harmlessness of the ‘content neutrality’ asserted by Internet providers. It may even have finally discredited the claim of groups like People for the American Way that religious hatred is the root cause of violence.
“But the goodness of Cassie Bernall may do something far more than these small victories over a corrupt popular culture bought by fifteen deaths in Littleton, Colorado. It may deliver a victory in the culture wars so massive that all the narrow policy wars are simply forgotten. To picture her standing there trembling in the school library, with a gun to her head, the question ‘Do you believe in God?’ hanging in the air, is to believe that a change of heart is possible, that God may be loose in America again, that the pendulum may have finally begun its long arc back.”
Ellen Wilson Fielding writes from Davidson, Maryland.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding -------- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Letters DATE: 8/1/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 1-7, 1999 ----- BODY:Gov. Bush's Life Stance
First, I would like to thank you for your outstanding coverage of pro-life issues facing America and the world. Your newspaper has become a valuable tool for those seeking to restore legal protection to preborn children.
I felt compelled to write after reading the front-page article “Gov. Bush Leaves Pro-Lifers Guessing” (Register, July 11-18 issue). Not only was I frustrated with Gov. Bush's refusal to publicly support the right to life of all preborn children, but I was deeply saddened to read officials from National Right to Life Committee steadfastly defending his lukewarm and incredibly weak statements.
Politicians take their cues from those advocating for a cause. It is the advocacy organizations that set the standard for candidates. The reason we have candidates like George W. Bush is because we — grass-roots pro-life Americans — have allowed some pro-life organizations to publicly hail weak candidates as “strong pro-lifers.” Let us not forget that Gov. Bush has publicly stated his support for the legal killing of children conceived in rape and incest through all nine months of pregnancy. In the past few weeks, he's stated he would not require his nominees to the Supreme Court to support the right to life. This is not a “pro-life” position.
Pro-abortion groups demand more from their candidates. That's why Al Gore and Bill Bradley proudly state they will only nominate pro-abortion justices to the court. They know pro-abortion support is contingent on their defense of the so-called “right to abortion” in all cases. They get action when they set the standard. Sadly, many pro-lifers still haven't learned — after 26 years of killing — that compromise with babies' lives has not and will never work.
Mary C. Matuska state director, Pro-Life Wisconsin Brookfield, Wisconsin
Orthodox Theology on Mary
In your little article on “The Immaculate Conception and the Theotokos” (Register, July 4–10 issue) you cite the assertion of Metropolitan Isaiah that “the Orthodox hold that Mary was purified of all sin at the Annunciation.” Certainly, many Orthodox maintain this opinion. However, as Bishop Kallistos Ware notes [in his book The Orthodox Church]: “The Orthodox Church has never in fact made any formal and definitive pronouncements on the matter.” Thus, Metropolitan Isaiah's statement should not be taken as normative for all the Orthodox. …
Father Fahey might be correct in observing that Catholic and Orthodox tend to have different theological understandings of original sin. However, patristic scholars such as J.N.D. Kelly have shown that these differences (in their origins) are not as pronounced as some maintain. I would think that there is an Eastern Christian way of affirming that Mary, as the New Eve, was all-holy (i.e. immaculate) from the first moment of her being.
Robert Fastiggi St. Edwards University Austin, Texas
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: What Constitutes Compassion for The Mentally Ill? DATE: 8/1/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 1-7, 1999 ----- BODY:The Clinton administration recently announced two initiatives relating to mental health. One is called “mental health parity” which would require insurers to provide the same annual and lifetime benefits for mental health care as for standard care. The other is an extension of the law prohibiting discrimination against the disabled to cover discrimination against those disabled by mental illness.
Both of these initiatives are highly questionable. They are based on arguments by analogy. First, mental health is like physical health. Therefore, the same insurance practices should apply to both areas. Second, being disabled by mental illness is like being disabled in other ways. Therefore discrimination against either type of disabled person should be prohibited.
Neither of these analogies works.
First, consider the extension of medical insurance rules into the mental health area. The problem is that people who aren't really very sick can use the mental health benefits of most insurance plans. Some years ago, my husband and I sought marriage counseling from a psychologist that our insurance company generously paid for. We weren't really sick. We could have been served just as well, or maybe even better, by a clergyman or a self-help group.
More recently, we adopted a little Romanian boy who has a variety of psychological problems stemming from his years in a minimum-care orphanage. He is really sick. He needs specialized care from very experienced professionals. His therapy is time intensive and requires specific knowledge. For these reasons, his care is also intrinsically expensive.
Unfortunately, the average insurer can't tell the difference between these two cases. The qualifications of helping professionals for both cases might be the same: “Marriage, Family and Child Counselor.” However, to discourage frivolous use, insurers come up with limits on the number of visits they will pay for per year — frequently 20. But we aren't being realistic to think that an incest survivor or an attachment-disordered child can be treated adequately in 20 visits. The insurers are trying to break even by lumping unlike cases together. Requiring “mental health parity” increases every-body's coverage and everybody's costs, but does nothing to overcome the basic problem of distinguishing the frivolous from the truly needy.
One plan at the state level attempts to sort out such problems. A bill recently introduced in the California legislature lists nine serious mental illnesses and requires insurance parity for these specific illnesses. By increasing coverage, this plan offers the relief that families of the seriously mentally ill are looking for.
Even this plan is not without problems, however. We still have to hope that no one will seek a false diagnosis of schizophrenia, for example, in order to qualify for increased coverage. But that's not entirely likely. Our experience with the Americans with Disabilities Act shows that people can become pretty creative when a lot of money is at stake. People (with the help of their attorneys) have had an almost irresistible urge to define themselves as disabled in order to qualify for the protection of the act.
On the other hand, the good thing about the California plan is that it is a plan for California only. If its plan has too many loopholes and attracts unforeseen clients, racking up unforeseen costs, still no other state is penalized. In fact, other states might learn from the experience. The odds are that the 50 states trying different approaches will come up with some workable solutions. The odds of the federal government hitting the nail on the head with the first try are close to zero.
Now consider the second problem of treating mental disability like other disabilities under discrimination law. The problem here is that people who are mentally ill need others to make adjustments for them. Employers should be aware of such conditions in making job assignments. The more disabled the person is, the more it is truly necessary to “discriminate” in this sense. A person with bipolar disorder should not be expected to function well in a high-stress position. An employer who does not assign someone a particular position because the worker has a serious mental illness should not be treated like an employer who will only hire blacks as custodians.
Again, the confusion arises from lumping together very different kinds of people who have sought mental health assistance.
Tipper Gore is passionate about mental health because she herself had the experience of depression after her son had a serious accident. She sought care from the mental health community and she was right to do so. Certainly, she should not face any discrimination from the fact that she sought counseling.
But she was not chronically sick in the way that people with more serious disorders are. Schizophrenics, psychotics — these are people who require long-term care. It is not compassion to prevent employers from acknowledging the limitations flowing from the condition of the mentally ill.
The mentally ill present particular challenges. They demand time-intensive, specialized care, sometimes for a lifetime. They challenge our notions of who we are and what our freedom means. Sometimes, we would prefer not to look too closely at them and the demands they place on us.
At the same time, they deserve better than to be swept into categories we already have in place, categories meant to address different problems. They deserve for us to think through their unique set of needs and capabilities. Our common humanity demands that we see them for who they are, rather than evading them.
Jennifer Roback Morse, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, welcomes e-mail at jmorse@jps.net.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: J.R. Morse -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: God Is Alive and Well. But Is Western Europe? DATE: 8/1/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 1-7, 1999 ----- BODY:Is God Dead? In Western Europe, It Sure Can Look That Way. That's the headline of the provocative cover story in Newsweek's July 12 international edition.
The article presents data on one of the major stories of the twentieth century: the collapse of Christian practice in Western Europe. With the exception of Italy (29.4%) and Ireland (63.2%), it is difficult to find a country where more than a fifth of the population claims to go to church “regularly.” In Paris, the figure is less than 5% — and other cities in Europe are not much better. Indeed, Newsweek correctly judges Western Europe to be “a post-Christian continent.”
The article focuses on the consequences for the churches of the “death of God.” It quotes Anglican primate Dr. George Carey of Canterbury saying that the Church of England was “one generation away from extinction.”
Other sources offer the tired blather that people are still seeking the same spiritual dimension but in different places, as if the God of the First Commandment could be adequately replaced by reading Chicken Soup for the Soul or indulging in a little ersatz Buddhism.
Newsweek may exaggerate the point by claiming that “Christianity has become an alternative lifestyle — as wacky as atheism once seemed,” but there is no point opposing the evidence that Western Europe has been unfaithful to its baptismal promises. In fact, Pope John Paul II suggested as much in France nearly 20 years ago.
The operative question is: What are the consequences for society of the “death of God?” One might pose Newsweek's question a little differently: Is Western Europe Dead?
Western Europe is dying — of old age. Falling birthrates have meant that the old nations of Europe are getting older. The nations that once conquered the farthest corners of the globe are witnessing the demographic conquest of their capitals by their former colonial subjects, with the social and racial tensions to match. Birth rates tend to plunge during times of great stress or when the future is bleak — times of war or famine, for example. Thus the dearth of children is a stark confession of a lack of hope in the future.
The fearfulness of Western Europe might be a reaction to the bloody toll wrought by the grand schemes and false utopias of the past two hundred years. In 1789 the blood started flowing in earnest, and Europe has been wracked ever since by revolutions and wars — save for the “peace” of the Cold War, achieved by Western Europe (and America) consigning Eastern Europe to the Soviet empire. The collapse of communism held out the great prospect of true peace. At least, until the massacres resumed in the Balkans.
Perhaps Western Europe, the land of explorers and missionaries, has simply tired of the great adventures of the spirit and has become willing to settle for a future concerned with more mundane matters. The European Union has been Western Europe's overarching post-war project. But matters of organization — common currencies and joint regulation of food safety standards and the like — will not be a sufficient foundation for a common project worthy of the European heritage. The building of a superstate (and even that project is not universally supported) cannot be an end in itself. Can it be that the same peoples who built the cathedrals and castles of the past now want a monster bureaucracy in Brussels as their enduring monument?
“It is not true, as is sometimes said, that man cannot organize the world without God,” wrote Henri de Lubac in The Drama of Atheistic Humanism, trying to understand Europe's failed experiments in totalitarianism. “What is true is that, without God, he can ultimately organize it only against man.”
Western Europe is busy organizing its world again, 10 years after the Berlin Wall fell, and 10 weeks after the most recent European war finished. The task of re-organization now involves the newly freed “other half” of Europe, from the Baltics to the Balkans.
It seems unlikely that this new Europe will organize itself in an old-style totalitarian fashion again, but absent any transcendent horizon, what kind of Europe will emerge? If Europe abandons its Christian identity — which is what united Europe in the first instance — will a common agricultural policy provide a sufficient substitute?
The story of the European turmoil of the past 200 years can be read as the consequence of revolutions that sought to organize Europe according to, as George Weigel puts it, “ultra-mundane theories of redemption.” If the Europe of the 21st century attempts the same thing, merely substituting the shiny baubles of consumer culture for the ideologies of race and class, are there any grounds for confidence that the results won't be the same?
The specter of amoral medicine run amok is already haunting Europe. Will those who killed God have any reason not to kill the weak, the aged, the disabled and the genetically “inferior” in their midst?
Frank Sheed, the great Catholic apologist, wrote that the most important war of his time — and he lived through both world wars — was a battle over whether God was dead or alive. “On one side were those who hold that all the world's problems must be solved within the boundaries of the world. On the other are those who hold that without God and his Christ and the spiritual soul and the world to come, no problems can be solved.”
Is God dead in Western Europe? If he is, can Western Europe long survive?
Raymond de Souza writes from Rome.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond J. De Souza -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Where The Knights Were Born DATE: 8/1/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 1-7, 1999 ----- BODY:On Christmas Day 1877, the future founder of the Knights of Columbus, Father Michael McGivney, began his ministry as curate of St. Mary's Church in New Haven, Conn.
It was the start of something that one day put St. Mary's on the map.
St. Mary's was the city's first Catholic church, dedicated in 1874. Since then, it has served not only its parishioners, but Yale University students and people from well beyond the New Haven area. This is especially evident at Christmas and Easter Masses, and during the five solemn novenas celebrated in the church every year.
The church has also come to be a site of personal pilgrimage for the Knights of Columbus throughout the year. Many members of Father McGivney's society who visit the area ask for the location of the church, and then stop by to say a prayer or attend Mass here where the priest's remains are located. Virgil Dechant, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, said the church is considered a shrine by many, though it isn't officially designated as such.
There is, however, a shrine to the Infant of Prague inside St. Mary's, to the right of the altar. This is where five solemn novenas are offered each year by the Dominican priests who have staffed the parish since 1886.
Presiding at the Birth
Father McGivney's legacy is stronger today than ever. Deeply concerned about his flock's spiritual and financial welfare, he believed there should be a fraternal benefit society that would strengthen religious faith and also provide for the financial needs of families overwhelmed by illness or the death of the family's breadwinner.
On Oct. 2, 1881, in the basement of St. Mary's, Father McGivney and a small group of men met to discuss the formation of such a society. Out of that meeting came the founding of the Knights of Columbus, now a worldwide organization of about 1.6 million members. The Knights are still headquartered in New Haven, not far from St. Mary's.
The first meeting of the new society was held at St. Mary's on Feb. 7, 1882. Its principles were unity and charity. The concepts of fraternity and patriotism were added later.
According to the account of one of the charter members, William Geary, at that first meeting, Father McGivney was “acclaimed as founder by 24 men with hearts full of joy and thanksgiving, recognizing that without his optimism, his will to succeed, his counsel and advice, they would have failed.”
Father McGivney did not remain at St. Mary's long; he was reassigned in 1884 to a church not far from his birthplace of Waterbury, Conn. Still, his love and concern for his people were remembered by every parishioner, and by many others in New Haven. His parishioners drew up a resolution that said Father McGivney's kindness and the purity of his life had “secured the love and confidence of the people of St. Mary's, which will follow him in every future field of labor.”
A Short Life
That future was cut short just six years later, after a long bout with pneumonia. Father McGivney died on Aug. 14, 1890, two days after his 38th birthday. He was buried in Waterbury.
In 1982, during the centennial celebration of the Knights' founding, Father McGivney's remains were moved to St. Mary's. His sarcophagus occupies a prominent place in the church, just inside the main entrance. It is the site of many devotions for the Knights and for many other faithful.
In 1996, the cause for Father McGivney's canonization was begun, with Dominican Father Gabriel O'Donnell, who resides at St. Mary's, appointed as postulator. In 1997, the Vatican notified the Archdiocese of Hartford that the cause for sainthood for Father McGivney could proceed.
No miracles are yet attributed to Father McGivney, but devotion to him continues to grow. Father O'Donnell has said, “In the end, there is only so much we can do on behalf of Father McGivney. The rest is up to God.”
In the early 1980s, the Knights renovated St. Mary's. One important addition was the imposing steeple, which rises 179 feet from the once-unfinished tower — left so because of an enormous construction debt when the church was built. It features an 11-foot Celtic cross and contains three bells, the largest of which weighs 3,300 pounds. The bells ring out the Angelus each morning, noon and night and call the faithful to worship at other times.
Another magnificent addition during the renovations was a 400-pound, bronze Carolingian crucifix, made by Italian sculptor Tomasso Gismondi. It was modeled after a cross presented by Charlemagne to the old St. Peter's Basilica in the ninth century.
St. Mary's medieval Gothic architecture, a landmark decades before Yale University buildings were constructed around it in similar design, is reminiscent of European churches that predate it by many centuries. It is complemented by enormous stained-glass windows, which depict the 15 decades of the rosary. The Stations of the Cross, set between each window, are hand-carved and more than 4 feet in height.
Corinthian pillars, topped with gold leaf, support the buttressed ceiling, which also is coated with gold leaf. Elaborately hand-carved dark wood for the pews and altars dominates the nave.
A visitor will be struck by the remarkable life-size statues of the Blessed Mother, St. Dominic and St. Joseph. The Virgin wears a gold crown on her head that came from South America. St. Dominic is holding a replica of St. Mary's Church in his hand. At his feet is a dog holding a torch in its mouth, depicting a dream the saint's mother had that her son would carry the light of truth to the world.
The organ is impressive. It has nearly 3,000 pipes, the longest of which is 16 feet. It was built by George and Elias Hook of Boston in 1871 and was originally placed in St. Alphonsus Church in New York. Moved to St. Mary's in 1982, its tones now fill the church at Sunday Mass and at the 12:05 p.m. Mass every Friday.
St. Mary's provides a spiritual haven for the faithful seven days a week, between 6:30 a.m. and 6 p.m. While there are no scheduled tours, literature placed at the entrance to the church provides a history of St. Mary's and of Father McGivney. Pilgrims and other visitors can pray and be inspired by the Old World aura of St. Mary's.
Jim Malerba is based in North Haven, Connecticut
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Jim Malerba -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Prayer for the Canonization Of Father Michael McGivney DATE: 8/1/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 1-7, 1999 ----- BODY:God, our Father, protector of the poor and defender of the widow and orphan, you called your priest, Father Michael J. McGivney, to be an apostle of Christian family life and to lead the young to the generous service of their neighbor.
Through the example of his life and virtue may we follow your Son, Jesus Christ, more closely, fulfilling his commandment of charity and building up his Body which is the Church.
Let the inspiration of your servant prompt us to greater confidence in your love so that we may continue his work of caring for the needy and the outcast.
We humbly ask that you glorify your servant Father Michael J. McGivney on earth according to the design of your holy will.
Through his intercession, grant the favor I now present (here make your request).
Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: In August, Television Looks at History DATE: 8/1/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 1-7, 1999 ----- BODY:So, it's August: Time to turn off the TV set and head outdoors? The answer is a qualified “yes.” Qualified only because there are a few gems worth catching before the fall season gets under way in September. August, for example, brings us another “pledge” period on public television. You have to check your local listings for these, but mid-August offers a slew of mostly music-related programs, including “Lawrence Welk's Songs of Faith,” “Charlotte Church: Voice of an Angel,” “Bernadette Peters in Concert,” as well as an “American Masters” special on Tin Pan Alley.
Here are some other shows worth catching:
THURSDAYS July 29-Sept. 9
Nightline in Primetime: Brave New World ABC 10 p.m. Eastern
Last August, “Nightline” — ABC News' hugely successful late night program — aired an unusual prime-time series on crime and punishment that worked so well that it decided to give prime time another try. But this year we get something with a distinctly premillennial feel: the future of technology and mankind. The title, of course, is directly inspired by the famous line in The Tempest. “O, wonder! … How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in't.” And like Miranda, from The Tempest, ABC News is equally awed by the extraordinary potential of modern technology.
But here's the good news with “Brave New World.” It is not a mere recitation of the glories of high technology. Instead, it attempts to look deeply into the ethical and moral implications of the high-tech boom. The new world, this series proclaims, is a brave one, but is also a tricky and potentially treacherous one. Questions asked: How has our concept of time been altered by new technology, and how has that affected the way we think and behave? Or, at what point will technology begin to take over an individual human being's thinking and decision-making process?
Serious intentions aside, “Brave New World” is not always heavy sledding through the byways of Silicon Valley. Thanks to anchor and narrator Robert Krulwich, the series is often whimsical and lighthearted. Even high technology, it would appear, has a sense of humor.
WEDNESDAYS Aug. 25 & Sept. 1
On the Trail of Mark Twain with Peter Ustinov PBS 9 p.m. Eastern
The title of this program — PBS' major offering in August — is somewhat misleading. Mark Twain? Do not be fooled: this is, four square, about Sir Peter Ustinov and the actor's own particularly pungent, and off-beat, brand of humor. “On the Trail” will air on two consecutive Wednesdays, but only one hour — the second, which is provocatively if obscurely entitled “Beautiful Death” — was available for review.Yet it is quickly apparent why Ustinov, who has narrated other travelogues for PBS, was attracted to Twain. When the great American writer was a struggling stringer for a San Francisco newspaper, he had the good sense to use his publisher's money to travel to exotic and beautiful places like Hawaii and Fiji (this particular two-part series is based on Twain's best-selling 1897 memoir, Following the Equator). When Twain visited Hawaii, for example, it was a kingdom separate and apart from the mainland United States. This intrigued Ustinov, who observes that “wherever I traveled I found people obsessed with the ancestry of their lost past.” What does this have to do with Mark Twain? Who knows, but during this hour we see Ustinov taking hula lessons, interviewing a man with leprosy, and other disparate (and seemingly unconnected) activities. We see plenty of Ustinov, who is somewhat doddering, and now walks with the assistance of a cane. But Ustinov seems to be taking his cue from a famed British writer — Anthony Trollope — rather than Twain. He uses these hours to comment on the oddities of American customs and mores, yet what we end up with are the oddities of Peter Ustinov.
SATURDAY AUG. 7
The Vietnam War: A Descent into Hell Discovery Channel, 8–11 p.m. Eastern
Why has the Discovery Channel tucked this richly detailed program out of sight on a Saturday night in the midst of summer? Many viewers are perhaps wary of Vietnam documentaries; there have been a slew of them in recent months, and they have been numbing. But Discovery's take on of this conflict is substantially different. “A Descent” goes deep into modern history, to carefully examine the roots of the war, and question the assumptions that so many of us have taken for granted about the Vietnam War and its causes. In particular, it ascribes far greater responsibility to the Eisenhower administration for the United States' deepening involvement in Vietnam than it usually receives.
Still, “Descent” doesn't rely on historians, but policy makers and operatives from the 1950s, including officers from the State Department and the Office of Strategic Services. One Eisenhower aide, for example, dismissively calls the president's unalloyed belief in the domino theory “a concoction” which was unsupported by facts, he claims. There are numerous interviews with key personnel from the formative years of the war, which makes this program a worthy — and engrossing — addition to the huge canon of Vietnam documentaries.
SATURDAYS & SUNDAY Aug. 21, 22, 28
EWTN Global Showcase EWTN 8 p.m. Eastern
EWTN will present a series of programs this month celebrating the anniversary of Cardinal Karol Wojtyla's election as Pope in 1978.
Just some of the highlights: The network will air the anniversary Mass that took place on Oct. 18, 1998, on Aug. 21; “Catholic Compass” will air “Pope John Paul II: A Celebration of his Life,” a biography of his life on Aug. 22; and a “Showcase” presentation entitled “Pope John Paul II: Conscience of the World,” that features footage from his 1979 trip to Mexico and 1998 visit to Cuba.
A program note observes that “the Holy Father has touched many lives all over the world including places like Africa, Europe, the United States and especially his homeland of Poland.” This airs Aug. 28.
***
Clouds on the Horizon
We have seen the immediate future of network television, and from a family perspective, the news is not good.
Fall, of course, means new programs on the major networks — well over 30 new shows will premier between September and December.
However, a relatively new and ominous trend looms: Many new shows feature extraordinarily harsh language as well as dramatic situations that are patently unsuitable for children. UPN, the fledgling network that is barely drawing a breath, will even air a Thursday night two-hour telecast of so-called “World Championship Wrestling” that has already drawn fire from critics. It promises to be unusually violent, and will air when millions of children are in front of the TV sets.
Why are networks “pushing the envelope” this fall more than in years past? The answer has to do, in part, with a gradually changing focus of network TV. The networks are seeking young adult viewers more than ever before, and the way to do that, they believe, is with sexual content and violence. From a network programming perspective, families are merely redundant, and that has led to a radical decline in standards.
It is still possible to find something here and there, however. You just have to look.
Verne Gay writes about television for Newsday.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Verne Gay -------- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Videos in Release DATE: 8/1/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 1-7, 1999 ----- BODY:Microcosmos
Sponsored by a consortium of European countries and their film departments, Microcosmos is a wonder to behold. The nature documentary's exquisite footage was shot in an anonymous meadow surrounded by trees somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere. A sweetly voiced narrator announces that in the meadow a season is a lifetime and invites viewers to marvel over the bucolic location's many insect residents. What follows is a microphotographic, extremely close-up examination of the behavior of some familiar but nonetheless fascinating bugs. Among other beautifully shot sequences, the documentary shows bees hovering over gloriously colored flowers; ants bearing enormous burdens; spiders capturing struggling flies; ladybugs trundling along branches; butterflies emerging from their cocoons; and water bugs recoiling from raindrops on a small pond's stormy surface. Microcosmos also includes a few scenes of insect courting, insect violence and insect encounters with other species. All nature lovers should be intrigued by the film, but even those who think of themselves as anti-bug should find something fascinating, even lyrical about the complex insect world revealed in Microcosmos.
The Quiet Room
Australian filmmakers seem to have a special ability to produce the occasional highly unusual motion picture. The latest entry in this select category is The Quiet Room. Set in only two rooms, with a tiny cast, the film reveals the interior monologue of an Australian schoolgirl (Chloe Ferguson). The 7-year-old has turned mute in protest against her bickering parents (Celine O'Leary and Paul Blackwell), whose marriage is in a downward spiral. The deeply unhappy and confused girl wants her small family to return to the happiness they knew when she was a 3-year-old (Phoebe Ferguson), shown in flashback, but knows only one way to do so — a regression into silence. Her loving but frustrated parents try to understand their daughter; but her behavior, and their own, is well beyond any easy answer. Eventually, the family comes to a hard-won compromise that allows them to get on with their lives. Although The Quiet Room's cinematic technique is a somewhat distracting at first, eventually it proves to be a powerful path into a young girl's psyche.
True Heart
Teenage twins Bonnie (Kirsten Dunst) and Sam (Zachery Ty Brown) are summoned by their mother (Dey Young) to join her and their stepfather, Dick (Michael Gross), at a conference in northern British Columbia. On the flight to the conference, the small plane the twins are riding in crashes. The pilot and another passenger are killed, but Bonnie and Sam emerge relatively unscathed. The crash attracts Khonanesta (August Schellenberg), a local Indian who promises to escort them to a ranger station. The trio's trek across brutal if beautiful terrain is complicated by the machinations of a band of poachers who are determined to kill a local Kodiak bear. Khonanesta is determined to foil their intentions, and the twins join him in making life awkward for the evil men. However, the poachers soon take their revenge on the trio and a few others. Although True Heart is meant to be a family film set in a glorious location and employing impressive animal sequences, the plotting is pedestrian and incorporates unnecessary violence. The result is an uneven wilderness epic.
Loretta G. Seyer is editor of Catholic Faith & Family.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Loretta G. Seyer -------- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Father Avery Dulles Says Dissent Should Be Private DATE: 8/1/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 1-7, 1999 ----- BODY:MIAMI—Jesuit Father Avery Dulles is worried about “growing numbers of theologians” who question even “revealed doctrine” and who resort to petitions, press conferences and demonstrations as if they represented an alternative magisterium.
The Fordham University professor and writer made his observations at the annual convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America in June.
Register Radio News correspondent Rich Rinaldi recently spoke with Father Dulles.
Rinaldi: It is not always easy to understand the varying degrees of authority that accompany Church teachings. Can you offer some guidance?
Father Dulles: One thing I have often done is to simply summarize the three grades of doctrine that are distinguished in the profession of faith and which have now been incorporated into canon law by Pope John Paul. The three grades are, in the first place, certain truths that are revealed by God and taught as such by the Church and which all must believe if they wish to be Catholic Christians. Then there are truths that are inseparably connected with revealed truth but are not themselves revealed. And the third category includes other Catholic teachings which are more or less loosely connected with revelation but are still obligatory doctrine because they are authoritatively taught by the magisterium.
Can all three experience some level of change or development?
The development is somewhat different in the case of those different kinds of doctrine. The first two categories are irreversible or infallible so they can still develop but only incrementally — not by way of being contradicted. The third category could be at least modified in the course of history, and so there is a little more scope for change there.
The meaning of the word ‘dissent’ is difficult to pin down.
Can the third category be considered infallible?
While obligatory, they are not infallible.
In what category would the Church's position on women priests be located?
That has been discussed, particularly by Cardinal [Joseph] Ratzinger [the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith]. He maintains that women's ordination is in the second category, at least provisionally. [It is] something that is intimately connected with revelation. He said that, at the present stage, it would be too early to affirm that it is in revelation, but in the course of time it might become apparent that it really is a part of revelation itself. But in either case he would maintain that it is infallible, and he said so in a formal response to a question that was put to [the Holy See]. The Holy Father himself has used the word “definitive” — it must be definitively held by all the faithful, which seems to be equivalent to infallible teaching.
Is the teaching on contraception infallible, or can it be said that it is still in development?
It seems to me that neither the Pope nor the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith has taken a clear position on that, but there was a Roman document that did say — in a very passing statement — that it was irreformable. I have an idea that it will not be reformed; it has been so emphatically taught by five popes of this present century and there are no signs that it's up for reconsideration.
So we should not expect a change from
Well some people, of course, are pressing for change of Humanae Vitae, but I think they are diminishing in numbers, and their cause becomes more difficult to defend as the years go on.
Is there a place for a Catholic theologian to dissent, and what is the Holy Father's position on this?
The meaning of the word “dissent” is difficult to pin down. Often when the Pope is discussing it, he's thinking of a kind of a noisy dissent in which people are challenging the magisterium and are setting themselves up as a kind of alternate magisterium. They are trying to gather disciples to their own position which is contrary to that of the Church. He maintains that this is not a proper attitude for Catholics in respect to the magisterium.
What about personal dissent, especially for a theologian?
If an individual has difficulties of conscience in maintaining a particular doctrine and cannot bring himself or herself to assent, that's understandable enough and that happens sometimes. In that case they should express their difficulties to colleagues or [other] and try to obtain further light. [They should] try to see whether they are correct or whether they made a mistake somewhere, and pray for further light and seek to unite their minds with the teachings of the Church, if they possibly can. That kind of dissent, if it should even be called dissent, is quite understandable and even proper for Catholics.
Rich Rinaldi is director of Register Radio News.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Rich Rinaldi -------- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: New Fund-Raiser Is Bullish on Academic Institute DATE: 8/1/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 1-7, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—The new fund-raising chief for an academic institute that wants to fund scholars outside the reach of U.S. bishops has downplayed the controversy surrounding his employer.
Hugh Michael Dempsey, of Green-sburg, Pa., refused to comment to the Register about the status of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies, which bills itself as “not … jurisdictionally related” to the bishops. “I don't really know all the particulars about that,” Dempsey said.
A private foundation in Europe called Argidius will contribute $10 million to the Washington, D.C.-based institute, provided that it shows its fund-raising capabilities, according to the institute's brochures.
Dempsey was scheduled to start in his new position July 26. He said he did not know what salary to expect.
The self-described “free-standing” academic institute, also known as the Commission on Catholic Scholarship, is headed by Marianist Father James Heft, chancellor of the University of Dayton. The institute wants to raise $60 million for an endowment to fund scholarship that fits its understanding of the Catholic intellectual tradition.
U.S. bishops are planning to meet in November to decide on new norms for safeguarding the authenticity of theological education at Catholic colleges and universities. Pope John Paul II's 1990 apostolic constitution on Catholic higher education, Ex Corde Ecclesiae, calls for norms for theology professors to receive a “mandate” from a “competent ecclesial authority.” Many Catholic education leaders fear the new academic institute would bypass such ecclesial authority.
“I'm familiar with the Ex Corde Ecclesiae issue,” Dempsey said, “but until I know more about all the relevant issues, I can't comment.” Asked about his personal commitment to the Church's magisterium, he said, “Until I know more, my comment would be irrelevant.”
Asked about his new job, he said, “I am a member of the Order of Malta, and the Order of the Holy Sepulcher and I felt for a very long time that I wanted to do more serious concentration on the faith and helping to expand people's understanding of the faith. My understanding of the institute is its main mission is to expand people's understanding of the faith and helping the faith to be relevant to people's lives.”
The institute plans to give grants exclusively to theology faculty at the discretion of the Commission on Catholic Scholarship. The institute's literature states that it hopes universities “will encourage some of their supporters to assist this important initiative [with donations].”
Concern about the religious identity of Catholic colleges and universities has peaked in recent months. Earlier this year media attention focused on a theology dean at the University of Detroit Mercy who gave public speeches denouncing the Church for opposing abortion. Georgetown University allowed use of campus facilities for a student-hosted talk by pornographer Larry Flynt, who used vulgar language to denounce the Catholic Church for opposing pornography. And a number of Catholic colleges have honored public promoters of abortion at their commencement addresses.
Dempsey received his undergraduate and master's degrees from Bloomsburg University, and a doctorate from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He heads the Dempsey Group, which provides management consultant services.
He has served as president of The Eye and Ear Institute of Pittsburgh and has been associated with several local organizations in Westmoreland County, Pa.
Dempsey said he was a vice chairman of the Catholic Campaign for America briefly during its first year of operation. He said he will seek funds through “leadership grants” from sources in the United States and abroad.
—Register staff
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Register staff -------- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Education Notebook DATE: 8/1/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 1-7, 1999 ----- BODY:A Newspaper's Double Standard
The League's newsletter reported that The Journal News editorialized against the Irish Christian Brothers' Iona College for refusing to publish an obscenity-laden student poem in the college's literary magazine. Reporter Caren Halbfiner made similar charges in a separate piece.
In a letter to the editor, the League noted the irony that Halbfiner described the offending passages as “sexually explicit” and one that includes “an expletive.” She did not quote the actual material, League President William Donohue wrote, “no doubt, because printing such language violates the policy of Gannett Newspapers, as it would most mainstream newspapers.”
Donohue concluded: “If newspapers have the right to maintain certain ethical standards in deciding what is printed in their names, why shouldn't Catholic colleges have the same right?”
Have Schools ‘Turned Back the Clock’ ?
“Schools and universities nationwide … are reexamining the definition of educational equity and the role of racial criteria in student admissions, while courts have been increasingly challenging and striking down racial preferences as unconstitutional,” Ferdinand wrote.
The reporter focused much of her story on the disappointment of the city's liberal establishment with both the national trend and the local application. The decision “set off alarm bells among those who fear the clock will be turned back on a quarter century of desegregation efforts that began with mandatory busing.”
But because only 16% of public school students are white, the change in policy is not expected to radically alter the racial makeup of Boston's 129 schools. “When the Boston Latin School was forced to drop race as a selection factor, the number of black and Hispanic students admitted to the school this year was only 2% less than the previous year — not the dramatic decrease predicted by some,” conceded Ferdinand.
The Post story did not include quotes from the white parents and students who threatened to file the discrimination suit, or from anyone who opposed the old Boston system of racial preferences. The only sources included in the story who were in any way positive about the change were those who explained the new policy as inevitable, and who maintain that it will not represent a major change.
“There are some concerns that we will go back to all-white and all-black neighborhoods,” said Tracey Lynch, a school committee spokeswoman. “But … given what the city and the schools already look like, it doesn't [seem] at all likely that we would go back to one-race schools.”
Abstinence Programs at Work
That's better than national statistics which show that more than 50% of the teen population in the United States engaged in sexual intercourse in 1990. Since that figure is almost a decade old, the Florida result may reflect an emerging trend for the entire nation.
The Herald reported that Florida schools emphasize abstinence in their sex education curricula and educators gave credit to churches and other community organizations for promoting the message.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: A Voice for Women on Death Row DATE: 8/1/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 1-7, 1999 ----- BODY:Anti-death penalty crusader Kathleen A. O'Shea was featured in the Winter 1999 CUA Magazine, published by The Catholic University of America, for her pioneering work raising questions about women on death row. She spoke recently with Register Radio News correspondent Rich Rinaldi.
Rich Rinaldi: How many women are now on death row?
Kathleen O'Shea: Right now there are 48 women.
Does your study look at the world or just the United States?
My study was only in the United States and it covered the period from 1900 to 1998.
Bring us up to date about the conditions of the women on death row. There are some unusual things happening on death row, like the women in Idaho and others.
Yes, that's one of my big concerns because women on death row are so few. Many of them are isolated. Right now there are eight women in Idaho on death row. For the most part they are kept in special isolated cells which we would refer to as the kind of cell [where they] are sent when they misbehave in prison.
These women have little contact with anyone and basically we don't know about them. We don't know what happens to them. The people who are in charge of that area have total power over them. I know from personally interviewing wardens that basically they don't bother with what goes on. I spoke to one woman warden. I asked her if she knew of the women on death row in her prison — she had four; … had she ever been there to see them. And she told me, No, that she didn't do that because she didn't want to become personally involved with that area.
You speak of women in Idaho who haven't seen anybody for four years and are isolated for 23 hours a day.
Outside of the people who are in charge of that area, one of the things I want to talk about, for example, is that women are only allowed to have showers three times a week. And when they go to shower, they go in shackles and handcuffs. Now why would someone be taken five feet down the hall to a shower in shackles and handcuffs? To me, that's a cruel and unusual punishment. There is no need for it. … And one woman told me that has changed, from shackling or handcuffing her in front of her, to putting her handcuffs behind her back so that, if she walks to the shower, she has to carry everything. There are men who take her to the shower. If she drops her soap or washcloth or something like that, she has to squat down backwards and pick this up off the floor. That's totally unnecessary.
The other kind of thing they are never allowed, like in some states, … [is] one phone call a week. Most of these women have several children. This is a very difficult thing for them not to be able to talk to their children and families.
Some of them are allowed only four envelopes a month. Paper, pens, any kind of personal hygiene stuff, they have to pay for themselves. These are, for the most part, poor women with no money. If their families have any money it's going toward their cases. So, where could they get pen and paper and that kind of thing?
Why is it that women are being treated differently than men or is this unique to just death row inmates?
Yes, it is.
Why?
When I talked to those people in charge of it, they told me … there's no gender thing. It's solely economic. But I have difficulty in believing that.
They say that because there are so few women in the prisons, they cannot afford to hire personnel that would give these women the same kind of treatment that men are allowed. For example, to group with each other and recreate, or at least that women be allowed to have three pairs of underwear a week. … Women write to me and tell me they need clothes.
You have mentioned different methods of execution that some of these women may be facing.
We have execution by electric chair, by lethal injection, gas and firing squad. Idaho has a firing squad and there is a woman there who will be put to death that way. Delaware has hanging as a possibility. There are no women on death row now in Delaware, but it is the method.
Some of these sound bad and you talk about botched executions. It sounds like these are not a straightforward, humane way to treat people.
In Florida … there was a case of Pedro Medina who was executed and the hood that was put on his head, the metal hood, when they applied the electricity, the hood caught fire. He was still alive and nobody knew what to do because it never happened before.
They turned it off so the fire would go out. The fire went out. He was still alive so they said, “We have to execute him; let's do it again.” And the hood caught fire again. So, they left it on and he basically was burned to death. It didn't work.
A lot of times people have had lethal injections and … [the executioners] couldn't find the veins. One time the thing slipped out of the vein and they had to go back in to reinsert it. One time one guy sat up and said, “It's not working; I'm not dead.” And so they had to do it again. We don't know that a lethal injection is painless because they give them a drug that paralyzes them. So, basically, the person they paralyze can't tell us whether or not they're in pain. People are doing studies now tell us that the solution that is used in lethal injections is very painful.
You mentioned that a woman may be facing hanging. That has to be considered unusual punishment?
There was a woman hanged in Arizona at one time. When she was hanged, she was decapitated — which is always a possibility in hangings.
Rich Rinaldi is director of Register Radio.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Rich Rinaldi -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Euthanasia Foe Says 'Tide Is Turning' DATE: 8/1/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 1-7, 1999 ----- BODY:After a friend's assisted suicide, California attorney Wesley J. Smith wrote a Newsweek article condemning the propaganda that led people to believe they had the right to take their own lives. He later became involved with the Anti-Euthanasia Task Force based in Steubenville, Ohio, and authored Forced Exit: The Slippery-Slope From Assisted Suicide to Legalized Murder. Smith recently spoke with Register assistant editor Geraldine Hemmings.
When did you first become involved with the whole issue of euthanasia?
I got into this whole issue because a friend of mine killed herself under the influence of Hemlock Society propaganda. And I was so stressed about this, that I wrote an article for the June 28, 1993, edition of Newsweek which I called, “The Whispers of Strangers.” I warned about these whisperers who were giving people, like my friend, moral permission to kill themselves and then teaching them how to do it.
The task force asked permission to run that article in their newsletter and that's how I heard of them. At the same time that they were asking for that permission, I was also receiving all kinds of hate mail from people who were saying that suicide is good, that suicide is noble and that I only wanted to see people suffer.
I realized that something really profound was happening in the culture and something very disturbing.
How did you become involved in the Anti-Euthanasia Task Force?
I talked to Rita Marker and I read her book Deadly Compassion which was the biography of Ann Wickett … who helped [Derek Humphrey] co-pilot the Hemlock Society and whom he abandoned when she became ill with breast cancer. In her despair, she turned to Rita.
[Ann] ended up killing herself. But it was her biography [that influenced me] and it was also the warning by Rita of what the agenda is of the euthanasia movement.
I called Rita and said, “Listen, I think that I have some skills that you that you could use.” … I said that if I could be of any assistance, to let me know. And my involvement with the task force from that point on grew continuously.
Do you find that euthanasia is increasingly permeating the minds and the hearts of people in this country?
It's the death culture. We have a death culture. I call it a medical death culture which increasingly looks to killing and/or death as the answer to medical difficulties and societal problems. You devalue human life and it's essentially utilitarian. …
We have … a ‘medical death culture’ which increasingly looks to killing and or death as the answer to medical difficulties'
— Wesley J. Smith
What we are doing in suicide and euthanasia and bioethics is creating a hierarchy of human values. We value something in life more than we value other things. Those we value, we treat better than those we don't value. And that's just a new form of oppression. Instead of being based on race or being based on gender, it's being based on state of health or physical ability. That's unacceptable.
How should you look at the suffering of others, and what is true compassion?
I think that it's our human obligation to help. True compassion is “suffering with.” Compassion means that when someone is suffering, we care and we love enough that we involve ourselves to help take some of the burden off the suffering individual. That, of course, can come in many ways because there are many forms of suffering.
Among those ways, for example, is that if physical pain is the cause of suffering, we try to get people access to the kind of medical treatment that would alleviate that. … Let them know that they remain valued and loved, and not rejected because they are no longer healthy.
What is the difference between euthanasia and assisted suicide? Is the difference merely technical?
Technically, assisted suicide is when a doctor or someone else gives the person the help by which they kill themselves. … Assisted suicide is a joint effort to kill someone where the actual act is done by the person. Euthanasia is when the third person does the killing.
Surely assisted suicide is just a steppingstone away from euthanasia?
Assisted suicide is the wedge towards euthanasia. But advocates in this country know that people reject doctors doing the killing, so now they are saying, “You do your own killing.” But self-killing does-n't always work because sometimes people go into comas. … Eventually, if people ever come to accept assisted suicide, they will naturally accept euthanasia.
Oregon has physician-assisted suicide. Has this state paved the way for other states to do the same?
No, I actually think that the tide is turning. Since 1994, five states have outlawed assisted suicide specifically by statue, and one state has made it a civil wrong. The five states that have outlawed it by statute are Rhode Island, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland and Michigan. The state that outlawed it as a civil wrong is Virginia. Jack Kevorkian is now in jail as a murderer. Michigan, which was the center of assisted suicide activity in this country, rejected legalization in November 1998 by 71%-29%, which is an overwhelming margin.
Who are the main leaders in the fight against euthanasia?
When Oregon passed its law, assisted suicide's primary opponents, but not exclusive, were the Catholic Church and the right-to-life movements, and medical associations. That has now broadened to include advocates for the poor [and] the disability-rights activists.
So that you not only have religious people but you have secular people. The disability-rights groups and the advocates for the poor are ratio-nalist, materialist seculars, and liberal. … The opposition now looks like America.
And that has had a huge difference here in California in stopping a legislative attempt because the grass-roots effort to prevent legalization here has been very successful precisely because the opponents are no longer pigeonholed into one part of the society … and that is to be deeply welcomed.
We often ask the question “What can I do? I'm only one person. I'm not part of any group. How can I help?”
There are a lot of things you can do. First and foremost, you need to talk. The only way to defeat it is going to be one person at a time, grass-roots style. That's where it will be the most effective. We have to tell each other our stories of how this is bad. And we need to advocate in our neighborhood and among our relations over the dinner table and after church.
If someone sees someone in a wheelchair and says, “If I looked like that, I would go to Kevorkian,” which is very common, it's our human obligation to say, “Wait a minute, let's take a look at that statement,” and defend the value of the disabled person or the sick person, and learn about the things that can be done to make life better for disabled people and for the dying people, so that this is no longer shrugged off as the innocuous statement.
Start talking about the HMOs and how it only costs $35 for the drugs in an assisted suicide but it may cost $35,000 to care for that person properly. And, if you legalize assisted suicide, guess which way things are going to go? You start bringing up these very practical and pragmatic reasons. If the person is religious you can also bring up moral issues and eventually you turn it around. One by one, people are turning around. … Our victory will come with education, education, education. And that is done one person at a time.
What can we do as individuals when we learn about support for euthanasia in newspapers, TV or over the Internet?
When someone opposes assisted suicide and the issue is on talk radio or a chatroom over the Internet, or there's an article in the newspaper, they should write a letter to the editor, they should engage in the chatroom, they should call the talk radio program. They should be able to set forth why this is wrong, not only from a moral perspective, but also from the practical pragmatic perspective.
The Anti-Euthanasia Task Force gives people the educational tools to allow them to engage in this issue intelligently and with optimism and with a knowledge of the truth. That works; that is what really works. I call it stretching the rubber band — let's say that the goal is to break the rubber band. I stretch it and it doesn't break, you stretch it and it doesn't break, but after 20 of 30 people, eventually it breaks. And the person who breaks the rubber band isn't actually the last person, it's all of them.
Average people are the key to victory … average people who know that it's wrong and who touch people in their daily lives.
Was this an over-the-table conversation in your family when you were growing up?
It wasn't an issue when I was growing up. I'm 50 years old. It was never dreamed of that people would want their doctors to kill them. It was not discussed because we had memories of the Holocaust in which doctors in Germany did kill people based on disability. … That's why I was so shocked [at the reaction] when I wrote my [Newsweek] piece, because I didn't think that my article was controversial.
Surely parents have a very difficult task in rearing a family in today's society when they are surrounded by all of this? What can they do?
Parents have to bring their children up respecting life and respecting people who are sick and respecting people who are disabled, and believe in equality.
—Geraldine Hemmings
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Geraldine Hemmings -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 8/1/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 1-7, 1999 ----- BODY:During a U.S. bishops ad limina visit June 6, 1998, Pope John Paul II stressed the importance of each bishop's role in the teaching of the Catholic faith in his diocese (See stories, Page 14).
In an ecclesiology of communion, the Church's hierarchical structure is not a matter of power but of service, completely ordered to the holiness of Christ's members.
The Marian dimension of the Church is prior to the Petrine or hierarchical dimension, as well as being supreme and pre-eminent, richer in personal and communitarian implications for the various ecclesial vocations. If I mention these well-known truths, it is because everywhere in the Church, and not least in your country, we see the spread of a fresh and invigorating lay spirituality and the magnificent fruits of the laity's greater involvement in the Church's life.
As we approach the third Christian millennium it is of paramount importance that the Pope and the Bishops, fully conscious of their own special ministry of service in the Mystical Body of Christ, continue to 'stir and promote a deeper awareness among all the faithful of the gift and responsibility they share, both in association and as individuals, in the communion and mission of the Church.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Life Notes DATE: 8/1/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 1-7, 1999 ----- BODY:Austrian Youth Plan 340-Mile March for Life
ZENIT, July 21-The March for Life by German and Austrian youth is scheduled to leave from the cathedral in Munich on Aug. 1 and end with Mass at the cathedral in Vienna on Aug. 27.
The youth will proclaim the Gospel of Life en route by means of talks, slide shows, flyers and posters. Mass will be celebrated daily. The planned route includes a stop in Altoetting, the largest Marian pilgrimage site in Germany. On Aug. 9, the marchers will cross into Austria.
The 340-mile-long March for Life has the support of Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Vienna, Cardinal Joachim Meisner of Cologne and several other bishops. Auxiliary Bishop Andreas Laun of Salzburg announced his desire to take part in the march.
“This initiative hopes to bring together prayer, pilgrimage and meetings with youth,” said Cardinal Schoenborn. “Without wounding or judging, the young people will be encouraged by the witness of lived solidarity and charity, and through conversations and detailed information on the defense of life.”
The march has already attracted the attention of Austrian lawmakers. Matthias Ellmauer, a representative in the National Assembly, told the young people, “I assure you that I am intervening in Parliament for the right to life [also for unborn children!] and that I will allow this to [permeate] my entire parliamentary work.”
Genetic Testing Not Always the Answer
The tests are “technically more difficult to perform and trickier to interpret than conventional medical tests,” said the paper.
Nancy Seeger, whose mother and aunt both died of breast cancer, got her report last September from Oncormed, a genetic testing company then based in Gaithersburg, Md. The report indicated that the Bethesda woman had not inherited any of the common genetic mutations that would predis-pose her to the disease, said the paper.
However, eight months earlier, Oncormed told Seeger “she harbored a mutation that could place her at a greatly increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer. As a result, and after consulting with her doctor, Seeger quickly underwent surgery to remove her ovaries,” said the article. “Now the company was writing to say the first result had been a mistake.”
Said the paper, “Seeger is one of a growing number of people in this country learning the hard way that the rapidly expanding field of genetic testing is not everything its gleaming molecular image would suggest.”
The paper also said that genetic tests are subject “to virtually none of the formal oversight required of standard medical tests. The Food and Drug Administration, which approves the safety and effectiveness of other blood tests, has opted not to regulate genetic tests such as the one Seeger took, saying it lacks the resources.”
U.N. Population Control Funds Approved by House
CATHOLIC WORLD NEWS SERVICE, July 20-The U.S. House voted July 19 to give $25 million to the United Nations for population control programs provided none of the money is given to China.
Said the newswire report, “Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), the most promi nent pro-life member of Congress, unsuccessfully challenged the amendment which passed 221–198.”
Smith attempted to ban funding for the U.N. program “as long as it has a presence in China, which has a one-child, one-family policy that includes forced abortions.”
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Facts of Life DATE: 8/15/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 15-21, 1999 ----- BODY:Did You Know?
The pain of abortion is real, deep and long-lasting — but also difficult for sufferers to admit. Following is the text of a note Michael T. Barry found at an Ohio memorial for the unborn:
My Dear Leah,
Twenty-six years ago I gave you up for abortion. I was right out of high school, thinking only of myself and finding no support from the father. My parents would have disowned me so I saw no alternative.
I am now married to a wonderful man with sons ages 13 and 16. My life seemed complete until I attended the High School Youth Retreat at Steubenville in June of 1999. Even though I converted to the Catholic faith shortly after I married, I never confessed my deepest sin until that retreat weekend. I found the weekend so emotional! Moving. I could hardly wait for the Saturday morning session to end so I could go to confession.
Not a day goes by that I have not thought of the child I aborted.
My penance was to name the child, pray and write a letter so others might learn from my mistake.
I now pray daily to Leah asking her to forgive me and be my guardian angel to watch over me. We have a mighty God who forgives us of all our sins.
I am so sorry.
Love,
Your Mother
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life --------- TITLE: Fox TV Wows Viewers with Stigmata and Visions DATE: 08/08/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 08-14, 1999 ----- BODY:BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.—More than 7.6 million viewers, including a “surprisingly high number of teen-agers,” tuned into a two-hour July 28 Fox Television program featuring supernatural occurrences.
Included in the program were a statue that bled and a woman on whom the apparent wounds of Christ's passion, the stigmata, appeared before viewers' eyes.
The program, “Signs from God: Science Tests Faith,” claimed to bring rigorous tests to bear on the spectacular phenomena that the Catholic Church treats with great caution. While officials of the Beverly Hills, Calif.-based TV network said they heard “nothing but good reports” about the show, viewers who spoke to the Register had differing views.
Most admitted that the program was presented in a fair, polite and objective manner even if it failed to meet some standards of certainty.
Fox network's chief executive officer, David Hall, told the Register that “we took manifestations of faith and tested them as the entire basis of the show and after our demonstrations we said, ‘You, the public, are the jury and you have to make up your own mind.’”
“It was absolutely a great success for the viewers,” Hall added. “Based on affiliate member telephone calls, it was No. 1 for the night among teen-agers and all the calls were 100% positive.”
Among those on the studio panel was Father Peter J. Stravinskas, editor of the Catholic Encyclopedia, who spoke briefly at the opening and closing of the program.
“I said at the beginning and ending of the program that I have big question marks,” Father Stravinskas told the Register.“I told the audience I had question marks particularly with the stigmatist, that while they seemed to be following all the proper procedures for a Church review, I think that we still have to adopt a wait-and-see attitude.”
The writer, educator and administrator of Holy Trinity Church in Newark, N.J., was recommended for the show's appearance “by a friend from Vatican Radio.”
“I must say that the people running the program were extremely respectful toward the Church and toward me, so I guess all of those things are plusses,” he added. “But, in terms of a sensational approach to the matter, I think that is what it was and that was exactly what I had expected.”
Asked about the priest's comments on the program, Hall emphasized that no effort was made to make claims about whether the audience should accept or reject what was demonstrated in the show concerning stigmata, crying statues and other unusual occurrences.
In the course of the program, several methods of modern-day research and investigative tools were claimed to be used to study the phenomena. These included DNA tests, CAT scans and other high-tech procedures.
Viewers' Views
Curtis Talley, a permanent deacon who directs the office of Multicultural Ministries in the Diocese of Memphis, Tenn., watched the program and said, “I found the man who was dealing with the presentations was very sensitive when he set out to demonstrate what had happened in these cases — and I found the evidence overwhelming.”
“As I watched the program, I also reminded myself that when someone tries to demonstrate a miracle happening, skeptics will always try to find a way to claim that ‘well, it didn't conclusively prove anything,’” Deacon Talley said.
“Although I felt the program dealt mostly with the Catholic Church and apparitions,” he added, “I also felt that it carried a strong overall message of evangelization that people need to turn to Jesus to hear what he is saying.”
One priest who spoke with the Register asked that his name not be used so that he wouldn't offend any of his parishioners. He was unenthusiastic about the program and said, “Most of these claimed apparition sites are fictitious mind-over-matter situations.”
Fox's Take
The recent program seemed unusually positive for Fox TV, which in recent months had come under criticism for two of its shows, The Simpsons and Ally McBeal, which featured what many perceived as anti-Catholic humor.
Fox TV described the July 29 program in advance news releases as “an unprecedented search for the truth behind the spiritual phenomena aimed at determining if they are direct signs from God, or elaborate hoaxes to deceive followers.”
The program was produced by Michael Willesee Sr. and his son, Michael Jr., both of Australia. Hall said the father-son team spent seven years “trying to convince” the subjects in the program to undergo elaborate tests and give testimony about their cases.
Asked what drew their attention to the subjects in the program, Hall described the elder Willesee as the “most skeptical man on the planet” and when he heard claims of the events taking place he began preparing the research.
The process took seven years, said Hall, because “these people don't put themselves forward, and they don't have public relations men or agents, so it took seven years for Willesee to win their confidence to the point where they would agree to go public with their stories and the testings.”
Father Stravinskas said that after the program, Willesee “seemed rather annoyed at what I had said.”
“I closed my appearance on the show by pointing out that the Catholic Church's attitude towards these things is very, very skeptical, whereas I think they expected me to say that the Church is enthusiastic about this kind of stuff,” said the priest.
The show also dealt with information attributed to private revelations. On this subject the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches:
“Throughout the ages, there have been so-called ‘private’ revelations, some of which have been recognized by the authority of the Church. They do not belong, however, to the deposit of faith. It is not their role to improve or complete Christ's definitive Revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of history. Guided by the magisterium of the Church, the sensus fidelium knows how to discern and welcome in these revelations whatever constitutes an authentic call of Christ or his saints to the Church.
“Christian faith cannot accept ‘revelations’ that claim to surpass or correct the Revelation of which Christ is the fulfillment, as is the case in certain non-Christian religions and also in certain recent sects which base themselves on such ‘revelations’” (No. 67).
Robert R. Holton writes from Memphis, Tennessee.
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: Robert R. Holton ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Fortune Article Is Hit For Anti-Vatican Bias DATE: 08/08/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 08-14, 1999 ----- BODY:NEW YORK—The story is billed as perhaps the biggest scandal in the history of the insurance industry, yet it reads like one of those pulp novels that occasionally appear with the Vatican as a dramatic backdrop.
The story is included in the Sept. 6 edition of Fortune magazine, Time Warner Inc.'s business publication, under the headline “Washing Money in the Holy See.”
The protagonist of the story is Martin Frankel, a bizarre genius who is able to fool politicians, businessmen and the saviest of Washington lawyers. But writer Richard Behar chooses not to dwell on the central figure or to even characterize most of his victims as experts who should have known better.
The object of Behar's investigative scorn is the Vatican and the Church hierarchy for whom he grants no status as victims.
“It's intriguing that the bad guy in this story is anyone who is associated with the Vatican, even on a low level,” said Father Robert Sirico, president of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty and a columnist for Forbes, a competing business magazine. “The good guys are the ones who signed all the bogus documents and pushed the whole thing along. What's wrong with this picture?”
In interviews with the Register, Father Sirico and other critics of the Fortune story acknowledged that Vatican officials were duped by Frankel, and that it may be proved that some of them went too far in assisting a man who promised to dedicate millions to “help the poor and alleviate suffering,” the stated mission of a charitable trust set up Frankel, who is now an international fugitive.
“But it's not the words [in the article] that are so bad, but the music,” said Father Sirico.
Despite the article's tone, Behar insisted in an interview with the Register that he did not mean to imply that the Vatican or even any of its officials knew what Frankel was really up to, much less that any official personally benefited from the deal.
He said that the Vatican officials implicated in the drama are guilty of setting up an infrastructure for a charity without properly investigating Frankel and his intentions. “They have to be wiser to these kinds of situations,” Behar said.
Franciscan Appeal
Frankel laid the foundation for drawing Church representatives into his scheme by becoming something of an expert on Francis of Assisi, reading scores of books on the saint. Frankel, who is Jewish, apparently devised his admiration for the saint of the poor as a logical motive for giving “hundreds of millions of dollars” to Catholic charities that would be carried out in the saint's name.
He first convinced attorney Thomas Bolan of his sincerity. Behar described Bolan as “a fervent establishment Catholic,” with good intentions. Bolan is a former bank chairman and prosecutor who specialized in fraud, and who also served as an adviser to President Reagan. Behar reported that Frankel was also represented at times by “former Ambassador Robert Strauss and his bigfoot Washington, D.C., law firm, Akin Gump.”
Behar said that it's “understandable” that Bolan has been “crushed” by the Frankel scandal. “Putting the top-shelf legal expert in the most charitable light, Bolan was probably blinded by his own Catholic enthusiasm,” his hefty retainer, and by the fact that Frankel paid for round-the-clock medical care for one his sons, Behar reported.
Key Man
Bolan introduced Frankel to Father Peter Jacobs who would serve as Frankel's primary instrument in the Vatican phase of his scam.
Ordained for the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., in 1955, Father Jacobs spent much of the 1960s working with the poor and as a Fire Department chaplain in New York. He was suspended and lost his priest-ly faculties in 1983 for opening a restaurant whose proceeds would go to the homeless, according to Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for the Washington Archdiocese. She explained that ownership of a restaurant was not “an approved form of ministry for priests.”
She said the suspension was lifted in 1987 when the restaurant was closed, but Father Jacobs never applied to have his faculties reinstated. The lack of faculties means that routine confessions heard by Father Jacobs since 1983 are not valid. Masses offered by the priest are valid but illicit.
The only valid marriages performed by Father Jacobs since 1983 are those in which faculties were specifically delegated to him by a pastor for a particular couple.
Behar's chief source for the Frankel story, Father Jacobs is described as “a liberal priest,” as “sympathetic” and as Frankel's “unwitting tool.”
Behar dedicates several sections of his article to Father Jacobs’ good if “controversial” character, his genuine concern for the poor and a lack of business acumen that can be excused in a pastor.
“[Father Jacobs] is the first to admit he knows next to nothing about money,” wrote Behar. The only principal to speak on record, Father Jacobs acknowledged: “I don't understand business and I don't like business.”
All of this prepares the reader for the news that Father Jacobs, as president of the bogus St. Francis Foundation, frequently “sign[ed] papers that he either didn't read or didn't understand; at one point he even faxed [Frankel] several of his signatures so that they could simply be affixed to documents.”
Behar puts this in perspective: “People who know Jacobs say it's completely conceivable that, because of his trusting nature, he could get swept up in a mess like this one.”
Double Standard?
With the Frankel scam unraveling, Father Jacobs was brought before insurance regulators in Mississippi. Behar reported that Father Jacobs’ “primary contribution” was to repeat a telling line once uttered by a cardinal: “Priests in business either fool people or get fooled.”
The comment's truth, which Behar is willing to apply to Father Jacobs, was not applied to priests who work in the Vatican.
It is alleged in Behar's article that priests with close links to the Vatican were willing to accept aid for the poor in exchange for vouching for Frankel's solvency in various insurance deals. In doing so, Frankel was relying on a shell game that involved complicated movements of funds through banks in a number of countries.
Behar said Frankel now “stands accused of siphoning off at least $200 million — and perhaps far more — from seven insurance companies in five states and squirreling away much of the money in Swiss and Italian bank accounts. Frankel, it appears, controlled the trust that owned the insurers, even as he was engaged, under a different alias, to manage their assets through a brokerage firm he also controlled.”
Behar described Frankel's Vatican ploy in a way that could be interpreted as though the Vatican officials knew what Frankel was up to: “In short, Frankel appears to be requesting that the Vatican front for him as a money launderer in return for a 10% cut of the funds looted from U.S. insurance companies. Frankel would use part of the remaining 90%, it seems, to buy progressively larger insurers.”
The news service Business Wire picked up Behar's tone in a digested version of the Fortune article that was made available to clients July 26. It extends Behar's reference to the Vatican's “cut” of looted funds, strongly implying that “the Church” was privy to the scheme: “The Church could sit back from a distance and — eyes wide shut — gather in the promised hundreds skimmed from Frankel's nascent insurance empire.”
K. Peter Maneri, a New York-based crisis communications expert and a consultant to many large corporations, was critical of the article.
“Because this is a one-source story — namely, Father Jacobs — and contains a lot of innuendo, Behar's accuracy is open to question,” Maneri said. “Unlike everyone else in the story, the Vatican officials’ motivations are not examined, leading the reader to draw the worst possible conclusions.”
He added that the portrayal of the Vatican and its employees harkens back to the oldest forms of anti-Catholic prejudice — a prejudice that “is tolerated and even encouraged in popular culture. This couldn't be written about any other group without incurring outrage from the guardians of what is and is not permissible.”
For its part, the Vatican has explained that it has no connection to the St. Francis Foundation or to Monitor Ecclesiasticus, a long-established Roman foundation that was implicated in the story through its director, Msgr. Emilio Colagiovanni, who promoted Frankel's plan to set up a charitable fund.
Behar alleges that Msgr. Colagiovanni made false written and oral statements about Frankel's role with the foundations.
Vatican Links
In his article, Behar frequently points to the prestige of Monitor Ecclesiasticus and what he considers its semiofficial status within the Church as possible evidence of deeper Vatican involvement in the scandal.
In particular, he cites Pope Benedict XV, who reigned from 1914 to 1922, who “once declared” that a canon law review issued by Monitor Ecclesiasticus was “published with the special authorization of the Holy See,” and that Pope Paul VI gave the organization his apostolic blessing. “If the current Pope feels any different,” concluded Behar, “he hasn't made it public.”
According to ZENIT, a Rome-based news agency, neither St. Francis nor Monitor Ecclesiasticus are listed among the “juridical persons” or legal entities of the Holy See. It also reported that the St. Francis Foundation has never had an account with the Vatican Bank, and that the Vatican does not directly oversee the work of Monitor Ecclesiasticus.
“If you know the structure of the Church and how the Vatican works, you can see that this writer has no feel,” said Acton's Father Sirico. “He gives undue weight to things like apostolic blessings, Vatican ID cards and letters from secretaries of former popes.”
The author of “The Capitalist Ethic,” a periodic column on business ethics that appears in Forbes, Father Sirico said Behar was relying on stereotypes of the Church and the clergy to add drama to a story that should have focused on the insurance industry.
“Is this the article that's covering ‘the biggest’ scandal in the history of the insurance industry?” asked Father Sirico. “The insurance side is a legitimate financial story that the business reader would be interested in knowing about.”
He pointed out that the article does not include the name of the companies bilked by Frankel or any of the details about how they were duped.
Rick Henshaw, a spokesman for the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, told the Register that the organization is drafting a letter of protest to Fortune. The group said the article puts the Vatican and Church leadership in the “worst possible light,” Henshaw said.
‘Media Anti-Catholicism’
Behar told the Register that the Vatican was guilty of a “subsequent cover-up” in the Frankel case and that “the tone [of his article] was affected by the Vatican's post-scandal response.”
Father Sirico said the article should be seen as part of a long string of media anti-Catholicism. “It's in the tradition of the wall-to-wall coverage of sexual allegations against the late Cardinal Bernardin, and ABC's inclusion of a commentator who denounced Mother Teresa during live coverage of her funeral.”
Behar is so determined to “put the black hat on the Vatican,” said Father Sirico, that he is even willing to depict Frankel as unbalanced and worthy of some sympathy.
He points to the final sections of the article that describe “the intense relationship forged between Father Jacobs and the con man” during a period in which Frankel was “coming unhinged.”
“People who worked for [Frankel] said I was the only one who gave him peace,” said Father Jacobs. “If he winds up in prison, I would certainly go and try to help him.”
Joe Cullen is an assistant editor of the Register.
----- EXCERPT: COVERAGE OF FRANKEL FRAUD SCRUTINIZED ----- Extended BODY: Joe Cullen ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Texas Group Helps Bosnia To Pick Up Postwar Pieces DATE: 08/08/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 08-14, 1999 ----- BODY:BODARISTE, Bosnia— The war may be over in Bosnia, but the need for assistance remains.
“Now the real work begins,” said Jeff Reed, head of St. David's Relief Foundation, a Dallas-based nondenominational group which has a strong Catholic presence.
The foundation, which has provided humanitarian aid to Bosnia-Herzegovina since 1991, has shifted its emphasis from relief to rebuilding. St. David's plays a role in the three huge tasks which the country faces: rebuilding buildings, reuniting people, and navigating the delicate transition to democracy.
“The physical damage of the war was substantial,” said Reed, “but the emotional suffering is far worse.”
The legacy of the war was social havoc. Many homes are crumbling or demolished. Factories and other places of employment have been destroyed, forcing the people to look for work far afield. Land mines scattered through the countryside threaten children and livestock. Worst of all, said Reed, a smoldering hostility makes unity difficult.
In view of these needs, St. David's has shipped roofing materials and volunteer roofers for two summers running. This year's crew of 35 Americans flew to Bosnia on June 3 and pounded nails for nine days. According to Reed, “the roofs mean hope, and hope means life.” Beyond material aid, the Roofs Across Bosnia program has boosted morale and fostered cooperation among a people demoralized by war, he said.
The first beneficiary of the program, the northeastern village of Bodariste, got more than a face lift in the summer of 1998. The villagers have a much more optimistic out- look now than they did a year ago. According to Bodariste's mayor, Slavko Blazevic, “Since St. David's’ visit, people want to come back. People are calling me to see what kind of shape the village is in.”
Blazevic saw his village of 1,200 reduced to 37 families during the war. Some were killed and others fled. He has labored to restore electricity and telephone lines, and is working to get running water for the community. In addition to the houses, a St. David's volunteer corps made sure to roof the church, the spiritual center of the village. These efforts have paid off: At last count, the population is up to 700 people.
“The biggest change I see in Bodariste,” said returning volunteer Pat Pope, “is the attitude. People seem more enthusiastic, more energized.” Pope, who works in mental health care, said she was moved to join the team when she saw the bombing of a mental health institution on television. She followed up this summer to help with the second village, Dubravice.
“This is an important part of my life now,” she said.
Gift Goats
Another of the foundation's enterprises, Kids for Kids, delivered pregnant goats to Bosnian families. To receive a goat, the family had to agree to give its first offspring to a neighbor. The project thus provided not only food and a fresh start, but fostered community relations as well.
One intrinsic difficulty of the undertaking was the care required by livestock. “We kept the goats for as short a time as possible,” said Reed, “but they still needed a lot of attention. One problem with goats is, they have a tendency to eat everything.” St. David's delivered 700 goats, after which the project was taken up by a Swiss relief organization.
“Baby food is a lot easier,” Reed continued. “You just store it in a warehouse until it's time to deliver.” The Baby Food Feeding project is one that Reed, himself a father of young children, is especially proud of. The Texas foundation has kept a constant supply going into Bosnia since 1991. According to its annual report, St. David's shipped over 200 tons of baby food in 1998 alone.
Less practical and more creative was the project to set up basketball hoops — an effort to entice Muslims and Croats to come together, Reed explained.
Focused on Bosnia
Unlike larger relief organizations which must divide their resources between different countries, St. David's focuses exclusively on Bosnia-Herzegovina. St. David's can also take on projects regarded as too small for larger organizations.
Reed works hand in hand with the Franciscans, among them Father Svetozar Kraljevic and Father Leonard Oric, head of the relief group Medjugorje-Mir. The foundation leaves it to the local friars to determine needs and oversee the distribution of goods which Reed purchases and ships.
During the war, Reed and his staff purchased, painted and packed 8-ton vans, which they then moved in convoys from London to Croatia. “We only stopped for gas,” said Dan Thraen, a convoy driver.
From the warehouse, medicine and other goods were delivered to communities isolated by war. The St. David's crew became masters at negotiating roadblocks and dodging fire. Occasionally, they had to make night forays.
“The drivers had to make night runs with the car lights off, to avoid becoming targets,” said Brother John Anthony of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, who is vice president of St. David's. “Even in the daylight, these winding mountain roads can be treacherous.”
The experience and relationships established during the war are now at the service of more peaceful endeavors.
While wartime shipments centered on survival needs, peacetime shipments include construction materials and educational items. Paradoxically, now that there is more freedom to move about the country, financial help may be less forthcoming. Reed speculated that “once the war was over and Bosnia was out of the headlines, people forgot about it.”
While from a human point of view the organization hinges on contributor support, Reed firmly believes it's run by God's providence.
“I thought I was done after the first project (in 1991). But God just kept opening doors. … In all these years, we haven't lost one shipment or had one casualty.”
But what pleases Reed the most is “the effect this little organization has had on so many lives — both those who receive and those who give.”
One example he cited is Brother John Anthony. The former John Boughton became a Catholic and a religious through his work with St. David's.
Reed said, “All who have gotten involved — convoy runners, warehouse workers, roofers — have been touched in some way by God.”
Wendy-Marie Teichert of Sacramento, Calif. recently returned from Bosnia.
***
Jeff Reed of St. David's Relief Foundation can be reached at (800) 618-9789.
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: Wendy-Marie Teichert ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Unions - Just What Doctors Are Ordering DATE: 08/08/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 08-14, 1999 ----- BODY:ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Dr. Roger Anderberg would love to have a practice like Marcus Welby, M.D.
“I'd love to have it just be me and my patients, but that's difficult to do that right now,” said the Catholic pediatrician from Ann Arbor, Mich.
Instead of emulating the doctor in the famous television series, Anderberg and about 80 other primary care physicians have formed a new corporation, Integrated Health Associates. He said the doctors believe Integrated Health Associates will give them the clout they need to negotiate with the vast and interwoven network of hospitals, health care networks, and health insurance providers in southeastern Michigan that might otherwise dictate how they practice medicine.
But many doctors have taken a further step away from TV's Dr. Welby. In a move that was once considered out of the question for physicians, especially those in private practice, some have formed or joined unions.
Take Dr. Fred Hankin, the section head for orthopedic surgery at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor. He and other local orthopedic surgeons have joined the Federation of Doctors and Dentists, a local union affiliated with the AFL-CIO. Hankin said the move by the doctors in his field was not taken for the usual reasons associated with joining a union.
“We did not do it for collective bargaining, nor for striking, nor for contract negotiation,” he maintained. “We have joined it as a resource. We mainly joined a union so we would have access to their expertise.”
Both Anderberg and Hankin said their need to join with other physicians was necessary for them to keep giving the same quality of care to their patients. They aren't alone — in June the American Medical Association surprised industry observers by voting to form a doctor's union.
“With the way health care was changing, we decided the most reasonable approach would be to control our own destinies,” Anderberg said.
“The industry needs primary care doctors, and if you have a big enough group that are in partnership, then you are in a better position to bargain.”
But where is this heading? Will doctors soon be going on strike? Will Catholic doctors who unionize face challenges to their faith as they join with secular physicians?
Ever since the managed care movement gained momentum in the early 1990s, resulting in the proliferation and subsequent mergers of health maintenance organizations — HMOs — patients and doctors alike have complained that, while costs were being contained, the quality of care was being compromised.
“A lot of unnecessary expense has been driven out of health care costs in this country,” explained Tracy Williams, vice president of Benefit Systems Inc., an Indianapolis-based agency that acts as an intermediary between companies that buy insurance and those that provide it. “But insurers realized they have a tool to ratchet down the costs, and they continued to crank it.”
“Doctors are not really trained to be businessmen,” acknowledged Dr. Lee Harrington, a Catholic psychiatrist who maintains a private practice in Salem, Ore. “But if HMOs are controlling the money to the extent that they are impinging upon life-and-death decisions, doctors need to find some way to organize. The whole purpose is to ethically and effectively practice medicine, and not get absorbed into their bottom line.”
He noted this is why he joined an independent physicians association, a group of doctors loosely organized for the purpose of negotiating contracts and patient care protocols.
“Specialists in orthopedic surgery deal with trauma,” Hankin said. “When someone breaks a bone, they need to see an orthopedic doctor. I would treat them first before I worried about their insurance coverage.”
Mergers of large HMOs have caused even more concern that the practice of medicine would be cost-driven.
“In some areas, Aetna-Prudential could control up to 30% of market share,” Williams said. “They could say something like, ‘Here's what we will pay you for a coronary bypass.’ The doctors need to be able to say, ‘We can't accept that.’ They could potentially have to walk out on strike.” He noted that projections of Aetna-Prudential market share were only estimates based on current numbers for the two companies.
Williams continued, “It used to be that people would say, ‘If my doctor's not in the (HMO) network, it's not a good network.’ But now people are so used to HMOs, they don't say that anymore, and that's what is driving this impetus for unions. Because if nothing is done, ultimately managed care will drive practices.”
Justice Dept. Concerns
Apparently concerned about market domination as well, the U.S. Department of Justice launched a review of the Aetna U.S. Healthcare's proposal to acquire Prudential HealthCare after it was announced last December. One concern was Texas, where Aetna had previously acquired another company, NYLCare.
On June 21, Aetna U.S. Healthcare announced it had reached agreement with the Justice Department to proceed with the acquisition, after divesting itself of NYLCare's commercial HMO businesses in Dallas-Fort Worth and certain other counties in Texas. Yet even after the divestiture, Aetna itself projected it would remain the leader in the Texas market, with about 2.5 million health
members statewide, including 1 million HMO members.
“Although we do not agree with the Justice Department's concerns about the effect of the acquisition, a divestiture was the most expeditious way to bring closure to the comprehensive DOJ review process,” said Richard L. Huber, chairman and chief executive officer of Aetna, in a June 21 news release. An Aetna spokes-woman had not returned calls as this story went to press.
Still, doctors such as pediatrician Anderberg acknowledge that managed care has contributed to the medical industry.
“I think the HMOs have also worked for the good of the patient and the doctor,” he said. “You can economize on prescriptions, or use broad-spectrum antibiotics. There's something to be said for the morality of spending and using resources appropriately, too.”
Tactics
Williams on the other hand contended that many physicians have used a series of tactics to counter the trend toward managed care.
First, they formed independent physicians associations such as the one Harrington, the Oregon psychiatrist, joined. Some of these associations, in turn, have partnered with hospitals to form physician-hospital organizations. Gene Ragland of Ann Arbor heads up one such group, Huron Valley Physicians Association, which partnered with St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor.
St. Joseph's is part of Mercy Health System, which also manages its own HMO, called Care Choices.
“With St. Joseph's as our partner, I think this is the best alternative for private-practicing doctors,” Ragland said. “I think we can compete with big hospitals like the University of Michigan Medical Center and the major area HMOs.”
And HMOs are also struggling with their bottom lines. Mercy Health Systems itself announced in June plans to merge with Holy Cross Health System Corp. If the merger is finalized, the merged systems will become the third largest Catholic health care system.
The Associated Press reported Mercy Health Systems had absorbed reimbursement drops of more than $18 million from Medicare and $19.5 million from Medicaid in fiscal 1999, which ended June 30.
“The focus of the consolidation is to build on the strengths and traditions of both health systems in order to ensure a strong Catholic health ministry,” said Sister Patricia Vandenberg, president and chief executive of Holy Cross Health System, based in South Bend, Ind.
According to Sister Linda Werthman, president of the Sisters of Mercy Regional Community of Detroit, which oversees Mercy Health Systems, said the merger is not being forced upon the two health care providers by financial problems. But she acknowledged that locally controlled, provider-owned health plan providers across the country are going out of business. And this, according to Williams, causes more doctors to think about organizing.
The Conscience Clause
Keeping up with the changes in health care leaves unanswered questions for the Catholic physicians. Should a Catholic doctor strike or refuse to give care? Would a union or a physicians association impinge on a Catholic doctor's freedom of conscience on moral matters?
Physicians in private practice may not be able to strike, Ragland pointed out. “I think physicians in private practice are scrambling to find some way to have input into decision-making, but they can't strike,” he said. “They are prohibited from doing so by antitrust laws.”
Doctors who are employed by the state or hospitals can strike, but they should not refuse to give care, Oregon psychiatrist Harrington emphasized. “If you were going to strike, you couldn't refuse care.
You must give your patients the right care, although there are some things you could decline. A doctor is not required to take on more patients or any patients he can't adequately care for.”
Michael O'dea, an insurance broker whose office is in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., said greater attention must be applied to insurance plans. “I do think something needs to be done to establish the doctors’ participation in the decision-making process. But what we truly need is a Catholic insurance program, rather than doctors unions,” he said.
O'Dea and Williams established a completely Catholic plan for the Diocese of Lincoln, Neb., last year. But most U.S. dioceses do not have such a plan integrated with Catholic teaching.
“There's a need for legislation so that all religious organizations do not have to participate, directly or indirectly, with medical procedures which they consider to be immoral,” O'dea said.
In Oregon, the only state in the country that has physician-assisted suicide, doctors can legally prescribe a lethal dose of pills. However, insurance providers in Oregon have not required doctors to refer or treat anyone in this way.
“That's not happened yet, but there is a potential for economic or other pressure to be applied,” said Harrington. “Even independent physicians associations or unions could apply that pressure.
“Of course, I don't think it would happen, because their whole purpose is to allow you to ethically practice medicine. But it could.”
Anderberg, the Michigan pediatrician, said he once had such a close call. “I have run into difficulty with some patients who have wanted to have an abortion. I am a primary care doctor, so the HMO did not require me to sign the consult. I was able to tell the patients I couldn't help them,” he said.
He noted, “Any time you are part of a larger crew, they can certainly attempt to set standards for you. It's better for the physician to retain as much independence as possible.” But, he added, “That's not the direction in which medicine is heading.”
Kate Ernsting writes from Ann Arbor, Michigan.
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: Kate Ernsting ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A Prodigal Daughter Returns DATE: 08/08/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 08-14, 1999 ----- BODY:A former speech writer for the speaker of the U.S. House, she and her father, renowned scholar Michael Novak, co-authored the book Tell Me Why? A Father's Answers to His Daughter's Questions About God published by Pocket Books. Recently Rich Rinaldi of Register Radio News spoke to her about her faith journey.
Rich Rinaldi: How did you end up helping your father to write a book about religion?
Jana Novak: It all started out as a personal project. I had my own doubts and questions that I wanted answered before I felt I could research religion specifically on my own. I had gone through a period of atheism and finally came to the point where I believed in God but wasn't so sure about religion. I thought the best way to get those questions answered, those kind of stumbling blocks, was to get my father, who is a theologian, to answer those questions for me, and then I was willing to do the research and read my own book.
When did your search for faith begin in your life?
To be honest, one of my earliest memories is in fourth grade creating a new religion with a friend of mine. I was raised Catholic but I found the Church just too distant, so the religion we created was kind of a combination Bible study and Quakerism, in terms of meeting in smaller groups and just talking. So you can see what I was searching for in terms of a very personal, comforting feeling.
Did that develop all through high school?
It did. And over time I became just more and more distant from the Catholic Church that I was attending, in terms of not going as often, which is how I went through a kind of period of atheism, and what I call “agno-deism,” where I believed in a God and a higher being but wasn't sure about anything else.
Your father speaks of what could be defined as a type of competition from the world that children have to go through; the world is basically eroding your faith while he is trying to help with the faith.
It's one of those things where I think that especially for younger people, teen-age years can be very difficult. For example, whether you have a relatively privileged and nice teen-age years or awful ones, either way this is a very difficult period — periods during which specifically the Church doesn't seem like it's that much help. At least that's what personally happened for me. I kind of looked at the priest and thought, “How can this celibate unmarried man ever understand anything a teen-ager is going through? He doesn't have kids to relate to.” And I think that during those periods it becomes very difficult for young people sometimes to understand the reason and the why and the logic behind this.
What was college life like for you?
That was like a mixture for me. I went to Duke University and at the beginning was even more put off by religion because I found it so hypocritical that I see these people out, wasted out on Saturday night, and driving themselves, with hangovers, to church on Sunday. But I also went through some periods where I had some good Catholic friends. I dated a Catholic guy during college and I spent a lot of time talking about religion and attending church and that sort of thing. So it's kind of a weird mixture and one which many people go though.
There was a lot of interaction between you and your dad during those college years. You speak of faxing notes back and forth and some in-depth discussions.
Actually that was post-college and only the last couple of years during college. I was still in my agnodeist kick.
You are 26 years old, a member of Generation X. Is there a difficulty in college for your average Generation X person. Are we overly secularized?
In many ways, yes. In many ways, there is a … movement specifically with Generation X toward spiritually. One thing the ’60s did was draw the division between the concept “church and state” … they made the very secular environment that we were brought up in. For example, even the CCD [Confraternity of Christian Doctrine] classes and religious after-school classes that friends of mine from other faiths took, usually were not very good for my generation. The people teaching them seemed to be kind of more interested in political action then they were in teaching what the Bible said. So I think that it's a secular environment. But I think the one thing that I've noticed is the response of many people of my age to becoming very spiritual, not necessarily religious [by] belonging to religion, but there are many people that I know who are moving towards the sense of spiritually and God.
There are some topics in your book, for example, “Can I choose any faith I want?” and also “Why be Catholic?” Can you answer those for us?
I know for myself that when I started this book I came to the realization that I believed basically in the Christian God. But I wasn't so sure I wanted to be a Catholic, which is where the first question came up about choosing any religion.
My father's answer was, “You know, you choose the religion based on what is true religion. It's not a club. You don't go because you like the people there best, you think they have the best coffee hours after Mass or after the service. You choose whichever one you think is ‘true.’” In terms of for myself, I was raised Catholic and so when I decided to start going back to Church, it made the most sense to go back to Catholicism. I'll admit there was also the reason, the very logical intellectual reason, since Catholicism is kind of the mother ship for all the other religions, it's the root that all the other … Christians come from. For me, it made the most sense to start there. And if I understood Catholicism, I would then understand all the other Christian religions
You are comfortable with it today?
Exactly. I thought that if I was not comfortable with it later, and after studying Catholicism, that I was not comfortable with it … but right now I am very happy.
Your father gave you a
He did. When I first started asking him questions he tried to hand me the textbooks, including the Catechism. At that time, I wasn't ready for that. Now, having done the book, the Catechism has been incredibly helpful to me.
—Rich Rinaldi
----- EXCERPT: Generation X-er finds path back to Catholicism ----- Extended BODY: Jana Novak ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: U.S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 08/08/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 08-14, 1999 ----- BODY:JFK the Seeker
Just five months ago, he wrote, “Celebrities are people whose personal lives are at least as newsworthy as their professional lives. In becoming so anointed, they have won some measure (large or small) of immortality, and we admire them for achieving that ultimate human ambition.’’
In a November, 1997 column, he discussed the deaths of Mother Teresa and Lady Diana and was disturbed that there was more interest in the latter's passing than in the likely saint's: “How many people remember every detail of Diana's death but virtually nothing of Mother Teresa's?’’
Kennedy knew Mother Teresa, who had a significant impact on him. He closed the November, 1997 column with a sentence that Pekkanem described as perhaps the most “telling and poignant” he ever penned: “The three days I spent in (Mother Teresa's) presence was the strongest evidence this struggling Catholic has ever had that God exists.”
Houses of Worship Divided
“After battling for years over homosexuality and other hotly divisive social and theological issues, virtually all of the historic mainline communions — Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, and United Church of Christ — find themselves so badly polarized that some church leaders wonder if they can possibly continue to hold together,” said Sheler. “Some doubt they should even try.”
According to Princeton University sociologist Robert Wuthnow, disaffected congregations on “both the left and the right” increasingly are forming strategic alliances and simply ignoring denominational policies.
“But while these informal … alliances may be preventing mass defections for now, says Wuthnow, ultimately they may prove to be the denominations’ undoing by providing an organizational structure for some future breakaway movement …,” reported Sheler.
United Methodist Pastor Scott Field, who has long complained that his church is slipping away from its biblical moorings, told US News that “within a couple of generations, you'll find three Christian churches: Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and evangelical Protestant.” He further predicted that the mainline denominations “will be an interesting phenomenon of the past.”
Added Sheler: “Others foresee liberals from the various mainline churches joining forces under some common ecumenical banner.”
Senators Protest Hostility to Religion
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, July 21—A group that promotes separation of church and state is under fire from three senators, according to the wire service.
Republican senators Jesse Helms, Jeff Session and Paul Coverdell wrote a letter to Attorney General Janet Reno asking for an investigation of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, AP said.
The senators said the group intimidates churches “into not participating in the political process” by warning them that distributing voter guides in churches may be illegal. The Christian Coalition sent out 72 million such guides in 1998.
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ----- Extended BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Register Not Involved In Misreported Contest DATE: 08/08/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 08-14, 1999 ----- BODY:A Canadian daily misidentified the National Catholic Register as the source of another publication's contest regarding redrawing the face of Jesus.
At the request of the Register, the Star printed a correction of its report.
Said the correction, “The American publication holding the international art competition for a contemporary image of Jesus is the National Catholic Reporter, not the National Catholic Register as reported Tuesday.
“The Star regrets the error.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Churches Uniting Against Gambling in Kentucky DATE: 08/08/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 08-14, 1999 ----- BODY:Mention “Kentucky” and many people instantly think “Derby,” the annual horse race that inspires much interest … and gambling.
But a wide range of Christian churches in Kentucky are now coming together to keep gambling from growing in the Bluegrass state after Gov. Paul Patton floated a plan to open 12 to 14 new casinos in the state.
Religious groups have had astonishing success fighting the casino lobby. In Ohio, Kentucky's neighbor to the north, churches defeated a gambling initiative by a wide margin despite being outspent $8.5 million to $1 million in the campaign.
Jane Chiles, executive director of the Kentucky Catholic Conference, recently spoke with Register Radio News correspondent Jay Dunlap about the fight against gambling.
Jay Dunlap: Why are so many religious leaders coming together to oppose expanded gambling in Kentucky?
Jane Chiles: I think one of the things that probably has caused religious entities to rally around this issue is that Kentucky did put in a lottery 10 years ago, so we know a little bit more about the impact of the proliferation of gambling.
We're very clear that it is a “tax” on low income people. They end up spending a disproportionate amount of their income on this. And so in that regard, while we weren't active in the anti-lottery campaign, we certainly are active now. I think in Kentucky there is an understanding that the horse industry, whether that be the racing or the breeding, and all of the other kinds of things that relate to it, is clearly a part of the fabric of who we are. It's woven through many of our lives. And the betting that goes on around that is just a very, very small piece of it. We attract people from all over the world to buy our horses and to race our horses.
This gambling that the governor is proposing at this time is something that really will be incumbent upon Kentuckians to go out and gamble as much as we possibly can, in order somehow to bring a little bit more money into the tax coffers. And as such it is just not the least bit palatable to us.
Can you tell us a little bit about the social costs associated with gambling in the many places across the country where it has expanded?
For example, Bishop [Robert] Muench, who is the bishop of the Diocese of Covington, came to us out of the Archdiocese of New Orleans. Bishop Muench can speak to the example of southern Louisiana and southern Mississippi, where pastors would have people show up at their doorstep who had lost everything. They maybe still had the members of their family, but beyond that they had lost everything: their cars, their jobs. Their houses were mortgaged to the hilt.
They could never, never manage to ever keep up with all of that, and they were looking to the Church for help. I think as you look at the data around the country, it's very clear that you have increased incidence of domestic abuse as the pressures of especially the addictive gambler hit home. Personal bankruptcy goes to an all-time high in communities when they do this. You have a whole variety of crime increase. It is a high price that could never be offset by what might trickle into the general revenue fund.
Some people, when they see the Catholic Church opposing gaming say, “But you thrive on bingo!” How do you respond to that?
That is often a question that's raised as we speak out on this issue. First of all, we see casino gambling as a real threat to the common good. It's a very high-stakes form of gambling that is night and day in terms of comparing it to charitable gaming. Charitable gaming in Kentucky is done on a very limited, highly regulated basis, where a church can only conduct one bingo a week.
They can only have casino-style games at their festivals twice a year. It's very limited. Also the money that's generated by that does go to help offset higher tuition costs; that's the most frequent use for it.
But we would say that really we can speak to this issue because we are a voice of experience and we are willing to say that we recognize that in charitable gaming those revenues are “addictive.” It seems like easy money, and once you start taking it, it's very difficult to wean your church or your school from that. As such, we think that voice of experience needs to speak up to the broader community as the government considers moving into this venture.
Isn't it the case that one diocese is studying weaning charitable gaming across the board?
We are very proud of this in the Covington Diocese. Again, this is the diocese of Bishop Muench who came out of New Orleans and who really has seen the very direct threat that this is to the lives of the families around this sort of gambling opportunity. A year and a half ago, he eliminated the casino-style games from the church festivals. They are in the process now of doing a study to see what is the price tag. What is generated by bingo? How can that be offset by other kinds of revenue so that we can continue to achieve the goal particularly of keeping our tuition affordable, especially in the urban environment?
I know in that diocese those are the schools that are most at-risk because, were they to not have bingo, the fear is that their tuition would become unaffordable to families. So Bishop Muench has undertaken a very deliberate study of this so that his diocese can make some decisions about moving beyond charitable gaming.
As far as the whole move to oppose expanded gambling in Kentucky, it's a matter of the Catholic Church joining with a host of other churches, isn't it?
As the director of the Kentucky Council of Churches has said several times, we think in some ways Gov. Patton has done the greatest favor to the cause of Christian unity because we are finding ourselves very much in line with both the mainstream Protestant churches as well as the Southern Baptists, who are not members of the Kentucky Council of Churches but have joined us on this. Probably the largest congregation in the state, Southeast Christian, which is a nondenominational church that we normally have not worked with — we are really enjoying developing these new relationships. We think that bodes well as I said for the cause of Christian unity.
Jay Dunlap is a host of Register Radio News.
----- EXCERPT: How do Catholics answer the 'bingo question'? ----- Extended BODY: Jay Dunlap ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Vacation is for Building Faith and Family DATE: 08/08/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 08-14, 1999 ----- BODY:CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy—People should use summer vacations to enjoy moments of peace and closeness with their families and with God, Pope John Paul II said.
Vacations should be “a time of human recharging,’’ an opportunity “to find yourself and others again in a more balanced and serene way,’’ the Pope said Aug. 1.
John Paul said he hoped that those who are enjoying these days of rest “will be able to spend some time to regain their energies far from their usual environment and be able to rediscover themselves and others, in a more balanced and serene dimension of life.”
The Pope, meeting visitors at his summer residence south of Rome, prayed for people on vacation, those who already have returned home and those unable to take time off.
Summer vacations, he said, bring to mind families first. Families often “feel the disadvantages of the fast rhythm of work, especially in the big cities,’’ the Pope said. “Often it is difficult for them to find the peaceful climate and atmosphere they need’’ for intimacy, discussion and planning.
Pope John Paul said it was interesting and encouraging that more and more families are spending part of their vacations in “places of the spirit: monasteries, shrines, hermitages and retreat houses.’’
“Almost always these places bring together the beauty of the natural environment with opportunities to draw spiritual riches from meeting God in reflection, silence, prayer and contemplation,’’ he said.
The Pope said people also should make time for silence and reflection “to safeguard interior harmony,’’which is easily overwhelmed by the tasks and responsibilities of daily life.
In the evening, Pope John Paul hosted a classical music concert by the Pro Mundo Uno music academy, an international organization that brings together musicians from various countries to play as witnesses to peace and international harmony. (From combined wire services)
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 08/08/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 08-14, 1999 ----- BODY:Cardinal Arinze on Dialogue with Islam
The Pope's wish was confirmed by Cardinal Francis Arinze, president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue, during an interview with Famiglia Cristiana, an Italian Catholic magazine.
Cardinal Arinze told the publication that he is praying and working to make the Holy Father's pilgrimage possible.
Noting the meeting among different religious confessions that is scheduled to take place at the Vatican from October 24-28, Cardinal Arinze emphasized the advances that have taken place in relations with Islam over the last 30 years.
He pointed to several highlights: “I recall the joint declarations condemning grave acts of violence, such as the attack on New York's World Trade Center and the series of deaths in Algeria; I note the academic exchange between the Pontifical Gregorian University and the University of Ankara in Turkey.”
The cardinal also said that some difficulties remain. For example, it is hard for the Islamic world to accept the principle of religious liberty as understood in the West.
“Last January the Pope reminded the ambassadors to the Holy See that there is a country where possession of the Bible is a crime punishable by law,” recalled Cardinal Arinze. “John Paul II did not name Saudi Arabia, but in my country there is a proverb that says:‘If someone looks good in a hat, let him wear it.’”
“In some Moslem countries, Catholics are not allowed to have a church, but there is a mosque in Rome. Religious liberty is an inalienable right,” stated the cardinal.
However, Catholics must also examine their conscience he said. “It was in the year 1650 that the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples gave missionaries in the Far East specific instructions to respect all good customs that were not incompatible with the Gospel. It insisted on spreading the Gospel, not the cultures of Italy, Spain or France.”
But, the Cardinal concluded, “not all the missionaries and theologians paid sufficient attention to this principle.”
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ----- Extended BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Saints John XXIII And Mother Teresa? DATE: 08/08/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 08-14, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—Two of the Catholic Church's most beloved figures of the 20th century — Pope John XXIII and Mother Teresa — could be proclaimed saints early in the 21st century.
The proceedings in the cause of John XXIII, who died in 1963, are so far advanced that Vatican officials expect him to be beatified on Sept. 3, 2000, as part of Holy Year celebrations. Beatification is the penultimate step before sainthood.
Mother Teresa's cause opened July 26 in Calcutta, India, the city where she founded the Sisters of Charity to work among the poor and destitute. She died in September 1997 at the age of 87.
Pope John Paul II on March 1 cleared the way for Mother Teresa's proceedings to begin by waiving the five-year waiting period normally required after a candidate's death. Pope Paul VI took similar action in the cause of John XXIII, allowing it to start in 1967, four years after his death.
At the same time that Mother Teresa's beatification process opened in Calcutta, John XXIII's closed in Rome.
In John XXIII's cause, the Vatican medical panel voted unanimously on April 23 to authenticate one of 15 miracles attributed to him — the healing in May 1966 of Sister Caterina Capitani, 24, of southern Italy, who was believed to be dying of “a hemorrhaging gastric perforation with external fistulization and acute peritonitis.”
To become a saint, a candidate must be credited with a second miracle that occurred after beatification.
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 08/08/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 08-14, 1999 ----- BODY:Church is Entering Era Similar to Ancient Israel
SONNTAGSBLATT, July 25—Catholic pastoral theologian Rolf Zerfass of the New University in Wuerzburg, Germany, warned in a retirement speech that the Church in Europe is “on the road toward being a minority among the peoples.”
“It is obvious,” Zerfass told the newspaper before his speech, “that our generation is not succeeding in passing on the faith to the next generation. In the next 20-30 years, this breaking off of tradition will become dramatically visible… I ask myself if this might not be the challenge of the next millennium: to go down to small numbers like at the very beginning, trusting that it is not our numbers that count.” He added: “As the Bible says, ‘The war horse is a vain hope for victory.’ Instead, God wants to reveal his strength in our weakness.”
Zerfass drew parallels between the current “postmodern” period and the Babylonian captivity. The Jews’ exile and diaspora were unique events in the history of Israel from which Christians are drawing meaning.
According to Zerfass, living as a minority taught the children of Israel to know their God and his will for them. Likewise, the understanding of the contemporary period as one of exile will help to quell discouragement in the face of a daunting task. The Church, he added, will need pastors who are capable of leadership.
Sectarian Strife Continues in Indonesia
LOS ANGELES TIMES, July 28—Tensions are high among Muslims and Christians in Ambon, Indonesia, as more than a dozen people are dead in clashes after mobs looted and burned shops in recent weeks, the Times reported.
The situation is the same on nearby Saparua Island, where dozens of people have died in sectarian violence in recent months, according to the newspaper. An Australian pastor who asked not to be identified for the story, said Muslims are trying to provoke Christians to violence.
Small groups of Christians have been attacked, and a mob hurled stones at a Christian church, breaking windows, he said. In one area, a riot broke out and Muslims burned several houses, prompting Christians to retaliate by destroying Muslim homes. A bomb reportedly left by Muslims harmed two Christian youths.
“Any counter-attack would give Muslims a good excuse to start a holy war,” the pastor told the paper. Christians are weary of the provocation and might respond violently, he said.
Last Priest in Chechnya Abducted
COMPASS DIRECT NEWS SERVICE, July 26—It is believed that the last Russian Orthodox priest in Chechnya has been kidnapped, according to the ecumenical news service.
Father Vasily Yampolsky, the rector of Saint Michael the Archangel Church in Grozny, and two other men were taken hostage July 17, Compass said. Eight Orthodox priests have been kidnapped in Chechnya and neighboring territories of Russia in the last year, church leaders in Moscow reported. Russian special forces recently freed two priests who were being held by Chechen bandits in Ingushetia.
Hundreds of Russians and foreigners have been kidnapped in the region since 1994, Compass said. Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Rushailo said Chechen kidnappers may be holding as many as 800 people.The targeting of Christians led most Protestant to flee Grozny, the main city earlier this year, he said.
Aleksandr Kulakov, pastor of Grozny's Russian Baptist Church, disappeared in March and was found beheaded. American missionary Herb Gregg was freed recently after more than seven months in the hands of Chechen bandits.
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ----- Extended BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: World -------- TITLE: The Underpopulation Problem DATE: 08/08/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 08-14, 1999 ----- BODY:An unhappy letter from El Paso, Texas, and an alarming press release from the European Union recently arrived at our offices on the same day — providentially, it seems.
First, the letter.
“I must respond to the editorial entitled ‘Aborting Poverty,’(Register, July 18-24),” it said. “The statement in this article, ‘There can be too many cattle … but never too many people,’expresses a tragically mistaken notion. Not only are there too many people in the world, but the paltry and tardy efforts of the U.N. are like trying to quench a conflagration with a garden hose. Had real population control efforts been undertaken a generation ago, when the problem was first identified, we would not be facing the catastrophe we face today. Yet even the U.N.'s modest efforts incur the wrath of the Holy See and Catholics worldwide. Presumably, many Catholics would rather see widespread starvation, war over scarce resources and environmental degradation rather than population control.”
It is important to remember that the United Nations’ “modest” efforts at population control have meant the forced sterilization of women in the Third World and the provision of expensive contraceptives for hungry refugees in Albania.
But doubtless, this letter's understanding of the population question reflects the sentiments of most Americans today — sentiments that are based on misunderstandings.
First, the way the letter's argument treats human beings is wrong. Every human being has an infinite value, regardless of race or income level, because each shares in the image and likeness of God. As such, people cannot be judged quantitatively like cattle. Every new baby is incalculably precious, regardless of how many have come before her or how many will come after her.
Second, the argument's “facts” are wrong. There simply isn't an excessively high population. Ever since the musings of economist Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834), the myth that the world is overpopulated and outrunning its food supply has sunk deep roots in the West's thinking. The dense populations of cities and the shocking poverty in many parts of the world appear to support the myth.
But the opposite is true. Our planet can sustain a much larger population with no fear of running out of food, land space or natural resources. The world's population, in fact, could fit into the state of Texas, with enough room for, say, families of four to have 5,000 square feet of living space.
The world is by no means overpopulated. The sooner we admit that, the sooner we'll focus more attention on finding real answers to the problems that cause poverty and hunger.
Which brings us to the press release from Europe.
It announced a July 29 Eurostat report warning that Western countries can expect health and pension costs to soar over the next 50 years as the number of people over retirement age rises to about one third of the total population. “The main cause of the aging is the decline in births over the last two to three decades,” the report said. We suspect Eurostat is a lot closer to the world's real demographic problem: underpopulation.
* * *
The U.S. House voted July 29 not to fund abortions overseas. The bipartisan bill, sponsored by Reps. Jim Barcia, D-Mich., and Chris Smith, R-N.J., would prohibit taxpayer funding of international groups that promote or perform abortions.
The 228-200 vote is an encouraging sign of America's changing attitude toward abortion. President Clinton, however, has vowed to veto it.
The question must be asked: Why should you and I take home less pay in each paycheck in order to fund attacks on unborn children abroad? Apart from the immorality of abortion, can't we at least object on racial equity grounds to the American-funded depopulation of predominantly Third World countries? The U.S. government just finished one war to end ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. Why can't it stop its own brand?
And who is the abortion extremist — the one who defends such a practice or those who try to stop it?
* * *
In the wake of our June 20-26 report on the moral implications of extreme sports, comes a tragic news story from Switzerland.
In late July, 45 tourists went to the town of Interlaken “to experience the adrenaline rush of using their bodies to slide down a rope through alpine waterfalls, swimming through rapids or hopping from rock to rock” in a sport called canyoning.
A downpour turned the river into a wall of water that swept them down the river. Nineteen died, by one report, in a tragedy that shocked a town it describes as a mecca for extreme sportsmen.
“Instead of seeking drugs and rock music,” the New York Times News Service reported, “twenty-something backpackers, many of them Americans, [turn to] the summertime high of extreme sports: paragliding, rafting, ice climbing, bungee jumping and canyoning.”
Young people are looking for something that is larger than life, something that gives their life a meaning apart from their adrenal glands.
What, other than God, will satisfy them?
----- EXCERPT: EDITORIAL ----- Extended BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: A Novel Apologetics Novel DATE: 08/08/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 08-14, 1999 ----- BODY:A Philadelphia Catholic in St. James's Court by Martin de Porres Kennedy (Lilyfield Press, 1999 paperback, $12.95)
If we want to know our fellow Christians in depth, we obviously need to know them as persons — what is important to them, and how they live and love. This is what happens when mindsets and motives come alive in the cast of characters created in this first novel of professor Martin de Porres Kennedy of Western Kentucky University. Besides being an intriguing tale, it is an instant course in apologetics.
Firefighter Mick O'shea, husband and father of four, meets his tragic death one night in an attempt to rescue a drug dealer strapped to a recliner on the floor of a house engulfed in flames. The scene is rehearsed nightly in 17-year-old Michael's dreams. He sees his father emerge, burned and dazed, dragging the unconscious victim, and then collapse on the street. Sirens wail and horns blare as firefighters, paramedics, and a horrified crowd look on.
Mick is rushed to the hospital, but it is too late…. At the funeral Mass, the plot gathers momentum as the tangled strands of the family's reactions pull taut.
It is tempting to question God, runs Father McBride's homily. How could you let this happen? This is fair? That a good family man dies saving the life of a man wrapped up in the illegalities of drug use?
But perhaps we should be asking instead, he continues, who are we, that Christ suffered unto death to save us? Was it such a shame then or a tragic irony that Christ died to save us? Mick O'shea would have us pray for that man he saved, instead of shaking our collective heads in wonder at God's heartlessness….
He must be rebuking me, thinks Mick's older brother, Matty. I know I've been bitter that Mick died saving a worthless wretch. Matty, a renowned lawyer, has always thought his younger brother too idealistic to get ahead as he should in the world, with a wife and four children to support.
Lester McGuffey, up from Kentucky for his brother-in-law's funeral, shudders in horror at the back of the church. How on earth can people listen to this blasphemy? How can so many still be willingly led by this religion of the Dark Ages? Les was shocked when his sister Tammy married Mick O'shea; when she converted to Roman Catholicism he was grief-stricken. They don't know what they're doing, his thoughts run on. If they just read the Bible, their eyes would be opened. We've got to get them to read God's Holy Word.
I know my husband didn't die in vain, Lord, prays Tammy, but I need Mick's help to raise these children.
Moments of Suspense and horror lead up to a climax not devoid of subtle humor
The stage is set. Within a week, the O'sheas are on their way to Les’ farm in Kentucky for the summer. Les meets them at the railroad station and packs them into his Chevy truck — Tammy, with two year old Kate in her arms, Michael, and the two younger boys, Tim and Dante. He heads for the rustic cottage on his property that he and his wife Pam have prepared for them.
The cultural shift from Philadelphia to a Kentucky farmstead, where oil lamps do duty for electricity and horses plow the fields, is a challenge to the O'sheas. Tammy finds the slower rhythm of life balm to her sorrow. The younger children exult in clean country air, home-grown food, and light farm chores, while Michael learns to milk the cow, harness the horses, disk the field, plow it, and harvest the hay with his uncle and young cousins.
Michael also attends his uncle's Sunday services. Les, leader of the congregation, bases his first talk on the theme of “no intermediary between us and God,” quoting extensively from the bible as all the congregation follow in their own bibles. But what happened to the twelve apostles? Michael silently muses. What about Peter? Mary?
Most of what Michael knows about his Catholic faith he learned from his dad. Amazed at his uncle's knowledge of the Bible, he now delves into the collection of his father's books they had brought with them from home. He notes several titles by Fulton Sheen and Thomas Merton, then reaches out for Rome, Sweet Home. He remembers his dad's enthusiasm about Scott Hahn, who converted to Catholicism through his study of the Bible. I'll start here, he decides.
In ongoing discussions between Michael and his uncle's lively congregation, the papacy, the Eucharist, and devotion to Mary come under fire. Michael presents the Church's teachings as he has learned them from his father's books. He is abashed by his own ignorance of Scripture, but is spurred on by the deep love of the fundamental-ists for Christ, and their obvious thirst for truth.
Two feisty members of the group make things difficult for him, however, expressing undisguised scorn and hatred of the Church. In response, Michael, instead of retaliating, calmly defends his faith with scriptural references that underscore the Church's teachings.
It would be unfair to give the final outcome of this tale. Evil pits all its strength against Michael. Grace inspires and empowers him. Moments of suspense and horror lead up to a climax not devoid of subtle humor. We are left applauding the hero of the piece, wondering, and wishing for more.
Dominican Sister Mary Thomas Noble writes from Buffalo, New York.
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: Sister Marythomas Noble ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: The Case for Women's Modesty DATE: 08/08/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 08-14, 1999 ----- BODY:“A Modesty Proposal: How Do Men Think About Women's Dress?” by Father Thomas Morrow (New Covenant, August 1999)
Father Thomas Morrow, a priest of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., considers how Catholic women should grapple with the issue of modesty in dress:
“Christian commitment seems to be catching on with young singles. And the acid test of that commitment is chastity. Are we willing to truly live the Gospel, including its sexual morality?
“As people think more this way, they begin to think about the root causes of unchastity. One that comes to the fore is immodesty. The recovery of modesty is a key factor in the effort to return to a decent, biblical sexual ethic.”
While acknowledging that modesty is an issue for both sexes, Father Morrow points out the special reasons that makes this more of a women's issue: “Since women are more integrated than men, and see the whole person, they are often unaware of how men are looking at them. Yet, at the same time, since the woman does not experience sensuality to the same degree as the man, she who should be more concerned about modesty does not feel the need for modesty. Pope John Paul II, in making this point in his book Love and Responsibility, concludes that ‘The evolution of modesty in woman requires some initial insight into the male psychology.’”
Father Morrow uses his own and other males’ reactions to make this point: “When I was a young bachelor, living on the beach in California, I believed in chastity, and tried hard to live it, but the idea of modest dress in women never crossed my mind. If I saw a woman dressed in a tight mini-skirt, or a minuscule bikini … I was perfectly ready to visually exploit her, even though I had no intention to exploit her physically. Only later, when I began to think about the root causes of lust, did I realize that this sort of dress was having a negative effect on me.
“Few men take the time to reflect on just what is happening when they face a sexily dressed woman. One who has is Father David Knight. He wrote the following:
“‘In the measure that a particular style of dress is consciously and deliberately provocative — whether the deliberate intent is on the part of the designer, or the wearer, or of both — this way of dressing must be recognized as a mild form of reverse rape by which a person arouses unsolicited sexual desire in another person who may not want to be aroused. Whenever this happens to men (who are more subject to this kind of arousal than women) it always causes some anger, whether recognized or not. This may explain some of the hostility and aggressive behavior that men are guilty of toward women.’
“What it comes down to for a woman is this: Do you want to be remembered for your legs, your chest, or your curves? Or do you want to be remembered for your warmth, your femininity, your personality, your decency, your goodness? If a woman accentuates her physical values, she will surely drown out her other, more personal, more significant and more lasting values.”
Father Morrow asserts that “a good Christian woman has so much going for her, that even if short skirts were a benefit (which they aren't), they would be of minimal importance. A woman living in the state of grace has a bit of an aura that far exceeds any fashion statement. As one person put it, ‘There is nothing more attractive than holiness.’ Christian women sometimes underestimate their inner beauty, perhaps because the fashion designers have such a strong influence, placing so much stress on the exterior.
“There are plenty of modest, chic women, who dress sharply, but not sexily, women who are in control of their own styles, to the extent that they are decent. These women are also in control of their social lives, and get less pressure for sexual favors.
“Let's face it, our world has virtually lost any sense of decency. Granted, it's time for men to step forward and take part in the moral renewal of our culture. But women have their part to play as well, not only for the sake of the men who are trying to do the right thing, but for their own sakes as well. Women have the most to gain from chastity, and modesty is a good way to begin.”
Ellen Wilson Fielding writes from Davidson, Maryland.
A summary of an article selected by the Register from the nation's top journals.
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: LETTERS DATE: 08/08/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 08-14, 1999 ----- BODY:George W. Bush
Josh Mercer's story “Governor Bush Leaves Pro-Lifers Guessing” (Register, July 11-18 issue) left me wondering how his excellent article acquired such a title. Did the editor read the story, or does the headline reflect someone's political agenda?
[Texas Republican] Governor [George W.] Bush's position on abortion should leave no one “guessing;” it is clear for all those willing to see it. The National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL) and the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) agree that Governor Bush has a solid pro-life record.
According to a NARAL press release, Governor Bush “signed nine anti-choice provisions in 1999 alone, more than any other state executive in the country.” NARAL also credits Governor Bush with 16 pro-life provisions during the three legislative sessions of his administration. Kate Michelman, president of NARAL, stated that Governor Bush “has exercised leadership with a legislative agenda that erodes a woman's right to choose. He is solidly anti-choice and would actively seek to erode or eliminate a woman's right to choose if elected President.”
NRLC Executive Director David O'steen has stated “Governor Bush has a pro-life record and has taken a pro-life position.” O'steen also has stated that those “who truly want to save unborn children should concentrate on exposing vice president Al Gore's pro-abortion position, rather than attacking pro-life positions of other Republicans.”
What Governor Bush has been unwilling to do is to impede the confirmation of pro-life judicial nominees by stating in advance that he will apply a “litmus test” on the question of abortion. President Reagan was also unwilling to cripple his nominees by announcing that he had applied such criteria.
While Bush and Gore poll about even among those who support abortion, Bush leads Gore 2-1 among those who oppose it because the record is clear. He has said he supports a Constitutional ban, would sign a partial-birth abortion ban, and will end federal funding of abortion.
As governor, Bush streamlined Texas adoption procedures; advocated and signed parental notification legislation with stiff penalties for doctors who violate provisions of the law; established group homes, run by faith-based institutions, for unwed teenage mothers; and instituted an aggressive abstinence education program that funds successful, community-based abstinence education programs.
The title given Mr. Mercer's story in this political season leaves me guessing that someone at the National Catholic Register has an agenda apart from objective reporting.
Daniel J. Cassidy Jersey City, N.J.
Editor's Note: Last week, the Register printed a letter by a reader who doubts Gov. Bush's pro-life stance. We have printed both letters to show the variety of views on the subject.
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Pope Gazes Beyond the Earthly Pale DATE: 08/08/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 08-14, 1999 ----- BODY:Alongside the never-ending banter on the economy, politics, fashion and other prosaic topics, discussion in Rome has recently swirled around a more ethereal concern: heaven. In his weekly catechesis of July 21, Pope John Paul delved into the doctrine of eternal life. Surprisingly for such a sublime theme, the secular media feasted on the Pope's words and accorded them ample space in the daily papers.
The Italian daily La Repubblica devoted a whole page to deliberation on heaven, with the headline “According to Wojtyla, Paradise not among the Clouds” splashed across the top. “Blessedness is not a physical place,” the subtitle explained matter-of-factly, “but a living relationship with the Trinity.” One wonders who else but John Paul II could provoke a discussion on the meaning of eternal life and turn it into news.
Yet eternal salvation —heaven —is news, big news. Christians profess salvation as the heart of the Gospel (the good news) of Jesus Christ. Our perspective on life changes radically when we bear in mind the brevity of our time on earth and the reality of eternity. Despite its importance, however, heaven seems to receive scant attention from the pulpit and exerts little influence on the daily lives and even on the piety of Christians. There are surely numerous reasons for this, of which I would like to examine three.In the first place, heaven is hard to imagine. All similes fail miserably and attempts to conjure up a picture of heaven fall flat. Even the great saints gifted with visions of heaven —from Paul to Teresa to Catherine — wind up tongue-tied when they try to offer us a description of paradise, and their stammering about heaven's ineffability does little to enkindle devotion. How does one get excited about something unimaginable?
Hope for concrete benefits, on the other hand, such as a long-awaited vacation, a pay bonus or the visit of a loved one readily capture our attention and motivate us to keep plugging along through our day-to-day chores. We easily while away the hours daydreaming about an upcoming holiday precisely because we have a pretty good idea what awaits us and we can turn it over in our mind. The more we dwell on it, the more our desire grows.
Yet this is precisely the exercise we need to perform with heaven, and hard as it is, it's not impossible. We need to learn to desire heaven, and to create an interior environment conducive to this yearning for eternity. We must take our limited but real experiences of love and beauty and truth, let them be magnified to a dizzying intensity, and then realize that heaven is infinitely more than that. One day, not so long from now, we will encounter the fullness of truth and joy, of which temporal realities are but a dim reflection, and we will embrace for all eternity the God who loved us madly from the beginning of time. Heaven, the Pope reminds us, “is neither an abstraction nor a physical place …, but a living, personal relationship with the Holy Trinity.”
A second stumbling block to a more heavenly mindset stems from misplaced humanitarian concern. Some Catholics still seem to labor under the weight of centuriesold accusations that hope in heaven somehow disengages Christians from human society. Thinking about the world to come, we are told, excuses Christians from the task of bettering the world we live in.
Yet this old Enlightenment shibboleth is demonstrably false. “Far from diminishing our concern to develop this earth,” we read from Vatican II, “the expectancy of a new earth should spur us on” (Gaudium et Spes, 39). And indeed we find that the most “other-worldly” Christians —Mother Teresa comes immediately to mind —exhibit the deepest commitment to improving the lot of those around them, both spiritually and materially. And this makes perfect sense. If this short life is all we have, why wear ourselves out in endeavors destined to futility? We are left with two options: either languish in nihilism or wallow in Epicurean indulgence: “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we shall die.” But if we work with our eyes fixed on the world to come, service to our fellow man and efforts to improve the human condition take on an eternal significance.
Thirdly, perhaps as a backwash of Kant's ethical legacy, Catholics often feel squeamish about working for a “reward,” as if the incentive of heaven detracted from their purity of intention. Don't thoughts of heaven sully our love for God —we may wonder —and make us spiritual mercenaries? Wouldn't it be more “perfect” to forget about heaven and simply love and serve God for who he is?
Christ didn't seem to think so. He consoles the poor with the assurance that “theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3) and urges his followers to store up for themselves “treasure in heaven” (Luke 12:33). No hint here of a higher road free of self-interest. Moreover, hankering for heaven doesn't mean less love for God, but more. Love seeks union with the beloved, and heaven is just that. It isn't a deluxe package of creature comforts separate from God, but the possession of God himself. St. Teresa speaks of such a longing for eternal union with God that she compares it to “dying because I don't die.” The greater our love for God, the greater our yearning for heaven. Desire for heaven can never be mercenary, since a mercenary wouldn't want what heaven has to offer.
It was St. Paul who said that if our hope lies in this world alone, we are the most unfortunate of persons. Worn out from toil, or frustrated by injustice, or scandalized by evil, or jaded by pleasure, or disgusted with our own wretchedness, we look around and ask: “Is there nothing more?” And happily, wonderfully, the reply comes back: “Yes, there is. This life is just an anteroom to the true life that is to come, where every tear will be wiped away.” That will never cease to be really big news.
Father Thomas Williams is author of Building on Solid Ground.
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: Thomas Williams Lc ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: China's Religious Paranoia DATE: 08/08/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 08-14, 1999 ----- BODY:Much attention has been paid in the press recently to China's crack-down on Falun Gong, a New Age sect which the Communist government believes constitutes a threat to internal security. China has been roundly and rightly criticized for its handling of the Falun Gong.
It is difficult for us in the West, with our background in diversity, open-mindedness, freedom of association, etc., to imagine what could possibly be threatening about a group that, according to Canada's National Post ,“mixes watered-down Buddhist theology, Taoist principles and breathing exercises to promote well-being [and whose] devotees appear to present more of a risk to themselves — in terms of sprained shoulders and pulled ligaments — than to the massive Communist edifice.”
But China's paranoid overreaction to Falun Gong becomes more understandable when seen in the context of its relationship with religious communities of a more traditional bent over the past 50 years.
Once the Communists took control in 1948, they didn't wait to make it known there would be no place for religion in the new order. Not only was all political power to radiate from Beijing, but Mao Zedong asserted that the Communist Party was also to be the embodiment of all moral order in the country. The Communists would not tolerate the existence of a competing allegiance in the moral sphere, especially one like the Catholic Church which would naturally be looking to Rome rather than Beijing for its authority.
The Anti-Christian Campaign
Initially, vast purges of Chinese believers and the imprisonment, torture and expulsion of foreign missionaries were carried out. But after two years of virulent persecution, Beijing concluded that the Christian Churches were simply being driven underground and that they could not be destroyed by such means. Instead the Communists began setting up competing churches, strictly controlled by the party, in an attempt to co-opt believers. To this day, these state run “Patriotic Association” churches are the only ones with legal status in the country, and government regulations strictly state that Christians are only allowed to worship in these Patriotic Association churches.
Despite both regulations and brutal reprisals for disobedience, the underground Church has thrived in China. Today, at least 8 million Chinese remain loyal to Rome, worshipping in underground illegal House-churches. (An estimated 4 million Chinese have become affiliated with the Patriotic Association churches.) In 1996, the Communist Party responded to this vibrancy by issuing a document detailing procedures for the step-by-step eradication of the underground Roman Catholic Church — steps that included systematic brainwashing, ideological “struggle sessions,” and criminal prosecution of pro-Vatican Catholics.
In an address on Dec. 3, 1996, Pope John Paul II extolled the underground Catholics of China as “a precious jewel of the Catholic Church” — the Patriotic Association he described as “a church which does not respond either to the will of the Lord Jesus, nor to the Catholic faith.”
The Pope's Role Noticed
Patrick Tyler, in a New York Times article Jan. 26, 1997, on the underground churches, quotes Zou Chunxiang, a Church member living in Jiangxi province. “The government is afraid that if we practice our religion, that this will be harmful to security,” she said. “The government is afraid we will conspire with foreign countries and overthrow the state.” The Chinese Communists are deadly serious about this; all the men in Zou's family, for example, are in prison or on the run.
But the government of China deserves some credit here. It has comprehended something of the powerful force for freedom and democracy represented by religious communities — something which has almost entirely escaped the notice of political analysts in the West.
Paul Marshall, a senior fellow with the Washington, D.C.-based Freedom House, and author of Their Blood Cries Out: The Untold Story of Persecution Against Christians in the Modern World, observes that our “chattering classes,” — diplomats, journalists, political commentators and policy analysts — while so earnest in examining the economic, social and political causes of current events, suffer from a kind of “secular myopia” which leaves them unable to see, let alone understand, the impact of faith upon “the lives of individuals and the lives of nations.”
While the role of the Church in the fall of communism in Europe almost entirely eluded Western observers, it didn't escape the attention of the Chinese government. In distinction to their Western counterparts, the Chinese are, as Marshall describes them, “perversely aware of the power of spirituality and, as a result, regard religion with deadly seriousness.” In 1992 the Chinese state-run press made note of the fact that “the Church played an important role in the change” in Eastern Europe and warned, “if China does not want such a scene to be repeated in its land, it must strangle the baby while it is still in the manger.” China is busy strangling to this day.
Where Dictatorships Faded
There is clearly a note of paranoia in all this. The Chinese, in their response to the Falun Gong, make it apparent that they regard any religious organization, however benign, which is not completely under government control, as a subversive threat.
But the dynamism of the Catholic Church in China must surely be one of their gravest concerns. For the Catholic Church has demonstrated more clearly and dramatically than any other, the power of religious communities to help bring down thug regimes.
While the last quarter-century has seen the fall of dictatorships and the disappearance of communism as a global creed, one of the untold stories in this drama is the virtual disappearance of dictatorships in countries with a Catholic majority.
Political scientist Samuel P. Huntington has written that the “third wave of democracy” in the 1970s and 1980s, one which encompassed Eastern Europe, Latin America, Iberia and the Philippines, came in large part from the commitment to democracy and human rights in the Catholic Church. As Huntington describes it, “In the 1960s … changes within the Church brought a powerful social institution into opposition to dictatorial regimes, deprived those regimes of whatever legitimacy they might claim from religion, and provided protection, support, resources and leadership to pro-democratic opposition movements.”
The Pope of Freedom
Having lived successively under the crushing yoke of both the fascist Nazis and the communist Soviets, Pope John Paul II knows only too well the unimaginable human suffering that is the inevitably consequence of these utopian ideologies. With this background, and since becoming Pope in 1979, John Paul II has emerged as a fearless proponent of democracy and freedom on the world stage.
When Karol Wojtyla became Pope 20 years ago, 22 of 42 countries with a Catholic majority were tyrannies. Today only two Catholic countries unambiguously remain dictatorships: Equatorial Guinea and Cuba.
While the Pope's visits to foreign countries have always involved a predominantly religious message, neither protocol nor government warnings have held him back from taking advantage of his platform and influence to condemn the principle of total-itarian government and to advocate instead a healthy political system, expressed as “the free and responsible participation of all citizens in public affairs, in the rule of law, and in respect for and promotion of human rights” all to be grounded, of course, in a set of faith-based values.
His visits have brought remarkable changes. There was his first tumultuous return as Pope to his native land of Poland in 1979, one year before the birth of the Solidarity trade union movement. And then again in 1987, a year and a half before roundtable talks led to the collapse of communist rule there.
While other forces were unquestionably at work, Polish dissident leaders clearly remember a landmark shift in public consciousness that arose from the Pope's visit.
In the Vicar's Footsteps
Adrian Karatnycky, in an article May 4, 1998, in the National Review describes how a visit by the Pope tends to first spur religious activity and lay Catholic activism in the form of cultural and then more general discussion groups. This is usually accompanied by a growing influence of the “frequently circumscribed Catholic press.”
“In closed societies,” writes Karatnycky, “these forces become a focus of organized life outside the direct control of the totalitarian state — in short, an alternative democratic Catholic culture that opposes the values of dictatorship.”
Karatnycky goes on to explain how the fact that the Church hierarchy reports to Rome allows it to remain somewhat insulated from interference by the dictatorial state and “ensures a measure of independence for the church community.”
In Eastern Europe — encouraged by the example of a Pope boldly unafraid to speak the truth — religious communities and other groups became more daring, eventually linking up and emerging, as from the catacombs, to begin organizing and agitating more openly, soon to become an unstoppable flood of thousands upon thousands of supporters.
Having witnessed and examined closely what happened in Eastern Europe, the Chinese understand only too well how such forces, if given the smallest breathing room, can quickly escalate beyond the control of the state. Don't expect Beijing to invite the Pope for a state visit in the near future.
And make no mistake: Thug regimes such China, with a shrewd sense of self-preservation, feel at least as threatened by communities of religious faith as they do by their secular competitors. They understand, as China clearly does, that religious faith is a subversive force, one which, if left unchecked, may well lead to the overthrow of the strongest, most repressive totalitarian regime.
Karl Marx asserted religion to be the opium of the people, a drug which worked to prevent the masses from recognizing and throwing off their chains of bourgeoisie oppression. Irony indeed, that Red China struggles today against that same force of religion, out of fear it might empower the people of China to throw off the chains of oppression forged for them daily by their Communist masters.
J. Fraser Field is executive officer of the Catholic Educator's Resource Center, info@catholiceducation.org.
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: J. Fraser Field ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Where Can a Pro-Lifer Feel at Home DATE: 08/08/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 08-14, 1999 ----- BODY:Pro-lifers have about the best message around, that every human life is worth protecting, and yet the major political parties, their ear attuned to the cultural requirements for winning, are giving them less room to hang their hats. With elections on the horizon, political rhetoric is sounding more “moderate” and, of course, that means more pro-abortion. What's a pro-lifer to do?
Presidential contender Sen. Bob Smith departed the Republican Party in mid-July disgusted with the dominance of shallow pragmatism over principles he has seen in the last few years. He could not stay with a party where often he stood alone defending key positions stated in the Republican platform like 14th Amendment protections extended to the unborn and ending performance-based education. He called the party leaders “hypocrites” for not fighting for principles they talk about like tax reform; they called him “selfish” for abandoning the party. This episode reflects the difficult position many pro-lifers with traditional values find themselves in as they look toward the next presidential election.
The basic problem involves finding the best strategy for pro-lifers in this hostile political climate. Does quitting the Republican Party really help their cause? If more people left to form a third party, would this guarantee a Democratic pro-abortion win? Ross Perot's Reform Party has some issues but cannot agree on any candidates. Or should pro-life party members stay and raise the level of debate no matter what the cost? And is there any merit to a party's strategy of seeking to appear more “moderate”?
Pro-lifers in either party should see themselves as the grain of sand in the oyster. Republicans do not hold the same principles as 25 years ago. The Democrats have remained the party of the dominant liberal culture. But the presence of pro-lifers keeps some very important issues alive, like the right to life of unborn children, stopping support for global efforts to spread abortion, and real tax and health care reform. Leaving the party solves the problem of one's personal irritation at the way things are run but does not address the need for ongoing debate within the party on key issues.
Smith's strongest complaint was Republican hypocrisy which in many ways is no worse than Democrat hypocrisy. Since when have politicians not said one thing and done another? In this political climate, both parties should take strong positions that will lead us to a higher moral ground. That will not happen without a stronger voice from pro-lifers.
Still, Smith's departure and the danger of Pat Buchanan's and Gary Bauer's departures may awaken both parties to the realization that enough pro-lifers may go elsewhere, and stay home on Election Day, that it would be prudent to adhere to more of the principles that motivate the core voters. Perhaps pro-lifers should begin in House and Senate races and in state elections to run third-party candidates. Al Gore is too high a price —prohibitively high price — for pro-lifers to pay in the 2000 election. But the warning signals are out.
The main fault of party leadership, according to Smith, is they put winning above everything else. Paul Gigot, of The Wall Street Journal, says that the desire of the Republicans to win, a legitimate political incentive, is fueled by their concern over the future of the Supreme Court. The next president will have at least three appointments to the Supreme Court. “Conservative” justices hold a narrow margin in many 5-4 votes which would be lost with Democratic appointees. The desire to win does not excuse hypocrisy, but it does explain why the party has decided it must follow the culture and become more “broad-minded,” more moderate.
Political life involves compromises but pro-lifers do not want to compromise on questions of the value of human life, family issues and key foreign policy matters. The reality is a few pro-lifers may decide to leave the parties. It is urgently important that those who remain and those who vote for them must continue to keep the debates alive, presenting the best arguments and encouraging good candidates.
Candidates reflect voters’ positions, and political parties should too. We as voters should not underestimate the importance of our input now as these battles rage. The parties ask for our money. They should also hear from us about our real concerns, the positions we want the party to take.
Last November the bishops urged us to be more active in building the culture of life, and the times call for more attention to our basic freedoms. If we put up with hypocrisy now in candidates and political parties we will get more of it after the election. This is a good time to speak about that, which we will not put up with.
Mary Ellen Bork, a board member of the Catholic Campaign for America, writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: Mary Ellen Bork ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Church Teaching on Labor Unions And on the Vocation of Doctors DATE: 08/08/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 08-14, 1999 ----- BODY:In his 1981 encyclical Laborem Exercens (On Human Work), Pope John Paul II teaches that allworkers have a right to form unions.
All these rights, together with the need for the workers themselves to secure them, give rise to yet another right: the right of association, that is, to form associations for the purpose of defending the vital interests of those employed in the various professions. These associations are called labor or trade unions. The vital interests of the workers are to a certain extent common for all of them; at the same time, however, each type of work, each profession, has its own specific character which should find a particular reflection in these organizations” ( No. 94).
He also states that the right to strike should be used with an eye to the common good.
“While admitting that it is a legitimate means, we must at the same time emphasize that a strike remains, in a sense, an extreme means. It must not be abused; it must not be abused especially for “political” purposes. Furthermore, it must never be forgotten that when essential community services are in question, they must in every case be ensured, if necessary by means of appropriate legislation. Abuse of the strike weapon can lead to the paralysis of the whole of socioeconomic life, and this is contrary to the requirements of the common good of society, which also corresponds to the properly understood nature of work itself” (No. 100).
In October remarks made to the bishops of California, Hawaii and Nevada on their ad limina visit to Rome, the Holy Father characterized the medical profession as a special vocation.
The work of Catholic health care institutions in meeting the physical and spiritual needs of the sick is a form of imitation of Christ who, in the words of Saint Ignatius of Antioch, is ‘the doctor of the flesh and of the spirit.’ Doctors, nurses and other medical personnel deal with people in their time of trial, when they have an acute sense of life's fragility and precariousness; just when they most resemble the suffering Jesus in Gethsemane and on Calvary. Health care professionals should always bear in mind that their work is directed to individuals, unique persons in whom God's image is present in a singular way and in whom he has invested his infinite love.
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Singing the Praises of Daily Life DATE: 08/08/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 08-14, 1999 ----- BODY:Not even drizzle could dampen the spirits of a crowd of more than 600 people that gathered for Marie Bellet's outdoor concert at Epiphany Church in Coon Rapids, Minn. Families from as far away as Missouri and Pennsylvania gathered at the event July 18.
The concert marked the closing of the Mary Foundation's National Men's Conference. Featured were speakers such as Jeff Cavins of EWTN-fame and Sen. Bob Smith of New Hampshire, in his first campaign stop as a presidential candidate after quitting the Republican Party. The concert was also Bellet's second in a week following her appearance at the National Association of Catholic Home Educators conference in Manassas, Va.
Sporting a polka dot dress, Bellet appeared upbeat in spite of the rain. She sang on the grass in front of the crowd rather than use a covered trailer which had been set up for her.
“I feel more at home with children running all around me,” she explained.
Bellet delighted the crowd with a number of ballads from her first album, “What I Wanted to Say,” released in 1997, as well as a few new songs such as, “You Know Where I Am,” “I Live Next to a Highway” and “The Man of the House.”
Often accompanied by mandolin or guitar, her light acoustic style is sometimes country, sometimes pop and sometimes simply Bellet. Her songs are notable not only for their faith content, but for quality. While her background music was all prere-corded, it did not detract from the real attraction — Bellet's voice.
Bellet has a soothing, pure voice that is not only easy to listen to, but comforting. Her songs are like lullabies for the adult mind. The faith found in them is not pounded into the listeners’ head. Rather, listeners’ gently discover it as they reflect on the lyrics. Whether she is singing about grocery shopping, preparing a meal or diapering the children, she captures the essence of what parents face daily.
Her original storytelling lyrics offer hope, humor and meaning to parents striving for holiness in everyday life.
Unlike the meaningless pop songs with repetitive beats commonly heard on the radio, Bellet's melodies are stories that must be carefully listened to.
Songs for Mothers
Her first song was one that many mothers could identify with and was the title track from her first album. In it, she stands in the grocery line with her children while another woman looks on condescendingly. The checkout girl shakes her head as she scans the groceries and asks, “Are these all yours? When do you find time for you?” But the mother of seven longs to tell the woman that her children are the “best of me.”
Her songs are about the struggles of being a parent, and the value in that struggle. It's no wonder that mothers are among her biggest fans. She sings about life as a housewife and mother for a world that no longer values these roles.
“I write my songs as I’m folding laundry or doing the dishes,” she told the Register. “My audience is the women that no one else talks to. I want to tell mothers that they are not crazy or alone. If my music can do that, it will all be worthwhile. My songs remind mothers of things they already know, but sometimes forget during the drudgery of their day. To make sacrifices for marriage and children is the noblest thing we do.”
A Song for Fathers
Bellet addressed her song “One Heroic Moment” to the fathers in the audience. The song tells of the struggle of a father who has worked a long day and is tempted to go out with the guys after work for a drink. Heroically, he denies himself — a sacrifice Bellet compares to the one made on Calvary.
While spirituality is subtly evident in all of her songs, her obviously spiritual songs are particularly moving. Although she didn't sing them at the concert, “Thy Will Be Done” and the catchy “Here I Am” are favorites on the album.
Bellet, who lives in Nashville, Tenn., says she produced her first album for fun. “I've been very encouraged by the many letters that mothers have sent,” she said.
Bellet's concert lasted about 45 minutes. During the 10-minute encore she sang three new songs: “Ordinary Time,” “Life Line” and “The Weight of the World.” In “Life Line,” she sings about a woman facing an unexpected pregnancy. Its lyrics are haunting: “Mother can you see me, Mother did you know? I could be a Boy Scout, I could be a ballerina. … Don't you want to find out, don't you want to know?”
New CD Coming
Some of those songs will appear on Bellet's forthcoming compact disc titled “Ordinary Time.” She was scheduled to begin recording that album Aug. 3. Due out Oct. 30, it will be about finding glory in the ordinary.
“Housewives are often confronted with images of wealth, health and prestige in the grocery store checkout lane,” Bellet observed. “I want them to see the value in their vocation as an ordinary woman in ordinary time doing God's work. Despite what the checkout magazines might say, they're not missing anything.”
Bellet's message is a refreshing one in a culture that demeans both the innocence of childhood and the treasures of parenthood. One cannot help coming away from her music energized and willing to fight the good fight for yet another day.
Tim Drake, of St. Cloud, Minn., can be reached via e-mail at tdrake@gw.stcdio.org.
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: Tim Drake ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Fighting the Catholic Lag In Contemporary Music DATE: 08/08/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 08-14, 1999 ----- BODY:Steve Griffin knows a thing or two about getting talented musical artists heard by the masses. A former president and chief executive officer of Nest Entertainment Inc., he's now brought his talents to contemporary Catholic music. As president of Troubadour Communications Group in Nashville, Tenn., an offshoot of John Michael Talbot's Troubadour for the Lord record label, he helps Catholic artists find listening audiences, and vice versa. He spoke with Register Radio News correspondent Jay Dunlap about the challenges of marketing Catholic music ministries in today's media-saturated environment.
Jay Dunlap: Why is it that Catholics seem to lag behind other Christians when it comes to faith-centered pop music?
Steve Griffin: If you look at the contemporary Christian music market, it has every genre of music. It appeals to all age groups. You would not be able to distinguish it from a contemporary music culture if not for the positive lyrics. The lack of a strong Catholic presence there is very puzzling — especially when you consider that, in the past, so many great composers were commissioned by the Church. It seems somewhere along the way we abdicated what I would call the cutting-edge music position. Catholic music that entertains and ministers to people really hasn't worked its way in.
Tell me about some of the artists you're promoting.
First of all, I work with and manage John Michael Talbot. He's an example of a Catholic artist who really has made it. He's sold over 4 million records and has achieved success both in the Catholic market, where he tours exclusively today, and in the contemporary Christian music market as well. He and I together started this new company, which now has nine artists with a 10th about to sign on. It's an eclectic group of men and women representing a variety of different sounds, because our goal is to provide music people can listen to. We're trying to reclaim that tape or CD player in the dashboard of the car with great music and uplifting lyrics that can inspire you in the middle of the week.
We have to appeal to both youths and adults, and we think we can do that with artists like Aaron Thompson out of Phoenix, Ariz. Aaron has an acoustic guitar sound; he sounds very much like the lead singer from Hootie and the Blowfish. He plays several instruments and leads Mass music in his home parish. He wrote a song called “Days of Grace” … It's about his mother, who has Alzheimer's, and about the grace he and his dad need. I saw him perform it before an audience recently and there wasn't a dry eye in the house.
These are songs about real-life experiences. People can turn to drugs and alcohol and the wrong things, or they can turn to God. That's kind of the theme of all of our artists.
We've got an artist named Greg Walton, from Tennessee. He does a song called “Free” which he sets up by asking, “What would you say to Satan if you had a chance to tell him something? This is what I'd tell him.” Then he sings that he's free, he's not in Satan's bondage anymore, because the Lord has paid the price and set him free.
Wendy Vaughan is another of our artists. She's from Houston, though she was born in Venezuela and her parents are from Cuba. She's got a salsa sound.
These are all people who love the Lord, love the Church, and want to write songs from their heart and from their life experiences.
You're marketing these artists in an innovative way, as fund-raisers for parishes?
Yes, we're trying to set up a concert series in local parishes, where one of these artists will perform each quarter. If you buy a “season pass,” over a two-year period you'll hear all our artists.
The idea is to give people a chance to look forward to some great music by Catholics for Catholics.
The parishes don't have to set it up as a fund-raiser, but if they do, we give them 20% of everything we raise in ticket and product sales. And the artist can make a living.
One of the reasons we're not where we need to be in the Catholic Church [in terms of music] is that a lot of these Catholic artists cannot afford to focus on their craft full time.
A lot of times they have a day job and the music is kind of a side project. Well, until you get serious about the music — and can focus and write and tour — you don't really get to the level of artistry that it takes to get heard today.
By pre-selling these programs, we hope to provide an income stream so that our artists can work on their music full time.
—Jay Dunlap
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: Jay Dunlap ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: A Catholic Renaissance in Maine DATE: 08/08/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 08-14, 1999 ----- BODY:STANDISH, Maine—David House recalled that after he took over as president of St. Joseph's College in 1995 and started describing his vision for the institution, a 15-year veteran professor said uneasily, “No one has really talked about this as a Catholic institution.”
House has tried to change that over the last four years, though he has not always had a receptive audience at Maine's only Catholic college. “Some people would arch their backs and get very bristly about it,” he said.
Officially, this school, which sits on 331 acres next to Sebago Lake about 16 miles from Portland, has always been Catholic. Founded as a women's college by the Sisters of Mercy in 1912, the nuns have been on campus ever since. In 1970 the school turned coed.
While St. Joseph's wasn't immune to the turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s, college officials said it did not go through as tortuous a struggle with its identity as did many other Catholic colleges. In recent years, several longtime observers have noted a spiritual rejuve-nation on campus.
Much of the credit has been given to the campus chaplain, Father John Tokaz, a Capuchin Franciscan friar now entering his third year at the college.
“He's added some life and vitality that's just been amazing,” said Erby Mitchell, a 1998 graduate who now works as assistant director of student life for student activities.
Father Tokaz, through his accessibility, affability, and frequent contacts with students, has managed to quadruple campus Mass attendance on Sunday nights and has helped attract and guide at least 10 converts at the college this past spring.
The chaplaincy is the focal point of a broader effort at the school to make religion a part of students’ everyday experience.
“We talk about students’ spiritual lives; they've got one, and we hope while they're here they'll take a look at it,” said Timothy Leary, dean of students and vice president of student affairs since 1996.
Virtues, Not ‘Values’
The college tries to foster virtue. Dorms are single-sex, except for one building, which is segregated by floor, House said. Leary said the school directs students having overnight guests of the opposite sex to sign them in and have them stay in another building.
The school does not allow abortion counseling. Last spring, House came upon and removed Planned Parenthood literature at a campus health clinic, put there by an unknown person.
Following the Sisters of Mercy tradition, many students volunteer to work with the poor. Some work in soup kitchens and with immigrants in Portland during the school year. Some also use their spring break to work in inner-city Baltimore, in Appalachian communities, or on a Passamaquoddy Indian reservation in Maine. The school also has a chapter of Habitat for Humanity.
House said he would like to add a Third World apostolate, which he called “a gateway to Gospel teaching” that ties in with the Sisters of Mercy mission. But he said he also hopes to guard against making volunteerism a “surrogate religion” instead of a reflection of Christian faith.
“It's become a substitute kind of politically correct religion, to go out to soup kitchens to volunteer,” he said. “It allows people to skip devotional life. … These are people who talk about ‘values.’ They don't talk about ‘virtues.’”
External Signs of Faith
The external signs of devotional life have always been prominent on campus. House said one of the benefits of being tucked away in Maine is that St. Joseph's has never had passionate battles over crucifixes in the classroom, like those some other Catholic colleges, because the school never took them down.
“There's none of that foolishness at St. Joseph's,” House said. “There's never been any question that we're going to have symbols of our Catholic identity everywhere.”
About 60% of the college's students are Catholic, officials said. House said parents and students, even some religious-minded Protestants, are attracted to St. Joseph's in part because it represents itself as Catholic. “And that's a promise we have to make good on,” said House, himself a convert to Catholicism in the early 1970s.
A Renaissance
Daniel Sheridan, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the college since last year, sees St. Joseph's as part of a “renaissance of Catholic higher education going on around the country.”
Sheridan, who served for 16 years as faculty member and administrator at Loyola University in New Orleans, said he wants to foster the Catholic intellectual tradition in St. Joseph's curriculum.
“And I want to do that not as a backward-looking thing,” Sheridan said. “Not just that we study the medieval Catholic thinkers, but that we emulate them. They did for their time what we need to do for our time.”
The theology department has benefited from the surge in spiritual awareness.
When Sister Marilyn Sunderman joined the faculty as a theology professor in 1994, students saw theology only as a requirement. No one was majoring or minoring in theology. Now, six or seven students are majoring in theology, and about a dozen are minoring in it.
“People start out in our intro courses, and they realize there's a lot they would like to learn about theology in general,” said Sister Marilyn, department chairman since 1997. “The combination of a stronger theology department and a much stronger campus ministry department is engendering interest in people.”
The college has recently started a master's program in pastoral studies for off-campus students, with help from the Diocese of Portland. Courses include canon law, church management, theological inquiry, Christology and New Testament.
“It shows that the college is interested enough to invest its energies and money in developing a program that can be helpful to the Church at large,” Sister Marilyn said.
The Pope's Vision
House, the president, supports Ex Corde Ecclesiae(From the Heart of the Church), the 1990 apostolic constitution of Pope John Paul II on Catholic higher education. Among its directives, the constitution asks colleges to maintain a majority of Catholics on their faculty and to ensure that professors of Catholic theology obtain a license from their local bishop.
Sheridan, the dean, said he finds Ex Corde Ecclesiae “inspiring” but disagrees with the Church's position on theology teachers and majority-Catholic faculties. Sheridan said quality should be the test of a faculty candidate, not religion.
“He and I disagree on that,” House said, “and I always tell him half-jokingly, ‘I’m president and you're not.’ We've had some real interesting discussions about it, but I wouldn't have hired him if I thought he was a dissenting Catholic.”
House supports Ex Corde Eccles-iae's requirement that teachers of Catholic theology hold a mandate to do so from the Church. And while he said he would ideally like to see the “vast majority” of faculty members Catholic, he is not certain that smaller, geographically isolated schools will always be able to fulfill the provision that calls for a majority-Catholic faculty. He prefers the term “critical mass,” which he defines as “enough so that there is no danger of Catholic identity becoming lost in the thicket of debates.”
He hastened to add that if the U.S. bishops vote for majority-Catholic faculties, “I would do everything I possibly could … to comply with that.” He estimated that slightly more than half of St. Joseph's 55 full-time faculty members are Catholic.
“What I do make sure when I hire people is we don't have people who claim to be Catholic and are pro-abortion” or involved in anti-Church groups, he said.
He said he also believes all faculty members, whether Catholic or not, ought to be “respectful of our teaching, very much aware of what it means to be at a Catholic college, and not just neutral about it.”
St. Joseph's is growing fast. The incoming freshman class will be its largest ever. A new recreational center last spring replaced the “Chamber of Horrors,” where the Division III basketball team built a national reputation. The school plans to build a new dormitory immediately, and another one in 2001. Goals for the next several years include increasing full-time undergraduates to 1,000 and increasing faculty numbers to 70 from 55.
Matt McDonald writes from Mashpee, Massachusetts.
----- EXCERPT: President of St. Joseph's nudges his institution back to its mission ----- Extended BODY: Matt McDonald ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: A Chaplain Who Packs Them In DATE: 08/08/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 08-14, 1999 ----- BODY:As a candidate for the chaplain's position, Father John Tokaz went on his tour of St. Joseph's College dressed as always, in his Capuchin Franciscan habit.
“They'll never buy that,” one skeptical college official whispered to the president, David House, as they accompanied the candidate.
But Father Tokaz has been a hit since his arrival in 1997. “Right away, the students took to him,” House said. “And I think it's because they see him as someone who is authentic.”
The chapel used to be a quarter full for 9 p.m. Sunday Mass, according to Sister Sylvia Comer, director of campus ministry since 1990. “Now the word is that if you want to get a seat, you have to get there 10 minutes early,” she said.
This past spring, 27 students participated in the college's equivalent of the diocesan Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, Sister Sylvia said. Eight were baptized, including four baseball players. Four who had been baptized in Protestant denominations were received into the Church. Two received first Communion; the rest were confirmed.
Members of the campus community said Father Tokaz's methods are persistence, ubiquity and follow-through. Though he lives in Portland, he is always on campus, and makes special efforts to talk with each student, according to observers. “He is like a living witness,” House said. “He's very quiet, not a backslapper.”
He is also methodical. House said Father Tokaz once told him he has five conversations with a student before inviting him to Mass.
Sister Mary George O'toole, associate dean of academic affairs, described Father Tokaz as “kind of like a Pied Piper.”
But while some college chaplains are able to cultivate a cult of personality by acting like a talk show host, House said, Father Tokaz is not afraid to tell students things they might not want to hear. “He's not just someone who's trying to be popular with the students,” House said.
Erby Mitchell, originally from Brooklyn, N.Y., came to St. Joseph's to play basketball, not to get religion. Though he had become Catholic at age 15, his interests as a freshman in 1994 lay elsewhere.
But when Father Tokaz arrived at the beginning of Mitchell's senior year, the priest established a rapport with him. “He understands what it's like to be a teen-ager,” Mitchell said, adding that “he's the first spiritual adviser who has allowed me … to challenge Catholicism.”
Father Tokaz said he takes his “walk-talk-and-invite” strategy from St. Felix of Cantalice (died 1587), the first canonized Capuchin saint. Each summer he travels to meet the families of students who live in New England. “How can I know somebody if I don't know where they come from?” he said.
Katie Pinard, an incoming sophomore from Biddeford, Maine, who is student president of campus ministry, praised the Capuchin as the spark of religious life on campus:
“He's the greatest advertisement for the Catholic faith we could have, because everything he does really embodies the spirit of Jesus.”
—Matt McDonald
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: Matt McDonald ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Education Notebook DATE: 08/08/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 08-14, 1999 ----- BODY:Teachers Need to Learn the Basics
LOS ANGELES TIMES, July 22—“A nationwide movement to raise academic standards is creating an appreciation for a sometimes neglected truism — you can't teach what you don't know,” reported Richard Lee Colvin, the Times education writer. “And in the case of elementary and middle school teachers, what they often don't know very well is mathematics.”
Colvin featured a 125-hour faculty development program in algebra and geometry being given to hundreds of teachers in California. “Across the nation, thousands of teachers are making similar efforts to relearn, or learn for the first time, the subjects they teach,” said Colvin.
The program has been prompted by the more demanding standards now faced by students. “With key concepts of algebra, such as the use of variables, now being taught as early as the third grade, many teachers are finally confronting [their]fear of numbers,” said Colvin.
Colvin said the new trend is a marked contrast to professional development classes for teachers that “have focused on teaching tricks — how to get kids to teach one another, or a snazzy new way to liven up classroom discussions. But there's little evidence, researchers now say, that the billions of dollars spent on pushing such generic teaching techniques have had much, if any, impact on student achievement.”
Catholic President of Lutheran University
CAPITAL UNIVERSITY PRESS RELEASE, July 20—A Lutheran university in Columbus, Ohio, will be led for the first time by a Catholic president.
Daniel A. Felicetti, 57, will assume the leadership of Capital University in August. He will be the 13th president of Capital, which is the largest university in North America affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church.
Since 1989, Felicetti has been president of Marian College, a Catholic, Franciscan liberal arts college in Indianapolis where he has presided over an increase in enrollment and a successful $8 million fund-raising campaign.
“Felicetti noted that Marian College and Capital University share several common characteristics as values-driven, Christian institutions of higher education,” said the university's release.
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Ore. Assisted Suicide Law Leaves Activists Edgy DATE: 08/08/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 08-14, 1999 ----- BODY:PORTLAND, Ore.—Proponents of Oregon's physician assisted suicide law say that disabled people have nothing to fear from it. But Rich Burger is not convinced of that.
“We are creating a situation where society is saying we're better off dead than disabled,” contended Burger, a disability-rights activist from Portland who is himself disabled.
Under the law, patients with terminal illnesses who are deemed to have six months or less to live would be eligible to obtain a lethal prescription of a barbiturate such as Seconal.
That six-month rule doesn't assure Burger.
He contended that if life is not worth living with a disability for six months, then it's not worth living for more than six months either. “It screams to me that there's definitely an anti-disabled bias to this attitude,” he said.
Not everyone agrees with him. “For the most part, disabled people wouldn't have access to the law anyway,” said Hannah Davidson, director of Oregon Death With Dignity, which supports the law. She denied that the law and its supporters show a bias against the disabled.
The law took effect in November 1997. In its first year, 15 people killed themselves with the use of physician assisted suicide, according to the Oregon Health Association.
Davidson said most of those who ended their lives wanted to avoid loss of bodily functions. “These people who used the option had a history of being in control of their lives,” she said. “This wasn't something new that they thought about when they got ill. This is a lifestyle.”
It's that very attitude, however, that activists for the disabled find so disturbing.
“The act is called Death With Dignity,” observed Diane Coleman, president of the Illinois group Not Dead Yet, which keeps an eye on the Oregon law.
“What is the indignity that the proponents are trying to avoid?” she asked. “What is it that they fear so much that they would prefer death? It isn't pain. It's disability. Ask them to describe it. They describe incontinence, using a wheelchair, needing help going to the bathroom. These are the indignities they would rather die than face. We find them to be insulting from our point of view.
“They're saying, ‘I don't want to be like you. I'd rather be dead.’ If you need assistance — something the aging and disability community service has been fighting for — that's indignity.”
It's also an erroneous idea, Coleman contested, that loss of bodily movement means loss of control. She says that many people on her staff need assistance “but they lead very dignified lives. They need someone to help them to dress, to go to the bathroom. It's like having a gardener or a cook. Yes, it's more intimate. Yes, it takes more skill and understanding to manage those services. But there are centers for independent living like our own that can guide people in how to do that effectively. To equate this with indignity shows a very sad lack of understanding, and fear or contempt for disability.”
Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life) reaffirms the teaching of the Catholic Church against all forms of suicide.
“Suicide is always as morally objectionable as murder. The Church's tradition has always rejected it as a gravely evil choice. …
“To concur with the intention of another person to commit suicide and to help in carrying it out through so-called ‘assisted suicide’ means to cooperate in, and at times to be the actual perpetrator of, an injustice which can never be excused, even if it is requested. In a remarkably relevant passage Saint Augustine writes that ‘it is never licit to kill another: even if he should wish it, indeed if he request it because, hanging between life and death, he begs for help in freeing the soul struggling against the bonds of the body and longing to be released; nor is it licit even when a sick person is no longer able to live’”(No. 66).
Health Care Endangered
Like other euthanasia opponents, Coleman of Not Dead Yet sees a strong conflict of interest in the state offering to pay to end someone's life. Many disabled and elderly people benefit from the state's health plan, which now also covers physician assisted suicide.
The state requires doctors to tell their patients about their options when discussing suicide with them. “But guess what?” Coleman said, “They won't pay for them.”
“For instance, the state won't pay for something like community- and home-based services, which can make their lives much easier,” she said. “But chances are they will pay for suicide.” The cost of the lethal prescription is $35 to $50.
Dr. William Toffler, a Portland physician, said he agreed that some aspects of needed health care are being denied to poor people.
“There has been limitations for some patients for some pain medication including Oxycontin, one of the better oral long-acting medications for pain,” he told the Register. “Some patients have been denied the doses that they needed to relieve their pain.” He added, “At the same time, the Oregon health plan has fully funded assisted suicide.”
Coleman said the real issue for many dying and disabled people is being a financial burden to their families. Again, community- and home-based services can offer a viable solution. “If families have to absorb all the costs, it does become prohibitive.”
These kind of services are something that the elderly and disabled communities have long been fighting to obtain. But she says the euthanasia movement isn't interested in providing these kind of options for people.
She cited a privately published book by euthanasia advocate Derek Humphrey and Mary Clement, Freedom to Die. The authors write that one in three people going into a nursing home would prefer to be dead, “so we should allow that, and then a cost saving measure would be in place.”
Hard to Enforce?
Coleman finds the Oregon law to be poorly written with too many loopholes for abuses. “The only safeguard is the immunity to participants in the killing,” she said.
“If they [participating doctors] believe in good faith that they have complied with the terms of the law, then they are safe,” she added. To prove otherwise would be impossible, she maintained.
“There are no enforcement provisions whatsoever,” Coleman added. “It's virtually impossible for someone to be prosecuted under this law.”
Death With Dignity's Davidson, in contrast, said she believes the law is hard to abuse. “You have to get two doctors to risk their professions and testify that the patient is not under some kind of duress from the family to end her life,” she said. “You'd have to get two witnesses to say she wasn't being pressured. You'd have to get a minimum of four people — two doctors and two witnesses — to lie and have two requests plus a request in writing from the patient herself.”
But Wesley J. Smith, a California-based attorney for the Ohio-based Anti-Euthanasia Task Force, contended that all the law required is that there be a diagnosis of terminal illness.
“There is no checking before the killing takes place by the state or by anybody,” he said. “The whole law relies on [the word of] the doctors [that they] are in compliance with the law.”
A spokesman for the Oregon Department of Justice and the state's attorney general's office, Peter Cogswell, said that he was “not in a position where I want to minimize those concerns, but also I am not in a position where I can confirm them. … We have not looked at this issue.”
Smith said that doctors are supposed to report all assisted suicides by filling out forms “but there is no punishment if they don't. Therefore it is clear that if an assisted suicide com-plies with the guidelines, the chances are, the form will be filled out, and if it did not comply with the guidelines, the chances are it will not be filled out and they will be no penalty.”
There is no autopsy on the people who die, “so we don't know what the actual conditions of these people were,” Smith added. “There is an utter secrecy that has been imposed over the whole practice.”
Regina Doman is based in Front Royal, Virginia.
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: Regina Doman ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: LIFE NOTES DATE: 08/08/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 08-14, 1999 ----- BODY:Abortion Rates Continue To Drop in U.S.
NATIONAL RIGHT TO LIFE, July 29-A statement by the National Right to Life Committee said that the 1996 figures on abortion released by the Centers for Disease Control, showed a marked decline in the numbers of abortions being performed in the country.
In 1996 the number of abortions was 1,221,585 with a rate of 20 per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44 and a ratio of 314 abortions per 1,000 live births.
“The latest figures released by the CDC shows a continuing trend toward fewer abortions,” said Laura Echevarria, director of media relations.
Payment Program for Sterilization of Women
THE WASHINGTON POST, July 28-A privately funded program that pays drug-addicted women $200 to get sterilized or to use long-term birth control opened in Chicago last week, said The Washington Post. But the program has been widely criticized, according to the report, as “it coerces poor women impaired by drugs into making what often is an irreversible reproductive decision.”
Said the paper, “The program, which has also attracted attention in Minneapolis, Dallas and Fort Pierce, Fla., was branded as exploitive and ‘basically bribery’ by reproductive rights advocates and other critics who vowed to fight it.”
The program was originally founded by Barbara Harris of Anaheim, Calif., “who after adopting four children from the same cocaine-addicted mother tried to get legislation passed in California making it a crime to give birth to a drug-addicted baby,” said the report.
“Failing in that effort, she devised the unorthodox incentive program intended to persuade women to agree to tubal ligation, which is not always reversible, or to get long-term birth control.”
Oregon Gov. Refuses To Sign Pro-Life Budget
OREGON RIGHT TO LIFE, Aug. 2-The Oregon Right to Life reported Aug. 2 that the state's pro-abortion Gov. John Kitzhaber refused to sign the $2.2 billion budget for the Department of Human Resources because pro-life legislators removed $2.8 million in funding for abortion and assisted suicide.
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: Regina Doman ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: U.S.-funded Abortions Abroad Are Targeted DATE: 08/08/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 08-14, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—The U.S. House passed a measure July 29 that would prohibit U.S. taxpayer funds from going to international organizations that perform or promote abortions.
Rep. Christopher Smith, a Republican co-author of the measure, told the Register that abortions “literally in the millions” would be prevented if his amendment to a foreign aid bill becomes law. The amendment, also authored by Democrat Rep. James Barcia, passed 228-200.
A competing amendment that allows for birth control also passed in the House 221-208. That measure, introduced by Rep. Jim Greenwood, R-Pa., has White House support. The Senate in June passes its version of a foreign appropriations bill that does not include a pro-life provision.
The Smith amendment would reinstate the so-called Mexico City policy implemented by the Reagan administration in 1984. That policy prohibits U.S. taxpayer money from being used for organizations that want to legalize abortion in other nations, especially Planned Parenthood International. President Clinton repealed the Mexico City policy two days after he took office.
Currently more than $400 million in taxpayer money goes to groups such as the U.N. Population Fund and Planned Parenthood International. The funding helps pay for contraception, sterilization and abortion policies.
A report done for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, “Unto the Least of These My Brethren: U.S. Population Control Policy,” said that 100,000 women in Peru were sterilized against their wills. Beginning in 1996, the Peruvian Ministry of Health set quotas for medical workers on the number of people they had to sterilize each month, according to the report written by Steven Mosher.
Organizations in more than 100 countries that currently restrict abortions write abortion laws and lobby to enact them, according to Smith and previous reports of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. Sometimes they succeed, as in South Africa. In China, Planned Parenthood International and the U.N. Population Control coerced many women to have abortions.
Rep. Barcia told the Register in a statement, “We have, as a nation, established a policy in which we prohibit the use of federal dollars to pay for abortions because of the value that we place on each human life.” He added that the amendment “retains the funding available for international population assistance, but works to ensure the money goes only to those organizations who do not perform abortions.”
Barcia said problems creep in when organizations who receive government funding “claim they're assisting in family planning activities; the end result is an increase in abortions.” The Smith amendment directs that no funds may go to any organization unless they certify that they will not perform abortions. Also they are prohibited from lobbying to change the laws concerning abortion. Smith's office is calling the vote a victory.
Rep. Greenwood, referring to his own amendment, told the Register “our language is a compromise. It represents a shift from abortion to contraception.”
He added that his amendment “makes it clear that funds will not promote abortion.” He said that “it is highly moral and highly ethical to promote birth control.” His reason for this is because “when there is no access to contraceptives, women die.” According to Greenwood, “585,000 women are dying from postpartum hemorrhaging” and are living in “starvation, poverty and squalor.” He wants to combine “health services” to mothers and children along with promotion of contraceptives.
Greenwood said that he expects Smith's amendment to fail and his to pass. The two amendments will go to a House-Senate conference committee where the abortion debate could be heated.
Smith stated, “We're not going to budge.” He said that Greenwood's amendment is “total double talk,” and only protects the “status quo.” Greenwood voted against the partial-birth abortion ban.
Clinton's Stance
Each year Smith proposes the amendment to reinstate the Mexico City policy. However, Clinton vetoed the amendment in the past and threatened to do so again this year. An official statement from the White House said “the administration strongly supports the Greenwood amendment” and “strongly opposes the Smith amendment.”
Bishop Theodore McCarrick, chairman of the International Policy Committee of the U.S. Catholic Conference, wrote a July 28 letter to Congress endorsing the Smith-Barcia amendment. He called it “a modest step and a safeguard against the United States cooperating with aggressive efforts by International Planned Parenthood Foundation and other pro-abortion groups to overturn the pro-life laws of sovereign nations.” The National Conference of Catholic Bishops strongly supports the Smith-Barcia amendment.
Though the amendment would face a presidential veto, Smith said that “the House leadership is 100% behind us.”
John Drogin writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: One House amendment allows them, another doesn't ----- Extended BODY: John Drogin ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 08/08/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 08-14, 1999 ----- BODY:The religious highlight of the Holy Father's Pastoral Visit to New York City in 1995 was the Mass he celebrated on Oct.7 commemorating Our Lady of the Rosary on the Great Lawn of Central Park in Manhattan. “You are called to respect and defend the mystery of life always and everywhere,” he said, including care for the poor and opposition to euthanasia in his remarks.
Like Mary, you must not be afraid to allow the Holy Spirit to help you become intimate friends of Christ. Like Mary, you must put aside any fear, in order to take Christ to the world in whatever you do - in marriage, as single people in the world, as students, as workers, as professional people. Christ wants to go to many places in the world, and to enter many hearts, through you. Just as Mary visited Elizabeth, so you too are called to “visit” the needs of the poor, the hungry, the homeless, those who are alone or ill; for example those suffering from AIDS.
You are called to stand up for life! To respect and defend the mystery of life always and everywhere, including the lives of unborn babies, giving real help and encouragement to mothers in difficult situations. You are called to work and pray against abortion, against violence of all kinds, including the violence done against women's and children's dignity through pornography. Stand up for the life of the aged and the handicapped, against attempts to promote assisted-suicide and euthanasia! Stand up for marriage and family life! Stand up for purity! Resist the pressures and temptations of a would that too often tries to ignore a most fundamental truth: that every life is a gift from God our Creator, and that we must give an account to God of how we use it either for good or evil.
----- EXCERPT: ----- Extended BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: Did You Know? DATE: 08/08/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 08-14, 1999 ----- BODY:Handicapped advocacy groups, health care experts and (according to some polls) a majority of Americans support the notion that those facing the end of life should be cared for, not killed.
A bill in Congress would authorize $5 million for training programs focusing on health care for dying patients that alleviates pain and enhances quality of life. Sponsored by 135 representatives in the House, the Pain Relief Promotion Act is also endorsed by the American Medical Association and hospice organizations.
A coalition headed by former first lady Rosalynn Carter released polling data in March that suggested that Americans, by a two-to-one ratio, think the nation should make pain relief — not assisted suicide — the focus of efforts to aid dying patients.
----- EXCERPT: Facts Of Life ----- Extended BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: Eugenics Tone Feared in Crime-Abortion Study DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:CHICAGO—A study which links the 1990s drop in crime with the dramatic rise of abortion in the 1970s has shocked many social critics and pro-life advocates, who see the report as an endorsement of abortion—with racial overtones.
The authors of the “Legalized Abortion and Crime” denied that their as-yet unpublished study promotes abortion.
Yet the study's premise—that those who would have committed crimes were aborted in the years following the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision—is viewed by many as promoting not only abortion, but eugenics as well.
“The abortion-related reduction in crime is predominantly attributable to a decrease in crime per capita among the young,” the report said. It then suggests that two “mechanisms” could account for crime decreases, “selective abortion on the part of women most at risk to have children who would engage in criminal activity, and improved childbearing or environmental circumstances caused by better maternal, familial, or fetal circumstances.”
Rejecting the claim that reduced crime is a result of improved policing techniques in urban areas like New York, the authors of the report cite cities like Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, where crime has gone down without them. “While all of these factors may have served to dampen crime to some degree, we consider a novel explanation for the sudden crime drop of the 1990's: the decision to legalize abortion over a quarter century ago,” the report said.
Critics of the report said they don't object to the claim that fewer young people would result in fewer crimes. What they object to is the suggestion that minorities are more likely to commit crime and thus abortion, which reduces their numbers, should be welcome.
“We didn't have any interest in stepping into the abortion debate,” Stanford University law professor John Donohue, one of the report's authors, told the Register.
Referring to him and co-author Steve Levitt, a University of Chicago economics professor, Donohue said, “We have written several papers on crime, but couldn't explain the drop. In the course of our studies we stumbled upon the data of abortion—that it may be linked with the drop in crime.
“Our view is that nothing in the paper should be seen as an endorsement of abortion, [though] obviously we're concerned about the negative consequences of bringing unwanted children into the world. But there are many ways of avoiding births that don't rely on abortion.”
He added that the controversy surrounding the report is “a bit of a media issue.”
Charles Osgood, host of CBS News Sunday Morning, however, told the Register that he thought the report was “scary.” He said that in his view the report resembled eugenic theories.
Such theories, which at times devalue human beings based on racial or other genetic characteristics, were once strongly identified with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.
“It's a sort of dangerous road to start going down,” Osgood said, “to identify a group that is likely to contain a lot of criminals and to suggest that because many were aborted there is now less crime. I think it's racist, genocidal and bad science.”
Though he said the authors of the report don't want their study to be seen as promoting abortion, there are too many other factors involved in the lower crime rates to justify their focusing in on abortion.
“One factor is the economy,” Osgood said. “When prosperity goes up, crime goes down. Another is government programs, which seek to reduce crime. Yes, it's true that some are born poor and are more likely to become criminals, but the answer is not to abort these pregnancies, but to present poor people with more opportunities.”
Joe Scheidler, who heads the Pro-Life Action League, agreed with Osgood.
“This is eugenics,” Scheidler told the Register. “It says that if you're a minority and young, you're going to have trash, so kill it.” Scheidler said the report should be welcome news to pro-abortion groups like Planned Parenthood, which, he said, was founded on the principles of eugenics.
“They know that minorities comprise the highest number of abortions by percentage,” Scheidler said. “Margaret Sanger [the founder of Planned Parenthood] thought minorities were scum. She was very upfront about this when she referred to abortion as ‘eliminating the human weeds.’”
Scheidler said that there were very few crimes by Jewish boys in the 1940s as a result of Nazi efforts to eliminate Jews a decade earlier, but that it would be “diabolical” to view this as a social benefit.
“The fact is that a growing majority of people, especially women, are coming to view abortion as bad,” he continued. “Planned Parenthood knows this and is trying to show people that abortion has some good effects, and that it's gonna get better,” he said.
Roger Rathman, vice president of media relations for Planned Parenthood, refuted Scheidler's claim, saying it “could not be further from the truth.” Planned Parenthood's goal, he said, “is what it has always been, to see that every child in America is a wanted child.”
Rathman added that Planned Parenthood had no comment to make on the crime report since it had not yet seen it.
Statistics obtained from Planned Parenthood's research arm, the Alan Guttmacher Institute, show that abortion is far more common among blacks than whites. In 1995, for example, there were 409 abortions per 1,000 pregnancies among minority women, compared with 210 abortions among whites.
Susan Tew, deputy communications director for the Guttmacher Institute, said it was “extremely premature” to comment on the crime study until it had undergone peer analysis. She confirmed, however, that many of the data contained in the study came from Guttmacher studies.
—Or Business?
Dolores Bernadette Grier is vice chancellor for community relations in the Archdiocese of New York. Grier, who is black, takes a different tack than Scheidler on the question of eugenics.
“As for singling out minorities, I used to think that was the case because the majority of Planned Parenthood's clinics are in minority neighborhoods,” she said. “But the bottom line is that abortion is a big business. And what do you do in a business? You try to sell your product to the most vulnerable. These medical hit men can make a million dollars a year performing abortions. Planned Parenthood has no feeling for the babies, their concern is the money and they don't care who they kill to get it.”
Grier recounted a visit she once made to a Planned Parenthood clinic in New York City, claiming to show an interest in their literature. “I went in and saw all of these couples on the first floor—black and white,” she said. “But when they took me upstairs to get the materials I felt like I was in the corporate offices of IBM. There were plants and white businessmen in three-piece suits.—The point is that this is big business.”
A 1987 Church document, Donum Vitae (The Gift of Life), from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, warned specifically about the link between abortion and eugenics.
”The abortion mentality…thus leads, whether one wants it or not, to man's domination over the life and death of his fellow human beings and can lead to a system of radical eugenics.”
A Different Theory
Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, said, “Abortion and crime are indeed linked, but not in the way that the pro-choice people would like them to be.—[I]t is necessary for us to give serious consideration to the psychological dynamics that have been unleashed by the abortion culture.”
Father Pavone said that many children born after the Roe decision are strongly affected by the realization that they were viewed as a mere choice by their parents.
“Nobody who is really serious about ending violence in our society can afford to leave any stone unturned in that effort [to end abortion],” he said. “Those who can least afford it, of course, are the children themselves.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian McGuire ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Even If It's by E-mail, It Can Still Be Slander DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:CINCINNATI—Procter & Gamble Co. thought the rumors had died down.
But they hadn't figured on e-mail.
For years, a rumor circulated that the Cincinnati-based home products manufacturer had ties with the Church of Satan and that 10% of its annual profits funded the church. This culminated in several court cases in the early '80s in which the company was vindicated of the accusations and some of those who disseminated the rumor were fined for libel.
That outcome would be enough to dissuade future rumor-mongers, Procter & Gamble thought.
But rumors that once spread person to person by word of mouth are now sent to droves at a mere keystroke on a computer—with no dependable way of tracing their origin. Welcome to the world of e-slander.
Many in corporate and media circles are concerned over the ease and speed with which groundless claims now circulate electronically. Moreover, many well-intentioned Christian e-mailers face a seemingly novel moral question daily—to believe or not to believe what shows up in my in-box?
Msgr. William Smith, a moral theologian at St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, N.Y., thinks the question is simple. “It's a matter of calumny and a direct violation of the Eighth Commandment,” he said. “Just because it involves technology doesn't mitigate the offense.—[T]hat it's done over a computer has nothing to do with it—it's just plain wrong.”
But a computer technician in Arlington, Va.—he asked to be identified only as Mike—said it's more complicated than that. Having recently received an e-mail from a friend which claimed that Procter & Gamble recently came clean on its ties with Satanism, he talked the matter over with his wife and decided it was serious enough to look into. “I told my wife about the rumor and we decided that maybe we should send for a transcript.” Meanwhile, Mike sent the e-mail to a number of friends, all of whom would be “concerned to know about attacks against the Church,” he said.
In defense of passing the rumor along, Mike distinguished between those who invent the lies and those who, in good faith, take them at face value and send them to friends. “I think to claim that passing along e-mails without checking their veracity is a lie, is pretty strong,” he said. “There's a valley of difference between sending out spam e-mails that are scandalous and informing close friends of something that's a concern—to say, ‘Hey, I received this, what do you think?’ Without question, I'd be hesitant to call that slander. If I thought it was false, I wouldn't propagate it,” he said. So thought the friend who sent Mike—and 41 others—the message about Procter & Gamble.
A Captive Audience
Who gets these e-mails? Often, it's people like Mike. Those who, for one reason or another, wish to harm a big corporation or a public figure often single out Catholics and other Christians who take their faith seriously. They play upon their duty to defend Christ and his Church by claiming that someone connected with a corporation or government has made some scandalous statement about Christianity on television. To give their claims the appearance of truth, they often cite a specific date and episode of the show on which the person was to have made the remark.
They even provide the address and episode number, urging concerned parties to send away for a transcript of the show. The invitation is enough to convince most people that the tapes are indeed out there, and so they believe the lie wholesale. One recent example of this is an e-mail that certain Catholic media outlets have recently received regarding Attorney General Janet Reno.
The e-mail stated that on the June 26 edition of “60 Minutes,” Reno said that “a cultist is one who has a strong belief in the Bible and the second coming of Christ, who frequently attends Bible studies, who has a high level of giving to a Christian cause, who home-schools for their children, who has accumulated survival foods and has a strong belief in the Second Amendment, and who distrusts big government. Any of these may qualify a person a cultist but certainly more than one of these would cause us to look at this person as a threat, and his family as being in a risk situation that qualified for government interference.”
After sending the message about Reno to some friends, the woman who received this e-mail discovered it was a canard, and quickly informed those to whom she had sent it.
“I've long thought that the most important teaching in Catholic schools about computers is not how to use them, but the ethics of using them,” said Dan Andriacco, director of communications for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. “One issue is the ethics of drawing research materials. Are you researching, or simply reprinting something verbatim? But another dimension of ethics and the Internet is the distribution of false information.”
“On the one hand, the Internet is just a medium like books,” Andriacco continued. “But it's the first mass medium that lets ordinary people become the producers. Anyone can reach a large number if people on the Internet. It's fairly easy to set up a Web page or to recirculate something through e-mail or bulletin boards, he said. “In one sense, then, it's no different from other media, but in another it's very different because it has greater access and moves so fast—it requires a greater amount of vigilance.”
Andriacco added that he too received an e-mail this week that passed along the Procter & Gamble rumor. He said that because Procter & Gamble resides within the Cincinnati Archdiocese, Archbishop Joseph Bernardin and his successor, Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk, have often spoken out in defense of the company. One of Archbishop Pilarczyk's letters, which calls upon those involved in spreading the rumor to stop, is posted on Procter & Gamble's Web site.
“I'm not sure he [Archbishop Pilarczyk] knows it's resurfaced,” Andriacco said. “Last week I received one e-mail message regarding it, and I got a telephone call about it this week from Florida. Both people had heard a rumor that the chief executive officer of Procter & Gamble mentioned his connection with Satanism on a recent issue of ‘Sally Jesse Raphael.’ They wanted to know whether Archbishop Pilarczyk still stands for what he said previously,” Andriacco said. “I sent back a message saying that the rumor is a lie. I also told them to check out the Sally Jesse Raphael Web site, which posts a message saying that the rumor is a hoax. Sending them to the Web site is the most concrete way to respond, because it sends people back to the source of the rumor.”
Counting the Costs
Typically, large companies like Procter & Gamble practice a policy of ignoring calumny. They figure it's too costly to respond to every detraction, however unfounded it may be. But the Procter & Gamble rumor became so nettlesome to corporate headquarters, which shielded some 50,000 calls about the rumor during a three-month period in 1982, that it decided to track down its source. As it turned out, the rumor was circulated by two Amway distributors.
And there have been suits since that case in '82. “We're talking significant amounts of money, millions of dollars over the years,” said Procter & Gamble spokeswoman Linda Urley. She said that the rumors started to circulate in the late '70s and have continued with varying levels of intensity since then. “Somebody will morph the story or introduce some new facts to it,” she said. “In the '80s, they said our CEO appeared on the Merv Griffin Show or on Phil Donohue, now it's Sally Jesse Raphael.”
On the question of bearing false witness against one's neighbor, the
Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “He becomes guilty:—of rash judgment who, even tacitly, assumes as true, without sufficient foundation, the moral fault of a neighbor—of detraction who, without objectively valid reason discloses another's faults and failings to persons who did not know them—of calumny who, by remarks contrary to the truth harms the reputation of others and gives occasion for false judgments concerning them” (No. 2477). The Catechism then advises, “to avoid rash judgment, everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbor's thoughts, words, and deeds in a favorable way” (No. 2478).
Regarding modern means of communications, No. 2494 of the Catechism says: “Society has a right to information based on truth, freedom, justice, and solidarity.…The proper exercise of this right demands that the content of communication be true and—within the limits set by justice and charity—complete. Further, it should be communicated honestly and properly. This means that in the gathering and in the publication of news, the moral law and the legitimate rights and dignity of man should be upheld.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian McGuire ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Shroud Data in Line With Gospel Account DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:TARPON SPRINGS, Fla.—Many of the “mysteries” surrounding the Shroud of Turin that have puzzled scientists for years can best be explained by one hypothesis, according to a growing body of scientific evidence.
The hypothesis: It is the burial shroud of Jesus.
New evidence announced in St. Louis on Aug. 2 by botanist Avinoam Danin of Jerusalem, along with other recent findings, suggest the cloth was used in the Jewish burial of a man from northern Palestine who was crowned with thorns and crucified before the eighth century and buried in a garden tomb by a wealthy man.
Last week's Register reported that plants and pollen embedded in the Shroud of Turin, as well as newly discovered imprints of flowers on its surface, have been traced to the area around Jerusalem and dated to before the eighth century by Danin, of Hebrew University. In an interview, shroud expert John Iannone also explained new doubts scientists have about the accuracy of 1988 carbon dating tests that suggested the shroud dated to the 13th or 14th century.
This week, Iannone, the author of The Mystery of the Shroud of Turin: New Scientific Evidence (Alba House, 1998), puts those findings into the context of other recent evidence supporting the authenticity of the shroud.
The Shroud of Turin is a yellowing linen cloth measuring 14 feet 3 inches long by 3 feet 7 inches wide. It bears the image of a man's face and body and what appear to be bloodstains.
It is named for its present home in Turin, Italy. Written accounts of its history track it to Lirey, France, in 1354. Iannone points to earlier written histories that he says could refer to the shroud, including legends about King Abgar (circa A.D. 40), works by the historians Eusebius and Evagrius, the sixth century Acts of Holy Apostle Thaddaeus, and accounts of the presence of a shroud in Constantinople in the 10th and 13th centuries.
The image that appears on the shroud is unique, and its cause is unknown. It is a photonegative image with a scorched look and bears none of the signs of painting. Shroud devotees often attribute the unusual quality of the image to unknown physical aspects of the Resurrection.
Pope John Paul II has expressed his own attitude toward the shroud. During an April 1980 visit there, he called Turin, “the city that preserves an unusual and mysterious relic … the Holy Shroud, an extraordinary witness—if we accept the arguments of so many scientists—of Easter: of the Passion, the Death and the Resurrection. A silent witness, but at the same time surprisingly eloquent!”
Iannone is also president of the Holy Shroud Task Force of Tarpon Springs, Fla. He spoke with the Register about recent evidence related to the shroud.
Register: Pollen from flowers and from thistles was found on the shroud. Could the thistles be the crown of thorns mentioned in the Gospels?
John Iannone: Yes. There are flowers present which were used in burial, and Dr. [Alan] Whanger [of Duke University] said that in his investigation of both the Oviedo cloth in Spain [believed to be a face cloth used in Jewish burial, it shares many characteristics of the shroud] and the Shroud in Turin that this thistle … is most likely related to the crown of thorns.
The floral images on the shroud are pretty substantial, as are the pollen that match those flowers. I think Dr. Danin [the Jerusalem botanist] and Dr. [Uri] Baruch [of the Israeli antiquities authority] have shown that the pollen is not just “random.” There are pockets of pollen on the shroud identified with specific flowers that they say had to have been placed there.
So it's also one of the identifiers of the fact that this is the historical Jesus, because we know that very often in Roman crucifixions … individuals would be given a mass grave. But this individual was obviously treated in a very respectful fashion by being laid in a shroud which is a very fine fabric. This individual also had been given a private “garden” tomb, being entombed with flowers. It makes it a much more dignified funeral, certainly, one we would correlate with the New Testament verses. It provides one of the signatures that we use to identify it with the historical Jesus.
I understand that among the flowers used are some that only bloom in March and April.
Dr. Danin has pointed out 28 species of flowers … identified from the pollen [that are] grown in the Holy Land, and more specifically within the 5-kilometer area he calls the Jerusalem-Hebron area. So these are flowers that grow very close to Jerusalem. He said they grow principally in March and April and May. That would correlate with the time of the Passover and the Passion. He said they would be flowers that would be fresh in the fields around Jerusalem at that time of year and could easily have been picked at the time of the crucifixion. Some would even be in the markets of the city.
Have we learned anything new about the blood in the shroud? Some have argued that it is dye or paint, and not blood.
Some of the latest studies that have been done on the blood have been done at the University of Texas and also in Europe, but I'll work with what's been done in the U.S. right now.
Dr. Victor Tryon and his wife, Nancy, run the DNA lab at the [University of Texas] Health Science Center. They have now pointed out that in samples of the blood they studied from … the back of the head, they have been able to identify X and Y chromosomes which tells them that this is in fact a male's blood.
And they have identified a very small strand of DNA. They can't say if it's … Jesus' blood or not because they have no comparison, but what they can say is that “this is degraded DNA which is consistent with the supposition of ancient blood.” That's the way they phrase it, and that is pretty serious.
Prior to 1978 when the blood studies really began in earnest, there were those who would say that this is just a medieval painting, this is red ocher paint, and there are still a few die-hards today. But [the information shows] that this is a blood where you can identify DNA, where we can type it as AB, where we can say it's degraded, ancient blood and it even has high concentrations bilirubin as Dr. [Alan] Adler has pointed out at the University of Western Connecticut. Bilirubin is very common with individuals who die under traumatic circumstances with high stress and that is certain with crucifixion.
When you get into all of that you clearly dismiss the concept that this is any kind of paint or die or ink or chalk. There is no substance that constitutes the image, and the blood is real, it's ancient, and it's human.
What's the significance of AB blood type? Does it offer any clues?
Of the four types of blood—A, B, O and AB—AB is the most uncommon. About 3.2% of the world population have that. It's very specific to the Middle East and even more specific to northern Palestine. [There are] high concentrations of AB blood there. So that really helps identify the area where the shroud is from. It's very hard to deny that this is a cloth that can be traced to ancient time.
What other signs do we have that trace it to Jesus' time?
Another very interesting thing: the shroud is 14 feet and 3 inches long by 3 feet and 7 inches wide. People say that's a kind of odd measurement. Why would they cut a cloth that way? The fact is that if you take the shroud and you translate it into cubits (cubits are about 21.6 inches), which is the ancient Jewish method of measurement, it becomes exactly 2 cubits by 8 cubits.
And there is a real consistency with ancient Jewish loom technology. What we know of how they wove cloth, it's a very fine weave, a three-over-one as opposed to a common weave. We know that Joseph of Arimathea, for example, was a wealthy man. He's the one who purchased the shroud and loaned his garden tomb. So the fabric is very consistent with everything we know of ancient Jewish weaving, and the type of cave tombs and the individuals involved in the burial of Jesus.
Rich Rinaldi is director of Register Radio News.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Rich Rinaldi ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Pro Wrestling's Antics Don't Amuse Everyone DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:ST. PAUL, Minn.—Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura's scheduled one-day return to the pro wrestling ring is just one more sign of the times for Wade Horn.
It's not that Horn, president of the Gaithersburg, Md.-based National Fatherhood Initiative, has it in for the wrestler-turned-governor. He doesn't think the public should worry about the publicity (and prestige) a reigning governor might bring to the sport when Ventura referees the World Wrestling Federation's Summerslam on Aug. 22.
Rather, Horn's big concern lies with parents who matter-of-factly introduce their children to WWF's low-brow mix of vulgarity, sexual innuendo and pseudo-violence.
“I see fathers bringing their kids to these matches,” Horn told the Register. “What is going through their minds?”
“It's indisputable that if we saturate our kids with violence and sex that they will begin to associate the two together,” said Horn, who is also a child psychologist. “This isn't rocket science. This doesn't require a psychologist. This is just logical.”
Horn was quick to admit, though, polling data and television ratings seem to indicate that parents might be sending mixed signals.
“Everybody says that there's too much sex and violence on TV,” he observed, “but somebody is watching this stuff.”
Indeed they are. The WWF has doubled its revenues within the last two years, to $251 million, and earlier this month announced a stock offering expected to generate $172.5 million. For better or for worse, professional wrestling has become a significant, though often overlooked, force in popular culture.
In recent years, the amount of vulgarity and violence in professional wrestling has escalated significantly, but Jim Byrne, senior vice president of marketing for WWF, said he believes that the WWF is simply providing audiences with what they want.
“Yes, we can be a little raunchy,” Byrne told the Register. “Yes, sometimes our wrestlers use colorful language. It's all 100% entertainment.”
Explaining the Minnesota governor's decision to make the Aug. 22 appearance, Byrne said, “Vince McMahon (the founder of WWF) and Jesse Ventura remained good friends over the years. It looked like a great opportunity for everyone to have a lot of fun.”
For parents who object to WWF fare, Byrne encouraged that they use the federation's ratings system, which rates each of its show. Different WWF programs such as “RAW” or “Heat” air on different nights and at different times to let parents better monitor their kids' viewing, Byrne said. And if all programs are unacceptable, then Byrne suggested that parents are free to change the channel.
Ventura spokesman John Wodele agreed. He said that it is not Ventura's responsibility to make sure children aren't watching.
“The governor is a firm believer in parental discretion,” Wodele said. “If they think it's inappropriate, they should monitor access.” He added that the show is intended only for adult. “It's a pay-per-view event; it's not free TV.—There's ample opportunity for parental decision.”
The appearance of the Minnesota governor, who left wrestling in the '80s, may not even attract many children to watch the Summerslam because Ventura isn't as popular with kids as he is with those of college age who grew up with him, said Peter Turo, 13, of White Plains, N.Y.
“Kids our age don't know much about government anyway,” Peter told the Register.
More Demand, More Supply
In fact, wrestling programs dominate most of the top-rated slots in cable television and rank No. 1 among the college-men audience.
But that might change. Plans are in the way for more wrestling, and at earlier times when more kids will likely watch. The Nashville Network will air an hour of Extreme Championship Wrestling from 8 to 9 p.m. starting Aug. 27.
The UPN network announced that it will broadcast wrestling every Thursday from 8 to 10 p.m. with a program called “WWF Smackdown!”
Gov. Jesse Ventura
UPN President Dean Valentine defended his decision at a television critics' meeting in Los Angeles. “We do not believe there is anything sexist or violent about the WWF,” he said.
Others were not so convinced. “There's nothing liquid about water, either,” retorted Horn. Wrestling, he said, “is not a good thing for impressionable minds.”
When Valentine was asked if the WWF was sexist for having a pimp character who brings with him women he calls “hos,” Valentine responded, “Hey, guys, it's comedy. Ligthen up.”
Fake or Real?
“Most 12-year-olds think it's fake, but so what?” said Horn. “Just because you call it a comedy, doesn't mean it has no impact.”
Peter Turo, the 13-year-old from White Plains, agreed that most his kids age know that wrestling is staged. “But I only know it's fake because I've heard it's fake,” he said. Not so with 6- and 7-year-olds, his friend Tim Hurst pointed out. “They think it's real.”
In May, a 7-year-old Dallas boy killed his brother with a clothesline he learned from watching wrestling on TV.
WWF's influence does not stop with just the violence. Many kids knew that former female wrestler Sable had posed nude for Playboy magazine, because it was mentioned prominently on the WWF and received widespread media publicity on talk shows like “Roseanne.” Moreover, many male wrestlers make references to deviant sexual acts and often degrade women both verbally and physically.
Real vs. TV
Gary Wolfram, of Hillsdale, Mich., blamed parents for shunning their duties. “How do children have the time to watch this stuff?” asked the Catholic father of three.
In order that his 11-year-old son, Wyatt, properly understand the distinction between television and reality, Wolfram takes him along on deer hunting trips.
“When you take your child along for a hunt, you can show him true violence,” Wolfram said. “The deer's dead. It's not coming back up. On TV, you just shoot the person and that's it. It's a false sense of violence; there's no consequences for your actions.”
Josh Mercer, a native Minnesotan, Is based in Washington, D.C
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Josh Mercer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Helping Homosexuals the Church's Way DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:Father James B. Lloyd
He has hosted a popular TV interview program, directed a school of pastoral counseling, worked as a missionary and taught psychology, but for the past five years, he has run a chapter of Courage, the Church ministry to help homosexuals. He spoke recently with Register correspondent John Burger.
John Burger: The Vatican recently barred Father Robert Nugent and Sister Jeanne Grammick, the founders of New Ways Ministry, from any pastoral work involving homosexual persons. Does this mean that the Church is against ministry to homosexuals?
Father James Lloyd: Absolutely not. On the contrary, the Church is deeply into it. Courage was founded at the request of Cardinal Terence Cooke, archbishop of New York from 1968 to 1983. The Church is asking us to get into the healing ministry with compassion, but with truth. The Church is concerned for anyone who suffers, and the person with homosexual tendencies suffers.
The Church is moved with the pity of Christ to help. An Episcopalian bishop, Bennett Simms of Atlanta, said it nicely: “Compassion does not mean endorsement.”
The Church is loaded with compassion, but the person who is truly loving and compassionate will sometimes have to be firm and demand certain boundaries. Cardinal Alfonso LÛpez Trujillo of the Pontifical Council for the Family said that to be silent here is neither pastoral nor caring. People like Father Nugent or those involved in Dignity say you're not supposed to raise the question of what the Church teaches, but focus on compassion.
I think there's a certain amount of hostility in that stance. It's like saying, “I don't care what you do, just don't bother me.” A truly loving Church says, “I have to guide you for your sake.” When people say the Church is uncompassionate, they don't know what they're talking about. The Holy Father has written beautifully about sexual problems, about human love, that the basis of society is the family.
I'm euphoric about the Vatican decision. Not mentioning Church teaching leaves the doors open for people with this problem, lets them keep doing it. It's such a disservice. So it will be very helpful to say, “This is the fact, this is the reality.” Living in a fantasy world is a problem.
In the pastoral care for homosexuals, how big is the role of teaching the truth about homosexuality?
Not to let people know the truth, to let themselves be blinded, is wrong. Truth is a jolt of reality. One of my Courage members said the other night, “I've been clear of homosexual acts for six months and I'm beginning to see things clearly.” It's the truth of Christ himself, which is freedom. If you say, “Do whatever seems natural to you; God will understand,” that's very hostile.
What made you want to get into this work?
I kind of bounced into it as part of my role as a psychologist. Some of the people I was seeing had sexual problems. I wasn't well informed about it; it was shadowy. I began to see the pain of these people, and I saw how pastoral counseling brought them great relief, how the sacraments and living chastely brought them a great deal of peace.
To be a Christian is not just to be comforted but to be in a place of transformation. I was teaching psychology at St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers and brought in Father John Harvey, one of the founders of Courage, to give a guest talk. I was fascinated by what he was saying; for example, to see that the word “gay” is really a reaction-formation word, a defense mechanism the mind uses not to face something, to cover up anger, bitterness, loneliness, depression.
There is an enormous amount of sadness, alienation in the gay community. I found that by offering Christ in the Catholic manner, [this] gave them great relief, self-esteem. The Courage notion gave them friendship with people who had similar goals, rather than with people who were occasions of sin. I have 51 people on my list who come, 14 or 15 at a time, every Tuesday, all males. I'm convinced that the only way out is Jesus Christ. This is the real answer.
My group is made up of men ranging in age from 23 to 74 and has included a physician, a Ph.D., a J.D., a street prostitute, a computer programmer, an actor, a Russian Orthodox priest, Protestant ministers. One guy is a secular religious. I had a rabbi, but he had to drop out because the talk about Jesus made him too uncomfortable. He said there's no comparable group in Judaism.
How does Courage work?
Basically, on the model of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's group-oriented. We begin with prayer, a little reflection by the leader, who is usually a priest. Each person has a chance to speak without interruption. Before the meeting, there's a social, and some remarkable friendships come out of it.
It's a spiritual program with psychological adjuncts. I've got them going to Mass every day, saying the rosary, doing spiritual reading. Courage is a positive thing. We talk about developing in the love of Christ and learning to carry the cross of Christ. It gives people access to grace. Some will never be anything but homosexually oriented, and they've accepted that. Their condition and their suffering can actually be a platform for holiness, provided a person approaches it the Christ way.
One of the men who comes to the meetings is a lawyer, and he constantly quotes from Francis Thompson's poem “The Hound of Heaven.” The point is that when you give in to God you're happy, not when you deny the commandments, when you give in to the so-called gay abandon. The question is, “What is God's will?” The commandments are meant to give happiness. I'm not even talking about the physical effects, such as AIDS, but the interior—the lack of equanimity in your life. It's the same with heterosexuals who are promiscuous: They will also find distress and a lack of love, though researchers claim that the traumatic wound is deeper in homosexuals.
A heavy accent has been on chastity. There are some men who have the possibility of growing to the heterosexual level. Some people do that, but they're in the minority. One guy I knew got married and had kids, but that's rare. I'm pessimistic about change. I haven't seen that much. But I've seen enormous evidence of containment and holiness.
Changing is not a goal of Courage. We're encouraging people to go for the cross. Change is an option open to the person. It's chastity that is a requirement.
There is also Encourage, which helps families of homosexuals. When a 20-year-old says, “Mom, Dad, I'm gay,” they're devastated. It can be a terrible disappointment. But they can learn how to react healthily and holily to that.
To what extent is the problem one of promiscuity and a generally incorrect or incomplete notion of sexuality on the part of many young people?
Promiscuity is fairly rampant, especially in what they call cruising—going from bar to bar looking for a sexual encounter. Even when they've had a relationship, living together, they would have the privilege of fooling around with others as long as they had an emotional primacy. All they require is an emotional constancy, even if they have a little fun with others. A lot of homosexuals are almost infants about it; their concept of sexuality is physical. Masturbation is rampant, jousting with sexy jokes—casual encounters at parties. They can be very intelligent, artsy, verbal, creative, yet be infantile or juvenile on another level. They're also generally narcissistic, terribly self-concerned.
Will the Vatican action affect the many other New Ways groups around the country?
I suspect they will ignore it. The same with Dignity and so-called gay and lesbian ministries. They generally ignore Church teaching. They're more into a feel-good experience.
Has Courage caught on?
Yes and no. It could be more successful, though it's spread to New Zealand, Australia, England, Ireland and Canada. But the demands are tough. You have to be totally dedicated to be involved.
Do you encounter any difficulties promoting Courage? Is there opposition among other Catholics who minister to homosexuals? How do you deal with that?
Yes, even from some priests. I ask them, “Why don't you like it?” One reason, I think, is that it calls for self-restraint, discipline. The Church says homosexuality is an intrinsic disorder. Some people take that as saying homosexuals are sick, but it's not that. It's just that the Creator did not plan it this way. He meant for the male to seek the female, the female to seek the male, and for them to have children. I asked Father Harvey once why some priests are so opposed to Courage. He said they don't think chastity is possible. That's the keynote to the whole Courage thing.
We get difficulties from a lot of nuns: They allow the emotional to override the real and ask questions like, “How can you deny people love?” That's why people said the Vatican statement was severe. But I saw it as a long-suffering thing. They were in conversation with Father Nugent and Sister Grammick for 20 years, asking them to think it over.
I feel that if the Church says this, it has to be taken seriously. Rather than debate with people, I tell them, “This is where I'm coming from.” There's no way I can force anybody. But people keep coming to Courage because the need is out there. I have to go to people I can help. For alcoholics, we don't discuss the possibility of a drink here or there. We say, “This is toxic for you; it's evil, destructive.” It's a ruthless approach. We give no quarter to the enemy, the enemy being one's sexual deviancy or impulses to act out.
You've been a priest for 51 years. What has it been like?
Terrific. I've had more fun than I should have. It's been a very full life. I was on TV once and the gal asked me, “Why are you a priest?” I said, “Because I like it.” I know I wouldn't be content being anything else. It's been a lot of work, and I started some projects that didn't work out. There were disappointments, but that kind of thing pales in comparison to the larger picture.
What were the formative influences in your life that led you to the priesthood?
Strangely, probably my father, who was a Jewish agnostic. He was in the theater. I thought I was going to be a doctor. That's what he wanted. But I thought it would be great fun to spend life probing human beings, to try to move them to God. My mother was Irish, very simple. The Paulist priests in my parish were outstanding, very priestly guys, I thought, interesting, intellectual, fun. The Irish Christian Brothers who taught at my high school, Power Memorial in Harlem, put the cap on it for me. They were so totally devoted to Christ and the Church. It just struck me that this is a very attractive way to live.
Why did you get into psychology?
I was rector of a seminary during the Second Vatican Council, and a lot of priests were leaving to get married. Students were in an uproar. I thought I'd study a little bit about human nature to see what's going on with these guys. So I got a counseling degree, which was very helpful. Then I got a doctorate in psychology. My dissertation dealt with why men leave the priest-hood.
How has it helped you in your ministry?
I work mostly with priests and religious on the assumption that healers really need to be healed. The presumption is that those guys have it all figured out, and they don't. My primary identity is as a priest; I interpret everything through that lens. The whole human nature thing is hooked into Catholic anthropology. I take that, and it works for many people. It helps me to be priestly. I go to people who get busted up by life.
— John Burger
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Burger ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: Cable TV Firm Draws the Line on Adult Fare DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:COUDERSPORT, Pa.—Some cable television providers have a reputation for making money by offering “adult” content to customers.
Adelphia Cable doesn't want to be one of them.
Based in rural north central Pennsylvania, Adelphia has 5.1 million customers, making it the sixth largest cable company in the country. What it doesn't have is “adult” channels on its network.
John Rigas, Adelphia founder and director, said he decided almost 47 years ago to provide programming that would be both suitable for families and a strengthening force in society.
He and his brother, Gus, established one of the nation's first cable TV systems in Coudersport, naming it with the Greek word for brother.
Adelphia spokesman Paul Heimel told the Register that Rigas' sense of social responsibility means that the company won't allow “adult” content. “He doesn't want to increase the company's financial standing by sacrificing the company's principles,” he said.
Not all its programming would be considered family fare, however; the company does offer channels carrying R-rated movies. But Heimel said that the company is sacrificing money “in the millions” because “adult” programming provides “potentially some of the most lucrative pay services available at cable companies.”
Heimel recalled that when Adelphia recently acquired some existing cable companies, Rigas told him that those with “adult” channels “should brace for the fact that we are going to be removing them. That is going to cause quite an uproar.”
That policy wins applause from Brian Gail, a one-time advertising executive who helped launch the nation's biggest cable television concern, HBO. Gail was fired from his ad firm after a run-in with HBO officials over their programming. He now heads Gail Force, a communications consulting firm in Philadelphia.
Gail said he admires Adelphia for its responsible attitudes toward programming decisions that in other companies “have a harmful effect on children and on family-building and community-building.”
Time Warner Inc., parent of HBO, said it tries to find a balance in dealing with issues that concern parents. One solution is pay-per-view, said Michael Luftman, vice president of corporate communications at Time Warner Cable. “This a situation where the customer knows exactly what he or she is purchasing—and we presume that they are informed enough to be able to make that choice appropriately.”
He contended that the only difference between his company and Adelphia “is that Adelphia does not sell these pay-per-view channels.”
Brian Gail disagreed. “There is a major decisive distinction,” he said, “between a company that is trying to build community and provide family entertainment like Adelphia, and Time Warner, who is trying to satisfy shareholders by putting whatever they can on the air under whatever label they have to.”
Parents do have a responsibility to oversee their children's viewing choices, said Gail, and maybe even to buy electronic blocking devices, like those offered by Time Warner. But cable companies “have a responsibility to put programs on the air that don't require it,” he said.
Adelphia's Heimel said that, as a carrier, a company cannot control 100% of its programming. He added that Adelphia also tries to show parents how to use their cable service. “We sponsor what is called the critical viewing workshops,” Heimel noted. “We bring groups in and we try to help the parents to choose wisely among the programming.”
In his 1999 World Communications Day address to people who work in media-related industries, Pope John Paul II said, “The media have a special responsibility to all who are searching: ‘to witness to the truth about life, about human dignity, about the true meaning of our freedom and mutual independence.’”
Gail observed that many cable TV customers already know what they want—and it doesn't include “adult” channels.
“The people who by and large pay the monthly fee are mothers,” he said. “And mothers do not want anything in the home … that is destructive of home and does not build a sense of home and family.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: U.S.Notes & Quotes DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:Darwin on the Run in Public Schools
THE WASHINGTON POST, Aug. 8—The Kansas Sate Board of Education has adopted new standards for teaching biology that criitics say will virtually eliminate any consideration of evolution from the science curriculum in the state's public schools.
At least eight other states are “trying to remove evolution from state science standards or water down the concepts, with varying degrees of success,” reported Hanna Rosin.
Since the Supreme Court ruled in 1987 that Louisiana could not mandate that schools give equal time to teaching creation science, Rosin reported, creation activists have sought to undermine evolution on scientific grounds.
“Religious conservatives have tapped into skepticism from inside and outside the scientific community to discredit evolution, seizing on routine disagreements among scientists to disparage it as nothing more than a theory,” said Rosin.
A recent Gallup poll found some 44% of Americans believed “God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years.” Forty percent thought God guided evolution. Only one in 10 of those surveyed held a strict evolutionist perspective that excludes God.
Megachurches Shrinking
RELIGION TODAY, Aug. 10—“Megachurches are looking for fresh ideas to help them grow again,” reported the e-mail Christian news service.
Megachurches, defined as churches with 2,000 or more members, expanded rapidly for two decades, attracting congregants to the evangelical Protestant churches.
“But growth has slowed markedly, and the enormous congregations are making big changes to adapt their programs to new social realities,” said Religion Today.
Pastors said dissatisfied members want something more than contemporary music, minidramas and sermons that offer life lessons. They are looking for community and a sense of belonging.
More oversight may be helpful, said Scott Thumma of Hartford Seminary, who has researched megachurches. Because megachurches function independently, they have few checks and balances, he said. “That leaves room for abuses. Organizational power of a big budget and staff sets up problems.”
Victory for Religious Rights
REUTERS, Aug. 12—A federal court ruled Aug. 10 that the Minnesota Department of Corrections was wrong to discipline employees who read Bibles in silent protest during a training session on homosexuality in the workplace, Reuters said.
“There was never any reason for our clients to be forced to listen to state-sponsored indoctrination about the acceptability of the homosexual lifestyle,” attorney Francis Manion of the American Center for Law and Justice told the wire service.
The court ordered that written reprimands given to the employees be withdrawn. “This is a major victory for the rights of religious believers who are singled out and punished for their religious beliefs,” Manion said.
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Vatican and Islam: the U.N.'s Strange Bedfellows DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:UNITED NATIONS—When the Vatican stands up to opposes United Nations' population programs that promote contraception, sterilization and abortion, its allies typically include Islamic countries.
Even Sudan, a country in which Christians are severely persecuted, can be counted on to collaborate with the Holy See in its struggle against U.N. programs that oppose the best interests of the family.
Austin Ruse, director of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute in New York, has worked to build up the Vatican-Islamic partnership on the crucial population issues that are the regular fare of U.N. deliberations. He recently spoke with Register Radio News correspondent Jay Dunlap.
Jay Dunlap: How did these two “strange bedfellows” come together?
Austin Ruse: In 1994, the Holy Father called for people of faith to go to the Cairo conference on population and development because he knew some bad things were going to happen there. A natural affinity between the Catholic and the Muslim worlds developed—to great criticism from a lot of “tony quarters.” They use the most extreme terms—“conservative Roman Catholic states” and the “criminal states of the Middle East”—when describing the [informal] alliance. But it endures because there is a great common ground on life and family questions that is shared by Catholicism and Islam.
Are we seeing what philosopher Peter Kreeft called an “ecumenical jihad,” an “ecumenical holy war,” in which the world's conservative religions are banding together to fight secularization?
We, as believing and practicing Catholics, have much more in common with Islam in the Middle East than we do with Francis Kissling, who runs Catholics for a Free Choice. So, yes, this is precisely what we are seeing.
Islam lacks a teaching magisterium. Is there one Islamic teaching regarding contraception and abortion?
We do not have a seamless alliance with Islam. Sadly, they are not fully with us on contraception and they are not fully with us on abortion. What they are fully with us on is the inviolability of the family. I have been with Muslim diplomats who say that abortion is a decision for the family; if the family decides that it is appropriate, then they will go ahead and do it.
How do they view our practices in this area?
They regard the high abortion rates in the West as an outgrowth of the rampant promiscuity of our people, and if they ever experience the same phenomenon they might do the same thing. But, no, they are not completely with us doctrinally on these issues.
So it's more about the sacredness of the family?
That's right. They're keenly interested in fertility rates that ensure growing populations. And the reason that you introduce contraception, sterilization and abortion into a population is to engender selfishness and therefore a lower fertility rate.
Are the Islamic countries reacting against the contraceptive imperialism so prevalent in the United Nations?
They are, but not all of them. Again, it's not a seamless situation. Not all Catholic countries are with us, and neither are all Muslim countries. Qatar will be for us [on most things]. Iran is with us on some questions related to homosexuality, but will be against us on some issues regarding contraception. Our work at the United Nations is very akin to fiddling around with a Rubik's cube.
No simple puzzle, is it?
Not at all. Some of our closest allies at the U.N. are the Sudan and Libya, who are viewed as enemies of the United States and, in the case of Sudan, enemies of Christianity. But on questions of life and family there are none better because they agree with us and because they will stand up and speak.
Why is that important?
First and foremost, the United Nations is a place where people come and talk. If you don't talk then you might as well not even be there. There are no votes taken at the United Nations. They move towards consensus. If any one or two or three governments are against certain language, then that language is thrown out. But that happens only if a country stands up and speaks. The Sudan and Libya stand up and speak for families, including Christian families, all the time.
In Europe the native populations are in decline, especially in Western Europe where there is also an influx of Muslim immigrants with large families. Are we seeing a self-inflicted fall at the heart of Christendom?
Absolutely. I would much rather have a believing and practicing Muslim next door to me than a pagan. Europe is pagan. I regret that it has turned away from the Church and away from the faith, but I would rather see them be Muslim than pagan.
How does this “pagan Europe” manifest itself?
Just this last week there was a move of this type at the meetings to establish an international criminal court. France, the Church's “eldest daughter,” attempted to remove the priest-penitent privilege from the rules of procedure for the new court. This is despicable. And the Muslim states will stand up for the priest-penitent privilege that has traditionally been enjoyed by all clergy and all religions. Who do we have more in common with?
How are demographics changing in Europe?
Because of the rampant spread of contraception, sterilization and abortion, there are now 61 countries—mostly in the industrialized West—who are at what is known as “below replacement fertility.” Replacement fertility is roughly 2.1 children per family, depending on certain circumstances.
What kind of circumstances?
For example, If a country has a very highly developed medical system, then 2.1 is fine. But if it has bad hospitals it may need 2.4 or 2.5 children per woman to replace its population and to stay at its current level of, let's say, 15 or 20 million people. Even if they stay right there, it means that they are no longer growing.
What will that mean?
It means their population is rapidly aging. Just a year ago, Japan passed an incredible milestone. There are now more Japanese over the age of 65 than under the age of 15. This means the population is aging and will begin to shrink. We—in the history of the world—have never done this to ourselves, and we don't know what's going to happen. There could be a kind of intergenerational warfare, for example.
Who are some of the other “worst offenders”?
Countries like Latvia, which is now at 1.1 children per woman. Italy is at 1.5; Spain is at 1.5—two Catholic countries. There are some cities in Italy, including Bologna, that are at 0.8 children per woman. This is child-hating on a grand scale.
What is the replacement rate in Islamic countries?
It depends on where you go. Some Islamic countries, including Iran, actually have a program that encourages fertility reduction. For the most part, though, their rates are higher than they are in the West. Just know that.
—Jay Dunlap
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jay Dunlap ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Vatican Not Surprised by China Veto of Visit to Hong Kong DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—Reports that China has vetoed a possible visit by Pope John Paul II to Hong Kong came as no surprise to the Vatican, which has seen Beijing rebuff all of its recent efforts to improve relations.
The Vatican had no official comment Aug. 9 on the reports, said to have been confirmed by Bishop Joseph Zen Ze-Kiun of Hong Kong, that the Chinese Foreign Ministry has ruled out a stop in the former British colony when the Pope travels to Asia late this year.
Members of the Hong Kong parliament protested the veto, calling it an unwarranted interference in Hong Kong's affairs.
John Paul would have been the second pope to visit Hong Kong. Pope Paul VI made a three-hour stop there in 1970.
But Vatican sources said Chinese officials already had made clear in informal contacts that John Paul would not be welcome in Hong Kong because the Vatican maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
The situation was further complicated by China's anger over the recent statement by Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui that Taipei and Beijing should have “state-to-state relations.” China considers Taiwan a breakaway province.
The Vatican suspended formal diplomatic relations with China after the communists took control in 1949.
In order to weaken the ties of Chinese Catholics to the Vatican, the government established the Patriotic Association of Chinese Catholics in 1957, forcing Catholics still loyal to the Vatican to practice their faith underground.
In an effort to improve relations, the Vatican indicated earlier this year it might be prepared to jettison its ties with Taiwan.
Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican secretary of state, said in February he was prepared to move the Vatican's embassy from Taipei to Beijing immediately.
“We are aware that in order to normalize our relations with Beijing, we will have to modify relations with Taipei. We are willing to negotiate,” Cardinal Sodano added in March when Chinese President Jiang Zemin visited Italy.
But the Chinese response was chilly. Jiang did not cross the Tiber River for an audience with the Pope, and Zhu Bangzao, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, told a news conference, “Words are not enough. You have to follow through with deeds.”
John Paul is scheduled to travel to Asia before the end of the year to formally close the synod of Asian bishops that was held in the Vatican in the spring of 1998.
It was at the synod that Asian bishops raised the possibility the Pope might visit Hong Kong, which reverted to China in 1998, to celebrate Mass for the island's some 240,000 Chinese Catholics and 120,000 immigrants from the Philippines.
Vatican sources said it is likely the Pope will make the trip in November, visiting India with stops in Bombay, Calcutta and New Delhi. It also appeared the Vatican has discarded the idea of a stop in Macao because the Chinese could view a visit by the Pope one month before the Portuguese colony returns to Chinese rule as a provocation.
Macao has about 25,000 Catholics, or about 6% of its population. The Diocese of Macau, seat of the oldest bishopric in the Far East, was established in 1575.
John Paul also is eager to travel to Vietnam, but Vatican sources said a visit would be difficult for logistical reasons. The country lacks facilities for gatherings of hundreds of thousands of people.
In a separate but related development, the Vatican has confirmed it has had an “envoy” in Hong Kong since 1989 despite its lack of diplomatic ties with China, Reuters reported.
In a statement, the Vatican said Father Fernando Filoni, an official at the Vatican's embassy in the Philippines, has been charged with “monitoring the life of the Church in Hong Kong and continental China more closely.
“The cleric lives in Hong Kong. It is not a diplomatic mission, but rather of a discreet presence that respects the situation.” (From combined wire services)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Pope Urges Strengthening of Geneva Conventions DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions, Pope John Paul II called for stronger protection of civilians and prisoners of war in times of conflict.
“The minimum protection of the dignity of every human being guaranteed by international humanitarian law too often is violated in the name of military or political needs, which never should have precedence over the value of the human person,” the Pope said Aug. 11.
At the end of his weekly general audience, Pope John Paul told visitors that the Geneva Conventions were signed Aug. 12, 1949, after World War II “to assure the protection of civilians, prisoners and all victims of armed conflict.”
The first two Geneva conventions establish guidelines to improve the condition of the war sick and wounded.
The third convention called for an end to the belief that the captive is the winner's booty. Captured soldiers may have the right to take up arms removed, but the rest of their rights cannot be violated.
The fourth convention safeguards civilians' rights in times of war, guaranteeing respect for the person, the home, family rights, and moral and religious convictions in all circumstances.
The conventions call for humane treatment of the wounded, prisoners of war and soldiers who have surrendered. They prohibit hostage-taking, torture and executions without trial by a regularly constituted court.
The Pope specifically referred to conflicts in the Balkans, Africa, Colombia and the Indian subcontinent as situations that call for full compliance with the conventions.
On the anniversary, he said, the international community should pause to reflect on “the situation of victims of war which, still today, bloody numerous states.
“We are aware today of the need to find a new consensus on humanitarian principles and to strengthen their foundations to prevent repeated atrocities and abuses,” John Paul said.
The Pope said that in its “indispensable” teaching of respect for every human life, the Church seeks to collaborate actively with all those who work to assure “respect for the dignity of and assistance to the suffering, whether civilians or military.”
John Paul said he gives his blessing to all those who work to help “the many and innocent victims of conflicts, prisoners and civilians at the mercy of violence.”
(From combined wire services)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Qoutes DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:New Cardinals Expected
THE UNIVERSE, Aug. 8—“John Paul is expected to create new cardinals within the next year,” reported the British Catholic weekly's Gerry Leonard.
The College of Cardinals currently has 154 members. However, only cardinals under the age of 80 may serve as electors of a new pope.
This means that only 107 cardinals could participate in a conclave if one were held today. The total number of electors must not exceed 120. As the months go by and additional cardinals become ineligible to vote for the next pope, additional open slots in the “college of electors,” are created , wrote Leonard.
If the Pope were to hold a consistory by the end of this year, he could create at least 14 new cardinals in order to reach the full number of 120 electors. If he waits until the middle of next year, he would be able to create at least 18 new electors, which would rise to 21 if he waits until the end of 2000.
John Paul II has created 128 cardinals, he wrote. Twenty -six of the cardinals created by Paul VI continue as members of the College. Only one cardinal—Austria's Cardinal Franz Konig—survives from the era of John XXIII. He was 94 on Aug. 3.
‘Good’ Pope John Was Not Naive
CORRIERE DELLA SERA, Aug. 5—“It is painful to see how some regarded and continue to regard the [Second Vatican] Council as a bomb that exploded in inexperienced hands,” said Archbishop Loris Capovilla, former private secretary of Pope John XXIII, in an interview with the Italian newspaper for a story in a series on the most important events of the millennium.
The events covered in the story included Vatican II and John's pontificate.
“[It is] as though simplicity and innocence played a bad joke on the Church,” by calling the Council in such a turbulent time, asserted the archbishop. “Obviously, the simplicity and innocence being that of the ‘Good Pope’ [John],” he said.
“Some have enjoyed labeling Pope John, stereotyping him in a diminishing way, as though he was only good,” said Archbishop Capovilla. While the Pope was a popular figure primarily due to his image of simple goodness, this does not mean that he did not feel criticisms profoundly, he said, referring to passages in John XXIII's Journal of a Soul to illustrate the point.
Pope Consults With Orthodox About Holy Land Trip
VIMA, Aug. 5—The Vatican has written to the Orthodox patriarchs of Antioch, Jerusalem, Athens and Sinai to seek their blessing on a Holy Year pilgrimage by Pope John Paul II to the Middle East and Greece, according to the Athens newspaper.
Vima reported that Cardinal Edward Cassidy, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, wrote to the patriarchs in the Pope's name to ask about the conditions for a papal visit.
The Pope said June 30 in a letter on Holy Year pilgrimages that he hoped to travel in the year 2000 to Old Testament sites in Iraq, Egypt and Jordan, as well as visit Nazareth, Bethlehem and Jerusalem to retrace the life, death and resurrection of Christ, and go to Damascus and Athens to meditate on the early Church.
The Pope has said the trip would also have an interfaith and ecumenical dimension, encouraging dialogue with Jews, Muslims and the Orthodox, but no political implications.
The newspaper said Patriarch Ignatios would answer after Aug. 15 but wanted to discuss the papal trip with the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul—the spiritual headquarters of Eastern Orthodoxy—and with other Orthodox leaders before giving a final answer.
Earlier reports from Athens said the Greek Orthodox Church would not welcome a papal visit, but the newspaper said two commissions of the Church's Holy Synod had discussed it, and the issue will now go before the full assembly of the Holy Synod when it next meets.
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Anglican Primate: Press Victim or Poor Communicator? DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:Members of the Church of England leaped to the defense of their primate after a national newspaper claimed he doubted the resurrection of Christ.
While some claim Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, head of the worldwide Anglican communion, was deliberately set up by the press, others think he lacks the communication skills needed to be an effective Christian leader.
The story reminded many of Bishop David Jenkins, the former Anglican ordinary of Durham, who revealed one Easter Sunday in the 1980s that he did not believe in the virgin birth or the Resurrection, saying, “I do not believe God did a conjuring trick with bones.”
Hoping to have hit on a similar scoop, the Aug. 1 edition of The Mail On Sunday newspaper led with a front page story that was headlined: “Fury at Carey's attack on the Church.”
It quoted Archbishop Carey as stating, “I can tell you frankly that while we can be absolutely sure that Jesus lived and that he was certainly crucified on the cross, we cannot with the same certainty say that he was raised by God from the dead.”
The story outraged the Anglican faithful.
A typical reaction came from Evelyn Jones, a worshipper in South West England.
She told the Register, “I think they were looking for something like that to get him. They were twisting his words. I am sure Dr. Carey holds the basic Christian belief in the Resurrection.”
Sally Walters, a believer from the same part of the country, backed the archbishop's statement.
“He's right—there are a lot of things we have to take as faith, I think the main difficulty is the clash between the language of theology and the language of the media.”
A spokesman for Archbishop Carey said he “does, in fact, believe in the Resurrection. There is no chance ever of that not being the case.”
He said the use of statements from the archbishop's forthcoming book, Jesus 2000, were “highly selective.” The book is scheduled for release in September.
The spokesman pointed to another portion of the text that reads like a wry premonition of how the archbishop's remarks would eventually be taken: “‘Archbishop of Canterbury doesn't believe in the Resurrection;’ it is a wonderful headline, put your pens down.”
Archbishop Carey also received solidarity from the English and Welsh Catholic bishops' conference which refused to be drawn into the controversy.
A spokesman for the bishops' media office blamed Archbishop Carey's problem on mischievous journalism. “It was an appalling piece of reporting. Most people saw it for what it was—awful.”
But some commentators placed at least some of the blame with the primate himself.
Early in his episcopacy Archbishop Carey created a stir when he called Catholic teaching on the ordination of women “heresy.”
Damian Thompson, former religion correspondent of the national Daily Telegraph newspaper and an influential media commentator, told the Register, “He's never got it right.
“I think in this latest article he was almost goading the media to produce an unflattering story. It is symptomatic of the way he deals with the media.”
Added Thompson: “His communication skills have never improved since his disastrous early days, although maybe some of the people around him are better at clearing up the mess.”
Thompson compared the archbishop's relationship with the press to the one enjoyed by the late Cardinal Basil Hume, whose opinion was often sought when the secular media needed a “Christian” soundbite or quote on a national issue.
“Cardinal Hume was immensely personable,” said Thompson. “In these times the public persona of a church leader is very important. Carey is not a very engaging person and he is gaffe-prone in media terms.”
Catholic theologian and columnist Father Francis Marsden said Archbishop Carey had been naive, adding, “The media want controversy. They … want a good headline and saying ‘the Archbishop of Canterbury doubts the Resurrection’ makes very good copy.”
Father Marsden, a columnist for the British and Irish weekly, The Catholic Times, said, “Although he is an evangelical, [Archbishop Carey] seems to be going partly along the liberal way of separating the Jesus of history [from] the Christ of faith.
Some liberal theologians in Britain and Germany say, although Jesus was a historical figure, titles such as messiah are the projections of the first-century Christian community.”
He added, “I have a problem with his statement that you cannot prove the Resurrection, and [that] it is a matter of faith. It goes back to the old question: If you had a video camera would you have been able to video the Resurrection? I believe, yes, you would have been able to.
“A lot of what we believe in life we take on the evidence of witnesses, and the apostles went to their deaths proclaiming that Jesus had risen from the dead.
“All but John were martyred for saying this. I agree with Pascal's famous statement, ‘I believe witnesses who get their throats cut.’”
Paul Burnell writes from England.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Paul Burnell ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quoutes DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:Sudan Expels Canadian Priest
REUTERS, Aug. 9—Sudan has expelled a Canadian priest from the country without cause, according to the wire service.
Father Gilles Poirer, 57, worked in a slum parish in Hillat Mayo, six miles south of the capital city of Khartoum, providing the poor with modest loans to start small businesses, said the article.
Officials of the Muslim government told him on July 15 that he had two weeks to leave the country. “No reason was given for his expulsion,” a Church official old Reuters. “This is another sign that the regime is once again trying to cripple the Church.” A Sudanese priest from the same parish is awaiting trial in connection with several bombings in Khartoum last year. The charges are seen as part of a government campaign of harassment against priests, said the report.
Chinese Religious Leaders Approve Ban
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE, Aug. 4—China's officially sanctioned religious leaders applauded the government's recent ban on the Falun Gong sect, insisting it did not threaten religious freedom, the French news service reported.
“Falun Gong is not a religion, but an illegal organization that is like a cult,” said Jin Luxian, honorary chairman of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association. The Patriotic Association was established by the communist regime and has no ties to the Vatican, said the article.
“[Founder of Falun Gong] Li Hongzhi used religious terminology and mixed it with fallacies,” Jin said, adding that the cult was “anti-science, anti-civilization and anti-religion.” Jin said he would try to get the 140,000 Patriotic Catholics in Shanghai to see the danger of Falun Gong, said the report.
China banned Falun Gong, which advocates breathing and meditation exercises to attain inner strength, on July 22, accusing it of being a threat to society. The underground Catholic Church in communion with Rome is also banned and is subjected to ongoing persecution.
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Holy Shroud in John's Gospel DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:John 19:38-42; 20:1-8
Joseph of Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus, but a secret one for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus; and Pilate granted permission. So he came and took away his body. Nicodemus, who had first come to him by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds weight. So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen wrappings with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews.
Now, in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. Therefore because of the Jewish day of preparation, since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.
On the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came early to the tomb, while it was still dark, and saw the stone already taken away from the tomb. So she ran and came to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”
So Peter and the other disciple went forth, and they were going to the tomb. The two were running together; and the other disciple ran ahead faster than Peter and came to the tomb first; and stooping and looking in, he saw the linen wrappings lying there; but he did not go in. And so Simon Peter also came, following him, and entered the tomb; and he saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the face-cloth which had been on his head, not lying with the linen wrappings, but rolled up in a place by itself. So the other disciple who had first come to the tomb then also entered, and he saw and believed.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Unborn Criminals? DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:University of Chicago economics professor Steven Levitt and Stanford law professor John Donohue III have authored an unpublished study which suggests that legalized abortion in the early 1970s contributed to a drop in crime a generation later.
The theory is that “unwanted” children—those more likely to have been aborted—would have been more prone to become criminals, had they lived. High rates of abortion in 1970s minority and poor communities, the authors say, led to the lower crime rates in the 1990s.
The study has made people on both sides of the abortion debate uncomfortable. Many abortion supporters would prefer to paint abortion as a woman's choice, not as a publicized means for keeping down the number of poor and minority kids. For many abortion opponents, on the other hand, the study brings to mind the racist mentality of eugenics advocate Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood.
For us, the study is a reminder that abortion advocacy didn't originate from confusion about when life begins. It originated from white fears of a growing underclass. We wonder how often that continues to be the unspoken motive of today's pro-abortion efforts worldwide.
Yet two things are clear: first, that many forms of crime have decreased during America's abortion era; and second, that the most heinous crimes have increased dramatically.
As criminologist John DiIulio and William Bennett show in their book Body Count: Moral Poverty—and How to Win America's War Against Crime and Drugs, the crimes that are committed are often much worse in degree and kind. Today's criminals are likely to have very little remorse and very little conscience about what they do, argue DiIulio and Bennett. The Columbine High School massacre is a glaring example.
Such behavior is a consequence of the breakdown in the moral order that, in turn, has been brought about by another category of crime—one that breaks every moral code from the Ten Commandments to the Hippocratic oath. It is abortion.
In a nation that allows more than a million unborn children to be slaughtered every year, is it any wonder that criminals will take lives on a large scale too, as at Columbine?
The Levitt/Donohue study has it wrong. Crimes haven't decreased because of abortion; they have shifted. The victims are no longer just people in the streets, but unborn children in the womb.
A plan allowing children as young as 12 to request and receive “mercy killing” is expected to gain parliamentary approval next year in the Netherlands.
The guidelines only require that the patient make a voluntary and “informed” request, and be suffering “irremediable” and “unbearable” pain after exhausting all other medical options.
Mercy killing, or euthanasia, is often associated with the very old, and public revulsion at the thought of doctors killing their patients can be tempered by the consideration that the victims at least have lived full lives. But the prospect of mercy killing of the young reveals what is at the root of the euthanasia mind-set: a lack of appreciation for the value of all human life.
When a nation puts preconditions on the value of life—be it for the sake of “compassion” or just plain convenience—it leaves no foundation for life to stand on.
How can we reverse this trend? By reminding the world in a thousand ways of the absolute value of life—a value not based on what we can do or how we feel, but on who made us, and why.
It seems appropriate that, on the eve of the Jubilee celebrations of Christ's birth, new evidence suggests that devotees of the Shroud of Turin may have been right all along. The shroud may very well be the burial cloth of Christ.
A decade ago, officials who had conducted carbon testing said the linen cloth could not have been around before the year 1260. Now, scientists say that the image and bloodstains on the cloth seem to be made by the body of a Palestinian man before the eighth century. The man was buried in the customary Jewish way, and his body strewn with flowers found in the Jerusalem area.
The authenticity of the shroud would, of course, have no bearing whatsoever on the Christian faith. We already have all the evidence we need of Christ's passion, death and resurrection in Scripture and in the reality of the Church.
The Gospel accounts of Christ's life were reported by weak men who were constantly in need of correction and rebuke by their leader, and who fled him in Gethsemane. The apostles seem incapable of faithfully following Jesus, let alone creating a religion that would sweep the world. Something happened that drew them together and changed them after Christ's death.
What Pope John Paul II has called the “silent testimony” of the shroud can give hope to Catholics in today's culture of death. On our own we cannot overcome the immense problems of our time. But with the one who died and rose from the dead, all things are possible.
----- EXCERPT: Editorial ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: What Thérèse Learned from John of the Cross DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:John and Thérèse: Flames of Love by Guy Gaucher, auxiliary bishop of Bayeux and Lisieux (Alba House, 1999 172 pages, $12.95)
On Oct. 19, 1997, Pope John Paul II proclaimed St. Thérèse of Lisieux a Doctor of the Church. Momentum for such a declaration had been building since the early '30s, in conjunction with the increase of devotion to the Little Flower, the Carmelite saint who died in Lisieux in 1897.
Among those who had sought this designation “Doctor” was Auxiliary Bishop Guy Gaucher of Bayeux and Lisieux, a biographer and authority on the saint. In his most recent volume, John and Thérèse: Flames of Love, Bishop Gaucher does not so much defend the proposition that Thérèse deserves the title Doctor, as he demonstrates the central influence which St. John of the Cross had on this 19th-century Frenchwoman.
The bishop makes his case through a close reading of Thérèse and her own absorption in the thought of John of the Cross: her cribbed pencil marks on file cards, notations crowding the margins of works of St. John that collected on her bed stand in the infirmary, and also the varied commentaries of those who had known Thérèse in life and testified to her constant and fervent devotion to her 16th-century brother Carmelite.
Fray Juan de la Cruz was not an unknown spiritual personage in Thérèse's family. Her two older sisters had entered the Carmel, and along with her sister Céline, Thérèse was reading Dom Gueranger's Liturgical Year, which contained material on the life and thought of St. John of the Cross. The two girls would sit in the parlor and discuss extracts from St. John.
Céline would later comment about Thérèse: “Since her adolescence, how often she would enthusiastically repeat these words of St. John of the Cross: ‘Lord, to suffer and be despised for you!’ That was the theme of our aspirations, when at the belvedere window we would talk together about eternal life.”
At the Benedictine Abbey school of Notre Dame du Pré, as a schoolgirl of 13 she would pen this same theme during a handwriting exercise. The manuscript disappeared in a fire at the school in 1940, but recently reappeared in the form of a photocopy at the Carmel in Lisieux.
By 1890, at age 17, she had made her solemn profession holding on her heart a note addressed to Jesus: “May I never seek nor find anything but yourself alone. May creatures be nothing for me and may I be nothing for them, but may you, Jesus, be everything!” Bishop Gaucher observes, “The dialectic of St. John of the Cross, of nothing and everything, was already so very present to her.”
When Thérèse was 23, in the year 1896, in the midst of a desolation, encountering the sufferings born of a desire that accompanied her every prayer, she broke through with a remarkable discovery: “Oh Jesus, my Love—my vocation, at last I have found it.—MY VOCATION IS LOVE! Yes, I have found my place in the Church and it is You, O my God, who have given me this place. In the heart of the Church, my Mother, I shall be Love.” And we are hardly surprised to encounter, at this same place in her manuscript, 10 quotes that she had copied out from St. John of the Cross.
The world seeks the Love toward whom the suffering servant-woman of Lisieux points.
Thérèse's appropriation of John of the Cross was not in itself a scholarly enterprise. Indeed, the author admits “it is very difficult to say whether she truly read the works of St. John of the Cross.” It was more a matter of mining nuggets, of finding an aphorism so charged with content that her eager heart would discover endless variations on the theme. “Thérèse's readings were not systematic, and scrupulously critical thinking did not encumber her respect for the text.—When she copied a passage she didn't hesitate to change a punctuation mark or a word (conforming to the usage of the time). She had great freedom and took whatever liberties she needed.”
In the same year that she announced her vocation as one of Love, she penned the words of St. John of the Cross in her own handwritten Consecration to the Holy Face: “The smallest movement of pure Love is more useful to the Church than all other works put together.” This phrase appears in Spiritual Canticle B of the Spanish mystic. However, the first time she copied it she left out the phrase “put together.” One wonders if the spiritual daughter is inclined to soften, with the flame of love, the rigor of her spiritual father's words. Bishop Gaucher suggests in a few places within this study that Thérèse may indeed be complementing—that is, enhancing—the commentary of St. John of the Cross.
Thérèse desired to be consumed by Love; she sought to die for Love so that she might be taken up to see the Holy Face and in return begin to do good for others on earth. Bishop Gaucher tells us that for Thérèse service to the Church was not a matter of “duration” but rather of “intensity.”
The world seeks the Love toward whom the suffering servant-woman of Lisieux points. The world seeks this specifically Thérèsian wisdom. One catches suggestions of it in Wycherly's restoration play All for Love and in the early Graham Greene novel, The End of the Affair. I believe Puccini also puts it on the lips of Caliph when he reveals the final riddle—amore—in the opera Turandot.
Mysticism is not so much a question of spiritual athleticism. Nor, by extension, is it theological erudition. It is more a matter of being enflamed by the Divine Bridegroom. Doctors of the Church may indeed begin where theologians leave off. This book makes the case for Thérèse's importance in the Church, and by implication makes us understand the Church's decision to include her in the list of Doctors.
James Sullivan is based in Fairfield, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: James Sullivan ----- KEYWORDS: Books -------- TITLE: Architecture: Modernist or Renewed? DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:“The Stones of Babel: Modernist Sacred Architecture and the Mortification of the Senses” by Catesby Leigh (Touchstone, May/June 1999)
Catesby Leigh, an architectural design critic in Washington, D.C., writes: “Everybody knows the earliest story in the Bible that has to do with architecture. It is the story of the Tower of Babel, which attributes the division of tongues among men to the vain-glorious intentions behind that most ambitious of construction projects. Architecture makes a distinctly inauspicious debut in the Scriptures, and…yet God prescribed the design of the Tabernacle to Moses in great detail.”
Conflicting attitudes toward church architecture can be traced among Christians from the earliest centuries, when “St. Jerome—asserted that the splendor of the Temple of Solomon offered no justification for ornate churches.” The Temple was part of a temporary dispensation that had now become obsolete.
“But more than seven hundred years later, a great French churchman, Abbot Suger, had very different thoughts, when he described the impact of beautiful religious architecture on him: ‘— then it seems to me that I see myself dwelling, as it were, in some strange region of the universe which neither exists entirely in the slime of the earth nor entirely in the purity of Heaven.’”
Though it was the Reformation “which propagated the functional concept of a church as an auditorium or meeting place for the preaching of the Word rather than the holy place wherein the faithful might encounter—in built, carved and painted form—a vision of the Heavenly Jerusalem,” earlier ascetics like St. Bernard had “banished all elaborate ornament in stone, paint, and stained glass. Such ornament he regarded as a distraction from religious devotion.”
But “even in the most austere Cistercian monasteries, the architecture pleases the eye because of the way the dimensions and contours of its spaces are grounded in our own embodied state, and because of the high quality of the masonry work, with its simple ornamental detailing. Alas, it remained for our own century to produce esthetically mortifying sacred architecture, as the design for a new Roman Catholic cathedral in Los Angeles by the Spanish architect Jose Rafael Moneo reminds us.
“Many people know they like very little of what modernism has to offer these days, but since its partisans have erected a Tower of Babel of their own—a tower of theoretical babble—those who prefer art grounded in ancient conventions are left at a distinct disadvantage.” Leigh explains the basis of some of these likes and dislikes by describing the ways in which classical architecture draws from and satisfies humanist instincts for symmetry, and for abstractions of the human body or its parts—as in columns, for example.
Western artists and architects operating out of the classical tradition are thus attempting to bring forth a kind of second version of nature, one that is true to the original while it also strains forward to a new vision of nature as it would be in an unfallen state. This Western approach does not delight in perverse twists and distortions of the natural creation. That is why “this artistic tradition is inextricably bound up with the ancient notion—challenged first by Christian ascetics, then by the Reformation, and now by modernism—that in a church the arts of form might bring forth that vision of the Heavenly Jerusalem.”
There is no way this vision of the religious architect's mission can easily coexist with “the modernist design to emphasize the Church's relevance to the modern age.” Modernist architecture, with its attempt to incorporate “the supremely functional and economic machine rather than the human body” as a basis for design, dehumanizes architecture. “Our Nietzschean demigods have forgotten that architecture exists to make us lesser mortals at home in the world.—[But] a growing number of young architects are spurning the Tower of Babble and the mortification of the senses for sound artistic principles.”
“[A] church conceived as a symbol of the Church that is Christ's body should stand apart from the other buildings the faithful encounter in their daily life.…[S]urely it is just a question of time before the Church of Rome rethinks the matter, along with other Christian denominations. For the ugliness modernism has propagated in our midst is no coincidence. It simply affirms the truth about false prophets: ‘By their fruits ye shall know them.’ ”
Ellen Wilson Fielding writes from Davidson, Maryland.
A summary of an article selected by the Register from the nation's top journals.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Letters DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:Hate Crimes
You asked, “Hate Crimes Are Bad, But Is a Law Needed?” (Register, Aug. 1-7 issue).
Not only are they not needed, but they're a threat to the Bill of Rights. The government and the media are selective about which crimes they consider “hate crimes.” For instance, the murder of Matthew Shepard, a homosexual,—was a “hate crime,” and was supposed to show the need to have indoctrination sessions in our schools to fight “homophobia.” The rape and murder of 11-year-old Eddie Werner by a 15-year-old homosexual who was seduced by middle-aged men, on the other hand, if mentioned at all, was also supposed to show the need to fight “homophobia.”
In December 1997 a high school student fired at eight fellow students who were gathered in prayer at a high school in Paducah, Ky. And in April 1999 we had the more famous attack on Christians at Columbine High. As The Weekly Standard of May 10 put it, “eight of the murdered students at Columbine High School were serious Christians, four Catholics and four evangelicals. The killers went after 17-year-old Rachel Scott and 18-year-old Valeen Shnurr apparently for no other reason than that they had Bibles. The central image of Littleton … is that of Cassie [Bernall], the 17-year-old with a gun to her head being asked if she believed in God.”
But the media doesn't see murder carried out because of hatred of Christianity as a “hate crime.” In fact, the usual media response was to blame the victims, and claim that the real problem was the “intolerance of diversity” and “homophobia” of the student body.
And that's how “hate crimes” laws will attack the First Amendment—by insisting that only politically incorrect views are “hate,” and that they can be prosecuted even if the holders of those views don't advocate any violence. (Watch what happens to pro-lifers once they're put on the books.)
Don Schenk
Allentown, Pennsylvania
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinon -------- TITLE: The Supreme Court at the Crossroads DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:There is a saying in Washington that “personnel is policy.” For better or worse, that saying applies especially to the Supreme Court, whose nine life-tenured justices have the final word on questions of federal law. We will soon be facing an important moment in the court's—and our country's—history. The next president will replace at least three justices: Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and Associate Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and John Paul Stevens, all of whom are widely expected to retire within the next four years.
This is a prospect that has not received the attention it deserves, perhaps because much of the public still assumes that the Supreme Court is just a bunch of legal technocrats, dryly opining on abstract legal questions. Now, if that were true, if the Supreme Court really did just practice law in a dispassionate way, then replacing retiring justices would not be a particularly momentous occasion. And the public could safely be bored with it. The reality, however, is very different.
The Supreme Court has long been divided, not only over what individual constitutional provisions mean, but more fundamentally, over how to decide what they mean. Some justices take the strict view that the Constitution's language still means only what it originally meant, no more and no less. Others give themselves wide latitude to read new and evolving meanings into it. The resulting conflict means that the personalities of the Supreme Court justices end up determining much of what the Constitution requires. So whenever one-third of these personalities turns over, it is a significant event. That would be true no matter which three justices were retiring. But the fact that it is these three in particular makes the event truly critical.
Consider, for example, the potential effects on issues of religious liberty.
Common sense is only just starting to return to the law of religious liberty. Beginning in the 1940s a majority of the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment required the government not only to be neutral among individual religions, that is, to treat Baptists the same way it treats Catholics and Jews, but that it also required the government to be neutral between religion and what some justices called “irreligion.” That was a critical mistake. It effectively dispatched lower level officials on a search-and-destroy mission against all expressions of religion in public life. Then, to add insult to injury, a majority of the Supreme Court consistently refused to apply neutrality evenhandedly. Just as in George Orwell's Animal Farm, where some animals were “more equal” than others, some laws, notably those that disadvantaged religious institutions, were “more neutral” than others. Religion almost always lost.
The departure of these three justices will be a truly critical event.
In the 1980s, however, that began to change—because the court's personnel began to change. A majority of the court still clung to its mistaken view that the First Amendment required neutrality between religion and irreligion, but at least neutrality began to be neutral. The court, for example, held that government benefits could aid both religious and nonreligious institutions equally. This was a great step forward. One result was that parochial school students entitled to government financial remedial instruction could now receive that tutoring inside their classrooms, just like everybody else. Under the Supreme Court's prior interpretation, the kids had to leave their school buildings and be tutored in vans parked on the street.
The court also held that private religious expression was almost as welcome in the public square as other types of private speech. This was a great half-step forward. In a case called Capitol Square vs. Pinette the court held that the grounds of the Ohio State Capitol, which were open on a first-come-first-served basis for private displays, could not be closed to a group who wanted to display a cross. Nevertheless, a bare majority of the justices refused to make that rule categorical. They took the extraordinary view that there might arise in the future a situation where private religious speech would have to be discriminated against to keep the public from mistaking it for government speech.
In short, the law of religious liberty is better than it used to be, but still a far cry from what it should be.
It is also very tenuous. In both the education case and the cross case, the 5-4 margin of victory was provided by two of the three justices who will be replaced by the next president. In the education case, it was Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice O'Connor who provided the majzority to vindicate religious liberty. In the cross case it was Justice O'Connor and Justice Stevens who rounded out the five-vote majority and left a cloud hanging over religious speech. The three of them have been responsible for many other 5-4 cases as well.
In short, all of the religious liberty gains that have been achieved to date, and all of the potential gains for the future, depend on whom the next president appoints to replace Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice Stevens and Justice O'Connor. It is a shame that the Supreme Court is so politicized. But until that changes, the president's personnel decisions will determine the shape of our constitutional rights.
Kevin J. Hasson is president and general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty in Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: kavin Hasson ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: Saving the West from the New Barbarians DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:Few would dispute that Western civilization is in trouble. Despite its riches and power, it is declining both morally and demographically. This is a matter of more than parochial concern. Western civilization belongs to everyone because it is the only civilization that addresses itself, not just to itself, but to all human beings of whatever religious, cultural, or national origins. Western civilization seeks universal truth and invites all to examine its premises.
Because of its openness, Western civilization has spread throughout much of the world. Though it has had its share of conquest by force of arms, its real appeal is its invitation for all men to reason together as means of finding common ground. Today, its principles are under attack in the very place that gave them birth—the West. These principles must be defended, not because they are Western, but because they are true. Their loss would be a catastrophe not only for the West but for the world.
The greatest advances in Western civilization came about through the general grasp of great insights concerning God, man and nature: monotheism, philosophy, the centrality of the family in society, the sanctity of the individual, and the rule of law. At the foundation of Western civilization, Greek philosophy made a number of momentous discoveries: that the mind can know things, as distinct from having opinions about them; that objective reality exists; that there seems some purpose implied in its design; and that this purpose has to do with what man calls “the good.”
‘The Good’
Aristotle said that “the good” that all men naturally seek is happiness—achieved through a life of virtue. Jewish and Christian revelation taught that “the good” has a transcendent source and is to be found in God himself, in whom man will find complete fulfillment. In their souls, all people are ordered to “the good” in the same way. This is what is meant by human nature. Human nature enables man to acknowledge another person as a fellow human being. This act of recognition is the basis of Western civilization. We have forever since called barbarian those who either are incapable of seeing another person as a human being or who refuse to do so.
Western civilization was the vehicle for imparting these fundamental truths about the human condition. When healthy, a civilization works at both the conscious and subliminal levels. The custom and ceremony of daily life subliminally engender the good moral habits necessary to a healthy society through what is generally called culture. At the very least, a person responded to these influences by being “cornered into virtue.”
The consequences of the erosion of civilization at this level are unfortunately abundant in Western society: endemic divorce, illegitimacy, functional illiteracy, child abuse, abortion, rampant sexual disease, drug abuse, pornography, and a culture coarsened by a stream of vulgarity in popular entertainment. The first and most vulnerable victims of this barbarous bombardment have been children, robbed of innocence and grace, and the orderly homes in which such things must be nurtured.
The rebarbarianization of man in the 20th century took place through highly codified ideologies that offered new paths to secular salvation in communism and Nazism, both challenges that arose within Western civilization. Likewise, our dehumanization today is not the result of external forces but of internal decay. However, it is not the product of a new belief, but of a lack of belief; not of an acceptance, but of a rejection.
The New Original Sin
As composer Igor Stravinsky once wrote, “the old original sin was one of knowledge, the new original sin is one of non-acknowledgment.” It is the refusal to acknowledge anything outside the operation of the human will—most especially “the good” toward which the soul is ordered. The new barbarian is not interested in conforming his mind to reality but in conforming reality to his wishes. For him, the goal of freedom is not the truth, but more freedom.
The new barbarian will not accept as real any rational end that could constitute a limitation on his freedom, including those very “limitations” that define what human is. As a result, the new barbarian, like the old, has no capacity to recognize another person as a human being, or even to differentiate between the human and the animal. The loss of this capacity has brought upon us the nowtoo-familiar culture of death.
The first sign of a barbarian is a lack of self-knowledge—an unawareness of his own barbarousness. Many of today's intellectuals and cultural gatekeepers would be at a complete loss to define the difference between the human and the nonhuman, between civilization and barbarism. In fact, many would think it highly insensitive to suggest that there is a difference between the two.
The recent appointment of Peter Singer to the chair of bioethics at Princeton University illustrates this point. Professor Singer thinks that animals have rights and that newborn, handicapped babies do not. You must not eat meat, but you can kill a child. The most impressive thing about his teachings, which seem to be a mix of 19th-century utilitarianism and Darwinism, is how much you would have to not know in order to hold them. To my knowledge, Singer has never explained why animals have never spoken up for animal rights, nor why they have never observed them themselves, especially the carnivores.
When faced with the uproar over Singer's appointment to Princeton's ironically named “Center for Human Values,” Princeton President Harold Shapiro made the extraordinary defense that what matters is not Singer's ideas, but whether they can be rationally defended.
The question does not seem to have occurred to Mr. Shapiro: Can one make a rational case that there is no essential distinction between a man and an animal, when it is precisely the use of reason that differentiates the two? In other words, the very act of making the case reasonably would disprove it.
The problem with this massive moral and intellectual breakdown is that the repetition of anything evil breeds a familiarity which blunts one's sensibility to eyil.
Modern Crusades
Taken to its extreme, prolonged indulgence in any evil kills not only the soul, but the soul's awareness of its own death. Conscience is gradually erased, and replaced by feelings of self-righteousness, which inspire sanctimonious “crusades” for, say, pornography, drugs, pedophilia, abortion, euthanasia and other forms of moral “liberation.” While the acceptance of these rationalizations is devastating for an individual, for a civilization it is catastrophic. This is the reason that civilizations in decline are unaware of their own demise.
Appeals to tradition to restore our world will not work because Western traditions have lost much of their power to compel. Today, one cannot sustain the good life, in its pre-libertine sense, without constant reflection upon first principles. One must actively resist the corrosive influences in the media, in politics, in education, in every form of entertainment, even in some pulpits. In order to do this, what was once imbibed in the traditional home or learned by osmosis through custom must be known explicitly and consciously. We must recover those first principles upon which the great traditions of Western civilization were built, principles which emanated from the answers to the most important questions. We must then advance those contemporary cultural endeavors that reflect these answers in enduring forms of literature, music, architecture and the other arts.
Ultimately, a spiritual and moral decline can be countered only by a spiritual and moral revival. It must start, however, with the recovery of reason, with reason aware of what is beyond itself. It should begin with reason's assent to the very real possibility of the Transcendent.
What starts in reason can often end in faith, because faith is reasonable. As Alexis de Tocqueville noted, this point carries great political import as well. He said, “Despotism can govern without faith, but liberty cannot.”
We need not lose heart at the magnitude of the task. Our spiritual ancestors faced similar trials. We can turn to them for the spirit that is required of us now.
In the fifth century B.C., Nehemiah exhorted the Jews: “You see the trouble we are in: Jerusalem is in ruins, its gates have been burnt down. Come, let us rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and suffer this indignity no longer” (Nehemiah 2:17).
Robert R. Reilly, chairman of the Committee for Western Civilization, writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Robert R. Reilly ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: The Voice of the Lord Upon the Waters DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:At Sunday vespers during ordinary time the Church sings a beautiful antiphon: The whole creation proclaims the greatness of your glory. Ordinary time includes the summer holiday months, the time when vacations are opportunities to experience what the liturgy sings.
St. Paul taught the Romans that everyone should know about God, whether Jew or Greek, because “ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made” (Romans 1:20). St. Paul was talking about the whole of the natural order, but he might well have been talking about Victoria Falls, one of the more awesome of the “things that have been made.”
Victoria Falls, on the Zambesi River bordering Zambia and Zimbabwe, is the largest expanse of falling water in the world, making most waterfalls seem like leaky faucets. During the peak months, the Zambesi flows over the falls at a rate of 132 million gallons per minute, forming a curtain of water over a mile wide and about 335 feet high. I was fortunate not to visit the falls in peak season—March to April—because then the mist generated by the crashing waters is so dense that the falls themselves are hidden. In July it is possible to see their splendor—and also to feel it, as the “mist” from the falls was sufficient to soak me from head-to-toe in an instant, as if I had been caught in a torrential downpour.
From my father, who used to take us hiking in the Rockies, I learned to turn visits to the wonders of nature into pilgrimages. He once told me, as we looked out from our hike over the expanse of the Bow River Valley in southern Alberta, that he did not understand how anyone could behold such a sight and not believe in God. His words came back to me at Victoria Falls.
The falls have prompted similar observations since man first saw them. The Tonga, the native people of the region, seeing the rainbows that play upon the mist, named them motsé oa barimo—“the pestle of the gods”—believing that the falls were the dwelling place of the divinity, and the rainbow one of his tools. The Tonga would make offerings to the gods at the falls, throwing bead necklaces or bracelets into the waters.
The first European claim of seeing the falls was made in 1855 by Dr. David Livingstone, the great Scottish explorer and missionary who named the falls after Queen Victoria. He was first told about the falls by the local people as the place mo ku sa tunya musi—“where there is always smoke rising”—a reference to the spray that can been seen from a distance of several miles. In a felicitous misinterpretation of the word tunya, Livingstone gave the local name of the falls as “thundering smoke,” because the rumble of the waters can be heard far off.
“No one can imagine the beauty of the view from anything witnessed in England,” wrote Livingstone. “Scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight.”
That applies to all of creation, whether at Victoria Falls, the Grand Canyon or any one of the hundreds of natural wonders that become the destinations of summer travels. The grandeur of the natural world—so far beyond human artifice—calls forth a response. That response can take different forms. It can be one of fear, like the fear of the local tribesmen who offered sacrifice at the falls. It can be one of petty pride, like the pride of Livingstone who harassed other explorers because he wanted the glory of “discovering” the falls first. Or the response can be ideologically driven, like the blindness of so many contemporary observers who, having committed themselves to a crude “scientific” materialism, insist on seeing only randomness and chance where beauty and order abound.
A response is unavoidable. The Christian response has to be one of gratitude and humility—and responsibility, knowing that all this has been given to the stewardship of man. A fellow seminarian, who traveled to the falls with me, remarked that he felt invited to prayer: “Not to pray at such places is to miss a great opportunity.”
Yes, gratitude, humility and responsibility give way to prayer as the most fitting response to the glories of creation that we visit in the summer holidays. We remain pilgrims in this world, not only in the great temples built by man, but especially in those temples fashioned by God himself: Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these (Matthew 6:28-29).
Neither Solomon nor his father David saw Victoria Falls—mosi oa tunya—but David's psalm provides the most suitable prayer:
The voice of the Lord is upon the waters; the God of glory thunders, the Lord upon many waters.
The voice of the Lord is powerful, the voice of the Lord is full of majesty
(Psalm 29:3-4).
Raymond de Souza, a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Kingston, Ontario, filed this column from Africa.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond J.De Souza ----- KEYWORDS: Comentary -------- TITLE: A Parents' Back-to-School Book Guide DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:Coordinating School Kids' Schedules
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families: Building a Beautiful Family Culture in a Turbulent World by Stephen R. Covey and Sandra Merrill Covey (Golden Books Pub Co., 1998, 390 pages, $15)
It's back to school, and for many families this means back to car-pooling, the homework wars, and sports and extracurricular schedules that would challenge even Gen. Patton's strategic planning abilities. Families today are faced with conflicting demands on their time, an aggressive culture, a complex society and fast-paced lives.
Time management guru Stephen Covey brings his seven habits to the family arena to help families find their unique vision, set goals and priorities, and stay on track. In fact, Covey's own family, with nine children, is where he first developed the seven habits material, and where the principles are most significantly applied. Covey's seven habits show parents how to take control of the direction and formation of their families. With many examples from his own family, he vividly portrays the principles: being proactive, beginning with the end in mind, putting first things first, thinking win-win, seeking first to understand, synergizing, and sharpening the saw.
Covey shows how parents can gain the cooperation of their kids and have a unified family vision by developing a “family mission statement.” He encourages families to think through questions such as: What kind of family do we want to be? What things are truly important to us as a family? What kind of feeling do we want to have in our home? What are the unique gifts of each family member? What are the principles we want our family to follow?
Covey offers many practical suggestions for encouraging cooperative and happy family interactions; for example, implementation of the “emotional bank account,” one-on one bonding times, and family nights. Each chapter includes practical tips for sharing each of the principles with children, and with adults and teens.
Laraine Bennett edits the Family 2000 newsletter in Bethesda, Maryland.
----- EXCERPT: Parent-suggested reading to cope with students from 'K' to college. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: A College Guide for Parents of the Class of '00 DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:Choosing the Right College: The Whole Truth About America's 100 Top Schools by Intercollegiate Studies Institute (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1998, 672 pages, $25)
Tim Flannery: As our children approach college age and we consider the very serious matter of helping them select a school that will serve them well in their lives, we naturally fall back on our own college experience as a guide. But how many of us know firsthand more than one or two schools? And how many changes have occurred since we attended college?
We need a comprehensive source of information on colleges that addresses the important issues of educational philosophy, academic programs and campus life. Choosing the Right College fits the bill.
The staff of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute reviews 100 of the most competitive colleges across the country, guided by the notion that “the liberal arts continue to provide the broadest and most humane form of education.
” Their assessments are based on interviews with faculty, students and administrators, questionnaires, and site visits.
Each essay contains sections on the school's history, academic setting (including details on individual departments), political environment and student life.
Based on this reviewer's knowledge of the colleges examined, the commentaries are insightful, well-balanced, and credible, making this guide a very useful tool in choosing the right college.
Alice Flannery: The editors of Choosing the Right College, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute's college review guide, believe in the value of a liberal arts education in forming the whole person—teaching him to recognize and prize what is good and true. The guide examines how successfully 100 of America's top universities and colleges achieve this liberal arts ideal.
Each review is divided into four parts. First is an overview which includes a brief history and a description of the current state of affairs at the university. Second comes a discussion of academic requirements and an examination of how well the school lives up to the ideal of a liberal arts education. Third, there is included a description of the political environment the student will encounter; and, fourth, a description of the day-to-day extracurricular life (e.g. housing, clubs and organizations).
The section on academic requirements was notable because of the recommendations for particular departments and professors. The sections I most appreciated as a mother were those on political environment and social life. Kids will spend four years living at college. They can't avoid the ethos of campus life; it might even affect them more than the courses they choose.
Much of the substance of each evaluation comes from students and professors at the schools. I found the evaluations very thorough and balanced. Choosing the Right College does a good job of capturing the tone of each university.
Tim and Alice Flannery, of Chantilly, Va., have six children.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Tim and Alice Flannery ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Career Advice for College Students? Be a Politician DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:A Sacred Union of Citizens: George Washington's Farewell Address and the American Character by Matthew Spalding, Patrick J. Garrity, Daniel J. Boorstin (Rowman & Littlefield, paperback edition, 1998, 256 pages, $16.95)
Witnessing today's tawdry scandals and petty corruption, many young Christians reject politics as an unworthy endeavor.
But according to the Catholic faith, politics is a noble vocation. Thus, the Second Vatican Council in Gaudium et Spes (No. 75) called on youth “with a talent for the difficult yet noble art of politics, or whose talents in this matter can be developed, [to] prepare themselves for it, and, forgetting their own convenience and material interests, they should engage in political activity.”
The father of our country, George Washington, should be a paradigm for American Catholics today as he was for earlier generations. Washington wasn't Catholic, but as a teen-ager, he memorized and practiced 110 “rules of civility” from an old Jesuit manual where he learned everything from small details of manners to his relationship to God.
Dignified at every moment, sparing in his talk, courageous in war and in politics, Washington set aside the private life he loved at Mount Vernon in order to serve the national cause of his “friends and fellow-citizens.”
This splendid book testifies to Washington's obsession in developing greatness in his countrymen's character and virtues. He gathered his lifetime of experience into his farewell address as his enduring legacy on the political and moral basis of self-government. The authors articulate the meaning and significance of the Washingtonian “Credo” which has indelibly shaped the character of every American.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (No. 1884) calls on wise political leaders to imitate God's governing the world. Washington was such a statesman. Speaking to the Delaware Indian Chiefs in 1779, he said: “You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are.”
In fact, Washington's moral imagination was not limited to his own country. In their fresh and original reading, authors Spalding and Garrity show that Washington tried to form the high character of American citizens to inspire a moral revolution around the world.
Giant leaders of the stature of Washington scorn the falsehood that the virtues or vices of politicians and citizens are merely a “personal matter.” Among the farewell address's best known lessons are these: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labour to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and citizens—[R]eason and experience both forbid us to expect the National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle—virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.”
These words constitute the center of the farewell address. They display the moral heart of a great politics and “culture of life” which America was intended by its greatest founder to become.
It is jarring to contemporary ears that Abraham Lincoln, “savior” of the nation and liberator of millions, could describe our first chief executive as “still mightiest in moral reformation.” Presidents as moral reformers?
This book shows us how perhaps our greatest president used his high office to call every American to great virtue.
According to Vatican II's Gaudium et Spes, Catholics must attend to the common good. Some of us have a “special and personal vocation” to statesmanship, which must be encouraged especially in our small-souled political age.
This book on Washington's final advice to his countrymen will achieve its great purpose if it helps ignite the political imagination of a new generation of Catholic men and women with noble hearts, large ambition, and great love for their “friends and fellow-citizens.”
Dennis Teti teaches at the Washington, D.C. campus of Regents University.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Dennis Teti ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Encountering the Master in Adoration DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:The Master Is Here: Biblical Reflections on Eucharistic Adoration by Brian McNeil (Veritas, Dublin, 1997 Through Ignatius Press 95 pages, $9.95)
Letters to a Brother Priest by Msgr. Josefino Ramirez (Missionaries of the Blessed Sacrament, 1995, 81 pages, $9.95)
As Father Brian McNeil, CRV, points out in the introduction to his book on the subject, “All over the world today, we are experiencing a quiet but very vigorous flowering of Eucharistic adoration.”
In The Master Is Here, Father McNeil briefly examines the history and theology that has led to the current popularity of extended adoration before the exposed Eucharist, and responds to objections, heard less and less, to its practice. His primary objective is to offer personal testimony of the experience of adoration and the spiritual power and contemplative fruits that come with it.
Ordained in 1985, Father McNeil had more experience of adoration—once common in many religious communities—than most religious and seminarians of his generation. And, like many who have experienced adoration as a weekly or monthly act of piety, he knew it mostly as a dry exercise best spent in spiritual reading. “No one ever suggested to me that adoration could take the form of a simple, prolonged act of looking at the host.”
As a young priest, he writes, “I began daily silent Eucharistic adoration because people whom I respected recommended it to me.” For Father McNeil, adoration soon became his preferred venue for meditation, offering the full range of experiences—from dryness and distractions to “unutterable joy, the union of love with Jesus”—that are given to those who set time aside for genuine prayer.
But adoration is more. It is a oneon-one meeting that is deepened by familiarity, transforming the one who looks upon the actual Jesus and converses with him. “By concentrating our gaze on Jesus in the host and opening ourselves to this personal encounter with him,” says Father McNeil, “we expose ourselves to him, to the power that emanates from him now as it emanated while he was on earth.”
Our wasted thoughts, distractions, and feelings of aggression, resentment and even lust can be especially powerful in the stillness of prayer. While at times troubling, these normal tendencies need to be exposed to “the irradiation of Christ's love from the host,” says Father McNeil.
A school of humility and reparation, adoration is an excellent opportunity to make intercession for others and to achieve “a configuration to Jesus that takes the form of a true compassion which offers hope to the suffering world.”
Father McNeil compares the forms of adoration now practiced with those prior to the Second Vatican Council and sees the current eucharistic movement as a manifestation of healthy lay initiative, and as a vehicle for achieving Vatican II's forceful reminder that all Christians are called to live truly holy lives.
“One could have felt pretty safe in prophesying, 15 years ago or so, that Eucharistic adoration would … simply disappear,” recounts the priest. “This development is surprising—to put it mildly!”
Forty Hours devotion, First Friday adoration and the frequent practice of having Benediction after the Stations of the Cross and novenas were downplayed after the Vatican Council in order to emphasize the reformed and more accessible Mass in the vernacular.
While one occasionally hears about a comeback for this or that old-time devotion, this is not what has occurred with veneration of the Blessed Sacrament. At least in some places, adoration is now actually more accessible—and convenient—than in the pre-conciliar period, thanks especially to perpetual adoration programs and those with extended hours.
Christ-centered and scriptural, today's eucharistic devotion does not substitute for the liturgy but is an extension of the Mass.
While traditional books of piety, devotional pamphlets and prayer cards abound at the average adoration chapel, Father McNeil observes, “the contemporary flowering of silent adoration offers each member a specific possibility of growing in the love of Jesus Christ” through prayer of the heart.
Like Father McNeil's book, Letters to a Brother Priest showcases scriptural passages that are easily related to prayer before the Eucharist, and both books are ideally suited for use during adoration itself.
The New Testament, especially the Gospels, is all about encounters between men and women and the living Christ. In adoration, it is easy to relate to characters such as the woman at the well, Zacchaeus—who climbed a tree to be able to see Jesus—and the woman who suffered from a hemorrhage who drew physically close to the Lord in hopes of a healing that was, indeed, granted her.
In his Letters, Msgr. Josefino Ramirez writes to a much younger priest, Father Thomas, urging him to begin perpetual adoration in his parish in the Philippines as a way to deepen his own spiritual life and that of his parishioners.
In each letter, the author offers a different insight about the value of adoration by drawing lessons from the Gospels, the lives of the saints and everyday occurrences such as being reminded of the lyrics of an old song to make the point that “Christ waits for us in the Blessed Sacrament.”
Joe Cullen is an assistant editor of the Register.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joe Cullen ----- KEYWORDS: Books -------- TITLE: Other Books on Eucharistic Adoration DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:Adoration: Eucharistic Texts and Prayers Throughout Church History Complied by Daniel P. Guernsey (Ignatius Press, 1999 250 pages, $14.95)
This book collects eucharistic texts and prayers from Scripture, from the Fathers of the Church, from the saints, the liturgy and other sources. Guernsey presents them for use in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament and in preparation for Mass.
Excerpt
“How great was the charity of Jesus Christ in choosing for the institution of the Eucharist the eve of the day he was to be put to death! At that moment all Jerusalem is on fire, all the populace enraged, all are plotting his ruin, and it is precisely at that moment that he is preparing for them the most unutterable pledge of his love. Men are weaving the blackest plots against him, and he is occupied in giving them the most precious gift he has. They are only thinking of setting up an infamous cross for him that they may put him to death, and he is only thinking of setting up an altar that he may immolate himself every day for us.”
— St. John Vianney
Praying in the Presence of Our Lord: Prayers for Eucharistic Adoration by Father Benedict J. Groeschel, CFR (Our Sunday Visitor Press, 1999, 124 pages, $6.95)
Franciscan Friar of the Renewal Father Benedict Groeschel provides the reader with prayers that Christians, ancient and modern, have used for adoration of Christ in the Eucharist. Father Groeschel says, “Every canonized saint and millions of devout people have found the most profound consolation, reassurance and challenge to grow in faith, hope and charity before the Tabernacle.”
Excerpt
“Lord, stay with us.”
These words were spoken for the first time by the disciples of Emmaus. Subsequently in the course of the centuries they have been spoken, infinite times, by the lips of so many of your disciples and confessors, O Christ. …
I speak the same words today.
I speak them to invite you, Christ, in your Eucharistic presence, to accept the daily adoration continuing through the entire day, in this temple, in this basilica, in this chapel. …
Stay! That your presence in this temple may incessantly be reconfirmed, and all those who enter here may become aware that it is your house, “the dwelling of God with men” (Rev 21:3) and, visiting this basilica, may find in it the very source “of life and holiness that gushes from your Eucharistic Heart.”
— Pope John Paul II, prayer in Blessed Sacrament Chapel, St. Peter's Basilica,inaugurating perpetual adoration there in 1981
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Books -------- TITLE: Reprinting the Classics DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:The Heroic Face of Innocence: Three Stories by Georges Bernanos (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1999 150 pages, $13.00)
Bernanos is best known for his novel Diary of a Country Priest. This volume collects three of his shorter works: Joan, Heretic and Saint; Sermon of an Agnostic on the Feast of St.
Thérèse and Dialogues of the Carmelites. The title of the volume refers to a constant theme of Bernanos' work—that the endless and monstrous challenges faced by each person in this fallen world, especially in the 20th century, can be successfully met only with a specific kind of heroism, the heroism it would take to really follow the admonition of Christ, “Unless you become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Excerpt from
“Supposing, my brothers, that I were consumptive, and I wished to drink the waters of Lourdes, and doctors suggested that they should dilute in it some drug of their own. ‘My dear doctors,’ I would reply, ‘you have said I was incurable. Let me try my luck undisturbed. In this matter, which is strictly between myself and Our Lady, if I need any go-between, you can be sure I won't be asking the pharmacist.’”
Some of the other volumes in the Eerdmans' series: The Portal of the Mystery of Hope by Charles Peguy; Prayer: the Mission of the Church by Jean Danielou; The Discovery of God by Henri de Lubac.
How to Love as Jesus Loves: Unlocking the Treasures Of Christ's Sacred Heart by Father Francis P. Donnelly, SJ (Sophia Institute Press, 1999 152 pages, $13.95)
In this series of 18 meditations on the Sacred Heart, originally published in 1911, Father Donnelly presents Christ's personal love for every soul. He encourages the reader to turn to Jesus as the divine source of love who can give each person strength to love others in the everyday circumstances of life.
Excerpt:
“In the fire of Christ's word are blended the flames of two loves. In the beating of His heart, the ear can detect the harmony of two sounds: the melody of the greatest love that ever throbbed in man, and its harmonic melody of infinitely higher octaves, the love of God. Every word, then, of Christ was far from idleness. It was possessed of a divine energy. It was the coinage of the gold of Christ's Heart.”
Some of the other titles reprinted by Sophia Institute Press: Comfort for the Sick and Dying, And for Those Who Love Them, by David L. Greenstock from a 1956 original; How to Live Nobly and Well: Timeless Principles for Achieving True Success and Lasting Happiness, by Jesuit Father Edward F. Garesché from a 1931 original; The School of Mary: Forty Essential Lessons for Sinners, from the Blessed Mother Herself, by John A. Kane from a 1942 original.
----- EXCERPT: Publishers return to time-honored works by Catholic authors ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Books -------- TITLE: Matthew's Gospel In Rough Beauty DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:Why make biblical epics? Most filmmakers produce them to entertain and/or get rich. Others aim higher and try to connect contemporary audiences with the ideas and stories upon which our culture is based.
The Gospel According to St. Matthew accomplishes all of this and more. No one knows for certain what inspired the Italian writer-director Pier Paolo Pasolini (Accatone) to create this film, but its single-minded intensity and luminous passion produce a satisfying drama with a unique appeal to Christians.
This is a movie that can make converts. It can be used as a tool of evangelization which grabs its audience emotionally while propagating an orthodox understanding of the faith.
The film was first released in 1964 after winning the Special Jury Prize at that year's Venice Film Festival. At first glance, it doesn't seem to conform to the rest of Pasolini's work. The filmmaker was a well-known Marxist, and his previous movies reflect this point of view.
Not surprisingly, every scene in The Gospel According to St. Matthew bears witness to his commitment to the poor. But the film is dedicated to Pope John XXIII, and much to the horror of Europe's secularist intelligentsia, it also presents the miracles as real events.
The movie was shot entirely on location in the hills of Basilicata in southern Italy. The cast is made up exclusively of nonprofessionals. Most were local peasants although Pasolini used his own mother to play Mary during Jesus' later ministry. The text is taken verbatim from the Gospel. The sequence of events is slightly reordered. Some scenes are shortened. Others are omitted.
One of the first images is a closeup of Mary (Margharita Caruza), whose natural beauty reminds us that the radiant Madonnas of Italian Renaissance masters like Raphael and da Vinci were probably inspired by real-life models. The young woman is pregnant, and her husband Joseph (Marcello Norante), who looks like he actually works with his hands, broods nearby. He walks away as if to abandon her.
Roadside Angel
Immediately, there's a miraculous intervention which the filmmaker makes sure has no rational explanation. A handsome, dark-haired angel appears on the road. “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because she has conceived what is in her by the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you must name him Jesus” (Matthew 1:20-21). Joseph, of course, obeys.
The movie, like Matthew's Gospel, doesn't contain the birth narrative. The three wise men come to worship the Christ child. When they return to their own country without revisiting King Herod, the massacre of the innocents is ordered.
The murderous incident is recreated with realistic, documentary techniques which are used throughout the rest of the film. The slaughter takes place on a rocky hillside. Herod's soldiers attack both on foot and on horseback. They are peasants like their victims but vicious and uncouth. The film techniques focus on the mothers' terror and grief, not the acts of violence themselves. We experience viscerally the sense of evil which permeates the event. The Holy Family is saved by the appearance of the same angel.
As we move into the adulthood of Jesus (Enrique Irazoq), the movie emphasizes the authorities' opposition. The beheading of John the Baptist is a crucial turning point. Unlike most presentations of the incident, Salome isn't depicted as particularly sensuous. She's modestly dressed, and her dancing is almost innocent. The feast takes place in the daytime in an open-air courtyard. Absent is the expected depravity. Yet the prophet's death seems even more calculated and coldblooded than usual.
Love of Children
Jesus sheds a silent tear. The muscles in his face harden as he becomes aware that John's violent death is a precursor of his own. This adds a sense of urgency to the teachings that follow.
Jesus' love of children is highlighted. We see that they adore him, and he brightens whenever they come near. These encounters underline the importance of his teaching that “Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). It is also the little ones bearing flowers and branches who first welcome him on his triumphal entry into Jerusalem.
Jesus' appearances before the Sanhedrin and Pontius Pilate are captured in long shots with a hand-held camera. We can clearly hear the Gospel text describing what's happening. But the visual action, viewed from within the crowd, is distant and hard to follow. We feel the remoteness of the religious and political authorities from those they're governing and the unfairness of what they decide.
The crucifixion is shot in a similarly naturalistic fashion. There's no attempt to compose pretty pictures such as are often found in biblical movies and old-master paintings. Our Savior's pain and suffering is real.
The Gospel According to St. Matthew successfully dramatizes Jesus' transcendent powers and his connection to ordinary people. It works as both a human and a spiritual story. We are moved by its rough beauty, and our souls are opened to its truth.
Arts & Culture Correspondent John Prizer writes from Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Videos in Release DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:A Civil Action
Quality galore can be found in A Civil Action, a movie based on Jonathan Harr's nonfiction best seller. Its director is Steven Zaillian, who has a history of thoughtful filmmaking. Its cast is top-notch, with John Travolta as overconfident Boston personal-injury attorney Jan Schlictmann, William H. Macy as his nervous accountant and Robert Duvall as their wily corporate-lawyer opponent. Its production values are first-rate, especially the wintry cinematography that reveals so much about the manufacturing town of Woburn, Mass. Woburn was the home of 12 children who died of leukemia. The youngsters' parents hire Schlictmann to represent them in a case against two multinationals. The parents believe the multinationals contaminated Woburn's groundwater, ultimately causing the children's deaths. Schlictmann and his small law firm throw everything at the corporate legal team, but are outgunned, out-spent and outmaneuvered. A rough justice ultimately emerges, but nobody is happy with the results. It's hard to know how accurate A Civil Action is without prior knowledge, but the film is an engrossing look at a legal and personal imbroglio.
Life Is Beautiful
An Oscar winner, Life Is Beautiful, is a film to love or hate. It opens with the happy-go-lucky Guido (Roberto Benigni) careening through the countryside of 1939 Italy with his brother Ferrucio (Sergio Bini Bustric); they're on their way to jobs as waiters. Then, through a happy misfortune, Guido rescues the beautiful Dora (Nicoletta Braschi) and is immediately smitten. He later discovers that the teacher is unhappily engaged to a pompous Fascist official. After an unusual courtship, Guido finally wins Dora. The movie then flashes forward five years. Dora and Guido have been blessed with a son, Giosué (Giorgio Cantarini), but their life is ripped apart when the Jewish Guido and Giosué are sent to a German concentration camp. Guido attempts to protect his son from the horror by telling him that they're competitors in a special contest. Life Is Beautiful is basically two films—the first is a sunny romantic comedy, while the second is a grim tale of paternal sacrifice. For some, the contrast is illuminating; for others, it's merely irritating.
Our Friend, Martin
Although Our Friend, Martin is basically a hagiographic presentation of the life of Martin Luther King Jr., it tells his story in an unusual manner. Instead of offering a straightforward documentary, the film mixes animation and live-action footage, history and fictional plotting, to produce instructive entertainment designed for grade-schoolers and middle-schoolers. The story highlights Miles, a sports-obsessed, African-American sixth-grader. His best buddy is Randy, a white boy with a credulous streak. Their physical nemesis is Kyle, a white fellow student; their intellectual nemesis is Maria, a brilliant Hispanic classmate. One day, the four sixth-graders go on a field trip to King's boyhood home, where Miles and Randy grab a special baseball mitt that lets them time-travel.
They encounter King at critical moments of his life and quickly learn several important lessons about justice and racial equality. Kyle and Maria later receive a similar educational opportunity. Even though Our Friend, Martin is strengthened by riveting documentary footage and the presence of top actors bringing cartoon characters to life, the simplicity of its historical argument mars its effectiveness.
Loretta G. Seyer is editor of Catholic Faith & Family.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Jude Turns Tears to Joy DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:Liz Trotta, New York bureau chief for the Washington Times and maybe the first American woman to report the fighting from Vietnam, decided to apply her investigative skills to an unusual task for a modern-day journalist: to find out the truth about St. Jude. Retracing the apostle's steps in the Middle East and Rome, eventually she also came to a shrine near downtown San Francisco where thousands visit every year to turn to this saint when life has pushed them to the edge.
Trotta called St. Jude “the patron of last resorts, lost causes, the impossible, the man to summon as the ship goes down.” Attending the annual novena at the national shrine to the saint, in St. Dominic Church, she found those lost causes, especially people facing death from AIDS. She told their stories in a chapter titled “City at the Edge: San Francisco,” the last one in her book, Jude: a Pilgrimage to the Saint of Last Resort.
Why do so many people feel an affinity for St. Jude? First Trotta pointed to a wider trend: “In the last decade there has been a resurgence in devotionalism.” She described it as a “silent but profound change in spiritual climate” and quoted a priest who calls it “a yearning of the heart.” She believed that the renewed interest in St. Jude is part of that wider trend.
Dominican Father Thomas Hayes, former director of the shrine of St. Jude, said, “People feel lonely … Catholics and [non-Catholics], and want to be part of something. We always want heroes.”
Still there are many people who specifically seek out St. Jude instead of any other saint. Why? St. Jude was one of the Twelve Apostles, brother of St. James the Less and a blood relative of Jesus.
One of the New Testament letters bears his name. Tradition says that he was martyred in Persia with another apostle, St. Simon. However, more than all these facts, the focus of attention on St. Jude is a result of what he stands for: hope in the midst of hopelessness.
Father Hayes said, “The people want to hear about Jude, a role model and hero.—Some may feel that the Church is too alien, too big, too powerful, whatever, for them. Do they say, ‘I'll be satisfied just with Jude?’ Perhaps. But I don't think it's a substitution [for the Church].
In most cases, it's more of a humble thing—that they're not worthy or deserving, and that God doesn't want anything to do with them.” They find comfort in the saint's well-known concern for hopeless situations like theirs.
Early Days of the Shrine
The shrine of St. Jude is situated in the northwest corner of St. Dominic Church. Weekly devotions to the saint began here in 1935 and remained fairly local to the parish for some years—until the appointment of Dominican Father Patrick Kane. Father Kane's involvement with the saint came about literally by accident. At the Dominican novitiate in Marin County, Calif., he fell as the result of a spell and was almost killed. During his recovery it was suggested to him that he work with the list of people interested in the shrine, which at the time was nothing more than a shoe-box full of slips of paper, and see what he could do to help. Father Kane brought in volunteers and under his guidance the shrine began to grow.
Eventually Father Kane was able to go back to his work and do a limited amount of preaching, but he had another spell while preaching in Idaho. He fell, hit his head on the pulpit and died. His brother, Dominican Father John Kane, picked up where he left off and directed the shrine for about 10 years. In 1978 Father Hayes came to assist him, eventually becoming director of the shrine himself.
Father Hayes described the mission of the St. Jude Center. “It's a form of preaching—it's an apostolate—that is to say a work of religion dedicated to communicating with people who would otherwise not have a chance. Many people have trouble communicating in their parish church. They can't find their priest or their priest is too busy. Here they can get on the phone, they can always find somebody, they can write a letter. The letters, we hope, are always answered.”
Callers find a listening ear in one of the many volunteers or lay staff who have helped the priests make the shrine what it is today. There are four big novenas each year, and an extensive mailing list of people who join the novenas either in person or at home. During those periods of time there are special Masses, services, rosaries, and special preaching, all highlighting the power of prayer and the influence of St. Jude. A calendar is published each year identifying the dates of the special novenas, and people are encouraged to send in their Mass intentions, and any questions, difficulties or problems. The mailing list has at times numbered almost 80,000.
Although the population of St. Dominic parish is largely white and African-American, hundreds of Hispanics and Filipinos regularly attend the church because of their devotion to St. Jude. “This is not your ordinary kind of territorial parish,” Father Hayes explained. “It's a place that people come to for devotions. There are the hard-core parish people that live nearby, but that by itself wouldn't explain why this is a parish and what it does as a parish.”
St. Dominic Church, built in a valley in an out-of-the-way neighborhood, is an unnoticed church. Stately and Gothic, it is known in the city for its beautiful woodwork in the confessionals and side altars. Except for sunrise and sunset when the church is beautifully illuminated by the light pouring through the front and rear stained-glass windows, St. Dominic's is a very dark church, seemingly illuminated only by the hundreds of candles lit at the side altars. This allows pilgrims the opportunity of a quiet peaceful place to reflect and pray.
The 1989 Earthquake
The church almost became history after the 7.2 Loma Prieta earthquake, which shook San Francisco in 1989. At first no one was sure how much damage the church had sustained. It was a time of panic and some called for the church to be torn down. But after all the buildings were checked, it was determined that there was no structural damage except to the “crown” on the church tower, which had to be removed.
Concern then turned to the fact that this kind of Gothic style structure, with very high walls, and a very heavy roof, was liable to suffer severe damage in a future earthquake. The decision was made to reinforce the stability of the church by adding flying buttresses. There are seven of these massive concrete structures anchored into the ground in order to withstand the force of any ground disturbance. At the top they are secured to a ring of steel inside the roof of the church.
The cost of the restoration effort was more than $7 million. When money began to run short, Father Hayes, who at the time was the director of the shrine, received the OK to ask people if they wanted to contribute to the restoration. As a result of their $500,000 in donations, one of the buttresses is called the “St. Jude Buttress.”
Father Hayes recalled an incident that occurred during the restorations that illustrates what draws so many people to the shrine. A man “came to the door when the church was closed,” Father Hayes said. “He's standing at the front door; he's crying and so forth. So I thought I better say something to him.” When Father Hayes tried to engage him in conversation, the man said, “Oh, I'm sorry, but I just wanted to sit here and pray.”
Finding out that he was neither a member of the parish nor a Catholic, the surprised priest asked him why he would think of coming to the shrine. The stranger said he knew it was a place he was always welcome. “It's a place to pray,” he said.
He knew what so many others have also found—that even if his hopelessness seemed to be a good reason to avoid other places in the world, here it was the very reason why he could feel at home.
Lynn Smith writes from San Francisco.
----- EXCERPT: Why the paths of the hopeless lead to San Francisco ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: Pro-Lifers Differ Over United Nation Dues DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—U.S. House pro-lifers are disagreeing on a key question touching on overseas abortions: Should the United Nations be forced to reform before it gets paid?
The House on Aug. 5 rejected an amendment by Ohio Democrat Tony Hall, to pay $244 million in back dues to the United Nations before Congress addresses U.S. funding of international abortion promoters.
New Jersey Republican Chris Smith, chairman of the House Pro-Life Caucus, is against the U.S. funding of abortion groups overseas. He is leading a battle with the Clinton administration over whether to first pay the back dues, or arrears, with no strings attached or to seek certain U.N. reforms first.
The defeat of Hall's amendment by a vote of 221-206 will force Clinton to decide what is more important: maintaining the U.S. vote in the U.N. General Assembly, or funding abortion programs abroad.
“This signifies very clearly that if he [Clinton] wants to pay U.N. dues, he's going to accept reform,” Christian Polking, press secretary for Smith, told the Register.
The president consistently has vetoed any bill with pro-life language in it. “The only time he [Clinton] signs anything pro-life is when it has something he wants more in it,” said Polking. Pro-lifers need to stop the “abortion crusade” overseas, he added, and “hone in on groups [who are] manipulating governments.”
Last October, Clinton vetoed a bill that would have paid nearly $1 billion in dues to the United Nations. In his veto message, Clinton said that “the Congress has included in this legislation, unacceptable restrictions on international family planning programs and other international organizations.” The latter included Planned Parenthood International and the U.N. Population Control Fund.
In the past, Hall, a member of the House Pro-Life Caucus, supported not paying the back dues, aide Deborah DeYoung told the Register. She said that he thought it worked then, but he now thinks the United States should simply pay the arrears so it doesn't lose its vote.
Hurts the Cause
Polking acknowledged Hall as a “good” pro-lifer but said that “Hall's amendment hurts the cause.” The victory is “reassuring for us,” Polking added. “We want to make sure that reforms go through.”
Hall and his supporters have a decidedly different strategy on the issue than Smith. “We're undercutting the U.N. which prevents their job of peace-keeping and saving children,” said DeYoung.
But Douglas Johnson, legislative director for National Right to Life Committee, said it is more important to “curb egregious aspects of pro-abortion activities overseas” than to pay the U.N. dues. He added, “We opposed the amendment and welcomed its defeat.”
The National Conference of Catholic Bishops also agreed with Smith that U.N. payments should be halted until the reforms are made. “We don't think Congress should budge,” said Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the conference's Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities.
“We are in favor of paying the U.N. dues, but we wouldn't want to create an effort to circumvent Smith's goals [of U.N. reforms],” Doerflinger added. “We generally support the U.N. as an institution, that does not include support for the U.N. Population Control Fund.”
Most House members favor staying in the United Nations, though each year about 75 members vote in favor of the United States leaving the international body.
On not paying the dues, Hall in a press release said, “This strategy is failing to achieve the goal of changing U.S. abortion policy—goals I share as a member of the Pro-Life Caucus. But it is undercutting the development work that is central to the United Nations' mission—work that is a proven way of reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies and abortions.”
Kentucky Republican Harold Rogers, a leader in U.N. reform, said on the House floor “the only leverage we have to ensure that these reforms take place is by making them a condition of arrearage payments.”
U.N.'s Biggest Deadbeat
As Hall opened the debate on the House floor, he said, “When we link abortion with U.N. arrears we take a moral issue and we twist it to serve other purposes. I find it embarrassing that the world's only superpower is the U.N.'s biggest deadbeat.”
Smith argued that the United States pays a disproportionally high amount for U.N. peace-keeping missions and other expenses. “This talk about the U.S. being a deadbeat is absurd,” Smith said. “We pay more than our fair share.”
Smith said the United States last year paid $1.5 billion to the United Nations, $300 million of which was voluntary.
The United States loses its vote in the U.N. General Assembly if, after the beginning of a year, the debt is the same or larger than the previous year. “This is historic,” according to Hall's aide, DeYoung. “It's the furthest in the hole we've been.”
New measures demanding reform before payment will likely surface in the House in the coming months. Whether Clinton will sign any of them into law remains to be seen.
John Drogin writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Drogin ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Rocker Stands Firm for Life DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:It's not often that the terms “hard-rock music” and “pro-life activism” are spoken in the same sentence—unless the topic of discussion is the lead singer of one of the world's biggest-selling bands.
Gary Cherone, whose soaring vocals stand out even against the earsplitting crunch of Van Halen, is turning his powerful voice to protect the unborn.
On Aug. 14, Cherone stood on the steps of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., and read an open letter he penned in June.
“When is a woman not a woman?” said Cherone. “The answer is nonnegotiable: The ability to pursue happiness is contingent upon liberty—her liberty—and her freedom is solely dependent upon the mother of all human rights, the right of life.”
The letter was addressed to Eddie Vedder, lead singer of the rock group Pearl Jam and an outspoken supporter of the abortion-rights organization Rock for Choice.
The occasion for the reading was the arrival in Washington of a group of participants in the Crossroads Coast-to-Capitol Pro-Life Walk, which had just completed a three-month trek to spread their message. Additionally, Cherone received the American Life League's Courage Award.
Representing Rock for Life, an American Life League organization, Cherone challenged Vedder and others in the entertainment industry to consider redirecting their political energies.
Following the address, the usually reticent Cherone answered several questions for the Register.
Register: How do your band mates feel about your pro-life position?
Cherone: They support what I do. But this is my own view and I would leave it up to those guys. This is personal, but they support anything I do other than singing out of key. They wouldn't support that.
In your letter you speak a great deal about rights. Does your pro-life position arise primarily from a natural-rights or a religious sensibility?
Actually, it was important for me to not make it a political or religious letter. The letter was more philosophical and scientific. I wanted to go there because I thought I could reach an audience that had a common ground, regardless of what side of the fence you're sitting on. Anybody who is offended at the letter is offended at the truth. I said nothing in the letter that wasn't true.
Do you have a religious faith?
Yes, I'm a Messiah-believing Christian, nondenominational.
You must be aware that your stance clashes with the reckless lifestyle people expect from rock stars.
I've been doing this almost 20 years and I hate to break the news to the public, but that's more myth than anything.
What are your upcoming plans for supporting life?
Getting more involved with Rock for Life and speaking when I can. I was also invited to meet with the Pope next year. That would be pretty incredible.
Breaking Ranks
Bryan Kemper, founder of Rock for Life, says that Cherone has angered many in the rock community by breaking ranks over abortion. They're surprised, he says, that “one of their own” would defy their staunch position on the issue.
“But there are also those who wish to God they had the courage that Gary has,” says Kemper. “I think there are a lot of people in the rock community with a respect for life. I know that there are people whose lives are changing and I believe that, through something like what Gary's done, they will get the courage to stand up also.”
Read the full text of Cherone's Rock for Life letter at www.rockforlife.org, or by calling Steve Anborn at (540) 659-4171.
Matt Hisrich writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Matt Hisrich ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Life Note DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:Colo. Won't Fund Family Planning Clinics
DENVER POST, Aug. 11—Gov. Bill Owens has created a new statewide policy which doesn't allow state funding for family planning, reported the Denver Post.
“Owens' top health official, Jane Norton, announced [Aug. 10] that giving abortion providers money violates a 1984 voter-passed constitutional amendment that banned any state money from going directly or indirectly to pay for abortions,” reported the paper.
The paper quoted a Planned Parenthood spokeswoman saying “This is about appeasing the Christian Coalition, which extracted a pledge during the campaign last fall to de-fund Planned Parenthood.”
“That is absolutely not the case,” Norton retorted. “The governor did not ask me to do this.” Owens, a Catholic, opposes abortion. Norton said he supported the decision.
“For about 20 years, Planned Parenthood has gotten money under a contract with the state to provide health services such as cancer screenings and birth control,” said the report. This year, Planned Parenthood expected $319,000 in state dollars. The organization provides abortions at different facilities in Colorado Springs, Denver, Durango and Fort Collins, it said.
Life Institute Offers Resource Web Site
ZENIT, Aug. 10—The Life Research and Communications Institute has launched a web site to serve as a resource on life issues, bioethics and the dignity of the person. The site's address is http://www.culture-of-life.org.
“Our hope is that anyone defending the dignity of life will be able to find the writings and research useful in furthering their cause,” said Robert Best, President of the Institute. “Authentic science will always support the dignity of human life and the value of strong families.”
The Institute was founded in 1997 to collect and communicate scientific and factual information in order to promote the culture of life. “With facts from credentialed research, we hope to better engage mainstream culture with the message of life,” said Best. “Facts like the scientifically confirmed link between abortion and breast cancer are things that we have to get out to the public no matter how intense the media bias is.”
The Institute's web site includes articles on breast cancer and abortion by endocrinologist Dr. Joel Brind. “Dr. Brind's published research, his testimony in Congress and his continued tenacity in exposing these facts have been a great contribution to the pro-life movement,” said Best.
“Many people are also completely unaware of the dangers of the so-called ‘pill’,” said Best. “These drugs work against the body's natural processes and they contain carcinogenic elements in order to accomplish their goal.” This information is documented in an article entitled “Abortion and the Pill” by Dr. Chris Kahlenborn, which is also featured on the Institute's site.
Other authors on the web site include: Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons, Director of Comprehensive Counseling Services in Philadelphia; Patrick Fagan, the Fitzgerald Fellow for Family and Culture studies at the Heritage Foundation; and Dr. William May, the McGivney Professor of Moral Theology at the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family.
Bradley Says Gore is Soft on Abortion
ASSOCIATED PRESS, Aug. 11—Democratic Presidential candidate and former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley told supporters on Aug. 11 that, unlike Vice President Al Gore, he “respect[s] a woman's right to choose, and that includes women who are poor,” the Associated Press reported.
Bradley was responding to a Des Moines Register article in which Gore Spokesman Roger Salazar was quoted as saying that Gore opposes federal funding of abortion, except to save the life of the mother.
Salazar later recanted the statement, saying that Gore does in fact support unrestricted federal funding of abortion.
Gore's position has changed dramatically since he was a member of Congress. As a U.S. senator in 1987, Gore wrote, “During my 11 years in Congress, I have consistently opposed federal funding of abortions. In my opinion, it is wrong to spend federal funds for what is arguably the taking of a human life.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Lawyer Hopes New Argument Topples Roe DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:At first, it sounds like a novel argument: Under current laws, abortion is illegal because it always deprives the mother of informed consent. Simply enforce the law as it stands, and the abortion issue will be solved.
An attorney with a track record of pro-life success considers that argument credible enough—especially in light of evidence shed by technological advances—to bring it before the Supreme Court.
New Jersey attorney Harold J. Cassidy, whose previous litigation struck down surrogate parenting in the high-profile “Baby M” case, is pursuing a lawsuit on behalf of Donna Santa Marie, a woman who was pressured into an abortion against her will, and two other women.
Cassidy hopes the suit will overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that made abortion-on-demand legal any time during a pregnancy.
Cassidy spoke about the case with Register Radio News correspondent Rich Rinaldi.
You cite “Baby M” as a precedent for your arguments. Can you explain the connection?
The Supreme Court of the United States has always recognized the fact that a mother has a fundamental right to have a relationship with her child. In the case of adoption, if a woman thinks that, for whatever reason, she cannot raise her child, the law says that no waiver of that right will be recognized until after the baby is born.
The thinking behind this is multi-faceted. One, it's a recognition that a woman shouldn't be forced to make a decision when she is in a crisis. And two, [her decision] has to be fully informed. Only when she can hold the baby, see the baby, can she have a full appreciation of what she is giving up.
In the Baby M case, the Supreme Court of New Jersey said that, as a matter of law, any decision by a mother to waive this fundamental right prior to birth is uninformed.
Can you give us some of the specifics of that case?
Well, a woman had made the mistake, for altruistic purposes, of trying to help a couple who could not have their own child. She signed a contract not only prior to birth, but prior to conception.
The contract said that she would have the father's sperm implanted in her, carry the child, and then surrender her rights to a relationship with that child once the baby was born. She would surrender the child so that the wife of the father of the child could adopt the child. But then she had a change of heart.
She went through the experiences that women have in pregnancy, and she understood that this was her child. When the baby was born, she realized that she could never give that baby up, especially in exchange for money, which is what the contract was for.
The Supreme Court said that those contracts are unenforceable as a matter of law for a number of reasons, including the fact that they exploit women—but also because the mother has this fundamental right [of informed consent]. As a matter of law, a right of such magnitude could never be waived until the mother sees the baby after birth.
So the court was saying that this right can be given up only after birth?
Yes, and it's also a further recognition of a fact that we all know and is really, in a way, a sacred statement about all of us as individuals: that each child is utterly unique and determinations have to be made about that particular child.
‘The court has shown … that it is totally unimpressed with the reasoning behind
There is also the question of new technology today as compared to when
In 1973 science understood life only on a gross morphological basis. Today, with DNA research, we understand it on a submolecular level.
There has been this explosion of technology, much of which has resulted in new discoveries which conclusively establish that we have a complete, separate, unique and therefore irreplaceable human being right after conception.
This is one of the things that we are presenting to the court: This is a human being. Abortion doctors have been claiming that they are representing the rights of the woman. They claim that the act of killing a human being for no purpose other than to get rid of [him or her] is a constitutionally protected act.
The court has never looked at the question of whether such conduct, so defined, could be constitutionally protected. Also, once you recognize that the mother-child relationship exists, the child exists.
The court has never been presented with the abortion doctors who have been claiming they represent the rights of the mothers.
No one has ever raised a woman's right [to be fully informed]. Well, now we have the Santa Marie litigants—women who have courageously stood up and said, “Our rights have been destroyed by the abortion doctors who killed our children without our informed consent.”
Do you expect to win this case?
The court has shown in a number of decisions that it is totally unim-pressed with the reasoning behind Roe.
That decision isn't standing now because the court thinks it's solid jurisprudence; it's standing for a number of [legally weak] reasons. One of these is that the court doesn't see an alternative, given the current climate. Another is that the court claims it is bound to upholding [the status quo] because so many people have come to rely on it.
I expect that Roe will fall because there is no case that is so bad in terms of its legal reasoning and in terms of the damage that it does to the culture. It represents what is probably one of the greatest human rights violations of our time.
It's just a matter of people standing up to the court and demanding that our justices get things right when it comes to the lives of children and the welfare of their mothers.
Rich Rinaldi is director of Register Radio News.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Rich Rinaldi ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:A new study suggests that abortion reduced crime rates (see story, page 1). Pope John Paul II suggests that the opposite may be true.
In his homily at Denver's World Youth Day on Aug. 15, 1993 (Nos. 3-4), he said the abortion mentality has allowed crime and immorality to become more prevalent.
We are … witnessing the spread of a mentality that militates against life—an attitude of hostility towards life in the mother's womb and life in its last phases. At the very time that science and medicine are increasingly able to safeguard health and life, threats against life are becoming more insidious. Abortion and euthanasia—the actual taking of a real human life—are claimed as "rights" and solutions to "problems," problems of individuals or those of society. The killing of the innocent is no less sinful an act or less destructive because it is done in a legal and scientific manner.
In modern metropolises, life—God's first gift and a fundamental right of each individual, the basis of all other rights—is often treated more or less as a commodity to be … manipulated at will.
All this takes place although Christ, the Good Shepherd, wants us to have life. … He knows how many young people are wasting their lives, shirking their responsibility and living in falsehood. Drugs, the abuse of alcohol, pornography and sexual disorder, violence: these are some of the grave problems which need to be seriously addressed by the whole of society, in every nation and at the international level.
Why do the consciences of young people not rebel against this situation, especially against the moral evil which flows from personal choices? … Is it because conscience itself is losing the ability to distinguish good from evil?
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Did You Know? DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:In the June 1999 issue of its journal The American Psychologist, the American Psychological Association published a report called “Deconstructing the Essential Father.”
It said, “We do not believe that the data support the conclusion that fathers are essential to child well-being .…”
But the Morehouse School of Medicine and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta recently released a separate study. They compiled birth and death information for more than 200,000 children born in Georgia in 1989 and 1990 and found that the children in birth certificates lacking a father's name were twice as likely to die in the first year of life. After taking account of factors including maternal age, adequacy of prenatal care, and identifiable medical risks, a “significant” discrepancy remained, reports the Family Research Council.
----- EXCERPT: Facts of Life ----- EXTENDED BODY: TITLE: Eugenics Tone Feared in Crime-Abortion Study DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:CHICAGO—A study which links the 1990s drop in crime with the dramatic rise of abortion in the 1970s has shocked many social critics and pro-life advocates, who see the report as an endorsement of abortion—with racial overtones.
The authors of the “Legalized Abortion and Crime” denied that their as-yet unpublished study promotes abortion.
Yet the study's premise—that those who would have committed crimes were aborted in the years following the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision—is viewed by many as promoting not only abortion, but eugenics as well.
“The abortion-related reduction in crime is predominantly attributable to a decrease in crime per capita among the young,” the report said. It then suggests that two “mechanisms” could account for crime decreases, “selective abortion on the part of women most at risk to have children who would engage in criminal activity, and improved childbearing or environmental circumstances caused by better maternal, familial, or fetal circumstances.”
Rejecting the claim that reduced crime is a result of improved policing techniques in urban areas like New York, the authors of the report cite cities like Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, where crime has gone down without them. “While all of these factors may have served to dampen crime to some degree, we consider a novel explanation for the sudden crime drop of the 1990's: the decision to legalize abortion over a quarter century ago,” the report said.
Critics of the report said they don't object to the claim that fewer young people would result in fewer crimes. What they object to is the suggestion that minorities are more likely to commit crime and thus abortion, which reduces their numbers, should be welcome.
“We didn't have any interest in stepping into the abortion debate,” Stanford University law professor John Donohue, one of the report's authors, told the Register.
Referring to him and co-author Steve Levitt, a University of Chicago economics professor, Donohue said, “We have written several papers on crime, but couldn't explain the drop. In the course of our studies we stumbled upon the data of abortion—that it may be linked with the drop in crime.
“Our view is that nothing in the paper should be seen as an endorsement of abortion, [though] obviously we're concerned about the negative consequences of bringing unwanted children into the world. But there are many ways of avoiding births that don't rely on abortion.”
He added that the controversy surrounding the report is “a bit of a media issue.”
Charles Osgood, host of CBS News Sunday Morning, however, told the Register that he thought the report was “scary.” He said that in his view the report resembled eugenic theories.
Such theories, which at times devalue human beings based on racial or other genetic characteristics, were once strongly identified with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.
“It's a sort of dangerous road to start going down,” Osgood said, “to identify a group that is likely to contain a lot of criminals and to suggest that because many were aborted there is now less crime. I think it's racist, genocidal and bad science.”
Though he said the authors of the report don't want their study to be seen as promoting abortion, there are too many other factors involved in the lower crime rates to justify their focusing in on abortion.
“One factor is the economy,” Osgood said. “When prosperity goes up, crime goes down. Another is government programs, which seek to reduce crime. Yes, it's true that some are born poor and are more likely to become criminals, but the answer is not to abort these pregnancies, but to present poor people with more opportunities.”
Joe Scheidler, who heads the Pro-Life Action League, agreed with Osgood.
“This is eugenics,” Scheidler told the Register. “It says that if you're a minority and young, you're going to have trash, so kill it.” Scheidler said the report should be welcome news to pro-abortion groups like Planned Parenthood, which, he said, was founded on the principles of eugenics.
“They know that minorities comprise the highest number of abortions by percentage,” Scheidler said. “Margaret Sanger [the founder of Planned Parenthood] thought minorities were scum. She was very upfront about this when she referred to abortion as ‘eliminating the human weeds.’”
Scheidler said that there were very few crimes by Jewish boys in the 1940s as a result of Nazi efforts to eliminate Jews a decade earlier, but that it would be “diabolical” to view this as a social benefit.
“The fact is that a growing majority of people, especially women, are coming to view abortion as bad,” he continued. “Planned Parenthood knows this and is trying to show people that abortion has some good effects, and that it's gonna get better,” he said.
Roger Rathman, vice president of media relations for Planned Parenthood, refuted Scheidler's claim, saying it “could not be further from the truth.” Planned Parenthood's goal, he said, “is what it has always been, to see that every child in America is a wanted child.”
Rathman added that Planned Parenthood had no comment to make on the crime report since it had not yet seen it.
Statistics obtained from Planned Parenthood's research arm, the Alan Guttmacher Institute, show that abortion is far more common among blacks than whites. In 1995, for example, there were 409 abortions per 1,000 pregnancies among minority women, compared with 210 abortions among whites.
Susan Tew, deputy communications director for the Guttmacher Institute, said it was “extremely premature” to comment on the crime study until it had undergone peer analysis. She confirmed, however, that many of the data contained in the study came from Guttmacher studies.
—Or Business?
Dolores Bernadette Grier is vice chancellor for community relations in the Archdiocese of New York. Grier, who is black, takes a different tack than Scheidler on the question of eugenics.
“As for singling out minorities, I used to think that was the case because the majority of Planned Parenthood's clinics are in minority neighborhoods,” she said. “But the bottom line is that abortion is a big business. And what do you do in a business? You try to sell your product to the most vulnerable. These medical hit men can make a million dollars a year performing abortions. Planned Parenthood has no feeling for the babies, their concern is the money and they don't care who they kill to get it.”
Grier recounted a visit she once made to a Planned Parenthood clinic in New York City, claiming to show an interest in their literature. “I went in and saw all of these couples on the first floor—black and white,” she said. “But when they took me upstairs to get the materials I felt like I was in the corporate offices of IBM. There were plants and white businessmen in three-piece suits.—The point is that this is big business.”
A 1987 Church document, Donum Vitae (The Gift of Life), from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, warned specifically about the link between abortion and eugenics.
”The abortion mentality…thus leads, whether one wants it or not, to man's domination over the life and death of his fellow human beings and can lead to a system of radical eugenics.”
A Different Theory
Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, said, “Abortion and crime are indeed linked, but not in the way that the pro-choice people would like them to be.—[I]t is necessary for us to give serious consideration to the psychological dynamics that have been unleashed by the abortion culture.”
Father Pavone said that many children born after the Roe decision are strongly affected by the realization that they were viewed as a mere choice by their parents.
“Nobody who is really serious about ending violence in our society can afford to leave any stone unturned in that effort [to end abortion],” he said. “Those who can least afford it, of course, are the children themselves.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian McGuire ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Even If It's by E-mail, It Can Still Be Slander DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:CINCINNATI—Procter & Gamble Co. thought the rumors had died down.
But they hadn't figured on e-mail.
For years, a rumor circulated that the Cincinnati-based home products manufacturer had ties with the Church of Satan and that 10% of its annual profits funded the church. This culminated in several court cases in the early '80s in which the company was vindicated of the accusations and some of those who disseminated the rumor were fined for libel.
That outcome would be enough to dissuade future rumor-mongers, Procter & Gamble thought.
But rumors that once spread person to person by word of mouth are now sent to droves at a mere keystroke on a computer—with no dependable way of tracing their origin. Welcome to the world of e-slander.
Many in corporate and media circles are concerned over the ease and speed with which groundless claims now circulate electronically. Moreover, many well-intentioned Christian e-mailers face a seemingly novel moral question daily—to believe or not to believe what shows up in my in-box?
Msgr. William Smith, a moral theologian at St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, N.Y., thinks the question is simple. “It's a matter of calumny and a direct violation of the Eighth Commandment,” he said. “Just because it involves technology doesn't mitigate the offense.—[T]hat it's done over a computer has nothing to do with it—it's just plain wrong.”
But a computer technician in Arlington, Va.—he asked to be identified only as Mike—said it's more complicated than that. Having recently received an e-mail from a friend which claimed that Procter & Gamble recently came clean on its ties with Satanism, he talked the matter over with his wife and decided it was serious enough to look into. “I told my wife about the rumor and we decided that maybe we should send for a transcript.” Meanwhile, Mike sent the e-mail to a number of friends, all of whom would be “concerned to know about attacks against the Church,” he said.
In defense of passing the rumor along, Mike distinguished between those who invent the lies and those who, in good faith, take them at face value and send them to friends. “I think to claim that passing along e-mails without checking their veracity is a lie, is pretty strong,” he said. “There's a valley of difference between sending out spam e-mails that are scandalous and informing close friends of something that's a concern—to say, ‘Hey, I received this, what do you think?’ Without question, I'd be hesitant to call that slander. If I thought it was false, I wouldn't propagate it,” he said. So thought the friend who sent Mike—and 41 others—the message about Procter & Gamble.
A Captive Audience
Who gets these e-mails? Often, it's people like Mike. Those who, for one reason or another, wish to harm a big corporation or a public figure often single out Catholics and other Christians who take their faith seriously. They play upon their duty to defend Christ and his Church by claiming that someone connected with a corporation or government has made some scandalous statement about Christianity on television. To give their claims the appearance of truth, they often cite a specific date and episode of the show on which the person was to have made the remark.
They even provide the address and episode number, urging concerned parties to send away for a transcript of the show. The invitation is enough to convince most people that the tapes are indeed out there, and so they believe the lie wholesale. One recent example of this is an e-mail that certain Catholic media outlets have recently received regarding Attorney General Janet Reno.
The e-mail stated that on the June 26 edition of “60 Minutes,” Reno said that “a cultist is one who has a strong belief in the Bible and the second coming of Christ, who frequently attends Bible studies, who has a high level of giving to a Christian cause, who home-schools for their children, who has accumulated survival foods and has a strong belief in the Second Amendment, and who distrusts big government. Any of these may qualify a person a cultist but certainly more than one of these would cause us to look at this person as a threat, and his family as being in a risk situation that qualified for government interference.”
After sending the message about Reno to some friends, the woman who received this e-mail discovered it was a canard, and quickly informed those to whom she had sent it.
“I've long thought that the most important teaching in Catholic schools about computers is not how to use them, but the ethics of using them,” said Dan Andriacco, director of communications for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. “One issue is the ethics of drawing research materials. Are you researching, or simply reprinting something verbatim? But another dimension of ethics and the Internet is the distribution of false information.”
“On the one hand, the Internet is just a medium like books,” Andriacco continued. “But it's the first mass medium that lets ordinary people become the producers. Anyone can reach a large number if people on the Internet. It's fairly easy to set up a Web page or to recirculate something through e-mail or bulletin boards, he said. “In one sense, then, it's no different from other media, but in another it's very different because it has greater access and moves so fast—it requires a greater amount of vigilance.”
Andriacco added that he too received an e-mail this week that passed along the Procter & Gamble rumor. He said that because Procter & Gamble resides within the Cincinnati Archdiocese, Archbishop Joseph Bernardin and his successor, Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk, have often spoken out in defense of the company. One of Archbishop Pilarczyk's letters, which calls upon those involved in spreading the rumor to stop, is posted on Procter & Gamble's Web site.
“I'm not sure he [Archbishop Pilarczyk] knows it's resurfaced,” Andriacco said. “Last week I received one e-mail message regarding it, and I got a telephone call about it this week from Florida. Both people had heard a rumor that the chief executive officer of Procter & Gamble mentioned his connection with Satanism on a recent issue of ‘Sally Jesse Raphael.’ They wanted to know whether Archbishop Pilarczyk still stands for what he said previously,” Andriacco said. “I sent back a message saying that the rumor is a lie. I also told them to check out the Sally Jesse Raphael Web site, which posts a message saying that the rumor is a hoax. Sending them to the Web site is the most concrete way to respond, because it sends people back to the source of the rumor.”
Counting the Costs
Typically, large companies like Procter & Gamble practice a policy of ignoring calumny. They figure it's too costly to respond to every detraction, however unfounded it may be. But the Procter & Gamble rumor became so nettlesome to corporate headquarters, which shielded some 50,000 calls about the rumor during a three-month period in 1982, that it decided to track down its source. As it turned out, the rumor was circulated by two Amway distributors.
And there have been suits since that case in '82. “We're talking significant amounts of money, millions of dollars over the years,” said Procter & Gamble spokeswoman Linda Urley. She said that the rumors started to circulate in the late '70s and have continued with varying levels of intensity since then. “Somebody will morph the story or introduce some new facts to it,” she said. “In the '80s, they said our CEO appeared on the Merv Griffin Show or on Phil Donohue, now it's Sally Jesse Raphael.”
On the question of bearing false witness against one's neighbor, the
Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “He becomes guilty:—of rash judgment who, even tacitly, assumes as true, without sufficient foundation, the moral fault of a neighbor—of detraction who, without objectively valid reason discloses another's faults and failings to persons who did not know them—of calumny who, by remarks contrary to the truth harms the reputation of others and gives occasion for false judgments concerning them” (No. 2477). The Catechism then advises, “to avoid rash judgment, everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbor's thoughts, words, and deeds in a favorable way” (No. 2478).
Regarding modern means of communications, No. 2494 of the Catechism says: “Society has a right to information based on truth, freedom, justice, and solidarity.…The proper exercise of this right demands that the content of communication be true and—within the limits set by justice and charity—complete. Further, it should be communicated honestly and properly. This means that in the gathering and in the publication of news, the moral law and the legitimate rights and dignity of man should be upheld.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian McGuire ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Shroud Data in Line With Gospel Account DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:TARPON SPRINGS, Fla.—Many of the “mysteries” surrounding the Shroud of Turin that have puzzled scientists for years can best be explained by one hypothesis, according to a growing body of scientific evidence.
The hypothesis: It is the burial shroud of Jesus.
New evidence announced in St. Louis on Aug. 2 by botanist Avinoam Danin of Jerusalem, along with other recent findings, suggest the cloth was used in the Jewish burial of a man from northern Palestine who was crowned with thorns and crucified before the eighth century and buried in a garden tomb by a wealthy man.
Last week's Register reported that plants and pollen embedded in the Shroud of Turin, as well as newly discovered imprints of flowers on its surface, have been traced to the area around Jerusalem and dated to before the eighth century by Danin, of Hebrew University. In an interview, shroud expert John Iannone also explained new doubts scientists have about the accuracy of 1988 carbon dating tests that suggested the shroud dated to the 13th or 14th century.
This week, Iannone, the author of The Mystery of the Shroud of Turin: New Scientific Evidence (Alba House, 1998), puts those findings into the context of other recent evidence supporting the authenticity of the shroud.
The Shroud of Turin is a yellowing linen cloth measuring 14 feet 3 inches long by 3 feet 7 inches wide. It bears the image of a man's face and body and what appear to be bloodstains.
It is named for its present home in Turin, Italy. Written accounts of its history track it to Lirey, France, in 1354. Iannone points to earlier written histories that he says could refer to the shroud, including legends about King Abgar (circa A.D. 40), works by the historians Eusebius and Evagrius, the sixth century Acts of Holy Apostle Thaddaeus, and accounts of the presence of a shroud in Constantinople in the 10th and 13th centuries.
The image that appears on the shroud is unique, and its cause is unknown. It is a photonegative image with a scorched look and bears none of the signs of painting. Shroud devotees often attribute the unusual quality of the image to unknown physical aspects of the Resurrection.
Pope John Paul II has expressed his own attitude toward the shroud. During an April 1980 visit there, he called Turin, “the city that preserves an unusual and mysterious relic … the Holy Shroud, an extraordinary witness—if we accept the arguments of so many scientists—of Easter: of the Passion, the Death and the Resurrection. A silent witness, but at the same time surprisingly eloquent!”
Iannone is also president of the Holy Shroud Task Force of Tarpon Springs, Fla. He spoke with the Register about recent evidence related to the shroud.
Register: Pollen from flowers and from thistles was found on the shroud. Could the thistles be the crown of thorns mentioned in the Gospels?
John Iannone: Yes. There are flowers present which were used in burial, and Dr. [Alan] Whanger [of Duke University] said that in his investigation of both the Oviedo cloth in Spain [believed to be a face cloth used in Jewish burial, it shares many characteristics of the shroud] and the Shroud in Turin that this thistle … is most likely related to the crown of thorns.
The floral images on the shroud are pretty substantial, as are the pollen that match those flowers. I think Dr. Danin [the Jerusalem botanist] and Dr. [Uri] Baruch [of the Israeli antiquities authority] have shown that the pollen is not just “random.” There are pockets of pollen on the shroud identified with specific flowers that they say had to have been placed there.
So it's also one of the identifiers of the fact that this is the historical Jesus, because we know that very often in Roman crucifixions … individuals would be given a mass grave. But this individual was obviously treated in a very respectful fashion by being laid in a shroud which is a very fine fabric. This individual also had been given a private “garden” tomb, being entombed with flowers. It makes it a much more dignified funeral, certainly, one we would correlate with the New Testament verses. It provides one of the signatures that we use to identify it with the historical Jesus.
I understand that among the flowers used are some that only bloom in March and April.
Dr. Danin has pointed out 28 species of flowers … identified from the pollen [that are] grown in the Holy Land, and more specifically within the 5-kilometer area he calls the Jerusalem-Hebron area. So these are flowers that grow very close to Jerusalem. He said they grow principally in March and April and May. That would correlate with the time of the Passover and the Passion. He said they would be flowers that would be fresh in the fields around Jerusalem at that time of year and could easily have been picked at the time of the crucifixion. Some would even be in the markets of the city.
Have we learned anything new about the blood in the shroud? Some have argued that it is dye or paint, and not blood.
Some of the latest studies that have been done on the blood have been done at the University of Texas and also in Europe, but I'll work with what's been done in the U.S. right now.
Dr. Victor Tryon and his wife, Nancy, run the DNA lab at the [University of Texas] Health Science Center. They have now pointed out that in samples of the blood they studied from … the back of the head, they have been able to identify X and Y chromosomes which tells them that this is in fact a male's blood.
And they have identified a very small strand of DNA. They can't say if it's … Jesus' blood or not because they have no comparison, but what they can say is that “this is degraded DNA which is consistent with the supposition of ancient blood.” That's the way they phrase it, and that is pretty serious.
Prior to 1978 when the blood studies really began in earnest, there were those who would say that this is just a medieval painting, this is red ocher paint, and there are still a few die-hards today. But [the information shows] that this is a blood where you can identify DNA, where we can type it as AB, where we can say it's degraded, ancient blood and it even has high concentrations bilirubin as Dr. [Alan] Adler has pointed out at the University of Western Connecticut. Bilirubin is very common with individuals who die under traumatic circumstances with high stress and that is certain with crucifixion.
When you get into all of that you clearly dismiss the concept that this is any kind of paint or die or ink or chalk. There is no substance that constitutes the image, and the blood is real, it's ancient, and it's human.
What's the significance of AB blood type? Does it offer any clues?
Of the four types of blood—A, B, O and AB—AB is the most uncommon. About 3.2% of the world population have that. It's very specific to the Middle East and even more specific to northern Palestine. [There are] high concentrations of AB blood there. So that really helps identify the area where the shroud is from. It's very hard to deny that this is a cloth that can be traced to ancient time.
What other signs do we have that trace it to Jesus' time?
Another very interesting thing: the shroud is 14 feet and 3 inches long by 3 feet and 7 inches wide. People say that's a kind of odd measurement. Why would they cut a cloth that way? The fact is that if you take the shroud and you translate it into cubits (cubits are about 21.6 inches), which is the ancient Jewish method of measurement, it becomes exactly 2 cubits by 8 cubits.
And there is a real consistency with ancient Jewish loom technology. What we know of how they wove cloth, it's a very fine weave, a three-over-one as opposed to a common weave. We know that Joseph of Arimathea, for example, was a wealthy man. He's the one who purchased the shroud and loaned his garden tomb. So the fabric is very consistent with everything we know of ancient Jewish weaving, and the type of cave tombs and the individuals involved in the burial of Jesus.
Rich Rinaldi is director of Register Radio News.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Rich Rinaldi ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Pro Wrestling's Antics Don't Amuse Everyone DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:ST. PAUL, Minn.—Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura's scheduled one-day return to the pro wrestling ring is just one more sign of the times for Wade Horn.
It's not that Horn, president of the Gaithersburg, Md.-based National Fatherhood Initiative, has it in for the wrestler-turned-governor. He doesn't think the public should worry about the publicity (and prestige) a reigning governor might bring to the sport when Ventura referees the World Wrestling Federation's Summerslam on Aug. 22.
Rather, Horn's big concern lies with parents who matter-of-factly introduce their children to WWF's low-brow mix of vulgarity, sexual innuendo and pseudo-violence.
“I see fathers bringing their kids to these matches,” Horn told the Register. “What is going through their minds?”
“It's indisputable that if we saturate our kids with violence and sex that they will begin to associate the two together,” said Horn, who is also a child psychologist. “This isn't rocket science. This doesn't require a psychologist. This is just logical.”
Horn was quick to admit, though, polling data and television ratings seem to indicate that parents might be sending mixed signals.
“Everybody says that there's too much sex and violence on TV,” he observed, “but somebody is watching this stuff.”
Indeed they are. The WWF has doubled its revenues within the last two years, to $251 million, and earlier this month announced a stock offering expected to generate $172.5 million. For better or for worse, professional wrestling has become a significant, though often overlooked, force in popular culture.
In recent years, the amount of vulgarity and violence in professional wrestling has escalated significantly, but Jim Byrne, senior vice president of marketing for WWF, said he believes that the WWF is simply providing audiences with what they want.
“Yes, we can be a little raunchy,” Byrne told the Register. “Yes, sometimes our wrestlers use colorful language. It's all 100% entertainment.”
Explaining the Minnesota governor's decision to make the Aug. 22 appearance, Byrne said, “Vince McMahon (the founder of WWF) and Jesse Ventura remained good friends over the years. It looked like a great opportunity for everyone to have a lot of fun.”
For parents who object to WWF fare, Byrne encouraged that they use the federation's ratings system, which rates each of its show. Different WWF programs such as “RAW” or “Heat” air on different nights and at different times to let parents better monitor their kids' viewing, Byrne said. And if all programs are unacceptable, then Byrne suggested that parents are free to change the channel.
Ventura spokesman John Wodele agreed. He said that it is not Ventura's responsibility to make sure children aren't watching.
“The governor is a firm believer in parental discretion,” Wodele said. “If they think it's inappropriate, they should monitor access.” He added that the show is intended only for adult. “It's a pay-per-view event; it's not free TV.—There's ample opportunity for parental decision.”
The appearance of the Minnesota governor, who left wrestling in the '80s, may not even attract many children to watch the Summerslam because Ventura isn't as popular with kids as he is with those of college age who grew up with him, said Peter Turo, 13, of White Plains, N.Y.
“Kids our age don't know much about government anyway,” Peter told the Register.
More Demand, More Supply
In fact, wrestling programs dominate most of the top-rated slots in cable television and rank No. 1 among the college-men audience.
But that might change. Plans are in the way for more wrestling, and at earlier times when more kids will likely watch. The Nashville Network will air an hour of Extreme Championship Wrestling from 8 to 9 p.m. starting Aug. 27.
The UPN network announced that it will broadcast wrestling every Thursday from 8 to 10 p.m. with a program called “WWF Smackdown!”
Gov. Jesse Ventura
UPN President Dean Valentine defended his decision at a television critics' meeting in Los Angeles. “We do not believe there is anything sexist or violent about the WWF,” he said.
Others were not so convinced. “There's nothing liquid about water, either,” retorted Horn. Wrestling, he said, “is not a good thing for impressionable minds.”
When Valentine was asked if the WWF was sexist for having a pimp character who brings with him women he calls “hos,” Valentine responded, “Hey, guys, it's comedy. Ligthen up.”
Fake or Real?
“Most 12-year-olds think it's fake, but so what?” said Horn. “Just because you call it a comedy, doesn't mean it has no impact.”
Peter Turo, the 13-year-old from White Plains, agreed that most his kids age know that wrestling is staged. “But I only know it's fake because I've heard it's fake,” he said. Not so with 6- and 7-year-olds, his friend Tim Hurst pointed out. “They think it's real.”
In May, a 7-year-old Dallas boy killed his brother with a clothesline he learned from watching wrestling on TV.
WWF's influence does not stop with just the violence. Many kids knew that former female wrestler Sable had posed nude for Playboy magazine, because it was mentioned prominently on the WWF and received widespread media publicity on talk shows like “Roseanne.” Moreover, many male wrestlers make references to deviant sexual acts and often degrade women both verbally and physically.
Real vs. TV
Gary Wolfram, of Hillsdale, Mich., blamed parents for shunning their duties. “How do children have the time to watch this stuff?” asked the Catholic father of three.
In order that his 11-year-old son, Wyatt, properly understand the distinction between television and reality, Wolfram takes him along on deer hunting trips.
“When you take your child along for a hunt, you can show him true violence,” Wolfram said. “The deer's dead. It's not coming back up. On TV, you just shoot the person and that's it. It's a false sense of violence; there's no consequences for your actions.”
Josh Mercer, a native Minnesotan, Is based in Washington, D.C
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Josh Mercer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Helping Homosexuals the Church's Way DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:Father James B. Lloyd
He has hosted a popular TV interview program, directed a school of pastoral counseling, worked as a missionary and taught psychology, but for the past five years, he has run a chapter of Courage, the Church ministry to help homosexuals. He spoke recently with Register correspondent John Burger.
John Burger: The Vatican recently barred Father Robert Nugent and Sister Jeanne Grammick, the founders of New Ways Ministry, from any pastoral work involving homosexual persons. Does this mean that the Church is against ministry to homosexuals?
Father James Lloyd: Absolutely not. On the contrary, the Church is deeply into it. Courage was founded at the request of Cardinal Terence Cooke, archbishop of New York from 1968 to 1983. The Church is asking us to get into the healing ministry with compassion, but with truth. The Church is concerned for anyone who suffers, and the person with homosexual tendencies suffers.
The Church is moved with the pity of Christ to help. An Episcopalian bishop, Bennett Simms of Atlanta, said it nicely: “Compassion does not mean endorsement.”
The Church is loaded with compassion, but the person who is truly loving and compassionate will sometimes have to be firm and demand certain boundaries. Cardinal Alfonso LÛpez Trujillo of the Pontifical Council for the Family said that to be silent here is neither pastoral nor caring. People like Father Nugent or those involved in Dignity say you're not supposed to raise the question of what the Church teaches, but focus on compassion.
I think there's a certain amount of hostility in that stance. It's like saying, “I don't care what you do, just don't bother me.” A truly loving Church says, “I have to guide you for your sake.” When people say the Church is uncompassionate, they don't know what they're talking about. The Holy Father has written beautifully about sexual problems, about human love, that the basis of society is the family.
I'm euphoric about the Vatican decision. Not mentioning Church teaching leaves the doors open for people with this problem, lets them keep doing it. It's such a disservice. So it will be very helpful to say, “This is the fact, this is the reality.” Living in a fantasy world is a problem.
In the pastoral care for homosexuals, how big is the role of teaching the truth about homosexuality?
Not to let people know the truth, to let themselves be blinded, is wrong. Truth is a jolt of reality. One of my Courage members said the other night, “I've been clear of homosexual acts for six months and I'm beginning to see things clearly.” It's the truth of Christ himself, which is freedom. If you say, “Do whatever seems natural to you; God will understand,” that's very hostile.
What made you want to get into this work?
I kind of bounced into it as part of my role as a psychologist. Some of the people I was seeing had sexual problems. I wasn't well informed about it; it was shadowy. I began to see the pain of these people, and I saw how pastoral counseling brought them great relief, how the sacraments and living chastely brought them a great deal of peace.
To be a Christian is not just to be comforted but to be in a place of transformation. I was teaching psychology at St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers and brought in Father John Harvey, one of the founders of Courage, to give a guest talk. I was fascinated by what he was saying; for example, to see that the word “gay” is really a reaction-formation word, a defense mechanism the mind uses not to face something, to cover up anger, bitterness, loneliness, depression.
There is an enormous amount of sadness, alienation in the gay community. I found that by offering Christ in the Catholic manner, [this] gave them great relief, self-esteem. The Courage notion gave them friendship with people who had similar goals, rather than with people who were occasions of sin. I have 51 people on my list who come, 14 or 15 at a time, every Tuesday, all males. I'm convinced that the only way out is Jesus Christ. This is the real answer.
My group is made up of men ranging in age from 23 to 74 and has included a physician, a Ph.D., a J.D., a street prostitute, a computer programmer, an actor, a Russian Orthodox priest, Protestant ministers. One guy is a secular religious. I had a rabbi, but he had to drop out because the talk about Jesus made him too uncomfortable. He said there's no comparable group in Judaism.
How does Courage work?
Basically, on the model of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's group-oriented. We begin with prayer, a little reflection by the leader, who is usually a priest. Each person has a chance to speak without interruption. Before the meeting, there's a social, and some remarkable friendships come out of it.
It's a spiritual program with psychological adjuncts. I've got them going to Mass every day, saying the rosary, doing spiritual reading. Courage is a positive thing. We talk about developing in the love of Christ and learning to carry the cross of Christ. It gives people access to grace. Some will never be anything but homosexually oriented, and they've accepted that. Their condition and their suffering can actually be a platform for holiness, provided a person approaches it the Christ way.
One of the men who comes to the meetings is a lawyer, and he constantly quotes from Francis Thompson's poem “The Hound of Heaven.” The point is that when you give in to God you're happy, not when you deny the commandments, when you give in to the so-called gay abandon. The question is, “What is God's will?” The commandments are meant to give happiness. I'm not even talking about the physical effects, such as AIDS, but the interior—the lack of equanimity in your life. It's the same with heterosexuals who are promiscuous: They will also find distress and a lack of love, though researchers claim that the traumatic wound is deeper in homosexuals.
A heavy accent has been on chastity. There are some men who have the possibility of growing to the heterosexual level. Some people do that, but they're in the minority. One guy I knew got married and had kids, but that's rare. I'm pessimistic about change. I haven't seen that much. But I've seen enormous evidence of containment and holiness.
Changing is not a goal of Courage. We're encouraging people to go for the cross. Change is an option open to the person. It's chastity that is a requirement.
There is also Encourage, which helps families of homosexuals. When a 20-year-old says, “Mom, Dad, I'm gay,” they're devastated. It can be a terrible disappointment. But they can learn how to react healthily and holily to that.
To what extent is the problem one of promiscuity and a generally incorrect or incomplete notion of sexuality on the part of many young people?
Promiscuity is fairly rampant, especially in what they call cruising—going from bar to bar looking for a sexual encounter. Even when they've had a relationship, living together, they would have the privilege of fooling around with others as long as they had an emotional primacy. All they require is an emotional constancy, even if they have a little fun with others. A lot of homosexuals are almost infants about it; their concept of sexuality is physical. Masturbation is rampant, jousting with sexy jokes—casual encounters at parties. They can be very intelligent, artsy, verbal, creative, yet be infantile or juvenile on another level. They're also generally narcissistic, terribly self-concerned.
Will the Vatican action affect the many other New Ways groups around the country?
I suspect they will ignore it. The same with Dignity and so-called gay and lesbian ministries. They generally ignore Church teaching. They're more into a feel-good experience.
Has Courage caught on?
Yes and no. It could be more successful, though it's spread to New Zealand, Australia, England, Ireland and Canada. But the demands are tough. You have to be totally dedicated to be involved.
Do you encounter any difficulties promoting Courage? Is there opposition among other Catholics who minister to homosexuals? How do you deal with that?
Yes, even from some priests. I ask them, “Why don't you like it?” One reason, I think, is that it calls for self-restraint, discipline. The Church says homosexuality is an intrinsic disorder. Some people take that as saying homosexuals are sick, but it's not that. It's just that the Creator did not plan it this way. He meant for the male to seek the female, the female to seek the male, and for them to have children. I asked Father Harvey once why some priests are so opposed to Courage. He said they don't think chastity is possible. That's the keynote to the whole Courage thing.
We get difficulties from a lot of nuns: They allow the emotional to override the real and ask questions like, “How can you deny people love?” That's why people said the Vatican statement was severe. But I saw it as a long-suffering thing. They were in conversation with Father Nugent and Sister Grammick for 20 years, asking them to think it over.
I feel that if the Church says this, it has to be taken seriously. Rather than debate with people, I tell them, “This is where I'm coming from.” There's no way I can force anybody. But people keep coming to Courage because the need is out there. I have to go to people I can help. For alcoholics, we don't discuss the possibility of a drink here or there. We say, “This is toxic for you; it's evil, destructive.” It's a ruthless approach. We give no quarter to the enemy, the enemy being one's sexual deviancy or impulses to act out.
You've been a priest for 51 years. What has it been like?
Terrific. I've had more fun than I should have. It's been a very full life. I was on TV once and the gal asked me, “Why are you a priest?” I said, “Because I like it.” I know I wouldn't be content being anything else. It's been a lot of work, and I started some projects that didn't work out. There were disappointments, but that kind of thing pales in comparison to the larger picture.
What were the formative influences in your life that led you to the priesthood?
Strangely, probably my father, who was a Jewish agnostic. He was in the theater. I thought I was going to be a doctor. That's what he wanted. But I thought it would be great fun to spend life probing human beings, to try to move them to God. My mother was Irish, very simple. The Paulist priests in my parish were outstanding, very priestly guys, I thought, interesting, intellectual, fun. The Irish Christian Brothers who taught at my high school, Power Memorial in Harlem, put the cap on it for me. They were so totally devoted to Christ and the Church. It just struck me that this is a very attractive way to live.
Why did you get into psychology?
I was rector of a seminary during the Second Vatican Council, and a lot of priests were leaving to get married. Students were in an uproar. I thought I'd study a little bit about human nature to see what's going on with these guys. So I got a counseling degree, which was very helpful. Then I got a doctorate in psychology. My dissertation dealt with why men leave the priest-hood.
How has it helped you in your ministry?
I work mostly with priests and religious on the assumption that healers really need to be healed. The presumption is that those guys have it all figured out, and they don't. My primary identity is as a priest; I interpret everything through that lens. The whole human nature thing is hooked into Catholic anthropology. I take that, and it works for many people. It helps me to be priestly. I go to people who get busted up by life.
— John Burger
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Burger ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: Cable TV Firm Draws the Line on Adult Fare DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:COUDERSPORT, Pa.—Some cable television providers have a reputation for making money by offering “adult” content to customers.
Adelphia Cable doesn't want to be one of them.
Based in rural north central Pennsylvania, Adelphia has 5.1 million customers, making it the sixth largest cable company in the country. What it doesn't have is “adult” channels on its network.
John Rigas, Adelphia founder and director, said he decided almost 47 years ago to provide programming that would be both suitable for families and a strengthening force in society.
He and his brother, Gus, established one of the nation's first cable TV systems in Coudersport, naming it with the Greek word for brother.
Adelphia spokesman Paul Heimel told the Register that Rigas' sense of social responsibility means that the company won't allow “adult” content. “He doesn't want to increase the company's financial standing by sacrificing the company's principles,” he said.
Not all its programming would be considered family fare, however; the company does offer channels carrying R-rated movies. But Heimel said that the company is sacrificing money “in the millions” because “adult” programming provides “potentially some of the most lucrative pay services available at cable companies.”
Heimel recalled that when Adelphia recently acquired some existing cable companies, Rigas told him that those with “adult” channels “should brace for the fact that we are going to be removing them. That is going to cause quite an uproar.”
That policy wins applause from Brian Gail, a one-time advertising executive who helped launch the nation's biggest cable television concern, HBO. Gail was fired from his ad firm after a run-in with HBO officials over their programming. He now heads Gail Force, a communications consulting firm in Philadelphia.
Gail said he admires Adelphia for its responsible attitudes toward programming decisions that in other companies “have a harmful effect on children and on family-building and community-building.”
Time Warner Inc., parent of HBO, said it tries to find a balance in dealing with issues that concern parents. One solution is pay-per-view, said Michael Luftman, vice president of corporate communications at Time Warner Cable. “This a situation where the customer knows exactly what he or she is purchasing—and we presume that they are informed enough to be able to make that choice appropriately.”
He contended that the only difference between his company and Adelphia “is that Adelphia does not sell these pay-per-view channels.”
Brian Gail disagreed. “There is a major decisive distinction,” he said, “between a company that is trying to build community and provide family entertainment like Adelphia, and Time Warner, who is trying to satisfy shareholders by putting whatever they can on the air under whatever label they have to.”
Parents do have a responsibility to oversee their children's viewing choices, said Gail, and maybe even to buy electronic blocking devices, like those offered by Time Warner. But cable companies “have a responsibility to put programs on the air that don't require it,” he said.
Adelphia's Heimel said that, as a carrier, a company cannot control 100% of its programming. He added that Adelphia also tries to show parents how to use their cable service. “We sponsor what is called the critical viewing workshops,” Heimel noted. “We bring groups in and we try to help the parents to choose wisely among the programming.”
In his 1999 World Communications Day address to people who work in media-related industries, Pope John Paul II said, “The media have a special responsibility to all who are searching: ‘to witness to the truth about life, about human dignity, about the true meaning of our freedom and mutual independence.’”
Gail observed that many cable TV customers already know what they want—and it doesn't include “adult” channels.
“The people who by and large pay the monthly fee are mothers,” he said. “And mothers do not want anything in the home … that is destructive of home and does not build a sense of home and family.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: U.S.Notes & Quotes DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:Darwin on the Run in Public Schools
THE WASHINGTON POST, Aug. 8—The Kansas Sate Board of Education has adopted new standards for teaching biology that criitics say will virtually eliminate any consideration of evolution from the science curriculum in the state's public schools.
At least eight other states are “trying to remove evolution from state science standards or water down the concepts, with varying degrees of success,” reported Hanna Rosin.
Since the Supreme Court ruled in 1987 that Louisiana could not mandate that schools give equal time to teaching creation science, Rosin reported, creation activists have sought to undermine evolution on scientific grounds.
“Religious conservatives have tapped into skepticism from inside and outside the scientific community to discredit evolution, seizing on routine disagreements among scientists to disparage it as nothing more than a theory,” said Rosin.
A recent Gallup poll found some 44% of Americans believed “God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years.” Forty percent thought God guided evolution. Only one in 10 of those surveyed held a strict evolutionist perspective that excludes God.
Megachurches Shrinking
RELIGION TODAY, Aug. 10—“Megachurches are looking for fresh ideas to help them grow again,” reported the e-mail Christian news service.
Megachurches, defined as churches with 2,000 or more members, expanded rapidly for two decades, attracting congregants to the evangelical Protestant churches.
“But growth has slowed markedly, and the enormous congregations are making big changes to adapt their programs to new social realities,” said Religion Today.
Pastors said dissatisfied members want something more than contemporary music, minidramas and sermons that offer life lessons. They are looking for community and a sense of belonging.
More oversight may be helpful, said Scott Thumma of Hartford Seminary, who has researched megachurches. Because megachurches function independently, they have few checks and balances, he said. “That leaves room for abuses. Organizational power of a big budget and staff sets up problems.”
Victory for Religious Rights
REUTERS, Aug. 12—A federal court ruled Aug. 10 that the Minnesota Department of Corrections was wrong to discipline employees who read Bibles in silent protest during a training session on homosexuality in the workplace, Reuters said.
“There was never any reason for our clients to be forced to listen to state-sponsored indoctrination about the acceptability of the homosexual lifestyle,” attorney Francis Manion of the American Center for Law and Justice told the wire service.
The court ordered that written reprimands given to the employees be withdrawn. “This is a major victory for the rights of religious believers who are singled out and punished for their religious beliefs,” Manion said.
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Vatican and Islam: the U.N.'s Strange Bedfellows DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:UNITED NATIONS—When the Vatican stands up to opposes United Nations' population programs that promote contraception, sterilization and abortion, its allies typically include Islamic countries.
Even Sudan, a country in which Christians are severely persecuted, can be counted on to collaborate with the Holy See in its struggle against U.N. programs that oppose the best interests of the family.
Austin Ruse, director of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute in New York, has worked to build up the Vatican-Islamic partnership on the crucial population issues that are the regular fare of U.N. deliberations. He recently spoke with Register Radio News correspondent Jay Dunlap.
Jay Dunlap: How did these two “strange bedfellows” come together?
Austin Ruse: In 1994, the Holy Father called for people of faith to go to the Cairo conference on population and development because he knew some bad things were going to happen there. A natural affinity between the Catholic and the Muslim worlds developed—to great criticism from a lot of “tony quarters.” They use the most extreme terms—“conservative Roman Catholic states” and the “criminal states of the Middle East”—when describing the [informal] alliance. But it endures because there is a great common ground on life and family questions that is shared by Catholicism and Islam.
Are we seeing what philosopher Peter Kreeft called an “ecumenical jihad,” an “ecumenical holy war,” in which the world's conservative religions are banding together to fight secularization?
We, as believing and practicing Catholics, have much more in common with Islam in the Middle East than we do with Francis Kissling, who runs Catholics for a Free Choice. So, yes, this is precisely what we are seeing.
Islam lacks a teaching magisterium. Is there one Islamic teaching regarding contraception and abortion?
We do not have a seamless alliance with Islam. Sadly, they are not fully with us on contraception and they are not fully with us on abortion. What they are fully with us on is the inviolability of the family. I have been with Muslim diplomats who say that abortion is a decision for the family; if the family decides that it is appropriate, then they will go ahead and do it.
How do they view our practices in this area?
They regard the high abortion rates in the West as an outgrowth of the rampant promiscuity of our people, and if they ever experience the same phenomenon they might do the same thing. But, no, they are not completely with us doctrinally on these issues.
So it's more about the sacredness of the family?
That's right. They're keenly interested in fertility rates that ensure growing populations. And the reason that you introduce contraception, sterilization and abortion into a population is to engender selfishness and therefore a lower fertility rate.
Are the Islamic countries reacting against the contraceptive imperialism so prevalent in the United Nations?
They are, but not all of them. Again, it's not a seamless situation. Not all Catholic countries are with us, and neither are all Muslim countries. Qatar will be for us [on most things]. Iran is with us on some questions related to homosexuality, but will be against us on some issues regarding contraception. Our work at the United Nations is very akin to fiddling around with a Rubik's cube.
No simple puzzle, is it?
Not at all. Some of our closest allies at the U.N. are the Sudan and Libya, who are viewed as enemies of the United States and, in the case of Sudan, enemies of Christianity. But on questions of life and family there are none better because they agree with us and because they will stand up and speak.
Why is that important?
First and foremost, the United Nations is a place where people come and talk. If you don't talk then you might as well not even be there. There are no votes taken at the United Nations. They move towards consensus. If any one or two or three governments are against certain language, then that language is thrown out. But that happens only if a country stands up and speaks. The Sudan and Libya stand up and speak for families, including Christian families, all the time.
In Europe the native populations are in decline, especially in Western Europe where there is also an influx of Muslim immigrants with large families. Are we seeing a self-inflicted fall at the heart of Christendom?
Absolutely. I would much rather have a believing and practicing Muslim next door to me than a pagan. Europe is pagan. I regret that it has turned away from the Church and away from the faith, but I would rather see them be Muslim than pagan.
How does this “pagan Europe” manifest itself?
Just this last week there was a move of this type at the meetings to establish an international criminal court. France, the Church's “eldest daughter,” attempted to remove the priest-penitent privilege from the rules of procedure for the new court. This is despicable. And the Muslim states will stand up for the priest-penitent privilege that has traditionally been enjoyed by all clergy and all religions. Who do we have more in common with?
How are demographics changing in Europe?
Because of the rampant spread of contraception, sterilization and abortion, there are now 61 countries—mostly in the industrialized West—who are at what is known as “below replacement fertility.” Replacement fertility is roughly 2.1 children per family, depending on certain circumstances.
What kind of circumstances?
For example, If a country has a very highly developed medical system, then 2.1 is fine. But if it has bad hospitals it may need 2.4 or 2.5 children per woman to replace its population and to stay at its current level of, let's say, 15 or 20 million people. Even if they stay right there, it means that they are no longer growing.
What will that mean?
It means their population is rapidly aging. Just a year ago, Japan passed an incredible milestone. There are now more Japanese over the age of 65 than under the age of 15. This means the population is aging and will begin to shrink. We—in the history of the world—have never done this to ourselves, and we don't know what's going to happen. There could be a kind of intergenerational warfare, for example.
Who are some of the other “worst offenders”?
Countries like Latvia, which is now at 1.1 children per woman. Italy is at 1.5; Spain is at 1.5—two Catholic countries. There are some cities in Italy, including Bologna, that are at 0.8 children per woman. This is child-hating on a grand scale.
What is the replacement rate in Islamic countries?
It depends on where you go. Some Islamic countries, including Iran, actually have a program that encourages fertility reduction. For the most part, though, their rates are higher than they are in the West. Just know that.
—Jay Dunlap
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jay Dunlap ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Vatican Not Surprised by China Veto of Visit to Hong Kong DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—Reports that China has vetoed a possible visit by Pope John Paul II to Hong Kong came as no surprise to the Vatican, which has seen Beijing rebuff all of its recent efforts to improve relations.
The Vatican had no official comment Aug. 9 on the reports, said to have been confirmed by Bishop Joseph Zen Ze-Kiun of Hong Kong, that the Chinese Foreign Ministry has ruled out a stop in the former British colony when the Pope travels to Asia late this year.
Members of the Hong Kong parliament protested the veto, calling it an unwarranted interference in Hong Kong's affairs.
John Paul would have been the second pope to visit Hong Kong. Pope Paul VI made a three-hour stop there in 1970.
But Vatican sources said Chinese officials already had made clear in informal contacts that John Paul would not be welcome in Hong Kong because the Vatican maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
The situation was further complicated by China's anger over the recent statement by Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui that Taipei and Beijing should have “state-to-state relations.” China considers Taiwan a breakaway province.
The Vatican suspended formal diplomatic relations with China after the communists took control in 1949.
In order to weaken the ties of Chinese Catholics to the Vatican, the government established the Patriotic Association of Chinese Catholics in 1957, forcing Catholics still loyal to the Vatican to practice their faith underground.
In an effort to improve relations, the Vatican indicated earlier this year it might be prepared to jettison its ties with Taiwan.
Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican secretary of state, said in February he was prepared to move the Vatican's embassy from Taipei to Beijing immediately.
“We are aware that in order to normalize our relations with Beijing, we will have to modify relations with Taipei. We are willing to negotiate,” Cardinal Sodano added in March when Chinese President Jiang Zemin visited Italy.
But the Chinese response was chilly. Jiang did not cross the Tiber River for an audience with the Pope, and Zhu Bangzao, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, told a news conference, “Words are not enough. You have to follow through with deeds.”
John Paul is scheduled to travel to Asia before the end of the year to formally close the synod of Asian bishops that was held in the Vatican in the spring of 1998.
It was at the synod that Asian bishops raised the possibility the Pope might visit Hong Kong, which reverted to China in 1998, to celebrate Mass for the island's some 240,000 Chinese Catholics and 120,000 immigrants from the Philippines.
Vatican sources said it is likely the Pope will make the trip in November, visiting India with stops in Bombay, Calcutta and New Delhi. It also appeared the Vatican has discarded the idea of a stop in Macao because the Chinese could view a visit by the Pope one month before the Portuguese colony returns to Chinese rule as a provocation.
Macao has about 25,000 Catholics, or about 6% of its population. The Diocese of Macau, seat of the oldest bishopric in the Far East, was established in 1575.
John Paul also is eager to travel to Vietnam, but Vatican sources said a visit would be difficult for logistical reasons. The country lacks facilities for gatherings of hundreds of thousands of people.
In a separate but related development, the Vatican has confirmed it has had an “envoy” in Hong Kong since 1989 despite its lack of diplomatic ties with China, Reuters reported.
In a statement, the Vatican said Father Fernando Filoni, an official at the Vatican's embassy in the Philippines, has been charged with “monitoring the life of the Church in Hong Kong and continental China more closely.
“The cleric lives in Hong Kong. It is not a diplomatic mission, but rather of a discreet presence that respects the situation.” (From combined wire services)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Pope Urges Strengthening of Geneva Conventions DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions, Pope John Paul II called for stronger protection of civilians and prisoners of war in times of conflict.
“The minimum protection of the dignity of every human being guaranteed by international humanitarian law too often is violated in the name of military or political needs, which never should have precedence over the value of the human person,” the Pope said Aug. 11.
At the end of his weekly general audience, Pope John Paul told visitors that the Geneva Conventions were signed Aug. 12, 1949, after World War II “to assure the protection of civilians, prisoners and all victims of armed conflict.”
The first two Geneva conventions establish guidelines to improve the condition of the war sick and wounded.
The third convention called for an end to the belief that the captive is the winner's booty. Captured soldiers may have the right to take up arms removed, but the rest of their rights cannot be violated.
The fourth convention safeguards civilians' rights in times of war, guaranteeing respect for the person, the home, family rights, and moral and religious convictions in all circumstances.
The conventions call for humane treatment of the wounded, prisoners of war and soldiers who have surrendered. They prohibit hostage-taking, torture and executions without trial by a regularly constituted court.
The Pope specifically referred to conflicts in the Balkans, Africa, Colombia and the Indian subcontinent as situations that call for full compliance with the conventions.
On the anniversary, he said, the international community should pause to reflect on “the situation of victims of war which, still today, bloody numerous states.
“We are aware today of the need to find a new consensus on humanitarian principles and to strengthen their foundations to prevent repeated atrocities and abuses,” John Paul said.
The Pope said that in its “indispensable” teaching of respect for every human life, the Church seeks to collaborate actively with all those who work to assure “respect for the dignity of and assistance to the suffering, whether civilians or military.”
John Paul said he gives his blessing to all those who work to help “the many and innocent victims of conflicts, prisoners and civilians at the mercy of violence.”
(From combined wire services)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Qoutes DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:New Cardinals Expected
THE UNIVERSE, Aug. 8—“John Paul is expected to create new cardinals within the next year,” reported the British Catholic weekly's Gerry Leonard.
The College of Cardinals currently has 154 members. However, only cardinals under the age of 80 may serve as electors of a new pope.
This means that only 107 cardinals could participate in a conclave if one were held today. The total number of electors must not exceed 120. As the months go by and additional cardinals become ineligible to vote for the next pope, additional open slots in the “college of electors,” are created , wrote Leonard.
If the Pope were to hold a consistory by the end of this year, he could create at least 14 new cardinals in order to reach the full number of 120 electors. If he waits until the middle of next year, he would be able to create at least 18 new electors, which would rise to 21 if he waits until the end of 2000.
John Paul II has created 128 cardinals, he wrote. Twenty -six of the cardinals created by Paul VI continue as members of the College. Only one cardinal—Austria's Cardinal Franz Konig—survives from the era of John XXIII. He was 94 on Aug. 3.
‘Good’ Pope John Was Not Naive
CORRIERE DELLA SERA, Aug. 5—“It is painful to see how some regarded and continue to regard the [Second Vatican] Council as a bomb that exploded in inexperienced hands,” said Archbishop Loris Capovilla, former private secretary of Pope John XXIII, in an interview with the Italian newspaper for a story in a series on the most important events of the millennium.
The events covered in the story included Vatican II and John's pontificate.
“[It is] as though simplicity and innocence played a bad joke on the Church,” by calling the Council in such a turbulent time, asserted the archbishop. “Obviously, the simplicity and innocence being that of the ‘Good Pope’ [John],” he said.
“Some have enjoyed labeling Pope John, stereotyping him in a diminishing way, as though he was only good,” said Archbishop Capovilla. While the Pope was a popular figure primarily due to his image of simple goodness, this does not mean that he did not feel criticisms profoundly, he said, referring to passages in John XXIII's Journal of a Soul to illustrate the point.
Pope Consults With Orthodox About Holy Land Trip
VIMA, Aug. 5—The Vatican has written to the Orthodox patriarchs of Antioch, Jerusalem, Athens and Sinai to seek their blessing on a Holy Year pilgrimage by Pope John Paul II to the Middle East and Greece, according to the Athens newspaper.
Vima reported that Cardinal Edward Cassidy, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, wrote to the patriarchs in the Pope's name to ask about the conditions for a papal visit.
The Pope said June 30 in a letter on Holy Year pilgrimages that he hoped to travel in the year 2000 to Old Testament sites in Iraq, Egypt and Jordan, as well as visit Nazareth, Bethlehem and Jerusalem to retrace the life, death and resurrection of Christ, and go to Damascus and Athens to meditate on the early Church.
The Pope has said the trip would also have an interfaith and ecumenical dimension, encouraging dialogue with Jews, Muslims and the Orthodox, but no political implications.
The newspaper said Patriarch Ignatios would answer after Aug. 15 but wanted to discuss the papal trip with the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul—the spiritual headquarters of Eastern Orthodoxy—and with other Orthodox leaders before giving a final answer.
Earlier reports from Athens said the Greek Orthodox Church would not welcome a papal visit, but the newspaper said two commissions of the Church's Holy Synod had discussed it, and the issue will now go before the full assembly of the Holy Synod when it next meets.
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Anglican Primate: Press Victim or Poor Communicator? DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:Members of the Church of England leaped to the defense of their primate after a national newspaper claimed he doubted the resurrection of Christ.
While some claim Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, head of the worldwide Anglican communion, was deliberately set up by the press, others think he lacks the communication skills needed to be an effective Christian leader.
The story reminded many of Bishop David Jenkins, the former Anglican ordinary of Durham, who revealed one Easter Sunday in the 1980s that he did not believe in the virgin birth or the Resurrection, saying, “I do not believe God did a conjuring trick with bones.”
Hoping to have hit on a similar scoop, the Aug. 1 edition of The Mail On Sunday newspaper led with a front page story that was headlined: “Fury at Carey's attack on the Church.”
It quoted Archbishop Carey as stating, “I can tell you frankly that while we can be absolutely sure that Jesus lived and that he was certainly crucified on the cross, we cannot with the same certainty say that he was raised by God from the dead.”
The story outraged the Anglican faithful.
A typical reaction came from Evelyn Jones, a worshipper in South West England.
She told the Register, “I think they were looking for something like that to get him. They were twisting his words. I am sure Dr. Carey holds the basic Christian belief in the Resurrection.”
Sally Walters, a believer from the same part of the country, backed the archbishop's statement.
“He's right—there are a lot of things we have to take as faith, I think the main difficulty is the clash between the language of theology and the language of the media.”
A spokesman for Archbishop Carey said he “does, in fact, believe in the Resurrection. There is no chance ever of that not being the case.”
He said the use of statements from the archbishop's forthcoming book, Jesus 2000, were “highly selective.” The book is scheduled for release in September.
The spokesman pointed to another portion of the text that reads like a wry premonition of how the archbishop's remarks would eventually be taken: “‘Archbishop of Canterbury doesn't believe in the Resurrection;’ it is a wonderful headline, put your pens down.”
Archbishop Carey also received solidarity from the English and Welsh Catholic bishops' conference which refused to be drawn into the controversy.
A spokesman for the bishops' media office blamed Archbishop Carey's problem on mischievous journalism. “It was an appalling piece of reporting. Most people saw it for what it was—awful.”
But some commentators placed at least some of the blame with the primate himself.
Early in his episcopacy Archbishop Carey created a stir when he called Catholic teaching on the ordination of women “heresy.”
Damian Thompson, former religion correspondent of the national Daily Telegraph newspaper and an influential media commentator, told the Register, “He's never got it right.
“I think in this latest article he was almost goading the media to produce an unflattering story. It is symptomatic of the way he deals with the media.”
Added Thompson: “His communication skills have never improved since his disastrous early days, although maybe some of the people around him are better at clearing up the mess.”
Thompson compared the archbishop's relationship with the press to the one enjoyed by the late Cardinal Basil Hume, whose opinion was often sought when the secular media needed a “Christian” soundbite or quote on a national issue.
“Cardinal Hume was immensely personable,” said Thompson. “In these times the public persona of a church leader is very important. Carey is not a very engaging person and he is gaffe-prone in media terms.”
Catholic theologian and columnist Father Francis Marsden said Archbishop Carey had been naive, adding, “The media want controversy. They … want a good headline and saying ‘the Archbishop of Canterbury doubts the Resurrection’ makes very good copy.”
Father Marsden, a columnist for the British and Irish weekly, The Catholic Times, said, “Although he is an evangelical, [Archbishop Carey] seems to be going partly along the liberal way of separating the Jesus of history [from] the Christ of faith.
Some liberal theologians in Britain and Germany say, although Jesus was a historical figure, titles such as messiah are the projections of the first-century Christian community.”
He added, “I have a problem with his statement that you cannot prove the Resurrection, and [that] it is a matter of faith. It goes back to the old question: If you had a video camera would you have been able to video the Resurrection? I believe, yes, you would have been able to.
“A lot of what we believe in life we take on the evidence of witnesses, and the apostles went to their deaths proclaiming that Jesus had risen from the dead.
“All but John were martyred for saying this. I agree with Pascal's famous statement, ‘I believe witnesses who get their throats cut.’”
Paul Burnell writes from England.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Paul Burnell ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quoutes DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:Sudan Expels Canadian Priest
REUTERS, Aug. 9—Sudan has expelled a Canadian priest from the country without cause, according to the wire service.
Father Gilles Poirer, 57, worked in a slum parish in Hillat Mayo, six miles south of the capital city of Khartoum, providing the poor with modest loans to start small businesses, said the article.
Officials of the Muslim government told him on July 15 that he had two weeks to leave the country. “No reason was given for his expulsion,” a Church official old Reuters. “This is another sign that the regime is once again trying to cripple the Church.” A Sudanese priest from the same parish is awaiting trial in connection with several bombings in Khartoum last year. The charges are seen as part of a government campaign of harassment against priests, said the report.
Chinese Religious Leaders Approve Ban
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE, Aug. 4—China's officially sanctioned religious leaders applauded the government's recent ban on the Falun Gong sect, insisting it did not threaten religious freedom, the French news service reported.
“Falun Gong is not a religion, but an illegal organization that is like a cult,” said Jin Luxian, honorary chairman of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association. The Patriotic Association was established by the communist regime and has no ties to the Vatican, said the article.
“[Founder of Falun Gong] Li Hongzhi used religious terminology and mixed it with fallacies,” Jin said, adding that the cult was “anti-science, anti-civilization and anti-religion.” Jin said he would try to get the 140,000 Patriotic Catholics in Shanghai to see the danger of Falun Gong, said the report.
China banned Falun Gong, which advocates breathing and meditation exercises to attain inner strength, on July 22, accusing it of being a threat to society. The underground Catholic Church in communion with Rome is also banned and is subjected to ongoing persecution.
----- EXCERPT: From selected sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Holy Shroud in John's Gospel DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:John 19:38-42; 20:1-8
Joseph of Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus, but a secret one for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus; and Pilate granted permission. So he came and took away his body. Nicodemus, who had first come to him by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds weight. So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen wrappings with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews.
Now, in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. Therefore because of the Jewish day of preparation, since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.
On the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came early to the tomb, while it was still dark, and saw the stone already taken away from the tomb. So she ran and came to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”
So Peter and the other disciple went forth, and they were going to the tomb. The two were running together; and the other disciple ran ahead faster than Peter and came to the tomb first; and stooping and looking in, he saw the linen wrappings lying there; but he did not go in. And so Simon Peter also came, following him, and entered the tomb; and he saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the face-cloth which had been on his head, not lying with the linen wrappings, but rolled up in a place by itself. So the other disciple who had first come to the tomb then also entered, and he saw and believed.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Unborn Criminals? DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:University of Chicago economics professor Steven Levitt and Stanford law professor John Donohue III have authored an unpublished study which suggests that legalized abortion in the early 1970s contributed to a drop in crime a generation later.
The theory is that “unwanted” children—those more likely to have been aborted—would have been more prone to become criminals, had they lived. High rates of abortion in 1970s minority and poor communities, the authors say, led to the lower crime rates in the 1990s.
The study has made people on both sides of the abortion debate uncomfortable. Many abortion supporters would prefer to paint abortion as a woman's choice, not as a publicized means for keeping down the number of poor and minority kids. For many abortion opponents, on the other hand, the study brings to mind the racist mentality of eugenics advocate Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood.
For us, the study is a reminder that abortion advocacy didn't originate from confusion about when life begins. It originated from white fears of a growing underclass. We wonder how often that continues to be the unspoken motive of today's pro-abortion efforts worldwide.
Yet two things are clear: first, that many forms of crime have decreased during America's abortion era; and second, that the most heinous crimes have increased dramatically.
As criminologist John DiIulio and William Bennett show in their book Body Count: Moral Poverty—and How to Win America's War Against Crime and Drugs, the crimes that are committed are often much worse in degree and kind. Today's criminals are likely to have very little remorse and very little conscience about what they do, argue DiIulio and Bennett. The Columbine High School massacre is a glaring example.
Such behavior is a consequence of the breakdown in the moral order that, in turn, has been brought about by another category of crime—one that breaks every moral code from the Ten Commandments to the Hippocratic oath. It is abortion.
In a nation that allows more than a million unborn children to be slaughtered every year, is it any wonder that criminals will take lives on a large scale too, as at Columbine?
The Levitt/Donohue study has it wrong. Crimes haven't decreased because of abortion; they have shifted. The victims are no longer just people in the streets, but unborn children in the womb.
A plan allowing children as young as 12 to request and receive “mercy killing” is expected to gain parliamentary approval next year in the Netherlands.
The guidelines only require that the patient make a voluntary and “informed” request, and be suffering “irremediable” and “unbearable” pain after exhausting all other medical options.
Mercy killing, or euthanasia, is often associated with the very old, and public revulsion at the thought of doctors killing their patients can be tempered by the consideration that the victims at least have lived full lives. But the prospect of mercy killing of the young reveals what is at the root of the euthanasia mind-set: a lack of appreciation for the value of all human life.
When a nation puts preconditions on the value of life—be it for the sake of “compassion” or just plain convenience—it leaves no foundation for life to stand on.
How can we reverse this trend? By reminding the world in a thousand ways of the absolute value of life—a value not based on what we can do or how we feel, but on who made us, and why.
It seems appropriate that, on the eve of the Jubilee celebrations of Christ's birth, new evidence suggests that devotees of the Shroud of Turin may have been right all along. The shroud may very well be the burial cloth of Christ.
A decade ago, officials who had conducted carbon testing said the linen cloth could not have been around before the year 1260. Now, scientists say that the image and bloodstains on the cloth seem to be made by the body of a Palestinian man before the eighth century. The man was buried in the customary Jewish way, and his body strewn with flowers found in the Jerusalem area.
The authenticity of the shroud would, of course, have no bearing whatsoever on the Christian faith. We already have all the evidence we need of Christ's passion, death and resurrection in Scripture and in the reality of the Church.
The Gospel accounts of Christ's life were reported by weak men who were constantly in need of correction and rebuke by their leader, and who fled him in Gethsemane. The apostles seem incapable of faithfully following Jesus, let alone creating a religion that would sweep the world. Something happened that drew them together and changed them after Christ's death.
What Pope John Paul II has called the “silent testimony” of the shroud can give hope to Catholics in today's culture of death. On our own we cannot overcome the immense problems of our time. But with the one who died and rose from the dead, all things are possible.
----- EXCERPT: Editorial ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: What Thérèse Learned from John of the Cross DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:John and Thérèse: Flames of Love by Guy Gaucher, auxiliary bishop of Bayeux and Lisieux (Alba House, 1999 172 pages, $12.95)
On Oct. 19, 1997, Pope John Paul II proclaimed St. Thérèse of Lisieux a Doctor of the Church. Momentum for such a declaration had been building since the early '30s, in conjunction with the increase of devotion to the Little Flower, the Carmelite saint who died in Lisieux in 1897.
Among those who had sought this designation “Doctor” was Auxiliary Bishop Guy Gaucher of Bayeux and Lisieux, a biographer and authority on the saint. In his most recent volume, John and Thérèse: Flames of Love, Bishop Gaucher does not so much defend the proposition that Thérèse deserves the title Doctor, as he demonstrates the central influence which St. John of the Cross had on this 19th-century Frenchwoman.
The bishop makes his case through a close reading of Thérèse and her own absorption in the thought of John of the Cross: her cribbed pencil marks on file cards, notations crowding the margins of works of St. John that collected on her bed stand in the infirmary, and also the varied commentaries of those who had known Thérèse in life and testified to her constant and fervent devotion to her 16th-century brother Carmelite.
Fray Juan de la Cruz was not an unknown spiritual personage in Thérèse's family. Her two older sisters had entered the Carmel, and along with her sister Céline, Thérèse was reading Dom Gueranger's Liturgical Year, which contained material on the life and thought of St. John of the Cross. The two girls would sit in the parlor and discuss extracts from St. John.
Céline would later comment about Thérèse: “Since her adolescence, how often she would enthusiastically repeat these words of St. John of the Cross: ‘Lord, to suffer and be despised for you!’ That was the theme of our aspirations, when at the belvedere window we would talk together about eternal life.”
At the Benedictine Abbey school of Notre Dame du Pré, as a schoolgirl of 13 she would pen this same theme during a handwriting exercise. The manuscript disappeared in a fire at the school in 1940, but recently reappeared in the form of a photocopy at the Carmel in Lisieux.
By 1890, at age 17, she had made her solemn profession holding on her heart a note addressed to Jesus: “May I never seek nor find anything but yourself alone. May creatures be nothing for me and may I be nothing for them, but may you, Jesus, be everything!” Bishop Gaucher observes, “The dialectic of St. John of the Cross, of nothing and everything, was already so very present to her.”
When Thérèse was 23, in the year 1896, in the midst of a desolation, encountering the sufferings born of a desire that accompanied her every prayer, she broke through with a remarkable discovery: “Oh Jesus, my Love—my vocation, at last I have found it.—MY VOCATION IS LOVE! Yes, I have found my place in the Church and it is You, O my God, who have given me this place. In the heart of the Church, my Mother, I shall be Love.” And we are hardly surprised to encounter, at this same place in her manuscript, 10 quotes that she had copied out from St. John of the Cross.
The world seeks the Love toward whom the suffering servant-woman of Lisieux points.
Thérèse's appropriation of John of the Cross was not in itself a scholarly enterprise. Indeed, the author admits “it is very difficult to say whether she truly read the works of St. John of the Cross.” It was more a matter of mining nuggets, of finding an aphorism so charged with content that her eager heart would discover endless variations on the theme. “Thérèse's readings were not systematic, and scrupulously critical thinking did not encumber her respect for the text.—When she copied a passage she didn't hesitate to change a punctuation mark or a word (conforming to the usage of the time). She had great freedom and took whatever liberties she needed.”
In the same year that she announced her vocation as one of Love, she penned the words of St. John of the Cross in her own handwritten Consecration to the Holy Face: “The smallest movement of pure Love is more useful to the Church than all other works put together.” This phrase appears in Spiritual Canticle B of the Spanish mystic. However, the first time she copied it she left out the phrase “put together.” One wonders if the spiritual daughter is inclined to soften, with the flame of love, the rigor of her spiritual father's words. Bishop Gaucher suggests in a few places within this study that Thérèse may indeed be complementing—that is, enhancing—the commentary of St. John of the Cross.
Thérèse desired to be consumed by Love; she sought to die for Love so that she might be taken up to see the Holy Face and in return begin to do good for others on earth. Bishop Gaucher tells us that for Thérèse service to the Church was not a matter of “duration” but rather of “intensity.”
The world seeks the Love toward whom the suffering servant-woman of Lisieux points. The world seeks this specifically Thérèsian wisdom. One catches suggestions of it in Wycherly's restoration play All for Love and in the early Graham Greene novel, The End of the Affair. I believe Puccini also puts it on the lips of Caliph when he reveals the final riddle—amore—in the opera Turandot.
Mysticism is not so much a question of spiritual athleticism. Nor, by extension, is it theological erudition. It is more a matter of being enflamed by the Divine Bridegroom. Doctors of the Church may indeed begin where theologians leave off. This book makes the case for Thérèse's importance in the Church, and by implication makes us understand the Church's decision to include her in the list of Doctors.
James Sullivan is based in Fairfield, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: James Sullivan ----- KEYWORDS: Books -------- TITLE: Architecture: Modernist or Renewed? DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:“The Stones of Babel: Modernist Sacred Architecture and the Mortification of the Senses” by Catesby Leigh (Touchstone, May/June 1999)
Catesby Leigh, an architectural design critic in Washington, D.C., writes: “Everybody knows the earliest story in the Bible that has to do with architecture. It is the story of the Tower of Babel, which attributes the division of tongues among men to the vain-glorious intentions behind that most ambitious of construction projects. Architecture makes a distinctly inauspicious debut in the Scriptures, and…yet God prescribed the design of the Tabernacle to Moses in great detail.”
Conflicting attitudes toward church architecture can be traced among Christians from the earliest centuries, when “St. Jerome—asserted that the splendor of the Temple of Solomon offered no justification for ornate churches.” The Temple was part of a temporary dispensation that had now become obsolete.
“But more than seven hundred years later, a great French churchman, Abbot Suger, had very different thoughts, when he described the impact of beautiful religious architecture on him: ‘— then it seems to me that I see myself dwelling, as it were, in some strange region of the universe which neither exists entirely in the slime of the earth nor entirely in the purity of Heaven.’”
Though it was the Reformation “which propagated the functional concept of a church as an auditorium or meeting place for the preaching of the Word rather than the holy place wherein the faithful might encounter—in built, carved and painted form—a vision of the Heavenly Jerusalem,” earlier ascetics like St. Bernard had “banished all elaborate ornament in stone, paint, and stained glass. Such ornament he regarded as a distraction from religious devotion.”
But “even in the most austere Cistercian monasteries, the architecture pleases the eye because of the way the dimensions and contours of its spaces are grounded in our own embodied state, and because of the high quality of the masonry work, with its simple ornamental detailing. Alas, it remained for our own century to produce esthetically mortifying sacred architecture, as the design for a new Roman Catholic cathedral in Los Angeles by the Spanish architect Jose Rafael Moneo reminds us.
“Many people know they like very little of what modernism has to offer these days, but since its partisans have erected a Tower of Babel of their own—a tower of theoretical babble—those who prefer art grounded in ancient conventions are left at a distinct disadvantage.” Leigh explains the basis of some of these likes and dislikes by describing the ways in which classical architecture draws from and satisfies humanist instincts for symmetry, and for abstractions of the human body or its parts—as in columns, for example.
Western artists and architects operating out of the classical tradition are thus attempting to bring forth a kind of second version of nature, one that is true to the original while it also strains forward to a new vision of nature as it would be in an unfallen state. This Western approach does not delight in perverse twists and distortions of the natural creation. That is why “this artistic tradition is inextricably bound up with the ancient notion—challenged first by Christian ascetics, then by the Reformation, and now by modernism—that in a church the arts of form might bring forth that vision of the Heavenly Jerusalem.”
There is no way this vision of the religious architect's mission can easily coexist with “the modernist design to emphasize the Church's relevance to the modern age.” Modernist architecture, with its attempt to incorporate “the supremely functional and economic machine rather than the human body” as a basis for design, dehumanizes architecture. “Our Nietzschean demigods have forgotten that architecture exists to make us lesser mortals at home in the world.—[But] a growing number of young architects are spurning the Tower of Babble and the mortification of the senses for sound artistic principles.”
“[A] church conceived as a symbol of the Church that is Christ's body should stand apart from the other buildings the faithful encounter in their daily life.…[S]urely it is just a question of time before the Church of Rome rethinks the matter, along with other Christian denominations. For the ugliness modernism has propagated in our midst is no coincidence. It simply affirms the truth about false prophets: ‘By their fruits ye shall know them.’ ”
Ellen Wilson Fielding writes from Davidson, Maryland.
A summary of an article selected by the Register from the nation's top journals.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Letters DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:Hate Crimes
You asked, “Hate Crimes Are Bad, But Is a Law Needed?” (Register, Aug. 1-7 issue).
Not only are they not needed, but they're a threat to the Bill of Rights. The government and the media are selective about which crimes they consider “hate crimes.” For instance, the murder of Matthew Shepard, a homosexual,—was a “hate crime,” and was supposed to show the need to have indoctrination sessions in our schools to fight “homophobia.” The rape and murder of 11-year-old Eddie Werner by a 15-year-old homosexual who was seduced by middle-aged men, on the other hand, if mentioned at all, was also supposed to show the need to fight “homophobia.”
In December 1997 a high school student fired at eight fellow students who were gathered in prayer at a high school in Paducah, Ky. And in April 1999 we had the more famous attack on Christians at Columbine High. As The Weekly Standard of May 10 put it, “eight of the murdered students at Columbine High School were serious Christians, four Catholics and four evangelicals. The killers went after 17-year-old Rachel Scott and 18-year-old Valeen Shnurr apparently for no other reason than that they had Bibles. The central image of Littleton … is that of Cassie [Bernall], the 17-year-old with a gun to her head being asked if she believed in God.”
But the media doesn't see murder carried out because of hatred of Christianity as a “hate crime.” In fact, the usual media response was to blame the victims, and claim that the real problem was the “intolerance of diversity” and “homophobia” of the student body.
And that's how “hate crimes” laws will attack the First Amendment—by insisting that only politically incorrect views are “hate,” and that they can be prosecuted even if the holders of those views don't advocate any violence. (Watch what happens to pro-lifers once they're put on the books.)
Don Schenk
Allentown, Pennsylvania
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinon -------- TITLE: The Supreme Court at the Crossroads DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:There is a saying in Washington that “personnel is policy.” For better or worse, that saying applies especially to the Supreme Court, whose nine life-tenured justices have the final word on questions of federal law. We will soon be facing an important moment in the court's—and our country's—history. The next president will replace at least three justices: Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and Associate Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and John Paul Stevens, all of whom are widely expected to retire within the next four years.
This is a prospect that has not received the attention it deserves, perhaps because much of the public still assumes that the Supreme Court is just a bunch of legal technocrats, dryly opining on abstract legal questions. Now, if that were true, if the Supreme Court really did just practice law in a dispassionate way, then replacing retiring justices would not be a particularly momentous occasion. And the public could safely be bored with it. The reality, however, is very different.
The Supreme Court has long been divided, not only over what individual constitutional provisions mean, but more fundamentally, over how to decide what they mean. Some justices take the strict view that the Constitution's language still means only what it originally meant, no more and no less. Others give themselves wide latitude to read new and evolving meanings into it. The resulting conflict means that the personalities of the Supreme Court justices end up determining much of what the Constitution requires. So whenever one-third of these personalities turns over, it is a significant event. That would be true no matter which three justices were retiring. But the fact that it is these three in particular makes the event truly critical.
Consider, for example, the potential effects on issues of religious liberty.
Common sense is only just starting to return to the law of religious liberty. Beginning in the 1940s a majority of the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment required the government not only to be neutral among individual religions, that is, to treat Baptists the same way it treats Catholics and Jews, but that it also required the government to be neutral between religion and what some justices called “irreligion.” That was a critical mistake. It effectively dispatched lower level officials on a search-and-destroy mission against all expressions of religion in public life. Then, to add insult to injury, a majority of the Supreme Court consistently refused to apply neutrality evenhandedly. Just as in George Orwell's Animal Farm, where some animals were “more equal” than others, some laws, notably those that disadvantaged religious institutions, were “more neutral” than others. Religion almost always lost.
The departure of these three justices will be a truly critical event.
In the 1980s, however, that began to change—because the court's personnel began to change. A majority of the court still clung to its mistaken view that the First Amendment required neutrality between religion and irreligion, but at least neutrality began to be neutral. The court, for example, held that government benefits could aid both religious and nonreligious institutions equally. This was a great step forward. One result was that parochial school students entitled to government financial remedial instruction could now receive that tutoring inside their classrooms, just like everybody else. Under the Supreme Court's prior interpretation, the kids had to leave their school buildings and be tutored in vans parked on the street.
The court also held that private religious expression was almost as welcome in the public square as other types of private speech. This was a great half-step forward. In a case called Capitol Square vs. Pinette the court held that the grounds of the Ohio State Capitol, which were open on a first-come-first-served basis for private displays, could not be closed to a group who wanted to display a cross. Nevertheless, a bare majority of the justices refused to make that rule categorical. They took the extraordinary view that there might arise in the future a situation where private religious speech would have to be discriminated against to keep the public from mistaking it for government speech.
In short, the law of religious liberty is better than it used to be, but still a far cry from what it should be.
It is also very tenuous. In both the education case and the cross case, the 5-4 margin of victory was provided by two of the three justices who will be replaced by the next president. In the education case, it was Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice O'Connor who provided the majzority to vindicate religious liberty. In the cross case it was Justice O'Connor and Justice Stevens who rounded out the five-vote majority and left a cloud hanging over religious speech. The three of them have been responsible for many other 5-4 cases as well.
In short, all of the religious liberty gains that have been achieved to date, and all of the potential gains for the future, depend on whom the next president appoints to replace Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice Stevens and Justice O'Connor. It is a shame that the Supreme Court is so politicized. But until that changes, the president's personnel decisions will determine the shape of our constitutional rights.
Kevin J. Hasson is president and general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty in Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: kavin Hasson ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: Saving the West from the New Barbarians DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:Few would dispute that Western civilization is in trouble. Despite its riches and power, it is declining both morally and demographically. This is a matter of more than parochial concern. Western civilization belongs to everyone because it is the only civilization that addresses itself, not just to itself, but to all human beings of whatever religious, cultural, or national origins. Western civilization seeks universal truth and invites all to examine its premises.
Because of its openness, Western civilization has spread throughout much of the world. Though it has had its share of conquest by force of arms, its real appeal is its invitation for all men to reason together as means of finding common ground. Today, its principles are under attack in the very place that gave them birth—the West. These principles must be defended, not because they are Western, but because they are true. Their loss would be a catastrophe not only for the West but for the world.
The greatest advances in Western civilization came about through the general grasp of great insights concerning God, man and nature: monotheism, philosophy, the centrality of the family in society, the sanctity of the individual, and the rule of law. At the foundation of Western civilization, Greek philosophy made a number of momentous discoveries: that the mind can know things, as distinct from having opinions about them; that objective reality exists; that there seems some purpose implied in its design; and that this purpose has to do with what man calls “the good.”
‘The Good’
Aristotle said that “the good” that all men naturally seek is happiness—achieved through a life of virtue. Jewish and Christian revelation taught that “the good” has a transcendent source and is to be found in God himself, in whom man will find complete fulfillment. In their souls, all people are ordered to “the good” in the same way. This is what is meant by human nature. Human nature enables man to acknowledge another person as a fellow human being. This act of recognition is the basis of Western civilization. We have forever since called barbarian those who either are incapable of seeing another person as a human being or who refuse to do so.
Western civilization was the vehicle for imparting these fundamental truths about the human condition. When healthy, a civilization works at both the conscious and subliminal levels. The custom and ceremony of daily life subliminally engender the good moral habits necessary to a healthy society through what is generally called culture. At the very least, a person responded to these influences by being “cornered into virtue.”
The consequences of the erosion of civilization at this level are unfortunately abundant in Western society: endemic divorce, illegitimacy, functional illiteracy, child abuse, abortion, rampant sexual disease, drug abuse, pornography, and a culture coarsened by a stream of vulgarity in popular entertainment. The first and most vulnerable victims of this barbarous bombardment have been children, robbed of innocence and grace, and the orderly homes in which such things must be nurtured.
The rebarbarianization of man in the 20th century took place through highly codified ideologies that offered new paths to secular salvation in communism and Nazism, both challenges that arose within Western civilization. Likewise, our dehumanization today is not the result of external forces but of internal decay. However, it is not the product of a new belief, but of a lack of belief; not of an acceptance, but of a rejection.
The New Original Sin
As composer Igor Stravinsky once wrote, “the old original sin was one of knowledge, the new original sin is one of non-acknowledgment.” It is the refusal to acknowledge anything outside the operation of the human will—most especially “the good” toward which the soul is ordered. The new barbarian is not interested in conforming his mind to reality but in conforming reality to his wishes. For him, the goal of freedom is not the truth, but more freedom.
The new barbarian will not accept as real any rational end that could constitute a limitation on his freedom, including those very “limitations” that define what human is. As a result, the new barbarian, like the old, has no capacity to recognize another person as a human being, or even to differentiate between the human and the animal. The loss of this capacity has brought upon us the nowtoo-familiar culture of death.
The first sign of a barbarian is a lack of self-knowledge—an unawareness of his own barbarousness. Many of today's intellectuals and cultural gatekeepers would be at a complete loss to define the difference between the human and the nonhuman, between civilization and barbarism. In fact, many would think it highly insensitive to suggest that there is a difference between the two.
The recent appointment of Peter Singer to the chair of bioethics at Princeton University illustrates this point. Professor Singer thinks that animals have rights and that newborn, handicapped babies do not. You must not eat meat, but you can kill a child. The most impressive thing about his teachings, which seem to be a mix of 19th-century utilitarianism and Darwinism, is how much you would have to not know in order to hold them. To my knowledge, Singer has never explained why animals have never spoken up for animal rights, nor why they have never observed them themselves, especially the carnivores.
When faced with the uproar over Singer's appointment to Princeton's ironically named “Center for Human Values,” Princeton President Harold Shapiro made the extraordinary defense that what matters is not Singer's ideas, but whether they can be rationally defended.
The question does not seem to have occurred to Mr. Shapiro: Can one make a rational case that there is no essential distinction between a man and an animal, when it is precisely the use of reason that differentiates the two? In other words, the very act of making the case reasonably would disprove it.
The problem with this massive moral and intellectual breakdown is that the repetition of anything evil breeds a familiarity which blunts one's sensibility to eyil.
Modern Crusades
Taken to its extreme, prolonged indulgence in any evil kills not only the soul, but the soul's awareness of its own death. Conscience is gradually erased, and replaced by feelings of self-righteousness, which inspire sanctimonious “crusades” for, say, pornography, drugs, pedophilia, abortion, euthanasia and other forms of moral “liberation.” While the acceptance of these rationalizations is devastating for an individual, for a civilization it is catastrophic. This is the reason that civilizations in decline are unaware of their own demise.
Appeals to tradition to restore our world will not work because Western traditions have lost much of their power to compel. Today, one cannot sustain the good life, in its pre-libertine sense, without constant reflection upon first principles. One must actively resist the corrosive influences in the media, in politics, in education, in every form of entertainment, even in some pulpits. In order to do this, what was once imbibed in the traditional home or learned by osmosis through custom must be known explicitly and consciously. We must recover those first principles upon which the great traditions of Western civilization were built, principles which emanated from the answers to the most important questions. We must then advance those contemporary cultural endeavors that reflect these answers in enduring forms of literature, music, architecture and the other arts.
Ultimately, a spiritual and moral decline can be countered only by a spiritual and moral revival. It must start, however, with the recovery of reason, with reason aware of what is beyond itself. It should begin with reason's assent to the very real possibility of the Transcendent.
What starts in reason can often end in faith, because faith is reasonable. As Alexis de Tocqueville noted, this point carries great political import as well. He said, “Despotism can govern without faith, but liberty cannot.”
We need not lose heart at the magnitude of the task. Our spiritual ancestors faced similar trials. We can turn to them for the spirit that is required of us now.
In the fifth century B.C., Nehemiah exhorted the Jews: “You see the trouble we are in: Jerusalem is in ruins, its gates have been burnt down. Come, let us rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and suffer this indignity no longer” (Nehemiah 2:17).
Robert R. Reilly, chairman of the Committee for Western Civilization, writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Robert R. Reilly ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: The Voice of the Lord Upon the Waters DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:At Sunday vespers during ordinary time the Church sings a beautiful antiphon: The whole creation proclaims the greatness of your glory. Ordinary time includes the summer holiday months, the time when vacations are opportunities to experience what the liturgy sings.
St. Paul taught the Romans that everyone should know about God, whether Jew or Greek, because “ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made” (Romans 1:20). St. Paul was talking about the whole of the natural order, but he might well have been talking about Victoria Falls, one of the more awesome of the “things that have been made.”
Victoria Falls, on the Zambesi River bordering Zambia and Zimbabwe, is the largest expanse of falling water in the world, making most waterfalls seem like leaky faucets. During the peak months, the Zambesi flows over the falls at a rate of 132 million gallons per minute, forming a curtain of water over a mile wide and about 335 feet high. I was fortunate not to visit the falls in peak season—March to April—because then the mist generated by the crashing waters is so dense that the falls themselves are hidden. In July it is possible to see their splendor—and also to feel it, as the “mist” from the falls was sufficient to soak me from head-to-toe in an instant, as if I had been caught in a torrential downpour.
From my father, who used to take us hiking in the Rockies, I learned to turn visits to the wonders of nature into pilgrimages. He once told me, as we looked out from our hike over the expanse of the Bow River Valley in southern Alberta, that he did not understand how anyone could behold such a sight and not believe in God. His words came back to me at Victoria Falls.
The falls have prompted similar observations since man first saw them. The Tonga, the native people of the region, seeing the rainbows that play upon the mist, named them motsé oa barimo—“the pestle of the gods”—believing that the falls were the dwelling place of the divinity, and the rainbow one of his tools. The Tonga would make offerings to the gods at the falls, throwing bead necklaces or bracelets into the waters.
The first European claim of seeing the falls was made in 1855 by Dr. David Livingstone, the great Scottish explorer and missionary who named the falls after Queen Victoria. He was first told about the falls by the local people as the place mo ku sa tunya musi—“where there is always smoke rising”—a reference to the spray that can been seen from a distance of several miles. In a felicitous misinterpretation of the word tunya, Livingstone gave the local name of the falls as “thundering smoke,” because the rumble of the waters can be heard far off.
“No one can imagine the beauty of the view from anything witnessed in England,” wrote Livingstone. “Scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight.”
That applies to all of creation, whether at Victoria Falls, the Grand Canyon or any one of the hundreds of natural wonders that become the destinations of summer travels. The grandeur of the natural world—so far beyond human artifice—calls forth a response. That response can take different forms. It can be one of fear, like the fear of the local tribesmen who offered sacrifice at the falls. It can be one of petty pride, like the pride of Livingstone who harassed other explorers because he wanted the glory of “discovering” the falls first. Or the response can be ideologically driven, like the blindness of so many contemporary observers who, having committed themselves to a crude “scientific” materialism, insist on seeing only randomness and chance where beauty and order abound.
A response is unavoidable. The Christian response has to be one of gratitude and humility—and responsibility, knowing that all this has been given to the stewardship of man. A fellow seminarian, who traveled to the falls with me, remarked that he felt invited to prayer: “Not to pray at such places is to miss a great opportunity.”
Yes, gratitude, humility and responsibility give way to prayer as the most fitting response to the glories of creation that we visit in the summer holidays. We remain pilgrims in this world, not only in the great temples built by man, but especially in those temples fashioned by God himself: Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these (Matthew 6:28-29).
Neither Solomon nor his father David saw Victoria Falls—mosi oa tunya—but David's psalm provides the most suitable prayer:
The voice of the Lord is upon the waters; the God of glory thunders, the Lord upon many waters.
The voice of the Lord is powerful, the voice of the Lord is full of majesty
(Psalm 29:3-4).
Raymond de Souza, a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Kingston, Ontario, filed this column from Africa.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond J.De Souza ----- KEYWORDS: Comentary -------- TITLE: A Parents' Back-to-School Book Guide DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:Coordinating School Kids' Schedules
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families: Building a Beautiful Family Culture in a Turbulent World by Stephen R. Covey and Sandra Merrill Covey (Golden Books Pub Co., 1998, 390 pages, $15)
It's back to school, and for many families this means back to car-pooling, the homework wars, and sports and extracurricular schedules that would challenge even Gen. Patton's strategic planning abilities. Families today are faced with conflicting demands on their time, an aggressive culture, a complex society and fast-paced lives.
Time management guru Stephen Covey brings his seven habits to the family arena to help families find their unique vision, set goals and priorities, and stay on track. In fact, Covey's own family, with nine children, is where he first developed the seven habits material, and where the principles are most significantly applied. Covey's seven habits show parents how to take control of the direction and formation of their families. With many examples from his own family, he vividly portrays the principles: being proactive, beginning with the end in mind, putting first things first, thinking win-win, seeking first to understand, synergizing, and sharpening the saw.
Covey shows how parents can gain the cooperation of their kids and have a unified family vision by developing a “family mission statement.” He encourages families to think through questions such as: What kind of family do we want to be? What things are truly important to us as a family? What kind of feeling do we want to have in our home? What are the unique gifts of each family member? What are the principles we want our family to follow?
Covey offers many practical suggestions for encouraging cooperative and happy family interactions; for example, implementation of the “emotional bank account,” one-on one bonding times, and family nights. Each chapter includes practical tips for sharing each of the principles with children, and with adults and teens.
Laraine Bennett edits the Family 2000 newsletter in Bethesda, Maryland.
----- EXCERPT: Parent-suggested reading to cope with students from 'K' to college. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: A College Guide for Parents of the Class of '00 DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:Choosing the Right College: The Whole Truth About America's 100 Top Schools by Intercollegiate Studies Institute (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1998, 672 pages, $25)
Tim Flannery: As our children approach college age and we consider the very serious matter of helping them select a school that will serve them well in their lives, we naturally fall back on our own college experience as a guide. But how many of us know firsthand more than one or two schools? And how many changes have occurred since we attended college?
We need a comprehensive source of information on colleges that addresses the important issues of educational philosophy, academic programs and campus life. Choosing the Right College fits the bill.
The staff of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute reviews 100 of the most competitive colleges across the country, guided by the notion that “the liberal arts continue to provide the broadest and most humane form of education.
” Their assessments are based on interviews with faculty, students and administrators, questionnaires, and site visits.
Each essay contains sections on the school's history, academic setting (including details on individual departments), political environment and student life.
Based on this reviewer's knowledge of the colleges examined, the commentaries are insightful, well-balanced, and credible, making this guide a very useful tool in choosing the right college.
Alice Flannery: The editors of Choosing the Right College, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute's college review guide, believe in the value of a liberal arts education in forming the whole person—teaching him to recognize and prize what is good and true. The guide examines how successfully 100 of America's top universities and colleges achieve this liberal arts ideal.
Each review is divided into four parts. First is an overview which includes a brief history and a description of the current state of affairs at the university. Second comes a discussion of academic requirements and an examination of how well the school lives up to the ideal of a liberal arts education. Third, there is included a description of the political environment the student will encounter; and, fourth, a description of the day-to-day extracurricular life (e.g. housing, clubs and organizations).
The section on academic requirements was notable because of the recommendations for particular departments and professors. The sections I most appreciated as a mother were those on political environment and social life. Kids will spend four years living at college. They can't avoid the ethos of campus life; it might even affect them more than the courses they choose.
Much of the substance of each evaluation comes from students and professors at the schools. I found the evaluations very thorough and balanced. Choosing the Right College does a good job of capturing the tone of each university.
Tim and Alice Flannery, of Chantilly, Va., have six children.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Tim and Alice Flannery ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Career Advice for College Students? Be a Politician DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:A Sacred Union of Citizens: George Washington's Farewell Address and the American Character by Matthew Spalding, Patrick J. Garrity, Daniel J. Boorstin (Rowman & Littlefield, paperback edition, 1998, 256 pages, $16.95)
Witnessing today's tawdry scandals and petty corruption, many young Christians reject politics as an unworthy endeavor.
But according to the Catholic faith, politics is a noble vocation. Thus, the Second Vatican Council in Gaudium et Spes (No. 75) called on youth “with a talent for the difficult yet noble art of politics, or whose talents in this matter can be developed, [to] prepare themselves for it, and, forgetting their own convenience and material interests, they should engage in political activity.”
The father of our country, George Washington, should be a paradigm for American Catholics today as he was for earlier generations. Washington wasn't Catholic, but as a teen-ager, he memorized and practiced 110 “rules of civility” from an old Jesuit manual where he learned everything from small details of manners to his relationship to God.
Dignified at every moment, sparing in his talk, courageous in war and in politics, Washington set aside the private life he loved at Mount Vernon in order to serve the national cause of his “friends and fellow-citizens.”
This splendid book testifies to Washington's obsession in developing greatness in his countrymen's character and virtues. He gathered his lifetime of experience into his farewell address as his enduring legacy on the political and moral basis of self-government. The authors articulate the meaning and significance of the Washingtonian “Credo” which has indelibly shaped the character of every American.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (No. 1884) calls on wise political leaders to imitate God's governing the world. Washington was such a statesman. Speaking to the Delaware Indian Chiefs in 1779, he said: “You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are.”
In fact, Washington's moral imagination was not limited to his own country. In their fresh and original reading, authors Spalding and Garrity show that Washington tried to form the high character of American citizens to inspire a moral revolution around the world.
Giant leaders of the stature of Washington scorn the falsehood that the virtues or vices of politicians and citizens are merely a “personal matter.” Among the farewell address's best known lessons are these: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labour to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and citizens—[R]eason and experience both forbid us to expect the National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle—virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.”
These words constitute the center of the farewell address. They display the moral heart of a great politics and “culture of life” which America was intended by its greatest founder to become.
It is jarring to contemporary ears that Abraham Lincoln, “savior” of the nation and liberator of millions, could describe our first chief executive as “still mightiest in moral reformation.” Presidents as moral reformers?
This book shows us how perhaps our greatest president used his high office to call every American to great virtue.
According to Vatican II's Gaudium et Spes, Catholics must attend to the common good. Some of us have a “special and personal vocation” to statesmanship, which must be encouraged especially in our small-souled political age.
This book on Washington's final advice to his countrymen will achieve its great purpose if it helps ignite the political imagination of a new generation of Catholic men and women with noble hearts, large ambition, and great love for their “friends and fellow-citizens.”
Dennis Teti teaches at the Washington, D.C. campus of Regents University.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Dennis Teti ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Encountering the Master in Adoration DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:The Master Is Here: Biblical Reflections on Eucharistic Adoration by Brian McNeil (Veritas, Dublin, 1997 Through Ignatius Press 95 pages, $9.95)
Letters to a Brother Priest by Msgr. Josefino Ramirez (Missionaries of the Blessed Sacrament, 1995, 81 pages, $9.95)
As Father Brian McNeil, CRV, points out in the introduction to his book on the subject, “All over the world today, we are experiencing a quiet but very vigorous flowering of Eucharistic adoration.”
In The Master Is Here, Father McNeil briefly examines the history and theology that has led to the current popularity of extended adoration before the exposed Eucharist, and responds to objections, heard less and less, to its practice. His primary objective is to offer personal testimony of the experience of adoration and the spiritual power and contemplative fruits that come with it.
Ordained in 1985, Father McNeil had more experience of adoration—once common in many religious communities—than most religious and seminarians of his generation. And, like many who have experienced adoration as a weekly or monthly act of piety, he knew it mostly as a dry exercise best spent in spiritual reading. “No one ever suggested to me that adoration could take the form of a simple, prolonged act of looking at the host.”
As a young priest, he writes, “I began daily silent Eucharistic adoration because people whom I respected recommended it to me.” For Father McNeil, adoration soon became his preferred venue for meditation, offering the full range of experiences—from dryness and distractions to “unutterable joy, the union of love with Jesus”—that are given to those who set time aside for genuine prayer.
But adoration is more. It is a oneon-one meeting that is deepened by familiarity, transforming the one who looks upon the actual Jesus and converses with him. “By concentrating our gaze on Jesus in the host and opening ourselves to this personal encounter with him,” says Father McNeil, “we expose ourselves to him, to the power that emanates from him now as it emanated while he was on earth.”
Our wasted thoughts, distractions, and feelings of aggression, resentment and even lust can be especially powerful in the stillness of prayer. While at times troubling, these normal tendencies need to be exposed to “the irradiation of Christ's love from the host,” says Father McNeil.
A school of humility and reparation, adoration is an excellent opportunity to make intercession for others and to achieve “a configuration to Jesus that takes the form of a true compassion which offers hope to the suffering world.”
Father McNeil compares the forms of adoration now practiced with those prior to the Second Vatican Council and sees the current eucharistic movement as a manifestation of healthy lay initiative, and as a vehicle for achieving Vatican II's forceful reminder that all Christians are called to live truly holy lives.
“One could have felt pretty safe in prophesying, 15 years ago or so, that Eucharistic adoration would … simply disappear,” recounts the priest. “This development is surprising—to put it mildly!”
Forty Hours devotion, First Friday adoration and the frequent practice of having Benediction after the Stations of the Cross and novenas were downplayed after the Vatican Council in order to emphasize the reformed and more accessible Mass in the vernacular.
While one occasionally hears about a comeback for this or that old-time devotion, this is not what has occurred with veneration of the Blessed Sacrament. At least in some places, adoration is now actually more accessible—and convenient—than in the pre-conciliar period, thanks especially to perpetual adoration programs and those with extended hours.
Christ-centered and scriptural, today's eucharistic devotion does not substitute for the liturgy but is an extension of the Mass.
While traditional books of piety, devotional pamphlets and prayer cards abound at the average adoration chapel, Father McNeil observes, “the contemporary flowering of silent adoration offers each member a specific possibility of growing in the love of Jesus Christ” through prayer of the heart.
Like Father McNeil's book, Letters to a Brother Priest showcases scriptural passages that are easily related to prayer before the Eucharist, and both books are ideally suited for use during adoration itself.
The New Testament, especially the Gospels, is all about encounters between men and women and the living Christ. In adoration, it is easy to relate to characters such as the woman at the well, Zacchaeus—who climbed a tree to be able to see Jesus—and the woman who suffered from a hemorrhage who drew physically close to the Lord in hopes of a healing that was, indeed, granted her.
In his Letters, Msgr. Josefino Ramirez writes to a much younger priest, Father Thomas, urging him to begin perpetual adoration in his parish in the Philippines as a way to deepen his own spiritual life and that of his parishioners.
In each letter, the author offers a different insight about the value of adoration by drawing lessons from the Gospels, the lives of the saints and everyday occurrences such as being reminded of the lyrics of an old song to make the point that “Christ waits for us in the Blessed Sacrament.”
Joe Cullen is an assistant editor of the Register.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joe Cullen ----- KEYWORDS: Books -------- TITLE: Other Books on Eucharistic Adoration DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:Adoration: Eucharistic Texts and Prayers Throughout Church History Complied by Daniel P. Guernsey (Ignatius Press, 1999 250 pages, $14.95)
This book collects eucharistic texts and prayers from Scripture, from the Fathers of the Church, from the saints, the liturgy and other sources. Guernsey presents them for use in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament and in preparation for Mass.
Excerpt
“How great was the charity of Jesus Christ in choosing for the institution of the Eucharist the eve of the day he was to be put to death! At that moment all Jerusalem is on fire, all the populace enraged, all are plotting his ruin, and it is precisely at that moment that he is preparing for them the most unutterable pledge of his love. Men are weaving the blackest plots against him, and he is occupied in giving them the most precious gift he has. They are only thinking of setting up an infamous cross for him that they may put him to death, and he is only thinking of setting up an altar that he may immolate himself every day for us.”
— St. John Vianney
Praying in the Presence of Our Lord: Prayers for Eucharistic Adoration by Father Benedict J. Groeschel, CFR (Our Sunday Visitor Press, 1999, 124 pages, $6.95)
Franciscan Friar of the Renewal Father Benedict Groeschel provides the reader with prayers that Christians, ancient and modern, have used for adoration of Christ in the Eucharist. Father Groeschel says, “Every canonized saint and millions of devout people have found the most profound consolation, reassurance and challenge to grow in faith, hope and charity before the Tabernacle.”
Excerpt
“Lord, stay with us.”
These words were spoken for the first time by the disciples of Emmaus. Subsequently in the course of the centuries they have been spoken, infinite times, by the lips of so many of your disciples and confessors, O Christ. …
I speak the same words today.
I speak them to invite you, Christ, in your Eucharistic presence, to accept the daily adoration continuing through the entire day, in this temple, in this basilica, in this chapel. …
Stay! That your presence in this temple may incessantly be reconfirmed, and all those who enter here may become aware that it is your house, “the dwelling of God with men” (Rev 21:3) and, visiting this basilica, may find in it the very source “of life and holiness that gushes from your Eucharistic Heart.”
— Pope John Paul II, prayer in Blessed Sacrament Chapel, St. Peter's Basilica,inaugurating perpetual adoration there in 1981
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Books -------- TITLE: Reprinting the Classics DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:The Heroic Face of Innocence: Three Stories by Georges Bernanos (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1999 150 pages, $13.00)
Bernanos is best known for his novel Diary of a Country Priest. This volume collects three of his shorter works: Joan, Heretic and Saint; Sermon of an Agnostic on the Feast of St.
Thérèse and Dialogues of the Carmelites. The title of the volume refers to a constant theme of Bernanos' work—that the endless and monstrous challenges faced by each person in this fallen world, especially in the 20th century, can be successfully met only with a specific kind of heroism, the heroism it would take to really follow the admonition of Christ, “Unless you become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Excerpt from
“Supposing, my brothers, that I were consumptive, and I wished to drink the waters of Lourdes, and doctors suggested that they should dilute in it some drug of their own. ‘My dear doctors,’ I would reply, ‘you have said I was incurable. Let me try my luck undisturbed. In this matter, which is strictly between myself and Our Lady, if I need any go-between, you can be sure I won't be asking the pharmacist.’”
Some of the other volumes in the Eerdmans' series: The Portal of the Mystery of Hope by Charles Peguy; Prayer: the Mission of the Church by Jean Danielou; The Discovery of God by Henri de Lubac.
How to Love as Jesus Loves: Unlocking the Treasures Of Christ's Sacred Heart by Father Francis P. Donnelly, SJ (Sophia Institute Press, 1999 152 pages, $13.95)
In this series of 18 meditations on the Sacred Heart, originally published in 1911, Father Donnelly presents Christ's personal love for every soul. He encourages the reader to turn to Jesus as the divine source of love who can give each person strength to love others in the everyday circumstances of life.
Excerpt:
“In the fire of Christ's word are blended the flames of two loves. In the beating of His heart, the ear can detect the harmony of two sounds: the melody of the greatest love that ever throbbed in man, and its harmonic melody of infinitely higher octaves, the love of God. Every word, then, of Christ was far from idleness. It was possessed of a divine energy. It was the coinage of the gold of Christ's Heart.”
Some of the other titles reprinted by Sophia Institute Press: Comfort for the Sick and Dying, And for Those Who Love Them, by David L. Greenstock from a 1956 original; How to Live Nobly and Well: Timeless Principles for Achieving True Success and Lasting Happiness, by Jesuit Father Edward F. Garesché from a 1931 original; The School of Mary: Forty Essential Lessons for Sinners, from the Blessed Mother Herself, by John A. Kane from a 1942 original.
----- EXCERPT: Publishers return to time-honored works by Catholic authors ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Books -------- TITLE: Matthew's Gospel In Rough Beauty DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:Why make biblical epics? Most filmmakers produce them to entertain and/or get rich. Others aim higher and try to connect contemporary audiences with the ideas and stories upon which our culture is based.
The Gospel According to St. Matthew accomplishes all of this and more. No one knows for certain what inspired the Italian writer-director Pier Paolo Pasolini (Accatone) to create this film, but its single-minded intensity and luminous passion produce a satisfying drama with a unique appeal to Christians.
This is a movie that can make converts. It can be used as a tool of evangelization which grabs its audience emotionally while propagating an orthodox understanding of the faith.
The film was first released in 1964 after winning the Special Jury Prize at that year's Venice Film Festival. At first glance, it doesn't seem to conform to the rest of Pasolini's work. The filmmaker was a well-known Marxist, and his previous movies reflect this point of view.
Not surprisingly, every scene in The Gospel According to St. Matthew bears witness to his commitment to the poor. But the film is dedicated to Pope John XXIII, and much to the horror of Europe's secularist intelligentsia, it also presents the miracles as real events.
The movie was shot entirely on location in the hills of Basilicata in southern Italy. The cast is made up exclusively of nonprofessionals. Most were local peasants although Pasolini used his own mother to play Mary during Jesus' later ministry. The text is taken verbatim from the Gospel. The sequence of events is slightly reordered. Some scenes are shortened. Others are omitted.
One of the first images is a closeup of Mary (Margharita Caruza), whose natural beauty reminds us that the radiant Madonnas of Italian Renaissance masters like Raphael and da Vinci were probably inspired by real-life models. The young woman is pregnant, and her husband Joseph (Marcello Norante), who looks like he actually works with his hands, broods nearby. He walks away as if to abandon her.
Roadside Angel
Immediately, there's a miraculous intervention which the filmmaker makes sure has no rational explanation. A handsome, dark-haired angel appears on the road. “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because she has conceived what is in her by the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you must name him Jesus” (Matthew 1:20-21). Joseph, of course, obeys.
The movie, like Matthew's Gospel, doesn't contain the birth narrative. The three wise men come to worship the Christ child. When they return to their own country without revisiting King Herod, the massacre of the innocents is ordered.
The murderous incident is recreated with realistic, documentary techniques which are used throughout the rest of the film. The slaughter takes place on a rocky hillside. Herod's soldiers attack both on foot and on horseback. They are peasants like their victims but vicious and uncouth. The film techniques focus on the mothers' terror and grief, not the acts of violence themselves. We experience viscerally the sense of evil which permeates the event. The Holy Family is saved by the appearance of the same angel.
As we move into the adulthood of Jesus (Enrique Irazoq), the movie emphasizes the authorities' opposition. The beheading of John the Baptist is a crucial turning point. Unlike most presentations of the incident, Salome isn't depicted as particularly sensuous. She's modestly dressed, and her dancing is almost innocent. The feast takes place in the daytime in an open-air courtyard. Absent is the expected depravity. Yet the prophet's death seems even more calculated and coldblooded than usual.
Love of Children
Jesus sheds a silent tear. The muscles in his face harden as he becomes aware that John's violent death is a precursor of his own. This adds a sense of urgency to the teachings that follow.
Jesus' love of children is highlighted. We see that they adore him, and he brightens whenever they come near. These encounters underline the importance of his teaching that “Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). It is also the little ones bearing flowers and branches who first welcome him on his triumphal entry into Jerusalem.
Jesus' appearances before the Sanhedrin and Pontius Pilate are captured in long shots with a hand-held camera. We can clearly hear the Gospel text describing what's happening. But the visual action, viewed from within the crowd, is distant and hard to follow. We feel the remoteness of the religious and political authorities from those they're governing and the unfairness of what they decide.
The crucifixion is shot in a similarly naturalistic fashion. There's no attempt to compose pretty pictures such as are often found in biblical movies and old-master paintings. Our Savior's pain and suffering is real.
The Gospel According to St. Matthew successfully dramatizes Jesus' transcendent powers and his connection to ordinary people. It works as both a human and a spiritual story. We are moved by its rough beauty, and our souls are opened to its truth.
Arts & Culture Correspondent John Prizer writes from Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Videos in Release DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:A Civil Action
Quality galore can be found in A Civil Action, a movie based on Jonathan Harr's nonfiction best seller. Its director is Steven Zaillian, who has a history of thoughtful filmmaking. Its cast is top-notch, with John Travolta as overconfident Boston personal-injury attorney Jan Schlictmann, William H. Macy as his nervous accountant and Robert Duvall as their wily corporate-lawyer opponent. Its production values are first-rate, especially the wintry cinematography that reveals so much about the manufacturing town of Woburn, Mass. Woburn was the home of 12 children who died of leukemia. The youngsters' parents hire Schlictmann to represent them in a case against two multinationals. The parents believe the multinationals contaminated Woburn's groundwater, ultimately causing the children's deaths. Schlictmann and his small law firm throw everything at the corporate legal team, but are outgunned, out-spent and outmaneuvered. A rough justice ultimately emerges, but nobody is happy with the results. It's hard to know how accurate A Civil Action is without prior knowledge, but the film is an engrossing look at a legal and personal imbroglio.
Life Is Beautiful
An Oscar winner, Life Is Beautiful, is a film to love or hate. It opens with the happy-go-lucky Guido (Roberto Benigni) careening through the countryside of 1939 Italy with his brother Ferrucio (Sergio Bini Bustric); they're on their way to jobs as waiters. Then, through a happy misfortune, Guido rescues the beautiful Dora (Nicoletta Braschi) and is immediately smitten. He later discovers that the teacher is unhappily engaged to a pompous Fascist official. After an unusual courtship, Guido finally wins Dora. The movie then flashes forward five years. Dora and Guido have been blessed with a son, Giosué (Giorgio Cantarini), but their life is ripped apart when the Jewish Guido and Giosué are sent to a German concentration camp. Guido attempts to protect his son from the horror by telling him that they're competitors in a special contest. Life Is Beautiful is basically two films—the first is a sunny romantic comedy, while the second is a grim tale of paternal sacrifice. For some, the contrast is illuminating; for others, it's merely irritating.
Our Friend, Martin
Although Our Friend, Martin is basically a hagiographic presentation of the life of Martin Luther King Jr., it tells his story in an unusual manner. Instead of offering a straightforward documentary, the film mixes animation and live-action footage, history and fictional plotting, to produce instructive entertainment designed for grade-schoolers and middle-schoolers. The story highlights Miles, a sports-obsessed, African-American sixth-grader. His best buddy is Randy, a white boy with a credulous streak. Their physical nemesis is Kyle, a white fellow student; their intellectual nemesis is Maria, a brilliant Hispanic classmate. One day, the four sixth-graders go on a field trip to King's boyhood home, where Miles and Randy grab a special baseball mitt that lets them time-travel.
They encounter King at critical moments of his life and quickly learn several important lessons about justice and racial equality. Kyle and Maria later receive a similar educational opportunity. Even though Our Friend, Martin is strengthened by riveting documentary footage and the presence of top actors bringing cartoon characters to life, the simplicity of its historical argument mars its effectiveness.
Loretta G. Seyer is editor of Catholic Faith & Family.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Jude Turns Tears to Joy DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:Liz Trotta, New York bureau chief for the Washington Times and maybe the first American woman to report the fighting from Vietnam, decided to apply her investigative skills to an unusual task for a modern-day journalist: to find out the truth about St. Jude. Retracing the apostle's steps in the Middle East and Rome, eventually she also came to a shrine near downtown San Francisco where thousands visit every year to turn to this saint when life has pushed them to the edge.
Trotta called St. Jude “the patron of last resorts, lost causes, the impossible, the man to summon as the ship goes down.” Attending the annual novena at the national shrine to the saint, in St. Dominic Church, she found those lost causes, especially people facing death from AIDS. She told their stories in a chapter titled “City at the Edge: San Francisco,” the last one in her book, Jude: a Pilgrimage to the Saint of Last Resort.
Why do so many people feel an affinity for St. Jude? First Trotta pointed to a wider trend: “In the last decade there has been a resurgence in devotionalism.” She described it as a “silent but profound change in spiritual climate” and quoted a priest who calls it “a yearning of the heart.” She believed that the renewed interest in St. Jude is part of that wider trend.
Dominican Father Thomas Hayes, former director of the shrine of St. Jude, said, “People feel lonely … Catholics and [non-Catholics], and want to be part of something. We always want heroes.”
Still there are many people who specifically seek out St. Jude instead of any other saint. Why? St. Jude was one of the Twelve Apostles, brother of St. James the Less and a blood relative of Jesus.
One of the New Testament letters bears his name. Tradition says that he was martyred in Persia with another apostle, St. Simon. However, more than all these facts, the focus of attention on St. Jude is a result of what he stands for: hope in the midst of hopelessness.
Father Hayes said, “The people want to hear about Jude, a role model and hero.—Some may feel that the Church is too alien, too big, too powerful, whatever, for them. Do they say, ‘I'll be satisfied just with Jude?’ Perhaps. But I don't think it's a substitution [for the Church].
In most cases, it's more of a humble thing—that they're not worthy or deserving, and that God doesn't want anything to do with them.” They find comfort in the saint's well-known concern for hopeless situations like theirs.
Early Days of the Shrine
The shrine of St. Jude is situated in the northwest corner of St. Dominic Church. Weekly devotions to the saint began here in 1935 and remained fairly local to the parish for some years—until the appointment of Dominican Father Patrick Kane. Father Kane's involvement with the saint came about literally by accident. At the Dominican novitiate in Marin County, Calif., he fell as the result of a spell and was almost killed. During his recovery it was suggested to him that he work with the list of people interested in the shrine, which at the time was nothing more than a shoe-box full of slips of paper, and see what he could do to help. Father Kane brought in volunteers and under his guidance the shrine began to grow.
Eventually Father Kane was able to go back to his work and do a limited amount of preaching, but he had another spell while preaching in Idaho. He fell, hit his head on the pulpit and died. His brother, Dominican Father John Kane, picked up where he left off and directed the shrine for about 10 years. In 1978 Father Hayes came to assist him, eventually becoming director of the shrine himself.
Father Hayes described the mission of the St. Jude Center. “It's a form of preaching—it's an apostolate—that is to say a work of religion dedicated to communicating with people who would otherwise not have a chance. Many people have trouble communicating in their parish church. They can't find their priest or their priest is too busy. Here they can get on the phone, they can always find somebody, they can write a letter. The letters, we hope, are always answered.”
Callers find a listening ear in one of the many volunteers or lay staff who have helped the priests make the shrine what it is today. There are four big novenas each year, and an extensive mailing list of people who join the novenas either in person or at home. During those periods of time there are special Masses, services, rosaries, and special preaching, all highlighting the power of prayer and the influence of St. Jude. A calendar is published each year identifying the dates of the special novenas, and people are encouraged to send in their Mass intentions, and any questions, difficulties or problems. The mailing list has at times numbered almost 80,000.
Although the population of St. Dominic parish is largely white and African-American, hundreds of Hispanics and Filipinos regularly attend the church because of their devotion to St. Jude. “This is not your ordinary kind of territorial parish,” Father Hayes explained. “It's a place that people come to for devotions. There are the hard-core parish people that live nearby, but that by itself wouldn't explain why this is a parish and what it does as a parish.”
St. Dominic Church, built in a valley in an out-of-the-way neighborhood, is an unnoticed church. Stately and Gothic, it is known in the city for its beautiful woodwork in the confessionals and side altars. Except for sunrise and sunset when the church is beautifully illuminated by the light pouring through the front and rear stained-glass windows, St. Dominic's is a very dark church, seemingly illuminated only by the hundreds of candles lit at the side altars. This allows pilgrims the opportunity of a quiet peaceful place to reflect and pray.
The 1989 Earthquake
The church almost became history after the 7.2 Loma Prieta earthquake, which shook San Francisco in 1989. At first no one was sure how much damage the church had sustained. It was a time of panic and some called for the church to be torn down. But after all the buildings were checked, it was determined that there was no structural damage except to the “crown” on the church tower, which had to be removed.
Concern then turned to the fact that this kind of Gothic style structure, with very high walls, and a very heavy roof, was liable to suffer severe damage in a future earthquake. The decision was made to reinforce the stability of the church by adding flying buttresses. There are seven of these massive concrete structures anchored into the ground in order to withstand the force of any ground disturbance. At the top they are secured to a ring of steel inside the roof of the church.
The cost of the restoration effort was more than $7 million. When money began to run short, Father Hayes, who at the time was the director of the shrine, received the OK to ask people if they wanted to contribute to the restoration. As a result of their $500,000 in donations, one of the buttresses is called the “St. Jude Buttress.”
Father Hayes recalled an incident that occurred during the restorations that illustrates what draws so many people to the shrine. A man “came to the door when the church was closed,” Father Hayes said. “He's standing at the front door; he's crying and so forth. So I thought I better say something to him.” When Father Hayes tried to engage him in conversation, the man said, “Oh, I'm sorry, but I just wanted to sit here and pray.”
Finding out that he was neither a member of the parish nor a Catholic, the surprised priest asked him why he would think of coming to the shrine. The stranger said he knew it was a place he was always welcome. “It's a place to pray,” he said.
He knew what so many others have also found—that even if his hopelessness seemed to be a good reason to avoid other places in the world, here it was the very reason why he could feel at home.
Lynn Smith writes from San Francisco.
----- EXCERPT: Why the paths of the hopeless lead to San Francisco ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: Pro-Lifers Differ Over United Nation Dues DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—U.S. House pro-lifers are disagreeing on a key question touching on overseas abortions: Should the United Nations be forced to reform before it gets paid?
The House on Aug. 5 rejected an amendment by Ohio Democrat Tony Hall, to pay $244 million in back dues to the United Nations before Congress addresses U.S. funding of international abortion promoters.
New Jersey Republican Chris Smith, chairman of the House Pro-Life Caucus, is against the U.S. funding of abortion groups overseas. He is leading a battle with the Clinton administration over whether to first pay the back dues, or arrears, with no strings attached or to seek certain U.N. reforms first.
The defeat of Hall's amendment by a vote of 221-206 will force Clinton to decide what is more important: maintaining the U.S. vote in the U.N. General Assembly, or funding abortion programs abroad.
“This signifies very clearly that if he [Clinton] wants to pay U.N. dues, he's going to accept reform,” Christian Polking, press secretary for Smith, told the Register.
The president consistently has vetoed any bill with pro-life language in it. “The only time he [Clinton] signs anything pro-life is when it has something he wants more in it,” said Polking. Pro-lifers need to stop the “abortion crusade” overseas, he added, and “hone in on groups [who are] manipulating governments.”
Last October, Clinton vetoed a bill that would have paid nearly $1 billion in dues to the United Nations. In his veto message, Clinton said that “the Congress has included in this legislation, unacceptable restrictions on international family planning programs and other international organizations.” The latter included Planned Parenthood International and the U.N. Population Control Fund.
In the past, Hall, a member of the House Pro-Life Caucus, supported not paying the back dues, aide Deborah DeYoung told the Register. She said that he thought it worked then, but he now thinks the United States should simply pay the arrears so it doesn't lose its vote.
Hurts the Cause
Polking acknowledged Hall as a “good” pro-lifer but said that “Hall's amendment hurts the cause.” The victory is “reassuring for us,” Polking added. “We want to make sure that reforms go through.”
Hall and his supporters have a decidedly different strategy on the issue than Smith. “We're undercutting the U.N. which prevents their job of peace-keeping and saving children,” said DeYoung.
But Douglas Johnson, legislative director for National Right to Life Committee, said it is more important to “curb egregious aspects of pro-abortion activities overseas” than to pay the U.N. dues. He added, “We opposed the amendment and welcomed its defeat.”
The National Conference of Catholic Bishops also agreed with Smith that U.N. payments should be halted until the reforms are made. “We don't think Congress should budge,” said Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the conference's Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities.
“We are in favor of paying the U.N. dues, but we wouldn't want to create an effort to circumvent Smith's goals [of U.N. reforms],” Doerflinger added. “We generally support the U.N. as an institution, that does not include support for the U.N. Population Control Fund.”
Most House members favor staying in the United Nations, though each year about 75 members vote in favor of the United States leaving the international body.
On not paying the dues, Hall in a press release said, “This strategy is failing to achieve the goal of changing U.S. abortion policy—goals I share as a member of the Pro-Life Caucus. But it is undercutting the development work that is central to the United Nations' mission—work that is a proven way of reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies and abortions.”
Kentucky Republican Harold Rogers, a leader in U.N. reform, said on the House floor “the only leverage we have to ensure that these reforms take place is by making them a condition of arrearage payments.”
U.N.'s Biggest Deadbeat
As Hall opened the debate on the House floor, he said, “When we link abortion with U.N. arrears we take a moral issue and we twist it to serve other purposes. I find it embarrassing that the world's only superpower is the U.N.'s biggest deadbeat.”
Smith argued that the United States pays a disproportionally high amount for U.N. peace-keeping missions and other expenses. “This talk about the U.S. being a deadbeat is absurd,” Smith said. “We pay more than our fair share.”
Smith said the United States last year paid $1.5 billion to the United Nations, $300 million of which was voluntary.
The United States loses its vote in the U.N. General Assembly if, after the beginning of a year, the debt is the same or larger than the previous year. “This is historic,” according to Hall's aide, DeYoung. “It's the furthest in the hole we've been.”
New measures demanding reform before payment will likely surface in the House in the coming months. Whether Clinton will sign any of them into law remains to be seen.
John Drogin writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Drogin ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Rocker Stands Firm for Life DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:It's not often that the terms “hard-rock music” and “pro-life activism” are spoken in the same sentence—unless the topic of discussion is the lead singer of one of the world's biggest-selling bands.
Gary Cherone, whose soaring vocals stand out even against the earsplitting crunch of Van Halen, is turning his powerful voice to protect the unborn.
On Aug. 14, Cherone stood on the steps of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., and read an open letter he penned in June.
“When is a woman not a woman?” said Cherone. “The answer is nonnegotiable: The ability to pursue happiness is contingent upon liberty—her liberty—and her freedom is solely dependent upon the mother of all human rights, the right of life.”
The letter was addressed to Eddie Vedder, lead singer of the rock group Pearl Jam and an outspoken supporter of the abortion-rights organization Rock for Choice.
The occasion for the reading was the arrival in Washington of a group of participants in the Crossroads Coast-to-Capitol Pro-Life Walk, which had just completed a three-month trek to spread their message. Additionally, Cherone received the American Life League's Courage Award.
Representing Rock for Life, an American Life League organization, Cherone challenged Vedder and others in the entertainment industry to consider redirecting their political energies.
Following the address, the usually reticent Cherone answered several questions for the Register.
Register: How do your band mates feel about your pro-life position?
Cherone: They support what I do. But this is my own view and I would leave it up to those guys. This is personal, but they support anything I do other than singing out of key. They wouldn't support that.
In your letter you speak a great deal about rights. Does your pro-life position arise primarily from a natural-rights or a religious sensibility?
Actually, it was important for me to not make it a political or religious letter. The letter was more philosophical and scientific. I wanted to go there because I thought I could reach an audience that had a common ground, regardless of what side of the fence you're sitting on. Anybody who is offended at the letter is offended at the truth. I said nothing in the letter that wasn't true.
Do you have a religious faith?
Yes, I'm a Messiah-believing Christian, nondenominational.
You must be aware that your stance clashes with the reckless lifestyle people expect from rock stars.
I've been doing this almost 20 years and I hate to break the news to the public, but that's more myth than anything.
What are your upcoming plans for supporting life?
Getting more involved with Rock for Life and speaking when I can. I was also invited to meet with the Pope next year. That would be pretty incredible.
Breaking Ranks
Bryan Kemper, founder of Rock for Life, says that Cherone has angered many in the rock community by breaking ranks over abortion. They're surprised, he says, that “one of their own” would defy their staunch position on the issue.
“But there are also those who wish to God they had the courage that Gary has,” says Kemper. “I think there are a lot of people in the rock community with a respect for life. I know that there are people whose lives are changing and I believe that, through something like what Gary's done, they will get the courage to stand up also.”
Read the full text of Cherone's Rock for Life letter at www.rockforlife.org, or by calling Steve Anborn at (540) 659-4171.
Matt Hisrich writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Matt Hisrich ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Life Note DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:Colo. Won't Fund Family Planning Clinics
DENVER POST, Aug. 11—Gov. Bill Owens has created a new statewide policy which doesn't allow state funding for family planning, reported the Denver Post.
“Owens' top health official, Jane Norton, announced [Aug. 10] that giving abortion providers money violates a 1984 voter-passed constitutional amendment that banned any state money from going directly or indirectly to pay for abortions,” reported the paper.
The paper quoted a Planned Parenthood spokeswoman saying “This is about appeasing the Christian Coalition, which extracted a pledge during the campaign last fall to de-fund Planned Parenthood.”
“That is absolutely not the case,” Norton retorted. “The governor did not ask me to do this.” Owens, a Catholic, opposes abortion. Norton said he supported the decision.
“For about 20 years, Planned Parenthood has gotten money under a contract with the state to provide health services such as cancer screenings and birth control,” said the report. This year, Planned Parenthood expected $319,000 in state dollars. The organization provides abortions at different facilities in Colorado Springs, Denver, Durango and Fort Collins, it said.
Life Institute Offers Resource Web Site
ZENIT, Aug. 10—The Life Research and Communications Institute has launched a web site to serve as a resource on life issues, bioethics and the dignity of the person. The site's address is http://www.culture-of-life.org.
“Our hope is that anyone defending the dignity of life will be able to find the writings and research useful in furthering their cause,” said Robert Best, President of the Institute. “Authentic science will always support the dignity of human life and the value of strong families.”
The Institute was founded in 1997 to collect and communicate scientific and factual information in order to promote the culture of life. “With facts from credentialed research, we hope to better engage mainstream culture with the message of life,” said Best. “Facts like the scientifically confirmed link between abortion and breast cancer are things that we have to get out to the public no matter how intense the media bias is.”
The Institute's web site includes articles on breast cancer and abortion by endocrinologist Dr. Joel Brind. “Dr. Brind's published research, his testimony in Congress and his continued tenacity in exposing these facts have been a great contribution to the pro-life movement,” said Best.
“Many people are also completely unaware of the dangers of the so-called ‘pill’,” said Best. “These drugs work against the body's natural processes and they contain carcinogenic elements in order to accomplish their goal.” This information is documented in an article entitled “Abortion and the Pill” by Dr. Chris Kahlenborn, which is also featured on the Institute's site.
Other authors on the web site include: Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons, Director of Comprehensive Counseling Services in Philadelphia; Patrick Fagan, the Fitzgerald Fellow for Family and Culture studies at the Heritage Foundation; and Dr. William May, the McGivney Professor of Moral Theology at the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family.
Bradley Says Gore is Soft on Abortion
ASSOCIATED PRESS, Aug. 11—Democratic Presidential candidate and former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley told supporters on Aug. 11 that, unlike Vice President Al Gore, he “respect[s] a woman's right to choose, and that includes women who are poor,” the Associated Press reported.
Bradley was responding to a Des Moines Register article in which Gore Spokesman Roger Salazar was quoted as saying that Gore opposes federal funding of abortion, except to save the life of the mother.
Salazar later recanted the statement, saying that Gore does in fact support unrestricted federal funding of abortion.
Gore's position has changed dramatically since he was a member of Congress. As a U.S. senator in 1987, Gore wrote, “During my 11 years in Congress, I have consistently opposed federal funding of abortions. In my opinion, it is wrong to spend federal funds for what is arguably the taking of a human life.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Lawyer Hopes New Argument Topples Roe DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:At first, it sounds like a novel argument: Under current laws, abortion is illegal because it always deprives the mother of informed consent. Simply enforce the law as it stands, and the abortion issue will be solved.
An attorney with a track record of pro-life success considers that argument credible enough—especially in light of evidence shed by technological advances—to bring it before the Supreme Court.
New Jersey attorney Harold J. Cassidy, whose previous litigation struck down surrogate parenting in the high-profile “Baby M” case, is pursuing a lawsuit on behalf of Donna Santa Marie, a woman who was pressured into an abortion against her will, and two other women.
Cassidy hopes the suit will overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that made abortion-on-demand legal any time during a pregnancy.
Cassidy spoke about the case with Register Radio News correspondent Rich Rinaldi.
You cite “Baby M” as a precedent for your arguments. Can you explain the connection?
The Supreme Court of the United States has always recognized the fact that a mother has a fundamental right to have a relationship with her child. In the case of adoption, if a woman thinks that, for whatever reason, she cannot raise her child, the law says that no waiver of that right will be recognized until after the baby is born.
The thinking behind this is multi-faceted. One, it's a recognition that a woman shouldn't be forced to make a decision when she is in a crisis. And two, [her decision] has to be fully informed. Only when she can hold the baby, see the baby, can she have a full appreciation of what she is giving up.
In the Baby M case, the Supreme Court of New Jersey said that, as a matter of law, any decision by a mother to waive this fundamental right prior to birth is uninformed.
Can you give us some of the specifics of that case?
Well, a woman had made the mistake, for altruistic purposes, of trying to help a couple who could not have their own child. She signed a contract not only prior to birth, but prior to conception.
The contract said that she would have the father's sperm implanted in her, carry the child, and then surrender her rights to a relationship with that child once the baby was born. She would surrender the child so that the wife of the father of the child could adopt the child. But then she had a change of heart.
She went through the experiences that women have in pregnancy, and she understood that this was her child. When the baby was born, she realized that she could never give that baby up, especially in exchange for money, which is what the contract was for.
The Supreme Court said that those contracts are unenforceable as a matter of law for a number of reasons, including the fact that they exploit women—but also because the mother has this fundamental right [of informed consent]. As a matter of law, a right of such magnitude could never be waived until the mother sees the baby after birth.
So the court was saying that this right can be given up only after birth?
Yes, and it's also a further recognition of a fact that we all know and is really, in a way, a sacred statement about all of us as individuals: that each child is utterly unique and determinations have to be made about that particular child.
‘The court has shown … that it is totally unimpressed with the reasoning behind
There is also the question of new technology today as compared to when
In 1973 science understood life only on a gross morphological basis. Today, with DNA research, we understand it on a submolecular level.
There has been this explosion of technology, much of which has resulted in new discoveries which conclusively establish that we have a complete, separate, unique and therefore irreplaceable human being right after conception.
This is one of the things that we are presenting to the court: This is a human being. Abortion doctors have been claiming that they are representing the rights of the woman. They claim that the act of killing a human being for no purpose other than to get rid of [him or her] is a constitutionally protected act.
The court has never looked at the question of whether such conduct, so defined, could be constitutionally protected. Also, once you recognize that the mother-child relationship exists, the child exists.
The court has never been presented with the abortion doctors who have been claiming they represent the rights of the mothers.
No one has ever raised a woman's right [to be fully informed]. Well, now we have the Santa Marie litigants—women who have courageously stood up and said, “Our rights have been destroyed by the abortion doctors who killed our children without our informed consent.”
Do you expect to win this case?
The court has shown in a number of decisions that it is totally unim-pressed with the reasoning behind Roe.
That decision isn't standing now because the court thinks it's solid jurisprudence; it's standing for a number of [legally weak] reasons. One of these is that the court doesn't see an alternative, given the current climate. Another is that the court claims it is bound to upholding [the status quo] because so many people have come to rely on it.
I expect that Roe will fall because there is no case that is so bad in terms of its legal reasoning and in terms of the damage that it does to the culture. It represents what is probably one of the greatest human rights violations of our time.
It's just a matter of people standing up to the court and demanding that our justices get things right when it comes to the lives of children and the welfare of their mothers.
Rich Rinaldi is director of Register Radio News.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Rich Rinaldi ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:A new study suggests that abortion reduced crime rates (see story, page 1). Pope John Paul II suggests that the opposite may be true.
In his homily at Denver's World Youth Day on Aug. 15, 1993 (Nos. 3-4), he said the abortion mentality has allowed crime and immorality to become more prevalent.
We are … witnessing the spread of a mentality that militates against life—an attitude of hostility towards life in the mother's womb and life in its last phases. At the very time that science and medicine are increasingly able to safeguard health and life, threats against life are becoming more insidious. Abortion and euthanasia—the actual taking of a real human life—are claimed as "rights" and solutions to "problems," problems of individuals or those of society. The killing of the innocent is no less sinful an act or less destructive because it is done in a legal and scientific manner.
In modern metropolises, life—God's first gift and a fundamental right of each individual, the basis of all other rights—is often treated more or less as a commodity to be … manipulated at will.
All this takes place although Christ, the Good Shepherd, wants us to have life. … He knows how many young people are wasting their lives, shirking their responsibility and living in falsehood. Drugs, the abuse of alcohol, pornography and sexual disorder, violence: these are some of the grave problems which need to be seriously addressed by the whole of society, in every nation and at the international level.
Why do the consciences of young people not rebel against this situation, especially against the moral evil which flows from personal choices? … Is it because conscience itself is losing the ability to distinguish good from evil?
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Did You Know? DATE: 08/22/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: August 22-28, 1999 ----- BODY:In the June 1999 issue of its journal The American Psychologist, the American Psychological Association published a report called “Deconstructing the Essential Father.”
It said, “We do not believe that the data support the conclusion that fathers are essential to child well-being .…”
But the Morehouse School of Medicine and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta recently released a separate study. They compiled birth and death information for more than 200,000 children born in Georgia in 1989 and 1990 and found that the children in birth certificates lacking a father's name were twice as likely to die in the first year of life. After taking account of factors including maternal age, adequacy of prenatal care, and identifiable medical risks, a “significant” discrepancy remained, reports the Family Research Council.
----- EXCERPT: Facts of Life ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life ----- TITLE: 'Desecration' Is Not Art, Catholic Protesters Insist DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:BROOKLYN, N.Y.—A crowd of 400 Catholics alternated between praying to the Blessed Virgin Mary and protesting the desecrated portrait of her on display inside the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
“I'm here because it makes me angry that they're disgracing my mother this way,” Patrick Gallic, 17, of Warren, N.J., told the Register. “Bashing Catholics is not art.”
“We're outraged that someone would put dung on a portrait of the Blessed Virgin Mary,” Margaret Fogarty, of Bronx, N.Y., told the Register.
The contentious picture, created by Chris Ofili, shows the Virgin Mary sprinkled with elephant dung and surrounded by pornographic pictures. It's part of an exhibit called “Sensation” that opened on Oct. 2.
“And this is art?” asked Fogarty. “These people have to be sick.”
Using a megaphone to broadcast their message to hundreds of people lined outside the museum, the protesters were noisy but peaceful.
“You talk about tolerance, acceptance and compassion,” Michael Mangan, of St. Michael's World Apostate, shouted towards the Museum. “Where is it for the Blessed Mother? Where is it for Christian Catholics?”
In addition to their disgust over the portrait, the protesters were outraged over the use of taxpayer dollars that went to finance the exhibit, which will be on display until Jan. 9.
“Let them do this with private funds,” said William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, and leader of the protest. “They don't have to do it on welfare from us.”
New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani moved recently to withhold $7.2 million in city funding from the museum. The city and the museum have since sued each other, with the museum even listing Guiliani as a defendant in its suit.
Guiliani clearly was a crowd favorite, though he did not appear at the protest himself.
“Rudy Guiliani, God Bless You,” Michael Mangan, of St. Michael's World Apostolate, shouted to the crowd. “The Lord will remember you for honoring our mother.”
Norman Seigel, president of the New York Civil Liberties Union was on hand to offer his views to the hordes of journalists covering the protest.
“Once you decide as a nation to fund the arts,” Siegel told the Register, “if you decide to defund the arts and the courts say that it was done because it was unpopular, that's unconstitutional.”
It was clear that Brooklyn's Congressman disagreed with that sentiment.
“Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that we have to subsidize art that offended our religion or any religion,” Rep. Vito Fossella, shouted to the crowd.
The museum warned patrons that the exhibit may be offensive and encouraged people to bring vomit bags, which the Catholic League supplied to over 500 people outside the Museum.
Catholics were not the only protesters, however. A dozen animal-rights activists objected to the exhibit as well, because of one piece of “art” made from sliced pigs.
“The only thing [Catholics] care about is an icon,” Michael Norcia told the Register. “I think they're oblivious to the more important issue,” which is cruelty to animals, Norcia said. “It's like talking about acne when you have terminal cancer.”
Only about six people protested on behalf of the Museum, accusing the Catholics of censorship. One protester's sign asked, “Is book burning next?” One man had cut out a large cardboard portrait of a hand with a middle finger raised. The man next to him held a sign that asked, “Find this offensive?”
The protester that received the most media attention, though, was neither a Catholic nor a vegetarian, but an anti-Guiliani protester. Holding two large paintings mocking the mayor, Robert Lederman shouted to journalists, asking to be interviewed.
Lederman, who claimed to be an artist, told the Register that elephant dung is considered sacred in Africa. Lederman also said the Catholics protesters do not understand the painting done by Chris Ofili, who is British. “It's a matter of cultural chauvinism,” Lederman said, referring to the Catholics.
John Dunleavy, of Bronx, couldn't disagree more. “If it was a Star of David with a swastika on it,” Dunleavy told the Register, “it certainly wouldn't be shown as art.”
One art patron, after leaving the Museum, mocked a nun outside the museum for refusing to see the exhibit, but was chastised by her friend. “Don't try reason with them,” he told her. “They're morons.”
Despite such hostility, the sponsors of the protesters deemed it a success.
“I'm very pleased that there's such a diverse crowd,” Donohue told the Register. “We're sending an unmistakable message that public funds should not be used to finance private hate speech.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Josh Mercer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: At St. Peter's Basilica The 2000 Countdown Begins With a Bang! DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—The restored façade of St. Peter's Basilica was blessed by Pope John Paul II in an evening ceremony Sept. 30 that heightened expectations for the Jubilee Year.
Calling it the “restoration of the century,” Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls likened it to the restoration of the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel: “That was the pictorial restoration of the century, this is the stone restoration.”
The massive, two-and-a-half year work of restoration has left even long-time Romans astonished at the restored beauty of the façade. As other Jubilee public-works projects remain as-yet unfinished, and the city of Rome is plagued by hundreds of construction sites, the on-time completion of St. Peter's lifted spirits among both Church and Italian government officials.
The restored façade was inaugurated with a 20-minute pyrotechnic spectacular that left mouths agape amongst the thousands in attendance in St. Peter's Square. The fireworks, which were shot off from the top of the façade and from the steps of the basilica, no more that 50 meters from where the Holy Father was seated, were coordinated with a setting of the Te Deum performed by the orchestra and choir of the National Academy of St. Cecilia.
The fireworks corresponded to the verses of the Church's ancient hymn of thanksgiving and praise. When the hymn spoke of the “white-robed army of martyrs” the fireworks showered the façade in white, followed by red, the color of martyrdom. And as the hymn built toward its crescendo — “Enthroned at God's right hand in the glory of the Father, you will come in judgment” — the explosion of fire and light around the central statue of Christ the King atop the façade created a powerful biblical image of the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and glory (cf. Matthew 24:30).
“This night will conclude a period of great preparation, spiritual and in part material, which characterizes our vigil,” said Cardinal Virgilio Noè, archpriest of St. Peter's and responsible for the restoration. “One desires that everything would be reordered and renewed, everything made beautiful for the Lord who is coming.”
“The entrance to the church of St. Peter's is adorned with great beauty,” he continued, quoting Paolino da Nola, a fifth-century bishop and poet. “The sensation of beauty which the eyes contemplate, while still outside the basilica, prepares the spirit for contemplation of the sacred mysteries which are celebrated inside.”
In his address the Holy Father spoke of the Jubilee as “already imminent” — Cardinal Noè gave the exact figure of 85 days. “The works of restoration remind us that every believer, each one of us, is called to a continual conversion and a courageous amendment of life to be able to meet Christ in a profound manner and to benefit fully from the fruits of the Holy Year,” the Pope said.
While the spiritual significance of the basilica was emphasized at the blessing ceremony, the staggering material aspects of the restoration were highlighted in special television documentaries made for the occasion. The stone façade is 7000 square meters, approximately the size of a soccer field. Thousands upon thousands of detailed photographs were taken of the façade, so that it could be studied inch by inch. The photographs now form a comprehensive computer database that will allow future work to be done with much greater ease. Detailed analysis of the stone, including the use of x-rays and microscopes, revealed the wear of time, and allowed for cleaning and enhancing according to the original design. The stone was cleaned by using high pressure water, air and carbon dust – a combination that cleans without damaging the stone, as sandblasting would do, for example.
The restorers made a surprising discovery that the original plans of the Carlo Maderno, the architect of the 17th century façade, had called for the stone to be painted. So the restoration brings out more clearly the use of color, and the façade now appears much brighter, and there are different shades of color.
The atrium of the vestibule of St. Peter's is also under restoration, including the ceiling which contains gilded scenes from the life of St. Peter. The scaffolding on that project is now coming down. St. Peter's will be scaffolding-free and more beautiful than it has been for centuries when the Jubilee Year opens.
Both the Italian President, Carlo Ciampi, and the Prime Minister, Massimo D'Alema, attended the blessing ceremony. Also in attendance were officials from Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi, an Italian oil company, which paid the restoration's $6 million cost and donated millions of man-hours of labor from its own workers.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond J. De Souza ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Nuns Feel Called to Go Door-to-Door DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:SCRANTON, Pa.—If you get a knock on your door tonight, it might not be the paperboy or the Jehovah's witnesses.
The Parish Visitors of Mary Immaculate, a religious order of nuns based in Monroe, N.Y., have been knocking on doors for more than 75 years.
They say they have been delivering the same message Pope John Paul II will send to the world when he knocks on the Jubilee door of the newly restored St. Peter's Basilica this December: Open wide the door to Christ.
“We go out looking especially for the ones who are away from the Church, those the Church can't meet in any other way. We show that we care about them, that we are missing them,” said Parish Visitor Sister Carole Marie Troskowski, the order's General Superior.
“We just knock and say we are coming on behalf of their parish priest, that he is concerned about the spiritual welfare of the people. Then we try to get into a conversation and show an interest in them. We just converse. We might see a guitar lying on the floor or a picture of children. It's amazing what people will disclose to you,” Sister Carole Marie said.
“And we always come back. This surprises many people. We come back and we visit many times. We offer them informal instruction in their faith, but we only give them what they can take initially. If by God's grace they have the courage to want to see a priest for confession or to rectify their marriage, we direct them. If someone has left the Church because of a bad experience they once had with someone in the Church, we never take sides. We tell them everyone is human. A lot of times, though, people will use this as an excuse to stay away,” Sister Carole Marie said.
Parish Visitor Sister Mary Gemma, who made her final vows in 1963, has knocked on a lot of doors in her day. Now serving as treasurer for the order, she told the Register that she was drawn to the Parish Visitors as a young girl when a member stopped by her family's house one day for a visit.
“I saw their work and I learned a little about their prayer life and their apostolate. I liked both. I was attracted to their hour of adoration before the Blessed Sacrament and to the person-to-person contact you have in doing door-to-door work,” Sister Mary Gemma said.
Today, the sisters have a total 68 members in the United States and Nigeria, including 16 new vocations at various stages in their formation.
“It's a wonderful work because you meet so many different kinds of people. A few slam the door in your face, but not most. Most will listen and hear you out. I've found that most people have an inner desire for God, even the ones that are not practicing their faith,” sister Gemma added.
“Many times we hear things that you might hear in confession and in some of these cases I ask them to repeat it to a priest. Some think their sin is so bad that they can't step inside a church. When you hear some of the things they are doing, you just take it like another piece of information and try to leave yourself open to talk about it later in the conversation,” she said.
Both Sister Gemma and Sister Carole Marie agreed that being a Parish Visitor doesn't require an outgoing personality. “It's a strange phenomena that you can be shy and still have a vocation to our order,” Sister Carole Marie said. “A number of our sisters are shy by temperament, but they love the person-to-person apostolate. Sister Carole Marie said the same is true for the lay missionaries her order trains to do parish missions on their own. “Its amazing how these people blossom when they witness to the Lord and to their Catholic faith,” she said.
Sister Carole Marie provided the Register with a brochure which described the life of piety lived by the Parish Visitors. “Our life of prayer includes Holy Mass in community; Morning and Evening Prayer of the Divine Office together; a daily Hour of Eucharistic Adoration; a half hour of meditation; Rosary; Scripture reading and other spiritual reading; and that spirit of prayerfulness throughout … called recollection.”
Why all the prayer when the nuns have such an active mission? Sister Carole Marie explained that the order's life of ordered contemplation is the “soul” of its apostolate.
“Our first commitment is a life of prayer that aims at a real contemplative union with the Lord. ‘Contemplation first because God is first,’”Sister Carole Marie said, quoting a favorite phrase of the order's foundress, Mother Mary Teresa Tallon.
This commitment to contemplative prayer as the center of an active apostolate has not gone unnoticed by major figures in the Church today.
“I think they are a marvelous community,” said Franciscan Friar of the Renewal Father Benedict Groeschel. “They've kept their religious spirit beautifully. They are one of the few communities that weathered the storm of the post-conciliar period well. And they did it by keeping a unified apostolate, a realistic and honest observance of their vows, and their habit. It's surprising to me that the other orders don't learn how essential these things are. The Parish Visitors are a ship afloat in a stormy sea. And anybody who does-n't know what I'm talking about is crazy,” Father Groeschel said
Parish Visitor Sister Marie Clare, 33, also spoke of the importance of contemplation for her work. “Without that prayer we couldn't do the job. We have to go to the Chapel first and ask Our Lord and his mother to help us because it is the Lord's work we are doing,” Sister Marie Clare said, adding, it's the Holy Spirit that converts the people, but the Lord wants to use us as his instrument. You know, It's not easy for somebody to just get up and knock on a stranger's door. The only weapon we have is prayer. That's how we get our strength.”
In a letter to the Parish Visitors, New York's John Cardinal O'Connor said God is able to make house-calls because the Parish Visitors take Him with them on their visits. “They take him to those who have never really known him as he wants to be known or who, having once been his close friends, have for whatever reason become virtual strangers. The Good News is a Person, the Lord Jesus Christ. The Parish Visitor Sisters make it possible for him to go where he just might never make it otherwise,” Cardinal O'Connor wrote.
The Parish Visitors celebrated their seventy-fifth anniversary in 1995. Sister Marie Clare said that she is making efforts to see that their foundress, mother Mary Tallon is beatified.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian McGuire ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Abused Quebec Orphans Do Deserve an Apology, But Not From Bishops DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY: JOE WOODARDMONTREAL—The bishops of Quebec are refusing to apologize to thousands of orphans who came under the care of Catholic nursing orders in the 1940s and 1950s.
They say there may be reason for others to do so — but not them.
“Such an apology … would be a betrayal of the efforts of those persons who have dedicated their lives to helping the least fortunate,” said the bishops of Canada's French-speaking province in a Sept. 15 statement.
Meanwhile, in response to the Quebec bishops’ statement, the Duplessis Orphans Committee has called for a boycott of parish collection plates. Beginning Oct. 3, the orphans said they would distribute pamphlets at Church doors and encourage worshippers to withhold their Sunday contributions.
The flap goes back to decades-ago regulations that prompted the provincial government to designate more than 5,000 children as psychiatric patients instead of public wards. The regulations allowed the orphans to be housed in Catholic institutions for the mentally ill. Many orphanages were also re-classified as asylums in order to be made eligible for government funding.
Since 1992, the 3,000 surviving “Duplessis orphans” have been seeking an apology and restitution from both Church and state for a policy that left them largely uneducated and with the social stigma of mental illness.
A smaller number are also alleging particular cases of physical, mental and sexual abuse, usually at the hands of civil servants and lay employees.
Other orphans from the era acknowledge the shortcomings of the old system but object to the idea that the Church, especially the religious nuns and brothers who cared for the children, should be blamed.
In 1997, the provincial ombudsman recommended that the province issue an apology and pay out $55 million. Instead, the government offered $3 million along with Premier Lucien Bouchard's advice that “the victims should turn the page and go on.”
That proposal was rejected, along with the bishops’ offer of support through the Church's network of social services.
In its statement, the bishops said “the Church does not intend to make any financial contribution to individuals or to a fund intended to assist the Duplessis orphans.
“We consider that the Church has already given a lot and continues to give generously. We are ready to continue the community actions in which we have been involved for many years,” and cooperate with other government efforts.
Les Orphelins de Duplessis take their name from Maurice Duplessis, Quebec premier from 1936-39 and 1944-59 who was renowned for both his devout Catholicism and his political conservatism.
Since the English conquest of 1756, Quebec has been isolated amidst North America's “Protestantizing Anglo-Saxonism,” and traditionally defended its French Catholicism through a “Holy Alliance” of Church and provincial government.
The Church long provided the province's educational and social services on a contract basis for the province, which served as treasurer and gate-keeper. The arrangement worked while Quebec was predominantly rural, but post-war urbanization brought the temptations of patronage, graft and prejudice.
In the “Quiet Revolution” of the 1960s, the province's secular liberals were able to tar the moral authority of the Church with the political corruption of the government. As a result, Quebec's Sunday Mass attendance today is at about 15%, and its birth rate ranks among the lowest in the world.
By 1954, the more than 5,000 Duplessis orphans made up an estimated 25% of the province's mental patients, officially classified as such for the sake of federal hospital funding. For example, St. Julien's Hospital at the time was home to 500 healthy orphans and 900 insane adults.
Much press attention has been devoted to alleged cases of sexual abuse, electric shock treatment and straitjacket confinement. However, when the Duplessis Orphans Committee was organized in 1992, the 3,000 survivors filed just 241 abuse complaints with the police and only one was successfully prosecuted.
While the secular media has dwelt largely on the sensational, the committee's complaint has focused primarily on the “misdiagnosis” of the orphans by the state that robbed them of proper schooling, sometimes required them to perform unpaid hospital labor, and left them with the lifelong tag of mental disability.
University of Montreal psychiatrist Jean Gaudreau, a member of a 1961 medical survey of the orphans, said that “many had [normal] intellectual potential,” but “suffered from cultural and sensory deprivation.” A large proportion of the orphans were the children of single mothers, for whom there was no other social assistance.
“We're not blaming the sisters for anything,” committee spokesman Carlo Tarini told the Register. “We're holding the bishops responsible, and they're hiding behind the religious orders.”
At one orphanage, Tarini said, a mother superior informed 350 crying children that, for legal reasons, they were all “crazy.” The black habits changed to white, bars went up on the windows, and schooling was replaced with a hospital timetable, he said.
In their statement, the bishops concluded: “Unfortunately, history cannot be altered, which is why we believe that it is preferable to devote our time and energies to meeting today the needs of persons who are requesting our assistance.”
Vincent deVilliers, a member of the Company of Montreal lay religious community, is a Duplessis orphan who objects to the actions of the orphans’ committee. “The sisters continued to treat the orphans like orphans” and not as mental patients, he told the Register.
When his orphanage became an asylum in 1954, deVilliers had made it only to the fourth grade, and his schooling abruptly stopped. “But they didn't treat us like mental cases,” he insisted. “And the committee is wrong to say that the Church and government were in collusion.”
Given that the children needed food, clothing, and shelter, he said the charitable orders were merely doing whatever they could under the rules of the time and with the resources that were then available to them.
The seven orders who cared for the Duplessis orphans include the Sisters of Providence, the Sisters of Charity, the Sisters of Mercy, the Grey Nuns, the Small Franciscans of Mary, the Brothers of Charity and the Brothers of Our Lady of Mercy.
In their statement, the bishops reject the orphan committee's call for a “dialogue,” because the committee has “instituted legal proceedings against certain religious authorities.” The committee, however, denies that it has any outstanding legal actions, though particular individuals may have their own civil suits working their way through the courts.
“The whole controversy seems to be driven by the stigma of insanity,” said a provincial court judge who asked not to be identified. “The nuns may have done the best they could, but the orphans ended up living with the label of mental illness.”
Joe Woodard writes from Calgary, Canada.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joe Woodard ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: What Vocations Crisis? DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:The number of men responding to calls to the priesthood in the Diocese of Arlington, Va., has steadily increased every year since 1985 — the year the late Bishop John Keating named him vocations director. He shared the secrets of his success with Register staff writer Brian McGuire.
McGuire: You've said that the strength of the Arlington Diocese's vocations program owes much to the efforts of three successive bishops. What have they done that's made a difference?
Father Gould: Well, our current bishop and his two predecessors each focused on a unique aspect of calling men to the priest-hood. Bishop Thomas J. Welsh, the first of the three, for instance, focused on “the mission.” He used to say to the guys, “the secret to the priesthood in Arlington is the ability to get Jesus Christ across the Potomac River to Washington on Monday morning.”
What does that mean?
That means in your homilies on Sunday mornings, in all your teaching and preaching, in all your programs such as adult education, make sure you give people an expression of your vocation as a priest. That worked well for him, because Catholic education was very important to him. He saw the complement between Catholic education and vocations.
Bishop John Keating was next.
Yes, and he focused on the theme of “men.” The key there is, you look for men who have docility and also initiative. Where Bishop Welsh wanted to synthesize the academic, social and spiritual dimensions of the diocese, Bishop Keating was looking for men who demonstrated prayer, generosity, hard work and sacrifice. He made it clear that he needed men who were able to listen to the Word of God expressed in the Church and lived out in the priest-hood.
And what about the current ordinary, Bishop Paul S. Loverde?
He's new here, just six months [into his appointment]. He expresses “the mystery” of vocations. He talks to the parents and says they must pray for vocations, but not from someone else's family — from their own family.
So there you have it — the mission, the men and the mystery. Those three themes have defined our vocations program.
Another of Bishop Loverde's key phrases is one he addresses to parents: “God will always reward you for your generosity.” The reward may be a daughter or son who goes off to priest-hood or religious life, or it may be a heart that's just open to the will of God.
What are some of the difficulties you've had finding vocations?
I visit the families and tell them what my parents never found out. What's involved in the vocation program, what will happen in the next five or six years.
The toughest is the young lad who is a convert, who is from a family who doesn't understand the Church in the first place, let alone the priesthood. One woman looked across the table at me and said, “We really don't know why you came here tonight. “ She wasn't wild about me being there. The boy was a convert and the parents were still Protestant.
What made you go to his house?
I visit every family for the candidates that are applying for seminary.
You go to help the parents understand?
Yes, I'm doing it because no one ever came to talk to my parents. They didn't have a clue what I was doing and I didn't have much more. And then I give every one of them my telephone numbers including my private line. And I tell them they can call me at three in the morning if they want. In 15 years, I have had a couple of calls at three in the morning.
What tends to concern parents?
It could be anything: health, academics, a schedule they fear might be too demanding for their son.
Are most parents encouraging of their sons'interest in the priesthood?
Yes, most times they are. Other times you hope they come around. Five years later that Protestant mother, though she never became Catholic, made the vestments for her son's ordination.
Do you ever see a vocation in someone who doesn't see one in himself?
We're very careful not to take candidates where [someone else] has told them they have a vocation. More often than not, it is the other kid in the class, not the [obvious] one.
Here's another family story. The oldest of seven sons. All home schooled. He went off to Christendom College. Now he is going to the seminary. They all met me just bug-eyed like I came from another planet. Like, what is going to happen now? The kids were so enthused but they just couldn't believe that their brother was going to the seminary to be a priest. Now that oldest son is the associate with me at the parish here.
Are most vocations the result of a lifelong discernment process?
I think most guys thought of it when they were young. I think it is difficult for the older candidate to go to the seminary, because his idiosyncrasies are locked in place. It's the same in marriage. In marriage, if you get married before 30, you are a couple; you're a team. You're more malleable when you're younger. So the people who say it's better to wait until you're older usually miss the point that the formation is easier for younger men.
What's another interesting vocation you've had to help along?
One young man was shot by a sniper as a newspaper boy when he was 12. He wasn't supposed to walk again. He came in to see me on his two canes and we weren't sure we could take this candidate because of his health concerns. The Pope made a statement that those with physical infirmities display the cross of Christ more credibly. And because of that statement from the Pope, we accepted that candidate. Now he is one of our terrific young priests in the diocese, Father Dennis Donahue.
What fundamental things should a diocese do if it want to increase vocations?
It has to have four groups working together: the bishop, the priests, the religious and the laity. When you separate those groups from each other, the temptation is for the priests and religious to blame the lay people for not giving their sons. The lay people, in turn, complain that the priests and religious don't give a credible witness — because lay people tend to be businessmen in their orientation. If you have something to sell, people invest in it. If you don't, don't look for my son. The key to success in Arlington has been that all four have been together in their enthusiasm for vocations and the key to success is the Poor Clares, because it is the spiritual before the social and academic.
Was getting the Poor Clares into the diocese motivated by that very idea?
I think so. I think Bishop Welsh had the design before him to synthesize the academic, social and spiritual dimensions of the parishioners. It's no great surprise because he was a seminary rector and that is the ideal for seminary candidates. They should synthesize the academic, social and spiritual. And that's what “Sister Mary Holy-Card” used to do to you in the first grade. She gave you holy cards, she put you together. You learn your prayers together. You learn how to tie your shoes together. You play together. Academic, social, spiritual synthesis is the key. You do it collectively as bishops, priests, religious and lay people.
What does that synthesis look like, day to day, in the diocese of Arlington?
You look for the number of people going to Mass, Confession, Eucharistic devotions or adult education. You look for the interest in Catholic education in the school system or the CCD programs.
How do you concretely go about getting vocations in the diocese ?
It's the priests of the parish that really push. They might meet a guy who is an altar boy, someone in the confessional, someone in college. If you want the real unsung heroes of vocations, it's the guy in the parish, the guy in the trench. Guys like me are bureaucrats. We'll go bless your pet rock. But the real vocation directors don't sit in my office. They are the priests doing the job out there, living the life and talking about it to whomever will listen. They deserve the credit more than anyone else.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: James Gould ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: Adoptions on Rise Due to Fewer Steps DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:AMARILLO, Texas-For Alfonso and Paula Armstrong adopting AlexZander was almost too easy.
“We heard about him on Saturday. We called on Monday. They did a home-study Monday night. We had him by Friday,” Alfonso Armstrong told the Register.
The quick and painless manner in which the Armstrongs adopted AlexZander four years ago runs against decades of conventional wisdom. Gone are the days when adoptions would take months upon months or even years.
“It's not as hard as it used to be,” said Armstrong, who is finalizing the legal work on adopting a set of twins, Adrien and Adreonna.
New government data show a 29% rise in adoptions nationwide. Last year 36,000 foster children were adopted, compared with 31,000 in 1997 and 28,000 in 1996.
Armstrong praised the Catholic Family Services of Amarillo, Texas, for their dedication. “They match up well adoption parents and biological parents. They work hard.”
Armstrong thinks, however, that more needs to be done to encourage other black families as well as Hispanic families to adopt minority children stuck in foster families.
The Deptartment of Health and Human Services announced in late September that the Catholic Family Services of Amarillo will receive a $250,000 grant to encourage adoption of minority children. Twenty four other groups received grants totaling $5.5 million.
The federal government also awarded $14.5 million to 35 states that had an increase in the adoption of foster children.
Option for Minorities
Donna Shalala, Secretary of Health and Human Services, said, “Our vision and our partnership with states has resulted in a tremendous effort to help more children get permanent homes. We are well on the way to meeting the president's goal of doubling the number of children adopted from foster care by the year 2002.”
Melody Walker, supervisor of Maternity and Adoption Services for the Catholic Family Services in Amarillo, Texas, is looking forward to using the grant to increase minority participation in adoption.
“We'll accept any family, but we're trying to get more Hispanic and black families to adopt,” Walker told the Register.
In addition to the federal subsidies to get foster children into permanent homes, the State of Texas mandates that foster care facilities must find a family within 12 months, Walker said.
“With all these kids available for adoption, we need to find families to adopt them,” Walker said.
Adopting children with special needs — those over 6 of any sibling group, or a minority over 2 — was much easier, Walker said. “There is no cost to a family that adopts children with these special needs,” Walker told the Register.
The key to continuing the increase in adoptions, Walker said, is minority involvement.
“We're trying to find minority families for children stuck in the foster care system,” Walker told the Register.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Josh Mercer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: U.S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:Catholic League Body-Slams Ventura
CATHOLIC LEAGUE, Sept. 30—Minn. Gov. Jesse Ventura is quoted in the November issue of Playboy as calling organized religion “a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers,” a statement issued by the Catholic League reported.
Said Catholic League president William Donohue, “The Minnesota Governor has now proven himself to be Jesse ‘The Bigot’ Ventura. Liberty shorn of its religious underpinnings is the real sham, as the Founders and most students of freedom have long understood. But according to the erudite Mr. Ventura, they all got it wrong.
“What Ventura is saying is that organized religion has an intrusive, and therefore deleterious effect on American society. To that end, it is only logical that he might seek to check its influence. This bears watching, as that is the position of an anti-religious bigot,” Donohue added.
Persecution of Catholics in China
“I got and saw the film on Wednesday, while hundreds of top American and European business executives were attending a Shanghai “economic forum” sponsored by Fortune and its owner, Time Warner, with the blessing and manipulation of the Politburo, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Mao's victory, and the decades of despotism by massacre that followed.
“Everything pertinent to trade was on the agenda, except the rights of Chinese. The C.E.O.s and company presidents, and Fortune and Time Warner, either judged these rights to have no value on any balance sheet, were foot-kissing the Politburo, or both,” Rosenthal said.
“I am asked why I write often about religious persecution of Christians, since I am a Jew, and not even religiously educated. One simple reason is sufficient: sufferings of the religious are as painful as of the secular. But there is another — neither religious nor secular freedoms will flourish where one is denied. Only if religious and secular Americans grasp that will a human rights movement exist in America that can protect them all,” Rosenthal wrote.
Marriage: The Tender Trap?
“According to the research, married couples’ assessments of the quality of their marriages starts to sink rapidly just after the ‘I do’ and continues downward through the first four years. The quality of marriage plateaus after that first drop and then declines again during years eight, nine and 10.”
----- EXCERPT: From Selected Sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Crusading Priest Calls for Children's Court DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY: PAUL BURNELLLONDON—The world's exploited and violated children need their own court of human rights, a crusading priest urged a major United Nations conference.
Columban Father Shay Cullen, an advocate for the abolition of child prostitution, made his latest proposal in August at the International Forum for Child Welfare in Helsinki that was sponsored by the United Nations to mark the 10th anniversary of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Citing statistics from the International Labor Organization, Father Cullen said 50 to 60 million children between the ages of five and 11 are “laboring in inhuman and potentially life-threatening conditions.”
In all, he said, “250 million children between the ages of five and 14 are laboring in developing countries. But many more are maltreated and abused victims of serfdom, child pornography and sweatshops that utilize child labor.”
An empowered youth can fight back, argued Father Cullen. He cited the Global March of Young People, an effort to demonstrate for freedom from child labor and sexual exploitation. Perhaps not well known in many places, the march took place in a number of cities around the world over the last year, ending with a demonstration at U.N. headquarters in New York.
But an international court would make for better protection for children whose own nations may be looking the other way.
Vikram Parekh, a research officer with Human Rights Watch, said a children's court “would be rather difficult to implement” because “many governments would be reluctant to [cede authority to] another jurisdiction.”
He said children's advocacy and human rights groups should first direct their efforts at getting governments to make the United Nation's convention on child rights made part of their own laws.
Father Cullen's call for an international justice forum for children received modified endorsement from Daphne McLeod, chairman of Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice, a British Catholic organization that promotes loyalty to the Pope and the Magisterium.
“The U.N. has to take action against those who threaten vulnerable children, especially those who are exploited and abused in the Third World,” McLeod told the Register. However, if the U.N. were serious about children's rights, she said, it would stop funding forced abortion in China and the promotion of pro-abortion policies in the Third World.
“When talk of children's rights comes to the West, it is usually at the expense of parents’ rights,” McLeon cautioned. For example, “the European Court of Human Rights is being used to stop parents from smacking their children. The next thing you know you will have children going to court to get out of doing the washing-up.”
In addition to the proposed court, Father Cullen told the conference that much remains to be done to break down the apathy and complacency that pervades government and society over issues such as child exploitation and child sexual abuse. “We are instead faced with an ever greater challenge so long as millions of children are enslaved, abused, exploited,” he said.
Paul Burnell writes from Manchester, England.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Paul Burnell ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Crusader Against Child Prostitution DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:LONDON—Columban Father Shay Cullen's call for an international court to protect children is the latest effort in a missionary career that has focused on saving abused and neglected children.
The 56-year-old priest's primary effort has centered on the eradication of child prostitution, a practice that is rampant in many parts of Asia where he has spent most of his priesthood since his ordination in 1969.
Often a lonely battle against ingrained culture practices, the struggle has brought him into conflict with mobsters, “sex tourists,” corrupt politicians and even the U.S. Navy.
Based in Olongapo City in the Philippines for the last 25 years, Irish-born Father Cullen is the founder of People's Recovery Empowerment and Development Association (www.preda.org), which began as a community-based drug education, prevention, and rehabilitation agency.
The organization's activities shifted into the realm of child prostitution in response to the thriving child sex business that fed off the huge U.S. Navy base at the Philippines Subic Bay. “The mayor and the [Navy commanders] were well informed that nine year-olds were being sold as sex objects to the sailors and to local pedophiles,” Father Cullen said last month at the International Forum for Child Welfare in Helsinki.
“But instead of reacting to protect the children and bring the abusers to justice, they tried to cover up, no doubt to protect their own personal careers, their own neglect and the immoral and illegal activity,” said Father Cullen.
“The policy of the local government official was … to make personal gain from the sex industry. The policy of the military was to care for the sexual needs of [its] men at the expense of the women and children.”
The U.S. courts refused to consider a 1993 lawsuit brought by Father Cullen's organization against the Navy but, with the help of supporters in Congress, the group won a $2 million settlement from the U.S. Agency for International Development that covered the medical and educational expenses for the children of Filipino mothers who were left abandoned by the American servicemen who fathered them.
While his efforts have focused on Asia, Father Cullen has cautioned that the West is not without its share of responsibility for the Asian sex trade.
Earlier this year, the priest assisted British authorities in the prosecution of English and Scottish men who helped run a Bangkok pedophile ring that catered to “sex tourists” from Europe and North America who visit Thailand to prey on child prostitutes.
The West is also home to millions of children who are physically and sexually abused in government and private institutions, in the home and in their neighborhoods, said Father Cullen.
“They frequently grow up in a culture of sex and violence, isolated from human interaction by the video game sub culture, without role models of virtue to emulate and admire,” said Father Cullen. He added that high divorce rates mean that many children are “deprived of the stability of family life.”
For more information on Father Cullen's work, call the Jubilee Campaign USA in Fairfax, Va., at (703) 503-0791.
—Paul Burnell
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Paul Burnell ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Qoutes DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:Why No Muslim Condemnation of Timor Violence?
Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, a deputy secretary of state in charge of foreign affairs, said Muslim silence on the fate of East Timor's Catholics contrasted with the church's defense of Muslim victims in the Balkans.
“It is sad to see that no Muslim religious leader has raised his voice to condemn the massacres and the destruction [in East Timor], while Pope John Paul II was a strenuous defender of human rights when the Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo found themselves in the same situation,” he told the Italian weekly Famiglia Cristiana in late September.
The archbishop said the violence in East Timor is the result of a political clash and does not represent a “religious war.” Nevertheless, he said, a worrisome religious element has surfaced. For example, fanatical Muslim groups have been among those perpetrating recent attacks against Catholic institutions, he said.
Archbishop Tauran expressed strong support for the United Nations decision to approve a multinational peacekeeping force in East Timor, but he said the process of authorizing and deploying such a force was too slow.
The international community needs to find “rapid mechanisms to prevent and resolve dramas of this dimension,” he said.
He said the Timor violence illustrated that the United Nations in particular needs to be equipped in a way that “makes it able to respond effectively to this type of situation.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: The Sexual Revolution Is Over, Says Cardinal DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:LONDON — The sexual revolution has run out of steam and a return to the virtues of strong families is under way, a senior Vatican official told a September conference on sex education.
Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, said that many of those who thought sexual license would bring happiness are now beginning to see the error of their ways.
Other participants at the conference, organized by Catholic doctors and pro-life activists, cautioned that a broadly-based shift in favor of traditional values remains overshadowed by the prevailing culture.
“There are those who helped introduce the sexual revolution who now confess that they were wrong,” said Cardinal Trujillo. “I am absolutely certain of this. If we present this truth of life to many young people, they will respond to the challenge” and cultivate a sense of chastity.
Cardinal Trujillo told the Register that he based his comments on a number of encouraging trends in the West, including a recognition that the family must be supported and defended, and that this is the terrain of more than just organized religion.
In particular, he cited a Vatican-sponsored meeting in August of politicians and legislators from North and South America in Buenos Aries in which politicians seemed to better understand that the family must be supported and not undermined by policies such as state-sponsored liberal sex education.
It “was a good surprise for me to see how interest is increasing everywhere in the truth,” said the cardinal. “This is good news because society must be engaged, not merely the Church.”
Cardinal Trujillo observed that “people are beginning to realize that if there is not a good formation in family life the family of the future is destroyed.”
The cardinal's argument was supported by Gordon Heald, former managing director of the Gallup United Kingdom polling company, who carried out opinion surveys for British prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major as a private consultant in the 1980s and early 90s.
Heald, who also conducts research for the English and Welsh bishops'conference, cited a study he completed for the Major government.
“We found that 80% of the population expressed concern for family values, a caring community, respect for other people, honesty in public life, concern for others and the teaching of values,” he said, adding that family breakdown is still perceived as “the biggest problem facing society.”
Heald said those same concerns were mirrored in the European Values Survey which he helped produce in the early 1990s.
Western politicians are aware of the shift, he said, and are beginning to respond. He pointed to U.K. Health Minister Tessa Jowell's Sept. 24 call for a campaign to encourage teenage girls to say no to premarital sex as an example of the trend. “I don't think anybody expected her to say this,” said Heald.
Worst Not Over
Other participants at the conference did not dispute the existence of a positive shift but cautioned that many in a position to encourage the trend are instead resisting it in favor of earlier attitudes.
“If anything the U.K. scene is getting worse,” Valerie Riches, a Catholic who is director of the U.K.-based Family and Youth Concern, told the Register. “It is not sex education we have, it is education for promiscuity.”
Riches said she has seen educational material aimed at seven-year-olds that teach mutual masturbation as a form of safe sex.
Riches also pointed to the children's rights lobby as a group that, contrary to what might be implied by its name, is often anti-family. “You now get people arguing that it is a child's right to have sex,” she said. “I have come across cases where schools would not inform parents that their child had been caught having sex at school. They do not do this unless the child gives … consent.”
One bright spot in keeping with Cardinal Trujillo's argument, according to Riches, is a growing number of initiatives such as Michigan's values-based sex education that has replaced programs that deal with the mechanics of sex and such things as contraception in a supposedly morally neutral way.
“This idea of values-based education is normally anathema to those who promote sex education,” said Riches. “Yet, in practice, children do respond to values …”
Cardinal Trujillo agreed that the tide is only beginning to turn away from the era of sexual revolution, and that many powerful sectors will continue to promote libertine thinking that poses as education.
“People will [soon] consider what we have gone through as a historical disaster, especially as everywhere there are wonderful [changes in attitude],” said the cardinal. But the damage, he acknowledged, will be plain to see for many years to come.
The Vatican prelate also observed that parents are looking to take greater responsibility for their children's formation, including in the sexual area.
“Without this good formation it is not possible to be really happy,” he concluded.
Paul Burnell writes from Manchester, England.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Paul Burnell ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Orthodox Resist Liberal Protestant Drift DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:NYBORG, Denmark—In a further sign of strain between Orthodox Christianity and Protestantism, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church has announced that it is withdrawing from the Conference of European Churches, one of Europe's main inter-church bodies.
No reason for the resignation has been given, although the Bulgarian Orthodox Church last year also withdrew from membership of the World Council of Churches.
In recent years there has been increasing criticism from within Orthodox churches about the activities of ecumenical organizations, which are perceived by some as being too dominated by Protestant churches and overly influenced by liberal theological trends. Similar tensions have been reported in the U.S. National Council of Churches.
In 1997, the Georgian Orthodox Church resigned from both the World Council and European conference. The situation in Bulgaria is also complicated by a continuing struggle within the country's Orthodox Church, despite a recent agreement to patch up a split between two rival church leaderships.
The Bulgarian church claims 87% of the country's population of nine million as members.
Conference leaders hope that the six-month period before the resignation becomes effective will allow time for further discussions, and possibly a change of heart by the church.
Dr. Keith Clements,the conference general secretary, said that the news from Bulgaria had been received with “great sadness, not least because many contacts continue with members of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.”
Asked whether the conference was facing a similar situation to that of the World Council, where representatives of Orthodox churches have called for major changes in the organization's structure and ethos, Dr. Clements said that these questions had not been raised “in the same way” within the conference.
The conference “has always been their organization from the beginning,” Dr.Clements told journalists during the meeting of the central committee, pointing out that the participation in the conference by Orthodox churches from eastern Europe went back to the organization's foundation in 1959. In contrast, most Eastern Orthodox churches joined the World Council only after 1961, 13 years after its foundation.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Word Notes & Quotes DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:China's Oldest Catholic Church Discovered
The ruins, located 380 miles northwest of Beijing, tell of a Church with walls just under 17 feet in height which contained an enormous main hall and two 16 foot tall rostrums. A white stone lion found under the ruins resembles those found in front of Italian cathedrals dating from the same time period, the Chinese news service reported.
Catholic missionaries traveling along the Silk Road, which runs from China through Central Asia, were among the first Westerners to visit China.
Rwandan Bishop Tried for War Crimes
Bishop Augustin Misago, a Hutu, is the highest Church official accused of helping organize the genocide. He admitted attending meetings with local and district officials who carried out the orders to exterminate Tutsis, but insisted that he was present only to to protect them from danger.
Hundreds of clergy were slaughtered in the war between the Hutus and the Tutsi minority, many for refusing to turn over refugees to the Hutu militias who carried out most of the killings. Sixty-two percent of the Rwandan population claimed Church membership before the war began.
Aloys Habimana, who has monitored scores of genocide trials for the independent Rwandan League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights, told the Post, that despite appearances, the government faces an uphill battle.
“To prove planning genocide is not easy against someone who was not in the government,” Habimana said. “They want to show the bishop was close to the government, but something is missing.”
The Vatican has pledged its support for Bishop Misago, and is paying his legal fees, the Post reported.
----- EXCERPT: From Selected Sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Low Art or High Artifice? DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:Register Radio News correspondent Rich Rinaldi spoke with Father George Rutler of St. Agnes Parish in Manhattan about the Brooklyn, N.Y., art exhibit “Sensation,” which features a desecrated image of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Rinaldi: Why has an art exhibit caused such an uproar?
Father Rutler: It has caused a widespread scandal particularly because of one painting which is supposed to represent the Blessed Virgin. The picture itself is almost a cartoon-like figure. It's not meant to be a realistic representation. I cannot talk of the motive of the artist. It would really be amusing, if it were not so appalling, to hear the justification for what the artist was doing: The elephant dung is supposed to represent fertility and nutriment according to an African iconography. Fifty years ago, if one had been told that an artist had been doing such things they would not have believed it.
Is this indicative of a trend?
I think, first of all, we have to remember that, in the world of art, as in philosophy and in universities and our general culture, there has been a breakdown of cultural reference. We are in what is called postmodernity which is really the nervous breakdown of modern conceits; we are just living with the fragments now.
So art is going through this frustration and is grabbing any kind of medium, any kind of imagery, basically to express a general neurosis about the meaning of things. So I would not really impute the artist with intent of blasphemy … but it certainly is appalling that this is the level that art has attained.
I also have real reservation about it being politicized. Every politician weighs in with one motive or another which is not altogether helpful. But the prominent political voice in this controversy has been the mayor of New York and I think he's very right when he makes the distinction between censorship and subsidizing of art.
Its demagogic to reduce this controversy simply to a matter of censorship. At the heart of the matter is the fact that tax money is being used to subsidize this kind of art. The mayor has simply said they can paint what they want, sculpt what they want, amuse themselves and get a thrill out of scandalizing others — but taxpayers’ money should not be used for it.
What is the motive of true art? Money or beauty?
Well artists do work for money, and it's been a false myth that artists have always starved. There have been very successful artists who were also great businessmen. But they were really driven by a love of beauty and beauty lies in conforming to truth. It is the expression of something greater than the self.
In recent generations, we lost that model and we easily began to think that art is self-expression, that the artist is expressing himself. This is a mantra which we've accepted uncritically — but that's the voice of people who have lost the sense of the transcendent, lost a sense of objective truth.
Thomas Aquinas and a whole scholastic tradition define beauty, drawing on the Greeks, as that which pleases the eye. But we have to remember that, for all these great philosophers, the eye that they spoke of was the eye of the virtuous person, one who was committed to the good.
But there's an undertone here. We have to bear in mind in this exhibition that we are simply dealing with contempt for the beautiful and the true and the good. I don't think it's simply Catholic bashing. I think its total nihilism.
So we are dealing with a deeper meaning here.
In very important periods of art there were artists who scandalized people who had a reduced vision of the glory that the artist could see. In Venice there were many controversies. There were artists even [sent] to the inquisition for subtle reasons when we look back on now and say that the critics wrong.
Goya expressed his contempt for war and cruelty by depicting it in very ugly pictures on occasion. But it is vainglorious for every artist to think that just because his painting upsets people that he is a prophet.
Every artist who thinks himself brave for challenging a great institution like the church is being a hypocrite. You wouldn't do that with a Muslim image. No artist in his right mind in New York would put up a painting mocking the Ayatollah or mocking a Jewish symbol because he knows it would be immediate political outrage. Catholics have been a little too passive on this.
What will happen next in this controversy?
Well, first, I think it's a barometer of culture. What happens to this kind of artistic display depends on what happens to culture in general. It's reached the level of a swamp, and either we will drown in it or there will be some kind of cultural resurrection.
But I think you have to be very careful about how the situation is addressed. People who want publicity will get it. They wouldn't mind, but it does raise the question of the role of government in subsidizing art — always a questionable project. We have to remember that Michelangelo had troubles with [the Vatican] about what he was painting and there were popes after him who disapproved of his art. But we also have to be very careful about how politicians exploit this situation.
I would compliment Mayor Giuliani for what he has done. One can say, “Well, he's being political.” Well, we can't fault a politician for being political. But I think in being political, he has taken the right stand. Mrs. Clinton has shown again another defect in her general cultural analysis in the position she has taken.
Rich Rinaldi is the director of Register Radio News.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: George Rutler ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Crutch of Faith? DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:When Gov. Jesse Ventura of Minnesota called religion “a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people,” and said other silly things in a recent interview, the response from several quarters was fast and furious.
Religious leaders and polititians were quick to denounce him, and the chairman of the governor's Reform Party, Russ Verney, wisely sought to distance the party from the former professional wrestler.
All of this was very appropriate, of course. It is always damaging for a man with the credibility of an elected statewide office to attack one of the fundamental institutions of society. It is especially dangerous at the end of a century that has seen widespread destruction at the hands of government leaders who expressed opinions about religion that were nearly identical to Ventura's.
But was anybody particularly suprised at the governor's words? Other government officials have been acting as if they believed what he said for years now.
One ready example is the partial-birth abortion debate. A ban on the procedure — in which a nearly full-term baby is born feet-first, then killed by a doctor who pierces her skull — passed both houses of Congress in 1997. In an unprecedented protest, all living U.S. cardinals prayed outside the White House in the rain in support of the ban.
But President Clinton vetoed the bill anyway, leaving the grisly procedure perfectly legal in the United States.
The truth is, religion has been considered an irrelevant voice in the public square for quite some time — and in that same period of time, our laws have deteriorated steadily.
Nonetheless, Ventura's words should't be dismissed as the musings of a public buffoon who is more suited to the entertainment of adolescents in the wrestling ring than to a position of trust.
Rather, his words should alert young men and women to wake up to the fact that such “buffoons” are shaping the world of the future.
Shouldn't we Catholics be doing that?
* * *
It is tempting to be shrug off the “Sensation” exhibit in Brooklyn, N.Y., in which an “artist” has sprinkled pornographic images and elephant dung over an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
One homilist, in particular, summed up the situation admirably in a joke. “The bad news is that a major U.S. museum has attacked our Blessed Mother,” he said. “The good news is, it's in New York City.”
And it is true that the exhibit is very much the product of an art world that increasintly seems less like an expression of our culture and more like an irrelevant eccentricity of cosmopolita.
Perhaps it is also true, as another protestor told the Register , that a star of David with a swastika in it would never be mistaken for “art” as this portrait has been. But even this comparison is not enough.
One teenage protestor outside the museum summed up the situation nicely when she told the Register, “They're disgracing my mother.”
Indeed, for Catholics, the Blessed Virgin Mary is not simply “an icon” as many news reports have referred to her. Having been assumed body and soul into heaven, she is a living, breathing human being as real as anyone else.
She is certainly also a symbol of our religion, and this makes the desecration of her portrait all the worse. But in the end we don't love her as a symbol. We love her as what Christ declared her, and as we have come to know her: Mother of God, Mother of the Church, and mother to each of us.
* * *
The unborn child “is an entity separate from the mother.”
That's the basic message of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, and that makes the 254-172 margin in the House of Representatives Sept. 30 a pro-life victory.
The bill is also a victory for women's rights. When pregnant women are attacked, they have a right to see justice done not just for themselves, but for their unborn children as well.
The Senate will not likely vote on the bill until February, but the Clinton administration has already threatened to veto the decision.
The opposition to the bill is alarming. The Register recently reported a case where a man arranged for a gang of friends to beat and kick his pregnant girlfriend to cause her to miscarry. Such an act should be condemned for what it is: An act of aggression aimed as much at the baby as at the mother.
----- EXCERPT: EDITORIAL ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Hope and Healing for Homosexuals DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:by David Morrison (Our Sunday Visitor Publishing, 1999, 288 pages, $14.95)
Today's “gay anthropology” rests on faith in two popularly supported social doctrines. The first holds that some individuals are “born gay.” The second warns that, for those who experience same–sex attractions, the only authentic response is to say, “Gay is who I am.’”
Those who cleave to these ideas will find their convictions challenged, if not threatened, by Beyond Gay, a first-person account of a man who left the “gay lifestyle” behind to find healing and wholeness in his Catholic faith.
But the book is more than an inspiring conversion testimony, for David Morrison intelligently balances observations about his personal life with astute social commentary. He discusses how politics within the Church and the American Psychiatric Association sometimes serve to reinforce erroneous thinking around homosexuality. He also describes the well-documented data indicating that the primary cause of male homosexuality is a developmental problem whose roots lie in anxious early-life relationships with parents and parent figures.
In his own life, Morrison relates what we reparative therapists call the “classic triadic relationship,” which has been so consistently established in the psychoanalytic literature. I have seen it hundreds of times in my own clinical practice. It's the case where a boy experiences his father as distant and detached, and his mother as over-involved.
Morrison remembers his own father as generally indifferent, and recalls his mother as making herself “all too accessible.” He writes, “I quickly understood that my family dynamic was she and I against my father.” In his early relationships with his peers, again we see several developmental themes common to the pre-homosexual boy — shame about his body, a feeling of inadequacy, and the sense of not belonging to the company of males, whom he eventually romanticizes from a distance.
He points out how fortunate are the sexually confused youngsters of our time who manage to escape the trap which ensnares so many others — the encouragement of teachers, counselors and society for sexually confused youngsters to label themselves “gay” before they are old enough to make an informed decision about such an essential issue. Without the opportunity to understand how feelings of gender inadequacy will lead to romantic idealization of same-sex peers, many young people have been led to believe the scientifically insupportable argument that “I was born this way,” or, if they are religious, “God makes people gay.”
The recent bishops’ document “Always Our Children,” by the way, reinforces the “gay” label, and many priests and bishops are now promoting the identity as valid even while reiterating the requirement of chastity. But Christian anthropology, backed by science, makes it clear that God did not design two kinds of people, heterosexual and homosexual. Morrison helps show that, when homosexuality occurs, it is not an authentic, God-given identity, but rather a struggle to make adjustments and find peace with a true, God-given identity.
Morrison speaks about the fear (so often reported by my own clients as well) of being genuinely seen by other boys for who he was, which resulted in the longing for a deep male friendship which never seemed to come. These longings became the foundation for later same-sex attractions: what he could not find in the usual way through friendship, he compensated for with the secret fantasy that one day he would find that one, special, “best buddy.” Those fantasies eventually led him into a gay lifestyle. In reparative therapy, we call this period the Erotic Transitional Phase: the time when the boy's emotional needs for same-sex attention, affection and approval become eroticized.
The author's reporting of his first homosexual experience at the age of 11 or 12 with an older teenage boy is also very typical in the formation of homosexuality. One-third of my own clients were sexually molested as little boys or young teenagers by older males. Their feeling of inadequacy and alienation from other males found a tension-releasing outlet early on in their lives, and this experience confirmed their suspicion that they might be gay. At the same time, it short-circuited any future attempts they might have made to experience normal, non-erotic male intimacy through the mutuality and equality of genuine male friendship.
As a young adult, Morrison at first tried to integrate his Christian identity with a gay identity. Thus he was at first drawn to the homosexual group Dignity, which seeks to integrate Catholicism with a gay identity. His disillusionment with Dignity led to a final struggle which revealed to him the cost of discipleship as he discovered those two identities (gay and Catholic) to be irreconcilable.
Morrison talks about his initial rebellion against Scripture and Catholic moral teachings, and acknowledges the Church's statement that homosexuality is an “objective disorder.” Many gay ministries within this country wish to simply ignore, explain away, or rationalize that powerful term which forces the homosexually oriented Catholic to make a fundamental decision. But without question, acknowledgment of that statement must be the “litmus test for orthodoxy” of any Catholic ministry. Many such ministries are diocesan-supported and flourishing around this country in spite of their failure to acknowledge that a gay identity cannot be “who a person really is” in the deepest and truest sense of human identity.
This is the first autobiography of its kind written by a Catholic, aimed at a Catholic audience and printed by a Catholic publishing house. It is even graced by a bishop's introduction. Here's hoping this book finds a wide audience — and inspires other gifted communicators to come forward, tell their stories and help build a new body of much-needed literature like this.
Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D., of Enicino, Calif., is executive director of the National
Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Nicolosi ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Living Up to Jesus'Impossible Standards DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:by J. Steven Covington (This Rock, Sept. 1999)
J. Steven Covington, a contributor to This Rock from Neillsville, Wisc., writes on Jesus’ injunction in Matthew 5:48 to his followers to “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Covington notes, “Poised at the center of the Sermon on the Mount, this Gospel exhortation is a critical teaching moment in the life of Jesus and a critical moment of revelation for all his disciples. It is the moment where Jesus sums up his teaching by issuing a clarion call for us to transform ourselves into an image of God's own holiness, that we may transform the entire world into the kingdom of God.”
Covington points out that from the point of view of religious Jews, the call for Jesus’ followers to transform ourselves into something that resembles God could seem blasphemous, but Jesus instead offers us the “opportunity to become fully human by imitating the loving qualities of God.”
Only St. Matthew uses the word “perfect” in the New Testament, and his only other use of it is in Jesus’ advice to the rich young man “that to ‘be perfect,’ to find his true ‘treasure in heaven,’ he must give his wealth to the poor and follow the way of Jesus. In both the Sermon on the Mount and the interaction with the rich young man, Jesus uses the word ‘perfect’ to demand a certain type of moral behavior that will reflect our attempt to know God fully and therefore always to seek his will in our lives.”
The Greek word Matthew uses is “teleios, an adjective that defines something as being complete, something that is ‘whole,’ ‘fully grown,’ ‘final.’”
We need to give special attention to what Jesus said up there on the mount, because it introduced his followers to the essence of the New Covenant — as Moses’ ascent to Mt. Sinai introduced the Israelites to the law of the Old Covenant. “By describing the type of perfect behavior to which we should aspire, Jesus is giving us a glimpse of what eternal life will be like in the kingdom of God: a life that is capable only of knowing peace, a life that is free from anxiety and filled with hope, a life that is loving and can promote only good. By illuminating for us the qualities that we should display to one another, Jesus is describing for us the very qualities that God himself displays toward us and all creation. The most remarkable of these qualities — and the one seemingly most beyond human reach — is God's capacity to pour out his love upon those unworthy of it.”
The comparisons Jesus sets up between the old code of living and the new would shock many Jews of his day, “who had been taught that hating an enemy is a good, even godly thing.” After all, shunning the unbelievers all about them, and keeping pure the special faith entrusted to the Chosen People, was the only way they had kept knowledge of the true God alive — and many times in the course of their history they had come near to losing it.
“Still,” writes Covington, “an exhortation to charity would not have been unusual in the society in which Matthew's Gospel was written. … The Old Testament, for instance, admonishes us to give aid to one's enemies in certain circumstances, and the Stoic and Cynic philosophers of Jesus’ day did emphasize that we should all love one another. But extending these aphorisms to the point of actually acting with love to an enemy — and thereby negating our ability to act with hate — is a teaching that seems to have come uniquely from Christ.”
This is where perfecting ourselves as human beings intersects with imitating God. “A love of enemies would have to be an imitation of the divine love that God extends to each of us, regardless of whether or not we deserve it (we don't), want it (not frequently enough), or will ever return it (impossible in like measure). And if under the influence of God's grace we can exhibit such a love, we will be participating, in advance, in God's new, recreated world where no hatred or sin will exist: a world like the perfect world he created for us in the first place, only more glorious, which will exist only when his kingdom is finally at hand.”
Ellen Wilson Fielding writes from Davidson, Maryland.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: LETTERS DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:Jewish Respect for Pope Pius XII
Thank you for Bob Holton's insightful article on the controversy surrounding John's Cornwell's malicious book Hitler's Pope ("He Was No ‘Hitler's Pope,’ Pius XII Experts Contend,” Sept. 19-25). What was disappointing and troubling, though, was Rabbi Leon Klenicki's charge, without support for his thesis, that Pope Pius XII somehow “chose” Nazism over Communism. Because of the type of organization he works for, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, Rabbi Klenicki should be even more sensitive to making unfounded charges, particularly against the leader of the Catholic Church. The Anti-Defamation League has, sadly, strayed from its commendable and accurate defense of Pius XII in years past, when Dr. Joseph Lichten refuted the defamatory work of a literary predecessor of Cornwell's, Rolf Hochuth, who wrote The Deputy in the 1960s.
Besides Lichten's Pius XII and the Holocaust: A Question of Judgment, I charitably suggest that Rabbi Klenicki and his colleagues read or reread the works of other respected Jewish scholars like Jeno Levai (Pius XII Was Not Silent, London: Sands & Co., 1968), who gave testimony at the trials of various Nazi war criminals, and Israeli diplomat Pinchas Lapide, author of Three Popes and the Jews (New York: Hawthorn, 1967).
Thomas J. Nash Steubenville, Ohio
Shakespeare's True Faith
The Sept. 5-11 Register reported on an international gathering of scholars that examined the question of whether or not Shakespeare was a Catholic ("Shakespeare Scholars Say The Bard Was … Catholic? “). In 1945 John Henry de Groot, a Presbyterian minister, published his Columbia Ph.D. thesis, “The Shakespeares and ‘The Old Faith,’”in which he gave the still most systematic and massive evidence on behalf of Shakespeare's having been a Catholic. This book was recently reprinted by Real View Books with a most enlightening postscript by Stanley L. Jaki, which shows, among other things, the stunning extent to which de Groot's scholarly book has been ignored and this holds true, also, of some Catholic Shakespeare scholars.
Dr. Krzysztof Rapcewicz Astoria, New York
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Showing Love To a World Gone Numb DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:More than 25 years after the legalization of abortion in the United States, a certain numbness has settled in. The brutality behind every abortion, which used to shock, now draws a collective yawn from the culture at large. Recent examples are abundant.
When it first broke upon the scene, partial-birth abortion provoked disgust and disbelief, even among self-described “pro-choicers.” Descriptions of the procedure broke through the elite media's attempts to suppress them, via C-Span and a massive public education campaign by the Catholic Church and others. But abortion advocates immediately and steadily challenged every partial-birth ban passed at the state level. Over time, media coverage of the abortion lobby's largely successful litigation strategy began to replace plain talk about partial-birth abortion itself.
Talk of crushed infant skulls has been replaced with language about “attacks on women's rights and Roe v. Wade.” Pro-abortion lawyers coolly predict that all partial-birth bans will be struck down on “summary judgment” (a decision without a trial, based upon the law alone, the facts not being in any dispute). Legal opinions talk of these bans as “undue burdens” on women and “threats” to “abortion providers.”
So where did helpless human infants go? The rhetoric has rendered them invisible.
Also, like a ban on partial-birth abortion, the proposed federal Unborn Victims of Violence Act has the potential to render unborn children visible. And abortion advocates have reacted similarly. In place of this proposed law, which would acknowledge a second victim when a pregnant woman is hurt, they have proposed a substitute bill in which — voila! — the baby magically disappears. Interrupting the mother's “normal course of pregnancy” is the crime, and the mother is legally counted as the only victim.
Finally, you may remember the flap over the Canadian hospital that delivers genetically imperfect babies and leaves them to die without care. At first, the story provoked real horror. But that quieted when the Alberta College of Physicians and Surgeons released the findings of its investigation into the matter: What the hospital is doing is exactly what is allowed in its own internal guidelines for “genetic terminations.”
Say what? Are we expected to draw comfort knowing that some cold internal protocol is being followed — and just wipe from our minds the excruciating pain and suffering of unaided infants left to starve to death?
You got that right.
The question for people of faith who see through these atrocities is: How do we break through the numbness that allows people to perpetrate such gross inhumanity against the meekest and most vulnerable of God's children?
There are some possibilities. First, take the appropriate, educational use of pictures. Abortion advocates lament that, while they've got “choice,” we've got babies. Experts hired by the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League fret over ultrasound pictures as a threat to legal abortion. Weekly, newspapers trumpet breakthrough technological tricks for making babies. The latest involves removing and freezing a woman's young ovaries and reimplanting them later, even after menopause, to restore fertility. In other words, babies are still a big draw.
But one caution here. Whether we're displaying beautiful pictures of living babies, or ugly pictures of aborted babies, pictures ought never be used in an offensive, attacking fashion. Rather, after preparing the viewer, we need to use images educationally, and even, ideally, with love for the viewer — in other words, with a burning desire to share the truth.
Closely related is another strategy that requires a loving intention. I was recently reading a parenting guide that teaches parents how to “reinforce” good behavior in their children by attentively complimenting and rewarding it. The book notes a study showing that the person in a family who gets the most reinforcement for good behavior inevitably gives the most. Loving, in other words, begets loving.
The Church knows this from countless stories — or rather the same story told over and over — in our post-abortion reconciliation programs. Before the abortion, so many women are not lovingly counseled about the child within. Afterwards, regularly abandoned by the child's father, they deny their pain. Many become vociferous advocates for abortion, all the while hating themselves. But with the assistance of loving counselors, they learn to see again. They see their child and learn to accept love from him or her, now in heaven. They see their own goodness again. Reinforced in their understanding of God's love for them, for every human life, they are able to see and love others, including the child they helped destroy.
There is a lesson in this for all people of life. We can help a numb nation again see the faces of the children destroyed by abortion at a rate of 4,000 every day, and the faces of their pained mothers as well.
Helen Alvaré is director of planning and information, Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Helen AlvarÈ ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Can europe bring back its faith? DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:What is the state of the faith in Europe? That's the question before the Synod of Bishops for Europe, gathering at the Vatican the first three weeks of October. They've got their work cut out for them, as three developments illustrate.
Item. Commentators in the Italian newspapers have been wringing their hands over the specter of a ‘new clericalism’ in Italian politics. The cause? Last spring the Italian bishops vigorously protested a proposed law that would permit unmarried couples access to artificial reproductive technologies. Their protest was successful, but Italian law still permits in vitro procedures for married couples, and remains quite liberal on abortion. So it is not as if the Italian Parliament is marching to orders from the chancery offices, but so marginal does elite opinion consider the Church's role that any attempt it makes to speak on matters of public morality is regarded as effrontery.
Item. Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger, Archbishop of Paris, recently visited Denver for the opening of the new seminary there. He related the following data on the dramatic decline of French Catholicism: “Fifty years ago, there were nearly 50,000 diocesan priests in France to minister to 40 or so million French people, not to mention numerous religious priests and nuns. There were 1,000 ordinations of diocesan priests every year. There are now approximately 25,000 priests alive. About 70 percent of them are over 65. The number of ordinations of diocesan priests has been down to 100 a year since the 1960s. In five to 10 years’ time, there are likely to remain only 6,000 diocesan priests to serve a population of over 60 million. As far as the religious orders are concerned, the decline has been just as dramatic if not more so.”
Item. The Book of Kells is one of the finest illuminated manuscripts in existence, testimony to the Gaelic genius that made the so-called Dark Ages not so dark at all. There is afoot an effort to produce a new “Book of Kells” to celebrate Scottish-Irish Gaelic identity. The new book will feature contemporary Gaelic poetry, art and calligraphy. The old book featured the four Gospels in Latin. No more — religion has been dropped from the new version. “We live in a post-Christian Europe,” explains Theo Dorgan, one of the project's managers. “You don't have an orthodoxy in Ireland.”
Is Europe “post-Christian”? The preparatory document for the Synod does not shy away from suggesting that “apostasy” might be the right word for what has happened in recent years across the vast peninsula of the Eurasian landmass.
Before a synod of bishops begins its work, a working document — known by its Latin name Instrumentum laboris — is published, synthesizing the advance submissions made on the synod agenda. The Instrumentum for the European Synod, as per usual for such documents, is terribly prolix, but a strong sense cuts through all the words that Europe's bishops are well aware that a spiritual calamity has struck the continent. What is to be done about it remains another matter.
These regional synods are part of the preparation for the Great Jubilee, and the European Synod is the last to be held, following synods for Africa, America, Asia and Oceania. Indeed, this is the second special synod for Europe, as the Holy Father called one in 1991, soon after the collapse of communism. That Europe would require two synods in less than a decade is one sign of how desperate things have become there.
“Although a Marxism imposed by force has collapsed, practical atheism and materialism are certainly present throughout Europe,” states the Instrumentum. “Though they are no longer imposed by force or explicitly proposed, people still think and behave as if God did not exist.”
This is not to be taken lightly.
“As a result, there is a great risk of a progressive and radical de-Christianization and paganization of the continent,” continues the document. “In some countries, the number of non-baptized is very high. Oftentimes, basic tenets of Christianity are not sufficiently known. All this puts the cultural identity of Europe in jeopardy, a situation which one person hypothetically described as a kind of ‘European apostasy.’”
Such blunt language is not the norm for Vatican documents. But the bishops fear that Europe is facing a crisis of hope, lacking the certainties that its former faith provided, and without any new certainties to replace them. As the Holy Father indicated last year in Fides et Ratio, “Now, at the end of this century, one of our greatest threats is the temptation to despair.”
In this context, the Synod proposes as its theme: Jesus Christ, Alive in His Church, Source of Hope for Europe. The synod intends to proclaim that only Jesus Christ can return hope to Europe and takes the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus as corresponding to the current state of Europe (Luke 24:13-35).
Europe, like those disciples, has witnessed a great tragedy — the collapse of 20th-century optimism under bloody wars. The latest Euro-American misadventure in the Balkans left Kosovo largely ethnically cleansed and the whole region terribly impoverished, only adding to the pessimism. Europe is walking away from its 20th century Calvary, like the disciples, and has lost its hope. The synod suggests that, if Europe meets Jesus Christ anew, he will restore its hope, as he did for the disciples, by explaining once again all those things that concern himself, and opening peoples’ eyes to the true foundation for hope.
The solution suggested by the Instrumentum is that the Church needs to return to the fundamentals of evangelization by preaching a Gospel encounter with Jesus Christ for its own sake. In other words, a “re-evangelization” is required — one that must start with the basics. Individuals and nations need to be re-introduced to Jesus Christ and from this introduction must flow an explanation of the transcendent dimension of the human person, along with the conviction that the person cannot endure for long in a morality deprived of its ontological underpinnings.
“It is not enough,” states the Instrumentum, “to propose Gospel and human values such as justice, peace and freedom; not because they are not essential, but because what is at stake is something more basic and fundamental.”
But who will do this work of re-evangelizing? Who will preach the Gospel, not as merely another humanitarian project, but as a living encounter with the only One who can restore hope to Europe? It is not clear where these new missionaries are, or where they might come from.
“A difficulty peculiar to the Church and communities in Western Europe is the increased age of the clergy, and of the laity actively involved in the life of parishes, all of which offers an image of an aging, lethargic Church and hinders the influx of vocations, thus rendering a creative commitment to evangelization rather difficult,” the document states. Indeed, in many European nations, the sight of a man under 30 at Mass is a rarity. And many of the grandmothers in attendance are not burning with apostolic zeal either, often attending Mass as more of a social or cultural tradition rather than a religious one. But even if the grandmothers were zealous, would they be able to speak to the parts of Europe that are newly free?
“There is common agreement that the new current of freedom which is sweeping across all countries in Europe is certainly a Gospel value,” the bishops acknowledge. “Yet, Christianity, [and] in particular the Church, is often seen as an obstacle and enemy of freedom. Moreover, the attempt is made to persuade persons and the whole of society that God is an obstacle on the path towards freedom.”
The Church in Europe, as in the Americas, needs to persuade society once again that Christ is the “true guarantor” of freedom, who liberates man from sin and for his vocation to love. Such a proposal is difficult at the best of times, and while the Instrumentum offers a long shopping list of practical measures — everything from a renewed commitment to ecumenism to offering more practical assistance to single mothers — they do seem rather prosaic measured against the self-proclaimed mandate of the synod, namely, to preach the “Gospel of Hope” to Europe.
Yet the synod itself hopes to be a moment of grace for the Church in Europe, for the re-evangelization of Europe, like the first evangelization, will be foremost a work of grace. And of course there are some tangible signs of hope. In that same address in Denver, Cardinal Lustiger pointed out seminary reforms that have produced in Paris the youngest clergy in France. Elsewhere in France there are small, but robust, renewals of religious life. And despite false fears of clericalism in Italy, it is true that the Church can on occasion still find a voice to speak authoritatively on moral matters. Also, beyond the decline of religious practice in Western Europe, there are countries to the east, most notably Poland, where the ravages of secularization are not so far advanced.
An old Italian monsignor, speaking to a small group of seminarians this past summer, commented that what is happening in Europe today is what happened in North Africa in the middle of the first millennium: An entire Christian civilization is being lost.
While in North Africa Christianity was chased out by the advances of the Muslim armies, today Europe faces invisible enemies — they reside in men's hearts — that have made Europe a “post-Christian” continent.
The Synod for Europe will proclaim that Jesus Christ is alive in His Church, and this will serve as a source of hope for Europe. Of course that is certainly true, and the synod participants will need to keep that in mind when the evidence so often points to the contrary.
Raymond de Souza, a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Kingston, Ontario, writes from Rome.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond J. de Souza ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: It's Perfectly Reasonable to Become - or Remain - a Catholic DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:Afriend of mine, a cradle Catholic, recently discovered — and fell in love with — C. S. Lewis’ masterpiece Mere Christianity. Of course, C. S. Lewis was not a Catholic.
The question of conversion is often asked about Lewis in the light of Chesterton, whom Lewis admired. Two of Chesterton's books, The Thing and The Catholic Church and Conversion, explained his reasons for becoming Catholic. They remain marvelous books, as does Orthodoxy, a book Chesterton wrote long before he became a Catholic. One suspects that the Lord often leads us gradually, even when he can do so suddenly, as he sometimes does, as in the case of St. Paul. So perhaps Lewis was on his way when he died in his mid-60s in 1963.But we should never underestimate the importance of C. S. Lewis to Catholics. Peter Kreeft's book C. S. Lewis and the Third Millennium, is perhaps the best explanation of the abiding importance of Lewis’ thought in coming decades. In any case, Lewis and Chesterton are writers who, perhaps more than any others, explain to us why being Catholic Christians makes sense. It is not some irrational act. It is not silly. It is in fact something that is intelligible at every level, including at the level of science, which used to be the main objection to Christianity. By now scholarship has shown that many a scientific position is possible only because of some understanding of cosmic order and secondary causality that was not understood without certain Jewish or Christian teachings.
Contrary to what might be popularly assumed, but quite in conformity with the experience of anyone who has read Augustine or Aquinas, Catholicism wants to know, as Walker Percy asked, just what else is there? Aquinas is rightly famous for being able to explain fundamental objections to the faith better than could those who object to it in the first place. It is of the essence of Catholicism to know what other religions, philosophies, movements, politics, or what have you, are opposed to it or give other explanations for life purportedly superior to it. Catholicism likes Aristotle's remark that the ability to explain objections reassures us about the truth of what we uphold.
The whole ecumenical movement that John Paul II has “engineered,” together with his formal dialogues with other religions and philosophies, as far as I can tell, is based on the idea that the first step is to get a clear idea of what each variety of Christianity does hold, of what each religion or philosophy maintains about itself. Without this initial effort, no progress can be made. It is to be noticed, moreover, that today it is the Catholic Church that aggressively seeks accurately to know what other systems hold. It does not find this energy in the universities or other cultural forms seeking to know, in turn, its truth. This says rather a lot about who does and does not fear the truth.
Chesterton, in The Thing, was quite amused in his dealings with Protestant positions to find that very few of the classical reasons given for the Reformation were still held by the descendants of Christianity's breakaway sects. Many of us today, thus, find that Catholics are much closer to evangelicals and fundamentalists than we are to so-called mainline Protestant bodies. Paul Seabury once wrote a famous essay about the amazingly varied teachings of his church, the Episcopal Church, I believe, called “Trendier Than Thou.” Aside from being amusing, the phrase underscored the problem of modern Christianity, not excluding certain movements within Catholicism, of taking its cues first from the dominant culture rather than the doctrine of the faith.
We live in a time when perhaps the greatest defender of reason is not a philosopher, but, in Fides et Ratio, the Pope of Rome, who is, to be sure, himself a philosopher. Indeed, one of the great ironies of the Church today is that at its head, both in the Holy Father and in Josef Cardinal Ratzinger, we have minds superior to those constantly criticizing them in the rest of the Church and society. No doubt, there is some irony here, probably divine irony.
Aristotle warned us that we would not see the truth of things if our personal lives were disordered. The main opposition to the Church today is not from science, nor is it from intelligence. It is at bottom, I think, from a widespread unwillingness to live and believe as the Church has handed down its teachings from its founding. Whole systems, themselves gradually shown to be of doubtful validity, have been and continue to be concocted to justify the ways that seek to make of Christianity and Catholicism something other than what they are.
So, when someone raises the question of whether or not it is “OK” to become a Catholic, I confess that I think it is quite all right. It is all right intellectually. It is all right historically. It is all right in the third millennium. But it may be dangerous.
Father James Schall is a professor of government at Georgetown University.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: James V. Schall ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Academic Institute Mum About Move From D.C. DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:Dear Sir:
I was a member of the commission on Catholic Scholarship (CCS) which worked for two years to draw up a plan for establishing an Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies (IACS) about which the Register has published several articles. I was away from Catholic University when the author of the latest article, Brian McGuire, called for an interview. I regret that we were not able to talk, although I have to admit that my desire to submit to a Register-inter-view was somewhat lessened by the memory of a 30-minute interview with another Register reporter, in which I corrected several mistakes in his article and explained several other things, but which was never used by him or anyone else in subsequent Register articles.
There are several mistakes in Mr. McGuire's latest article (Register, September 5-11, 1999). First, the CCS and the IACS are not the same thing. It was the CCS that had an office in Washington, D.C., not the IACS, which does not exist except to the degree that it was applied for and received tax-exempt status. Whether it will ever exist except as a noble dream will depend on the success of a fund-raising campaign now being planned. The CCS, as such, its planning-work ended, is dissolved, although some individual members of it are assisting in the effort to raise funds for the Institute.
Second, what you describe as a “move” from Washington, D.C., to Greensburg, PA, means nothing more than the fund-raising office is now located near the residence of Dr. Hugh Dempsey, who has agreed to chair the effort. If sufficient funding can be found to establish it, the IACS, as Greensburg Bishop Anthony Bosco fully knows, will be located elsewhere. But no decision has yet been made about the location of the IACS.
Third, the members of the CCS will not constitute the board of directors of the IACS if and when the latter is established. It is a mistake, then, to refer to the former as members of the latter's board of directors which has not yet been constituted.
Fourth, an earlier article in the Register (August 1-7, 1999) states that “the institute plans to give grants exclusively to theology faculty at the discretion of the commission on Catholic Scholarship.” There are three mistakes in this statement. First, as already stated, the CCS has already been dissolved. Second, decisions about grants will be made by the IACS's board of directors, which has not yet been established. Third, it was never the intention that the IACS will “give grants exclusively to theology faculty.” It has not been planned as a theological center but as a center where anyone interested in recovering and understanding the Catholic tradition or in applying it to contemporary issues may apply to work and may receive financial and institutional support for their investigation. These may be historians, philosophers psychologists sociologists, physical scientists etc., as well, of course, as theologians.
Fifth, two remarks with regard to your regular association of the proposed Institute with the controversies over the implementation of Ex corde Ecclesiae. First, informal conversations about establishing such an Institute began long before the document was published, and the two plenary meetings of the CCS that document was never a focus of discussion. Second, the reason for this is clear: we never envisaged the IACS as a college or university; we never planned that it would offer courses or grant degrees; we never thought of it as a rival to or substitute for Catholic colleges and universities; we thought of it simply as a research-center. Since Ex corde Ecclesiae is a document about Catholic colleges and universities and since the IACS will not be a Catholic college or university, it would follow that Ex corde Ecclesiae does not apply to the proposed IACS.
On the other hand, the IACS will provide another institutional basis for that dialogue between faith and reason that is urged in Ex corde Ecclesiae and in Fides et Ratio, precisely by offering opportunities for a scholarly study that the Pope insists is necessary. In this way it will also in its own way strengthen the contributions that Catholic colleges and universities can make to that great enterprise.
Sixth, the article cites one of the early documents of the CCS in which it is said that the IACS will be “free-standing” and “not jurisdictionally related” to the U.S. bishops. The first adjective means that it will not be associated with any university, Catholic or other, a decision that was made precisely to make it attractive to Catholic scholars at any institutions, rivalry among whom is not unknown. your article gives an invidious interpretation of the second phrase, once paraphrasing it as “operating outside Catholic Church structures” and once as “outside the line of bishops.” In my interview with a Register reporter I explained in some detail what the phrase meant, but since no use has been made of that explanation in subsequent articles, allow me to explain again what it means.
Both the Second Vatican Council and the Code of Canon Law defend the right of the faithful to found and to participate in various types of associations. Vatican II's Decree on the Lay Apostolate, #24, discussed various ways in which associations of the faithful are related to the hierarchy. Here the Council spoke first of “enterprises that are established by the free choice of the laity and are governed by their prudent judgment,” and the Council notes that these kinds of associations have often been praised and recommended by the hierarchy. Such enterprises, the Council adds, may not call themselves “Catholic” without approval of the competent ecclesiastical authority.
From such enterprises the text distinguished others which the hierarchy chooses to promote, and in which it assumes particular responsibility as, for example, by an official “mandate,” which, however, is said to leave the laity their rightful freedom to act on their own initiative. Finally, the Council speaks of other activities, more closely connected with the bishops’ role, which are undertaken in view of a hierarchical “mission” and in which “the laity are fully subject to superior ecclesiastical moderation.”
Three cases are therefore described by the Council, in ascending order of jurisdictional relationship with the hierarchy. The least formal such relationship is the first, and it is this type of association, and its relationship to the hierarchy, that was intended in the statement that the IACS would not be “jurisdictionally related” to the hierarchy. The right of Catholics to form such associations is clearly spelled out in the Code of Canon Law (canons 215 and 216).
For a group of the Catholic faithful, such as the CCS, to avail themselves of this canonically guaranteed freedom and right to consider establishing an association, such as the IACS, is unfairly described by you as an attempt to operate “outside Catholic Church structures” or “outside the line of bishops” or to “sidestep” the American hierarchy, as one of your earlier articles put it (March 28-April 3). Not only do “Catholic Church structures,” as defined both by the Council and the Code, have room for such an institution; Catholic s are even said to have a right to form them. I suspect that the great majority of Catholic institutions and associations in the United States, including other, already existing , fellowships of Catholic scholars, not to mention Catholic newspapers, have the same canonical status: that is, they do not operate under episcopal mandate much less under a formal mission which makes them, in the words of the Council, “Fully subject to episcopal moderation.” It was because the IACS was not envisaged as exemplifying either of these two cases of formal mandates or missions that it was described as not “jurisdictionally related” to the U.S. bishops. In other respects, of course, the IACS will operate, as we said, within the communion of the Church, which includes, of course, the jurisdictional responsibilities of bishops, whose “support and encouragement” it recognizes it will need and has already begun to seek and receive.
Seventh, I am sorry that your reporting has been so marred by mistakes addressed above that you have not provided your readers with an accurate idea of what the IACS, if it can get off the ground, wishes to do: to provide scholars interested in Catholicism as both an ancient and a still-living and powerful tradition an opportunity to take time off from their usual responsibilities and to concentrate for a period of time on a piece of work that will illuminate and carry that tradition forward. Many Catholic scholars will tell you that there is an institutional imbalance in funding-opportunities in the U.S. today, one that makes it very difficult to get grants for work on religion in general and on Catholicism in particular. The IACS was designed to balance the scales. I am sorry that both you and the critics you cite show so little sympathy with the idea. This attitude contrasts starkly with the enthusiastic support that has been received from many academic leaders and from members of the hierarchy both here and in Europe, support that grounds our confidence that the IACS will soon become a reality.
Sincerely Yours, Rev. Joseph A. Komonchak John and Gertrude Hubbard Chair in Religious Studies Catholic University of America
Editor's Note:
At the heart of Father Komonchak's concerns about the Register's coverage is the charge that we have unduly conflated two organizations.
Yet it is Father Komonchak, a member of the Commission on Catholic Scholarship (which he says is now defunct), who writes to us to correct our stories about the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies (which he says does not yet exist).
Again, in a Sept. 23 interview, Father James Heft told the Register that Father Komonchak speaks for the institute. If we have treated the organizations as one project, we are in good company.
Father Komonchak then charges that the Register has unfairly linked the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies with the debate about John Paul II's 1990 Apostolic Constitution for Higher Education Ex Corde Ecclesiae. But institute founder Father Heft is also chairman of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, and is very much at the center of the Ex Corde Ecclesiae debate, as are others involved in the institute.
For instance, in the Jan. 26 USA Today, Father Heft suggested that the bishops are using the debate to try to “run schools.” Father Heft, when given the opportunity, would not say that the institute project and Ex Corde Ecclesiae are unrelated.
Later, Father Komonchak addresses a phrase that the Register has often quoted. It is from a fact sheet in which the group called its project the “Catholic Institute for Advanced Studies” and claimed that it is “not jursdictionally related” to the bishops.
There has been too much confusion about who is and who isn't under Church control. For instance, in January, Holy Cross Father Edward Malloy, president of Notre Dame, and Jesuit Father J. Donald Monan, chancellor of Boston College, wrote an article in America magazine in which they suggested that their own universities are not “canonically Catholic.”
This sort of legalism obscures the letter and spirit of Vatican II and canon law. We should all be committed to the bishops, not out of fear in a “control” relationship, but out of love in a “communio” relationship.
Last, Father Komonchak says he is sorry that the Register coverage contained error. We regret that the institute's officials would not cooperate with us during the reporting of our stories. We welcome them to help us correct the record before publication in future stories.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: The Sounds of Salzburg Are a Sight to See DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:Wedged beneath Alpine peaks, Salzburg, Austria, is breathtakingly beautiful. Yet it's better-known for the pleasures it has historically offered the ears than the eyes. The central-Austrian city is the birthplace of Mozart, the home of a world-renowned annual music festival and the setting of The Sound of Music.
Founded in 700 and run by a powerful Church and aristocracy until 1815, Salzburg is also noted for its exquisite Catholic churches and abbeys. The Alstadt, the city's old section, is so thoroughly Catholic that waiters and conductors greet guests with Grüss Gott (literally, “howdy, God” but meaning “good day").
Salzburg's signature structure, as well its spiritual center, is the magnificent Dom, located in the heart of the old city. A church has stood on this spot since the 8th century. The current Renaissance-style cathedral was consecrated in 1628.
The notorious Archbishop Wolf Dietrich, intent on building an extravagant new church, was suspected of setting the fire in 1598 that demolished the old cathedral. The townspeople rose up against the archbishop, whose most notorious category of misdeeds, though my no means his only one, was his siring a dozen children. Dietrich was imprisoned in 1612. Markus Sitticus, his successor, went ahead with the new church.
The Dom is grand externally but admirably restrained on the inside. (Sitticus apparently was wary of repeating Dietrich's extravagant ways.) On weekday afternoons especially, when crowds are light, the interior emits a sense of peace and quietude.
Emblazoned on the church's huge bronze doors, invariably seen upon entering and exiting, are three allegorical figures representing faith, hope and charity.
Mozart at the Dom
The Mozart connection is strong even at the Dom. He was christened in the cathedral's 13th-century font and was the congregation's organist from 1779-1781. Tour guides light-heartedly note that very few worshipers ever found fault with the music at the church.
St. Peter's Abbey, founded by St. Rupert, is considerably smaller than the Dom but much more luxurious.
The church contains vaulted arches dating from the 12th century and the lavish interior is a product of the Baroque flourishes of the late 18th century.
Rupert was bishop of Worms when he was asked by a duke to Christianize Bavaria and its outer regions. Known for his simplicity, prudence and zeal, Rupert converted pagan temples into churches and established the salt-mining industry from which Salzburg derives its name. When he died in 718, he was buried in St. Peter's Abbey.
For several hundred years St. Peter's Abbey was a center of Christianity in central Europe. Its archbishops became powerful political rulers. Some ruled selflessly and kept their vows while others plunged their state into ruinous wars and lived scandalously.
The abbey's cemetery has a brooding, eerie atmosphere, even in mid-afternoon. Near the grave of Mozart's sister are the Catacombs, two small chapels built into a cliff. Romans who had secretly converted to Christianity held Masses here during the persecutions of the third century.
The Sound of Music
The cemetery was shown in the Sound of Music, which was filmed in and around Salzburg. The age-old burial ground was used for the scene in which Liesl's Nazi boyfriend blows his whistle to alert authorities to the hiding Von Trapp clan. The historic Nonnberg convent, located near the Dom, also has a connection to the movie.
The convent, founded by Rupert and originally headed by his niece, Erendruda, was where Maria lived, both in the film and real life.
The Sound of Music is mostly unknown in Austria, except among shrewd tour guides who know that Americans adore the film.
Among many historical errors, the film downplayed the strong Catholic faith of Maria. Raised as a socialist and atheist, she was dramatically changed by a chance encounter with a Jesuit priest when she was a teen-ager. She left the convent only because a doctor was concerned about her health.
Several outfits in Salzburg offer tours of the movie sites. Gunter, our guide, told us, “It's a typically American movie. The dresses are American. The music is very American.” The von Trapps did not escape by hiking over the mountains into Switzerland.
“That's hundreds of miles away,” explained Gunter. Refusing to fight for the Nazis, Captain von Trapp agreed to leave Austria and forfeited his home and property.
Before
A short walk from St. Peter's Abbey is the Franciscan Church, also known as the Collegiate Church. The church is considered the masterpiece of Fischer von Erlach, Austria's most celebrated Baroque architect. Visitors gape at the harmonious dome and the elaborate red marble altar. Masses with music composed by Mozart are said regularly.
The Capuchin monastery in the new city holds special interest for coffee lovers. The trademark brown robes and white hoods of the monks so resembled coffee topped with steamed milk that the word cappuccino was born.
It's apt in Salzburg that a popular drink should be associated with the Church. Catholicism is interwoven into the city's history, culture and landscape.
Though politically sovereign archbishops are part of the past, the faith still holds sway over much of the populace.
Jay Copp writes from Chicago.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jay Copp ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: What's a Catholic Supposed to Be? DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:Talk about a sleeping giant. Roughly 60 million of the 62 million Catholics in the United Statesdo not subscribe to a single Catholic periodical, according to apologist and author Karl Keating. If he's right, the groundswell of new Catholic publications of recent years has no impact at all on the vast majority of even regular churchgoers — let alone the large numbers of inactive Catholics who have stopped going to Mass altogether.
For many, “being a Catholic means going to Mass 45 minutes every weekend, and that's it,” said Keating, founder and president of Catholic Answers Inc., an apologetics and evangelizing organization near San Diego.
Enter Be, a new magazine aimed at Catholics who don't know much about their faith. The monthly 16-page full-color glossy debuts this month.
Keating said he was looking for a punchy name when he came up with Be, which he said sums up the point of the magazine: helping Catholics be Catholic.
“These people are interested in the faith, but they don't know they're interested yet,” Keating said. “Their interest has to be turned on.”
With short articles — 1,100 words over two pages or less — and simple language, Be is geared to the reader looking to breeze through in a single sitting. The inaugural issue's (October 1999) color photos and graphics compare with secular publications like Parade.
“We wanted a title and a look to the magazine which is not going to seem ‘religious-y’ to the people we want to reach,” Keating said.
But the magazine's creators emphasize that every article will offer plenty of depth and substance. “We're not watering down the faith,” editor Trask Tapperson said. “It's going to be authentic.”
Tapperson, a veteran newspaperman, joined Catholic Answers this past June, after a long career as reporter, editor, and freelance correspondent. He has worked for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and the Gannett company, and he has contributed to Time, Newsweek, The New York Times and USA Today.
Having converted to Roman Catholicism in 1989 after a long religious journey through “indifferentism, agnosticism and Episcopalianism,” he taps his own personal experience to present content that will engage the attention of those disaffected in the faith.
Tapperson said polls show “a great deal of spiritual hunger in this country.” He hopes Be will appeal to people with upbeat, easy-to-read articles about faith and conversion. Each issue will include articles by or about famous Catholics, such as Hollywood entertainer Lola Falana, whose conversion story runs in the first issue. Tommy Lasorda, former Los Angeles Dodgers manager, will appear on the cover of the second issue.
CCD for Adults?
“The fact of the matter is, most Catholics are uncatechized as adults, effectively,” said Keating. “They [end] their religious education as children in some CCD class.”
Writers slated to contribute to Be include Father Benedict Groeschel, a Franciscan Friar of the Renewal; James Hitchcock, professor of history at St. Louis University; Peter Kreeft, professor of philosophy at Boston College; and Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, archbishop of Philadelphia.
Keating, 49, author of Catholicism and Fundamentalism and Nothing But the Truth, will also write a one-page question-and-answer column.
Philip Lawler, editor of Catholic World Report, a monthly magazine, and Catholic World News, a daily Internet news service, had not yet seen Be last week, but recognized its goals. “That sounds like a variation on the challenge that we all face: to get the attention of people who don't read much Catholic literature,” Lawler said.
To succeed, Lawler said, the new magazine will have to overcome a very basic problem: Catholics, by and large, don't read about their religion. But that, he adds, may be because “most Catholic publications aren't worth reading.”
The challenge for editors, he said, is to produce publications that people read not just out of loyalty but because they are compelling. But the opportunity is there, he said, because people are looking to get information from sources they identify with.
Deal Hudson, editor of Crisis, a Catholic monthly magazine of opinion and analysis headquartered in Washington D.C., called the appearance of new Catholic periodicals “a sign of Catholic renewal around the country.”
“My view is, the more the merrier,” Hudson said. “It makes us all do better work.”
But Lawler noted that, although readership may be expanding for Catholic publications, there are limits. “I suppose there'll be some winnowing, because the market isn't that big and it looks like there's a certain amount of overlap,” he said.
A Witness to Hope?
Circulation goals for Be are ambitious: 60,000 for the first issue, 100,000 by Jan. 1, 500,000 in three years. One reason: Catholic Answers plans to offer subscriptions free of charge to individuals, with bulk subscriptions offered to parishes at cost. The magazine will accept no outside advertising, Keating said. Instead, it will rely on donor support and revenues raised by marketing other Catholic Answers products in its pages.
Keating got the idea for Be from Focus on the Family, an evangelical Protestant organization that publishes a magazine that reaches about 1 million people.
Catholic Answers, Inc., the largest Catholic apologetics and evangelizing organization in the country, already publishes a monthly magazine, This Rock, founded in 1990, which Keating said has a circulation of 20,000, including 14,000 paid subscribers.
But Keating said This Rock has not been reaching Catholics who have little interest in Catholic doctrine.
The magazine can be ordered by writing to Be, P.O. Box 199000, San Diego, Calif. 92158; by telephone at 1-888 291-8000; by email at be@catholic.com; or on the World Wide Web at www.catholic.com.
Matt McDonald writes from Mashpee, Massachusetts.
----- EXCERPT: Catholic Answers' new publication fans the embers of faith ----- EXTENDED BODY: Matt McDonald ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Prizer's Video Picks DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:Paradise Road (1997)
Times of deprivation and suffering can make or break a person, bringing the opportunity of attaining grace or falling into depravity. Based on this tension, many prisoner-of-war stories have made for great drama. Most movies on the subject deal with male soldiers. In Paradise Road, set in a Japanese prison camp during World War II, the focus is on women.
To keep up POW morale, a British tea-planter's wife (Glen Close) teams up with a former missionary (Pauline Collins) to form a vocal orchestra among the inmates, secretly rehearsing them to hum together as if they were the different musical instruments. Even their Japanese captors are moved by the sound of great music in such a desolate place. But the reality of the war and the enmity between the two sides gradually re-asserts itself.
Paradise Road pays attention to its characters’ spiritual development. Their moral crises are often confronted through the reading of a psalm or the recitation of a prayer. The movie dramatizes how, during times of great misfortune, “love is like a flame, visible to all,” and that the expression of love in the face of evil is almost always an occasion for grace.
Mr. Holland's Opus (1995)
Our culture undervalues teaching, looking particularly askance at those whose subject is music or art. The pay isn't good, and the profession doesn't get a lot of publicity. Because a teacher's effectiveness is hard to quantify and his influence may not pay dividends until years later, his worth often passes unnoticed.
Mr. Holland's Opus focuses on a public-school teacher's conflicting ambitions and how he resolves them over a 30-year period to the benefit of his students. Glenn Holland (Richard Dreyfuss) is a talented pianist and composer who has trouble supporting himself through his music. To pay the rent, he takes a job teaching at Oregon's John F. Kennedy High School in the ‘60s. At first, his classes are uninspiring, but slowly he gets hooked on trying to get his charges to share his passion, playing rock and roll to catch their interest and devoting extra effort to problem kids. At times, his absorption in work leads to conflicts with his wife and deaf son as he must learn to treat relationships with the same importance he gives to music.
The story plays off the intense political events of the ‘60s and ‘70s (the Kennedy assassinations, the Vietnam War, Watergate, etc.), but its main emphasis is personal. It's got a good-hearted sentimentality that feels genuine even upon second viewing.
I Confess (1953)
This year is the centennial of the birth of the all-time master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock. Much has been made of his Catholic up-bringing, and critics have long found Catholic themes buried behind his movies’ terror and thrills. But almost none of his 53 films deals overtly with religious subject matter.
I Confess is the exception. The setting is a grim, austere Quebec. Father Michael Logan (Montgomery Clift) hears the confession of the church sexton, who admits to the murder of a local female lawyer. There are no clues linking the guilty man to the crime, and the priest is obliged to keep silent. By a cruel twist of fate, circumstantial evidence is uncovered which implicates Father Logan. When it's discovered that the cleric has his own secret to hide, he's quickly brought to trial. But Father Logan feels bound by his holy vows on the inviolability of confession and refuses to speak up even to save himself.
Many outside the faith may find his withholding of this secret hard to understand. It looks like it will allow the wrong man to be punished and a murderer to go free. But Hitchcock treats the priestly vocation and vows with great respect, creating both a series of probing interior conflicts and a taut drama that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last minute.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Powerful Legal Microscope Finds No Identity Problem DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:The Journal of College and University Law, an education law review, devoted its Spring 1999 issue to a symposium on Pope John Paul II's apostolic constitution on the Catholic University, Ex Corde Ecclesiae (From the Heart of the Church). In the wake of the publication, it is hard to see how the current Catholic identity debate in the United States can ever be the same again.
In the journal, eight law professors and one theologian examine the ramifications — legal, historical, political and religious — of implementing Ex Corde in the United States.
As stated in the issue's introduction by Notre Dame law professor John H. Robinson, one of the journal's faculty editors: “None of our authors believes that the implementation of Ex Corde Ecclesiae along lines roughly congruent with those sketched in the bishops’ current draft norms would produce a legal crisis for the affected institutions, and most of our authors seem to think that requiring Catholic colleges to be meaningfully accountable to the Church's hierarchy is a good idea.
It adds, “For some of them, in fact, accountability of that sort appears to be necessary to the continued existence of these institutions as genuinely Catholic …”
At any rate, “[N]one expects the sky to fall if norms like the current draft norms are finally adopted; none, that is to say, expects governmental funding to be terminated, accreditation to be endangered, or Title VII-based litigation to be the inevitable consequences to the adoption of norms of that sort.”
This is not to say that all the thinkers come down on the side of the Pope and the bishops. Nor is there unanimous opposition to the position, held many of today's Catholic college presidents and advanced by the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU), that a university in the true sense must necessarily be wholly independent of any sponsoring church.
On the contrary, as Prof. Robinson points out, some of the authors here continue to “have grave doubts about the wisdom of requiring universities to be accountable to the local bishop, and even greater doubts about requiring Catholic theologians to have a mandate from the local bishop.”
Nevertheless, the overall conclusion of the symposium as a whole, buttressed by massive, detailed references to the applicable civil laws, regulations and court cases related to higher education, very strongly favors the view that religiously affiliated higher education institutions may — and, in many cases, should have — “juridical” links to their sponsoring religious bodies, and on terms that may be specified by the latter. This, of course, is exactly what the Holy See, echoed by the U.S. bishops, has been contending all along in the course of the protracted debate on Catholic universities.
This conclusion, coming as it does from credible observers with no vested interest in supporting either side of the debate, is very significant indeed. For more than 30 years, most Catholic college and university presidents grouped within the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities have consistently argued for complete institutional autonomy. They have interpreted the term “academic freedom” to mean independence from any kind of Church oversight of their campuses. Unilateral decisions have been made and advanced over just what it means for a college to call itself “Catholic” and, on campus after Catholic campus, the Church has been accorded no say in the matter whatsoever.
The presidents declared their virtual independence from the Church with their Land O'Lakes statement in 1967 and, since then, have regularly told the Holy See and the bishops that, without this independence, they would jeopardize their accreditation and their government funding, open themselves to possibly ruinous lawsuits on discrimination grounds, and, worst of all, forfeit all secular respect as bona fide American higher education institutions.
In the face of such contentions, the American bishops have, over the years, stopped short of imposing any actual norms in accordance with what canon law and Ex Corde Ecclesiae require. It has been the pope and the Congregation for Catholic Education in Rome that have continued to push for greater Church involvement in academia. Only after many years of rather fruitless “dialogue” with the Catholic college presidents are the American bishops now finally, perhaps, on the verge of enacting some obligatory norms which schools wishing to go on calling themselves Catholic will presumably have to accept.
Making a List
Among the symposium's highlights:
Holy Cross Father James T. Burtchaell, the lone theologian contributing to the symposium, was provost of the University of Notre Dame and, more recently, has published the widely praised book The Dying of the Light: The Disengagement of Colleges and Universities from Their Christian Churches (Eerdmans, 1998). In the journal, under the title “Out of the Heartburn of the Church,” he treats the overall historical and political context of Ex Corde Ecclesiae. Father Burtchaell's list of the “external authorities” to which all American universities regularly and unquestionably submit — in spite of the current shibboleths of “institutional autonomy” and “academic freedom” — is priceless:
“The first outside authority to which she regularly defers is the federal government, incarnate in the departments of State, Justice, Education, Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy, Health and Human Services, Labor, and Veterans Affairs; also the Equal Opportunity Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Library of Congress, the U.S. Patent Office, the National Science Foundation, the National Endowments for the Humanities and for the Arts, the National Institutes for health and the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
“Washington forbids her to ask the race of applicants, but requires her to report the racial breakdown of her personnel and students; makes it worth her while to include in every employment notice the assurance that she is an equal opportunity employer; forbids her to save the trees on her campus by spraying DDT; determines and inspects the housing for her laboratory animals (which therefore cost roughly twice a much per square foot as faculty office space); requires protection of all human subjects of any funded research, subject to elaborate guidelines and reporting; requires a minimum number of credit hours to be taken by students receiving tuition grants or guaranteed loans; and regulates the emissions from the power plant …”
The Brigham Young Precedent
Two law professors at Brigham Young University, James D. Gordon III and W. Cole Durham, Jr., in an article entitled “Toward Diverse Diversity: The Legal Legitimacy of Ex Corde Ecclesiae,” describe their own Mormon-sponsored university as a fully accredited American institution which nevertheless maintains closer ties to its sponsoring church than any of those contemplated by Ex Corde Ecclesiae. These two authors also review current religious exemptions to laws governing employment discrimination, as well as contract issues and questions of academic freedom.
University of San Francisco Law School Prof. William W. Bassett contributes a piece entitled “The American Civil Corporation, the ‘Incorporation Movement,’ and the Canon Law of the Catholic Church.” Bassett establishes that American Catholic colleges and universities generally remain “Catholic” in spite of the general movement from the 1960s on to secularize, acquire lay boards, separate themselves from their founding religious orders, and so on. He concludes that Ex Corde Ecclesiae applies to these institutions today (although he questions whether it is prudent to subject Catholic institutions to episcopal oversight at this time).
Schools Must Make a Choice
The Dean of the Duquesne University School of Law in Pittsburgh, Nicholas P. Cafardi, in a very pertinent article entitled “Giving Legal Life to Ex Corde Ecclesiae Norms: Corporate Strategies and practical Difficulties,” explains that the implementation of the apostolic constitution essentially hinges on the willingness of sponsoring religious orders, boards of directors or trustees to accept the papal requirements as applying to their institutions. Contrary to allegations that the bishops are trying to “control” the universities, the fact is that they possess no independent power to implement the Church's norms within these institutions; the schools have to agree that they want to be Catholic on the Church's terms. Dean Cafardi sees no essential difficulties arising out of their acceptance of the Church's terms coming from any state or federal laws or accrediting association requirements and the like.
The ‘Mandate’
There is still, of course, the much-discussed question of the “mandate from competent ecclesiastical authority” required by Canon 812 of the Code of Canon Law; every academic theologian is supposed to have this mandate, and many of them are accordingly crying foul over it.
The mandate question is thoroughly and competently covered in “What We Have Here Is a Failure to Communicate: The Mind of the Legislator in Ex Corde Ecclesiae” by Dominican Father D.R. Whitt, who teaches at the Notre Dame Law School, and who addresses the issue of theology generally in the life of the Catholic university. He concludes that the controversial “mandate” need not be problematical for American higher education institutions.
The major court cases which have been regularly cited as obstacles to the implementation of Ex Corde Ecclesiae lest colleges jeopardize some of their government funding are exhaustively covered by Valparaiso University School of Law Professor Edward M. Gaffney, Jr., in an article titled “Tale of Two Cities: Canon Law and Constitutional Law at the Crossroads.” He concludes that the threat of government funding cutoffs is really quite remote, and, meanwhile, the tax-exempt status of religiously affiliated colleges also remains safe.
All in all, this is a learned and authoritative symposium essentially buttressing Ex Corde Ecclesiae. It ought to settle most of the outstanding questions on the apostolic constitution (although, sadly, experience suggests that it probably will not).
To get a copy, write:
William P. Hoye, Faculty Editor, The Journal of College and University Law, General Counsel Office, 107 Hurley Building, Notre Dame, IN 46556.
Kenneth D. Whitehead, a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education, authored Of Catholic Colleges and Federal Funding (Ignatius, 1988).
----- EXCERPT: Law Journal May Bring Reality to the Catholic University Debate ----- EXTENDED BODY: Kenneth D. Whitehead ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Education Notebook DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:State Lowers the Bar
The decision, not yet approved, is in reaction to prediction that many from the Class of 2003 will not pass the test based on preliminary tests, reported the Boston Globe.
Board members justified the move on the grounds that many areas on the exam covered material not taught in every school statewide, said the report. In addition, they said, the testing is still in its early stages, so the bar must start low.
“The starting point would not be at the proficient level,” board chairman James Peyser told the Globe. “How far below is the question we need to determine.”
The Board also recommended that on only two subjects, English and mathematics, should students be required to pass, rather than five that the Legislature mandated.
Homeschooling Hits the Mainstream
At a conference on Sept. 24, Republican presidential candidates tried to outdue each other in heaping praise on the homeschooling parents. Steve Forbes declared, “You've shamed the regular school system with what you've achieved,” according to the report. Governor Bush said that homeschooling should be “protected from the interference of government.”
Gary Bauer, Pat Buchanan and Alan Keyes, as well as independent Sen. Bob Smith also agreed that the government should leave home-schoolers alone, it added.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: The Shepherd Children of Fatima DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:The “October Revolution” of 1917 (which actually took place in November) brought the Bolsheviks to power and communism to the Russian empire. Communism was spectacularly defeated some 70 years later, but the battle may well have started a few weeks before the “October Revolution” in the little Portuguese town of Fatima, where on October 13, 1917, the “miracle of the sun” confirmed the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary to three illiterate, peasant children: Lucia Santos and her cousins, Francisco and Jacinta Marto.
Our Lady appeared to the three shepherd children on the 13th of every month from May 13 until Oct. 13, 1917. The “beautiful lady,” as the children referred to her, encouraged the praying of the Rosary and doing penance so that souls may be prevented from going to hell.
The lady gave the children a vision of hell, and the many souls there, during the summer of apparitions, before promising a sign to confirm her presence. On Oct. 13, she revealed herself to the children as “the Lady of the Rosary", and provided the promised sign.
The 70,000 people who had come with the children — out of curiosity, or devotion, or skepticism — could not see the apparition, of course. But after our Lady took her leave, they were able to see a startling display, in which the sun became a pale disc that “danced.” in the sky. It was possible to look at the sun for an extended period of time and thousands of eyewitnesses did. Nothing like this solar phenomenon had ever been reported in history — except perhaps for the “miracle of the sun” that ensured Joshua's armies their victory at Jericho.
Much mischief has been made about the phenomenon of Fatima by those who wish to use it to reveal “secrets” that are considered lacking in the Gospels. But there is no need for “secrets” concerning Fatima — its message for the 20th century is earthshaking enough as it is. Its message was powerful enough, for instance, to bring down the Berlin Wall, not unlike the trumpet blasts of Joshua's priests outside the walls of Jericho.
Our Lady of Fatima spoke to the children about future calamities, wars, sufferings for the Church and the pope, and above all, of the need for repentance lest sinners be condemned to hell. She specifically asked for prayers that Russia might be converted. And she promised that in the end her Immaculate Heart would triumph. It is not necessary for any Catholic to believe anything about Fatima, but the Church has recognized the message as authentic, and the current Holy Father looks to Our Lady of Fatima to discern the “finger of God” at work.
“In the fall of communism the action of God has become almost visible in the history of our century,” writes Pope John Paul II in Crossing the Threshold of Hope:
“We must be wary of oversimplification … [but] what are we to say of the three children from Fatima who suddenly, on the eve of the October Revolution, heard: ‘Russia will convert’ and ‘In the end my Heart will triumph’ …? They could not have invented those predictions. They did not know enough about history or geography, much less the social movements and ideological developments. And nevertheless it happened just as they had said.”
“Perhaps this is also why the Pope was called from ‘a faraway country;’ perhaps this is why it was necessary for the assassination attempt to be made in St. Peter's Square precisely on May 13, 1981, the anniversary of the first apparition at Fatima — so that all could become more transparent and comprehensible, so that the voice of God which speaks in human history could be more easily heard and understood.”
This eruption of the supernatural in our world can be disturbing, as talk about visions and promises and miracles can easily slide into a kind of magical superstition. Fatima is not about that at all — our Lady came simply to remind us of what we already had been told. She came to those who would listen to her, and told us what we needed to hear.
The children of Fatima suffered a great deal from the skeptics — even in their own families — during the apparitions and afterward, but they remained steadfast witnesses to what they had seen and were docile to our Lady's request to do penance, which they obeyed to a heroic degree.
Even at a tender age, they suffered greatly in reparation for the horror of sin. Francisco and Jacinta died after prolonged illnesses in 1919 — Lucia is still alive and a Carmelite nun — and both of them offered their last agonies for the conversion of sinners. Francisco and Jacinta are expected to be beatified within the next year or two (see Register, May 16-22, 1999).
The three Fatima children were prepared to offer heroic sacrifices for the conversion of others because they understood the terrible consequence of unrepented sin: eventual separation from God in hell.
Hell has largely disappeared from contemporary Christian discourse. Yet, it cannot be dismissed as insignificant that the Mother of God would appear in Fatima to remind the world that Hell is very real and that many people go there. And if we are attentive, our Lady's warning is never far from our ears.
Our Lady of Fatima taught the children a short prayer to say after every mystery of the Rosary. That prayer is now said thousands of times every day in every part of the world:
O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of Hell, lead all souls to Heaven, especially those who have most need of thy mercy!
----- EXCERPT: 'It Happened Just As They Had Said' ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Will Pro-life Concerns Bolt with Buchanan? DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—Presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan is expected to leave the Republican Party sometime in October and begin a quest for the White House on the Reform Party's ticket.
A former member of the Nixon and Reagan administrations, Buchanan has been especially critical of the GOP lately, especially on trade, abortion and foreign policy. He began voicing threats to leave the party after a dismal fifth-place performance at the Iowa straw poll in August.
So-called “sore loser” laws on many states’ books prevent Buchanan from running on another party's ticket after an unsuccessful nomination campaign. He would have to leave then, before the primary season begins in early February.
Buchanan has choices other than the Reform Party, which was founded by Ross Perot, including the more conservative Constitution Party (formerly called the U.S. Taxpayers Party). The Constitution Party would seem a better ideological fit, though it does not have the media presence or the resources of the Reform Party.
Buchanan's biggest motivator in bolting the Republicans may be money. The next Reform Party nominee will receive a check from the federal government for $12.6 million because of Ross Perot's vote total in the 1996 election.
It's not that Buchanan was unwelcome in the Constitution Party.
“I tried in both ‘92 and ‘96 and I indicated that I would be pleased to discuss that possibility,” Howard Phillips, who founded the Constitution Party, told the Register.
“He told me if he went to the Reform Party the money is the reason,” said Phillips. “He is not interested in our nomination.” Phillips was recently nominated by Constitution Party as its presidential candidate. “[The money] is not the only factor, but it's a factor.”
Buchanan's campaign would not return calls for comment.
Unlikely Future
There is no doubt that Buchanan's economic views fit well with the protectionist views of the Reform Party. It is Buchanan's social conservatism that puts him at odds with the Reform Party's newest heavyweight, Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, who has advocated legalization of prostitution and opposes even a ban on partial-birth abortions.
“It seems strange and ironic that Buchanan would criticize the Republican Party as not pro-life and then would entertain joining a party that's not pro-life at all,” David O'Steen, executive director of the National Right to Life Committee, told the Register.
If Buchanan were to win the Reform nomination, he is unlikely to win, but might prove the spoiler. “He's a greater threat to the Republican nominee,” pollster Stuart Rotherberg told the Register. “Polls suggest anywhere from three to five points drawn from the Republican nominee.”
Which is why GOP Chairman Jim Nicholson, among others, has tried to keep Buchanan from leaving. “I asked him to consider very carefully before taking any action that could in any way help Al Gore or Bill Bradley extend the Clinton-Gore era another four years,” Nicholson said at a Washington press conference on Sept. 28.
Republican front-runner George W. Bush wants Buchanan to stay put. “The Republican primary is a contest of ideas,” Bush Press Secretary Mindy Tucker told the Register. Bush, she says, “wants the opportunity to beat him on the ideas.”
Abortion and the Court
With the recent hospitalization of Justice Ginsburg, the next president could appoint anywhere from two to four judges to the Supreme Court.
Joseph Sobran, the Constitution Party's vice-presidential candidate, suggested that the Republicans are no better than Democrats on abortion. “We have a pro-abortion Supreme Court,” Sobran told the Register. “Most of them are Republican nominees. Not exactly stalwarts, are they?”
Conservatives recognize that, while Republican presidencies brought us Supreme Court justices O'Connor and Souter, they also gave us Thomas and Scalia. Democratic nominees waver between bad and worse, say pro-lifers.
“A pro-abortion Democrat will have the chance to solidify Roe v. Wade for a generation,” warned O'Steele. “If abortion is an issue of concern for Buchanan, it really does-n't make sense for him to siphon votes from the Republican nominee.”
“Abortion is the ultimate issue; it deals with life and death,” O'Steele said, referring to Buchanan's penchant for emphasizing economic issues. “Tariffs mean nothing to a dead child. Immigration means nothing to a dead child.”
----- EXCERPT: Money may be main motivation to leave Republican Party ----- EXTENDED BODY: Josh Mercer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: House Passes Unborn Victims of Violence Act DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—Pro-lifers are calling it a “huge victory.” The House voted 254-172 Sept. 30 to pass the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which recognizes preborn children as victims under federally prohibited crimes of violence.
“The bill simply put federal law behind the common sense recognition that when a criminal attacks a pregnant woman, and injures or kills her unborn child, he has claimed two human victims,” said Douglas Johnson, who is legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee.
Supporters of the bill, authored by Rep. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., maintain that it does offer greater protections for the parents of the child. “The law must account for the grief of parents who have suffered due to the death or injury of their preborn child as a result of violence,” said Janet Parshall, chief spokesperson for the Family Research Council.
Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion Rights Action League, lambasted the bill. “[T]his legislation is not meant to provide greater protections for pregnant women, nor to fight crimes against them, but to forge new legal ground that would eventually undermine Roe vs. Wade,” she said in a statement.
Although the bill did not address the legality of abortion, pro-lifers acknowledged a main purpose for the bill would be to establish full legal rights to all human beings — born or preborn.
“Abortion is legal for now,” Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., said on the House floor during debate, “but that shouldn't mean that murderers, muggers and rapists should also have the same unfettered ability to maim or kill an unborn child without consequence.”
Smith criticized the abortion lobby. “At all costs, abortion advocates must cling to the self-serving fiction that unborn babies are something other than human and alive,” Rep. Smith said. “By systematically debasing the value of these children, it has become easier for adults to procure the violent deaths of these little ones if they happen to be unwanted, unplanned or imperfect.”
The bill now moves to the Senate, which will likely not have time to address the bill before adjourning for the year. In that case, the bill would likely have a vote in February, say sources close to the issue.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Josh Mercer ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: A Place to Remember the Briefest Lives DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:NEW YORK—Pregnant with their third child and nearing the end of their first trimester earlier this year, the last thing Dennis and Susan Clark of Omaha, Neb., expected was the miscarriage they suffered in June.
“I wondered if this was normal,” Susan recalled thinking at the first signs of miscarriage. Soon, she said, “I knew something was wrong.”
Her doctor urged her to get some sleep and come in when the office opened in the morning at 8 a.m. But “I couldn't sleep,” said Susan. Later, she passed out due to blood loss. Dennis had to carry her to the car in order to bring her to the doctor. When she arrived, the nurse had difficulty getting her blood pressure. She had lost nearly 8 pints of blood.
“We knew others who had mis-carried, but we didn't know what they had gone through until it happened to us,” said Susan. “In the hospital, and after we came home and reflected on our loss, we felt very alone. It wasn't until later that we learned about Holy Innocents Shrine for the Unborn.”
Holy Innocents Shrine
Nearly one million parents lose a child through miscarriage or stillbirth each year. Forgotten by society, these children remain in the memories of their families. New York's Church of the Holy Innocents Shrine in Memory of Children Who Have Died Unborn is providing parents a place to remember those children.
Dedicated by John Cardinal O'Connor on the feast of the Holy Innocents, Dec. 28, 1993, the shrine is a memorial to all children who have died before birth. Located in Manhattan's business section, Holy Innocents Church is active during the week as New Yorkers and others stream through its doors. The shrine itself is simple. It is located in the rear of the church, near the church entrance. It consists of the Book of Life, statues of Mary and Joseph, and a kneeler. Its visitors often leave flowers at the shrine.
When a child dies as a result of a miscarriage or stillbirth, the family experiences tremendous feelings of loss and grief. In many cases there is no burial or special place where their child is remembered. In the case of abortion, parents experience this loss years later.
The shrine offers a place for healing in several ways, say its organizers. For those parents who haven't already done so, the shrine offers parents the opportunity to name their child and to enter his or her name into “The Book of Life.” The book sits in the shrine encased in glass, between images of the Holy Family. The names of those who died before birth are inscribed in calligraphy in the book and parents are given a certificate in memory of their child.
“I will never forget you. See, upon the palms of my hands I have written your name.” Isaiah 49:15-16
To date, there are more than 2,500 names in the Book of Life. In addition, families also have the opportunity to have a Mass celebrated in memory of their child. All families are remembered in prayer during Mass on the last Friday of each month.
An Idea in Prayer
It was not long after Msgr. Donald Sakano, a former hospital chaplain, came to the Church of the Holy Innocents that he was struck with the idea for a shrine for the unborn. “I was kneeling in prayer when the idea came to me. I was familiar with the issue of parents losing a child and I knew there was an unmet need. Our culture doesn't address this need. What better place to address it than the Church of the Holy Innocents?” thought Msgr. Sakano.
“There is a pronounced need for people to bury their dead,” he said. The Shrine for the Unborn offers grieving parents a place to “bury their dead.”
Unrequited Grief
“We live in a culture where there is no language or ritual for those who die unborn,” Msgr. Sakano said. “Parents’ feelings are met with indifference or denial. And so, when they come, they bring an incredible amount of unrequited grief.”
For Dennis and Susan Clark that grief manifested itself in the things they felt they “ought to have done.” During the miscarriage, they said, they weren't sure what they should have done.
Bothered because they had done nothing for the child she had carried, Susan went seeking answers on the Internet. An e-mail response directed her to New York's Shrine for the Unborn. “Reading that e-mail was like a drop of joy,” said Susan.
Outpouring of Interest
Shrine director Mary Kelly and office manager Siobhan St. Leger receive calls, letters, and e-mail messages daily from parents who have lost an unborn child.
“We get letters from grandmothers who are concerned about the child that a grandson or granddaughter has aborted. We get letters from women in their 70s who say they lost a child 40 years ago and that everyone told them to forget about the child, but they couldn't. They ask us if we could please name that child. Just last week we received a letter from a man in prison who can't stop thinking about the child that his girlfriend had miscarried,” said Kelly.
The correspondence always follows a similar formula, Msgr. Sakano said.
“Parents tend to describe their loss, vocalize their grief, name their child, and thank us for having a shrine. Their pain and grief are just as real whether their loss occurred 50 years ago or three weeks ago. Families clearly receive the grace of healing from the shrine,” he said.
“Parents come before the shrine in a solemn moment to reflect sadly, but also to rejoice in God's mercy. People believe. Because they believe, they come away healed and grateful.”
“One year,” Pastor Msgr. Sakano remembered, “I received a call on Holy Thursday from a woman who had just miscarried a child. She said she was too poor to bury her child. I was able to link her up with a funeral director and on Easter Monday we held a funeral for her at Holy Innocents. The choir and the others in attendance were struck by that tiny, tiny casket. We had never seen anything like it.”
In August, Dennis and Susan Clark had the opportunity to visit the shrine while attending a friend's wedding in New York. Prior to their visit, they had discussed names with their two children, Jacob, 10, and Jessica, 8.
“On the day of our visit, we attended Mass at the Church of the Holy Innocents. Afterwards, we prayed before the shrine and named our child Jordan Francis,” recalled Susan.
“What is remarkable,” says Kelly, “is that the Clarks not only brought their own child's name to the shrine; they also brought the names and dates of five other children from family and friends, children who had died just a few years earlier to one that had died nearly 40 years ago. They had acted as ambassadors for the shrine in their own community.”
The Clarks spent the entire afternoon visiting with Kelly and Father Mark Rossetti, spiritual director for the shrine. “The visit brought us closure. It commemorated that there was a life there … that we had lost something. The visit soothed our hearts. It was the highlight of our entire trip to New York,” said Dennis.
“Our visit was like a spiritual burial for Jordan, and for our family. It was a day of celebration…in knowing that we were not alone and that our child would not be forgotten,” added Susan
Approximately a week after their return home the Clarks received six certificates from the shrine in the mail. Five of the certificates bore the names of the other children which they had carried to the shrine; one bore the name Jordan Francis, and the date June 29, 1999.
Future Plans
“Our goals include developing resources and acting as a clearing-house for other parish communities that may want to start similar shrines in their area,” explained Kelly.
“We want to make this ministry available to anyone who has experienced this kind of loss and to receive the healing that comes with naming the child, the liturgies, masses, and prayers being offered on behalf of the child, and simply knowing that their child will be remembered forever.”
Tim Drake writes from St. Cloud, Minnesota.
The Church of the Holy Innocents is located at 128 West 37th St., New York. Parents who have lost a child to miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion may contact the shrine at 212-279-5861 or by e-mail through their Web page at http://www.innocents.com.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Tim Drake ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: Chicago-area Babies 'Aborted' After Live Birth DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:OAK LAWN, Ill.—Christ Hospital in this southern suburb of Chicago is under investigation by federal and state authorities over a procedure that critics say amounts to infanticide, hospital officials acknowledge.
The attorney general's office and the Illinois Department of Public Health want to find out if so-called “therapeutic abortions” are performed in its labor and delivery department about 20 times a year.
In the procedure, used when the mother learns that her baby has mental or physical handicaps, labor is induced, a child is born and then given “comfort care” before being starved or asphyxiated. These abortions are performed through the 23rd week of gestation, only a week shy of present determinations of viability outside the womb.
Illinois Sen. Patrick O'Malley, a member of Christ Hospital's board of directors, said, “Our staff is working with the attorney general's office to understand the legal implications of this procedure in light of where we are today under the law. This may not even be part of Roe v. Wade. So it's a complex issue but we need to take a close look at it.”
The hospital has no official policy on these abortions, so in effect it carries them out with no definite mandate on an institutional or corporate level, said Nora O'Callaghan, head of the Archdiocese of Chicago's Respect Life Office.
The procedure was first brought to public attention in May by maternity ward nurse Jill Stanek, O'Callaghan told the Register, and was the subject of local media attention in Chicago in late September.
Cardinal Francis George has written several letters to Christ Hospital urging them in the strongest terms to halt the practice, said O'Callaghan.
At a pro-life rally at Christ Hospital on Oct. 2, Stanek, who is not a Catholic, said she was grateful for the cardinal's response. “God bless him. He took my word that this was going on and he turned out a letter to the hospital. … The Catholic Church has been wonderful. I have been amazed at how pro-life they are, how they're willing to do something effective for unborn children. I really am amazed.”
Stanek, who is still employed as a nurse at the hospital, hopes that her coming forward will induce the hospital to stop using the procedure.
Illinois State Sen. Chris Lauzen, told the Register that he was encouraged by the outpouring of response to Stanek's disclosure. “The most important thing is that a demonstration on a crummy, rainy morning brought so many people out to change things.”
He called opponents of the practice to call on “the power of God — the power of prayer — and then action.
The problem with all these issues [abortion and infanticide] is that the majority of the people don't believe that this actually happens in America.”
The senator, a key proponent of an attempt to ban partial-birth abortions in Illinois, said he would work with O'Malley to sponsor legislation to end the practice in Illinois health care institutions.
O'Malley said the procedure was “a matter of great concern to those of us with deep-seated convictions, which, frankly, in this community represents a healthy majority of the people.”
Bob Horwath writes from Chicago.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Bob Horwath ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:In a homily given at Fatima, Portugal, on May 13, 1991, the anniversary of the assassination attempt against the Holy Father and of the apparition of our Lady seen by four shepherd children, Pope John Paul II made an impassioned plea for every family to fight abortion by witnessing to life.
The families that do not refuse their relative obligations of procreation, within a proper sense of responsible parenthood and of confidence in divine providence, give the world a unique witness of higher values.
These challenge the anti-birth mentality current and rightly condemn this mentality which denies life in such a way that it comes to the point of sacrificing it — in many cases while it is still in the mother's womb by means of abortion, a hideous crime as the Council declares. I beg of you then, dear families, this generous service of respecting life.
Against the pessimism and selfishness which cast a shadow over the world, the Church stands for life: in each human life she sees the splendor of that ‘Yes’, that ‘Amen’ who is Christ himself. To the ‘No’ which assails and afflicts the world, she replies with this living ‘Yes’, thus defending the human person and the world from all who plot against and harm life(No. 6).
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: LIFE NOTES DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:Catholic Hospital in Battle Over Contraceptives
Wade Rose, Catholic Health Care West's vice president, told the paper his corporation will stick to the teachings contained in the statement of Religious and Ethical Directives adhered to by every Catholic hospital in America. This document outlines the Catholic moral teaching regarding the sanctity of life and natural means of reproduction.
Rose said critics of Catholic Health Care West are employing scare tactics to win public approval for their policies. He told the paper that only about 50 tubal ligations and fewer than 10 elective abortions were performed at the Gilroy hospital last year.
The Dangers of Underpopulation
MSNBC, Sept. 6—Noting that no major industrialized country in the world has a fertility rate above the replacement rate of 2.1 children per family, syndicated columnist Ben Wattenberg of the American Enterprise Institute warned of unexpected consequences.
“I don't believe we will run out of people, but you are going to see a stark decline in population in Europe and this isn't something the world has been through,” Wattenberg told the online news service.
“My own guess is if we start losing population it opens up a lot of troubling situations. One is economic — what happens to an economy based on growth in such a situation?”
Fewer babies being born and increasing life expectancies will give rise to what Wattenberg called the “grayby boom.” He said that by having fewer children we are eroding the population base of its “worker bees,” leaving no one to pay for pensions.
The rate of global population growth has been slowing since the 1960s, when birth rates began to decline around the world due to changing cultural and economic factors, including urbanization and the proliferation of birth control.
Texas Senate Passes New Adoption Legislation
Designed by Dr. John Richardson, a Fort Worth pediatrician, the Abandoned Baby Bill is expected to deter mothers from aborting their babies because of the lifestyle change that would result from their birth, said the paper.
The bill is believed to be the first such legislation in the nation. The new law amends Texas’ Family Code, allowing licensed emergency medical service providers to take possession of a child, without court order, when the parent voluntarily delivers the child to the agency and expresses no intent to return for the child.
Dr. Richardson is quoted saying he came up with the idea after reading an article on Abandoned Babies in the publication National Adoption Report. “When I read that article,” Richardson said, “I though ‘what are we doing for these babies?’”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: Did You Know? DATE: 10/10/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 10-16, 1999 ----- BODY:Condoms are often promoted as means of preventing sexually transmitted diseases. But condoms, whether used correctly and consistently or not , don't prevent the spread of a sexually transmitted disease called human papillomavirus, or HPV.
The disease, which has infected some 24 million Americans, is the most common incurable sexually transmitted disease in the United States.
Apart from its visible symptoms, the disease has been linked to more than 90% of all invasive cervical cancers, which claim the life of some 5,000 women a year.
It remains true that sexual abstinence outside of marriage is the only effective protection against sexually transmitted diseases.
—Family Research Council Washington Watch, Sept. 28
----- EXCERPT: Facts of Life ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: Thousands Protest Opening of Dogma DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:NEW YORK—A strange sight greeted the business crowd as they bustled past Lincoln Center in Manhattan on Oct. 4: a war protest in a time of peace.
About 2,000 Catholics — some having flown in from the Midwest; others having driven from as far away as Virginia — congregated outside the Performing Arts Center to protest the latest offensive in what they call a “culture war.” This time, it's the debut of Dogma, a film that protest organizer Thomas McKenna called “blasphemous against God and the Catholic faith.”
“We feel that the film is wrong, and degrading to our Catholic faith,” McKenna told the Register.
“We feel that blasphemy is an element in today's world used by enemies of the faith to promote perversion and to break down the catholicity of the faithful. If Catholics don't react to these things, it harms them because they grow accustomed to mockery and ridicule. Catholics should stand up for what they believe in.”
While protesters prayed and sang, the New York glitteratti arrived on the scene in limousines. Meanwhile, a small group of counter-protesters jeered at the Catholic crowd.
In many ways it resembled the scene outside the Brooklyn Museum just two days before, where Catholics gathered to protest the now infamous exhibit “Sensation.” Though less publicized, the Dogma protest outdid the 400 “Sensation” protesters.
The film was directed by Chasing Amy and Mallrats director Kevin Smith, a 29-year-old New Jersey native who refers to himself as a practicing Catholic.
It portrays two fallen angels, played by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, who have been banished from heaven to Wisconsin.
They catch wind of a priest in New Jersey who has designated a day for anyone who enters his church to have their sins forgiven. Affleck and Damon decide to go,expecting to reenter heaven through this “loophole” in Catholic dogma. This, the movie suggests, would negate the veracity of God herself (since God is played by singer Alanis Morrisette, known for bringing the “f-word” into wide play on pop radio for the first time).
During production, Affleck was quoted saying that the movie claims “Mary and Joseph had sex, and they had a kid, and therefore there's a female descendant of Christ on Earth … who works at an abortion clinic,” in Hollywood Online.
The movie is meant to be “incendiary,” he said, but claimed that its author, Smith, is “a devoutly religious Catholic,” who stands in “a history of reformers and people who criticize the Church.”
Dogma also shows a nun leaving her vocation to pursue the pleasures of the flesh, and a man thumbing a pornographic magazine in church.
The June 28 issue of Time reports that director Smith planned to re-edit certain scenes in response to the outcry after the Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colo. The sequences include one in which the pair of angels bullet-spray a board meeting of a large corporation and another in which they kill a group of people outside a church.
Dogma had its worldwide debut at the July Cannes Film Festival in France The film has come under heavy criticsm from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights for its ribald and antagonistic treatment of the Catholic faith. Its original distributor, Disney-owned Miramax, relinquished rights to the film in April, when Disney Chairman Michael Eisner decided it didn't fit his company's family image.
Crossing the Line
“They've crossed the line in what is called entertainment,” said Theresa Fragelli, a protester from Hazleton, Pa. “When it comes to religion they show no respect.”
Fragelli said she joined the protest to demonstrate her love for God and his Church. “When an offense is public, reparation has to be public. It's just like if someone abused your parents. It hurts you. Well, it's the same thing with faith. If you demonstrate that it hurts, you are proving that you love,” Fragelli said.
Maria Becker and her husband drove from Allentown, Pa., for the protest.
Becker said she went because “the culture has become very permissive,” adding, “the sacred is no longer sacred. My husband and I think that if they take that away from our children they will have nothing else.”
Becker said she hadn't seen the film, but had heard about it from some relatives who had. “They said it was violent as well as blasphemous. I was curious to read the script, but then I thought, ‘I don't want to read that junk,” Becker added.
Not Just Catholics
But Stephanie Zacharek, an Arts and Entertainment writer for Salon magazine, an online journal of “news, politics, culture and ideas,” didn't find the film offensive at all.
“I loved the movie,” she said. “It moved me. It's not going to get me back into the Church, but I did have strong feelings about it.”
“It isn't part of freedom of the press to insult someone else's religion.’
On hand for the debut, Zacharek, a lapsed Catholic, said the protesters were “orderly and polite,” but “somewhat misguided.”
“[It] troubled me that they were basing their protests on things they haven't seen or read,” she said, calling the movie a “work of art.”
But the New York protesters aren't the only ones objecting to the film. David Lowenthal, a professor of Political Philosophy at Boston College, told the Register that the film should raise objections “by any sensible person.” Lowenthal, who is Jewish, said people of all religion “should have solidarity on this point.”
“It isn't part of freedom of the press to insult someone else's religion.… There are a bunch of people in Hollywood who enjoy making fun of religion and they enjoy the full support of the courts right now. But that's nonsense if you understand the First Amendment,” Lowenthal said.
“Religion is something people hold dearer than their property and even their lives,” he added.
Police on hand for the demonstration put the number of protesters at about 2,000, but organizer McKenna thought the number was a little higher. “We told them we expected 2,000 to show. They blockaded a section of the street for us, but the crowd grew too large for the blockades. The police had to call for more barriers, but eventually they spilled out of these too,” McKenna said, adding that he thought the number of protesters was closer to 2,500.
McKenna characterized the Monday protest, which ran from late afternoon until a little after six in the evening, as a “prayerful protest rally of reparation.”
“We weren't there to say ‘you are bad. We made it clear that this was not about free speech. We were there as Catholics before God offering prayer for reparation,” McKenna said.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian McGuire ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: 'Involuntary Euthanasia' Testing the Law's Limits DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:STOCKTON, Calif.—Robert Wend-land is unique among other patients who are targeted by tube-removal cases.
He is conscious and interactive and, according to his wife and sister, he doesn't want to die. But Wendland may have no choice in the matter.
“The question now is whether or not the state of California will permit a conscious man to be dehydrated to death because he is retarded,” said Wesley J. Smith, a California attorney who has followed the case closely since it began several years ago. He has filed an amicus brief warning about the dangers to profoundly disabled people should Robert be allowed to die.
A feeding tube has been keeping Wendland alive since a 1993 car accident rendered him severely brain-damaged and unable to feed himself.
His wife, Rose Wendland, gave the okay to Lodi Memorial Hospital to remove the tube. The 20 members of the hospital ethics committee agreed, unanimously. Robert was almost left to starve.
But when an anonymous nurse informed Robert's sister and mother of the hospital's decision, their objections stalled the tube-removal and instead made it an issue for the courts.
Smith explained that at one time food and water were considered ordinary care. That changed in 1986, when the American Medical Association decided to call food and water “medical treatment” instead. This opened the door to a slew of court cases by family members of comatose or “permanently vegetative” patients seeking the authority to speak on behalf of their unconscious relative to refuse “medical treatment” in the form of food and water.
“At this point, there are policies which say that families can decide they don't want feeding tubes,” Smith said. “As long as the families agree, no one cares. It's only when you have a disagreement in the family and the patient is conscious, like Robert Wendland, that people learn about these cases,” Smith said.
According to his wife, not long before his accident, Wendland had made certain comments to the effect that he would rather die than live in a permanently vegetative state. Rose's lawyers sought to argue their case on the basis of this statement. The judge found it to be unconvincing, however.
Without “clear and convincing evidence” that Wendland himself would refuse food and water if he were able to, the tubes had to stay.Thus the court ruled in favor of Wendland's sister and mother.
But the court also ruled that Rose could make all other decisions regarding Wendland's care, making her Wendland's conservator.
Rose appealed the decision and Wendland was assigned his own attorney in the matter, on the recommendation of Janie Hickock Siess, attorney for Robert's sister and mother.
Surprisingly, Wendland's court-appointed attorney sided with Rose, arguing that the wife should be allowed to have his tube removed. Since both attorneys agree that Rose has the right to refuse medical treatment to Robert, the only thing keeping Robert alive is the dissension on the question among his family members.
His attorney, James Braden argues in his appeal, made available to the Register, that California law clearly gives “conservators” like Rose sole authority in deciding if and when to refuse medical treatment to persons in their care, no ifs and or buts: “The conservator has the exclusive authority to give consent for such medical treatment to be performed on the conservatee as the conservator in good faith based on medical advice determines to be necessary … ” he quotes the probate code saying.
“This plain language, containing no exceptions, no extra elements and no extraordinary burdens of proof, means that once the trial judge twice validated Rose Wendland as Robert Wendland's conservator, the court was required to allow her to exercise Robert's fundamental right to refuse further medical treatment,” Wendland writes in his appeal.
In a conversation with the Register, Siess referred to Braden's appeal, saying, “No state in this country that's looked at this issue has said a conservator can pull a feeding tube from a conservatee unless the conservatee is either comatose, terminally ill or in a permanently vegetative state.”
She said, “Wendland is not in that category. He feels pain, he interacts with his environment, and he can operate his electric wheelchair. He's just a disabled guy. In those other cases, the reason a patient is allowed to starve or dehydrate is because they can't feel pain. Robert can feel pain. … If you can kill Robert, who's next?”
Diane Coleman is the director of “Not Dead Yet,” an advocacy group for the disabled. She too is following the case closely. Coleman was shocked when she learned that Wendland's lawyer was “defending” his right to die. She also expressed concern over what she called “the agenda of euthaniasia-rights advocates,” an agenda she believes is evident in the Wendland case.
“Rose is pushing the limits of the law here,” Coleman said.
“The issue here is that Robert, by his actions and his gestures is expressing a desire to live. He isn't seeking death. People are now deciding that they have the right to take the life of a family member because they aren't fully who they were before an accident. This is involuntary euthanasia.
“If the state of California permits Rose Wendland to refuse her husband feeding, they will expand the ability of surrogates to withdraw life sustaining treatment from people who do not request it. Many thousands of people would face the same threat of death without consent,” Coleman said.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian McGuire ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: FALL FASHIONS IS MODESTY 'IN'? DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:MERIDEN, Conn.—The “modest” fall fashion show emerged from a crisis at a nuclear missile base.
On a Monday evening in early August, a group of central Connecticut women met for a weekly discussion group. Talk turned to the issue of Lt. Ryan C. Berry's request that he not be assigned to an Air Force underground nuclear missile silo capsule with a female officer for around-the-clock shifts. Berry, who is a Catholic, a husband and a father, morally objected to this kind of duty at North Dakota's Minot Air Force Base. He felt that mixing the sexes in the silo's cramped quarters could be an occasion of sin.
The women began reflecting on “some of the virtues Berry was displaying, including modesty,” said Karen Polce, the mother of five.
They began to see a larger issue in the nation at large: a crisis of women's modesty. Then, they decided to do something about it.
An article in the Aug. 26 edition of The Wall Street Journal, for example, noted that even in conservative businesses, employees are wearing the kinds of outfits that not long ago would have been consigned to Saturday night. Women are showing up at the office in tube tops, micro-minis and stiletto heels. Men are wearing tight trousers and deeply cut tank tops to work.
Outside the office, the clothing, or lack of clothing, can get even wilder. Teen-agers across the country are choosing ensembles that, objectively, resemble the outfits prostitutes would wear if they were trolling for clients. Leather and chains are no longer reserved exclusively for bikers or fetishists; some of the most prominent couturiers are showing them in their fall lineups.
The Connecticut women said fashion trends could insidiously affect their self-image and attitude toward modesty.
“We asked,” said Polce, “ ‘what message are we giving to the world about our self-image as Christian women as opposed to a self-image that's based on our sexual parts? An image that seems to be based on the Barbie doll?’”
That kind of sexualized appearance has a consequence far beyond fashion disasters, as Mary Beth Bonacci, an internationally noted Catholic author and lecturer on teen chastity, points out.
“When people display or call attention to sexual body parts,” she notes, “it demeans them, because it calls attention to the parts instead of the whole person. It makes it much easier for them to be viewed as sexual objects.”
Having a sense of modesty will prevent that objectification, so it's important to understand what modesty is.
Modesty is a fruit of the Holy Spirit that “protects the mystery of persons and their love” (No. 2522), says the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It “protects the intimate center of the person. It means refusing to unveil what should remain hidden” (No. 2521).
What should remain hidden can vary across time and cultures.
“Modesty is a tricky virtue,” says Bonacci, who heads Real Love Productions, “because it's culturally and socially conditioned. The goal of modesty is to avoid providing sexual temptation to the opposite sex, and that changes from culture to culture.”
“Everywhere, however,” says the Catechism, “modesty exists as an intuition of the spiritual dignity proper to man” (No. 2524).
The Catechism goes on to add that teaching modesty to children and adolescents “means awakening in them respect for the human person” (No. 2524).
Modeling Modesty
That teaching was very much a concern of the Connecticut women.
“We wanted to learn how to teach our own children at home about modesty,” explains April Beingessner, the mother of three.
Margaret Cannuli, the mother of six and the group's leader, suggested that there must be something the women could do apostolically to help children better understand and practice modesty.
After a brain-storming session, says Karen Polce, the women came up with the idea of holding a fashion show.
“The idea was electrifying,” recalls Cannuli. “Every woman there immediately took ownership of the idea. We don't recognize how we can put other people in the occasion of sin by how we dress and present ourselves.”
The women also wanted to teach the girls that dressing modestly doesn't mean dressing dowdily. People can be both modest and attractively garbed.
The 11-member team dubbed their fashion-show concept “A Modest Proposal: An Evening of Fashion & Fun Tailored to Suit the Feminine Mystique” and scheduled it for the evening of Sept. 27.
“The show started small,” notes Lisa Williams, the mother of one, “but Father LaPlante said to go bigger.”
Father Roland M. LaPlante, the pastor of Holy Angels Parish in Meriden, was highly supportive when parishioner Karen Polce asked him about holding a fashion show there. He offered the team the use of the parish center, the help of parish employees and some important dramatic advice: Include a bridesmaid dress and a wedding gown in the runway line-up.
Father LaPlante mentioned these outfits because he has seen many recent brides and bridesmaids wearing revealing dresses during weddings.
“A lot of the brides I see lately are not dressed appropriately for church,” he says. “Most of the brides are wearing backless gowns, which I don't think is appropriate in the sanctuary.”
Karen Polce, who had never attended a fashion show, was responsible for selecting the show's other outfits as well as hiring and training the models.
She approached stores at the nearby Meriden mall and asked if she could borrow clothes for a special kind of fashion show. Most merchants were highly receptive.
Polce found many of her nine models through the parish religious-education program. They ranged in age from 11 to 16, and included her daughter Alycia, 15. The neophyte models enthusiastically participated in the two-day effort it took to select the show's fashionable but appropriately modest garments.
The evening program, organized by Beingessner, blended fashion, fundraising and formative discussion of the meaning of modesty.
“The turnout was better than we expected,” said Williams, noting that tables and chairs had to be found at the last minute to accommodate the crowd.
She said she has heard a lot of feedback from members of the audience, who bid on fashion-related silent auction items, watched the girls emerge from a trellis and walk down the runway and then answered questions about what modesty means.
“I've only gotten positive feedback,” she said, and noted that she has been told that the show has had a “ripple effect” in the attitudes toward modesty of the women and girls who were there.
Modesty Means …
The models seem to have a solid grasp of what sartorial modesty is.
“Modesty means looking nice and attractive, and not tacky,” says Sarah Kayczor, 16.
“Looking nice, but not going too overboard,” adds Kaitlin David, 11.
“Being you own person in a way that is not gaudy, not flashy, and not trying to draw attention to yourself,” concludes Christina Jardine, 15.
Bonacci, who lives in Arizona, said that a “fashion show” sounded like a good way to introduce modesty to teens.
“Some people confuse modesty with unattractiveness,” says Mary Beth Bonacci. “Our bodies are gifts from God. We should dress to emphasize the person and not the part. We should honor our bodies.”
She goes on to warn against practicing a sort of latter-day Manichaeism with regard to the body and fashion. This ancient heresy basically said the spirit is good and the body bad; therefore, the body should be neglected or even punished.
The Church, on the contrary, teaches that both body and soul are gifts from God, and should be treated with proper consideration.
“We need to honor God with looking attractive,” says Bonacci.
Loretta G. Seyer is the editor of Catholic Faith & Family.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Loretta G. Seyer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Cardinal and Commonweal On Liberal Catholicism DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:CHICAGO—Margaret Steinfels, editor of Commonweal magazine, recalls a “famous moment” a year ago that led to the forum on the topic of liberal Catholicism Oct. 6.
It was during a homily that Cardinal Francis George, Archbishop of Chicago, said liberal Catholicism was an “exhausted project.”
This year's Commonweal conference invited him to explain what he meant, and he did. Other featured speakers included Steinfels and her husband, Peter Steinfels, a former Commonweal editor himself and religion and ethics columnist at The New York Times.
The evening's title, “The Crisis of Liberal Catholicism,” seemed to acknowledge that Cardinal George was on to something.
The audience was overwhelmingly liberal, Catholic, and over 50, including many who have helped make Chicago famous as a bastion of independent Catholic thinking. The audience was also large, leaving standing room only in the 270-seat little theater on the campus of Loyola University.
If Cardinal George felt outnumbered, he gave no sign of it. The Church, he said, could no longer be seen as a way to achieve “the world's goals.” That, he said, was the “exhausted project.”
But he had plenty of criticism for conservative Catholicism as well. While the Church cannot set aside its traditions “to make someone happy,” neither can it embrace “a conservatism that looks only to the hierarchy, making it responsible for all the good or bad that happens.” Bishops, he said, “are a reality check for faith. Do they control the Gospel? No, they serve it.”
In a critique of both tendencies, he said: “Become liberal or conservative, and you stop thinking things through.”
A Debate?
Peter Steinfels analyzed the crisis of liberal Catholicism in what he called a “parallel and independent” manner, not directly countering Cardinal George.
U.S. Judge John Noonan, Jr., former law professor at U. of California-Berkeley and author of Contraception, also spoke. His book helped undermine support for Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI's encyclical that reaffirmed the Church's opposition to artificial birth control. University of Notre Dame historian John McGreevey and Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, Jr. rounded out the program.
Steinfels argued in favor of liberalism as a reaction against oppression by Church authorities, in part a corrective element that is still needed. Pius IX said he had “always condemned” liberal Catholics. The future Pius X said, “Their piety disguised their venom.”
Even now, he said he finds it “depressing and even embittering” to read of such matters, especially since it was liberal Catholicism, he said, that saved some countries from being immersed in anti-Semitism and other evils. He decried “crisis-mongering” in our day, “when liberal Catholicism is the dominant outlook in the Church” while the fight against liberals is waged by a “well-funded movement and its publications.”
It “cannot be ruled out” that the Pope is in error on the ordination of women, he said, conceding that this position is well-received by “liberal society.” On the other hand, he said, his opposition to the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that permitted abortion are “as unwelcome” at The New York Times, his employer, as his views on Humanae Vitae are in the Roman curia.
Liberal is Not Left
Steinfels severely criticized “the Catholic left” as something more extreme than liberal Catholicism and which is embodied in the group A Call to Action and others for whom “inclusiveness” is so highly prized that it has become a meaningless “cant word.”
As an example, he cited A Call to Action convention speaker who called for an end to the episcopacy, a stand that didn't warrant criticism by Call to Action leaders or even by other Catholic liberals, who maintain a “discreet silence” about such excesses, and fail to “insist on the defining marks of Catholicism.”
Steinfels said Catholics on either extreme tend to be suspicious and are quick to question the motives of others; discussion gives way to “rallies” in an atmosphere in which people act as though they are members of political parties.
Cardinal George agreed. “We are a liberal culture,” he said, “and engagement with it is more complex than it appears … The ‘party’ spirit puts a stop to thinking.”
Catholics must talk about these things, he said, “but not as liberal or conservative.” The answer, he said, lies not in “power plays” and other maneuvers but in “what makes us holy.”
Points of Agreement
Both men had similar ideas about the damage that has been caused by false concepts of personhood.
“Both conservatism and liberalism … tend to look on the person as a bundle of desires or dreams, animal impulses and higher aspirations which are synthesized individually by choice and controlled socially by law,” the cardinal said.
Steinfels agreed that personal experience has been elevated to the beginning and the ending point of religious reflection.
The cardinal also noted “a darker side” to U.S. Catholicism, which is increasingly apathetic and dependent on immigrant newcomers to sustain itself.
“Are we forming people capable of sacrifice needed to continue the human project?” he asked. “Who are filling our graduate schools in the hard sciences? How many Indian and other Asian doctors staff our hospitals? How many study in our seminaries who are not Americans? Who's entering marriage with a sense of commitment?”
The last of Cardinal George's comments focused on the central importance of doctrine. “So serious is the question of doctrine,” he said, “that faced with [a substantial point of doctrine demanding my acceptance], I would resign if I couldn't say I accepted it.”
Chicago Tribune religion columnist Steve Kloehn described the George-Steinfels conversation as “a soaring tour” of intellectual and cultural history. “Most strikingly,” he said, “they often agreed.”
The speakers demonstrated “hope for a more rigorous and sophisticated approach to person, culture and God,” said Kloehn. “Seen in that light, today's [Church] spats could change fundamentally, or disappear altogether.”
Jim Bowman writes from Chicago.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jim Bowman ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: He's Safe! DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:As the regular baseball season wound to a close, the Catholic catcher and first baseman of the Kansas City Royals made two brothers’ day by granting them an interview in the historic confines of Yankee Stadium. The man who was a top 10 hitter in the American League during the 1999 season spoke with Mike Pieczynski, 15, and his brother Steve, 11.
Pieczynskis: When did you first want to be a baseball player?
Sweeney: I first got the idea when I was five years old. I've played baseball every day ever since.
Who was your favorite player as a kid?
Brian Downing of the California Angels, and I met him just like you're meeting me today.
Who do you look up to now?
On earth, my dad — he's got a strong backbone, he's a good role model, has real integrity and great faith in Jesus. But my main, true hero is Jesus himself. He's the one who can save us, as well as pick us up when we're down.
What's a good leader?
Someone who can inspire others to do the right thing even when others are doing something wrong. Some good guys who are this kind of leader in pro baseball right now are Joe Girardi of the Yankees and John Wetteland of the Texas Rangers. Some guys will say “Hey, let's go to the bars, get drunk and run around on our wives.” Well, Joe or John would say “Hey guys, let's not.” Maybe not everyone would go along with them, but some would. These guys are also the first to say, “Don't miss Church.”
Is it important to set goals?
Very important.
What separates people who succeed from those who don't?
Discipline — for example, you've got to sleep and eat right if you want to play well consistently. Also, faith — faith in Jesus gives you strength and discipline.
What role has your Catholic faith played in your success?
I'll give you an example. For two days before Ash Wednesday this year, I thought I might be sent down to the minor leagues or traded. I was the Royals’ third-string catcher. I went to Mass on Ash Wednesday and cried my eyes out. Up to that point, I had surrendered my life to the Lord, but not totally, so I said “Lord, six weeks from now (Easter, and opening day of the baseball season), I'm going to rejoice in your name, no matter what.” For the first time I totally surrendered my will to His. I felt total peace and freedom, no matter what was to come. As it turned out, I wasn't traded or sent down. In fact, I've had my best year yet.
Did you have to go to Church when you were a kid?
Yes, and I loved it. Now, as an adult, my relationship with the Lord is even more intimate. I'm even happier to go to Church now. You've got to make a choice to follow Jesus or not. Once you make that decision for Him, you're going to want to read your Bible and help others and go to Church. Jesus is number one in my life.
How does Christ make a difference in your professional career?
In pro baseball, I won't kid you guys, there are lots of temptations — girls, parties — but Christ gives me a foundation to build my life on. My teammates now know me and respect me so they don't ask me to do stuff that would compromise the integrity of my walk with the Lord.
What's the best part of being a pro?
It me a chance to be a role model for kids. Also, because professional baseball puts me up on a pedestal in people's minds, it gives me a good opportunity to deflect praise from me to Christ. When I sign autographs, I always put a Bible inscription on it. The kids will say, “What's this?” And I say, “Do you have a Bible at home?” They say, “Yeah,” and I say, “Well, go home and look it up!”
Can pros be good examples, and how?
Sure. You have to conduct yourself in a way pleasing to Christ, because I may be the only “Bible” that someone “reads.” Be a good Christian man, and you may help lead someone to the Lord — to make a decision to follow Jesus throughout their life, no matter what comes.
Any advice to Catholic youth who want to be the best at what they do?
If you want to be the best, think of Jesus standing with you at all times, because He is. Some people wear “WWJD” bracelets as a reminder. That stands for “What Would Jesus Do?”
Do other players know about your Catholic values, and do you think you can influence them?
My friend, another pro ballplayer, had been sleeping with his girlfriend. I talked to him and he ended up taking a vow of celibacy. He told her, ‘The next person I sleep with, if anyone, will be my wife.” So I think you could say that the Lord used me to influence him.
Thank you. My pleasure.
----- EXCERPT: Royal's hitter tells two young fans that his faith made the difference ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mike Sweeney ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: Stalled in Senate, Ten Commandments Sneak Into Schools DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—If the front door is closed, leave it to parents to find a window.
Fed up waiting for Congress and state legislatures to allow the Ten Commandments back into public schools, parents have found their own way.
“I want it on all the books,” Connie Williams, of Charleston, S.C., told the Register. Williams, with the help of volunteers, dispensed 10,000 book covers with the Ten Commandments written on them to public schools students in Charleston.
“People are excited and everyone likes the design,” Williams said. Although skeptical of the impact of placing it on the wall, Williams felt assured that if the Ten Commandments were on a child's book, he would read it.
Williams got the idea from a woman in Texas. She presented the proposal to her local church and secured $2,000 for the project.
Then, Williams did her homework. She found out where each school was located and what time its day started. She then found local volunteers who would hand them to children located off school property. Another book-cover crusade has been reported in Chicago.
“Adults are not allowed to hand them out on school property, but the kids can,” Williams told the Register.
For Williams, getting the Word of God into the hand of school children was a mission. “That was the burden on my heart,” she said.
Meanwhile, the legislative battle continues.
“I believe we are leading the nation,” Kentucky State Rep. Dr. J.C. “Bo” Ausmus told the Register of his plans to put the commandments in the schools.
Rather than making the decision statewide, the Ausmus bill would allow voters in local school districts to decide through referenda if the Ten Commandments should be placed on the wall.
“It's a local decision every turn you take in Kentucky,” Rep. Ausmus said. “We've written a foolproof bill here in Kentucky.”
The bill could give potential opposition groups like the ACLU the fits. “Normally, they would just go the court in Frankfurt, looking for an injunction,” Rep. Ausmus said. “They can't do that with this bill. They would have to go and sue each school.”
Rep. Ausmus said that the bill was crafted according to the guidelines acceptable by the Supreme Court. “Everybody that's looked at this says it's constitutional,” even opponents of the bill, Rep. Ausmus said.
Critics of the bill have deemed it merely symbolic, an act that feels good but would not truly affect any child. Rep. Ausmus dismisses such arguments.
“What if it saves just one life? Then it's the most important thing I've done,” Rep. Ausmus told the Register.
Federally, pro-family groups are promoting the Ten Commandments Defense Act, now stalled in the Senate.
“We think there's a hole in the heart of America,” Janet Parshall, chief spokesperson for the Family Research Council, told the Register. “We've tried everything else, we've tried metal detectors, who not try heart detectors?”
Parshall understood that the court has ruled in Stone vs. Graham against the displaying of the Ten Commandments, but she is convinced that this does not end the issue once and for all. “It's still debatable; I think it's worth a challenge.”
In a statement, Terry Shroeder of the ACLU countered that legislation to put the Decalogue in schools will “force feed” religion to public school children.
Parshall answered that the Ten Commandments have widespread support. “The Ten Commandments are recognized by three major religions of the world. Anyone who opposes them suffers from ‘theophobia’,” Parshall told the Register.
Parshall also fended off criticism that the act was simply symbolic. “The flag is just a symbol. The cross is just a symbol. But you know what? There are powerful ideas behind those symbols,” she said.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Josh Mercer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Scientist's Challenge: Don't Shout God Out of Research DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:Scientists gathered at a Sept. 25 conference took up an age-old challenge laid down by Charles Darwin.
“If it could be demonstrated,” Darwin wrote, “that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”
“What about light sensitive surfaces like the retina,” said Michael Behe, a professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University said. “If you focus on a complex system like the retina at the molecular level, you see that one of its components is itself made up of a larger number of parts, all of which are interdependent. If someone was born without one of these components, he'd be blind. The chemistry of vision is extremely complex and Darwin didn't have the tools to explain it, so he left the question of it wide open, as a black box that you can't investigate,” Behe told the Register.
In the language of evolution, vision is what is called an “irreducibly complex system.” Behe says there are many others: biological systems that work as a whole, but are useless without every one of their minute parts.
The question Behe asks is “How could a system that lacked a necessary component in one generation ever come to acquire it in a subsequent one?”
“It was easy to assume that evolution could produce biochemical systems like light sensitive surfaces or blood clotting systems when we didn't know how they worked. But now that we see the details, Darwinian evolution is a less plausible explanation than it once was,” Behe said.
For Behe, a more plausible account of complex biological systems would allow for the possibility that they were designed by a complex intelligence. But most scientists, he said, are just too too fearful of the “G” word to even consider appealing to intelligent design as an alternative to Darwinian evolution.
Give Up and Say ‘God Did It’
Critics of Behe say he underestimates the ability of evolutionary theorists to explain irreducibly complex systems. And critics of Dembski say he would have us return to a mingling of the science and revelation that puts limits on the Christian God.
“It's true that we don't understand a lot about evolution,” but that doesn't mean we should give up and say ‘God did it,’” said Jerry Coyne, a professor in the department of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago. “Behe's major fallacy is that he hasn't demonstrated that these systems are irreducibly complex. For all these systems, he does-n't know what would happen if you removed a part. To conclude that a system would break down is simply conjecture,” Coyne said, adding that, in his view, evolution may gives systems that aren't irreducibly complex the appearance of being so.
Coyne, who said he was not himself “a religious person,” told the Register that the reason we can't explain certain biological systems is that we don't have a fossil record of their history. “What Behe says is that every time we run into a complex problem we should give up and say that God did it. We are not excluding God; we just don't see how he helps us to understand scientific questions like this one. This is a practical matter.” Coyne added.
“I'm very careful to talk about intelligent design and not God,” Behe said, responding to Coyne's criticisms. “Science studies physical systems and one can come to the conclusion that an intelligent designer ordered these complex system based on observing them closely.
“Scientists are now searching for extra-terrestrial intelligence based on radio signals they receive from space. They believe they will be able to determine the presence of intelligent life forms based on the complexity of the waves they receive. They are confident that they can detect the presence of intelligent life forms based solely on the structure of radio systems, on the complexity of the waves they receive. I'm saying the same thing for biochemical systems.”
In response to Coyne's claim that Behe uses God to fill in the blanks, Behe said, “the conclusion for intelligent design is not based on ignorance of what a system looks like, but on our knowledge of how systems interact with each other.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian Mcguire ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: U.S.Notes & Quotes DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:Cardinal Law Concerned About Anti-Catholics On Bench
The cardinal provided Governor Cellucci with background material and asked him to look into the matter on his own. The letter was leaked to the Boston Globe and columnist Eileen McNamara used it as an occasion to criticize the cardinal for wrongfully meddling in state affairs.
Boston's diocesan paper, The Pilot, responded to McNamara in an editorial titled “Civics 101.”
“[McNamara] insists that ‘cardinals are not supposed to lobby.’ Where in civil law does it say that?
“Is Ms. McNamara aware of the fact that Protestants, through The Massachusetts Council of Churches, Jews, through their Community Council and Catholics, through their Massachusetts Catholic Conference, monitor every bill up at the state house that affects their constituents and institutions — or the general moral climate of the Commonwealth? And then give voice to their opinion?
“Does Mr. McNamara think for a moment that if Cardinal Law was given information which implied that some newly nominated judge was a racist or an anti-Semite, that he wouldn't share that concern with the governor? If she does, then Ms. McNamara doesn't know the cardinal.”
Congress Teams Up With Church in Fighting Porn
CNET NEWS.COM, Oct. 4—Lawmakers, church officials and Net access providers have been making strides to push the use of Web site blocking programs in schools, libraries and homes, the online news service reported.
In Congress, a sweeping juvenile justice bill could be the vehicle for a landmark requirement that schools and libraries block online pornography, obscenity and other material deemed harmful to minors to receive a federal Net access subsidy known as the “e-rate.”
Members of the House of Representatives and the Senate expect to agree on a plan for implementing the subsidy by the end of October, CNET reported.
But even if Congress fails to pass a filtering mandate, the Catholic Church is already working to promote voluntary Net screening programs within communities.
Joining religious-based filtered Net access services, such as HisNet.org and TrueVine, the Vatican Treasury Museum launched the Catholic Families Network on Oct. 7, which will include original content combined with a filtered Net access service provided by a New York start-up, iConnect, for $19.95 per month.
The company said the service will be marketed to millions of Catholics in the US and that it will share revenue from customer subscriptions and advertising rates with the Vatican Treasury Museum.
----- EXCERPT: From Selected Sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- Keywords: News -------- TITLE: Blessed Katherine Drexel Moves One Step Closer to Canonization DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:BENSALEM, Pa.—A medical board for the Vatican ruled Oct. 7 that there was no natural cause for the cure of a 17 month-old child's deafness.
The child was born with nerve deafness in 1992 and medical tests confirmed the condition in September 1993. In November, the family learned that prayer for the intercession of Blessed Katherine Drexel resulted in the miraculous restoration of hearing to Robert Gutherman's right ear.
The announcement by the medical board brings Blessed Katherine one step closer to sainthood. Next, the miracle must be affirmed by a board of theologians before a final decision by Pope John Paul II. If approved, Blessed Katherine would be the second American-born saint. St. Elizabeth Seton of New York was canonized in 1975.
The medical board's decision was welcomed by the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, the order founded by Mother Drexel.
“Everybody here is excited today,” Sister Louis Francis, who knew Blessed Katherine, told the Register.
“We all were very inspired by her generosity and the way she lived her life,” Sister Louis said. “She was interested in all of us sisters.”
Born in Philadelphia to a wealthy family, Katherine grew up learning the importance of payer and work, especially in the service of others. She inherited $20 million from her family but dedicated herself to helping the poor.
After learning about the hardships endured by Indians in America's west, Katherine decided to dedicate her efforts to this community.
Sister Francis told the Register, “She traveled a lot and she found out how the Indians were neglected. She sent them money to build churches and schools.”
She later found out that blacks in the South were also living in poor conditions and were in need of special attention. She would also eventually focus some of her order's effort on foreign missions.
“She gave her whole life to the evangelization and education of these communities,” Sister Ruth Catherine, guild director for the Sisters for the Blessed Sacrament, told the Register.
She built over 100 schools for blacks, and over 60 schools for American Indians, Sister Ruth said.
“She was a very nice person. She was a holy angel,” Sister Louis told the Register.
Katherine decided to become a religious following the death of her father. Aided her wealth she founded the Sisters for the Blessed Sacrament for Indian and Colored People on Feb. 14, 1891. Today, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament continue Mother Drexel's legacy with 48 missionary sites in 12 states and Haiti. Schools like St. Ignatius Loyola Elementary School in Philadelphia and Xavier University in New Orleans are run by her order
Blessed Katherine guided her congregation for 44 years before suffering a heart attack iIn 1935. For the next two decades she was confined to the moth-erhouse in Bensalem, Pa., just outside Philadelphia, where she devoted herself primarily to prayer. She died on March 3, 1995, at he age of 96.
Sister Regina Tracy holds the founder of her order in high regard. “What she did as a person —reaching out to the poor and depressed when no one else would — is remarkable,” Sister Regina Tracy told the Register.
Pilgrims continue to visit the moth-erhouse, which now includes Blessed Katherine's tomb, often asking for her intercession. Her shrine contains personal effects from her childhood desk to her office desk. Visitors can view a video that tells the story of Katherine Drexel's life and the work of her congregation.
Artifacts from the communities she touched are also found in the shrine. Some of the items include ebony, ivory and wood carvings from Haiti, Mali and Kenya. American Indian items include a Navajo rug, Sioux moccasins, and Pueblos pottery and terra-cotta.
“She is one marvelous woman,” said Sister Ruth. “Hopefully now her life will be an inspiration to others.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Josh Mercer ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Pope Beatifies Five Italians and One Belgian DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—Calling them “faithful workers in the Lord's vineyard,” Pope John Paul II beatified five Italians and a Belgian during a Mass in St. Peter's Square.
The freshly scrubbed facade of St. Peter's Basilica was hung with huge images of the newly beatified men. Some 20,000 Italian and Belgian pilgrims joined the Pope for the sunny outdoor ceremony Oct. 3.
“In today's celebration we have the joy to see elevated to altars of glory six faithful workers in the Lord's vineyard,” the Pope said. “In different times and in different ways, each of them generously gave of their own lives in service to the Gospel.”
The newly-beatified are:
— Ferdinando Maria Baccilieri (1821-1893), a parish priest and founder of the Servite Sisters of Galeazza.
— Edward Joannes Maria Poppe (1890-1924), a rural Belgian priest and former soldier.
— Arcangelo Tadini (1846-1912), a priest and founder of the Sister Workers of the Holy House of Nazareth religious congregation.
— Mariano da Roccacasale (1778-1866), a Franciscan brother.
— Diego Oddi (1839-1919), a Franciscan brother.
— Nicola da Gesturi (1882-1958), a Capuchin monk known as “Brother Silence.”
“In a world too often values-poor and saturated with words, there is need of men and women who, like Blessed Nicola da Gesturi, underline the urgency of recapturing the ability to be silent and listen,” the Pope said.
Pope John Paul has beatified 938 people during his 21-year pontificate.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- Keywords: Vatican -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:Iraqi Cleric Expects the Pope to Meet With Saddam
REUTERS, Oct. 6—Iraq's leading Christian cleric said he believes Pope John Paul II remains committed to a millennium pilgrimage to Iraq and that he expects the Pope to meet with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the wire service reported.
Vatican sources said earlier that the visit, which has not yet been officially announced, had hit “diplomatic problems.”
“Up until now, we were assured His Holiness would come to Iraq. There is no change to his agenda or program,” said Raphael Bidawid, the Chaldean church's patriarch of Babylon, on a recent visit to London.
Bidawid told the Royal Institute for International Affairs the Pope would travel to Ur, birthplace of the Old Testament patriarch Abraham and revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims.
Afterward he declined to respond to questions over whether the trip was in jeopardy, but an aide who had traveled with him on a two-week tour of the United States and Britain said Bidawid had not heard of any discord with the Vatican, reported Reuters.
Bidawid insisted the visit had no political overtones, but that the Pope was a head of state as well as a religious leader and protocol dictated he should see the Iraqi leader.
----- EXCERPT: From Selected Sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- Keywords: Vatican -------- TITLE: Synod Fathers: Lay Movements Key to Church's Future DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—The future of the Church can be seen in the lay movements that continue to expand on the continent, according to a number of participants at the Synod of Bishops for Europe
Czech Cardinal Miloslav Vlk of Prague, president of the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences, sang the praises of the movements in a speech on the synod floor, saying their impact has been “amazing” and they should be given room to grow.
In an interview Oct. 7, he said ecclesial movements are popular, energetic and, unlike other Church institutions, youthful. Like the major religious orders that arose and flourished in the Middle Ages, the movements appear to be the Holy Spirit's gift to the modern Church, he said. Not surprisingly, leaders of the movements agreed.
“Many people experience the Church as a rather geriatric institution,” Chiara Lubich, founder of the Focolare Movement, told the synod. She said movements like her own give the Church a profile of youthfulness, enthusiasm and a commitment to living the Gospel.
Kiko Arguello, co-founder of the Neocatechumenal Way, said his movement's focus on helping Catholics rediscover their faith offers a model for all parishes. He said Church structures need urgent renewal and called for establishment of a Vatican organization to promote this kind of evangelization.
Jesús and Juana Carrascosa, a husband and wife team from Communion and Liberation, shared their conversion story with the bishops, explaining the importance of the element of surprise in the encounter with Christ. “Jesus is a human presence that affects the whole of life and changes it. Therefore, Christians are needed who are aware and committed, and who are capable of making the Church present in their communities,” Jesús Carrascosa said.
To some, the praise of the movements seemed to coincide with a sense of resignation over the future of religious orders. One nun told the synod that consecrated life was being treated as “a very ill patient,” but that religious orders were too important to brush aside.
In the interview, Cardinal Vlk said many of the major religious orders were born in earlier centuries and that their “charisms” may not always be suitable to the Church's current period.
“I'm not saying the movements should have precedence. But perhaps they express more the needs of our time. I don't want to say religious orders don't express this, but they were certainly born for another time — and if they still have strength and dynamism, they will continue,” he said.
Cardinal Vlk said he hoped the synod would recognize a model of the Church that is less wedded to structures of the past, and in that sense give the lay movements space to expand, along with other more recent “manifestations of the Holy Spirit.”
Even the scarcity of priests, he said, could be a positive sign that reminds the laity that they, too, are called on to live and announce the Gospel. The priest shortage has serious implications for sacramental life, which is important for the Church, but “the life of the Church is not only the sacraments,” he said. The most important thing is to genuinely “live the life of the Gospel,” he said.
“In the past, perhaps we've had a narrow vision that Jesus is only present in the sacraments. Now, instead, this synod should enlarge the vision of the Church to include all the different types of Jesus’ presence in the Church,” he said.
Cardinal Vlk, who first got involved with lay movements during a period of religious repression in then-Czechoslovakia, where priests were not able to minister freely, said the spiritual commitment of lay movements has been one of the most effective evangelizing tools — more than the preaching of bishops, for example.
“I've been at meetings of these movements attended by others — people who were only ‘half-believers’ — and I've seen many of them convert right there. This way of living the Gospel appeals to them. It inspires them,” he said.
“It's not necessary that they sign up in the movement,” he added.
Cardinal Vlk acknowledged that the role of lay movements, which now number about 150, has not always been well understood in the Church, especially in the early years of Pope John Paul II's pontificate when many of the movements were experiencing significant growth. But he said the movements have matured and shown local bishops that they are valid ways of living the faith.
Cardinal Vlk said the Pope sent a clear and forceful signal when he presided over a meeting of 50 of the biggest lay movements in Rome in 1998.
“He wanted to have an ‘exhibit,’ you might say, of the movements as an expression of the activity of the Holy Spirit,” the cardinal said. He said the Pope's endorsement of the movements helped bolster their standing in the Church.
Cardinal Vlk said the movements have merely taken advantage of a legitimate “space for renewal” in the Church.
“The Holy Spirit has left this space so that it is always possible to correct, to renew. Because sometimes the institutional dimension of the Church — the hierarchy, the sacraments — has very fixed paths,” he said.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- Keywords: Vatican -------- TITLE: To Know Him We Must Experience God in Love DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—Knowledge of God is less an intellectual process than a growth in his love, Pope John Paul II told pilgrims.
The Pope characterized as a temptation — in some cases a prejudice — to reduce the Gospel to an ethical system, complete with prohibitions and impersonal precepts.
“Certainly knowledge of God also has a dimension in the intellectual realm,” the Pope said during his Oct. 6 weekly general audience.
“But the living experience of the Father and the Son comes about in love, that is, in the last analysis, in the Holy Spirit, because God's love has been poured into our hearts by means of the Holy Spirit.”
Addressing thousands of pilgrims in a chilly and cloud-covered St. Peter's Square, the Pope said the whole of Christian life can be summed up in the commandment to love. Without love, Christianity and its ethics are absolutely incomprehensible.
“Everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God,” said the Pope, quoting the First Letter of St. John.
“These sublime words, while revealing to us God's very essence as a mystery of infinite charity, lay the foundation on which the Christian ethic rests, all concentrated on the commandment to love.”
This commandment can be traced to the Old Testament covenant between God and Israel, he said. God expresses his love for man in pages brimming with tenderness, not because of his merits, but because he exists as God's creation — in spite of his weaknesses and infidelities.
“On one side, there is God's initiative of love; on the other, the response of love which he expect.,”
In the New Testament, the dynamic of love is centered on Jesus Christ, the Pope said.
The Pope reflected on Jesus’ revolutionary message, about which St. John would exclaim, “See what great love the Father has given us, that we should be called sons of God, and we really are!” (1 John 3:1).
“Humans participate in this love by knowing the Son, that is, by receiving his teaching and his redemptive work.”
“It is not possible to approach God's love except by imitating the Son in the observance of the Father's commandments.”
Initiation into this love brings full participation in Christ's filial relationship with the Father, the Pope said.
“Love transforms life and illuminates even our knowledge of God, until reaching that perfect knowledge of which St. Paul spoke.”
Christian conversion brings an authentic experience of God and his infinite love, the Pope said.
Because it is not an intellectual conversion, the Christian experience is not the living a series of soulless precepts. “The profound conversion Christianity proposes is a real experience of God,” the Pope clarified.
Christianity is not an ideology; it is a personal encounter with Christ. The most consoling effect of this encounter “is, precisely, the certainty that, this everlasting and overwhelming love with which God loves us [means] he will never abandon us.”
“The new heart, which loves and knows, beats in union with God, who loves with a perennial love.”
At the end of his audience, the Pope asked for prayers for peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea, which have been engaged in a sporadic border war for 17 months.
The Pope praised international mediators, especially the Organization of African Unity, for efforts to implement a negotiated settlement.
“Let us pray that the lingering obstacles will be overcome and the diffidence conquered, and that in this way, an encouraging witness that peace is always possible might be offered to the many ‘countries of sorro.”’
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Catholics Under Threat in Kosovo? DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:LONDON—Catholics in Kosovo, many of whom had to flee from Serbian aggression earlier this year, now face ethnic cleansing at the hands of Muslims, a Catholic relief agency has charged.
“Priests and people fear for their lives and many have to flee from their homes to Croatia,” one priest wrote to Mary Doohan.
“Every day some armed Muslims march through our Croatian Catholic villages searching houses, taking possessions and inflicting grievous damage; families with children and the elderly are particularly at risk,” he continued.
Doohan is president of the United Kingdom-based charity, The Little Way Association. The group is alleging that Catholics have been murdered and forced to flee from their homes by their former Muslim neighbors.
According to The Little Way, which funds mission projects in the Third World and former Eastern Bloc countries, thousands of Catholics have fled to neighboring Croatia.
Doohan has appealed to supporters to help the country's beleaguered Catholics. Doohan, who is only the second British woman to be made a papal dame, told the Register, “Now that the conflict in Kosovo has ended and people are returning to their homes, a new danger has arisen for Catholics in this difficult area.”
Friendly History
She said there is no history of Catholics from the area ever having attacked their Muslim neighbors. On the contrary, they “have offered them both help and sympathy in their time of persecution,” said Doohan. But “because they are not Muslim, they have been identified with the Serb aggressors so the innocent Catholics are suffering reprisals.”
She added, “Some are having to seek exile suffering severe hardship, some have been killed and homes have been burnt.”
Another priest wrote Doohan: “I have never been so sad as on the feast of the Assumption when only 450 people attended the ceremonies instead of thousands of people as formerly. All are afraid because the Muslims, to whom we offered help and sympathy, have turned against us.”
He continued: “People are being killed and injured and I cannot understand how those who have themselves suffered can inflict such suffering on others.”
Doohan said that nuns in one Kosovar city had been warned not to wear their crucifixes by the Muslim community. “I cannot give you any names and locations to protect the priests and nuns concerned,” she said.
NATO Unaware
Doohan's claims were doubted by a spokesman for the NATO-led peace keeping force, which includes 42,000 soldiers on the ground. The military spokesman in Pristina, the Kosovar capital, said the force had no records of any attacks on Catholics.
He conceded, however, that while crime victims’ ethnicity is recorded, their religion is not.
The Holy See's representative in Serbia, Archbishop Santos Abril, was among the first westerners to enter Kosovo after NATO troops took control.
The nuncio, who also reports to the Vatican on conditions in Kosovo, told the Register in a telephone interview, “I have not heard of any problems between Catholics and Muslims.” He added: “But I do not want to make any further declarations.”
In July, the nuncio told the Italian Catholic daily Avvenire that in addition to meeting the Catholic community he had also had meetings with Muslim and Orthodox leaders. He told Avvenire: “We told them we are here to help. We, the Catholic Church, want to be a link, a point of meeting, a bridge of brotherhood for all in order to really help these people. We want to tell them that reciprocal collaboration will guarantee security for all.”
Another Possibility
An alternative scenario was outlined to the Register by Augustine Paloko, an Albanian Catholic journalist for Kosovo's main daily newspaper, Kohaditore. Poloko said he doubted that Muslims were now turning on Catholics. “All Albanians, both Catholic and Muslim, suffered ethnic persecution from the Serbs. This has been an ethnic problem.
“Although,” he added, “there may be some problems in some of the Croatian villages because the Croatians are speaking a similar language to the Serbs, or maybe some of them even cooperated with the Serbs. There have been some Bosnian Muslims who have experienced a similar problem because they were speaking Serbo-Croat.”
Poloko claimed “there is no religious division in Kosovo.” He also pointed to a recent report on religious freedom by the U.S. State Department that underlined the ethnic — not religious — nature of problems in the region.
But this is disputed by The Little Way's Doohan, who said that the nuns who were warned not to wear their crucifixes were Albanian sisters, not Croats.
Aid To The Church In Need, founded during the Cold War to assist Churches behind the iron curtain, also maintains that Kosovo's Catholics have nothing to fear from their Muslim neighbors. But their Eastern European coordinator disagrees.
“Regrettably, I have to join with [those] bishops who have [privately] expressed a pessimistic attitude,” said Maria Konietzny. She told the Register of bishops and priests in neighboring Bosnia and Croatia, who have expressed to her their fears for the long-term viability of the faith in Kosovo.
She said concerns have been heightened by the fact that Hashim Thaci, a leader in the political wing of the Kosovo Liberation Army, is expected by many to become the state's next prime minister.
A radical Muslim, Thaci has made no secret of his desire to found an Islamic state in Kosovo, said Konietzny. The fact that half of the country's 60,000 Catholics have already fled leaves those who remain especially vulnerable.
During the occupation by the Serbian militia last spring, an estimated 300 Catholics were killed, especially in the villages of Djakovica, Pec and Meje. While only two out of the country's 40 priests were forced to leave during the occupation, most Church properties sustained heavy damages.
Paul Burnell writes from Manchester, England.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Paul Burnell ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:Timorese Turn to God for Consolation
According to Mydans, the Portugese priest celebrating the Mass compared the East Timorese people to the ancient Israelites, who ”suffered for freedom, suffered so that they could have their own land.”
The congregants “[Wore] their church clothes, recited their prayers and sang their hymns with dutiful calm, “ Mydans said, adding, “but when the service ended, there was a rush up the steps into the shell of the home of their bishop, Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo. The house was roofless and featureless but swept spotlessly clean.
“The people fell to the ground and began to weep openly at the foot of a tall plaster statue of the Virgin Mary, the only furnishing remaining in the house. The vandalized statue, now missing its hands and most of its face, bent over them.
“For many people here, the time for tears is arriving as the urgency of terror and hunger receded and the pain emerges,” Wydans said, according to the report.
Scientists Confirm the Great Flood
“Scientists have never found Noah or his ark, but they believe in his flood. It happened about 7,600 years ago, when the Mediterranean Sea, swollen by melted glaciers, breached a natural dam separating it from the freshwater lake known today as the Black Sea,” wrote Gugliotta.
He added, “It was an apocalyptic event, in many respects much worse than anything described in Genesis. Every day for two years 10 cubic miles of seawater cut through the narrow channel now known as the Bosporus, and plunged into the lake — more than 200 times the flow over Niagara Falls. Every day the lake rose six inches. And every day the water marched another mile inland, forcing people and animals to flee or drown, killing freshwater fish and plants by the ton, inundating forests, villages and entire cities and spreading pestilence and death for miles.”
Gugliotta said that the history of this event might be readable at the bottom of the Black Sea, where conditions after the great flood drew oxygen from its depths, leaving artifacts potentially incorrupt. In other words, Noah's ark may lie intact at the bottom of the Black Sea and scientists are now ready and able to find it.
“The ‘Black Sea Project’ hopes to prove that literally thousands of years of history may lie intact in the shipwrecks that are blanketed by the sterile waters of Noah's flood,” Gugliotta said.
----- EXCERPT: From Selected Sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- Keywords: News -------- TITLE: The Catechetics of Modesty DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:About modesty, the Catechism of the Catholic Church stresses its relationship to purity: “Purity requires modesty, an integral part of temperance. Modesty protects the intimate center of the person. It means refusing to unveil what should remain hidden. It is ordered to chastity to whose sensitivity it bears witness. It guides how one looks at others and behaves toward them in conformity with the dignity of persons and their solidarity.
“Modesty protects the mystery of persons and their love. It encourages patience and moderation in loving relationships; it requires that the conditions for the definitive giving and commitment of man and woman to one another be fulfilled. Modesty is decency. It inspires one's choice of clothing. It keeps silence or reserve where there is evident risk of unhealthy curiosity. It is discreet. …
“It protests, for example, against the voyeuristic explorations of the human body in certain advertisements, or against the solicitations of certain media that go too far in the exhibition of intimate things. Modesty inspires a way of life which makes it possible to resist the allurements of fashion and the pressures of prevailing ideologies” (Nos. 2521-2523).
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- Keywords: News -------- TITLE: A Beautiful Graveyard DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:The faith is experiencing a renaissance, with a growing number of vocations in the United States, and a flood of converts coming from Africa and parts of Asia.
But before we proclaim that the new springtime of the faith the Pope John Paul II expects has actually arrived, it should be pointed out that there is at least one place where the faith is in a stasis: Europe.
A summer Newsweek poll found that 39% of the French say they have no religion, and only 56% of the English believe in a personal God. In some countries, such as the Czech Republic, Sunday observance barely reaches 3%.
Now more than ever, Europe is the “beautiful graveyard” that Dostoevsky termed it. Europe's landscape is filled with magnificent churches, but the churches are mostly empty. And in Holland some of them have been sold and are being used as mosques. The new Synod of Europe's bishops has even called the situation there a kind of apostasy.
This should give Americans great pause, because the current state of Europe's faith is by no means unthinkable here. The causes for the decline are complicated and many. But at the root is the separation of faith and daily living that has afflicted Europe, first through iron-fisted ideologies like Nazism and Communism, then through a silent surrender to relativism, rationalism and materialism.
Americans, too, have driven faith out of the public square: It is illegal, for instance, for the Christians who died at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., to be remembered as Christians in the school's memorial. And Catholics are not guiltless. How many of us feel that it is somehow inappropriate for God to be mentioned at public schools, or at public meetings, or in our workplaces? If he were real, and important, how could he be “inappropriate”?
Pope John Paul II said that the Jubilee year 2000 will inaugurate a “new springtime of the faith” but only if we are “docile” to the Holy Spirit.
It is tempting to want to hold God at arm's length for the time being, hoping that some day soon he will be popular again, and less embarrassing to acknowledge.
If we simply wait for that day, it will never come. We have to pray for it, and prove our faith with action.
***
In our Oct. 10 issue, the Register reported on the frightening “therapeutic abortion” practice. In one Chicago area hospital, according to a nurse who still works there, the practice goes like this: labor is induced, a child is born, given minimal “comfort care” and then starved or suffocated. Abortion foes have argued for years that infanticide would surely follow abortion, and here — as in the partial-birth abortion procedure — it clearly has.
This scandal should send alarm bells to two groups: first, to the pro-life movement and, second, to Catholic hospitals
Our reporter tells us that the existence of the practice at more than one hospital has been common knowledge in pro-life circles since at least last May, when the nurse first came forward.
But the public at large doesn't know anything about it. Newspapers in Chicago did report the story in late September, but then quickly dropped it. When about 300 protesters gathered on Oct. 2 —in pouring rain and 40 degree temperatures —none of the major television networks deemed their denunciation of it newsworthy.
Certainly, this has more to do with those who work in the media than anyone else: Surveys report that news professionals are overwhelmingly pro-choice. They aren't terribly interested in broadcasting news that casts the abortion industry in a bad light. But this should cause pro-lifers to be more, not less, creative in finding ways to make sure the story gets out.
A second group should see a warning here as well: Catholic hospitals. The abortions took place in “Christ Hospital” which is at least nominally associated with two Christian denominations: the United Church of Christ and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. Both these denominations have taken an abortion-friendly stance on life issues recently. But they were not always that way.
Catholic hospitals must carefully avoid the slippery slope that leads from small infractions against teachings on life to horror's like Christ Hospital's. Once the principle of the inviolability of human life is ceded, the consequences of an anti-life ethic quickly follow.
Register correspondent Bob Horwath tells us that the most frightening banner at the protest he covered was not held by a pro-lifer, but an advertisement the hospital hung from its own wall. It announced to Oak Lawn residents that Christ Hospital is one of the top 100 hospitals in the country, and is “Right in your own backyard.”
He said it reminded him that children are being born only to be killed, in Christ Hospital, right in our own backyards.
----- EXCERPT: EDITORIAL ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: opinion -------- TITLE: A Pro-Life Primer for Student Activists DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:(Stand to Reason Press, 1999, 37 pages, $4)
The public square is fraught with pitfalls for those who would venture there to defend the sanctity of life — and no other single arena is more hostile than today's secular college campus. It's an atmosphere charged with emotion and cynical rhetoric.
Into the fray comes a helpful how-to guide written by Scott Klusendorf, director of bioethics for the San Pedro, Calif.-based Stand to Reason organization. Having gained a reputation over the last four years as a persuasive pro-life speaker and educator, Klusendorf is well-qualified to coach and support those brave young souls who dare to take the pro-life cause where it's especially unwanted.
Klusendorf's chief objective in Pro-Life 101 is to train students and young people to become effective defenders of life on campus or in the media. He has led seminars throughout the U.S. and Canada on techniques for winning abortion debates and formulating strategies to deflate pro-choice justifications.
In many ways, the slim handbook is a condensed version of one of Klusendorf's right-to-life presentations. And while it is aimed at a student audience, the book is a valuable reference for any Catholic or pro-lifer looking for an easily understandable summary of right-to-life principles. In three quick chapters, the book anticipates and counters the most commonly voiced pro-choice rationalizations.
One of Klusendorf's primary objectives is to demystify the abortion issue. To the argument that abortion is a complex question encompassing many side issues, Klusendorf tells readers to bear one simple fact in mind: What is a human before birth?
An insistent reference to the humanity of the unborn child, he notes, can be an effective counter to all obfuscation thrown up by abortion supporters. To force pro-choice supporters to admit that the “something” killed by abortion is indeed human, Klusendorf keeps the spotlight squarely on the morality of the issue, and prevents efforts to disguise abortion's ugly realities.
The book's middle section is clearly the most important. Here, Klusendorf presents an easy-to-grasp format for making a pro-life presentation to a secular group. Using the acronym SLED, he points out that neither size, nor level of development, nor environment, nor degree of dependency — nor the sum total of all those characteristics — constitutes a valid reason for disqualifying the unborn child as fully human.
The presentation section also features five central arguments that pro-choice supporters can use to counter the pro-life position. Klusendorf is especially adept at recognizing these stratagems as little more than efforts to deflect public attention from the truth of abortion. For example, justifying abortion in cases of rape is an example of disguising a true opinion by an appeal to a worst-case scenario. “The ‘pro-choice’ position is not that abortion should be legal only when a woman is raped, but that abortion is a fundamental right she can exercise for any reason she wants during all nine months of pregnancy,” he writes. “Instead of defending this position with facts and arguments, many disguise it with an emotional appeal to [fight] rape.”
This section also spells out the weaknesses of moral relativism, a philosophy often used by abortion supporters to undercut religious or morality-based debate. Moral relativists argue that there are no absolute standards of right and wrong. If it is up to us to decide right and wrong, Klusendorf writes, then there is no difference between Mother Teresa's morality and Adolf Hilter's.
The only omission in Pro-Life 101 is discussion of a strategy to respond to pro-choice individuals who simply don't care — and openly admit — that abortion involves the killing of an innocent human being. For years, abortion supporters have justified their position by denying the humanity of the unborn child. As that position becomes increasingly untenable, they have resorted to such tactics as attacking the credibility of pro-lifers, or accusing them of extremism, intolerance and violence. It's possible that Klusendorf's silence on the ‘don't care’ scenario is deliberate. Any movement that would admit that its success relies on the destruction of the innocent unborn needs no further elaboration or commentary.
Pro-Life 101 has received the endorsement of a number of prominent pro-life activists, including Father Frank Pavone, head of Priests for Life International. A number of Canadian pro-life workers, including John Hof and Ted Gerk of British Columbia, have also recommended the book for Canadian students.
Klusendorf has enlisted the support of an anonymous donor to underwrite production costs and keep the selling price low for students. Klusendorf plans to go to press in late October with an initial printing of 5,000 copies, with distribution set for November 1.
Pro-Life 101 is not a slick or glossy publication; nor is it expected to win prizes for flashy design and layout. But what the book lacks in visual appeal, it more than makes up in content and convenience. Buy it for yourself or a student who loves life.
Mike Mastromatteo writes from Ontario, Canada.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mike Mastromatteo ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: LETTERS DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:Prozac
Please let your readers with mental and/or emotional illness know that the Indepth column “Pick Your Elixir: Plato or Prozac” (Register, Oct. 3-9) was targeting only those who abuse medications to avoid all pain. The essay, written by philosophy professor Donald DeMarco, accomplished its goal mercilessly, never differentiating between abusers and those who have no choice but to take medication if they are to function.
Many devout, virtuous, desperately suffering and dignified Catholics must take their serotonin-reup-take-inhibitors or other medications for treatment of emotional and/or mental illness just as other Catholics must take medication for diabetes, cardiovascular disease, asthma, and on and on. One of the multitudinous crosses they, unlike the others, bear is that the term “mental illness” is often inaccurately applied. Mental illness is a physical [infirmity] borne of structural differences in the brain and/or electrical and chemical processing problems; these produce symptoms that range from inner suffering to thought disturbances to unusual behaviors to trouble in relating to other people.
By the grace of God, my husband manages to get up and go 12-hour days (six days a week, most weeks!), suffering. This morning, I wept when he left for work because, last night, after reading this article, he turned his face to the wall and asked, “Why do they have to persecute the poor, suffering, depressed people?” He is a wonderful Catholic witness in his workplace, a holy man, a contemplative in the world-liest of worlds. He is a wonderful husband. He is the holy priest of our household. He takes Calan SR, Allegra, and Prozac.
Name withheld by request
Editor's Note: The commentary looked at the philosophical principles underlying our culture, where mood-altering medications are dispensed so readily to so many. In no way was it intended as a criticism of individuals with genuine medical needs. In the future, should we revisit this subject, your input will inform our sensitivity to the issues you raise.
Which Cardenal Jesuit?
In his otherwise excellent review of George Weigel's Witness to Hope, Raymond J. de Souza makes a factual error for which Weigel is not responsible. He states that the “Jesuit priest Ernesto Cardenal lied about what the Pope said to him at the Managua airport.” I do not know whether Ernesto Cardenal lied or not, but I am certain that he is not, and never was a Jesuit priest. Ernesto's brother Fernando Cardenal was and is a Jesuit.
Father Avery Dulles, SJ
Fordham University The Bronx, New York
Bad Words
I beg to differ with Rich McPherson (quoted in “ ‘ Bad Words’ in the U.S. Leave Few Speechless,”Register, Sept. 19-25) regarding the sinfulness of using four-letter words. The norm for Christian morality is not just a set of commandments, but Jesus himself, as Pope John Paul II said in Veritatis Splendor. This is not to say we must all do what Jesus did, but we may not do what Jesus would never do. The day Jesus Christ would speak a foul word would be a cold day in… Gehenna.
Father Thomas G. Morrow
St. Catherine Laboure Church
Wheaton, Md.
One practical means of dissolving the current block between U.S. bishops and the Catholic colleges and universities is to set up regional theological accrediting boards to certify theology teachers to receive mandates to teach or to judge complaints against a teacher's orthodox teaching. Members of these accrediting agencies would be appointed by bishops and universities of a given region. The board's judgment would have to be ratified by the individual bishop of the diocese concerned. Appeal of a negative judgment would be made to a doctrinal commission of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, and further to the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith..
This system has both universities and the bishops sharing responsibility for orthodoxy of Catholic theology and encourages their cooperation. Alocal bishop's theological ignorance or bias is overcome and the universities’ misguided individualism curtailed.
Father Jerome Treacy, SJ
Clarkston, Michigan
Abortion and Contraception
Your [Sept. 13-25] issue (“Bill Gates to Hear from Pro-Lifers”) quoted American Life League president Judie Brown saying Bill Gates “who has the best of intentions … may have been misled by pro-choice groups” with regard to his foundation's donations.
I am positively certain that William and Melinda Gates and their staffs have not been misled at all and that their position is clearly well-informed and well-motivated to aid with donations the suffering countries and populations which press on existing resources in such a way as to create mass misery!
Let me once again put to you the same question:… How in the world does contraception increase the incidence of abortion?
Population control reduces misery and the well known figure of 20,000 child/infant deaths per day in the Third World countries attests to the fact that these miserable little creatures never should have been born, period. Hence: population control and contraception.
A. Douglas Russell
Editor's Note: The Supreme Court explained the correlation between abortion and contraception in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey: “In some critical respects, abortion is of the same character as the decision to use contraception. … For two decades of economic and social developments, people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail.”
Alan Guttmacher recognized the correlation as early as 1968, and Planned Parenthood statistician Dr. Christopher Tietze wrote in a 1981 book, “Ahigh correlation between abortion experience and contraceptive experience can be expected … Women who have practiced contraception are more likely to have had abortions than those who have not.” The evidence of the correlation was included in a 1978 Abortion Rights Action League debater's handbook.
Here's a good illustration of the correlation: Contraception became readily available in the 1960s and widely used in the 1970s in America. If contraception prevents it, abortion should have all but disappeared by now. But there are a reported 1.5 million abortions a year.
Finally, that there is more than enough food for everybody in the world is not in dispute. And the Register simply disagrees with your assessment of Third World populations. We believe that no one, of any race or income level, is a “miserable creature” that “ought not have been born.”
Saint Pius XII?
Regarding Pope Pius XII (“He was no ‘Hitler's Pope,’ Pius XII Experts Contend,” Sept. 19):
1) the Israeli government planted 800,000 trees in a forest near Jerusalem to commemorate the 800,000 Jews they estimated Pope Pius XII saved from Hitler;
2) the chief Rabbi of Rome became a Catholic and took Eugenio, the first name of Pius XII, as his Christian name because he was so impressed with the work the Pontiff did in saving Jews from the Nazis;
3) Dr. Jeno Levai, an eminent Jewish historian, said that during the 1930's Cardinal [Eugenio] Pacelli, while serving as Vatican secretary of state, lodged no less than 60 protests on behalf of the Jews, and as Pius XII “did more than anyone else to halt the crime (the Holocaust) and alleviate its consequences.”
Regarding John Cornwell [author of Hitler's Pope]:
1) in a previous book, Thief in the Night (1989), he ridiculed Pius XII as “an emaciated, large-eyed demigod.” He described the Pontiff as “somebody totally remote from experience”;
2) in The Hiding Places of God (1991), Mr. Cornwell wrote of his experience in the Catholic seminary he attended, “I took delight in attempting to undermine the beliefs of my fellow seminarians with what I regarded as clever arguments; I quarreled with the lecturers in class and flagrantly ignored the rules of the house.” He declared that human beings are “morally, psychologically, and materially better off without a belief in God.”
John Naughton Silver Spring, Md.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- Keywords: Opinion -------- TITLE: Transsexual Teacher, Expel Thyself DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:Dana Rivers may well have within him the potential to become the most popular teacher in the history of the Antelope, Calif. school system. After all, in the eight years he's taught at the high school, students have consistently named him the best teacher they've ever had. But the career educator may never find out just how good a teacher he might have been, and that would be a good thing.
Until the current semester, Rivers was David Warfield, a solid professional educator whose greatest contribution was developing an award-winning program for unmotivated students. But this fall, he reported for duty in a dress, high heels and eye liner. He announced that he had been undergoing hormone treatments in preparation for a sex-change operation in the near future, and went before the media saying he didn't see why this should preclude him from carrying on with the duties of his profession.
This prompted the school board to place Rivers on paid administrative leave, pending formal dismissal — and no small number of students, parents and teachers to rally in support of him keeping his job.
Rivers' supporters — and much of the media covering the developing story — want to know what harm could possibly come from an upstanding and productive individual exercising his “personal choice” to determine his gender. So what is wrong with this picture?
Well, for starters, it's a clear case of an adult in position to exert a strong influence over young people putting his own interests before those of the young people.
But, even more fundamentally, according to the natural law, we judge the morality of an act, not primarily by the effects which it may or may not have, but in regard to whether the act itself is in accord with our nature. Boiled down to the act itself, “transsexual ism” violates the integrity of the body (by mutilation), blurs the inherent distinction between male and female, and denigrates the proper goal of sexual desire, procreation.
But merely saying these things does not do much to help us, as Christian evangelizers, to explain our faith to a culture that views “tolerance” as the most sacred of all values. To explain why something like this is both wrong and harmful, we must have a firm grasp of the errors that inform our society's approach to moral matters.
First, our society no longer takes nature as the standard and limit of desire and action. Instead, desire itself has become the standard, and technology (including medical technology) the means to remove natural limits which stand in the way of our desire. We no longer ask, “Should we do it?” but “Can we do it?”
The problem with such an approach is simple: once the limits of nature have been overthrown, the only limit is technical power. Since technical power increases almost daily, our society continually stretches the limits of the morally acceptable. But that amounts to morality with only provisional limits, which is the next worst thing to no morality itself.
Compassion is misplaced when we do not distinguish between giving someone what he strongly desires, and giving him what is actually good for him. Only the latter is true charity.
Second, there is a tendency in our culture to overlook “private” matters, no matter how outrageous, in the lives of those who do well in public. Increasingly, that includes continuing to tolerate aberrant “private” behavior even when it's carried out in public. The error behind this principle can be seen clearly in regard to sexuality (where it is most lavishly applied in our day and age). Even though the sexual act itself is private, it is the very origin of society. How we regard sexuality will determine, in great part, the order and character of public life. This is why the marriage ceremony has been regarded by sane societies as a public act.
The devious aim of the public/private defense is the smuggling in of a moral deviation for the sake of eventual public approval, and hence integration into the public order. We have seen the same tactic used in the successful moral normalization of artificial birth control, abortion, divorce, pre-marital sex and pornography, and now it is being applied to advance the normalization of homosexuality and euthanasia.
Third, our society tends to confuse misplaced compassion with true charity. Compassion is misplaced when we do not distinguish between giving someone what he strongly desires, and giving him what is actually good for him. Only the latter is true charity. One hundred years ago, it would have been unimaginable to offer abortion to an overwhelmed mother; today the culture cannot imagine living without this “option” and viewing it as morally neutral, if not morally right in many cases.
To return to Mr. Warfield, it is not a question of how strong his transsexual desires are or how long he has had them. Charity should be directed to helping him, by an offer of spiritual counseling and support, to change his desires (insofar as he can), and bear his affliction (insofar as he cannot).
But, so long as this individual persists in acting out his selfish and scandalous “expression” while on the job of teaching young people, let us demand that he not be permitted to set foot in a classroom.
Benjamin D. Wiker teaches at Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, California
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Benjamin D. Wiker ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Supreme Court and the Culture of Life DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:If you are looking for a reason to care about next year's elections, consider this: At least four, and as many as six, of the nine justices with life tenure on the United States Supreme Court actually believe that “at the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”
This “mystery” passage, which sounds more like an excerpt from an undergraduate's term paper or a New Age tract than sound constitutional law, is taken from the infamous 1992 decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In that case, the Supreme Court re-affirmed the constitutional right to abortion it had invented 20 years earlier in Roe v. Wade.
It's no great political insight to observe that abortion and federal judge selection will be at the heart of the 2000 campaign. Candidates have already been asked whether they would impose a litmus test on potential judges (that's media code language for asking potential appointees how they would vote on abortion-related cases), and have responded with various disingenuous dodges. But of course the candidates — all the candidates — have litmus tests. This is not news, nor is it a bad thing. Does anyone really think that a Democratic president would nominate for a judgeship any lawyer who thought affirmative action was unconstitutional, or that a Republican would elevate judges who would invalidate the death penalty?
Abortion is today our nation's great shame, and the de-humanization caused by the abortion mentality is perhaps the greatest threat to our culture. Our intolerable indifference toward the sacrifice of unborn children on the altar of the false god “Autonomy” therefore should be a campaign issue. But Casey's mystery passage is not just about abortion; it is also about our nation's public philosophy and about the prospects for meaningful self-government — which makes Casey, and the Court, all the more important as election issues.
Now, the Casey quote is bad enough as philosophy (does anyone really believe that we can define our own universe?), and commentators have had fun lampooning its banality. But the mystery passage is even worse as constitutional law. In fact, it's downright dangerous. Casey is a threat to self-government, as well as to unborn children, because it is, despite its lofty rhetoric about liberty, profoundly authoritarian and undemocratic. The Casey justices not only believe in the opinion's breezy subjectivism, but they've also assumed the job of imposing it on the rest of us — and have set out to constitutionalize their own brand of moral relativism. When Sartre wallows in solipsistic fancy, we can dismiss it as the self-indulgence of an unhappy intellectual, but when the Supreme Court does it, it's the law of the land.
Once upon a time, the United States Constitution was not a treatise in pop existentialism, but a bold experiment in self-government. The framers took care to restrict federal powers, to protect certain individual rights against majority overreaching (although they somehow neglected to mention the right to define the mystery of the universe), and to set up a few basic ground rules. Beyond that, they left the tough choices about values and morality, for better or worse, to the American people. The framers trusted the capacity of independent citizens to govern themselves. The Casey justices did not.
What does all this have to do with the 2000 election? Not only will the next president probably appoint hundreds of federal trial and appellate judges, he or she will likely appoint the successors to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, and Justice John Paul Stevens. And if the next president fills Supreme Court vacancies with Casey-style philosopher-kings, and packs the lower federal courts with mystery-passage jurists, the courts will surely continue to stymie all meaningful efforts to limit and regulate abortion, including gruesome partial-birth abortions, and they could well create new, life-threatening rights, like the right to assisted suicide.
The new Casey devotees would gut the notion of meaningful self-government and undermine our constitutional covenant. If we only have democracy when the Supreme Court likes our laws and when our lawmakers’ values happen to coincide with the justices’ notions of the mystery of life, then we don't have democracy at all. A court that uses an ideologically loaded concept of liberty to trump duly enacted laws touching on difficult moral questions is not a neutral court.
We know what these difficult questions are: What may we do to protect the lives of unborn children and increase respect for the sanctity of human life? Must we stand by while doctors assist in the deaths of the disabled, the ill, the poor, and the aged? May our laws reflect and promote longstanding moral views regarding the nature of marriage and family?
Many Americans agree with the Supreme Court that liberty must include the right to assisted suicide and to end the life of an unborn child. Others think the Constitution leaves these matters to law-makers and to the people. Still others insist that the Constitution guarantees the same legal protections to unborn children and the terminally ill as it does to everyone else. After all, as Dr. Seuss put it, a person's a person, no matter how small. People will always disagree about moral questions and the law will always embody someone's morality and values. We have to decide as a nation which of the competing moralities our laws will embody and express.
In many ways, as Princeton Professor Robert George has observed, the debate over so-called social issues is really a clash between two radically different conceptions of the meaning and dignity of human life — between what Pope John Paul II would call the Gospel of Life and the Culture of Death. From one view, George notes, an unborn child has no right not to be killed at the direction of its mother — no right, at least, that the law may legitimately recognize and protect. And, at the other edge of life, every individual has the right to commit suicide and to be assisted in committing suicide, should that person, for whatever reason, prefer death to life.
This is the view the Casey justices would impose on us: the view that liberty means radically amoral individualism. From the other, more traditional, view, however, human life, both before birth and near death, is intrinsically, and not merely instrumentally, good; therefore, it is morally inviolable. This view, rooted in centuries of religious and philosophical tradition, says that the law not only may, but should, protect and respect human life, especially the lives of the most vulnerable.
When it comes to the sanctity of human life, the Supreme Court, like the nation, is deadlocked between those who believe their job is to protect and facilitate representative self-government (to let us decide) and those who see the Constitution as a license to second-guess the people's choices. In 1997, led by the chief justice, the Supreme Court in Washington v. Glucksberg re-affirmed the govern-ment's right to protect the vulnerable elderly and severely ill by outlawing physician-assisted suicide. The chief justice's opinion, joined by four other justices, played down Casey's extravagant narcissism and deferred instead to our legal traditions and to popular sovereignty.
Glucksberg therefore dealt an important blow to the culture of death, but its future is precarious. Will it be Casey or Glucksberg — secular relativism or self-government? The upcoming election will determine whether the justices and the courts will assume for themselves the right to revise and re-invent American morality or will instead leave the resolution of social issues to society. Sounds to me like a reason to visit the polls.
Richard W. Garnett is an assistant professor at Notre Dame University Law School.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Richard W. Garnett ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Pope Pius XII Misunderstood by The Protest Generation DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:After the recent publication of John Cornwell's Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII, we witness yet another spate of editorials, book reviews and essays on Pius XII's policies before and after World War II. Beginning with Rolf Hochhuth's 1964 play The Deputy, we have had almost constant popular and academic discussion of this topic. The very title of Cornwell's book seems slanderous, implying that Pope Pacelli was at Hitler's beck and call.
Cornwell claims that he has found the “secret” history of a sordid relationship. Generally, such provocative books gain much initial fanfare. Meanwhile, scholars patiently sift the facts, put them into a much less sensational context, and correct the exaggerations of judgments or facts on which they are based. When this corrective work is completed, the published results are rarely seen by those most ready to believe the initial new “secret” history.
Is there some general context in which ordinary Catholics might place these recurring accusations, which make this good pope sound responsible for the plight — the horror — of the Jews during World War II? Are there any principles or observations to keep in mind when reading the latest sensational “documentation” that claims to reveal this pope as a willing ally — or unwilling dupe — of a bloody century's most infamous genocidal killer?
The Church itself has sought to publish as fully as possible the complete records of the times. It has nothing to hide, even though opinions differ on what ought to have been done. Yet we continue to hear rumors of “secret” files that the Vatican is desperately trying to keep under wraps.
It is not effective to simply deny outright this sort of accusation. After all, the charges are based on hearsay and rumors, which have a way of taking on a life of their own. And, if indeed there are “secret” documents sealed away somewhere, and if the Vatican is as sly as its detractors claim, then how are we, the simple faithful, to get to the bottom of the matter?
A good place to start might be with the hard evidence. During and immediately after World War II, Pius XII was looked upon as someone who did much to help thousands of individual Jews, though he did so in his characteristic cautious and quiet way. Many Jewish leaders in the period immediately following the War acknowledged this fact. If we ask, “Could he have done more?”, it would be the same as asking Roosevelt or Churchill if either of them could have done more.
All three, no doubt, would have replied, “Yes, of course, we could and should have done more.” They are only guilty of doing what seemed prudent and feasible at the time the events were unfolding. In hindsight, we know many things that they did not know, or know well; this includes the broad the scope of the Nazi campaign against the Jews.
The real question this simple fact raises for me is, why did the accusations against Pius XII not come up until years after the War?
As I wrote in a 1968 essay, the real and only problem here has to do with the thesis, made first by the Hochhuth play, that Pius XII was at fault because he did not “publicize” the Holocaust and demand world attention to it.
Since the 1960's, we have come to believe that rhetoric, not effectiveness, is the first thing we should look to in these kinds of circumstances. We imbue vocal protest with almost mystical qualities, as though talking loudly enough and often enough can solve all problems.
Thus history's second-guessers argue that the Pope should have sacrificed prudence. Even at the cost of his life or the lives of numerous others, especially Catholics for whom he had direct concern, he should have thrown caution to the wind and vociferously condemned Hitler. All of this is very high sounding. It is always at the heart of the accusation that Cornwell and Hochhuth and others have made. But is it a valid supposition?
We know that the quiet efforts of Pius XII did save a significant number of Jews who otherwise would have been lost. We know, too, that when the Dutch bishops did publicly protest, Nazi policy was immediate: They put to death Dutch Jews who had converted to Catholicism. Pius XII, in other words, had to ask himself whether raising his voice to “shame” Hitler on the world stage might only have made things worse. He was forced to choose between lesser and greater evils. Only if we consider that Hitler, like Stalin, might have killed twenty million instead of six, awful as the latter is, can we see the problem.
In the midst of highly volatile circumstances, Piux XII chose a course that was cautious, prudent, agonizing and brave. He discerned, no doubt through deep prayer, that vocal protest would not stop Hitler — and it could well increase his fury and, thus, his killing.
What seems evident in all of this is that both the papacy and Israel, with their mysteriously intertwined destinies, are kept before our eyes by constant ruminations on what might have been.
Father James Schall is a professor of government at Georgetown University.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: James Schall ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: 'Hungarian Loreto' Lures Catholic Pilgrims DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:Most tourists visiting Hungary head to the recently restored Grassalkovich Castle in Godollo, not far from Budapest, because it was once home to royalty — Empress Elizabeth (Sissi) and Emperor Francis Joseph I (in the latter half of the 19th century).
But Catholics touring the area would do well to rush through that attraction so they can spend quality pilgrimage time at nearby Mariabesnyo, whose grounds include a unique Marian museum. Its claim to fame, which doesn't extend much beyond Hungary's borders, is that it houses what may well be the world's smallest miraculous statue of Mary.
Often visited by married Hungarian couples praying for a new little one in their lives, Mariabesnyo is called the Loreto of Hungary. It's run by Capuchins who offer tours through the church, showing visitors the minuscule miraculous statue, and behind it the high altar with an replica of Our Lady of Loreto.
The shrine traces its roots to a colorful story from the mid-18th century. Antal Grassalkovich, the Count of Godollo, owned a farm in Besnyopuszta, on which the ruins of an ancient abbey church had been found atop a small hill. When his wife, Teresa Klobusitzky, was recovering from an illness, he promised her that he would build a chapel on the spot and model it after the renowned Marian pilgrimage site in Loreto, Italy.
In the spring of 1759, the count began work on the chapel. First, the old abbey ruins had to be cleared away. He hired a brick mason named Janos Fidler, who, on the morning of April 19th, had a dream in which he heard a voice say: “If you dig in the church ruins where the main altar once stood, a gorgeous thing you will find.”
Janos explained the dream to another worker, Toth Marton, from the nearby town of Isaszeg. The two dug at the place where they assumed the main altar would be, and soon uncovered a statue carved in bone and measuring just five and half inches tall.
The statue depicted our Lady granting her heart to her son. It appeared to be from the eleventh or twelfth centuries, and suggested that the Virgin Queen and Mother served God with her whole heart.
The finished chapel was consecrated on August 15, 1761. Count Grassalkovich asked the Capuchins in Hatvan to bring to Besnyo a wooden replica of Our Lady of Loreto. Certain monks had brought it by foot from Italy. The infant in the arms of his dear mother was clothed, and the count commissioned two gold-plated, jewel-encrusted crowns to be made for the statue. This was placed behind the main altar.
Veneration Station
Today the tiny bone sculpture is kept in a case above the high altar for pilgrims to venerate. In the days of the count, it was kept in the private chapel of Godollo castle and only taken to Besnyo for special pilgrimages on Marian feast days.
In the church there is a bright pastel painting by Marton Lajos (1941) covering the entire wall left of the statue. It features Count Grassalkovich standing atop the hill, handing a white rolled scroll to a Capuchin friar, who bows his head humbly to receive it. They are surrounded by a bishop and Capuchins, some with processional crucifixes, and followed by altar boys at the back of whom stands a friar with a white Marian ensign. A server behind the bishop carries a blue pillow with gold tassels, resting place of the episcopal red biretta.
To the left of the count, Janos and Toth, both kneeling, hover over the digging place. One holds the small bone statue, encircled in saffron light. On their side townspeople watch in awe: women and children dressed in Hungarian national costume, another digger leaning against his shovel, a young man peering over a beautiful blue banner of our Lady. This figure is placed by the painter almost exactly parallel to the friar on the opposite side, as if to “frame” the long picture.
At the bottom of the hill, close to the hole in the ground, a small boy grasps two shields, one bearing the coat of arms of Hungary, the other of the Grassalkovich line.
As time passed, the chapel's popularity grew and pilgrimages there increased, so with permission of Cardinal Migazzi, the count built a church and a monastery for the Capuchins. They inhabited the convent on Dec. 7, 1763. The completed two-story church and cloister for 18 friars was consecrated by Bishop Karoly Salbeck of Vac on March 17, 1771.
Marian collection
Today the shrine houses an underground chapel with ceiling murals paying tribute to Hungarian history, and an interesting crypt including the elegant Grassalkovich sarcophagus. A 30-foot stone Capuchin Cross stands left of the church entrance, beyond which are two gift shops and a Marian museum.
The Stations of the Cross sweep through a long, luscious, forested path which leads to the butter-cream colored church. Here in a circular glass casing rests an Infant of Prague statue. This memorial of abortion victims was consecrated on June 16, 1996.
Pilgrims walk through the courtyard, past the church, into a gate and up a flight of wooden stairs. This leads into a Marian museum, featuring more than 1,000 Marian objects — candles, sculptures, relics, medals — from all over the world, collected by the Capuchins.
Antique and contemporary articles fill a few upstairs rooms nearly to overflowing. There are myriad representations, for example, of the Nativity scene, plus statues of Mary depicted variously as Chinese, Spanish, Kenyan and Caribbean. A glass case houses a collection of Miraculous Medals.
Americans will experience Mariabesnyo as one of those little-known, out-of-the-way treasure troves of Catholic spirituality that serve to remind the Catholic pilgrim just how many lives have been touched by deep devotion to our Lady down through the centuries. It's also a place where one is inspired to follow their lead.
Mary Regina Soltis writes from Parma, Ohio.
----- EXCERPT: The world's smallest miraculous statue of Mary? ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mary Regina ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Apostolate Saves Churches From Demise DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:WAUSAU, Wis.—Changing demographics is just one of the factors that often force bishops to make difficult decisions regarding church buildings. Faced with the competing interests of preserving priceless church heritage and putting a diocese's funds to best use, many must resort to selling off or razing beautiful churches.
Now some bishops have taken it upon themselves to get creative in finding a better way. St. Mary's Church here, recently saved from having to enter the real estate market, is an example of the trend.
Last Palm Sunday, Bishop Raymond L. Burke of La Crosse, Wisc., established the 107-year-old, neo-Gothic church as a chapel for the pastoral care of those who desire the celebration of the Tridentine Latin Mass. The chapel is staffed by the Institute of Christ the King, Sovereign Priest, a society of apostolic life based in Cashton, Wis.
One of the worthy tasks the institute has undertaken as a part of its apostolate is the salvaging of traditionally constructed churches that have fallen into disuse or neglect during the past 30 years.
“It is somewhat of a nationwide phenomenon that churches are closing down, one after the next,” Father Svea observes. “These beautiful buildings don't just belong to Catholics here and now; they are the result of generations of sacrifice. They are a living part of the Church's patrimony.”
Thus, with the help of interested bishops, the institute is working hard to restore and preserve traditional churches at risk of the wrecking ball.
Providential Priestly Presence
Due to the number of priests available to serve that part of the La Crosse diocese, St. Mary's and the neighboring St. James parish were merged in July of 1998 to form the Parish of the Resurrection of Our Lord.
Although neither church building could accommodate the new parish's 1,325 families, the merger won't close down the use of either building. Once the new church is built, St. James will be used as a chapel for downtown worship and will be maintained by all the Wausau Catholic parishes. St. Mary's will be used indefinitely for the Latin Mass apostolate.
Many Wausau residents have expressed great relief that St. Mary's Church, built in 1892, will continue as a Catholic place of worship. Even non-Catholics in Wausau, said Father Svea, are relieved that St. Mary's will be cared for and remain a beautiful historical landmark at the heart of downtown Wausau.
The institute's presence in this city of 40,000 has been especially welcomed by the artistic and musical communities. “We're witnessing a renewed interest in traditional musical and artistic forms,” Father Svea says. “Now Wausau has a home for that.”
St. Mary's is home to a Gregorian chant choir and the institute has set out on an ambitious restoration project which, Father Svea explains, “will embellish the already beautiful interior of the church and turn it into something magnificent.” The interior will be repainted and church artists have been hired to execute both murals and stencil work throughout the building.
The institute is also undertaking other capital expenses that the former parish could not afford. This year, for instance, the church will be getting a new heating and air conditioning system, and a badly needed new roof.
Even so, when Bishop Burke announced that he would be entrusting the church to the Latin Mass apostolate, a few critics felt as if St. Mary's was “going backward.”
Responding to this charge, Nancy Heideman, a former parishioner and lifelong friend of St. Mary's, reasons that “in light of today's newspaper headlines, I feel that a return to traditional values, beliefs and ways of worship just might be what this world and we Catholics need the most.”
Heideman said she is grateful for her bishop's decision to keep the wrecking ball at bay. “Now we will have two beautiful old historical shrines in Wausau,” she says.
Father Svea invites his critics to “come and see.” When they do, they find not only a beautiful and reverent sacred liturgy, he says, “but a community of people who are service-minded, young families that are blossoming — Catholics with a great love for their faith.”
Most of his critics, explains Father Svea, “are grateful once they see that we are caring for the church and they understand that they are always welcome here.”
Rockford restoration
Another church currently being preserved and restored by the Institute of Christ the King, Sovereign Priest, is St. Mary's Shrine in Rockford, Ill., which Bishop Thomas G. Doran has called “one of the most venerable Catholic churches in the City of Rockford.”
Three years ago St. Mary's Shrine, the second oldest church in the city, was slated to be closed and most likely demolished, until Bishop Doran gave the shrine over to the pastoral care of priests of the institute. Impressed with the growth and stability of the Latin Mass community in Rockford, Bishop Doran was happy to have found a way to keep St. Mary's open and cared for. Today St. Mary's is once again home to the Roman rite, including two daily Masses.
Built over a century ago, and having survived three decades of utter neglect, this red-brick neo-Gothic structure has been restored to its original splendor through a careful artistic restoration. A fire in 1962 damaged the beautiful stained glass windows — they have not been cleaned since the fire left its soot marks on their faceted round “gem glass” — as well as much of the ceiling and roof.
“There may be some who might think that the physical repair or restoration of an old parish church should not be the focus of so much effort, considering the state of the Church and the world today,” says Father Brian Bovee, 46, rector of Rockford's St. Mary's Shrine. “But our faith and our love of the faith,” he said, “are made concrete by the way we appreciate and take care of the sacred places wherein this faith is celebrated.”
Although many parishioners of St. Mary's were disappointed in the church losing its status as a parish due to lack of members and chronic financial problems, says Father Bovee, “others saw this as a providential solution to an otherwise impossible situation.”
The institute projects an intensified parochial life for the Catholics who benefit from the liturgical life at St. Mary's Shrine. Continuance of the food pantry program, outreach to the inner-city poor and to Hispanics, more public devotions and an increased availability of the Mass and sacraments are all to be undertaken as part of the apostolate of the institute at St. Mary's Shrine; there is also to be a renewed emphasis on sound catechetical training.
Both Fathers Svea and Bovee, among their brother priests of the institute, voiced their opinion that the Catholic Church's physical heritage is worth saving, preserving and maintaining.
“The beauty of these works of sacred art,” says Father Bovee, “are integrally connected to the beauty of the Catholic faith, which makes our work well worth the time.”
The institute, according to Father Bovee, is involved in a similar church restoration project in the historic city of Versailles, just outside Paris. In Africa, the institute is not only restoring church property but building anew as well. In Gabon they are present in two different locations and have already built three mission churches, restored a mission rectory and a convent.
Michael Rose writes from Cincinnati, Ohio.
----- EXCERPT: Institute offers an alternative to the wrecking ball ----- EXTENDED BODY: Michael S. Rose ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Prizer's Video Picks DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:MADELINE (1998)
Charm in movies or books is an elusive thing Hard to define, but you know it when you see it. By any standard, Ludwig Bemelman's best-selling novels about a Catholic girls’ school in Paris is charming. Madeline, based on the books, skillfully recreates their comic magic with a witty, graceful touch.
Madeline (Hatty Jones) is the only orphan at the school. The head-mistress, Miss Clavel (Frances McDormand), is a strict but loving disciplinarian. (The original books have Miss Clavel as a novitiate. The filmmakers make her a fully professed nun.) When Madeline becomes ill with appendicitis, she's treated at a Catholic hospital. There she meets Lady Covington (Stephane Audran), a former pupil at the school who has become its main benefactor. The elderly lady dies, and Madeline learns that her husband has decided to sell the place. When the little girl informs the other students, they panic, and she sets in motion a series of events intended to scare off prospective buyers.
The movie is a treat for adults and kids alike. Beneath the youthful hijinks is a carefully crafted moral sense. The girls’ Catholic education is always subtly present. They know right from wrong even when misbehaving.
HOWARDS END (1992)
In boom times like these, real estate is a good investment, and many middle-class people, and above, see their home as a stepping stone to greater wealth.
“Howards End” is the name of a small English country house where the family of Mrs. Wilcox (Vanessa Redgrave) has lived for almost a century. The time is 1910, and the well-bred Englishwoman sees her home as more than an elegant showplace. It's a house which radiates a kind of spiritual peace in the midst of materialistic pursuits — a place where friendship based on compassion and emotional honesty can flourish.
When Mrs. Wilcox dies, she leaves her home to a younger, less affluent woman (Emma Thompson) who shares these values more than her own flesh and blood do. The Wilcox family is outraged and burns the will, believing the property to be their rightful inheritance. But a dark secret emerges from the past of Mr. Wilcox (Anthony Hopkins) and changes the situation.
Howards End, based on E.M. Forster's acclaimed novel, celebrates human connections over status and possessions, dramatizing with great passion both the goodness and the hypocrisy which the house in question calls forth from those who love it.
Register movie critic John Prizer writes from Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: The Saint Who Promoted a Saint DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:Mount Royal, which dominates the city of Montreal, is in turn dominated by the great cupola of the Oratory of St. Joseph, the massive shrine church built by Blessed André Bessette, a Holy Cross lay brother who might have been the most well-known man in Canada in the early 1930s.
On a typical morning in those days a motley crew of the injured and the sick, poor and rich alike, would be lined up outside Brother André's small, 10-by-18 foot office, looking for cures from the “miracle man of Montréal.” Brother André would welcome them all for three hours in the morning, and another two hours in the afternoon, before spending several hours after dinner visiting the sick and invalids in their homes and hospitals.
By the time he arrived at his small office at 9 a.m., he would have already been up for four hours, having spent two hours in prayer in the chapel. The old brother also prayed for an hour at the end of the day, and took strength from his prayer to cope with the demands of the thousands who constantly besieged him for miraculous cures. “Never anything joyous, never anything amusing,” he was known to comment about his work.
Crutches on the Walls
Nevertheless, he received all those who came to see him, and performed thousands of miracles. The walls of the Oratory of St. Joseph are covered with the crutches, canes and other paraphernalia of infirmity rendered unnecessary by Brother André's cures. His conversations were curt, even brusque, often consisting of nothing more than his standard advice:
Get some oil consecrated to St. Joseph and a get a medal of St. Joseph. Rub the oil. Make a novena to St. Joseph. Pray to him a lot. Pray to the Good God.”
And when the thousands would return to thank him for his miraculous intervention, he would be equally brief: “It was St. Joseph and not I who cured you. Thank St. Joseph, not me.”
Brother André was both a fruit and a source of the increased devotion to St. Joseph that has marked the 20th century Catholic Church. The Church has long applied the words of the Pharaoh concerning the dreaming Joseph, son of Jacob, to the later Joseph, who also saw the will of God in dreams: Go to Joseph! (Genesis 41:55). Brother André spoke those words to the thousands who came to Mount Royal — Go to Joseph — and the Church as a whole has heeded that ancient injunction ever more in our time.
Patron of the Universal Church
Pope Pius IX, recently having lost the papal states in 1870, declared St. Joseph the Patron of the Universal Church on the feast of the Immaculate Conception that same year. Piux IX entrusted to the Church to the same fatherly protection “to whose custody God entrusted his most precious treasures,” as he wrote of Joseph's vocation to love and protect the baby Jesus and his mother Mary.
Devotion to St. Joseph is not entirely new, but had been dormant. St. Teresa of Avila encouraged a renewal of devotion to St. Joseph in the 16th century, but it has flowered much more in our century. Pope Pius XII instituted the feast of St. Joseph the Worker in 1955, to propose an example of a true Christian worker in response to communism's false vision of the worker. St. Joseph the Worker is celebrated on May 1, the European Labor Day, and during the communist period, the day on which the great Mayday military parades would be held.
Pope John XXIII decreed that Joseph's name be added to the Roman Canon (Eucharistic Prayer I) after that of Mary, and before all others. Pope John also commissioned a new altar of St. Joseph in St. Peter's Basilica, where public Masses are offered several times a day.
Go to Joseph!
Brother André's great shrine to St. Joseph was built as a result of his persistent determination to honor the great saint. As Brother André's fame as a miracle worker grew, his desire was shared by the multitude of pilgrims who sought him out, and now the shrine draws hundreds of thousands to pray at the tomb of Brother André, as well as to pray to St. Joseph.
The life of Brother André echoed in some respects the life of St. Joseph, illustrating how the Christian life includes both silent ordinariness and explosions of the supernatural. Joseph's silence in the Gospel was echoed in the life of Brother André. Before he came to be known as a miracle worker, his life was utterly devoid of any newsworthy events.
His entire written output consists of three dictated letters, and he never read a newspaper or magazine — to the extent of not knowing, in the 1930s, who Hitler, Mussolini or Roosevelt was. Joseph's silence bore fruit in his care for the Holy Family, as did Brother André's in the ordinary duties of a Holy Cross lay brother whose first tasks included being a simple porter.
Yet that silent, ordinary life was filled with the most extraordinary manifestations of God's supernatural interventions in our world. Modern-day Québéc society would scoff at the concept of miracles, as does much of 20th century enlightened, rationalist opinion. But God cannot be limited to the imagination, or even to the altar. Brother André was a sign sent to a sophisticated, prosperous, forward-looking North American city that God is still at work.
My Father is working still, and I am working — John 5:17. So said Jesus to the doubters of his day, and so says the life of Brother André to the skeptics of our day. Jesus is still at work in the world, and so too is the man they called his father, St. Joseph.
----- EXCERPT: Saints of The Century ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond De Souza ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Catholic League on Columbine DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:The title of the Catholic League press release is provocative: “Columbine Religious Art nixed due to lack of dung.”
It goes on to quote its president, William Donohue, saying:
“Had the parents plopped some dung on their memorial tribute, school officials would have readily accepted it. That is because it is entirely legal to defame a religion on public property, just so long as someone calls it art.
But it is illegal to post work that reveres religion. In short, the original meaning of the First Amendment clause on religion has been stood on its head.
“A spokesman for the Jefferson County School District has said that if the religious-themed ceramic tile art were posted, it might offend some people. He's quite right about this. What it will take to convince him that many more might be offended by not allowing such art, I do not know.
“In any event, didn't we just finish hearing in New York that being offended by art is no reason to ban it? And didn't we just finish hearing how wrong it is for public officials to get involved in such matters? And didn't we just finish hearing how awful it is to censor artistic expression? Or do these strictures only have application when art defames religion?”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- Keywords: Education -------- TITLE: Education Notebook DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:Magdalen College Pledges Fidelity, Again
MAGDALEN COLLEGE, Oct. 5—The Magdalen College began its 26th year with an Oath of Fidelity to the Catholic Church on Sept. 10 while welcoming their largest freshman class in 20 years.
The faculty and staff of Magdalen have taken the oath every year since 1991, the year after Pope John Paul II promulgated Ex Corde Ecclesiae, the Apostolic Constitution on Catholic Universities.
The Oath of Fidelity is required of teachers “who in any university teaches subjects which deal with faith and morals” (Code of Canon Law, 833:7).
Catholic University of America Enrollment Jumps
Why so many students?
John Dolan, dean of enrollment management, said the biggest single factor in the increase is “the clarity of our Catholic message,” the Herald reported. In addition, Catholic University increased their advertising budget and started accepting online applications. More than 700 students applied over the Internet, according to the University. About 80% of incoming freshman are Catholics.
The architecture program is also a big draw, Dolan told the Herald. “We set out to recruit 60 architecture students and 90 enrolled.”
Notre Dame Honors Rev. Leon Sullivan
NOTRE DAME, Oct. 7—The Rev. Leon Sullivan, a civil rights leader, will be awarded the 1999 Notre Dame Award for international humanitarian service on Nov. 3.
“Leon Sullivan's struggle against racial prejudice and economic injustice has been lifelong, exemplary and inspiring,” said Notre Dame's president, Holy Cross Father Edward A. Malloy, in announcing the award. “In honoring his work, we hope to recommit ourselves to the same struggle.”
The Rev. Sullivan, pastor emeritus at Zion's Baptist in Philadelphia, rose to prominence during the civil rights movement by organizing boycotts and protests. Later, he became active in fighting apartheid in South Africa.
----- EXCERPT: Saints of The Century ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Americans Take A Stand On Repect Life Sunday DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:On Sunday, Oct. 3, from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m., pro-lifers throughout the United States and Canada formed more than 863 human “Life Chains”.
Lining the streets of pre-determined busy intersections, people of all ages — including families, priests, pastors and youth ministers of every faith — gathered in what they called a silent, prayerful demonstration for an end to abortion, for its victims, for the inner healing of mothers who have felt driven to choose this option, and for repentance and forgiveness for personal failings in aiding the victims of abortion.
Life Chain sites were chosen because of their proximity to abortion clinics or to Planned Parenthood offices where either abortions or active abortion referrals are conducted.
In addition to uniting local citizens in public prayer, national director Royce Dunn says its purpose is to peacefully remind people that abortions are occuring in their own neighborhoods and to encourage them to pray and act on this issue as well. Life Chain events are held on the first Sunday of October every year.
“I think this is a moral obligation and an outward sign of love for the unborn children and for the people who are going through this,” explained Catholic participant, Joe Lupo.
“An overwhelming majority of people who drove by gave us thumbs-up enthusiastic suppport, so I think there's an overwhelming public support for this effort,” he said.
Pastor Steve DeNicola from Calvary Community Church in Mission Viejo, Calif., agreed. “I noticed that probably 80% of those who passed by gave us a positive response by honking enthusiastically and showing a thumbs-up sign.”
But he also noted the internal pain that this issue brings up for people.
“Abortion is an issue that hits the core of our being. For some people who drive by, it brings up some very painful memories and experiences. It allows us to see the pain of regret and heartache of some passer-bys that one wouldn't normally notice if they saw someone in a store or different situation.”
For him, as for others, participating in Life Chain “is a very prayerful experience.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Karen Walker ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:During a 1985 Mass at which 20 Kenyan couples made their wedding vows in the presence of the Pope, the Holy Father reminded the faithful of the importance of instructing engaged couples in the faith. He noted the importance of the sacraments to married life and as well as a proper understanding of natural family planning:
Couples should be carefully instructed concerning the grace of marriage, the role of the Sacrament in the mission of the Church, and its relationship with the other Sacraments, especially the Eucharist and the Sacrament of Penance. Important too is a proper understanding of the nature of sexuality and responsible parenthood, including the methods of natural family planning and the reasons for its use.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- Keywords: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: LIFE NOTES DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:Supreme Court May Declare a ‘Right to Abortion.’
PRO-LIFE INFONET, Oct. 6—More than 200 pro-life supporters maintained a prayer vigil on the steps of the Tennessee Supreme Court building on Oct. 5 as the judges heard oral arguments in Planned Parentohood of Middle Tennessee vs. Sundquist.
According to the Infonet's Steve Ertelt, this case provides abortion supporters a vehicle “by which they will argue that the Tennessee Constitution protects a “right to abortion,” adding, “such a ruling could invalidate as unconstitutional most pro-life protections already passed in Tennessee including a 48 hour waiting period, informed consent provisions for women, parental consent for minors and a ban on tax-payer funding of abortion.”
On Oct. 4, Tennessee Right to Life presented more than 42,000 signatures to the Governor's office on petitions in support of the challenged pro-life statutes. At the same time, the organization made public the results of a commissioned state-wide poll which reported strong support among Tennesseans for pro-life policies.
According to Ertelt, the poll indicated that 85 % of respondents supported informed consent for women and 78 % supported a 48 hour waiting period.
Actor Warren Beatty Says He's Pro-Life
Drudge said Beatty keeps his pro-life pedigree under his hat to remain credible among Hollywood elites, but that he confessed it openly in an interview with Drudge earlier in the year.
In a Sept. 30 column Drudge wrote, “During a star-studded, media-drenched gathering [last night], Beatty made a passionate political speech that touched on global trade, campaign finance and social justice, accusing Democrats and Republicans of participating in a ‘slow-motion coup d'etat of big money interests over the public interest.’
“But there was one topic that Beatty did not address—a topic that has become dear to his heart since marrying and having children with actress Annette Bening.
“‘Since having children, I am pro-life,’ Beatty told the Drudge report earlier this year.
“When asked why he does not declare his pro-life beliefs publicly, Beatty quietly said: ‘I can't,’ ” Drudge wrote, adding, “Indeed, one can only imagine the chaos that would have erupted inside of the Beverly Hilton Hotel if Beatty would have declared his updated views on abortion. It would have been over even before it began,” wrote Drudge. Beatty and his wife are expecting their fourth baby.
‘Pro-Choice’ Would Never Apply to Killing Abortionist
“I am personally opposed to killing abortionists,” George wrote. “However, inasmuch as my personal opposition to this practice is rooted in a sectarian (Catholic) religious belief in the sanctity of human life, I am unwilling to impose it on others who may, as a matter of conscience, take a different view. Of course, I am entirely in favor of policies aimed at removing the root causes of violence against abortionists. Indeed, I would go so far as to support mandatory one-week waiting periods, and even nonjudgmental counseling, for people who are contemplating the choice of killing an abortionist. I believe in policies that reduce the urgent need some people feel to kill abortionists while, at the same time, respecting the rights of conscience of my fellow citizens who believe that the killing of abortionists is sometimes a tragic necessity — not a good, but a lesser evil. In short, I am moderately ‘pro-choice.’”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- Keywords: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: They're Throwing The Pill Away. But Why? DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:As a teenager, Susan began taking “The Pill” to help regulate her menstrual cycle. Once married, she appreciated the “convenience” of it — an opportunity to enjoy the privileges of matrimony without the worry of changing diapers too soon. But, tired of pill-popping and the physical wear and tear that comes with the daily intake of synthetic hormones, Susan decided to take back her fertility, and she and her husband learned natural family planning. “The rewards — including marriage-building and knowledge of one's body — are so worth it.”
Susan is not alone. Among the couples she knows who use natural family planning, many of whom she met over the Internet, most say it's “easy.” She and her natural family planning-using friends — many of whom left the world of artificial hormones because of the havoc it had already wreaked on their bodies — also share a complaint often heard among those who've discovered natural family planning: Why didn't anyone ever tell me sooner?
Call it the world's best-kept family planning secret. It has long been derided and caricatured as part of a patriarchal Roman Catholic understanding of human sexuality. (The old joke is: What do you call couples who use natural family planning? Parents.) Now, natural family planning may be ready to go prime time, showing up in places like the Vegetarian Times, attracting an audience interested in going natural. Ironically, it may be the increasing numbers of brands of artificial contraceptives — most of which come with their own set of potential side effects, including threats to future fertility — available at their local pharmacies that are driving women to abandon pills, rubber, creams and jellies for nature's own.
It's not just Catholics who are signing up for natural family planning classes. “The large numbers of those who have turned to natural methods are not doing so for religious reasons,” says Rosalie Wesley, director of research at the Institute for Reproductive Health at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
“I would say that starting 10 years ago we were probably talking about 80 to 90% [of people learning natural family planning] were Catholics and now it is probably closer to 60%,” Joseph Stanford, former president of the American Academy of Natural Family Planning, recently told the Boston Globe.
Robert Kambic, a researcher who focuses on natural family planning at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, has been teaching natural family planning with his wife since 1970. In his experience, religion is rarely the catalyst for learning natural family planning. “In our 30 years of pre Canas, we always stress the lack of side effects, health, ‘understand self,’ ‘understand sexuality,’ ‘work together to plan and space pregnancies.’ These are the things that people come in wanting to know.”
And, although far from being cheerleaders, the reproductive-rights crowd can't rule natural methods of family planning out of the smorgasbord of available birth-control options. When asked, Princeton University's James Trussell, long-time editor of the field's bible, Contraceptive Technology, admits that while natural family planning methods are “very unforgiving of imperfect use,” “they are quite effective when used correctly and consistently.”
Still, granting institutions are rarely willing to fork over much money for research and development — nor are HMOs always willing to cover natural family planning classes, which usually run at a little over $100.
Pinpointing the actual numbers of natural family planning users is a challenge. According to the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth, 3% of all those limiting their family size in the U.S. chose natural family planning to do so. Georgetown's Institute for Reproductive Health, which focuses exclusively on natural family planning methods worldwide, finds that among married women who use any family-planning method, 14% use some form of periodic abstinence.
But interpreting the numbers is difficult. The World Health Organization considers natural family planning to be “methods for planning and preventing pregnancies by observation of the naturally occurring signs and symptoms of the fertile and infertile phases of the menstrual cycle, with the avoidance of intercourse during the fertile phase if pregnancy is to be avoided.”
In keeping with that definition, the limited numbers of surveys extant with a focus on natural family planning, lump together couples using the old, fairly obsolete rhythm method with those using withdrawal, and those using the much more structured Sympto-Thermal and Creighton methods, which require training in identifying cervical mucus in relation to fertility and temperature-taking. Surveys on pregnancy rates also fail to discriminate between those using natural family planning methods to avoid pregnancy and those who are simply trying to space out their children.
Still, despite the problems with surveys, a year-old, much-lauded study in the Journal of Reproductive Medicine proved what natural family planning doctors, teachers and users have long claimed.
Among some 2,000 couples using the most popular of methods, the Creighton model, the effectiveness rate was comparable to the pill or the condom. But don't expect natural family planning to become a viable option in sex-ed courses, since, in keeping with its religious roots, it is not “contraception” in the usual sense.
Natural family planning is meant to be divorced from the contraceptive mentality, rather than from procreation. It doesn't protect against sexually-transmitted diseases, nor is it an alternative for the promiscuous, who presumably don't have much flexibility in planning their dalliances.
And it still has its public-relations problems. Natural family planning is branded, tied very directly in public opinion to the Catholic Church and its opposition to abortion and contraception. And as the contraceptive mentality has been absorbed by people of all denominations, a sense of defeat on the issue among Catholics may have settled in, too.
Despite his dedication to natural family planning methods, on both theoretical and practical levels, Robert Kambic is skeptical about claims of a newfound popularity for natural family planning. “My wife and I have always seen this before — people coming to this just because they think it is a good thing — not for religious reasons. These new, younger people see things a little more short term. They see things positively.”
And, he faults his beloved Church for the lack of enthusiasm and understanding among her flock for natural family planning. Until the Church jumps in with financial support for advertising and education, and even full-time coordinators in dioceses that don't have them, a significant increase in Catholics using natural family planning is a far way off.
Kathryn Jean Lopez is production editor for National Review.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Kathryn Jean Lopez ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Faith and Family Planning DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:Steve and Eric met during their freshman year of college only to later drift apart. “It was a chance meeting at a friend's barbecue in 1991 where we reconnected,” explains Eric.
“By that time I had left the Church and was living an unchaste life. During the barbecue I attacked the Church. Steve responded charitably that the reason I left the Church was because I did not like what it had to say about the way I was living. Although I laughed off his comment, deep inside it had reached a smoldering ember of faith.” It was the beginning of a personal reawakening.
“Condoms, the diaphragm and the pill had blinded us,” admits Scheidler. Six years later, Eric's wife, April, announced her decision to get off the pill and enroll in a natural family planning (NFP) class.
“It wasn't until April refused to put those chemicals into her body and enrolled us in a NFP course that I began to appreciate the enormous physical, spiritual and psychological dangers of contraception,” explains Eric.
Steve is Steve Habisohn, 32, and Eric is Eric Scheidler, 32, the son of pro-life activist Joe Scheidler. The two founded the GIFT Foundation, dedicated to ending society's love affair with contraception.
“Once God used NFP to open our eyes, we began to understand the sacramental beauty of marriage, its sacredness, as well as its fragility. By the time the NFP course was half complete I had gone to confession and was back in the faith,” relates Eric.
During the spring of 1997 Scheidler decided to seek out his old friend, Steve. As it turned out, Habisohn and his fiancee were also enrolled in an natural family planning class. April's nervousness inspired Steve to come up with a simpler charting method, known as GIFT (God-Intended Fertility Technique).
“Eric was a true God-send,” Habisohn recalls. “The renewal of our friendship came at a point in Eric's life where he was rediscovering his faith and I was struggling to crystallize my vision for the GIFT Foundation. As Eric and I talked it became clear to the two of us that God was calling us to take on a major endeavor. I really felt as though God brought the two of us together to go out and be modern-day apostles of chastity.”
And so, the GIFT Foundation was born. Steve serves as the founder and president, and Eric serves as the executive vice president.
Twelve Myths of Contraception
“Parents need contraception to responsibly plan their families.”
“Contraception protects youth from pregnancy and disease.”
“Contraception reduces the need for abortion.”
So begin the GIFT Foundation's 12 Myths of Contraception.
“It's fascinating to see how God works in people's lives,” Scheidler goes on to say. “Steve and I started out with the idea of using Steve's business expertise to come up with a better way to market NFP. But the more we researched and the more we read, the more we realized the damage contraception was doing to society. Not only that, but we began to see that society's love affair with the pill was based on myths, not facts. Little by little, God brought the two of us to realize that rather than calling us solely to help spread NFP, he was also calling us to expose the real dangers of contraception.”
Using those 12 myths as a blueprint, the GIFT Foundation plans to create programs that will promote life-long chastity. It does this by offering resources to organizations and individuals at cost, launching a nationwide media campaign, producing field manuals, and hosting a web site and national conferences. Its first national conference was held in Schaumburg, Ill., in mid-September.
The conference, titled “Pandora's Pillbox,” featured speakers such as Cardinal Francis George, Dr. Janet Smith and Dr. Chris Kahlenborn.
Pro-life leaders such as Father Frank Pavone and American Life League's Judie Brown have voiced their support for the life-affirming work of the GIFT Foundation.
“In the final analysis, contraception leads to empty playgrounds. No singing. No giggles. Just silence. The GIFT Foundation is working to fill our playgrounds with the happy sounds of innocent children at play; the joyous sounds of life,” said Norma McCorvey, the “Jane Roe” of Roe v. Wade.
“When I first met Steve, I was hesitant. Here was this young man, so eager and relatively new to the whole NFP field, yet so ready to plunge in and change the world,” admits Sue Ek, program coordinator for the Natural Family Planning office and the U.S. headquarters for the Billings Ovulation Method in St. Cloud, Minn.
“I have come to really appreciate Steve and Eric. They are geniune and faithful in their Catholic faith. They are an incredible team and I have no doubt their influence on my generation has the potential to be powerful.”
Continues Ek, “What the GIFT Foundation has done for the Billings Ovulation Method in the United States has been wonderful. They were able to finance two senior trainers from the headquarters of Drs. John and Lyn Billings in Melbourne, Australia, to come to the U.S. to give teacher training sessions. They came in late April and we are already seeing our teaching becoming more authentic. Thanks to the GIFT Foundation, Billings Method teachers in the U.S., Canada and the Virgin Islands are revitalized. To top it off, Steve taped the entire training that took place in Orlando so we can use it in the future as a reference.”
GIFT Kits
Another tool the GIFT Foundation plans to use to spread the truth are individual GIFT kits. “Each kit,” explains Habisohn, “will be designed for specific recipients. For example, there might be one GIFT kit specifically for doctors, another for priests, one for newlyweds and another for college students.”
Habisohn further explains, “As an organization there is only so much that we can do. We want to build up an army of people who will spread the truth. These materials will change the hearts and minds of individuals. Our hope is that those people, in turn, will share what they have learned with others in their own spheres of influence.”
Habisohn points to what he sees as an eventual spiritual springtime.
“The virtue of chastity in marriage — which includes openly welcoming children and the willingness to freely choose to fast from intercourse for just and loving reasons — will be concrete signs of love between spouses. These will become the identifying marks of tomorrow's Christians. In turn, these Christians will be the ones who will once again make the pagan world take notice and say, ‘See how they love one another.’ Then, God willing, those who have fallen victim to the lies of the culture of death and embraced the contraceptive mentality, will throw off the chemical shackles which bind them, embrace the freedom of chastity and become active loving members in God's universal family.”
For his part, Scheidler says his past makes him eminently qualified to crusade against contraception. He himself has lived the lie. Says Scheidler, “My marriage was affected by it. I left the Church on account of it. I almost lost my faith as a result of it.
I endangered my immortal soul by using it. I was dead. But now I am alive again. I want to help free others who find themselves trapped in the culture of death's contraceptive web of deceit. I will spend the rest of my life breaking up that web.”
Tim Drake writes from St. Cloud, Minnesota
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Tim Drake ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Did You Know? DATE: 10/17/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 17-23, 1999 ----- BODY:Proponents of the birth control pill have always put a premium on the “sexual freedom” they say it provides. But Dr. Ellen Grant, once a proponent of the pill, changed her mind after taking part in a study of its side effects. Side effects Dr. Grant lists are:
The cessation of normal menstrual cycles and hormone production, migraines, loss of libido, depression [which Grant claims can lead to child abuse and suicide], severe mood swings, thrombosis, brain hemorrhage, visual disturbances, accidental deaths, weight gain, gall bladder disease, diabetes, vascular disease, cervical, ovarian and breast cancer, allergies, immune diseases, post-pill infertility, mental illness, cervical erosions, ectopic pregnancies, miscarriages and fetal abnormalities.
----- EXCERPT: Facts of Life ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: 120,000 Sing Along With Pop-Star Priest DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil—Sports-intoxicated Brazilians refer to Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro as soccer's “cathedral.” On Oct. 12, the feast of Our Lady of Aparecida, Brazil's patroness, more than 120,000 people filled the world's largest soccer arena — not to cheer the national team, but to turn the stadium into a temple of prayer and song.
The crowd was on hand to attend a Mass celebrated by a priest who draws crowds that rival the country's most popular athletes and performers.
Father Marcelo Rossi — tall, dark and handsome — has emerged in the last two years as probably the most popular personality in Brazil, thanks to a simple and highly emotional charismatic spirituality that, combined with his own considerable talents, has conquered thousands of hearts.
“God called me to priesthood and gave me the opportunity to fill stadiums in a way that I could never have predicted,” said the 32-year-old former aerobics trainer who once dreamed of soccer greatness.
The event served as an important sign of approbation for Father Rossi by the Church's leadership, which is naturally cautious about encouraging adulation for an individual priest.
The Mass at Maracana Stadium was offered at the request of the archbishop of Rio, Cardinal Eugenio Araujo de Sales, regarded as the Brazilian bishop closest to Pope John Paul II.
Cardinal Araujo de Sales' invitation was taken by many as an acquiescence to the priest's ministry, a signal that the Church in Brazil is willing to take a chance on the young priest.
Cardinal Araujo de Sales went further Oct. 14, telling one newspaper reporter that he has given Father Rossi “a free hand to act in Rio.” He added: “I am not the type of person who gives free rein. On the contrary, I am usually reluctant, but he is a very obedient man.”
From Priest to Pop Star
Marcelo Mendonca Rossi, the first of three children, converted to an active Catholic life 10 years ago when a beloved cousin died in a car accident. He entered the seminary of the recently created Diocese of Santo Amaro and was ordained a priest five years ago.
In 1997, at age 30, he took charge of a small parish where he quickly gained a following among the faithful who were impressed by the intense and unhurried manner in which he celebrated Mass, and by his realistic homilies that are easy to relate to life's daily problems and challenges.
By the end of his first year as pastor, weekend liturgies had to be moved to a 16,000-square-foot former factory in Southern Sao Paulo, which was renamed Our Lady of Perpetual Help. He remains pastor of the community.
Father Rossi recorded his first compact disc, The Byzantine Rosary, which includes songs, prayers and mediations, in 1998. By the end of that year, his nationwide celebrity was furthered by a feature spread in the popular magazine Istoé that focused on the young priest's success in bringing back to the faith non-practicing and former Catholics who had become evangelical Protestants.
The article launched what would become an unstoppable path to fame. Father Rossi was invited to appear on popular TV programs, with one network airing a weekly Mass celebrated by the youthful pastor. It quickly became one of the five top-rated shows in Brazil.
Fame, Fortune and Faith?
Father Rossi's second CD, Songs to Praise the Lord, has sold more than 3 million copies and the single, Raise Your Hands, held second place on the Brazilian pop charts for 12 weeks.
Intrigued by his ability to win many Brazilians back to the faith, secular media around the world have also noted the Padre Marcelo phenomenon. Time magazine selected him one of the 100 most influential Latin Americans for the next millennium. The New York Times and U.S. News & World Report have also done articles.
Father Rossi's latest CD, A Gift to Jesus, has made him the No. 2 all-time seller of CDs in Brazil.
Each of his regular Masses draws more than 60,000, and includes testimonies of conversions, including from those returning from evangelical Christian denominations or African-Brazilian cults.
A team of some 400 “cooperators” of Father Rossi not only have a strong Catholic commitment, but are regarded as models of prayer, charity and service.
Father Rossi has also been credited with helping the small Diocese of Santo Amaro become a national leader in vocations, going from 12 seminarians in 1995 to 62 this fall. “Father Marcelo certainly played a significant role in this increase,” Father Julio Shinji, rector of the local seminary, told the Register.
Legitimate Concern
Father Rossi's successes have not come without criticism. Some, including members of the hierarchy, have questioned the appropriateness of a priest who is also a pop idol.
Cardinal Serafim Fernandes de Araujo, archbishop of Belo Horizonte, sees a value — and a danger — in Father Rossi's ministry.
“Father Marcelo has certainly brought many Catholics back to Church life, but his permanent exposure to media could be a source for problems, especially for a young priest,” the cardinal said. “The media could sink him just as it brought him up, and the media could also distort the sense of the Mass by turning it into a trendy show.”
Some of Father Rossi's fellow priests in Santo Amaro also expressed concern about what they say is an excess of emotion and a lack of content in the famous priest's celebrations.
Father Rossi agreed that dangers exist and, for that reason, he says he exercises great care in his ministry. “I can't control my image, and good things can turn bad in the wrong hands,” he said.
“Everything I do, any initiative, is done with the explicit permission of my bishop; otherwise I don't go ahead,” he added.
Yet, some Church leaders wonder if Father Rossi's carefulness will be enough to prevent what could become, for many people, a purely emotional short-term experience.
In his Oct. 14 comments on Father Rossi, Rio's Cardinal Araujo de Sales acknowledged that the criticism that the popular priest provides little solid content to his followers has some merit. “Yes, but he gets young people to sing songs of praise to the Lord — young people who would otherwise would be singing [worldly] songs”.
Alejandro Bermudez writes from Lima, Peru.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Alejandro Bermudez ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Court Restricts Pro-Lifers Who Carry Graphic Signs DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:SAN DIEGO—Is Sylvia Sullivan a terrorist? A new lawsuit accuses her and six other pro-life picketers of being a “nuisance” to abortion clinic workers and causing them “emotional distress” — by displaying pictures of aborted children on picket signs.
The $2.5 million lawsuit seeks redress for the “nuisance” and “emotional distress” the women caused by displaying pictures of aborted babies at a San Diego Planned Parenthood clinic last March.
“They don't have the right to show those grossly distorted pictures to other people's children or to shove literature into people's faces who don't want to read it,” said Planned Parenthood attorney James McElroy.
“These hard-core folks think they have the right because they think they are God and everyone else is evil,” he told the Register. “At the heart of this case is the fact that these people think they have the right to impose in other people's rights.”
So far, all three San Diego judges involved with the case have lined up behind McElroy. Two judges have approved temporary restraining orders against the picketers, and San Diego Superior Court Judge Judith McConnell has ruled that no photographic signs larger than 8 1/2 by 10 inches may be displayed within 100 yards of the abortion facility. She further banned the distribution of any literature closer than 25 feet from the driveway and ruled that protesters must stand at least three feet from each other at all times.
In her ruling, McConnell stated that she intended to protect workers and those going in and out of the Planned Parenthood clinic from seeing the large photographic signs depicting aborted babies. Picketers say this has effectively created a large no-free-speech-zone in front of the clinic and around its driveway.
Defense attorney Katie Short says that McConnell has outstripped her constitutional boundaries as a jurist.
“These San Diego courts aren't even trying to follow the law,” Short told the Register. “By arguing that people inside clinics shouldn't have to see [graphic] signs she is opening up a whole new frontier of law.”
Short said that if the appeals court upholds McConnell's decision, then McConnell will have effectively written her own law, ignoring First Amendment protections of free speech. She said that restricting speech on the basis of its content is doubly unconstitutional.
“The most offensive thing about the ruling is the content-based restrictions,” Short said. “This runs contrary to what has been described as the most fundamental principle of the First Amendment — the government may not restrict speech based in its content. It's what the amendment is all about.”
Referring to the restrictions on sign size, Short said that no court in the country had ever made such an order.
Short also objected to the issuance of restraining orders to the protesters. She said the orders were served without any prior notification, calling this “contrary to explicit California court rules … the defendants had no notice or opportunity to defend their rights.”
Opinions about the usefulness of signs differ among pro-lifers. Some argue that images of aborted babies can be an effective way to educate women who are contemplating abortion. But graphic images can also serve as a barrier between protesters and the women they are trying to help.
But Sylvia Sullivan argues that the San Diego case presents a different case. With the way the clinic is situated, the only way protesters can communicate their message is by carrying signs for the clients to see as they drive by. Reducing the size of their signs, she said, effectively shuts their counseling work down.
“The clients and personnel think these signs are horrible,” Sullivan said. “We agree. We just think people should know what's going on in there.
“A few years ago people said, ‘Don't block the doors’; then they said, ‘Don't protest on street corners, go to the clinics’; now that's in jeopardy. Everyone who goes within 25 feet of the driveway or carries a sign larger than a sheet of notebook paper will be served with a restraining order and asked to leave.”
“This could be a very dangerous precedent if the court upholds this ruling,” Sullivan said, adding, “at this point, sidewalk counseling has been terminated.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian McGuire ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Adoration Can Open Locked Church Doors DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:MEMPHIS, Tenn.—One pastor here remembers how it was when he was younger.
“We always felt that the church was God's house and people had the right to go into it any time of the day or night that they wished to speak with him,” he said.
Things are different today.
With recent news reports of crimes ranging from a missing ciborium in Miami to the murder of a Connecticut priest, he locks his church as soon as the last Mass ends and keeps it locked all night except for special 24-hour devotions.
“Church security is [now] a science,” said Matthew Kaminski, risk manager for the Archdiocese of Chicago. “If you follow an aggressive stance to prevent a problem, you typically come up with some good results.”
James Kerstoffersen, risk manager of Catholic Mutual Insurance of Omaha, spends much of his time schooling church officials on how best to protect their buildings from damage by accidents, as well as illegal intrusions.
“If a church is plagued by break-ins, the most effective method to reduce them is the installation of a security alarm system,” he told the Register.
Kerstoffersen said his company also recommends that parishes lock doors whenever the church is unoccupied.
The use of a church — having people present in the building — is the key to keeping churches open beyond the schedule of Masses.
Father Joseph Jacobberger, the rector of St. Mary's Cathedral, in Portland, Ore., lamented that he is not able to keep the principal church of the diocese open even during daylight hours because it is located in a high-crime area that includes significant drug traffic.
The priest explained his frustration: “For a long time I kept toying with the idea of how nice it would be to have the cathedral open all day, especially since that [is] the case in Seattle and San Francisco,” where steady streams of visitors discourage mischievous behavior.
“Crimes against businesses,” including churches, said Kerstoffersen, “are usually crimes of opportunity — the reduction of opportunities for crimes will prevent loss.”
Watching from the Loft
Several churches in the Diocese of Brooklyn, N.Y., remain open during daylight hours through a volunteer program in which parishioners take hour-long turns that they spend in prayer in the choir loft — watching over the church and near a specially installed phone that can be used in case of an emergency.
Programs of perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament provide a steady flow of visitors who, because of their constant presence, discourage would-be burglars and vandals. Some pastors are reluctant to consider adoration for fear that open access to the church will only invite crime and troublemaking.
Father Patrick Battiato introduced perpetual adoration at his parish with those issues in mind, and not just because his parish, Holy Family, is located in Security, Colo.
“I installed a thorough security system to make people feel safe,” said Father Battiato, who added that residents have since reported noticeably less crime and drug activity in the area.
In Detroit, spiritual benefits of adoration have been apparent in a depressed section of the city since perpetual adoration was initiated in 1995 at St. Maron's Maronite Catholic Church. “This has been a real discovery; it has changed this whole area of the city,” said the pastor, Msgr. Joseph Feghali. “Those who come to pray leave different people.”
Most of those interviewed by the Register reported that the rate of church break-ins has fallen in recent years.
John Scholl, director of insurance for the Diocese of Buffalo, N.Y., said he has seen a marked drop in diocesan insurance claims for damage and losses caused by intrusions.
“It is true that things have changed for the better,” Scholl said. “And this is because Church leaders today are getting professional help in how to guard against break-ins and how to handle them when they do come about.”
They may also be getting some help from lay people who make the effort to pay in their churches — during the night as well as the day.
“The people have a great desire to pray and we pastors have the responsibility to help them,” said Msgr. Frank Bognano, a pastor in the Diocese of Des Moines, Iowa, and an advocate of perpetual adoration.
“It falls to us, their pastors, to open the doors of the churches and to trust the people to fulfill their deeply felt urge to pray, adore and be close to their Lord.”
Bob Holton writes from Memphis, Tennessee.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Robert R. Holton ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Anti-Catholic Preachers Set Up Pulpits on the Web DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:PEORIA, Ill.—The stream of writings proclaiming the errors and evils of Catholicism that began flowing on Oct. 31, 1517 — the day Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany — has in recent years splayed into an ever-expanding network of electronic tributaries.
The Internet's growth as a 24-hour, low-cost global forum for ideas has caught the attention of anti-Catholic groups and individuals, many of whom believe they have found the perfect medium for delivering the reasoning and rhetoric they hope will lead Catholics out of the Church.
Even a casual keyword search of the Web will turn up hundreds of sites promoting anti-Catholic messages. Many of them are linked to one another in Web rings; the “Bible Challenge for Catholics” ring, for example, lists 148 sites. (For pro-Catholic sites, good starting points are CatholiCity.com and www.envoymagazine.com/-frameset_links.html.)
Though anti-Catholic sites share the common goal of refuting the Catholic faith, they vary greatly in character and focus. For example, on the “Bible Challenge for Catholics” ring, a Protestant professor's scholarly critique of the 1995 document “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” is neighbor to the ramblings of a conspiracy theorist who claims the Vatican, Freemasonry and international Communism are joined in a plot to quell “Bible Christianity.”
Most of these sites, however, fall somewhere along a continuum between these two extremes. Ranging in scope and presentation from one-page, graphics-free tracts to professionally designed supersites, they tend to quote a lot of Scripture (and very little from Catholic teaching texts) and are burning with zeal to rescue souls from a “religious system” of “empty rituals that obscure the Gospel” of Jesus Christ.
‘Works of Darkness’?
“I do what I do because the Scriptures command me,” said Greg Loren Durand, a Mississippi author who has been practicing Biblical apologetics since 1986. Durand's Web sites contain sections dealing with subjects as diverse as Freemasonry and capital punishment, but it's clear the main focus of his attention is the Catholic faith — and demonstrating how his brand of Calvinism represents the true, historic Christianity that must oppose “heretical Rome.”
Asked via e-mail what motivates his efforts, Durand cited Ephesians 5:11 — “Take no part in the fruitless works of darkness; rather expose them.”
Presbyterians, Baptists, Adventists and nondenominational groups, plus pseudo-Christians such as the Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons often have no kinder words for each other than they do for Catholics.
“This is merely extreme Protestantism working itself out,” says Mark Brumley, managing editor of The Catholic Faith and Catholic Dossier magazines and himself a convert from evangelicalism. “Sola scriptura [the Reformation principle of doctrinal authority coming from ‘Scripture alone’], divorced from any binding ecclesiastical body, produces division.” Since active, vocal anti-Catholics tend to be the most vehement adherents to that principle, he said, “it makes sense that they would be divided among themselves.”
The chip-on-the-shoulder combativeness of the Free Grace Homepage can tempt one to dismiss it and many similar sites as the work of a fringe element. But this underestimates their impact.
22,000 ‘Hits’
Free Grace's home page, just one among hundreds, indicates more than 22,000 “hits,” or visits to the site since it first went up. The arguments they present frequently border on the absurd, yet they often contain enough Bible verses, historical references and appeals to logic to present the appearance of reasonableness.
Just as Internet pornography is now enticing individuals who would never enter an “adult” bookstore, Internet anti-Catholicism has the potential to dismay and confuse Catholics who have never picked up a tract at an airport or paid much heed to a door-to-door missionary.
The good news is, there is a flip side to all this.
“The Internet goes places that we physically are not able to go ourselves; if I write something evangelistic in nature, it may be seen by someone on the other side of the planet,” said James Akin, whose award-winning site, the Nazareth Resource Library (www.cin.org/users/james), provides essays on theology and apologetics as well as the “Nazareth Master Catechism,” a doctrinally cross-linked text of five historical Catholic catechisms.
“Knocking on doors is not as effective as it was 100 years ago,” added Akin, a staff apologist at San Diego-based Catholic Answers. “But the Internet goes into people's homes. They will read something off a Web page that they wouldn't listen to if you came to their door.”
The digital medium not only provides a means of publishing information on a global scale, but it also makes personal contact and debate possible — via e-mail and bulletin boards and in “real time” chat rooms.
“Cyberspace has given Catholics and anti-Catholics a greater opportunity to network amongst themselves and discuss the arguments put forth from both sides,” said David Keene, who runs the Catholic Apologetics Network site (members.xoom.com/dkeene/).
“It is crucial to the Church's mission to preach the Gospel to the whole world,” Keene observed. “Where else can you talk to so many people from so many lands?”
Todd M. Aglialoro writes from Peoria, Illinois.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Todd M. Aglialoro ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: They Dared Him to Write DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:He is founder and director of the Mary Foundation, which sends Catholic audiotapes throughout the country, and CatholiCity.com Internet sites, specializing in interactive communications, chat rooms and e-mail discussion groups. More than 500,000 copies of his three novels are in print: Pierced by a Sword, Conceived Without Sin, and House of Gold. He spoke recently with Register correspondent Tim Drake.
Drake: Tell us how your first novel,
MacFarlane: The first novel started on a dare from my wife. A friend of mine was writing a novel and called me for advice on Marian apparitions, the end times, that kind of thing. In my hubris, I gave him writing advice for an hour. You know, “Your characters are too holy. You've got to make sure most of your protagonists are fallen-away Catholics, because that's what most Catholics are nowadays.”
After I got off the phone, I told my wife that my friend was lost. “You're a good writer. You should write that book,” she said. I wrote the first chapters that afternoon and evening, almost as a joke. My friends loved those first few chapters, and so we decided to go for it. It was also my wife's idea to see if we could give them away the same way we gave away audiotapes.
Have you always wanted to be a novelist?
I never wanted to be a novelist. I was surprised how easily it came to me. I love it. I've been an executive, a teacher, a cook, a salesman, even a UPS driver. It was the first kind of work that ever “wore out my brain.” My friends and family think it's ironic how the seemingly endless stream of so-called dead-end jobs I had after college turned out to be such great training for making up stories.
The most satisfying part is how effective novels turned out to be for evangelizing. They're almost stealthy. Fallen-away Catholics are open to reading novels, even if they won't crack open a nonfiction religious book or listen to a Catholic audiotape.
You've just published your third novel, House of Gold. What is it about?
House of Gold started with the image of a man falling and getting back up, falling down and getting back up, time and again. He was carrying a cross or a plow (it gets fuzzy here), but he wasn't Christ. The falling man turned out to be Buzz. The theme was simple: Perseverance is what saves souls. There is also a strong theme of God the Father's desire to make his children fertile, physically and spiritually, against all reason and odds. The story itself is about what happens to two Catholic families when a computer problem wipes out the world's infrastructure. There is a lot of suffering and a lot of death in the story. It's the most gritty and gripping writing I've ever done.
What has been the reaction to your novels? How have your novels touched readers?
I receive and answer over 10,000 letters and e-mails every year, most from readers, and the vast majority are very positive, though a small number of readers find them a bit too earthy. Because the characters in my stories face modern problems, much of the subject matter deals with divorce, adultery, depression, godlessness, etc. That kind of thing is unavoidable in a contemporary Catholic plot. But the same can be said for subject matter such as redemption, conversion and grace.
The biggest thrill I can get as a Catholic writer is to hear a reader tell me that they've started praying the rosary, or returned to confession, or even, stopped using the pill. This last happens quite often. It seems like I get a letter every week with a picture of a baby born in no small part due to his parents' change of behavior regarding the Church's beautiful teaching on openness to life. Other readers, some in second and third marriages, are inspired to seek annulments because they want to receive the sacraments again. Many readers tell me that for the first time, they feel like it's “normal” to be a practicing Catholic.
There is a supernatural dynamic to these conversions that goes well beyond any particular skill I have as a writer. Before I start a novel, I send a letter to over 1,400 priests, nuns, deacons and brothers asking them to inter-cede for me and for all who will read the novel. I attribute many of the conversions inspired by my novels to the graces merited by these prayers, and by the prayers of the readers' relatives, with some of these relatives doubtlessly part of the Church Triumphant in heaven. Logic can change a mind, but only grace can change a heart.
You send audiotapes out as well, don't you, in the Mary Foundation?
Both the Mary Foundation and my novels were unplanned; they were accidents. Soon after we were married, my wife (who is also a Notre Dame grad with a degree in engineering) volunteered us to organize a weekend family conference in Cleveland.
As an afterthought, we decided at the last minute to give away free copies of an audiotape of one of my dad's lectures, despite my dad's warning that he didn't want publicity. It was going to be a one-time thing, but we had tapes left over, and so we told people to write to us. Well, there were some immediate and spectacular conversions from the tapes, and people wrote to us for more, sometimes enclosing donations. Protestants became Catholics. Fallen-away Catholics reverted. It was and remains very exciting.
We made more tapes. Within a year or two, we were giving away hundreds of thousands of tapes and I reluctantly quit my secular job as a national marketing director because our little “home” apostolate was exploding in growth. My wife has always been responsible for the bulk of the computer programming, purchasing and shipping systems design.
She's the brains; I'm the figure-head. She hacks and I yack. The real work, however, is done by tens of thousands of Mary Foundation lay distributors who literally hand the tapes out to family and friends as tools for evangelization.
We rarely advertise. Most people “discover” us when somebody hands them a tape or a book. We continue to offer all the tapes free of charge, and we don't send out fund-raising letters. Our models for this particularly Franciscan way of doing things are St. Maximilian Kolbe and Mother Teresa. Not fund raising forces us to be the most efficient apostolate in the country, and to rely on God, not our cleverness, for our funding.
What are the aims of the Mary Foundation?
The Mary Foundation's primary mission is simple: to spread total consecration to Immaculate Mary to as many people worldwide by distributing free information as quickly as possible. It's pretty much cribbed directly from St. Maximilian Kolbe and his work as the founder of the Militia Immaculata. He believed that total consecration was the essential tool for converting every soul in the world to Catholicism.
That's my goal in life: to help convert everybody in the world to Catholicism. Before you laugh, think about it, and you'll realize that this is the only goal in life for any Catholic. Of course, taking stock of my own faults, sinfulness, and lack of worldly influence, it only makes sense that such an organization would recruit others to help. That is the essence of the mystical body of Christ. We all have a role to play.
So we provide tools for evangelization to enable others to do the work. We ask our distributors to pray every day for all who will read and hear our materials. This is why the materials have to be affordable, even free. So everybody can take part, not just the well-off. It always struck me as tragic that those Catholics most willing to evangelize are those who can't afford the materials: one-income families, often home-schoolers, who can't rub two dimes together, much less buy 50 $10 tapes or 25 $15 books to give to their friends.
Ten years ago, this system sounded even crazier, and we spent a lot of time explaining our free materials/no fund-raising efforts, but the people who needed the tapes and books caught on quickly. Many Catholic materials, serving a glaring need in our postmodern pagan society, are primarily designed to catechize.
With our emphasis on technology, it was only natural for us to jump headlong into the Internet before most people had e-mail. Again, we concentrate on providing those services which have the deepest impact on conversion, on the fallen away, the searching soul.
The human contact that chat rooms and e-mail discussion groups offer does this. We're now branching out into conferences, and soon, trying our first ever “spinoff” — again, copying the secular media model, used mostly in television — that is, helping a new apostolate for Catholic men called the Joseph Foundation [www.catholic-men.com] get up and running. It will be independent of the Mary Foundation, run by a very experienced businessman and now full-time Catholic missionary, Jim Prusa.
What are your future hopes for the Mary Foundation and for your writing?
Honestly, I'm not sure. I'm never sure. Our Lady could decide to shut us down tomorrow, and I would be happy with that. If not, I would hope that some day soon, every practicing Catholic in the United States, Canada, England, Ireland and Australia was distributing our books and tapes to those who don't practice. Then we'll work on non-English speaking countries. We'll work on our Protestant brothers and sisters to bring them back to the fold. When everybody's Catholic, the project is complete.
As for my writing, I would like to adjust things so I can write at least one adult novel per year until I die. I'm only 37, and I feel that I know less about how to write a good novel than when I started. I've got a lot to learn. In a perfect world, I would also write young-adult fiction, children's books, and books for toddlers. With guidance from my spiritual director,
I've come to terms with the fact that writing is my calling in life, besides being a husband and father, so I might as well go for it. Unlike my friends, who wanted to be engineers or businessmen or carpenters, I never had any ambition to be anything besides a dad, so this is all new to me. I'm sure I'll write a couple of stinkers along the way, but I'm also sure I could write, with God's grace, another couple dozen novels before it's all said and done. Every line in the New Testament is a novel in embryo, so there's no lack of good material.
Tim Drake writes from St. Cloud, Minnesota.
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Readers can obtain a free copy of any of Bud MacFarlane Jr.'s novels by visiting www.CatholiCity.com
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Bud MacFarlane Jr. ----- KEYWORD: Inperson -------- TITLE: Churches Credited with Stopping Alabama Lottery DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:BIRMINGHAM, Ala.—Dixie has taken a two-step away from the games of chance.
Alabama voters on Oct. 12 rejected a lottery by a 54% to 46% vote. Two days later, the South Carolina Supreme Court effectively abolished all video poker, starting July 1, 2000.
Bill Thompson, a professor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas and a gaming expert, told ABC News, “This is the biggest anti-gambling week in American history. This is something the anti-gambling people can really celebrate. It's their biggest victory.”
Ministers Lead Charge
In late August, Alabama appeared ready to accept a state-run lottery. Polls showed a 20-point advantage in favor of the lottery. Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman waged a campaign stressing how proceeds from the lottery would go toward education scholarships.
But religious leaders pointed out that there was more to the issue than reaping new funds. Many pastors told church members that the lottery was wrong and would shatter families.
Republican Lt. Gov. Steve Windom said, “The ministers have made this happen — encouraging their congregrations to come together and vote against the lottery.”
The Rev. Joe Bob Mizzell said that no issue better united so many ministers from different denominations.
“Even the abortion issue — the sanctity of human life — has not come as close to bringing denominations together,” Mizzell said.
“We saw the conservative evangelicals and the black churches really unite,” said Michael Bowman, director of state and local issues for the Family Research Council.
He told the Register that “liberals are against it because the lottery steals from the poor and gives to the rich, and conservatives are against it because they think it is immoral.”
While Catholics and Jews did no play a strong public role in the debate, “a majority of them voted against it,” said Father Russell Biven, pastor of Our Savior Church in Mobile.
Supporters of the lottery emphasized that when Alabama citizens purchased lottery tickets in neighboring states like Georgia they are contributing to scholarships for Georgia students. Why not keep that money in Alabama for Alabama students? they asked.
In the end, voters were more convinced that the lottery would hurt children more than it would help them.
“The lottery is harmful to children,” said Bowman, citing a study released by the American Academy of Pedriatics that show 5% of adolescents have gambling addictions. When parents become addicted, families are often shattered.
Video Deluge in South Carolina
More than 34,000 video poker machines are scattered throughout South Carolina — twice as many as in any other state, including Nevada. But this industry has lost favor in the court of public opinion.
The neon flashes of the omnipresent machines became a sign of decline to many. Other signs were a rise in crime and a perception that more people were becoming addicted to gambling.
The case of a 10-day-old baby who died in a sweltering car as her mother was dropping coins in a slot machine seemed to epitomize the situation for some.
The National Gambling Impact Study Commission early this year issued the first major national study on gambling in 20 years. It demonstrated that gaming produces little economic benefit and comes with large social costs. “They basically said it's a parasitic industry,” Bowman said.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “Games of chance (card games, etc.) or wagers are not in themselves contrary to justice. They become morally unacceptable when they deprive someone of what is necessary to provide for his needs and those of others” (No. 2413).
Polls in South Carolina showed 61% in favor of banning the games. The Legislature approved a ballot initiative in which the voters would decide the fate of legalized poker.
But before residents could vote in the November election, the South Carolina Supreme Court declared the referendum an unconstitutional delegation of lawmaking by the Legislature.
Because of the wording of the original bill that called for the referendum, the court's action effectively bans the game as of July 1 unless the Legislature decides to re-legalize video poker. “No lawmaker will want to take up this issue in an election year,” said Bowman.
Reversal of Trend
The recent rejections of gambling marked a change for the South. For more than 10 years, Democrats have clung to a pro-gambling position to slow the region's drift into the Republican column.
Democratic consultant James Carville used the lottery to get Wallace Wilkinson elected governor of Kentucky in 1987. Zell Miller successfully copied the tactic three years later in Georgia. Democratic challengers in South Carolina and Alabama unseated Republican governors on pro-lottery planks in 1998.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Josh Mercer ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Cardinal Maida: European Church Needs American Vitality DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—The Catholic Church in the United States has developed a credibility and vitality that is absent in the European Church, according to Cardinal Adam Maida of Detroit.
In a break from the European Synod, Cardinal Maida told Register Radio News that in Europe “culture can be an awful lot of baggage that gets in the way of clear dialogue between people.” On the other hand, he said, “In America we are rather young as a country. … We haven't developed the animosities, the deep histories and the cultural differences that exist in Europe.”
Cardinal Maida said U.S. Catholics, less burdened with history, are inclined to take a more optimistic approach when facing challenges.
“In the competitive mode, you've got to exist, so we're prepared to do what it takes to be sure we're not going to be lost in the dialogue,” he said.
“It's a matter of survival,” he added.
During his address to the synod Oct. 9, Cardinal Maida praised new Church movements as particularly suited to pluralistic societies like the United States.
“Increasingly we find that the answer to the question about the place of our Catholic faith in a pluralistic society lies in small faith communities of various kinds — charismatic renewal groups, Cursillo, Scripture-sharing groups, the Neocatechumenate, etc.,” he said.
Cardinal Maida said the movements' ability to translate beliefs into action was a powerful force for social renewal.
“Through these groups, people of all faith backgrounds can hear the Good News with its ever-fresh vitality,” he said.
Several bishops at the synod have pointed to new movements as a way for the Church to better dialogue with society.
“These movements have our attention for the moment because they are young, they're fresh, and they're creative,” Cardinal Maida said. “To the extent that they're guided by the Holy
Spirit, they have a great future.”
But bishops must be “discerning, patient and prudent” when new movements find expression that is at odds with traditional Church models like the parish, he said.
The final test of the movements is along Gospel lines, he said.
“The fundamental message is Jesus Christ,” Cardinal Maida said. “We've got to lift him up in a way that challenges society and invites our people to celebrate the Lord, because the core of our strength is the Lord.
“How we dissect it, how we work with it, with what movements — it should all be focused on building up the reign of Christ.”
He told Register Radio News that his respect for the movements was not automatic.
“In my own archdiocese and in my own life as a priest, the charismatic movement was an example,” he said. “At first I wondered where all of this was coming from, but as it has endured and as it has touched the hearts of so many people and made such a difference, I have to see this as God's work.”
He said the Church, through its parishes and movements, should be a “servant” to the community at large, “washing the feet” of those it would evangelize, rather than following an authoritarian model.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Rich Rinaldi ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: U.S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:Pilgrimage of Reparation Draws Youth
NATIONAL COALITION OF CLERGY AND LAITY, Oct. 11—The fourth annual “Pilgrimage for Restoration” drew about 1,000 Catholics from across the United States and Canada to the Shrine of Our Lady of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville, central New York State, From Wednesday, Sept. 7-11, a statement issued by the Coalition reported.
Nearly 500 pilgrims walked seven miles from the Shrine of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha in Fonda, N.Y., along the banks of the Mohawk River to Auriesville on the final day on Sept. 11. They were joined by pilgrims who had been on a 68-mile pilgrimage from the shores of the Lake of the Blessed Sacrament (Lake George) since the previous Wednesday. Sixty people participated in the longer pilgrimage, the second annual, to commemorate the 353rd anniversary of the martyrdom of Saint Isaac Jogues, apostle to the Hurons.
According to organizers, about half of the pilgrims who participated all four days were under 25 years of age. “The general intention of the annual event is the advancement of a genuine Catholic Restoration. The theme of this year's pilgrimage — conducted in the year of God the Father — was Restoration of true devotion to Mary: Daughter of God the Father,” a statement issued by the Coalition said.
The Only Acceptable Bigotry
“Dogma, the religious satire by writer-director Kevin Smith scheduled to open next month, has inspired a predictable wave of protest from defenders of the faith. William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, already has published newspaper advertisements condemning the film's newspaper advertisements condemning the film's ‘Catholic bashing'under the not unreasonable suspicion that comedy featuring George Carlin as a cardinal and Alanis Morissette as God will never share a double bill with The Bells of St. Mary's,” Doherty wrote, adding, “Yet whether the sins committed by Dogma turn out to be moral or merely venial, the battle between Smith and Donohue highlights the once happy, now hostile relationship between Catholicism and Hollywood. Not so long ago, the church and the studio system enjoyed a warmly symbiotic association.
Doherty went on to note the difference between the Hollywood of yesterday and the Hollywood of today, where clerics are treated as foolish at best or perverse at worst. “Today, for at least some filmmakers, Catholicism is less a religion that a ready-made sound stage for horror-films and conspiracy thrillers, a creepy cult devoted to blood-soaked rituals, child sexual abuse and the greatest perversion of all in contemporary American culture, celibacy. A clerical collar, once the sign of protection and reassurance, is now more likely the mark of the scoundrel.
“It is difficult to imagine another religion whose iconography, rituals and priesthood could be so casually demonized on screen. If Hollywood routinely portrayed African American Ministers as lustful con artists or Orthodox rabbis as sordid agents of Israel, editorial pages across the nation would launch cruise missiles at the offenders,” Doherty said.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: From Selected Source ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Chips for the Poor and Priests of Las Vegas DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:LAS VEGAS—If you are in Las Vegas and need to speak with a priest, just hang around any casino cage where the players cash in their winning chips. There, a few times a week, a priest will invariably appear in black suit and clerical collar. He will be holding a bag or a box in which gamblers have deposited chips, the coin of the local realm, worth anywhere from $1 to $1,000.
“The priest at the casino cage — It's legendary in Las Vegas,” said Keith Copher, chief enforcement officer for the Nevada Gaming Control Board.
Despite all appearances, the priests aren't compulsive gamblers, nor are they likely to be on a God-given run of luck at the craps table. Rather, they are usually there to cash in what was left in the collection basket and poor box at Guardian Angel Cathedral or one of the city's other churches.
Like everything else in Las Vegas, the city's religious community benefits indirectly from the gaming industry for much of its cash flow. Because most who attend the cathedral are visitors, envelope donations and parishioner tithing are rare. The donated gambling chips, however, amount to substantial support.
“Recently, someone left three $1,000 tokens in the offering plate,” said the cathedral's rector, Father James F. Crilly. “Sometimes I personally go around to cash them in, and sometimes it is one of the other priests. We get to know most of the people working in the casino cages, and they get to know us.”
Father Crilly said the donations of gaming chips has become a touchy subject with casino management and the Nevada Gaming Commission. “In just the past year, it has become a very controversial issue,” he said.
For years, a sign inside the cathedral explained how gaming chips may be left in the offering plate. Recently, the sign was taken down and there's no official mention of the practice.
“It is against federal law to spend gaming chips anywhere outside of the casino that issued them,” said the Gaming Control Board's Copher. “Basically, if you use a chip for anything outside of the casino — even as a donation to a church — then it's being used as a form of alternative currency that competes with the federal dollar. The Federal Reserve takes that very seriously.”
The issue was raised when a famous Las Vegas casino, Binion's Horseshoe, suspected that counterfeit chips were in circulation.
“It's typical for regular poker players to just hold on to their chips, and then bring them back into the casino the next time they play,” Copher said. “While the counterfeit investigation was under way, Binion's stopped cashing chips of $500 or more,” from anyone who had not spent time at the casino's tables.
One man, desperate for cash, was turned away when he tried to exchange a few $1,000 poker chips. So he asked a Protestant minister who was sporting a white collar to cash in the chips for him. It didn't work.
“That's when contributions of gaming chips suddenly became [an] issue,” said Father Crilly, who added that he doesn't expect to be visited by the G-men or see the cathedral staked out by Treasury agents even though the practice of contributing chips continues as before.
“We now try to keep a low profile. We don't do anything to solicit it,” said the priest. That's more than enough for Copher and the Gaming Board. “The churches have been very good recently about not encouraging this practice,” he said. “And that's really all we can ask. We're not going to start arresting priests at the gaming cage because someone dropped some chips into the plate. It wouldn't be worth our time.”
Ministry to the Casino-Goers
The cathedral, built in 1963, sits right on the Las Vegas strip. It is dwarfed on all sides by massive casino hotels and their bright, flashing lights. It draws about 200 Catholics to each daily Mass, and visitors line up outside three confessionals before each service.
“Confession is the most important ministry we offer here,” said Father Crilly. He suspects the cathedral staff hears more confessions than nearly any Catholic church in the United States.
“People like to confess here because they are visiting,” and are not known to the local priests, said Father Crilly. “Often they will tell me they are embarrassed to confess at home, because they know the priest. Every now and then I will hear something startling, like someone being with a prostitute, but that's not the bulk of it.”
People also like to get married in Vegas and Catholics are no different, said Father Crilly. “I just recently did a wedding for a couple from Kenya, and they flew their entire family here,” the priest reported. “Another couple recently came here from Ireland, along with 150 guests.”
Father Crilly said he requires a letter from the couple's pastor before performing a marriage. “I get Catholics in here who think we can just operate like the commercial wedding chapels,” he added. “I have to explain to them we are not in that business, and that they have to go through the full process, even though this is Las Vegas.”
Wayne Laugesen writes from Boulder, Colorado.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Wayne Laugesen ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Cardinal George Focuses On 'New' in Evangelization DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:CHICAGO—Pope John Paul II recognizes that past methods of evangelizing will not suffice in the high-tech world of the third millennium, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago told Register Radio News in an interview Oct. 15.
The comments echoed remarks he made Oct. 11 at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind.
“Our Holy Father called us to a new evangelization because you have a new phenomenon,” he told Register Radio News.
He said Pope John Paul II has called for a new evangelization because old ways of evangelization no longer suffice. Those included missions to territories where people never heard the Gospel.
Today, the archbishop said, “Entire peoples and cultures that once were faithful to Christ are no longer in the Church. That demands a new evangelization because it's a new phenomenon. Our Holy Father says it must be new in its methods and new in its imagination.”
Four days earlier he had told conferees at Notre Dame: “Many of these peoples have simply given up on the faith itself. The Gospel is not news, and it's not good. We have to go in and find again a new form of expression.”
His talk was part of a three-day conference organized by the university's theology department to consider ways to implement the Pope's apostolic exhortation, Ecclesia In America (The Church in America).
More than 60 bishops, theologians, students and other interested people from across the Western Hemisphere attended.
Saying “human solidarity is possible,” Cardinal George noted that an Apollo 8 photograph of Earth from space shows no political or cultural divisions but only a beautiful array of continents.
Cardinal George stressed the need for entire cultures to be reached with the message of the Gospel.
“We are all converted by Jesus Christ,” he told Register Radio News, “but we live in groups called cultures. … If a culture is compatible with the Gospel … our own personal conversion is easier. If it's very much opposed to the Gospel, then you have to evangelize the culture.”
He also stressed the importance of updating methods of evangelization.
“I think the Holy Father is calling continentwide synods before the year 2000 precisely to ask how are we to evangelize, what is the mission of the church that Jesus gave us 2000 years ago now to be implemented in a genuinely global society,” he said.
Pope John Paul convened the Synod of Bishops from America at the Vatican in late 1997. His post-synodal apostolic exhortation was issued in January. European bishops are holding their synod throughout October.
Cardinal George said this new evangelization will require a new vocabulary — just as it did for St. Paul in the Acts of the Apostles.
“The merchants in the Areopagus in Athens didn't understand what he was talking about when he spoke of the resurrection from the dead,” said the cardinal, so Paul used their own religious language for his purposes, making a reference to their shrine to an “unknown God.”
Today's Catholics should also use a “new vocabulary,” to attract people “out of the entrapment of their own sinfulness and their own experience into the freedom that Jesus offers his people,” the archbishop said. “Sometimes when we preach the Gospel it doesn't sound like we are offering people freedom.”
John Cavadini, chairman of the theology department at Notre Dame, told the Catholic News Service that he hoped the gathering would produce concrete ways to implement the Pope's vision for the American hemisphere.
“It is kind of unusual to have this kind of meeting of bishops and theologians and other interested persons to have a kind of colloquy like this — to take the papal document as the visionary document it is and see if we can have it inspire our imagination,” Cavadini said.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Rich Rinaldi ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Defending Pius XII, Vatican Goes On the Offensive DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—Taking the offensive, the Vatican has sharply rejected charges that Pope Pius XII ignored the plight of the Jews during World War II because he was antiSemitic and supported Nazi Germany as a bulwark against the Soviet Union and communism.
Jesuit Father Pierre Blet, the Vatican's leading historian of the period, said the documents on which British journalist John Cornwell based the charges in his controversial new book “are certainly authentic.
“But, the conclusions that he drew from them are laughable as history. You can see that the author is not a historian.”
Father Blet spoke at a Vatican news conference called to present Pius XII and the Second World War According to the Archives of the Vatican, his one-volume summary of a 12-volume study published between 1965 and 1981.
Although the book, published originally in France in 1997, was not issued in direct response to Cornwell, it served as evidence for the Vatican's defense of the Pope.
Cornwell cites two letters as proof of Pius XII's anti-Semitism. One recommends the Vatican reject a request for palms to be used in a Jewish religious service and the other describes a Bolshevik revolutionary as “a Jew, pale, dirty with vacant eyes, hoarse voice, vulgar, repulsive, with a face that is both intelligent and sly.”
Father Blet and Cardinal Pio Laghi, former papal nuncio in Washington, said both letters must be viewed in the context of their time, long before the Second Vatican Council opened the way to dialogue between Catholics and Jews.
Nothing New
Father Blet noted that, although Pius XII signed the second letter, he did not write it. Cornwell described the letter as having lain in the Vatican archive “like a time bomb until now”; in fact, the letter was known and published in a 1992 study of Vatican-German diplomacy.
Asked point-blank if the Pope was anti-Semitic, Father Blet replied: “He certainly was not. He helped the Jews.”
Was Pius XII, who had served as papal nuncio to Germany, a Nazi sympathizer?
“You must not confuse philo-Nazism with sympathy for the German regime. There is no doubt that Pius XII liked Germans, but saying he was a Nazi sympathizer is something else.”
A native of France, Father Blet is the only surviving member of a team of four Jesuit historians named by Pope Paul VI in 1964 to sort through and publish documents stored in hundreds of cartons in the Vatican archives.
Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli was elected pope March 2, 1939, taking the name Pius XII.
Father Blet argued that, as pope, Pius XII “had limited means at his disposal” but sought, through his own representative in Berlin and through Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, to persuade Hitler not to attack Poland.
The Pope then joined forces with President Franklin D. Roosevelt in another fruitless attempt to dissuade Mussolini from joining forces with Hitler, Father Blet said.
Later, he said, Pius XII agreed to Roosevelt's request that the Vatican convince U.S. Catholics the Church's opposition to communism should “not impede coming to the aid of Soviet Russia in war with Germany.” The Pope's cooperation on this point flies in the face of Cornwell's theory that Pius XII was obsessed by communism.
Pius XII used guarded terms to speak about Nazi persecution of the Jews in his 1942 Christmas message, referring to “people destined to die only because of their ancestry.” In a speech to the cardinals on June 2, 1943, he said some groups were “destined, even without fault on their part, to the threat of extermination.”
Prudence
But Father Blet said the Pope chose to comply with the pleas of German and Polish bishops for “prudence” for fear of Nazi reprisals against Catholics as well as Jews.
“Every word I say which is addressed to authorities has to be seriously thought out and measured in the interest of those very people who are suffering so as not to involuntarily make their situation even graver,” the Pope told the cardinals in his 1943 speech.
In addition, Father Blet said, there was no evidence to prove the existence of “the gas chambers of which there were whispers” in 1943. “You have to distinguish between the general persecution of the Jews, which was known, and the extermination plan. There was no proof of this.”
The Pope's silence, however, “covered secret action through [Vatican diplomats and local bishops] to try to impede the deportations.
“The results of this action appear in the requests for new interventions and the testimony of gratitude toward Pius XII from associations and some of the leading Jewish personalities during the conflict and after the war ended.”
Father Blet noted Israeli historian Pinchas Lapide estimated that Pius XII's actions saved the lives of 850,000 Jews.
Further Vatican objections to the Cornwell book were published in an unsigned article in the Oct. 12 edition of the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano. The lack of a signature implies that the piece represents the thinking at the highest levels of the Vatican.
The article noted that Cornwell has no academic degree in history, law or theology, all of which figure largely in his book.
The First?
Cornwell said he was the first researcher to be granted access to the archive of the Secretariat of State. The Vatican said this was “completely false,” and that numerous scholars have seen documents from the archive. It said Cornwell had consulted only two series of documents regarding Bavaria and Austria between 1913 and 1921; documents from 1922 onward remain closed to the public, the Vatican said.
Cornwell wrote that he worked in the archives “for months on end,” but the Vatican said he was there only for a three-week period in 1997, often for very brief visits.
Cardinal Laghi acknowledged the existence of unoffiial pressure on the Vatican from the Israeli Embassy to suspend Pope Pacelli's cause for beatification.
Meanwhile, ZENIT, the Rome-based wire service, reported that Pius XII's cause for beatification has not been postponed due to ongoing criticism of the late pope by Jewish groups. Historian Peter Gumpel, relator of the cause, said: “I am authorized to state that [any talk of postponement] has no foundation.
“The cause for beatification of Pius XII is proceeding normally and rapidly.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Vatican -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:Turkish Bishop Troubled by Muslim Expansion
According to the Times, Giuseppe Germano Bernardini, archbishop of Izmir, characterized the spread of Islam as “a growing challenge to Christianity on its home ground” and “a campaign of expansion and conquest.”
“‘The domination has already started … [Government money] is being used not to create jobs in poor countries in North Africa and the Middle East, but to build mosques and cultural centers in Christian countries … including Rome, the center of Christianity. Who cannot see in this a clear program of expansion and re-conquest?” Cardinal Bernardini is reported as saying.
The Nando Times saw noted a difference in tone between this and the Holy Father's statements about Islam. “The dire tone of his warning contrasted with repeated overtures to the Islamic world by Pope John Paul II, whose comments on Islam frequently stress the values it shares with Christianity,” the news daily said, adding, “The archbishop was one of several at the synod to express frustration in dealing with the Islamic world, however. Others in the weeklong session have spoken of the need for cooperation between Muslims and Christians.”
Pope's Visit Fuels India's Fear of Conversions
Some political groups have organized protests in different places against the Church and its activities, The Hindu reported. These protests are ill advised, The Hindu article said, because they would serve only to “raise political and communal temperature in the country during the Pope's visit.
“We want to send a clear message to the Pope that during his visit here he must condemn religious conversions, for there are many ways to worship God.
The idea that only one way, the Christian way, is right goes against the very spirit of this country,” said Indian official Vishnu Hari Dalmia, in an interview with The Hindu, adding, “My party would welcome and greet the Pope with garlands if he were to clarify that he was against religious conversions and that he believed that there were different ways of worshipping God.”
The Hindu said that because Dalmia did not believe that such a condemnation would be forthcoming, he is getting his political ammunition against the Church ready. There is no indication so far that any steps have been taken to restrain the party represented by Dalmia, the VHP, The Hindu reported.
----- EXCERPT: From Selected Source ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Vatican -------- TITLE: Weigel's Adventures and Surprises As Biographer of the Holy Father DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:SEATTLE—George Weigel has provided readers of diocesan papers nationwide an inside look at the making of his biography of Pope John Paul II.
In a series of four syndicated weekly columns that ends Oct. 26, the Witness to Hope author tells the story of how he came to write a story that understands the “outsider” Polish Bishop of Rome from “inside.”
He also provides some color from the making of the biography. In the installment dated Oct. 26, he ends his series with “Adventures of a Papal Biographer,” adventures which include enduring Krakow without heat, getting locked out of the Vatican and involved in a scheme to wake the Swiss guards, and trying to flag down John Paul and his secretary in Cuba to get a ride after getting separated from travel companions.
Kay Lagreid, editor of The Catholic Northwest Progress, which originates the column, said in a statement, “The series is intended to help introduce readers of the Catholic press to four aspects of” the biography: “how it happened, what is different about it, what the surprises were and the author's adventures in writing the book.”
How It Happened
In the first column, released Oct. 5, Weigel told the story about how his conversations with papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls and the Pope led to his being chosen as biographer. He and the spokesman ticked off the qualifications of several candidates, including himself, he wrote.
“As I thought about a possible role in such a project, certain aspects of my own life began to seem less random,” he wrote. “I had been active at the intersection of Catholicism and public life for 20 years. I had studied philosophy and theology. I had written the first book proposing that John Paul had been the key figure in the collapse of European communism. I knew Poland fairly well, loved the Pope's ‘beloved Krakow,’ and had good contacts there. I had spent a fair amount of time in Rome, and thought I knew something about what worked — and didn't — in that singular environment. All of this, on reflection, seemed to point toward a certain resolution.”
He went on to describe the dinner conversation with Pope John Paul II, where the final decision was made.
The dinner also included Father Richard John Neuhaus, editor of First Things magazine.
“The conversation … was entirely natural, full of jokes and banter. In the course of it, the question of a full-scale papal biography, and me as the biographer, came up again. The Holy Father changed the subject, but while he was ruminating aloud on something else I could see that his mind was working on the previous questions. He then shifted conversational gears again and made it rather vigorously clear that, in his view, I should write his biography and the history of his pontificate.”
What's Different in the Book?
The second part of the series, said Lagreid, is meant to introduce readers to what is different about the book.
Weigel explains his intention to write about the Pope as a Christian disciple rather than as a statesman.
“One of the most moving examples of this in Witness to Hope is the previously untold story of the Pope's acting as a kind of confessor to the internationally revered Soviet dissident, Andrei Sakharov. I shall save that tale for the book, but I can mention here the run-up to their historic meeting, which was the Pope's prior conversation with Sakharov's wife, Elena Bonner, while Sakharov was in internal exile in Gorky.
“Elena Bonner was a very, very tough woman, a veteran human rights campaigner who had withstood intense physical and psychological pressures from the KGB. After two hours of conversation with the Pope, she came out of the meeting in tears, saying, ‘He's the most remarkable man I've ever met. He is all light. He is a source of light.’”
Surprises
In his Oct. 19 column, Weigel turned his attention to “surprises” in his book.
In addition to the unexpected way the Pope has kept up his friendships with acquaintances from his youth, “I was surprised,” he writes, “to learn the vast amount of time John Paul II has put into meeting with the world's bishops.”
During the pontificate of Paul VI, Weigel pointed out, a bishop on his quinquennial ad limina visit to Rome had a single, 15-minute encounter with the pope.
“John Paul quadrupled the number of encounters to four— a private meeting, a meal together; a concelebrated Mass; and, until 1995, a papal address to all the bishops making the ad limina from a given country or region. (Since 1995, the address has been delivered in written form to each bishop, as a kind of personal letter from the Pope.)”
He added, “The charge that John Paul is out of touch with the world's bishops is going to have to conjure a bit more with the empirical evidence … [he] has invested more time meeting with the world's bishops … than in meeting any other group of people.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Vatican -------- TITLE: Pope John Paul II: Through Love, God Offers Man AShare in His Divine Nature DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—God offers humans the ability to share in divinity by loving as he does, said Pope John Paul II.
“The ability to love as God loves is offered to every Christian as the fruit of the paschal mystery of death and resurrection,” the Pope told 16,000 pilgrims gathered under autumn sunshine in St. Peter's Square for the weekly general audience.
This type of love, called charity, is possible through a sharing in God's nature, or a “divinization,” brought about by the Holy Spirit, the Pope said Oct. 13.
Sounding hoarse but speaking in a strong voice, the Pope said charity “constitutes the essence of the new ‘commandment’ taught by Jesus.
“Charity animates Christian moral activity, orients and strengthens all the other virtues, which build in us the structure of the new man.”
In the Old Testament, the fundamental commandment to love God “with one's whole heart, whole soul and whole strength” began as a response due God's love for his people.
“Progressively, Israel understood that beyond this relationship of profound respect and exclusive adoration,” it had to move toward a more personal recognition of God as Father and even spouse.
“He awaits a true and proper response of love from the people he loves with a preferential love. He is a jealous God, who cannot tolerate idolatry, to which his people are continually tempted.
“Hence the commandment: ‘You shall have no other gods before me.’”
This love has two essential characteristics: Humans would have been unable to love in this way if God had not given them the power; and this love, “far from being reduced to a feeling, is expressed in walking God's paths, in observing his commands.”
Jesus Christ redefined the command to love God as the “greatest and first of all commandments,” and closely associated it with love of neighbor.
“In the person of Jesus himself, the meaning of this commandment assumes its fullness. In fact, the maximum intensity of man's love for God is realized in him.
“From now on, to love God with all my heart, all my soul and all my strength means to love this God who is revealed in Christ, and to love him with Christ's love, infused in us ‘through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.’”
Love for God, “is thus founded on Christ's mediation,” particularly shown in his death for us.
Christian charity finds its source in Christ's act of love.
The Church has defined charity as a “theological virtue, meaning a virtue which is referred directly to God and lets human creatures enter into the circuit” of love between the three persons of the Trinity.
“God the Father loves us as he loves Christ, seeing in us [Christ's] image.” This image is “painted in us, so to speak, by the Holy Spirit, like an iconographer.
“It is always the Holy Spirit who sketches within the intimacy of our person even the fundamental lines of the Christian response” to God's love.
“In this way, the dynamism of love for God springs” from a sharing in God's nature, which “divinizes us.”
John Paul concluded the audience by asking all to join in prayer to Our Lady of Fatima, to whom the Holy Father is especially devoted. Speaking on Oct. 13, he noted that it was the anniversary of our Lady's final apparition in the little Portuguese town in 1917.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Vatican -------- TITLE: European Bishops Look to Creativly Guide the Church DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—Christianity is the remedy for Europe's ills, but the Church must be united and creative in getting its message out, said members of the Synod of Bishops for Europe as they concluded a series of addresses that marked the synod's first week.
Part of the problem, said several bishops during the first week of the Oct. 1-23 synod, is that Church members seem too sad and defeatist to be effective witnesses of Christian hope. Synod members began meeting in small groups Oct. 12 to discuss ways to improve Church teaching and preaching, liturgy, and charitable activity.
Violence and lingering hatred in the Balkans, strained ecumenical relations, “the crisis of authority” in the Church, the declining number of vocations to religious life, and the crisis of the family were cited as problems calling for immediate action.
Other bishops focused on signs of hope for the Church in Europe, including the growth of lay movements, growing interest in spirituality, the flourishing of faith and of vocations in Eastern Europe, and the power of the Gospel message.
Belgian Cardinal Godfried Danneels of Mechelen-Brussels told the synod, “In Western Europe, we live in a culture as vast as a garden, where poisonous plants grow: the unchecked desire of consumerism, hedonism, pride.
“But every poisonous plant contains its antidote.”
A Spanish cardinal told the synod Oct. 11, “The renewal of Christian life in its proper sources — faith in the Word of God, celebration of the sacraments and the service of charity — will bring the divine and human hope which Europe needs.”
In his formal presentation to the participants, Cardinal Antonio Rouco Varela of Madrid reviewed the content of the 188 speeches delivered Oct. 1-9 and outlined questions for the small groups to discuss.
According to a one-page summary published by the Vatican, Cardinal Rouco said four points came up repeatedly in the speeches:
1. “The urgency for our churches to proclaim and clearly make known Jesus Christ, his personal presence and work, the source of hope which Europe needs.
2. “The need to propose and formulate the new evangelization of Europe as a lived and visible experience of Jesus Christ, who is alive in his Church.”
3. The need “to carry out an ecclesial examination of conscience,” looking at what is happening within the Church and in European society.
4. The need to find the strength for conversion and for the new evangelization of Europe in the Holy Year 2000.
The summary, said the cardinal's report, “tackles the examination of conscience by describing the most outstanding features of human reality in Europe today and of the situation of the Church in Europe.”
“Various problematic situations in the life of the Church are presented and, at the same time, this reality is seen as an appeal which the Holy Spirit launches to the Church in our time,” the summary said.
Polish Archbishop Jozef Zycinski of Lublin, speaking at an Oct. 11 press conference, said the synod is working out of “a vision of the Church in dialogue with the world.”
“This does not exclude what is pessimistic and painful,” he said, but it also means maintaining hope and looking for what is good in modern society.
“It is our duty to be open to Europe, to accept its positive values and to bring our values to Europe,” the archbishop said.
Cardinal Paul Poupard, the Synod's president delegate, evaluated the synod's progress for Vatican Radio. He emphasized that the proceedings can be summarized by its theme: “Jesus Christ in the Church: The Hope for Europe.”
Cardinal Poupard, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said: “From East to West there [are] people who insist on [merely] describing the situation. It was obvious — we needed to know more about the experience lived in the different churches. But we have also projected ourselves into the future, and we have now arrived at the key moment” when practical solutions must be proposed.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: After Plea for Pardon, Orthodox Bishop Is Embraced by Synod DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—In one of the more emotional and moving moments of the European synod, a Romanian Orthodox bishop apologized for his church's complicity in the repression of the Eastern Catholic Church in Romania.
Archbishop Iosif, the Romanian patriarchate's representative at the synod, asked forgiveness for “the evil endured” by Eastern Catholics whom the communist government tried to forcibly unite with the Orthodox in the mid-1940s.
The Christian churches of Europe must forgive each other for the hurts of the past and unite for the good of the continent, the archbishop told the synod Oct. 9.
The orthodox prelate was greeted with sustained applause — the longest ovation given anyone during the synod to date.
Turning to the future, Archbishop Iosif said, “the greatest sign of love for today's men and women, for Europe and for the world would be to rediscover the unity of the church.”
The archbishop, who ministers to Romanian Orthodox in Western and Southern Europe, said Christian unity would be a powerful incentive for people's conversion “toward a true and authentic unity which overcomes cultural, linguistic and all other differences.
“For this, we all need to mutually forgive each other, to climb up the cross of forgiveness so that with our own experience we catch sight of the kind of hope whose source is the Lord,” the archbishop said.
Irina Ilovaisky Giorgi Alberti, the Catholic editor of a France-based journal on Russian affairs, said Russian Christians “know that we need unity in the Eucharist to be truly Christian.
“The evangelization of Russia is a task whose difficulty far surpasses what one could imagine.” Churchgoing Christians in Russia account for only about 3% of the population.
“The Russian Orthodox Church did not expect the fall of communism and was not ready to respond to the questions and the needs facing it,” said Alberti.
The Orthodox Church “still is not ready and … is prey to the terrible temptation, especially in its upper echelons, of letting itself be used as an ideology to replace Marxism-Leninism, leading [the Orthodox Church] to isolation from and, perhaps, hostility [to] the Western Christian world,” she told the synod.
Alberti said some Orthodox refuse to pursue real efforts at Christian unity, claiming that Catholics and other Christians are proselytizing among the Orthodox, a violation of ecumenical principles.
“I can testify that this does not exist,” she said.
“This rejection of unity is a matter of politics and not religion, the refusal to open the doors to brothers and sisters of the Christian West, and first of all to the Holy Father.”
In an address to the general assembly, Cardinal Edward Cassidy, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, called for greater attention to ecumenism.
He said many are convinced that separation weakens the common witness to the faith. “But the number of those who are still not convinced represents an obstacle to ultimate progress.”
Because of this, Cardinal Cassidy requested that “the dialogue of truth be accompanied everywhere by the dialogue of love.” Yet, the latter needs the former, “if it is to make a truly positive contribution to the quest for unity and not generate confusion.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:Guatamalan Priest Flees Country
CABLE NEWS NETWORK, Oct. 13—A Guatamalan priest whom prosecutors once accused of killing a prominent bishop and human rights crusader, fled the county on Oct. 12 after receiving anonymous telephone calls, the news network's online service reported.
Father Mario Orantes had been held by police as a suspect in the April 1998 murder of Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi, for whom the priest worked. He was later released for lack of evidence, the news network reported.
According to the report, Orantes flew to an undisclosed country early on Oct. 12, after receiving a number of calls over the past few weeks. His lawyer is reported saying, “They would call him up and then hang up. He decided abruptly to leave the country for security and health reasons.”
In the CNN version of the story, Orantes, who was Gerardi's aid, found the bishop's body in the rectory where the two priests lived. “He was [then] arrested in a sensational July 1998 police raid involving close to 100 heavily armed officers,” it said.
Orantes' lawyer said his client was free to travel because all charges against him had been dropped, the report said, adding, “Human rights groups and church officials accused the country's security forces or ordering Father Gerard's killing and of covering up the investigation. The military denies any involvement.”
----- EXCERPT: From Selected Sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Arthur Klyber, Apostle to the Jews, Dies at Age 99 DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:LIGUORI, Mo.—Father Arthur B. Klyber, a Jewish convert and longtime missionary to the Jews, died Oct. 10 at the Redemptorists' nursing home in Missouri. He was 99.
Father Klyber served as domestic missionary, pastor and novice master during his 67 years as a priest, but his favorite ministry was his Jewish apostolate. Even as a seminarian, he dreamed of bringing Christ to his people.
He also sought through articles, booklets and lectures to make Catholics understand and appreciate the Jewish roots of their faith, and to reject hostility toward Jews. He once estimated he had distributed more than 800,000 copies of his writings.
Father Klyber contributed to several Catholic publications, including the Register. He was a friend and occasional subject of longtime Register columnist Paul Hallett, who said that Father Klyber had “done more in the cause of winning Jews for Christ than probably anyone else in recent times.”
He was born in 1900 in New York's Lower East Side to a family of observant Orthodox Jews. He and his two brothers lived in a Jewish orphanage in Harlem after his father left home and his mother died. About 1914 he moved in with an Orthodox aunt and uncle in the Bronx.
Knew of Prejudice
“I know all about Christian prejudice against Jews,” Father Klyber said in a 1977 profile. “I remember as a boy walking across the street from a church where the Catholic boys used to hang out and being pelted with stones. They would yell, ‘You damn Jew, get outta here!’ But I was too young to know why they did it.”
He volunteered for the Navy just before the United States entered World War I. While stationed in Southern California, the future priest was attracted to the Catholic faith. He was baptized Feb. 8, 1920. For his confirmation name he took Bernard, after the 12th-century Cistercian reformer and defender of the Jews.
Several months later, Klyber felt called to the priesthood. After being rejected by the Jesuits and the Franciscans, he was accepted by the Redemptorists.
Leaving a promising career in the Navy, he started at the Redemptorists' minor seminary in Kirkwood, Mo., in 1921, and professed in 1927. He was ordained a priest in 1932 in Oconomowoc, Wis.
While carrying out his regular Redemptorist duties, Father Klyber ran his Jewish apostolate on the side, with permission of the order.
He was an early member of the Edith Stein Guild of America, and won the organization's second Edith Stein Award in 1957.
In 1976, when he was having heart trouble and thought he would soon die, Father Klyber co-founded Remnant of Israel Inc., a nonprofit organization, to carry on his Jewish apostolate.
Goes West
When at age 79 he was officially semiretired, Father Klyber went from Chicago to Northern California, to become chaplain of a lay Dominican community whose members had formerly belonged to a hippie commune. In 1983 he moved with the community to New Hope, Ky., living for a while in a mobile home behind a winding dirt road without clean running water.
He gave his last lecture in Louisville in 1990, but continued to write into his early 90s.
In 1996, when his memory was failing, he moved to St. Clement's Health Care Center, the Redemptorists' nursing home in Liguori, Mo. He was living there when he died, apparently of a heart attack in his sleep.
“He was a true Redemptorist,” said Father James Keena, one of Father Klyber's novices during the 1950s, during his funeral sermon Oct. 13.
Father Keena, now the provincial vicar of the Redemptorists' Denver Province, recalled Father Klyber as a compassionate novice master with a great sense of humor. The novices always looked forward to the priest's Sunday talks, which reflected his deep study and feel for the Old Testament of his forefathers and the New Testament of Jesus, Father Keena said.
Great Suffering
Trying to explain what he described as Father Klyber's extraordinary kindliness, Father Keena said it must have come from great suffering, particularly the rejection by his family when he became a Catholic. Though Father Klyber eventually reconciled with many of his relatives, his baptism caused some members of his family to treat him as though he were dead, following the Orthodox practice of disavowing apostates.
Father Keena said Redemptorists trying to restore the order's charism of working with the poor and abandoned would do well to consider the lives of older Redemptorists such as Father Klyber.
He wrote six booklets, including four that are still in print: Once a Jew, This Jew, He's a Jew! and Queen of the Jews. A collection of his booklets and articles, titled The One Who Is To Come, will be published later this year by Remnant of Israel. A biography is also scheduled to appear next year.
Father Klyber was buried at the Redemptorists' cemetery in Liguori.
Matt McDonald is based in Mashpee, Massachusetts.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Matt McDonald ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Shine Your Light DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:Two U.S. cardinals recently made a powerful pitch for the new evangelization of America. Speaking with the Register’s radio apostolate, Register Radio News, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago pointed out that evangelizing individuals is not enough. Cultures have to be evangelized as well.
“We are all converted by Jesus Christ,” the archbishop said, “but we live in groups called cultures. … If a culture is compatible with the Gospel … our own personal conversion is easier. If it's very much opposed to the Gospel, then you have to evangelize the culture.”
Cardinal Adam Maida, archbishop of Detroit, also had a word about culture, especially Europe's. There is “too much history” in Europe, the cardinal said, and “culture can be an awful lot of baggage that gets in the way of clear dialogue between people.” On the other hand, he said, “In America we are rather young as a country. … We haven't developed the animosities, the deep histories and the cultural differences that exist in Europe.”
From the two cardinals, then, comes a great challenge and a reason for hope: The United States needs to be evangelized urgently, but this task may prove easier here than in Europe, where a special synod has been convened to address what is being called a continentwide “apostasy.”
What will it take to re-evangelize the States, and the West in general? Christ began his Church with a dozen apostles and a group of committed disciples who shone their light over the world. With today's communications technology — like the radio on which these cardinals' voices were heard — there's no reason the Church couldn't mobilize an army of new apostles.
***
The headline is alarming. “The End of Catholic Health Care in California?” asks the editorial in the Oct. 1 edition of The Tidings, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
The editorial goes on to describe how a new law, signed in September by Gov. Gray Davis, forces all employer-carried health insurance plans to pay for prescription contraceptives. The governor, himself a Catholic, did not respond to the California Catholic Conference's request for a conscience clause for Catholic hospitals.
As The Tidings notes, this means that Catholic institutions in California will have to choose between obeying the law or their consciences. But the editorial sees an even worse consequence:
“We suspect that in refusing to provide an adequate conscience clause, the bill's authors and sponsor (none other than Planned Parenthood) believe they have finally found a way to cripple or eliminate the last and most formidable challenge to their pro-choice juggernaut. Far-fetched? Planned Parenthood has already expressed its anger — and fear — that the growing number of Catholic hospitals may mean less access to abortion and contraceptive services in California.”
In legislative trends, laws that take hold in California are likely to show up in state legislatures around the nation. This is a direct challenge to American Catholics.
America was established as a free haven for people of conscience. Catholics must not be denied the freedom to follow theirs. Will California's Catholics let their outrage be felt?
***
Apart from being a bad joke, Jan Fransen's remarks to the European Parliament in Brussels were sadly revealing.
According to the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-Fam), the demographer made the joke during a United Nations Population Fund briefing to mark Oct. 12, the day that world population was estimated to reach 6 billion.
Fransen, a one-time Population Fund representative, said that to “increase mortality” would help curb population growth in Africa. During a question-and-answer period, a representative from Marie Stopes International, one of the largest abortion providers in the world, took the joke a step further, and pointed to AIDS as a possible way to population reduction, according to C-Fam.
AIDS has reached crisis proportions in Africa, dropping the life expectancy in some countries from 61 to 47. Fransen went on to say that the appropriate number of people on earth is somewhere between 700 million and 1 billion people.
That these comments were made at such a forum and were not greeted with outrage reveals a sick truth about the zeal for a smaller population. It can make us so numb to the value of individual human lives that the painful suffering of AIDS is seen as a benign influence in the world.
And, at the end of a century that tore Europe apart over racial, political and economic struggles, this anti-population mentality can allow a European leader to callously note an epidemic of African deaths while arguing that the world should be five-sixths smaller than it is.
----- EXCERPT: EDITORIAL ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Opinion -------- TITLE: The Minds of the Monks DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:by Father Hugh Feiss, OSB (HarperSanFrancisco, 1999, 218 pages, $23)
As a writer, I could pay a book no higher compliment than to find myself thinking, as I turn its pages: I wish I had written this. As a monk, I often personalize the experience of reading even further, provided the work really moves me: I catch myself admiring the binding, the print, the cover — the way the book feels in my hands as its words reach into my mind and heart.
That's the kind of connection I felt with Essential Monastic Wisdom even though it's not the work of one individual, but a compilation of quotes from many monastic writers spanning the ages.
Yet, although this book was written by monks, it is not a book produced for monks. As Benedictine Father Hugh Feiss tells us in his general introduction, it is a book for lay people.
And it scores well on that count, too. Recognizing that a “vocational bias” might be coloring my evaluation of the volume with undue enthusiasm, I wrote a lay friend who was also reading it. “I found the book to be very readable as far as its style and organization,” she explained. “Each topic can be read in a brief period, say, half-hour after lunch, and the reader can consider what he or she has read throughout the day. Personally, I appreciated the history of monasticism; it was concise and understandable.”
She hits on a good point. To make the multidimensional interior life of a monk accessible to the laity, Father Feiss has translated, edited and introduced the writings in such a way that the reader can progress from front to back or skip around between chapters — each is dedicated to a particular aspect of monastic life — with no loss of continuity. And his introductions to each of the chapters are very helpful in setting in historical and spiritual context the writings that follow.
As for the writings he's selected, the authors span the centuries and represent a wide array of perspectives — from the desert fathers to Esther de Waal, a contemporary writer in England. (Incidentally, the latter is the only lay person included; her studies on St. Benedict's Rule as a guide for those “in the world” makes her an especially appropriate choice for our times.)
The book begins with a chapter on ordering time and place, then moves, like a monk's day, through prayer, reading and work.
“Let them direct to God the works that they do,” advises St. Hildegard of Bingen, “because human work that is directed to God will shine in Heaven.”
A chapter on mutual support muses on not only what a monk does for his brother monks, but also on receiving what they do for him. Next up is hospitality, with thoughts on monasteries' tradition of welcoming those who are in any way “tired, weary or poor.”
Sections follow on silence and speech, reverence, humility, simplicity, discernment, peace and patience, separation, stability, obedience, authority and longing.
I'm sure it's no accident that Father Feiss ends these chapters with a section on love — a gentle reminder of what all the other chapters are really about.
“Love is the first virtue,” writes John Trithemius, a medieval Benedictine priest who, I've now learned, wrote some 60 books. “Love is required of each believer; whatever is not done in love merits nothing. Next comes joy, so that we may serve the Lord, not in bitterness, but happily.”
About the only thing Father Feiss couldn't find covered, apparently, was a rumination on getting up early — a fact of life for any monk worth his salt. (I could have used that since I'm writing this book review at 5 a.m. It's a good thing he didn't ask me to write about that subject. I would have spent my words singing the praises of a good cup of coffee.)
The book concludes with interesting and concise biographies of all the contributing writers. This section serves as an informative resource: Where else could you look into the lives of such fascinating, but obscure, masters of the interior life as a nun named Syncletica or the seldom-quoted Wulfston of Worcester?
These people lived intense and prayerful lives. Hidden in life, they now make great and gifted guides. This book shouldn't be missed by anyone who's ever gone on retreat at a monastery and wondered: “What would it be like to live this life every day?”
Brother Craig Driscoll, founder of the Monks of Adoration, lives in Petersham, Massachusetts.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Craig Driscoll ----- KEYWORD: Education -------- TITLE: Scripture Well-Lighted by Tradition DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:by Mark Shea (Envoy, June/July 1999)
Mark Shea, author of By What Authority? An Evangelical Discovers Catholic Tradition, writes on the relationship between sacred Scripture and sacred Tradition, noting that “though Scripture is sufficient (as Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:16), there is a distinction between material and formal sufficiency….
“It's the difference between having a big enough pile of bricks to build a house and having a house of bricks. Catholic teaching says written Sacred Tradition (known as Scripture) is materially sufficient: all the bricks necessary to build its doctrines are there in Scripture. But because some things in Scripture are implicit rather than explicit, other stuff besides Scripture has been handed down from the Apostles. This other stuff is unwritten Sacred Tradition (which is the mortar that holds the bricks of the written Tradition together in the right order and position) and the Magisterium or teaching authority of the Church (which is the trowel in the hand of the Master Builder). Taken together, these three things are formally sufficient for knowing the revealed truth of God.”
Shea discusses how we can tell the difference between tradition — things handed down, not because they are necessary to our faith — and Tradition. The former includes candles, favorite songs, popular forms of devotion, beloved books and treasured old rituals like Christmas caroling. “[N]one of these small ‘t' traditions, vital and living though they are, are essential to the Faith,” writes Shea. Sacred Tradition, on the other hand, comes from the Apostles themselves, and “must not be altered by addition or subtraction in any way. For the difference between tradition and Tradition is the difference between the customs of man and the revelation of God.”
How do we deal with claims that Catholics over the centuries have added plenty of things to Sacred Tradition, such as the Immaculate Conception and papal infallibility? And how do we answer the view of many that the Catholic understanding of Tradition really amounts to “secret” doctrines that are from time to time made officially public?
First, the Church explicitly repudiates the view that “Sacred Tradition is … a separate, secret and parallel revelation. Indeed, it is precisely this view of Tradition which the Church has always condemned as the essence, not of Christianity, but of Gnosticism.” Instead, sacred Tradition is “the living and growing truth of Christ contained, not only in Scripture, but in the common teaching, common life, and common worship of the Church. … [T]his common teaching, life and worship is a living thing — a truth which was planted as a mustard seed in first-century Jerusalem and which has not ceased growing since — as our Lord prophesied in Mark 4:30-32. The plant doesn't look like the seed, but it's more mustardy than ever.”
Since sacred Tradition comes from the Apostles (who received it from Christ), it cannot be added to, though the Church's comprehension of its meaning can be enriched. In other words, the Church cannot come up with a fourth member of the Trinity, or decide to consecrate beans and franks as well as bread and wine, though she can find new ways to express and clarify the meaning of the Trinity and the reality of transubstantiation.
Further, writes Shea, “[W]e do not derive the doctrine from Scripture. Rather, we see it reflected there. … Catholics see the Perpetual Virginity of Mary reflected in Scripture. … In this context, we discover not explicit, but implicit testimony to the doctrine, while those verses which appear to speak of Jesus' siblings or Mary's relations with Joseph after the birth of Christ can easily be understood in a way compatible with perpetual virginity.
“In summary, Sacred Tradition is handed down ‘both by word of mouth and by letter.’ In Scripture, as today, ‘Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture form one sacred deposit of the word of God’ (Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, II, 10) so that the Bible is part, not the whole, of the apostolic paradosis [tradition]. … In Scripture, both written and unwritten Tradition are from Christ and made by him to stand inseparably united like hydrogen and oxygen that fuse to form living water or like the words and tune of a single song. … In Scripture, the Church in council sits on the judge's bench and listens to the testimony of Scripture in light of its Tradition in order to discern how best to define that Tradition more precisely.
“And all this is because, in Scripture, as today, the Tradition, both written and unwritten, comes to us through the Body of him who is Truth: the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church Paul calls ‘the fullness of him who fills everything in every way’ and the ‘pillar and foundation of the truth’ (Ephesians 1:23; 1 Timothy 3:15).”
Ellen Fielding writes from Davidson, Maryland.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Letters DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:Closed Adoption Works Well, Too
After reading “Open Adoption Helps Mothers Choose Life” (Sept. 19-25), I was very much disturbed to say the least. I am the mother of three adopted children. My husband and I adopted in the 1960s through a licensed adoption agency.
Please inform the Catholic Counseling Services maternity counselor [quoted in the article] that, although ours was a closed adoption (in which the birth parents are unknown to the adopting parents and adopted children), there was no “dark side.” None of our children suffered from “higher levels of mental illness, physical illness, attention-deficit disorder or hyperactivity.” We were always completely honest with our children and all of them knew they were adopted from the time they could talk. I truly believe that the adoption process worked well — not only for us, but for our children and the birth mothers, who have always been in our prayers.
As one who has been deeply involved in the adoption process, I have many reservations about this new trend of open adoption, but for the sake of the children I hope it works well. [Meanwhile], for us and the families of closed adoptions (many of whom we know well), this [“old way”] worked just fine. To say otherwise is to do a grave disservice to all concerned.
Joan R. Millar Grover Beach, California
Verbal Standards
I beg to differ with the headmaster of the Catholic boys' school who was quoted as saying he doesn't think using “the occasional four-letter word” is sinful (“‘Bad Words’ in the U.S. Leave Few Speechless,” Sept. 19-25). The norm for Christian morality is not just a set of commandments, but Jesus himself, as Pope John Paul II said in Veritatis Splendor. This is not to say we must all do what Jesus did, but we may not do what Jesus would never do. The day Jesus Christ would speak a foul word would be a cold day in … Gehenna.
Rev. Thomas G. Morrow St. Catherine Laboure Church
Wheaton, Maryland
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Opinion -------- TITLE: Warning: I Brake For Genuflectors DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:I have modified the way I receive Communion. I used to give a deep bow when I got to the front of the Communion line, but the bow has given way to a genuflection. Yes, it is more visible (more obtrusive, some might say), but I don't care about that. By my reading of the rubrics, a genuflection is what is called for — and it seems the most appropriate gesture, anyway.
Consider what the celebrant is called to do. According to the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, during Mass he is to genuflect at certain times: “after the showing of the Eucharistic bread, after the showing of the chalice, and before Communion.” Immediately after his genuflection at Communion time, the priest self-communicates. He genuflects as a sign of adoration.
If genuflection is proper for the priest as he receives Communion, on what grounds could it be improper for lay people, given that nothing in the rubrics suggests that genuflection is a posture reserved for the clergy? Hold that thought a moment as we consider what the Church has taught about what lay people are to do as they receive Communion.
In Inestimabile Donum, the Congregation for the Sacraments and Divine Worship noted that, “[W]hen the faithful communicate kneeling, no other sign of reference toward the Blessed Sacrament is required, since kneeling itself is a sign of adoration.” But a sign of reverence should be made when the people receive Communion standing, which is the most common way in American parishes. “When they receive Communion standing, it is strongly recommended that, coming up in procession, they should make a sign of reverence before receiving the Sacrament. This should be done at the right time and place, so that the order of people going to and from Communion is not disrupted.”
So, if you receive Communion standing, you should make a sign of reverence just before you receive. What should that sign be? Inestimabile Donum does not specify, but one could argue that the priest and people should make the same sign, to show unity among themselves. What sign does the priest make? He genuflects. This suggests that genuflection, then, is the most proper sign for the people to make. But it is not the only sign they may give. They may give some other sign of reverence, such as a deep bow or even the sign of the cross. What is required is some sign of reverence, and the choice is up to the communicant.
Catholics need to adore their Lord when they receive him in Communion. Their bodies should mirror the love in their hearts.
Look at the final clause of the instruction in Inestimabile Donum: “[S]o that the order of people going to and from Communion is not disrupted.” Does this eliminate genuflection? Some might say it should. After all, if the person in front of you suddenly drops his knee to the ground, you might trip over him. It's been known to happen. A little direction from the pulpit, though, can eliminate such hazards.
All a priest need say is that someone going up for Communion should leave a little space ahead of himself as he gets near the front of the line — say, in second or third place. If he lets the person just ahead of him advance an extra pace or so, he can move forward into the empty space (thus putting the empty space between him and the person behind him) and genuflect. He may want to hold on to the end of the neighboring pew for support. With the empty space behind the genuflector, there will not be any danger of anyone tripping over him.
Besides, if most of the parishioners follow this arrangement, even newcomers to the parish will be able to see what is happening and will be able to adjust their own actions as they get to the front of the line. If a communicant chooses not to genuflect but to make some other sign of reverence, such as a deep bow, nothing is lost; he has plenty of room ahead and behind.
Most Catholics do not know that a sign of reverence is required of them because they have not been told. They have not been instructed by their pastors, who themselves may not know the rules. So it is that in many parishes genuflecting in the Communion line might strike some as “odd.” It is “odd” only in that it is uncommon, and it is uncommon only because the people have not been told what they are to do. The rarity of the act is no argument against genuflecting. It is an argument, instead, for proper and thorough instruction of the congregation.
Catholics need to adore their Lord, and at no time are they closer to him than when they receive him in Communion. That is the very best time for their bodies to mirror the love that should be in their hearts. The traditional way to signify adoration is not the sign of the cross, not the bow, but the genuflection. While genuflecting at Communion is not required, it strikes me as the most appropriate gesture, both psychologically and rubrically, and that is why I have switched.
Karl Keating is founding director of Catholic Answers.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Karl Keating ----- KEYWORD: Commentary -------- TITLE: October Meditations on the Rosary DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:In the holy rosary are wedded simplicity and depth, and the individual and communitarian dimensions [of the Catholic faith].
The rosary, in itself, is a contemplative prayer, and it has great intercessory power. Whoever recites it, in fact, is united to Mary in meditating upon the mysteries of Christ, and is led to invoke the grace proper to these mysteries in the multiple situations of life and history.
Let us take frequent recourse to this Marian prayer during the month of October — month of the rosary — which at one time was the daily prayer of Christian families.
There are so many intentions to entrust to Our Lady.
In particular, I exhort you to recite the rosary for the Synod Assembly of the Bishops for Europe, which is taking place here in the Vatican [the first three weeks of October]. I try to participate assiduously, and I see with how much pastoral anxiety the synod fathers are confronted with the great challenges of the European Continent. What emerges forcefully is the need for a renewed and courageous evangelization, for a vast missionary action that will keep in mind the changing situations of Europe, [which is] increasingly multiethnic and multicultural.
In the past, the prayer of the rosary has helped to safeguard the integrity of the faith of the people of God. May the fervent practice of this prayer sustain the Church in the passage toward the third millennium, so that it will continue to be a prophetic “sign and instrument of the intimate union with God and of the unity of all mankind” (Lumen Gentium, 1).
For this intention and for all the needs of the Church and of the world, I ask you all, especially the children, families and the elderly, to raise a common invocation to Mary during the whole month of October.
Let us ask the Blessed Virgin to help the Church to be, ever more and ever better, the bridge that unites man with God, and men with one another.
Let us pray so that peaceful understanding and respectful dialogue between peoples, cultures, and religions will be promoted and favored.
Mary, Virgin of the holy rosary, pray for us!
From Pope John Paul II's Oct. 10 Angelus message.
Here we are again, meeting as we did a week ago to recite the Angelus together. This week has passed quickly, rich in important meetings and visits.
Today, the last Sunday of October I wish to draw your attention to the rosary. In fact, throughout the whole Church, October is the month dedicated to the rosary.
The rosary is my favorite prayer. A marvelous prayer! Marvelous in its simplicity and in its depth. In this prayer we repeat many times the words that the Virgin Mary heard from the Archangel, and from her kinswoman Elizabeth. The whole Church joins in these words. It can be said that the rosary is, in a certain way, a prayer-commentary on the last chapter of the Constitution Lumen Gentium of Vatican II, a chapter which deals with the wonderful presence of the Mother of God in the mystery of Christ and the Church.
In fact, against the background of the words “Ave Maria” there pass before the eyes of the soul the main episodes in the life of Jesus Christ. They are composed altogether of the joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries, and they put us in living communion with Jesus through — we could say — his Mother's heart.
At the same time our heart can enclose in these decades of the rosary all the facts that make up the life of the individual, the family, the nation, the Church and mankind. Personal matters and those of one's neighbor, and particularly of those who are closest to us, who are dearest to us. Thus the simple prayer of the rosary beats the rhythm of human life.
During the last few weeks I have had the opportunity to meet many persons, representatives of various nations and of different environments, as well as of various Christian Churches and communities. I wish to assure you that I have not failed to translate these relations into the language of the rosary prayer, in order that everyone might find himself at the heart of the prayer which gives a full dimension to everything.
In these last weeks both I and the Holy See have had numerous proofs of good will from people in the whole world. I wish to translate my gratitude into decades of the rosary in order to express it in prayer, as well as in the human manner; in this prayer so simple and so rich.
Pope John Paul II's Angelus messagefor Oct. 29, 1978, 13 days after becoming Pope.
“All generations will call me blessed”: The Church's devotion to the Blessed Virgin is intrinsic to Christian worship. The Church rightly honors “the Blessed Virgin with special devotion. From the most ancient times the Blessed Virgin has been honored with the title ‘Mother of God,’ to whose protection the faithful fly in all their dangers and needs. … This very special devotion … differs essentially from the adoration which is given to the incarnate Word and equally to the Father and the Holy Spirit, and greatly fosters this adoration” (Lumen Gentium, 66). The liturgical feasts dedicated to the Mother of God and Marian prayer, such as the rosary, an “epitome of the whole Gospel,” express this devotion to the Virgin Mary.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 972.
Medieval piety in the West developed the prayer of the rosary as a popular substitute for the Liturgy of the Hours. In the East, the litany called the Akathistos and the Paraclesis remained closer to the choral office in the Byzantine churches, while the Armenian, Coptic and Syriac traditions preferred popular hymns and songs to the Mother of God. But in the Ave Maria, the theotokia, the hymns of St. Ephrem or St. Gregory of Narek, the tradition of prayer is basically the same.
Mary is the perfect Orans (pray-er), a figure of the Church. When we pray to her, we are adhering with her to the plan of the Father, who sends his Son to save all men. Like the beloved disciple we welcome Jesus' mother into hour homes, for she has become the mother of all the living. We can pray with and to her. The prayer of the Church is sustained by the prayer of Mary and united with it in hope.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 2678-9.
Meditation engages thought, imagination, emotion and desire. This mobilization of faculties is necessary in order to deepen our convictions of faith, prompt the conversion of our heart and strengthen our will to follow Christ. Christian prayer tries above all to meditate on the mysteries of Christ, as in lectio divina or the rosary. This form of prayerful reflection is of great value, but Christian prayer should go further: to the knowledge of the love of the Lord Jesus, to union with him.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 2708.
The rosary is a devotion to the 15 mysteries in which 15 groups of 10 Hail Mary prayers are recited, each of these decades being preceded by an Our Father and followed by a Glory Be.
Ordinarily, only one-third of the rosary is said on one occasion. The mysteries are divided into three groups as follows:
The Joyful Mysteries (the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, the Presentation in the Temple, the Finding in the Temple).
The Sorrowful Mysteries (the Agony in the Garden, the Scourging, the Crowning with Thorns, the Carrying of the Cross, the Crucifixion).
The Glorious Mysteries (the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Descent of the Holy Spirit, the Assumption of Mary into Heaven, the Coronation of Mary).
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Armadillo or Porcupine: Which are You? DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:Anyone who doubts whether God has a sense of humor has never seen a platypus. A platypus is an Australian oddity that God created in a moment of boredom by slapping a duck's bill and webbed feet onto a beaver's body. Another version has it that God caught a beaver laughing at a wallaby and decided to give him a taste of his own medicine by rearranging his anatomy. In any event, the animal kingdom teems with such quirks of God's imagination, weirder than any of the space creatures that populate George Lucas' films.
Other animals seem specially designed to teach us humans a lesson, or to show us aspects of our own behavior. We have, for example, the case of the ostrich hiding its head in the sand while the rest remains exposed, commonly referenced when characterizing people who tend to ignore problems rather than facing them. Or the unsavory leech, which literally lives off others' blood. Or the tortoise, elevated to celebrity by the Greek poet Aesop as a paragon of perseverence.
What animal best represents people of today? The two most likely nominees for the dubious honor would have to be the armadillo and the porcupine. The armadillo is a defiant relic of prehistory that has survived the vicissitudes of the millennia by a simple strategy of self-defense. As soon as the armadillo senses danger approaching, it curls up into a ball, safely protected behind impenetrable armor plates. It doesn't expose itself. It doesn't take risks. It lived through the rise and fall of the pterodactyl and the triceratops by a strict policy of non-exposure.
Similarly, men and women today live under a pall of fear — fear of intimacy, fear of the future, fear of commitment. In 1972 John Powell came out with a pop psychology best seller (adopted as a religion text by many schools) entitled Why Am I Afraid to Love? Now, as then, the answer is vulnerability. We are afraid to love because we are afraid of being hurt. Love means opening up, exposing the tender underbelly of sentiments, and the risk of betrayal.
If people were afraid to love in the ‘70s, they're downright petrified today. Why do young men and women wait so long nowadays to get married, if they marry at all? Why so much talk of “protecting myself” and “holding on to my independence?” There are many answers, to be sure, but among them is a profound distrust of others.
Cardinal J. Francis Stafford, head of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, suggests that one of the greatest challenges facing coming generations is the widening rift of distrust between men and women. He asks rhetorically: “Will women ever be able to trust us again?”
Fear of love doesn't equal fear of sex, of course. The sexual revolution has left few carnal inhibitions. Yet it would seem that the more willing people are to bare their bodies to one another, the less willing they are to bare their souls. “Hooking up” with multiple partners seems to be nothing more than insurance against a deeper emotional involvement, or worse still, dependence on another.
Thus modern society has produced a generation of armadillos. We are tougher than ever, more adapted to survival, but infinitely less human. And if we examine the hard shell closely we discover a sad reality. Those armor plates are nothing but scleroid scar tissue, hardened after numerous experiences of pain like the callused soles of barefoot runners.
The second zoological candidate to represent modern men and women would no doubt be the prickly porcupine. In place of a hard shell, this nettlesome critter is clad in a gown of shimmering quills. But watch out — that beautiful gown is barbed. Not content with mere impermeability, the porcupine takes self-defense a step further and keeps would-be confidants at spine's length. The policy here is to hurt before being hurt, or at least to send a prospective aggressor away with a nose full of needles.
Where does all this leave us? If society is generating more and more armadillos and porcupines, what prospects does this hold for the future of the human menagerie? How do we break out of the spiral of mutual suspicion?
First, distrust is not the product of spontaneous generation; it has real causes. When irresponsibility is rewarded (no-fault divorce is just one example), distrust and suspicion must necessarily follow. If we are to turn the tide of fear and distrust, we must create a culture of responsibility and trustworthiness. We will only lean on each other when we have reason to believe the other won't cave in on us.
Secondly, though much of the problem underlying the shift from interdependence to independence stems from a reaction to pain and betrayal, it also has an ideological component. The modern concept of freedom as autonomy and the repudiation of commitment as antithetical to freedom is inimical to the truth and well-being of the human person. We must recover a sense of freedom as ordered to love and self-giving.
Lastly, we must look to the cross. There, in the perfect expression of God's faithful and unconditional love, we discover our ultimate source of hope and trust. Love begets love, and only by experiencing a love that never fails do we find the courage to love others despite the risks. Only then can our armor be softened and our quills dulled.
Father Thomas Williams is editor of the book Springtime of Evangelization.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Thomas Williams LC ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: The Register's Jubilee Guide to Rome DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:I must confess that I was becoming blasé about the Jubilee when I set off for Rome in mid-September. The occasion has been planned and publicized for so long. I've read the documents and entire, inspiring volumes relating to the Holy Year; it almost seemed I had had enough of the Jubilee before it even got started.
But, when a chance came to return to the city with the most sumptuous Catholic heritage (and my former home) — and to write about what I found for readers of the Register who may be mulling a 2000 Roman pilgrimage — I didn't wait to pack my bags once again.
It was the right move.
My first night, which I spent in Venice on assignment for another publication, I turned on the television. There stood Pope John Paul II before St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City. He blessed the brilliantly restored facade, just finished, before a host of white fireworks rose like angels above the building. The Laudamus and Gloria rose from an orchestra and choir somewhere off-camera.
I learned that this was an unofficial beginning to the year that will celebrate the 2,000 years since the birth of the Savior. For me, this was like an early Christmas. Now I couldn't wait to get to Rome.
A few days later I stood in Piazza San Pietro, looking up at the basilica that was now more beautiful than I had dreamed, after a lengthy, painstaking renewal of the stone and the bells. In some ways this is my favorite piazza in the world. “Square” is an unfortunate translation, for it is anything but square.
The elegant piazza that Gianlorenzo Bernini designed to grace the entry to St. Peter's actually is formed with two huge semicircles of columns that provide welcoming arms for pilgrims as they finally reach Mother Church. At the top of the 284 columns and 88 pillars stand 140 statues of saints. Although it makes for an imposing scene, the saints make it merry. In Italian Baroque fashion they seem to all be gesturing directly to the pilgrim and saying, in unison: “Welcome home!”
A Pilgrimage, Not a Vacation
Catholics considering a trip to Rome next year should remember that the Holy Father has made it clear that local designated celebrations can provide the same spiritual benefits as a Roman pilgrimage. In other words, you don't have to cross the Atlantic to share in the graces of the celebration; your home diocese will likely have plenty going on right where you live.
On the other hand, if your schedule and budget permit, Rome is an enormous Catholic treasure-trove. Nowhere else in the world can you encounter the mystical body of Christ in all its splendor, history and dynamism quite like you can here. The exterior dimensions of the Church come alive in a way other places can only hint at — and, if you're watching and praying, this can translate into an incredibly powerful spiritual experience.
How long to stay? The Italian expression “Non basta una vita” (A lifetime isn't enough) is apropos. After 30 years of devotion to the city, I still see hundreds of new paintings, sculptures, and, on my recent visit, churches that have emerged from the gloom of locked doors to open for the Jubilee. I would say, especially since prayer and contemplation will accompany this trip, a week would be the minimum to experience St. Peter's and the major basilicas, as well as some of the major churches in Rome.
Since there's no way to know just how crowded the major sites will be at any given time, independent pilgrims, who may find the lines too long, can easily skip around to hit the less-crowded. There's so much to see in such a small radius around the Vatican.
For example, around the Pantheon, the Fountain of Trevi and Piazza Navona, there is a fine church on almost every street, thanks to the patrimony of the Baroque era. Also, Italy's artistic treasures are so plentiful that even the smallest church will offer a subject for contemplation and an altar for private prayer. Churches with Masses in English include San Silvestro (near Piazza Colonna) and for Americans, Santa Susanna.
Just be aware that Rome tends to be a particularly chaotic modern European city; the noisy mix of cars, buses and motorscooters (many with riders on cell phones) can be intimidating. Even though the use of private vehicles is to be restricted next year, cutting down on the volume of traffic, the more you can walk, the better.
Get the Card
Crowd-control plans that are under way now, monitored through computerized systems at command central, call for buses to be parked in specified areas at some distance from the city. Buses are able to enter the city only to discharge or pick up passengers at hotels or sites. The Padre Pio celebration of the past year was handled very well; 300,000 came and went without driving the Romans crazy, as they had anticipated. During 2000, an average daily influx of 150,000 is calculated, with 30 million as a year's total.
Do yourself a favor and pay about $40 to get a “pilgrim's card” which provides reservations at events of your choice for three days, which might include a Mass or another celebration plus free transit in Rome anywhere, including airport transfer. The easiest way to get the card is to visit the official Web site of the Vatican's Central Committee for the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000: www.jubil2000.org.
If you don't have access to the Internet, call 011-39-066-962-2207.
When to Go
As with any pilgrimage, sharing the journey with other Christian pilgrims can add another dimension to the experience of visiting Rome. There is no shortage of church and school groups putting together group packages. On the downside, group travel limits your options and generally increases the time you'll spend waiting. On the upside, you can forget about having to make reservations and carry luggage.
Whether you decide to go with a group or on your own, the time to make arrangements is right now. Naturally, Christmas and Easter 2000 will be particularly packed with visitors — and that means sightseeing tourists as well as Christian pilgrims — but rises and falls in traffic the rest of the year will be unpredictable. Your surest bet is to make your arrangements as soon as you know you want to go, no matter when in the year that falls.
I personally enjoy Rome in January after Epiphany, and in February, when airfares are usually lower, the tourists fewer, and Romans, not having to cope with so many languages and customs, are in a better mood. However, the area can be quite cold in the winter. Consider whether or not this would be an important factor for you.
Rome is nice in June, though school vacations always promise more student and parent tourists. July and August are often very hot. Fall can be ideal, though this year it was a very long summer.
The bottom line, heading into the 12 months of the Jubilee year, is that, as you make plans for your 2000 Roman pilgrimage, you need to remember that the area is still in the process of becoming a “new” old place. When I was there a couple of weeks ago, many statues and piazzas were still half boarded up. Work continues. All is supposed to be finished by Christmas, but who knows?
Plan early, travel light (because you'll almost certainly want to load up on religious articles and tour mementos), relax and enjoy yourself. After all, it may be another thousand years before Rome again goes this far to put on its best face for Catholic pilgrims.
Barbara Coeyman Hults, a travel guidebook writer, lives in New York.
----- EXCERPT: The Eternal City is noisy, confusing … and so beautiful it could change your life ----- EXTENDED BODY: Barbara Coeyman Hults ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: TRAVEL'S NOTEBOOK DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:Accommodations in Rome
Rome has been preparing for the Jubilee for many years and more rooms are available than ever before, including a large number in private homes with host families. However, rooms of all types are already booking up, so time is of the essence. I include some convent guesthouses here, but this is far from a thorough listing. If I were just starting to plan a Roman trip, I'd go to the public library or local bookstore and pick up the most recent travel guide to Italy. Most hotels will require credit card deposits. Make sure you get a confirmation number by phone, fax or e-mail. Reconfirm before leaving. Most establishments will have a reservation clerk who speaks English at least for these purposes.
Note that the Vatican, an independent state officially, does not have its own hotels and restaurants. These are located in Rome, which begins just outside Piazza San Pietro.
Convent Guesthouses
Here is a representative sampling, not a comprehensive listing, of convent guesthouses that you may want to consider. (For all numbers listed below, from the United States, dial 011-39-06 first and then the number of phone or fax listed.)
Piazza Farnese 96, 00186 Rome. Tel. 688-92596 or Fax 688-21926. This is a personal favorite. It has great dignity and warmth. Meals are also available and the location is excellent. However, it's small and often booked up. About $80 per night single or $75 each double with breakfast. (Brigida has been named one of the patronesses of Europe this year.)
Via dei Vascellari 61, 00153 Rome.
Tel. 581-2125 or 588-2405.
Fax 581-2125 or 588-2405.
Very simple and with a younger clientele usually, in pleasant neighborhood in Trastevere, south of the Vatican. Some have private bath. (This was the saint's home.)
Via dei Santissimi Quattro 1, 00184 Rome.
Tel. 704-54678; Fax 704-76150.
Summer only. Located in back of St. John Lateran, one of the most important basilicas. Simple college rooms, pool, tennis.
About $65 to $100.
Via Monte de Gallo 105.
Tel. 63-07-82.
Near the Vatican, up a flight of stairs. A very friendly spot nicely managed by American sisters from Syracuse, N.Y. Terrace views of St. Peter's.
About $50 single, $100 double.
Via Sistina 113, 00187 Rome.
Tel. 47-45-324.
Simple rooms in good location near top of Spanish Steps. About $45.
Hotels
Use your airline's tour operator for independent travel, which gives group rates without groups. Or call Central Holiday Tours, Italtours (Alitalia), Perillo, Donna Franca or others. Rome is a perennially popular travel destination, so most vacation travel agents will be able to offer good guidance.
Make sure that the hotel selected is near the center of Rome or near the Metropolitan (subway). The airport hotels are too far away, unless necessary. You may want to walk around Rome at night, which is dazzlingly floodlit and beautiful. Among those well located are the Colonna Palace and the Nazionale, near the Pantheon, but they are rather expensive and apt to be booked up. However, that is the best area for walking. Hotels near the train station such as the Massimo d'Azeglio or the Nord are well located near the Metro, train, and the terminus for many buses, including the No. 64, which goes to the Vatican.
You may want to check with the Bed & Breakfast Association of Rome: Email info@b-brm.it or phone 687-7348.
Security
Wherever pilgrims or tourists gather, alas, thieves and pickpockets see opportunity. Wear a money belt and don't take any valuables around the city. Do not leave anything unguarded even in St. Peter's. If things are put away in a money belt with about $50 in lire handy, you can relax. Keep what you can locked away somewhere safe.
Be careful changing money. If possible, buy traveler's checks in lire (now about 1,770 lire to $1). Some American banks and Italian banks in New York City have this service. You can wait until you get there to change money, but it's generally best to take care of this before you set off.
Souvenirs and Gifts
You'll have no trouble finding shops and stores eagerly waiting to sell you all manner of souvenirs and religious articles. I've found that the most tasteful items are in the shops in front of St. Peter's, in the side streets off the Via della Conciliazione and also in back and to the left of the Pantheon. My favorite for rosaries and other religious articles is the long-established Guadenzi on the Piazza della Minerva. The Vatican Museum's gift shop is also quite good, of course.
— Barbara Coeyman Hults
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Barbara Coeyman Hults ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Fear and Self-Loathing in Suburbia DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:Smug social commentators have mocked the cozy suburban way of life ever since America's middle class fled the cities en masse after World War II.
From The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956) and The Stepford Wives (1975) to the more recent Edward Scissorhands, Serial Mom, Ice Storm and Pleasantville, a growing archive of movies casts a suspicious eye on green-lawned neighborhoods and subdivisions, and finds them only superficially safe and sane places to live. The critically acclaimed American Beauty is the latest of these self-important specimens. It rips off David Lynch (Blue Velvet) and MTV's animated series Daria to concoct a sharp-edged, surreal satire of the affluent ‘90s, where alienation, intolerance and violence lurk just beneath the well-ordered surface.
Celebrated British theater director Sam Mendes (The Blue Room) and successful TV sitcom writer Alan Ball (Cybill) conjure up visual and verbal razzle-dazzle to pick off some deserving targets. American middle-class society has become, in many ways, the consumer-driven, materialistic culture they depict, and this narcissistic ethos can produce the kind of admiration for status and physical beauty which blots out all human connections that aren't in harmony with those goals. But the film-makers'vision is too one-sided and hollow, saying almost nothing about the subject that hasn't been dramatized better before.
To its credit, American Beauty is a skillful mixture of different stories and tones. It's both a suburban dad's midlife crisis and the coming-of-age of three mixed-up teens. The filmmakers shift gears between black comedy and moody character analysis without missing a beat.
The movie is narrated by its central protagonist, Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey). “I'm 42 years old. In less than a year, I'll be dead,” he begins, putting an element of suspense under the events that follow. “Of course, I don't know that. In a way, I'm dead already,” he adds, describing the depressed state of his psyche.
His wife, Carolyn (Annette Bening), and 16-year-old daughter, Jane (Thora Birch), consider him “this gigantic loser.” The unhappy family no longer communicates with one another and suppresses their anger and secret desires behind a facade of well-rehearsed conformity.
Lester's fed up with his job as a reporter at an advertising-industry trade paper and feels guilty about his deteriorating relationship with his daughter. Carolyn is a hard-charging real estate broker who places career before family. Jane, who never smiles, sees through her parents and longs to get away.
The movie then shows its main characters falling into several kinds of degradation.
Hoping to reconnect with their daughter, Lester and Carolyn attend a high-school basketball game where Jane is a Dancing Spartanette. Lester spots her blonde fellow-cheerleader, Angela (Mena Suvari), and loses himself to lustful thoughts. The experience changes his life. He begins doing bench-presses in the garage and standing up to his family at dinner in hopes of being worthy of her.
In working out this obsession, Lester recaptures some of the passion and idealism of his youth. His daughter is disgusted, finding his lust embarrassing and “pathetic.” But the underage Angela encourages him.
Carolyn is too absorbed in her own problems to notice, hiding her insecurities behind a maniacally chipper persona. She seeks release in an affair with a more-successful business rival (Peter Gallagher) and by shooting a handgun at a target range. The movie reveals its hierarchy of values by treating her adultery as less offensive than her enjoyment of firearms.
Suddenly, our perspective on the action shifts, and we're spying on everyone through the lens of a digital camera. The Burnhams' next door neighbor, Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley), is a video freak who's developed a crush on Jane and secretly records her every action. He's also a big-time dope-dealer. Surprisingly, she's not repelled by his voyeurism and returns his affection.
From the filmmakers' politically correct vantage point, Ricky's father is even more twisted than he is. The older man is a retired marine colonel who collects guns, reads The Wall Street Journal and watches old Ronald Reagan movies on TV. He's depicted as verbally and physically abusive toward his son and therefore responsible for his drug-dealing.
Every romantic attachment in the film is obsessive-compulsive except one. The Burnhams' male homosexual neighbors are a well-adjusted couple, the only normal people we meet.
By the movie's end, the filmmakers run out of gas. They have dissected the Burnhams and the Fittses with a cold eye and sick laughter, but they don't know where to go with it. Everything is tied together with a melodramatic piece of violence which the movie tries to pass off as a critique of homophobia and America's gun culture. The narrative's basic framing device — our knowledge that Lester is going to die — is milked for suspense. The resolution offers no surprise or moral enlightenment.
To lighten the film's dark vision, Ricky indulges in some New-Age mysticism. He videotapes the wind blowing a plastic bag back and forth for 15 minutes, perceiving a force larger than himself behind this display of nature's power. “It's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world,” he proclaims.
It's a self-centered look at the majesty of creation that demands nothing more than aesthetic appreciation. This, and a kind of self-liberation without redemption or sacrifice, are presented as our only reasons to hope. American Beauty is a prisoner of the same me-first culture it tries to satirize.
Arts & Culture correspondent John Prizer writes from Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: American Beauty's emotional paralysis and spiritual emptiness ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORD: Arts & Culture -------- TITLE: Adultery, Hollywood Style DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:In the real world, adultery is painful and traumatic to couples who suffer from it, and their marriages either reach a hard-won reconciliation or are destroyed by it.
But countless modern movies like American Beauty ask the audience to understand — and even applaud — adultery. The typical story line goes like this: A stifling marriage has left a husband or wife (or both) unsatisfied. It is often suggested that the adulterer-to-be has made great efforts to bridge the gap between the two. Often, the other spouse is uncaring or unkind. The adultery, when it occurs, is perfectly understandable. Why be true to an uncaring or unfeeling person? How is a marriage worth fidelity when love has left it?
The Catechism of the Catholic Church recognizes how “easy” adultery can become when a couple have already parted ways in their hearts. That's why, in speaking of marital fidelity, it points toward true romance: “St. John Chrysostom suggests that young husbands should say to their wives: I have taken you in my arms, and I love you, and I prefer you to my life itself.
For the present life is nothing, and my most ardent dream is to spend it with you in such a way that we may be assured of not being separated in the life reserved for us …. I place your love above all things, and nothing would be more bitter or painful to me than to be of a different mind than you” (No. 2365).
The Catechism then points out that adultery is “an image of the sin of idolatry,” an “injustice” to one's children, a transgression against the rights of the spouse and an attack on the marriage bond (No. 2381).
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Arts & Culture -------- TITLE: Prizer's Video Picks DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:The Apostle (1997)
Written and directed by Oscar-winning actor Robert Duvall, The Apostle dares to explore the thriving evangelical Protestant subculture without the usual one-dimensional prejudices. Euliss “Sonny” Dewey (Duvall) runs a large, prosperous church in Texas with his wife, Jessie (Farrah Fawcett). Sonny correctly suspects that Jessie is having an affair and takes revenge on his wife's lover with a baseball bat. He then does a fast disappearing act and — after re-baptizing himself in a river and anointing himself “an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ” — slips off to rural Louisiana, where he takes a new name and transforms a small, abandoned church into a thriving place of worship. His starting over results in a deeply compromised, but earnest, spiritual rebirth. He becomes a suffering servant, devoting himself to his congregation's needs until his past catches up with him.
Though it doesn't succeed as a fully developed drama, The Apostle is a brilliant character study. Duvall succeeds in creating a multi-dimensional, believable personality — a sinner who aspires to sainthood in his heart even as he lets his emotions and behavior get in the way. The movie deliberately leaves unresolved the question of whether the good Sonny does as a minister can atone for the evil he previously perpetrated.
Emma (1996)
Nobody likes a busybody, and the heroine of Jane Austen's novel, Emma, is one of literature's most annoying meddlers. Fortunately, she gets her come-uppance before receiving some unexpected rewards.
Emma (Gwyneth Paltrow) is a matchmaker in Victorian England who is seriously deluded about her talents. The movie's comedy springs from her errors in judgment about the ways of love and her inability to learn from her mistakes. Observing Emma's Byzantine scheming is an older friend of the family, Mr. Knightley (Jeremy Northern) who at first treats her like a sister. He's tolerant of her excesses and perceives the essential goodness underneath. But then the sparks start to fly.
Emma‘s romantic battlefields seem light years away from the gross-out humor of most films today covering similar situations in a contemporary setting. Austin's early 19th-century world is based on good manners and a strict moral code. Her heroines must learn to distinguish virtue from self-righteousness and good intentions. Their lessons along the way are difficult and funny, with an occasional tug at the heart strings.
Driving Miss Daisy (1990)
Friendship is one of life's treasures, and the relationship becomes an added gift when its passages change people for the better. Driving Miss Daisy, which won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actress and Best Screenplay, is set in Georgia during the final years of racial segregation. Miss Daisy Werthan (Jessica Tandy) is a wealthy, elderly, Jewish widow. Hoke Colburn (Morgan Freeman) is a middle-aged black man who's hired to be her driver. A more unlikely pair of friends is difficult to imagine.
The action unfolds over a 25-year period, featuring real events like the 1958 bombing of Atlanta's Temple and the 1965 dinner salute to Martin Luther King, Jr. The personal story includes a backyard garden tended by the two and a chilling encounter with the Alabama highway patrol. Eventually, Miss Daisy and Hoke come to regard each other as equals. The movie is a testament to the generosity of the human spirit.
High Sierra (1941)
Unlike their contemporary equivalents, the classic Warner Brothers gangster films emphasize character over action. Their most memorable personalities are colorful bad guys whom you get to understand and sometimes like. But behind the well-constructed, inventive plotting, there's always a firmly anchored moral universe. Crime never pays.
Roy Earle (Humphrey Bogart) is a tough-guy robber who's sprung from jail by an old-time associate for a California-hotel heist. But Roy is a gangster with a heart. During his cross-country escape he meets Velma (Joan Leslie), a club-footed girl who wins his sympathy. He somehow finds the money for an operation that cures her. The young woman then gives him the cold shoulder, jeopardizing his safety at a crucial moment.
High Sierra finishes with a breath-taking chase through the California mountains. Roy reflects on his own mortality and place in the universe. Earth seems like nothing more than “a little ball turning through the night, with us hanging onto it.” He dreams of “crashing out” and finding freedom away from the gangster life. But the sins of his past can't be ignored. Some might say he's dogged by cruel twists of fate. Others would call it the hand of providence. But you care about Roy until the end.
Arts & Culture correspondent John Prizer writes from Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORD: Arts & Culture -------- TITLE: Conference Marshals Support for Ex Corde DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—The Vatican's apostolic nuncio to the United States has called on America's 235 Catholic colleges and universities to renew their identity as “authentically Catholic” institutions.
The exhortation came as the nation's bishops prepare, after nine years of discussion, to vote in November on guidelines to implement Ex Corde Ecclesiae, the 1990 apostolic constitution on Catholic higher education.
The nuncio, Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, made the remarks as he addressed about 125 students, faculty, administrators and alumni of Catholic colleges and universities gathered for an Oct. 8-10 conference on Ex Corde sponsored by the Cardinal Newman Society.
“My presence here today, as the representative of the Holy Father, should convey the interest that the Holy Father has in your continued work for the renewal of Catholic higher education,” he said.
Titled “From Resistance to Faith: Renewing the Idea of the Catholic University,” the conference also presented such leading Catholic educators as Jesuit Father John J. Piderit, president of Loyola University of Chicago; Holy Cross Father James T. Burtchaell, former provost of the University of Notre Dame; and Daniel T. Robinson, research professor of psychology at Georgetown University.
Non-Catholics Voice Solidarity
The conference's most sustained and enthusiastic response was drawn by a non-Catholic, Ivy League professor who argued that a pluralistic society requires faith-based education if the society is to avoid sliding into bland homogeneity. Alan Charles Kors, professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania and coauthor of a controversial book, The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses, decried “Catholic-bashing” and a loss of true academic freedom at secular universities.
Kors said that, instead of being a threat to academic freedom, Catholic campuses are among the last places where the dignity of the individual is still respected. He described serious threats to academic freedom at secular schools, including speech codes, rampant anti-Catholicism and political correctness.
Another non-Catholic, Richard N. Williams of the Mormon-affiliated Brigham
Young University, explained that Catholic administrators' doubts about the legality and necessity of hiring and firing faculty to uphold a school's religious mission are unfounded.
“My university has had just such a policy in place for over 120 years, and everyone, including myself, is committed to it,” Williams said. “It seems to be working just fine.”
Williams described how Brigham Young University, which requires faculty to support the religious mission of the university while maintaining standards of academic excellence, has no significant problems receiving accreditation or public funding. He urged Catholic colleges and universities to develop clear standards of personal conduct, make support for the religious mission a criterion for employment, and to “have faith that you will achieve the highest levels of academic excellence not in spite of your religious mission, but precisely because of it.”
The need for such policies was made evident by Father James
Burtchaell, who chronicled the decline of religious identity at many colleges and universities originally sponsored by Christians, such as Harvard and Yale (Congregationalist), Princeton (evangelical Presbyterian), William and Mary (Anglican) and Brown (Baptist).
Catholic schools likewise lack sufficient mechanisms for ensuring their preservation as Catholic institutions, Father Burtchaell said. He referred to his 1998 book The Dying of the Light: Disengagement of Colleges and Universities from their Christian Churches, in which he warned educators to embrace and nourish religious identity, or witness the almost certain secularization of their colleges and universities.
People and Policies
Perhaps the most anticipated speaker was Father John Piderit, president of one of America's largest Catholic universities. Last June, Father Piderit stunned critics of Ex Corde by defending its most controversial provision, a requirement that teachers of Catholic theology receive prior recognition from their local bishop. Earlier this month, he again stood publicly in defense of the U.S. bishops' plans to implement Ex Corde, saying, “The time has come when we have to be more forthright about our commitment to our Catholic heritage.”
Father Piderit accepted his own challenge by presenting a vision for Catholic higher education and the policy and personnel changes that are necessary to achieve it. He echoed the bishops' call for greater numbers of faculty and administrators who are well-trained in “the Catholic way of doing things.”
“Hiring of new faculty and staff who are committed to the Catholic faith and mission is the greatest challenge for Catholic colleges and universities during the coming decades,” Father Piderit said, noting that non-Catholics could participate in this venture.
“But it is hard to imagine how non-Catholics could be eager to join in such a venture if Catholics are not,” he added. “So, it is important that the Catholic university of the future be able to attract capable Catholics, trained in their specialty fields, who wish to promote the Catholic faith and mission.”
Manuel A. Miranda, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, argued that the most important and easiest step in the direction of mission-centered personnel policies is to replace troublesome student-affairs staff who are responsible for “the problems of Catholic identity on our campuses and the scandals and harm to integrity they cause.”
“Personnel is policy, “ Miranda concluded, referring to problems such as excessive and underage drinking, sexual promiscuity and advocacy of activities not consistent with Catholic doctrine, such as abortion and homosexual activity.
‘Safe Sex’ Meetings
Such affronts to Catholic sensibilities were detailed by students and former students. They described Catholic campuses on which the norm was hostility toward traditional Catholic devotions, policies mandating acceptance of homosexual conduct, and a lack of appropriate Catholic retreat programs and liturgies.
Elizabeth Fiore, who graduated from Georgetown last May, recounted how, as a freshman, she had been instructed to attend a mandatory meeting on “safe sex.”
“At the conclusion of the session, the presenters snickered that they were not allowed to distribute condoms to us,” said Fiore. “Then they said they'd leave them on a table in the lounge” for attendees to help themselves.
Balancing out the accounts of the decline of Catholicism on Catholic campuses, a number of discussions pointed out positive developments afoot.
Georgetown's Robinson led a dialogue on ways to restore a core curriculum that is appropriate to the Catholic university. A panel of religious women and clergy spotlighted hopeful signs among Catholic youth and the desire for new vocations coming from Catholic education. And representatives from numerous Catholic and secular organizations offered resources and advice to those who are engaged in the renewal of Catholic identity at Catholic campuses.
University of Pennsylvania's Kors noted that no institution in all of human history has more singularly contributed to civilization than the Catholic Church, through its universities and internal and multicultural debates.
“Catholic universities must not lose their identity,” he pleaded. They must instead “serve again as ‘monasteries’ for the ravages of the current barbarians,” he said.
----- EXCERPT: Academic and religious leaders anticipate bishops' vote on guidelines for Catholic colleges ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Education -------- TITLE: Education Notebook DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:Sixties 101
FAIRFIELD UNIVERSITY—The Jesuit school located in Fairfield, Conn., is presenting the “'60s Project,” which will be “a unique, university-wide, semester-long examination of the 1960s 30 years after the end of that turbulent but momentous decade,” according to the school's Web site.
Speakers in the series included Christopher Hitchens, famous for saying Mother Theresa was “a demagogue and obscurantist, and a servant of earthly powers,” who spoke on Sept. 21.
Homosexual activist journalist and folk singer Janis Ian spoke on campus Oct. 2, and top abortion lawyer Morris Dees addressed the campus on Oct. 13.
In the coming weeks, two more speakers will visit campus, Gloria Steinem and former senator Eugene McCarthy.
In addition to the speakers, Fairfield had a “roundtable discussion on the use and abuse of psychoactive drugs” and plans a theatrical performance of the ‘60s musical Hair in November.
Gannon Celebrates 75 Years
GANNON UNIVERSITY—Gannon plans to celebrate its 75th anniversary not by creating new events, but by emphasizing traditional Gannon activities throughout the 1999-2000 academic year, according to its web site.
Gannon plans to enhance its anniversary celebration with a special service project to return something to the community of Erie, Penn. With the help of the aentire campus community, volunteers will build library and resource centers for the elderly as well as low-income families.
Gannon University's 75th anniversary celebration “will be marked by a celebration of its rich heritage, service to God and neighbor, and the ambition to shape the future.”
14 Years of Growth
UNIVERSITY OF THE INCARNATE WORD-Once again, UIW has an increase in student population, adding another 100 students, according to the school's Web site. With 3,600 total students, UIW's greatest growth came from a 7% spike in graduate students. The growth is part of a 14-year trend for the university, which has set enrollment records each year.
Dr. Louis J. Agnese, president of UIW, said the graduate enrollment increase is due to the greater variety of degree programs now available as well as the university's commitment to offering degree programs to nontraditional students through evening and extended-studies programs.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Education -------- TITLE: A Man of His Times DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:Rome's largest crowd in memory — several hundred thousand pilgrims — jammed into St. Peter's Square on May 2 for the beatification of Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, while another 200,000 or so followed the proceedings from the piazza in front of St. John Lateran.
It was altogether fitting, for the Capuchin friar drew millions of pilgrims during his life, including the current Holy Father, who went to confess to him as a young priest. Today his tomb at his friary in San Giovanni Rotondo attracts more pilgrims that any other shrine in the world, save for Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico.
In this series, we have looked these last few weeks at eruptions of the supernatural in this secularized century as evidence that God still works. The story of Fatima and the life of Brother André show that miracles might be more plentiful in our time than in the early Church.
Padre Pio demonstrates the more exotic supernatural gifts are not the product of imaginative medieval hagiographers, but evidence that God still chooses to work in extraordinary ways.
Like his spiritual father St. Francis of Assisi in the 13th century, Padre Pio had the stigmata, bearing the wounds of Christ in his own body. Like St. Philip Neri in the 16th century, he had the gift of bilocation; and like St. John Vianney in the 19th century, he could read souls in the confessional.
“Those open, bleeding wounds speak to us of the love of God for all, especially for those who are sick in body and spirit,” said Pope John Paul II the day after the beatification. “His testimony is a powerful call to the supernatural dimension, which must not be confused with the appetite for miracles, which is a deviation he always shunned.”
The Church is always reluctant to encourage the ‘seeking after miracles’, and so Padre Pio suffered during his life, even from his own superiors, who questioned the authenticity of his stigmata and other gifts. But the people believed, and came by the thousands, lining up for days at a time, to attend his Mass, to go to his confessional, to besiege him for counsel wherever they could find him.
The Peasant Priest
Padre Pio could always be found at his friary at San Giovanni Rotondo, which he entered in 1916 and which he never left thereafter. He was born Francis Forgione on May 25, 1887, was ordained in 1910, and spent the first six years of his priesthood with his peasant family due to ill health. His had grown used to suffering from an early age. In 1918, after celebrating Mass, he received the stigmata that afflicted him until shortly before his death in 1968. his passion lasted 50 years.
“I was sitting in the choir stall, giving thanks for the Holy Mass when a mysterious celestial figure appeared before me,” wrote Padre Pio to his confessor. “When the mysterious figure left, I realized that my hands, feet and side had been pierced and were flowing with blood. You can imagine the torment I felt and continue to feel every day. The wound in my side pumps out blood constantly, especially from Thursday evening until Saturday. I fear that I am going to die from loss of blood.”
‘I Belong to Everyone’
Padre Pio never tried to call attention to his extraordinary gifts, but poured himself out in the administration of the sacraments, even as the sacramental life of the Church flows from the pierced side of the crucified Christ. He celebrated the Mass with the greatest possible devotion and spent day after day in his confessional. His only external work was the hospital he directed to be built with the support of the pilgrims who sought him out, the House for the Relief of Suffering, opened in 1956. This hospital is renowned today for its high level of care, both medical and spiritual, and lives on as a particular expression of Padre Pio's care for the weak and suffering.
“I belong to everyone,” said Padre Pio. “Everyone can say, ‘Padre Pio is mine.’ I love my spiritual children as much as I love my own life. I have regenerated them in Jesus in sorrow and in love. I do not cease to implore for them God's blessings, praying for them to be internally transformed in Him.
My beloved ones, how beautiful is His face, and how sweet His eyes, and how good it is to be close to Him on the mountain of glory.” Padre Pio knew that Calvary is the mountain of glory.
The Victim Priest
It is noteworthy that Padre Pio is the first priest to be a recognized stigmatist — St. Francis was a deacon, and there have been women religious stigmatists.
Why no priest would be given this gift until the 20th century bears consideration.
Perhaps in a time of great confusion over the identity of the priest, Padre Pio bore in his body the most vivid reminder that the priest is called to be another Christ, and to act in the person of Christ.
And he did nothing other than what a priest is called to do: to celebrate Mass, to hear confessions, to counsel souls, to pray constantly, to offer his mortifications, to care for the sick and the poor.
He preached Christ crucified in his body in an extraordinary way, and also in the ordinary duties of a priest, to which he gave himself with heroic sacrifice for nearly sixty years.
When I am lifted up I will draw all men to myself — John 12:32. The cross of the Christ, imprinted in the flesh, the soul and the priesthood of Padre Pio, continues to draw men from all nations. Among other places, they were at St. Peter's last May. By the hundreds of thousands.
----- EXCERPT: Padre Pio and others made the 20th century a time of miracles and marvels ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond de Souza ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: They Want Him To Stop Singing DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:Liberation theologians and evangelical Christians don't agree on much, but they do agree that they don't much appreciate Father Marcelo Rossi, the Brazilian pop-star priest.
Liberation Theologians
Some have speculated that the rise of the charismatic renewal in Brazil and Father Rossi's more spiritual and more joyful-looking style have helped speed the decline of liberation theology.
“His presence in the media is a way to put himself above Jesus Christ,” said Dominican Father Alberto Betto, a prominent liberation theologian.
“It is not enough to bring people to church, it is necessary to send them to the poor,” said Father Betto. “But I don't see Father Marcelo among the poor; so he is just perpetuating the status of the rich.”
Leonardo Boff, a former Franciscan priest and the most well-known liberation theologian in Brazil, was even more acerbic, describing Father Rossi as the Brazilian equivalent of a “dumb blonde,” and as a “byproduct of the market economy, which provides the sort of druglike joy that people want [in order] to forget the commitment to the poor. He is not committed to the poor.”
Father Rossi responded that a large number of the people who feel renewed by his Masses and songs “are very poor people, those who suffer most.”
Father Rossi's superior, Santo Amaro Bishop Fernando Antonio de Figueiredo, went further. He told the Register that profits earned by Father Rossi — which he, as a diocesan priest, is entitled to use in any way he wishes — go to help the fledgling Diocese of Santo Amaro, which was created in 1992 without a cathedral, a seminary or many resources.
“Father Marcelo has no personal belongings. He is the most detached person I have ever met,” said Bishop Figueiredo.
Protestants Cry ‘Thief!’
Not surprisingly, some Protestants have also joined in the criticism. Edir Macedo, leader of the Universal Church of God's Kingdom, recently wrote in his newspaper, Folha Universal, that Father Rossi “is a thief of evangelical songs and style,” and that “he is trying to recover Catholicism's wasted time by imitating us.”
Father Rossi did not attempt to hide his amusement. “Who can claim the copyright for praising the Lord in a spirit of celebration and joy? The first Christian community did it — they would have the copyright,” he said with a smile.
On a more serious note, Father Rossi said “I have nothing against evangelicals, but I want Catholics to remain in our Church.”
— Alejandro Bermudez
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Alejandro Bermudez ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Black Marchers Decry Abortion Racism DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—The march on Washington of black pro-lifers that ended at the Supreme Court on Oct. 9 was not Joyce Smith's first civil rights march.
Smith marched many times with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Now, she said it was time to march for the rights of her preborn “brothers and sisters.”
“When you destroy a human life, that's murder,” Smith told the Register. “Abortion is totally against God. It's immoral.”
She was one of a hundred black pro-lifers who walked more than 200 miles from Newark, N.J., to deliver a blunt message: Racism and abortion are linked.
The first Say So March followed the path of the Underground Railroad, through which thousands of slaves passed to freedom.
The organizers said they plan on retracing the path every year until abortion is stopped. Star Parker, an activist for black opportunity causes and a Catholic, told the Register, “Just as that route was a road of freedom to our people, it will also be the road to save our people in the 21st century.”
Though publicity of the march was minimal, people responded warmly to their message, she said. “They came out of their houses into the streets to us, clapping and singing,” Parker said.
“The response we got has been great,” said Damon Owens, a Catholic from Newark, who organized the march in order to raise awareness of the catastrophic effect abortion is having on the black community. “Some people in Wilmington grabbed their sneakers and joined the march. A guy came down from Canada and joined the march in Philadelphia.”
In the future, organizers hope to attract 1,452 marchers to represent the loss the black community suffers to abortion. This year, marchers laid 1,452 roses on the steps of the Supreme Court — one for each black child that dies from abortion every day in the United States.
Marchers saw the abortion problem as particularly acute in the black community. Owens cited an African American Life Alliance study that found that, unless attitudes change in the black community, the black population would plummet from 30 million to 8 million during the 21st century.
“This is genocide,” Owens contended. “That is the passion behind the march, the respect for life.”
Marchers also criticized high-dollar philanthropists like Ross Perot and Warren Buffett for giving millions to organizations like Planned Parenthood, which is America's largest provider of abortions.
“We want to tell those who fund abortion providers, thinking they are helping blacks, that they are (in fact) killing us,” said the Rev. Johnny Hunter.
Hunter criticized Bill Gates in particular. Gates, who donates millions to the abortion industry, recently announced a donation of $1 billion in minority scholarships. “What good is a scholarship to a dead child?” Hunter asked. As the Register went to press, the Gates Foundation had not returned a phone call.
Noticeably absent in the peaceful demonstration were counterprotesters from pro-abortion groups like Planned Parenthood, the National Organization for Women or the National Abortion Rights Action League who are usually present at any Washington march that deals with abortion. Parker said their absence was no accident.
“They can't have black pro-lifers on one side and whites in favor of abortion on the other side,” she said. “They know that they can't do that on TV.”
Marchers claimed that racism has motivated the abortion movement from the beginning — and said they had evidence that proved it.
Said Hunter, “Even though we make up 12% of the population, we supply 33% of the abortion industry's business. We have fallen prey to Margaret Sanger's plan for the black race.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Josh Mercer ----- KEYWORD: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Surgeon Is Reconstructing Children's Lives DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:Dennis Nigro says he knew when he was 15 years old that he would be a plastic surgeon and that he would use his skills to help people. Today he is a successful plastic surgeon and founder of Fresh Starts Surgical Gifts, a nonprofit organization that provides free reconstructive surgery to children with physical deformities. He has received numerous honors, including the President's Volunteer Action Award, and the Dr. Thomas A. Dooley Award from Notre Dame. Register correspondent Martha Lepore interviewed him at his office in Encinitas, Calif., at 7 a.m. — on the day his first daughter was born.
Lepore: What deformities do your patients have?
Nigro: Most of them are birth defects, such as large growths of neural tissues on the face, birth-marks, protruding ears, and webbed fingers and toes. Some have scars from accidents or abuse. For the most part we perform reconstructions in several stages over a periods of one to two years. One of the benefits for me in doing these operations is becoming familiar with them and finding better ways to do them. Often there is a trading back and forth of techniques between the reconstructive work of Fresh Start and cosmetic surgeries in my practice.
In your surgical outreach through Fresh Start Surgical Gifts, you bring the patients to your clinic — why?
We do this because I found out on a medical mission to Mexico that I didn't have the surgical resources I needed. We can serve them so much better in fully equipped medical facilities. In fact, we are opening another Fresh Start surgery center in Johnson City, Tenn., at the end of October. Plastic surgeon Jim Brantner, MD, will be in charge of that center.
What do you get out of this work?
There are a lot of problems in today's medicine. In my regular practice, surgeries are being shackled by the legal and health care systems and I can't practice like I would like. Fresh Start gives me the opportunity to do what I think is needed for patients. It never feels like work doing Fresh Start surgeries; I enjoy it and feel good doing it.
What difficulties do you face in directing Fresh Start?
We began the program in 1991 and it involves not only the surgeries but also finding transportation and housing for patients and their families. In the last eight years, we've coordinated and performed free surgical procedures for more than 200 children during intensive surgery weekends that we now conduct about every seven weeks. I've learned that this work is not something where you can rest on reputation. You have to be on top of it every day. This can wear on you and be hard to do, but it is more than worthwhile.
What are your plans for the future?
I don't ever see my self as retiring and I hope Fresh Start realizes its potential as an organization. More people are finding out about us since we started the Web site [www. fssg.org]. In fact, many patients come to us through the Internet. I also have a weekly radio show and will continue to use part of my time to encourage volunteerism. I think it's very important and [I] tell people volunteering isn't a burden, it's a privilege.
Martha Lepore writes from Coronado, California.
----- EXCERPT: ProLife ProFile ----- EXTENDED BODY: Dennis Nigro ----- KEYWORD: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Prayerful Apostolate Marks Its 10th Year DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:BROOKLYN, N.Y.—The Helpers of God's Precious Infants didn't celebrate their 10th anniversary with a champagne cruise down the Hudson.
They marked it with their regular meeting — at the Ambulatory Surgery Center in Brooklyn, a large, pink-faced medical facility that specializes in abortions.
The event was typical: Brooklyn Bishop Thomas Daily began the morning with Mass for about 350 congregants at St. Michael's Church. After Mass, the Blessed Sacrament was left exposed on the altar of the Church for some to keep vigil. The rest walked to the center, praying 15 decades of the rosary and singing hymns. The helpers use no slogans or images, except for our Lady of Guadalupe. The event ended with silent prayer at the clinic.
Only one thing was different at the 10th anniversary prayer vigil: A group of 30 transvestites taunted the Helpers on the way to Mass, throughout the procession, and then gathered in a police-built pen on the near side of the abortion clinic to heckle them.
“The transvestites were placed behind this barrier,” said Kathleen O'Connell, a New York attorney who was present for the vigil. “They had signs and whistles and noisemakers, and they were singing obscene songs to the tune of Christian hymns.”
“This went on for an hour; really, it was amazing,” O'Connell said, “a startling contrast” between harassment and prayer.
The abortion facility's administrator saw it differently. “I think that's a stretch to use the word prayer,” said Frank Monk, who has been at the center since 1997.
“There is some prayer that goes on [at the vigils] but there are other activities that the patients complain about bitterly,” he said. “They indicate that they have been bothered and harassed. They resent it. They prefer to enter a licensed surgical facility without impediment.”
Monk claimed that Brooklyn's Msgr. Philip Reilly — the founder of the Helpers — is himself guilty of harassing the women. “He does it,” Monk said. “It is extremely unpleasant for the clients.”
Msgr. Reilly, who, for the past several years has spent at least six hours a day in front of the clinic when he is not traveling to teach his methods of prayerful protest, denies Monk's charges flatly. “It's a lie,” Msgr. Reilly told the Register.
He said his purpose is to pray at the center and to offer alternatives to the women seeking an abortion.
These women, Msgr. Reilly said, are often in very difficult situations and are under a lot of pressure. “But because we treat them with dignity,” he said there are “a tremendous number of turnarounds.”
Ten Octobers ago, on the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, Msgr. Reilly joined a group that, in his own words, consisted of “two grandmothers, a grandfather and a working girl.”
Their mission, they said, was to show the face of Christ to everyone involved in the daily routine of the abortion clinic, doctors, clients, nurses and police. The peaceful group didn't realize it at the time, but it was laying the seeds for a revolution in the pro-life movement.
Operation Rescue, with its “take-no-prisoners” style, was in its heyday. The thought of prayerfully winning over the hearts of abortion providers and their clients was viewed by many people in the pro-life movement as ineffective.
For the media and the courts, the image of militant pro-lifers has remained. But since then, thousands of men and women have quietly enlisted in the “Reilly method” of fasting and prayer for conversions of heart.
“I believe this is most effective method because of it is most in tune with God's design,” said Msgr. Reilly. “The greatest evil of abortion is not the 38 million babies that have died — that's a physical evil that happens to the babies.
“In God's eyes, the greater evil is occurs in the hearts of those who do not die physically, but who put the children to death.”
Bishop Daily, who was honored by the Helpers after the Oct. 9 anniversary vigil for his support of the group, was the first American bishop to participate in a prayer vigil with the Helpers. That was nine years ago. Since then, he has participated on more than 100 vigils. To date, more than 60 America bishops have followed his lead, with the numbers growing steadily each year.
Bishop Daily attributed the effectiveness and growth of the Helpers to the centrality of conversion to their mission. “Msgr. Reilly knows the meaning of prayer and penance,” Bishop Daily told the Register. “He also knows the meaning of activism in the proper sense. That's what turns people's minds around. Dialogue is one thing, but it has to be backed up by prayer and penance.”
Commenting on the rapid growth of the Helpers' philosophy — which is now being promoted in Eastern Europe, Australia and New Zealand — Msgr. Reilly said, “God is doing it. I wait for the call and just try to follow where he leads me.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian McGuire ----- KEYWORD: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:On June 25, 1988, the Holy Father flew to the Hörschling Airport at Enns-Lorch at the Dioceses of Linz and Sankt Pölten in Austria. He preached the following homily about the value of children's lives.
In light of this Christian courage for the future, I cry out to you: Take joy in your children, accept the gift of new life, refuse to destroy life. Treat it with love and respect from its very first moment. Children are not simply commodities to be considered financially and eventually discarded.
Have a heart for young people as well. They put to us new, seemingly weighty questions, and they are often impetuous and impatient. They also need preparation and hope for the future; they themselves are truly our hope and future.
What else does the Bread of Life strengthen us for? With its power we can resist evil.
Sometimes it seems that the hour of darkness is upon us; wars, oppression, injustice and catastrophes dominate the daily news. Personal pain, often borne and suffered in loneliness, oppresses individuals no less. None of this is meaningless; in all of this lies God's challenge to seek the power of salvation and liberation, first of all for one's self, then also in solidarity and unity (Nos. 5-6).
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: LIFE NOTES DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:Welcoming the 6 Billionth Baby
“The United Nations has officially designated today the ‘Day of Six Billion,’ marking the expected arrival of the earth's six billionth human inhabitant. To judge by the U.N.'s own pronouncements, this commemoration is meant to be not a celebration but a day of mourning and atonement.
“High authorities at the U.N. today apparently fix their hopes for the plan-et's future on setting the Third World awash with modern contraceptives. Alas, their prescription is as flawed as their diagnosis. Peacetime fertility levels in Western Europe first dropped below the replacement level in the 1930's — long before the advent of the pill or the IUD. European parents back then knew where babies came from — and so do prospective parents in Asia, Africa and Latin America today. The single best predictor of society's fertility level is the desired family size for women of childbearing age — and population planners have yet to invent a pill that can alter those preferences.
“The globe's six billionth member will enter a highly imperfect world. Terrifying material want still afflicts a fraction of mankind; for hundreds of millions of people in the sub-Sahara and the former Soviet Union, moreover, health conditions have worsened palpably over the past decade. Fortunately, those grim facts are exceptions to the overall sweep of 20th-century development. The great changes that have made it possible for the world to register its sixth billionth inhabitant are a triumph, not a tragedy. It would have been nice if the U.N.'s humanitarians could have peered beyond the glass of their limousine windows to see just that much.”
Florida Judge Rules Against Parental Notification
PRO-LIFE INFONET, Oct. 14—Parents in Florida don't have to know if their daughter is seeking an abortion, Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis ruled, upholding a decade-old statement by Florida's courts that legislative attempts to limit abortion are unconstitutional, the Infonet reported.
“The state will appeal the ruling, but as in rulings before it, Lewis's six-page order temporarily barring the state from enforcing the law cites a unique privacy amendment to Florida's Constitution. Florida's Supreme Court has relied on that amendment — granting every person ‘the right to be let alone and free from government intrusion into his private life’— to overturn limits on abortion,” added the Infonet's Steve Ertelt.
In 1989, the Florida Supreme Court struck down a law requiring parental consent before a minor's abortion. The newest law, requiring only parental notice, was to take effect on Oct. 11. It will not be enforced while appeals continue.
Florida Right to Life, calling parental notification a law that “will help restore sanity back in the family,” called it “bizarre” that a child cannot get her ears pierced without permission but can have an abortion without her parents' knowledge, Ertelt reported.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Did You Know? DATE: 10/24/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 24-30, 1999 ----- BODY:Pro-lifers are still fighting to win protections for unborn children. But animals are gaining new legal status all the time.
“Law schools at Harvard and Georgetown announced this past summer that they would offer courses in animal law for the first time,” reported the Washington-based Family Research Council in an Oct. 18 press release.
“Steve Wise, who'll teach the Harvard course in the spring, once listed a captive dolphin named Rainbow as the plaintiff in a suit against an aquarium. Wise has argued that rights to bodily integrity and liberty should be given to chimpanzees,” said the release.
----- EXCERPT: Facts of Life ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: On Abortion, U.S. Senate Tries to Have It Both Ways DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON — For the third time in four years, the Senate has voted to ban partial-birth abortions. This time however, abortion-rights supporters passed a resolution affirming the “constitutional right” to abort a child as recognized by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade.
The ban on partial-birth abortions passed 63–34. President Clinton has vowed to veto the bill as he has all previous bans on the procedure.
Under the procedure, a baby is partially delivered and then has her skull punctured and brains vacuumed out while her head is still inside her mother.
“To allow this to continue unchecked violates every principle of human rights and decency this country has always stood for,” said Cardinal William Keeler, archbishop of Baltimore. “So unique and brutal is this procedure that the majority of those Americans who are pro-life and those who describe themselves as pro-choice agree that it ought to be banned.”
“This crosses the line, this is infanticide,” said the bill's sponsor, Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa. “Surely the Senate can draw the line here.”
A presidential veto will likely be upheld as pro-lifers will remain two votes shy of a two-thirds vote necessary to overturn, a gain of one vote from last year. Two pro-life senators were absent from the vote on Oct. 21.
“If these 34 senators, Clinton and Gore get their way, thousands of babies will continue to be pulled feet-first from the womb while alive, and then brutally killed,” said Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee.
For the first time, the Senate voted 51–47 to approve a nonbinding resolution affirming the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which opened the door to the deaths of more than 36 million unborn children.
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who authored the amendment, told his fellow senators to be proud of advocating abortion. “Don't be afraid of this issue,” said Harkin, who nearly lost his Senate seat in 1996 because of his militant support of all forms of abortion.
Only two Democrats voted against the Harkin Amendment, Sens. John Breaux of Louisiana and Harry Reid of Nevada.
Eight Republicans agreed to the Harkin's affirmation of Roe. They were Sens. John Chafee, Rhode Island (who died Oct. 24 of heart failure); Ben Night-horse Campbell, Colorado; Susan Collins, Maine; James Jeffords, Vermont; Olympia Snowe, Maine; Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania; Ted Stevens, Alaska; and John Warner, Virginia.
Pro-lifers contended that the slim-majority vote to affirm Roe was no large victory for abortion advocates.
“I'm surprised they did as well as they did,” Santorum said. Observed Johnson: “The Harkin Amendment has no legal effect — it simply expressed the position of a bare majority of 51 senators, which is hardly a ringing endorsement of legal abortion on demand. The Harkin Amendment will not likely pass House and Senate conference committee action on the bill.”
Extremists?
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., a strident defender of abortions, looks forward to raising the issue of the abortion votes during the 2000 elections.
“This is going to be an absolutely huge issue next year,” said Boxer. “Now we see the extremists in the United States Senate.”
Proponents of the partial-birth abortion procedure believed that the Senate's ban was a direct assault on Roe. “This is just another attempt to undermine that decision,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.
Santorum, on the other hand, noted the failure of some partial-birth abortion supporters to address directly the issue of whether the procedure should remain legally protected.
“Because on its own merits, they have nothing to stand on,” Santorum said. “It's not medically necessary, never medically advisable and is much more dangerous to the woman. It borders on infanticide.”
Santorum told the Register that this specific abortion procedure is not respected in the medical community. “It's not done in hospitals, not taught in medical school or found in medical literature,” he said. “It's a barbaric act done just in abortion clinics.”
On the Senate floor, Santorum mentioned that twice in 1996 his pregnant wife rejected a late-term abortion even though they knew their son had a defect and would die shortly he left his mother's womb.
“My son, who died, was not perfect in the eyes of the world,” said Santorum, a Catholic father of six. “But he was perfect to me. He was perfect to my wife. And, most importantly, he was perfect in God's eyes.”
‘My son, who died, was not perfect in the eyes of the world,’ said Sen. Santorum, a Catholic father of six. ‘But he was perfect to me. He was perfect to my wife. And, most importantly, he was perfect in God's eyes.’
Shift in Opinion
Public opinion appears to be shifting away from permitting an abortion at any time during the baby's stay inside her mother's womb.
A May 1999 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll found that 58% of American believe either that abortion should be “illegal in all circumstances” or “legal only in a few circumstances.”
A poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates for the pro-abortion Center for Gender Equality shows that woman are becoming more pro-life as well. It found that 70% of American women favor “more restrictions” on abortion and that 53% believe that abortion should be legal (at most) in cases of rape, incest, or to save the mother's life.
“Some of the 51 senators who voted to endorse Roe may find that the vote returns to haunt them politically,” said National Right to Life's Johnson.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Josh Mercer -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: An Eve Haunted By a Pagan Past DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:MASHPEE, Mass.-'Tis the season when the line between Christian and pagan practices seems to blur.
Halloween, derived from All Hallowed's Eve, refers to the night before All Saints' Day. But it comes from the Celtic pagan feast Samhain, when spirits from the Otherworld (which should not be confused with either heaven or hell) were most able to enter the regular world through a fairy mound, called in Irish síd. On this day, Nov. 1, more than any other the Celts believed they were most likely to be accosted by foreign spirits, who could influence their lives.
This feast, though probably older than Christianity, lent itself to the Christian idea of communing with the dead through prayer and sacrifice, now especially marked by the Church on All Saints' Day on Nov. 1 and All Souls' Day on Nov. 2.
This year's is the 1,001st celebration of All Souls' Day, according to medievalist Sandra Miesel, of Indianapolis, who said that St. Odo of Cluny popularized the idea of having a special Mass for the dead on that day.
Union with the dead was reaffirmed by the Second Vatican Council's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium: “This most sacred Synod accepts with great devotion the venerable faith of our ancestors regarding this vital fellowship with our brethren who are in heavenly glory or who are still being purified after death” (No. 51).
Catholic history is full of examples of departed brethren making return visits. Most of these come from private revelation, which Catholics are not required to believe. But some come from Scripture, suggesting that exiting this world is not irreversible for God.
Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead in John 11:43–44, and restores to life a 12-year-old girl (Matthew 9:25, Mark 5:41–42, Luke 8:54–55).
Praying for the Dead
Living with the dead was not a strange idea for Christians of the Middle Ages, as a similarly titled book by Patrick Geary suggests.
“The living had an overwhelming obligation to pray for the dead,” Miesel said. “The continuity between the dead and the living, the ties of family and friendship, persist despite death.”
The faithful were inspired partly by charity, but also, Miesel said, by the “hope their descendants would do the same for them.”
That same spirit, so to speak, animates devotion to the dead from the current crop of those living on earth. And then, when the souls in purgatory finish their sentence, Miesel noted, “They'll become our patrons in heaven.”
The imperfect Christian living here on earth can hope the cycle will continue.
“And when we die, we'll be part of our descendants' lives in the same way,” Miesel said.
But while that's the ideal, some say the living aren't doing their part.
Father Benjamin Luther, pastor of St. John the Evangelist parish in Paducah, Ky., said many funerals nowadays are framed in the language of unofficial canonizations, with nary a mention of purgatory.
“People don't pray for the dead,” Father Luther said. “And of course, it's a big mistake.”
Ignoring the dead has affected Catholics' perspective on the culture.
Father Luther said Catholics don't seem to have a different perspective on Halloween from anyone else, which he finds disapponting because the celebration can be a catechizing tool. Several years ago, he said, one family in his parish held a “saints' party” at Halloween time, where kids dressed up as saints.
What the Church once borrowed from the pagans to make a point can still be useful, the priest said, but that requires making the point.
“We need to complete the process of truly Christianizing the observance,” Father Luther said.
Matt McDonald writes from Mashpee, Massachusetts.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Matt McDonald -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: 'Baby Step' In Direction Of Unity DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:Lutherans and Catholics plan to make history Oct. 31 by agreeing on one of the principal disagreements that led to the Protestant Reformation.
The Lutheran World Federation and the Vatican are scheduled to sign the Joint Declaration on Justification in Augsburg, Germany. Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to Wittenberg church door 482 years ago, changing the course of a millennium of Christian history.
Ishmael Noko, general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, will sign for Lutherans, and Cardinal Edward Idris Cassidy, president of the Pontifical Council for the Unity of Christians, will sign for Catholics.
The Lutheran World Federation represents 124 member churches in 69 countries, including the 5.2-million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Not all Lutherans, however, are represented by the federation.
“The understanding of the doctrine of justification set forth in this declaration shows that a consensus in basic truths of the doctrine of justification exists between Lutherans and Catholics,” said a common statement issued at the June meeting where the details of the agreement were finalized.
The agreement, the result of Lutheran-Catholic dialogue since the Second Vatican Council, was the focus of much theological debate in the past few years.
The dispute over justification — particularly over the place of a person's response to God's offer of salvation — was a key factor in the division of Western Christianity at the time of the Reformation.
‘ ... there is no reason to believe that the planned signing ceremony will be called off because of this criticism,’ said Udo Hahn, who represents the Lutheran World Federation.
The Vatican felt it necessary to issue a clarification about the joint declaration in 1998 that focused on its difficulties in accepting the way the document explained Lutheran teaching about the baptized being “at the same time righteous and sinner.”
According to Catholic doctrine, “in baptism everything that is really sin is taken away and so, in those who are born anew there is nothing that is hateful to God.”
The inclination to sin — or “concupiscence” in theological terms — is not the same thing as sin, the Catholic clarifications said.
Lutheran teaching, as explained in the joint declaration, holds that “believers are totally righteous in that God forgives their sins,” but when they look at themselves “they recognize that they remain also totally sinners.”
The new statement reconciles Catholic and Lutheran statements by explaining that although sins are wiped away in baptism, Christians continue to sin and continue to need forgiveness.
The new statement also clarified the place of good works in the faith life of believers.
While grace is a gift freely given and not earned, it said, “it is nevertheless the responsibility of the justified not to waste this grace but to live in it. The exhortation to do good works is the exhortation to practice the faith.”
Controversy
Controversy regarding the declaration surfaced again as recently as late October when more than 240 Protestant German theologians signed a petition criticizing it. Ecumenical News Service reported that the theologians believed that the document “explains only the Catholic interpretation of this central Protestant belief” and that by signing it, the Lutheran federation “would be giving its assent to this interpretation.”
Federation representative Udo Hahn, rejected the criticism, citing Hans Christian Knuth, the Lutheran bishop responsible for relations with the Roman Catholic Church. “The LWF will remain in dialogue with the critics,” Hahn said, “but there is no reason to believe that the planned signing ceremony will be called off because of this criticism.”
Despite criticism that also has arisen in Catholic circles, Father Arthur Kennedy, ecumenical officer for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, greeted the decision.
The declaration represents a significant step, which once was impossible due to “religious, sociological, and political reasons,” said Father Kennedy, who is also a theology professor at St. Thomas University. “The declaration affirms the unity that Lutherans and Catholics have already sensed has existed. The change now becomes part of the institution. It becomes part of our shared reality.”
Bill Cahoy, dean of the School of Theology at St. John's University in Collegeville, Minn., agreed. “While theologically significant, the declaration will have little impact on the daily life of both Lutherans and Catholics. ... “Time will tell if it represents the end, or simply the first step.”
Theological Baby Step?
Pat Keifert, theology professor at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, called the agreement a “baby step,” but said that even a baby step is significant, going further than any other document since 1531.
Keifert said the declaration represents only 40% of the gains which had been made by the U.S. Lutheran-Catholic dialogue over the past 30 years. “In the declaration, they are agreeing about how they disagree over salvation by justification,” Keifert told the Register. “This document achieves ecclesial diplomacy more than it achieves theological insight.”
Asked whether the agreement should have been made at all, Keifert responded, “A part of a loaf of bread is better than none at all, for someone who is hungry. What you hear is grief from someone who is hungry for the unity of the Church.”
American Lutherans, for the most part, are not represented by the Oct. 31 agreement. The 2.7-million-member Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and 500,000-member Lutheran Church-Wisconsin Synod are neither Lutheran World Federation members, nor signa-tories of the accord.
They are also more critical of the document.
Missouri Synod President Dr. A.L. Barry said the declaration contains significant “remaining differences” that cannot be reconciled. “The document is a very carefully worded statement that makes it possible for the representatives of the Pope to sign it without changing, retracting, or correcting anything that has been taught by the Catholic Church since the time of the Council of Trent,” said Barry. “The claim ... that Lutherans and Roman Catholics have now reached agreement on the doctrine of salvation, thereby ending the centuries-long dispute about how sinners are saved, is unfortunately not yet true.”
Nondenominational minister Herman Otten has been the pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in New Haven, Mo., for 42 years and is the editor of the independent publication Christian News. He agreed with Barry, saying, “On the surface it appears as if Rome now accepts justification by faith alone, but Rome does not. There is no agreement.”
Cause for Celebration
“The Joint Declaration represents one issue on which we can agree, and that should be celebrated,” said Father Gerald Dalseth, chair of the St. Cloud Ecumenical Commission and pastor at Christ the King parish in Browerville, Minn.
Father Dalseth related a question he had received from a parishioner on the issue: “She asked, ‘Does this mean that we will now have intercommunion?’” Father Dalseth responded in the negative and said, “The declaration simply means that Lutherans and Catholics now agree that we are justified by faith, and that our good works give evidence to our faith.”
Father Dalseth cautioned that before the declaration has any impact on the parish level, people need to be educated about it. To that end, he has recommended that all priests and deacons in central Minnesota obtain a copy of the documents and study them. “This provides a good opportunity for us to teach,” said Father Dalseth. He hopes that the declaration will give the ecumenical movement a new push.
Philip Gray, director of information services at Catholics United for the Faith, of Steubenville, Ohio, agreed. “Much doctrinally legitimate common ground has been forged. We ... hope and pray for full, unequivocal agreement between the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation, not only on other issues related to the doctrine of justification, but on all doctrinal issues that impede full communion between Catholics and Lutherans. We affirm the prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ to the Father, ‘that they may all be one ... even as we are one.’”
Tim Drake writes from St. Cloud, Minnesota.
----- EXCERPT: Lutheran-Catholic Agreement ------- EXTENDED BODY: Tim Drake -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Lay Preachers Take to the Streets DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:NEW YORK-Hundreds of people were hanging out in New York's Washington Square Park on a recent Saturday, watching street performers, enjoying the sunshine ... and debating with the Catholic Evidence Guild.
That's right, the Catholic Evidence Guild — the lay organization dedicated to teaching the faith on street corners. The guild has been enjoying a revival in the 1990s after a hiatus of some 20 years.
The late Frank Sheed, who was a member of both the London and New York chapters, called it “teaching the faith under the open sky.”
“They are trying to do what the Church has always encouraged, which is to share the faith with others,” observed Karl Keating, president of Catholic Answers, the apologetics apostolate based in San Diego.
Chapters are flourishing in New York, Michigan and Arizona, while others are being started around the country.
The six speakers who took to the podium recently in New York gave 15-minute presentations on subjects such as original sin, salvation and the Mass. Each one entertained questions from listeners, keeping as much as possible to his topic.
That's not always easy. Misconceptions about Catholic teaching and personal agendas abound, and New Yorkers want answers now.
So Greg Kelly's talk about Mary was largely lost on a group of smart teen-agers from the prestigious Bronx High School of Science who were more interested in challenging the Church on premarital sex and the more embarrassing moments of papal history, such as Avignon.
And Christian Leth, a tourist from Copenhagen, Denmark, did not have the patience for Don Murray's talk on hell and God's mercy. Leth had already accepted the Catholic interpretation of the Bible and was not interested in hearing “from the basic word up.”
The current guild revival began in Ann Arbor, Mich., by Thomas O'Brien and Joseph Campbell. O'Brien and London Guild master Leonard Sullivan reprinted Sheed's “Catholic Evidence Training Outlines,” which members rely on heavily for training and preparation of talks.
Soon after, Friar of the Renewal Father Benedict Groeschel, noted preacher and author, got a group started again in New York.
Cardinal John O'Connor, who had been a guild member in Philadelphia in his seminary days, gave his approval for the move. And two years ago, Deacon Bill Starrs of Sacred Heart parish in Prescott, Ariz., started a chapter in that predominantly Mormon town.
Father Robert Quarato, who assisted in the New York revival, has received inquiries from all over the country for help in starting new chapters. He warns that since the guild is a public apostolate, it needs the guidance of a pastor and approval of the bishop. “People shouldn't go out and try to represent the Church in some way without some oversight,” he said.
Members are given intensive training in theology and apologetics and give practice talks in front of classmates, who pepper them with tough questions. They have to speak before a certification board before being allowed to teach on the street.
The guild has always laid a heavy emphasis on spiritual preparation, and members are required to spend an hour before the Blessed Sacrament before
One-on-One Encounters
Speakers have found that, as much as people stop and listen to the talks, the really interesting things happen in oneon-one conversations after the formal presentations.
“The real work of the guild is not in giving talks,” said Lucy Tucker of New York. “They're the bait. We are fishers of men. What we hope will happen is that people come over and ask questions and be interested enough so they really want to stay and talk to us.”
Such encounters have led to confessions with a priest on the scene, and people have been directed to their parishes to have marriages reconciled.
In Michigan and Arizona, too, members find that one-on-one encounters are more effective. Joseph Campbell mans a free literature stand in front of the graduate library at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor every Wednesday for three hours and is ready to dialogue with any interested student or professor.
Wherever it operates, the guild's street style has made a difference in the lives of people who went out for a walk and never thought they would see such a group.
“It's opened up my eyes,” said William Barrera, an unemployed furniture mover who hangs out in Washington Square Park and has heard the guild there for the past two years. They've opened up my eyes to more things about the Church. They've enhanced my life, helped me understand why I'm here and what life is all about.”
John Burger writes from New York.
The guild's Web site is www.catholicevidence.org.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: John Burger -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Euthanasia and the 'Brain Death' Lie DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:To meet our “inescapable responsibility of choosing to be unconditionally pro-life,” as Pope John Paul II called for in Evangelium Vitae, we must oppose all euthanasia without compromise or exception, and we must expose it in all its forms.
Of course, doing so will put us at odds with much of the medical and cultural establishment of our day.
Standing counter to the popular tide, we must frequently reiterate that death ought to be declared only after the fact — never before. As the Holy Father has said, to declare death prematurely is to commit a fundamental injustice. “Brain death” is not death, and to say that a person with a beating heart, normal pulse, blood pressure, color, and temperature is “dead” is simply a lie, however cunningly packaged.
Some say that a person who cannot breathe without the help of a ventilator is already dead. Yet, often, after “brain death” has been declared, the ventilator and other life support are continued until it is convenient to harvest the “donor's” organs.
If he is alive when his vital organs are cut out of his body without the benefit of anesthesia, will he not feel pain, as does the baby in an abortion? It has been reported that when the incision is made to harvest the organs, there is an increase in the heart rate and blood pressure. Corpses, of course, have neither heart rates nor blood pressure, and after the removal of the beating heart or other vital organ, there will be no further heartbeat, breathing, or circulation. Deprived of the organs needed to sustain life, the “donor” will be cold, blue, pallid and stiff — in short, dead.
Because many physicians have been led to accept the lie of “brain death,” and because some are transplanting vital organs — even within our Catholic hospitals — I dare not remain silent but rather join our voices to those consistently raised by opponents of euthanasia.
We simply must not let this misleading phrase win a place in our lexicon.
In Favor of Life
In the past everyone knew who was dead and who was alive. If there was any doubt, it was resolved in favor of life, according to right reason and sound morals. If a hunter was even a bit uncertain whether his target were a deer or a man, should he pull the trigger? Of course not. That is why the Church has always given the benefit of the doubt to life, as shown by her traditional practice of providing the sacrament of the anointing of the sick (extreme unction) unless the signs of death are unmistakable.
We, the faithful, rely on the Holy Spirit to protect our families. We pray that he will guide those charged with grave responsibilities within the Church to make the right decisions, as well as empower them to act upon them — and oppose such egregious assaults on our God-given right to life and on the dignity of our persons.
Life is the substantial fact of the union of soul and body, for God has created man in his image and likeness. Death is the separation of soul and body.
A person is entirely alive until completely dead. Physicians, nurses and all others ought to protect life, preserve life, prolong life, and enhance the sanctity and quality of life.
“... nor can we remain silent in the face of other more furtive, but no less serious and real, forms of euthanasia. These could occur, for example, when, in order to increase the availability of organs for transplants, organs are removed without respecting objective and adequate criteria which verify the death of the donor.”
The dire consequences that would ensue were Church officials to endorse “brain death” are incalculable. Persons with disabilities, especially those whose organs are wanted by others, would simply be the first victims.
And there would certainly be grave implications for the anti-abortion cause in bandying about the term “brain death” in our dialogue promoting life. After all, to confuse the brain for the soul as the essence of human life has grave implications for the preborn baby, for the human brain does not begin to develop until several weeks after conception (i.e., fertilization) and requires additional weeks to complete its development.
Such a catastrophic error would be used to rationalize abortion and every sort of nontherapeutic experimentation on the preborn child, denied recognition not only of his personhood, but also of the very fact that he is alive.
“Brain death” makes a convincing case for “brain life” and the culture of death needs little convincing. As one consistent euthanasia advocate concludes: “human life may be seen as a continuous spectrum between the onset of brain life in utero (eight weeks gestation) and the occurrence of brain death” (Goldenring, J.M., “The Brain-Life Theory: Towards a Consistent Biological Definition of Humanness,” Journal of Medical Ethics, 1985, No. 11, p. 198).
Seek True Wisdom
The principles underlying the Holy Father's call to defend life in all its forms emanate as much from natural law as from the commandments given by God to man through Moses. Natural law speaks to all men in the quiet of their hearts, but it would seem those who have not stilled the whispers of conscience through pride are more likely to hear it. Perhaps that is why the poor and marginalized — the nomadic herdsman of the African plains, the peasant in the Asian village, the migrant in the South American favella — would never think of burying a brother with a beating heart. Meanwhile, the rich and powerful would cut that same beating heart from his body if it meant improving some stronger person's life (or building some unprincipled medical professional's bank account).
To be educated is not necessarily the same as to be wise. Those who confuse the brain with the soul exaggerate the importance of the former as they denigrate the worth of the latter. This extends, not surprisingly, to the limits of their own intellects. Science is no more a substitute for common sense than it is for religion.
While authentic science affirms the truths of the universe and its divine Creator, its practitioners often usurp his prerogatives. It is a fatal mistake to leave moral questions, such as the determination of death, to a declaration by a doctor corrupted by the culture of death.
The culture of death masks its genocide with lethal language (“artificial nutrition,” “fetal reduction,” “futile treatment” and so on) while redefining the meaning of other words, such as “conception,” to serve their ends.
“Brain death” is just another weapon in their arsenal — a weapon used to increase the availability of organs for transplantation without respecting objective and adequate criteria which verify the death of the donor.
As the Holy Father reminds us, there are many kinds of euthanasia. These include, alas, even “Catholic” euthanasia, which is, of course, no more
Catholic than the “science” behind “brain death” is science. What is Catholic is to defend God's gift of life, with equal fervor, against abortion, infanticide and euthanasia — including the furtive form masquerading as “brain death.”
Mercedes Arzú Wilson is president of Family of the Americas, a pro-life organization in Dunkirk, Maryland. Elizabeth A. Hoag is a member of that group's board of directors.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Mercedes Arz⁄ Wilson and Elizabeth A. Hoag -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Greetings from the Church in Hollywood DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:Christians often complain about Hollywood's excesses. This Catholic screenwriter wants them to do something about them. She started “Act One: Writing for Hollywood,” a nonprofit program based in Los Angeles dedicated to training a new generation of Christian writers. Fresh from Act One's just-completed inaugural session, Barbara Nicolosi spoke with Register correspondent Greg Erken.
Greg Erken: How did the idea of a scriptwriting school for Christians originate?
Barbara Nicolosi: The idea was born in three people around the same time. Coleman Luck, who has been in the business for 20 years, had decided this was a necessary thing. And David Schall, the head of Intermission, the largest Christian networking and fellowship organization in Hollywood, recognized that everything starts with the script. Meanwhile, I had written an article for Crisis magazine saying that Christians shouldn't complain that there is some big conspiracy in Hollywood against us. The fact is we're not giving Hollywood anything to work with. We're expecting non-Christians to write Christian themes, when we ourselves are not willing to roll up our sleeves, write the scripts, and learn the business.
David read the article, and last summer, he asked me if I would be interested in running a program to train screenwriters who come from a Christian background, if they could secure funding. Having read so much schlock written by Christians, and having said publicly many times that I was sick of seeing that kind of work coming out of our community, I felt like I had to say “Yes” and put my money where my mouth is.
What are you trying to accomplish with Act One?
Our plan for Act One is to every year pump into the [film] industry a group of talented writers who are writing with a consideration not only for technical proficiency but also artistic excellence.
It's not so much that they are going to be writing stories with overtly Christian themes, because we're not writing in a Christian culture anymore. Those would be largely unmarketable. But as believers, they would be overflowing with whatever is in their heart. We are trusting that the stories that come out of that place would have a different look than what we're seeing out there currently. They might handle the same material, but the way they would handle it would be different than a nonbeliever.
You talk to Christian writers every day. What are the biggest challenges they face?
They are largely the same as those facing non-Christian writers. They are entering a terribly difficult business, which takes a complete commitment. Many secular people in Hollywood do it for money, and I see many of my Christian friends not willing to make the sacrifices just for money, so they drop out. So I say, “OK, you see through all of this, but will you do it because it's a mission field? Will you do it for God?” Because if you aren't willing to make the sacrifices that these secular people make, we're not going to have a voice, and we're passing up the most powerful pulpit on the planet.
That reminds me of when Christians beginning in the late 1970s decided they no longer wanted to be outside of the political process. Slowly, over 20 years, they have learned to roll up their sleeves and get organized at the grass-roots level. It sounds like what you are launching is another step toward cultural renewal.
Definitely. Hollywood is not going to be reformed from the outside. We must have a heart for popular culture, and recognize that we Christians are not on a mountain looking down. We are part of this culture. Either we are going to be representing ourselves in the culture, or we're going to be represented by others who don't understand us. That's what's happening right now. I have so little patience when I hear Christians sit around critiquing the media, and then feeling like they've done something. It doesn't accomplish anything; it just gets our frustration out of our system for a while. I would much rather see people from the Church getting together and saying, “What's a great project we can do? Let's make A Man for All Seasons for this generation.”
How might a script like that be written from a Christian heart without consigning it to only the religious market?
First of all, when it's done well, you don't have to worry about [being ghettoized]. Any [major] film that has dealt with strong Christian themes in the last three decades has received either the Academy Award or tremendous critical acclaim. Think of Ghandi, Chariots of Fire, or The Mission. I think you have to understand who you are pitching to, and who is in control [of the filmmaking process]. You have to be smart. You have to find a way to deliver the truth of the Gospel, without getting people's back up.
There is money in the Christian community to make productions, but let's face it, how much money is going to Church communications projects, which could be put toward a feature film that could be seen by 50 million people worldwide, who are outside of the Church. And we're making the easiest kind of projects, which are documentaries and talking-head stuff. Narrative is very, very hard.
Sometimes it seems like the Church has gotten out of the business of using narrative — stories — to communicate.
And isn't that a tragedy? Stories are, after all, the way Jesus taught. Flannery O'Connor, perhaps the greatest Catholic storyteller of the last 50 years, said that the challenge for Catholic artists is to try to compel people to look squarely at reality, which nobody wants to look at. This is the essential difference between Christian art and what passes for most entertainment these days. Secular Hollywood is into the business of escapism — to separate the viewer from reality. But Christian artists believe that all reality flows from the heart of a loving God and that if people penetrate reality then they will encounter the Divine at its core. We have to be so good at what we do as artists that we will draw people into the uncomfortable place of looking at themselves. They will be compelled to enter into this kind of study because our characters and stories are well drawn and fascinating.
That sounds like John Paul II's insistence that we confront the true nature of man and the human condition, rather than escaping from it or averting our gaze.
There are a lot of Christians who are scandalized by the incarnation, by Christ's humanity and our potential for darkness and evil. We don't want to see movies with violence or intense themes. But Flannery O'Connor noted that violence is one of the most effective methods for an artist to rivet the attention of a reader. She said moments of violence uniquely prepare us for the action of grace.
As a screenwriter, I'm not interested in returning to the days of Father Knows Best, even though that kind of program is what many of our Christian people are clamoring for. That kind of entertainment isn't really good for us. It may be just as bad as programs full of gratuitous sex and violence — just another fantasy to escape into.
What kind of reaction has Act One received from the Hollywood establishment so far?
We were written up in a positive way by [key Hollywood observer] Howard Rosenberg of the Los Angeles Times, who in the past has not always been gentle with religious projects. Howard said that the idea of [the Christian community] always being defined from the outside has not been a good thing for Hollywood. We approach much of the industry by saying that we're another cultural group with a distinct voice, and just as you need women and African-Americans in Hollywood, you also need Christians.
How about from the Christian community?
When I go around and speak to Christian writers groups around the country, I always say “Greetings from the Church in Hollywood,” and they all laugh. Christians have bought into the idea that Hollywood is the throne center of the Devil, and there is no Church here. Then I ask them, “How many of you in the last month have complained about something in the movies or on TV?” And 300 hands go up. Then I ask them, “How many of you in the last month have said a prayer for those Christians laboring in Hollywood, or that God would send more Christians to Hollywood?” and I get maybe three hands.
Act One Faculty and Mentors
Act One's students are taught by leading Hollywood producers and writers, including:
Ron Austin (Mission Impossible, Matlock, Fr. Dowling Mysteries)
Dave Allen Johnson (High Incident, Against the Grain)
Coleman Luck (The Equalizer, Gabriel's Fire)
Dave MacFadzean (Home Improvement)
Karen Hall (M*A*S*H, Moonlighting, Northern Exposure)
Ken Wales (Christy, Cagney and Lacey)
Michael Warren (Family Matters, Two of a Kind)
So this is the problem: Not only are we trying to do something that is terribly difficult, but if the Church is not praying for us, it's impossible. Hollywood and television are tremendously powerful means that God has given to mankind. The Pope is saying they are tools to help unite human beings. But the devil has convinced the Church that they belong to him, and that they are intrinsically evil.
I've gone to many conservative conferences where they say “throw out your televisions.” But this is not what the Church is saying. The Church is saying that these instruments have the power to bring the human family together on a global scale. You definitely have to educate your children so that they are critical consumers, but also tell your children to be artists, producers and journalists.
One of the big challenges facing Christians in any endeavor is working together on an ecumenical basis. How does that tension play out with Christians in Hollywood?
Well, there's nothing like the great equalizer of persecution to get us Christians beyond our personal issues and prejudices. Let's face it, the Romans didn't ask, “Now, which side of the Arian heresy are you on?” before they threw the Christians to the lions. If you call on the name of the Lord, the powers of darkness label you all Christians. The devil is an equal opportunity opponent. We Christians in Hollywood are so much the minority that we have to work together to accomplish anything. I will work with anyone who is sincere and good-hearted and loves Jesus.
What kind of help is Act One getting from established Christians in Hollywood?
We had 52 faculty members and mentors from the Los Angeles entertainment community, all fervent Christians from all different denomination who have been on the front lines for many years. For example, Martha Williamson, executive producer of “Touched by an Angel,” spoke at our closing dinner. Our mentors met with their students for an hour each week on a one-to-one basis to provide feedback on whatever project the student was working on. And now our students have friends in Hollywood who can introduce them to contacts, be reference points, and encourage them — but not carry them.
Act One also has relationships with several production companies who have asked us to pass on the best scripts that come out of the program. We don't hand on anybody's work just because they happen to be Christian. I get deluged with scripts, and I know this interview will result in another hundred coming my way. So those of you are reading this, before you send me a script, make sure you know what you are doing. Read Syd Field's Screenplay, know the three-act structure, your characters better be developed, and the format better be industry standard.
How many students did you have for your first program?
Twenty-nine — 13 men, 16 women, 6% minorities, and various denominations. We had 300 to 400 people request applications, and 100 actually replied. From that pool, we accepted 30 (one student dropped out). We didn't have any money to advertise the program, so we used word-of-mouth and Internet mailing lists. I also went to about five or six writers conferences.
Can you point to any impact Act One has had already?
The last two days of the program we had five production companies come in and listen to our students pitch their work. Each of these companies asked to read at least four scripts when they are finished, which is terribly impressive for this industry. To have a script “read” is the first step, meaning a producer will look at your screenplay and consider developing it. It means circumventing the need to get an agent, and getting it right into the hands of a decision-maker. This is a huge opportunity for these students.
We have also started our script-critiquing service. Our faculty and mentors will be reading scripts and asking, “Is this story commercial, and is it a good vehicle for the Christian world-view?” If we get a script that is really great, I'll be happy to pass it on to the production companies we are working with.
What does Act One need to keep going in the future, and where are you looking for support?
Right now we have enough funding for one more program in L.A. But because of the tremendous response we've received, we want to have an East Coast version, which will cost about $50,000 to $75,000. We want to expand our promotion, and we would love to have two or three sessions every year instead of just one. So we need support from the Christian community. You can't do anything without money. We also need students. If you know talented writers, challenge them to write for a mass audience, and send them our way.
We also need prayer for the people in Hollywood, for the students, and for a renewal of the culture. Never before in history has a culture renewed itself, but maybe we can be the first. Our people have the “Jonah syndrome”: They want to get gourd plants and sit up in the mountains and watch God vent his wrath. But we have not yet received a divine commission that its time to head for the hills. That would be too easy — but it might make a great movie!
•••
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Barbara Nicolosi -------- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: Get Into Politics, Bishops Urge Laity DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON-America's bishops want Catholics to vote not just with their wallets, but also with their hearts.
The U.S. bishops will mail the Oct. 20 document “Faithful Citizenship: Civic Responsibility for a New Millennium” to every parish in the country this November. The booklet outlines voters guidelines for America's 61 million Catholics.
“While many Catholics, like others, have retreated from the political process, our faith calls us to engagement ... to get more involved in not only our own interests, but in moral principles as well,” said John Carr, spokesman for the conference.
The bishops have released such documents every four years since 1976, but this time “it's shorter more direct, in some ways more urgent,” Carr told the Register.
“We have a responsibility to try to reform and to renew this tradition,” Carr said of the political process. “We need to use this opportunity to shape this world to a greater respect for human life, human dignity and justice.”
“This is about more than our pocketbook, this is about whether we protect human life,” said Carr.
Father Richard John Neuhaus, editor of the monthly First Things, agreed in the sense of urgency. He told the Register that now more than ever, Catholics must bring their convictions to the ballot box.
‘We're really trying to reach the folks in the pews, not just the leadership people or the social justice people’
— Cardinal Mahony
“On the crucial issue of the day, between the culture of life and the culture of death, I think there will be a clear and drastic difference between the two parties and the two candidates” in the presidential election for 2000, Father Neuhaus said.
The document outlines the Church's stances on social and economic issues, from abortion to helping the poor.
“As Catholics we need to share our values, raise our voices, and use our votes to shape a society that protects human life, promotes family life, pursues social justice, and practices solidarity,” the bishops say in the document. “We believe every candidate, policy, and political platform should be measured by how they touch the human person; whether the enhance or diminish human life, dignity and human rights; and how they advance the common good.”
While the bishops do not intend to create a Catholic voting bloc and will not endorse candidates or political parties, they encouraged Catholics to affirm their faith in the political process.
“The title really says it all,” Cardinal Roger Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles, told the Catholic News Service. “Catholics really have a great responsibility to be active members of society, to really be informed.”
According to some, Catholics have fallen well short of voting in accordance with the Church's stances on such issues as abortion.
“When I think about a Catholic vote, I think of what Stalin said, ‘How many legions does the Pope have?’ You mean there is a Catholic vote?” syndicated columnist and vice-presidential candidate Joseph Sobran told the Register. “Some Catholic vote. We just aren't acting like serious Catholics.”
The bishops hope to change that.
“We're really trying to reach the folks in the pews, not just the leadership people or the social justice people,” said Cardinal Mahony, who is co-chairman of the U.S. bishops' Domestic Policy Committee.
Carr said, “The statement makes clear that in our tradition, citizenship is a virtue and participation in the political process in a moral obligation.”
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Questions for the Campaign DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:Following is an excerpt from the Oct. 20 document “Faithful Citizenship: Civic Responsibility for a New Millennium,” by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops:
Politics is about more than our own pocketbooks or economic interests. Catholics, other believers, and men and women of good will raise different questions for ourselves and for those who would lead us:
1. How will we protect the weakest in our midst — innocent, unborn children?
2. How will we overcome the scandal of a quarter of our preschoolers living in poverty in the richest nation on earth?
3. How will we address the tragedy of 35,000 children dying every day of the consequences of hunger, debt and lack of development around the world?
4. How can our nation help parents raise their children with respect for life, sound moral values, a sense of hope and an ethic of stewardship and responsibility?
5. How can society better support families in their moral roles and responsibilities, offering them real choices and financial resources to obtain quality education and decent housing?
6. How will we address the growing number of families and individuals without affordable and accessible health care? How can health care protect and enhance human life and dignity?
7. How will our society best combat continuing prejudice, bias, and discrimination, overcome hostility toward immigrants and refugees, and heal the wounds of racism, religious bigotry, and other forms of discrimination?
8. How will our nation pursue the values of justice and peace in a world where injustice is common, destitution is widespread, and peace is too often overwhelmed by warfare and violence?
9. What are the responsibilities and limitations of families, voluntary organizations, markets, and government? How can these elements of society work together to overcome poverty, pursue the common good, care for creation, and overcome injustice?
10. How will our nation resist what Pope John Paul II calls a growing “culture of death”? Why does it seem that our nation is turning to violence to solve some of its most difficult problems — to abortion to deal with difficult pregnancies, to the death penalty to combat crime, to euthanasia and assisted suicide to deal with the burdens of age and illness?
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: U.S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:College Woman Speaks Out Against Pornography
Porn consumption has its immediate effects, Palmer said. Women begin to sense men treating them as objects, and men find it difficult to enter into relationships without perverse expectations and disordered impulses. Palmer noted the ease with which filth now proliferates by way of the Internet, and called on men to take control of themselves for their own sake and for sake of the women they court.
Splinter Group to Build Church in Denver
Its founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, was excommunicated by Pope John Paul II in 1988 for ordaining priests without the blessing of the Church, Members of the Church, which will be named St. Isidore the Farmer, have raised $800,000 for the project. The cornerstone was laid on Oct. 17, and workers plan to finish the large cruciform Church by next summer.
Society priest Joseph Pfeiffer, the pastor of St. Isidore's, says the Society will eventually open a primary education school on the site. The original Church is located in downtown Denver, which claims 300 Society members.
A spokesman for Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput has reaffirmed the Church's condemnation of the Society, which chooses to operate outside the control of its local ordinary and refuses to accept the validity of the revised Mass. Masses at St. Isidore's will be said according to the Tridentine rite exclusively.
Feminist Atheist Blasts Brooklyn Exhibit
The exhibit has been criticized by the Catholic League and others for an image that denigrates the Blessed Virgin Mary, scattering her image with elephant dung and pornographic images.
Paglia, a lesbian and an atheist, teaches art history at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
“The rote attacks on [“Sensation” opponent New York Mary Rudolph] Giuliani have been deafening,” Paglia said. “While the mayor certainly exceeded his authority in demanding that the entire show be stopped … I am frankly enjoying his assault on the arts establishment, which is in dire need of a shake-up. …
“And I'm just as sick of ‘Catholic-bashing’ as Giuliani himself. I may be an atheist, but I was raised in Italian Catholicism, and it remains my native culture. I resent the double standard that protects Jewish and African-American symbols and icons but allows Catholicism to be routinely trashed by supercilious liberals and ranting gay activists,” Paglia said.
----- EXCERPT: From Selected Sources ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Hate Crime Act's Demise Prompts Catholic Questions DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON-The effort to include homosexuals as a specially protected group under federal hate crime legislation has prompted Catholic observers to revisit the question.
The latest attempt to extend hate crime sanctions to protect homosexuals law failed this month as a congressional committee stripped any hate crimes legislation from the final version of a spending bill moving through Congress.
A Catholic attorney and professor of human life issues at the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio called hate crimes legislation “classic examples of how hard cases make bad law.”
Professor Brian Scarnecchia sounded the warning as lawmakers in Washington sought legislative recourse to a recent string of crimes around the nation which included school, work-place and other mass slayings — some of them apparently motivated by objections to religion, national origins and sexual conduct.
He conceded that people should be “shocked and angry and want to do something” about such hate crimes, but he called on federal lawmakers and other officials to “back off a bit and take another look at what we have here” to determine just how far to go with such legislation at the federal level.
Sponsored by Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., the Hate Crimes Act of 1999 would have added “sexual orientation” to existing federal hate crime laws, and would have greatly expanded federal jurisdiction over hate crimes. It passed a voice vote in the House this summer. An alternative measure by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, offering a state-level solution to the problem, passed in the Senate.
Both measures were rejected by conferees Oct. 18.
Said Scarnecchia, “First of all, every crime that is committed is motivated by hatred or contempt of the common good or the dignity of the human person or the solidarity among people. Even every petty thief displays contempt against those from whom he or she steals and even a huckster shows contempt for those who fall for his sales pitch.”
Then he pointed out that every crime committed already sends a message to an entire community and usually causes people to be more careful to lock their doors or to look over their shoulders more carefully.
“So, there already is a chilling effect that comes with every crime committed,” he added.
The professor quoted St. Thomas Aquinas in noting that “good law shouldn't try to prohibit every vice, nor to promote every virtue. It is enough that it forbid the most grievous vices.”
The proposed inclusion of homosexuality in the hate crime legislation seemed to place many Catholic bishops on the horns of a dilemma.
Asked about the Catholic hierarchy's view on the overall hate crime legislation, a spokeswoman for the U.S.
Catholic bishops, Sister Mary Ann Walsh, said, “The idea that people should not hate and discriminate against other people is the position that the Church has taken.
“At the same time, the Church has a very strong opposition to any legislation that condones or promotes a homosexual lifestyle. Therefore, the homosexual aspect makes legislation more of a challenge for the bishops.”
Bishop William Friend of Shreveport, Pa., was one of the prelates who expressed misgivings about the Kennedy bill.
“We ought to teach very strongly on the social issues and ‘Love thy neighbor’ themes,” the bishop told the Register, “and reject very thoroughly racism and every other kind of ‘ism’ that demeans human dignity and human values.”
However, he expressed “great concern that we too often legislate ourselves out of freedom in this country.” “The general pattern seems to be that any issue that comes up today, we are going to have legislation that becomes restrictive in nature and more importantly places government in the role or decision-making relative to guilt or innocence,” Bishop Friend warned.
Thought Police
Rick Hinshaw, of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, said:
“Our inclination would be to say that when people commit violent acts against anybody, they should be prosecuted and punished to the full extent of the law because of the harm they've done, regardless of the reason they did the harm.
“But, when you get into adding punishments for the thought that might have been behind the violence, you get into … ‘thought police,’ and start meting out harsher punishment.”
There is no clear evidence that hate crime laws prevent hate crimes, according to Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama.
However, he conceded that such crimes target more than the individual hurt by the attacked, leading his group to the assumption that “although hate crime laws may not deter such crimes, they do provide a way in which Americans can make a statement that such crimes are intolerable.”
As to hate crimes against homosexuals, Potok said, “It is absolutely required that such crimes be included with hate crimes.”
Father Jack Kelley, retired Marianist professor of philosophy at the University of Dayton, said he believes the government has not only the power but “the duty with respect to the common good to define certain crimes as hate crimes. And it also seems to me that it still would be morally correct that when a person is abused because of his lifestyle, the abuse should be listed as a hate crime and dealt with that way.”
In a final plea, professor Scarnecchia said, “Hate crime federal legislation must be resisted while there still is time.”
Asked it he felt such federal legislation would eventually be enacted by the Congress, he said, “Yes, there is a good chance it will be passed unless people of a more farsighted and higher principled conviction make their voices heard.”
Robert Holton writes from Memphis, Tennessee.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Robert Holton -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Martyrs Are a Sign of Hope For Europe, Synod Contends DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY-The Special Assembly for Europe of the Synod of Bishops closed Oct. 23 on a note of hope.
The synod, which began three weeks ago stressing the dire straits in which Christianity often finds itself in Europe, chose to conclude by proclaiming a “Gospel of hope.”
“Man cannot live without hope,” began the official message of the synod participants that was released on the synod's penultimate day. “But every day this hope is weakened, attacked and destroyed by so many forms of suffering, anxiety and death that cut through the heart of many Europeans and throughout the whole continent. We cannot ignore this challenge.”
“Enlightened by faith in Jesus Christ, with humble certainty, we know that we are not deceiving you when we say that hope is possible even today and that it is possible for all,” continues the message.
The synod made it clear that this hope was not a matter of mere willful optimism in the face of a bleak European scene. Indeed, the first sign of this hope highlighted by the synod was the numerous martyrs of modern times, which gave witness with their lives to a hope that “is stronger than death.”
Other “signs of hope” identified include the hidden “holiness of so many men and women of our time,” “the rediscovered freedom of the Churches of Eastern Europe,” “the Church's increased focus on its spiritual mission and its commitment to making evangelization the priority,” and “the presence and the flowering of new movements and communities.”
The synod participants spoke favorably about the process of European unification, especially in comparison to the violence and war experienced in the Balkans.
“As Christians,” they wrote, “we wish to be committed Europeans, ready to make our contribution to the Europe of today and tomorrow, treasuring the precious heritage left us by the ‘founding fathers’ of the united Europe.”
Pope John Paul II spoke of the hopes he shared with the synod participants during his homily at the closing Mass in St. Peter's.
“If we look to past centuries, we must give thanks to the Lord because Christianity has been, in our continent, a primary factor of unity among peoples and cultures and of the integral promotion of man and his rights,” he said. He spoke also of his “firm conviction that there can be no true and fertile unity for Europe if it is not built on its spiritual foundations.”
The Holy Father's ongoing reflection on the European question was symbolized in the gift that was given to all synod participants at the end of the synod. They all received a volume containing all of John Paul's interventions on Europe through almost 21 years of his pontificate — 669 audiences, homilies and addresses altogether.
That “European magisterium” will be added to in a year or two, when the final postsynodal apostolic exhortation will be written, signed by the Holy Father and released publicly.
These long documents synthesize the deliberations of the synod into a coherent whole produced by the Holy Father and his collaborators from the synod. Last January, on his pastoral visit to Mexico, the exhortation Ecclesia in America was released, completing the work of the Synod for America, and next month in India, the Holy Father will issue Ecclesia in Asia, completing the work of the Synod for Asia.
The European Synod concluded the cycle of regional synods of bishops established as part of the preparation for the Jubilee Year. Synods were held in 1994 (Africa), 1995 (Lebanon), 1997 (America), spring 1998 (Asia) and fall 1998 (Oceania).
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond J. De Souza -------- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Papal Trip to Iraq Still On, But Date May Change DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY-The Vatican has decided to go ahead with plans for Pope John Paul II to make a controversial pilgrimage to Iraq but may change the date from December to January, Vatican sources said Oct. 21.
The resumed planning indicated that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has provided the guarantees demanded by the Vatican that the Pope's presence would not be politicized.
The Vatican canceled a planned trip to Baghdad by Father Roberto Tucci, the Jesuit who acts as the Pope's advance man, and announced a “pause for reflection” earlier this month after a group of Iraqi scholars leveled sharp criticism at a spiritual pilgrimage by the Pope.
The Iraqis said the Holy Father would be welcome only if he denounced the economic sanctions the United Nations imposed on Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
Iraqi Caldean Patriarch Raphael Bidawid, who is mediating between Baghdad and the Vatican, met in the Vatican Oct. 20 with Cardinal Achille Silvestrini, prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, and officials of the Secretariat of State.
Bidawid's brief visit stirred speculation that he carried a response from Saddam's regime to the Vatican's demands.
Asked at a Vatican news conference today whether the Pope would travel to Iraq, Silvestrini said: “I continue to have faith. And I really think he will make this trip although the date has not been fixed.”
Vatican sources said that because of the delay in planning, the visit probably would have to be moved forward from early December to mid-January.
John Paul hopes to travel to the site of the ancient city of Ur of the Chaldees in southern Iraq, home of the Prophet Abraham. Ur, located in the desert 240 miles south of Baghdad, would be the first stop on a series of papal pilgrimages to Old and New Testament sites in Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Palestine Authority territory and Syria to mark the start of the thirdmillennium of Christianity.
The U.S. and British governments strongly oppose the visit to Iraq on thegrounds that Saddam would try to exploit it politically.
Iraqi officials have begun renovating Ur, and the Vatican's envoy to Iraq, Archbishop Giuseppe Lazzarotto, met Saturday (Oct. 16) with Foreign Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf to discuss the papal trip, Reuters reported from Baghdad Thursday, quoting embassy sources.
The news agency said an advance team headed by Tucci was expected to visit Iraq to lay the groundwork but no schedule had yet been set, they said.
In a separate development, ZENIT, the Rome-based news agency, reported that the U.S. government's lobbying against the papal trip has intensified over the last weeks. Opposition to Saddam has led the U.S. to exhort John Paul II to “reconsider his decision” so as not to reinforce the dictator's position.
(From combined wire services)
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:But America's editors backpedaled after airing what some might have viewed as strong support for Pius, recommending, for instance, that in the wake of suspicions raised by the book about Pius’ actions during the Holocaust, the Vatican should establish an international commission of Catholic and Jewish historians to review them. The editors also recommended that Pius's beatification process be stalled until Pius is cleared by the court of popular opinion.
Meanwhile, Inside the Vatican in its October issue provides several articles delineating the great help Pope Pius XII was to Jewish friends from his boyhood and then throughout his pontificate.
Relics of St. Luke Found in Padua
Research on the sarcophagus was directed by anatomy pathologist Vito Terribile Wiel Marin, a professor of Anatomy and Histology at the University of Padua. After removing the heavy marble slab that covered the sarcophagus, researchers discovered a large lead box which was held shut by two red wax seals. The box rested on a wooden board, the magazine reported.
One of the researchers, Father Daniel Libanor, wrote that the skeleton inside the box was missing a cranium, a right elbow and a right anklebone. According to the study, the bones are those of a man who died in old age, somewhere between 70 and 85 years old.
This data confirms what Christian tradition teaches us about the evangelist, and it adds to the record that the Evangelist suffered from acute, diffused osteoporosis, grave arthrosis of the spinal cord, and pulmonary emphysema.
The bones were arranged with great care, reflecting the honor in which the Evangelist was held in antiquity. Vessels were also found in the sarcophagus attesting to the authenticity of the relics, the magazine said.
----- EXCERPT: From Selected Sources ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: 'Our Era Is Not Capable of Transmitting its Spiritual Heritage' DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:Synods of bishops are long affairs, in which hundreds of speeches are given one after another, for up to six hours a day.
It can be tedious, and difficult work. Cardinal Joachim Meisner, archbishop of Cologne, Germany, and one of three president-delegates of the European Synod, confessed that “we bishops, dedicated to the magisterium and immersed in the mandate of preaching, almost tend to lose the attitude of listening. On the occasion of this synod, we feel the weight of listening.”
After the main speeches are given, participants break into smaller groups by language to continue discussions. Those discussions are then reported back to the entire assembly. What follows are quotations from some of those reports. The “language-group” sessions are the most freewheeling part of the synod, and therefore give a flavor of the matters discussed.
Cardinal Godfried Danneels, archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels, Belgium, reporting on one French working group: “The problem of transmission is not only of the Church: Our entire era is not capable of transmitting its spiritual, moral and cultural heritage (value of marriage and the family, meaning of good and evil, sense of duty, of honor, of truth) to the following generation. If the Church could transmit values the following generations, she would heal our entire era.”
Cardinal Danneels, again, on marriage: “Some present themselves to the Church [for marriage] without or almost without faith. Some priests are content with minimum of requirements, marriage being a right of all men and the sacrament being the only valid marriage for the baptized. Others are more rigorous. But all of them have a problem of conscience that is a type of ‘martyrium’ in their lives as ministers.”
Archbishop Benigno Luigi Papa of Taranto, Italy, reporting on one Italian working group: “Europe, the first continent to be evangelized, more than a merely geographical location, is a cultural and historical concept. It was born from the Christianization of the Germanic and Slav peoples and their fusion with the Mediterranean peoples. In the history of Europe, we must remember three divisions that we still show the wounds of: that of 1054 that separated the one faith between the Byzantine and Latin culture; the Reform movement that lacerated the Western Church; and the later separation of reason from Revelation that opposed science to faith. To these divisions, the self-laceration of the two world wars must be added. Europe, that was born and grew in possession of a common faith, today suffers because of the division of Christians.”
Bishop Bellino Ghirard of Rodez, France, reporting on another French group: “Considering the reality of Islam in Europe, the Church sometimes has no other alternative to proposing sincere dialogue and she must make every effort to start it up and continue it, without being naive but also without prejudice. She must demand respect for the freedom of the Christian communities living in countries with a Muslim majority.”
Bishop Juan María Uriarte Goiricelaya of Zamora, Spain, reporting on the Spanish language group: “The laity are called upon, by their state, to be active and responsible members in the life of the Christian community. The reason for this active participation is by no means the lack of priests. Formation is required to provide basic and specific training to the laity to undertake their ecclesial responsibilities. Priests, on their part, must avoid a double risk: they must not retain responsibilities that can be undertaken by the laity, and they must not abdicate their own responsibilities with the justification of a democratic attitude, blurring the different function each has in the Church. All the laity, by their vocation, are called upon to participate actively in public life. In order to respond correctly to this vocation a Christian formation is necessary, and in which the social doctrine of the Church must have a special place. Greater attention must be paid to the lay persons who take on important responsibilities in the field of culture, the economy or politics, people who are often subjected to more pressure and temptations than ordinary citizens.”
Father Heinz Wilhelm Steckling, superior general of the Missionary Congregation of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, reporting on the German language group: “This very synod is an expression of our concern for the spiritual unity of Europe. On our continent we wish to transmit once again the hope given to us by Jesus Christ. The effects of the domination of totalitarian ideologies, the consequences of world wars and of the civil wars, and finishing with the defeat of European institutions faced with the horror of the so-called ethnic cleansing, even today darken the hope of people in Europe.
These events represent a pressing appeal for the Church to promote a new culture of encounter. Even today, the peoples of Europe are suffering from the consequences of collectivism in the East and the social security ideas of the welfare state in the West. This is why we ask for new forms of solidarity and participation.”
Bishop Donal Brendan Murray of Limerick, Ireland, reporting on the English language group: “The decline of the sacrament of penance is a very disturbing phenomenon. One of the most fundamental difficulties is that there is insufficient awareness that what comes first in the process of reconciliation is the merciful forgiveness of God. The revised rite of penance has not been celebrated in a way that draws out its full richness. It is first of all, like all liturgy, praise and thanksgiving to God. The large numbers receiving the sacrament in places of pilgrimage is related to the atmosphere of worship and praise which these places provide. The loss of the sense of sin, to which many point, may, paradoxically, be related to ‘enormous remorse.’ The problem may be that people are overwhelmed by a sense of helpless guilt which they do not understand and cannot express.”
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond J. De Souza -------- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:New French Law Allows Gay Unions
“The new law makes France the first traditionally Roman Catholic nation to recognize same-sex unions. The decision came nearly two years after the Socialist government proposed the law, touching off protests by “conservatives” and the Catholic Church.
“The law allows couples, whether they are of the same sex or not, to enter into a union and be entitled to the same rights as married couples in such areas as income tax, inheritance, housing and social welfare,” the article reported.
Worldwide Christian Population Dips
“According to the UK Christian Handbook, 28.3% of the world's population identified itself as Christian in 1990,” Religion Today reported. “The percentage of Christians will drop to 27.8% in 2000 and to 27.1% in 2010,” it said.
The primary reason? A lower birth rate among Christian families. The report added that about 85% of the world's non-Christians live in Asia.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: From Selected Sources -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Editorial DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:The U.S. Senate, in a 63–34 vote, once again made its view on partial-birth abortion clear: The frightening practice should be outlawed.
The often-repeated details of the gruesome procedure are numbing: An almost full-term baby is partially pulled from her mother's womb and stabbed in the skull with scissors. The baby's brains are then vacuumed out to allow an easier delivery of the body.
The Oct. 21 Senate vote is good news (despite the fact that a later, nonbinding vote that showed support for Roe v. Wade). For one thing, it shows that new Sens. Evan Bayh, R-Ind., and Blanche Lambert Lincoln, D-Ark., can be counted on to vote against the procedure.
Yet a black cloud looms over any pro-life victory celebration. President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore are both committed to keeping the grisly practice legal. Clinton has pledged to veto the Partial Birth Abortion Act of 1999, and a Senate override of a veto is unlikely.
“There's no such thing as partial birth,” argued Sen. Barbara Boxer on the floor of the Senate. A baby's rights begin “when you bring your baby home,” the California Democrat added.
The notion that an infant's rights don't begin until she's at home seems odd. But then nothing is too odd nowadays in a country that re-elected a president who vetoed the partial-birth abortion ban twice before. Certainly, the rights-begin-at-home-and-not-before argument would appeal to institutions such as Christ Hospital in the Chicago area. There, a nurse recently revealed that babies are starved or asphyxiated in what the hospital euphemistically calls “therapeutic abortions.”
Evil this deep requires much prayer and sacrifice to combat it. A call or letter to your senators and congressman would also help. Let them know that partial-birth abortion has no place in this one nation under God.
***
To forward its worldview, the population control movement has long held out the carrot of liberation to women through control over their bodies and “reproductive freedom.” Frustrated with the slow advance of its agenda, however, it is turning more and more to wielding the stick of fear to make women fall in line.
Wildly bloated figures of maternal mortality through “unsafe, illegal abortions,” neo-Malthusian doomsaying of dizzying population growth and diminishing resources, and warnings of widespread environmental devastation are churned out wholesale by the controllers' propaganda machine in an attempt to batter women into submission.
And what of those who won't conform to the prescriptions of the social engineers? They are stigmatized as irresponsible and selfish, and now, dangerous.
In a bizarre article in a recent issue of Time magazine, Lisa Beyer makes the incredible claim that deaths of babies locked in cars are linked to family size. “The best parents with the best intentions are simply incapable once they have too many kids,” writes Beyer, quoting an outspoken critic of large families. “It's easy to understand how in this total havoc, a child is left in the car.” Conclusion? Parents that have many children risk negligent homicide. “Accidents can happen,” we read in Beyer's essay, “but when we see a pattern like this, it should ring a big alarm.”
In what does this ominous “pattern” consist? The death of two orthodox Jewish children in Israel over the course of last summer, and the near death of a third, all of whom came from families with six or seven children. In other words, on ridiculously scanty evidence, Beyer spins a fantastic theory of correlation between the likelihood of infant death through negligence and family size.
As Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon wrote recently in The New York Times, at this point “purely voluntary programs will do little to reduce fertility; only those population programs that override parental preferences through bribes, bullying, threats or outright coercion will lower birth rates significantly.”
As the population controllers get more desperate, parents of large families should prepare for more bullying.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: John Michael Talbot's Rocky Road to Peace DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:It was in the tumultuous 1960s that John Michael Talbot first appeared on the American music scene. With his older brother Terry and their country-rock band, Mason Proffit, he entertained huge crowds and shared top billing with such established secular performers as John Denver, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and the Grateful Dead. It wasn't unusual, in fact, for critics to write that the Talbots' band had stolen the show from those other acts.
But, while they were all hitting the big time, Mason Proffit was coming apart. There was substance abuse in the group (not involving John) and growing disagreement as to goals and creative directions. In 1973, sitting on the edge of superstardom, the band disintegrated.
Yet the music went on. John and Terry, undergoing Christian conversion experiences, became part of a new phenomenon — contemporary Christian music. They began to find an audience eager to hear a blend of modern sounds and explicit proclamations of the Gospel.
In 1977, John's wife, Nancy, bewildered by the intensity and single-mindedness of his conversion, found herself seeking Christ along a divergent path. She pushed for divorce, and years of soul-searching followed for John. At Alverna, a Franciscan retreat center two miles from his parents' home in Indianapolis, he found his vocation. Baptized a Catholic in 1978 by Franciscan Father Martin Wolter, John lived at Alverna in solitude, prayer and study, alternating with periods of writing books, counseling and recording religious albums. He gradually emerged as “the holy man of the woods,” ready to found, in 1980, “The Little Portion” hermitage in Arkansas. Two years later, his Secular Franciscan House of Prayer community settled definitively on 97 acres in the Ozark Mountains.
That's the place “The Music of Creation” comes from. This is the work of a musician who has discovered, through his extraordinary endowment of talent, the God of music and the music of God. Overjoyed by his discovery, he is impelled to share his insights with all his fellow Christians, and particularly with the young. “The Music of God,” he writes, “is an exploration of this inward voyage of discovery, which prepares us to go back, outward and forward to bring goodness and love to all creation.”
Still very popular on the contemporary Christian charts, this monk-musician is, first and foremost, an apostle of Jesus Christ. Reading this work, one gets the sense he is also something of a scholar; it's clear he has pored over the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, including St. Thomas, St. Bonaventure, and St. John of the Cross, as well as the documents of Vatican II and the Catechism of the Catholic Church. But he has not merely read these sources. High in his hand-built hermitage, he has absorbed them until they have become an essential part of him. Obviously, he has prayed them.
Catholic to the core, Talbot is ecumenical in his evangelism.
Catholic to the core, Talbot is ecumenical in his evangelism. “The Music of Creation” is addressed to all who seek God in the midst of a secular cacophony telling them to turn away.
Beginning with the Blessed Trinity, Talbot lays out truths of the Catholic creed. But he doesn't explain them; rather, he holds them up for wonder in a way only the creatively gifted can. The depths of Catholic doctrine are presented as if observed with the clarity and simplicity of a child's gaze. Central is the incarnation, with Jesus as the living paradox of God's self-emptying. “Let us look seriously to his parables,” he writes. “They speak of his mystery that is yet accessible to all. They speak with words the truth beyond all telling, the truth of Jesus, the only-begotten Son of God.”
And of paradox: In the Incarnation, “glory takes on humility as a way to lead all to glory. Light takes on darkness as a way back to the light. … The full communion with the Trinity takes on the solitude and separation of the fallen human condition in order to lead all back into full communion, or common union, with and in the Trinity. Thus the path of emptiness is the way to fullness. Darkness is the way to light. Silence is the way to the Word. Solitude is the way to true community. And so goes the paradox into almost every aspect of human life.”
Mary's cooperation with God is brought out in the three-part harmony of the immaculate conception, the assumption into heaven and Mary's status as Ever Virgin. As Talbot notes, these three concepts teach us much about how we can work in harmony with God. For example, a lesson our souls can learn from the Ever Virgin is that “we are called to have virginal hearts, minds, and souls, so that this pure spirit within us all can be set free from the prison of sullied desires and lusts and be reborn of God.”
The themes of discipleship, community and docility to the Spirit lead to considerations on prayer, liturgy and the sacraments. Notable is the understanding Talbot tenders to all believers, whatever their communion; also, his writing is accessible to a wide range of readers, yet deep enough in doctrine to engage even rigorous intellectuals.
In prose that is both simple and profound, Talbot teaches us how to hear God's music — the only music that can transform our lives and open them to the joy of being entirely God's.
Dominican Sister Mary Thomas Noble writes from Buffalo, New York.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Sister Mary Thomas Noble -------- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: When Seminarians Meet Psychologists DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:An interview of Father Benedict J. Groeschel, CFR (Crisis, October 1999)
Father Benedict J. Groeschel, psychologist and director of the Office for Spiritual Development of the Archdiocese of New York, tells Crisis magazine that he has administered “the standard battery” of psychological tests to almost 1,600 vocational prospects over the past 30 years.
In a cover interview, Father Groeschel defends, in his own words, the careful use of psychological testing to help evaluate who should be admitted to an order or seminary. “Those who entered the seminary before testing began, as I did, will often remember that during the first days or weeks after their arrival it was clear that some people did not fit,” he says. “Often it became apparent only after their arrival that some applicants were acting in a seriously disturbed way or were, at least, ill suited. With the advent of testing, much of this turmoil has dissipated. Many candidates have been spared the pains of being rejected. Having spent thousands of hours doing evaluations, let me tell you that sparing many this disappointment is worth all the effort.”
But Father Groeschel, a Franciscan Friar of the Renewal, points out the limitations of the evaluative tests, and the special requirements of those administering them: “Psychological tests that evaluate the person from a variety of different perspectives will indicate serious problem areas as a rule. But the usefulness of the testing is entirely dependent on the honesty of the subject and the skill of the person administering and evaluating the results. … For example, on one of the most popular psychological instruments there is an indication for psychopathic personality, really a dishonest person who has been involved in considerable wrongdoing. A rather innocent and naive person who is accustomed to recognizing and confessing his own faults, as one does in an attitude of contrition and penance, is likely to appear on this test to be a psychopath. This is referred to as a false positive. I answered the questions keyed on this test to the psychopathic personality as I think St. Francis would have answered them and he came out a crook. A psychologist who knows his stuff and is willing to take the extra time to evaluate individual responses could easily make such adjustments. This is why I avoid computerized analyses of test results, which are widely used today.”
Both the tester's good faith and his religious credentials are crucial, notes Father Groeschel. “Any psychologist should be able to determine who is mentally ill or on the border, but when it comes to qualities like the ability to live within a community, to live a life of constant availability to others, and to maintain total sexual abstinence — it's obvious that only [someone very experienced in the components of religious vocations] can do this. Or if a psychologist is not experienced, at least one ought to have the intelligence and professional responsibility to ask someone who is.”
Another problem is that psychological tests “are standardized on samples of what are assumed to be normal or average populations. It is obvious in our declining society that norms for moral or ethical behavior are on an alarming downward slide. … This morally dissolute situation gets reflected in the norms so that the religious candidate is far outside the norm, as one might expect,” and thus he appears literally “abnormal.”
Father Groeschel also points out that some have abused results to prevent candidates with unpopular opinions from being accepted. “We all have some pathology. If a student is seen as too conservative or too liberal, he can easily be shipped off to have his head shrunk, to use the consecrated phrase. I have been invited into this kind of operation in the past. I fly from it because I suspect that I have enough time coming to me in Purgatory already. … If you want to do so, you can piously sink anybody's boat with a psychological report. This is unethical and probably an illegal abuse of power.”
Despite the drawbacks, Father Groeschel finds that “When I look back on it all, I feel [that, in administering psychological tests] I made a contribution to the Church, to many individuals, especially those who were spared the pain of failure. [Yet] I would have rejected my own patron saint, Benedict Joseph Labre. He attempted to join the Trappists eleven times and was never able to stay more than six weeks. When I have to turn someone down, I tell them about St. Benedict Joseph and his trust of God. I also remind them that God has another set of psychological norms. They are the Ten Commandments and the Eight Beatitudes, and you can pass them if you trust God and stay on the road that he has prepared for you. It may not be the road to the altar, but it is always the road to Heaven.”
Ellen Wilson Fielding writes from Davidson, Maryland.
----- EXCERPT: Article Digest ------- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding -------- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Letters DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:Schismatic Charity?
Your editorial “Radical Love” (Sept. 12–18), which repents for the sins of the Church's children, seems to fall into the factionalism it denounces. When you condemn “the Inquisition” and “the Crusades,” do you not become a faction? By the power of the keys they held from Christ, the supreme pontiffs granted indulgences for crusading. The papal inquisition was established by the supreme disciplinary authority of the Church, which is protected by the Holy Spirit, at the Fourth Lateran Council. There are canonized saints who were inquisitors, for example, St. John of Capistrano, St. Pius V and St. Peter Martyr. The Venerable Pius IX canonized the martyred Peter Arbues, inquisitor of Aragon, whose shed blood worked well-attested miracles, and he approved the prayer which says God raised Peter Arbues up to battle Jewish unbelief and Mohammedan superstition. Need it be pointed out that the pope is the supreme guardian of the Church's public prayer?
It sounds as if the Register is in danger of becoming schismatic, breaking communion with the Church whose supreme authority is one across the ages. Obviously you are not alone in this at the present time. I will be surprised if this letter is published.
Brother Ansgar Santogrossi, OSB St. Benedict, Oregon
Editor's note: There is no danger of schism in expressing solidarity with the Holy Father. Also, it should be noted that Pope John Paul II has expressed contrition for acts of uncharity committed contrary to the Church's mission — not as part of the Church's mission itself.
Wide Awake
I am writing in regards to the movie “Wide Awake,” recommended as a Prizer's Video Pick in the Sept. 19–25 Register. I beg to differ! My husband and I watched this movie with our children, 7 and 9, and found it lacking. There was bad language, immodesty and subtle Catholic-bashing — and Rosie O'Donnell as a nun? Well. Why would Catholics want to patronize Disney in any way, in light of their anti-family, pro-gay agenda, not to mention unfair labor practices and human rights abuses in Haiti and other places where their expensive merchandise is manufactured? Please direct us to truly good family films.
Rosemarie Denton Novi, Michigan
Editor's note: We urge readers to consider the Register Ratings on violence, profanity, nudity and sexual content, which follow our reviewer's opinions, to determine suitability for children before viewing. This film was given check marks in each of those categories, indicating that the movie contains instances of all four.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Whistling Past the Graveyard? DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:On his nightstand, St. Ignatius Loyola kept a skull marked with the words: “As you are, I was; as I am, you will be.”
A morbid fascination with death? No. Just a sure sign of serious Catholic spirituality in his time — a reminder to remain mindful of humans' inevitable date with their final earthly destiny. Memento mori!
Contrast that image with the average roadside cemetery of today, so common in a land whose highways and main roads sprung up long after most final resting places had already claimed their ground. The gravestones provide untold thousands of reminders of our final date with destiny — and yet thousands upon thousands of folks whiz past without so much as a glance in their direction.
My favorite cemetery is in Baltimore. I used to pass it on the way home from work in Washington each day. Spread across a small knoll next to the northbound lanes of Interstate 95, it's about a mile from the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel, near the perpetually busy bus station. Stuck in this forgotten plot of land, across from a factory that makes ball bearings, it's all but invisible to the drivers and passengers who pass it by day after day.
I've seen it in the clear sunshine of a frigid January morning. I've seen it on the way back from the March for Life, snow reflecting the winter moonlight. I've seen it in the fall, leaves blowing between the gravestones, and on summer nights when the white markers, moist with the city's oppressive humidity, glisten against the sweltering skyline.
That cemetery witnesses to me in a powerful way. Alongside one of America's busiest thoroughfares, here lies a silent “community” whose inhabitants remind me to ask myself what all my activity is about. As motorists speed by, trying to get to their destinations as quickly as they can, the site reminds any who will listen that there will be a time for each of us when the hustle and bustle will all come to a final and everlasting halt.
The movers and shakers on their way to broker big deals in the capital of the most prosperous nation in history would do well to pause, look toward the cemetery, and note how difficult it is to distinguish the famous from the nameless. Or at least to consider a question Leo Tolstoy once posed in a short story. “How much land does a man need?” (Answer: About six feet.)
I've seen it in the fall, leaves blowing between the gravestones, and on summer nights when the white markers glisten against the skyline.
Yes, those who rest underneath that hill one day went to factories and offices with all the concerns of the day on their minds. They, too, made plans, closed deals and took journeys. Now they remind us that, wherever we're headed on that highway at the moment, it's eventually going to lead to another generation's forgotten hill.
Roadside graveyards are not the only memento mori American motorists encounter. Lately more and more small white crosses are popping up on the shoulders of highways and secondary roads where tragic car accidents have occurred, ending busy lives abruptly and unexpectedly. Some of these roadside shrines are elaborate affairs with photographs, letters, banners and stuffed animals.
And those who take the trouble to memorialize their lost loved ones do the rest of us a favor. By indicating the spot where their beloved entered eternity, they remind us of the patristic motto that it is a “holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead.” They remind us of the basic truth of the doctrine of the communion of saints: There is a chain of hearts that neither death nor the present nor the future can ever break.
Perhaps past generations of devout Christians were readier to embrace the reality of death than the present generation because they didn't place their faith in the “miracles of modern medicine.” Parents who had many children knew that not all would survive to adulthood, and they were highly doubtful about their own chances of attaining old age, too. And they certainly didn't know about experiencing at least five days a week as a race against a precise, digital clock.
Well, look around. Average life expectancy has certainly increased — but, throughout history, the death rate (except in the cases of the likes of the prophet Elijah and possibly the Blessed Virgin) has remained exactly the same for the entire human race.
For many, this is a reality too terrible to face; our popular culture encourages us to avoid it by putting it out of mind and doggedly clinging to our youth. But Christians are called to take a more hopeful outlook. “For to me life is Christ and death is gain,” as St. Paul wrote. “… I long to depart this life and be with Christ, for that is far better” (Philippians, 1:21, 23).
American culture may not be comfortable with the reality of death, but reminders of death are all around us — even along the transient paths that carry us through one rush hour after the next.
The Church's days of All Saints and All Souls are upon us. Have you taken a moment of late to remember that you, too, have a date with eternal destiny? Memento mori!
John M. Grondelski is a moral theologian currently living in London.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: John M. Grondelski -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Business Is Business, Within Limits DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:The nature of the relationship between labor and management has changed markedly over the course of this century.
At the end of the 1800s, as the base of the economy shifted from agriculture to industry, laborers moved in droves from the farms to the factories. There they found that wage labor meant menial work for little pay in often terrible, sometimes unsanitary and not infrequently dangerous conditions. The rift between workers and employers, already characterized by class struggle, only seemed to widen.
Concerned about this development, Pope Leo XIII spoke out in defense of the poor and working classes. In 1891 he wrote an encyclical, Rerum Novarum (On the New Things), addressing the rise of industrialization in reference to the economic systems of capitalism and socialism. The encyclical outlined what the Church, the government and the workers themselves could do to ensure respect for human dignity in all working situations.
Now, a century later, many of those recommendations have taken hold. In fact, there has been a virtual transformation of culture with regard to work and respect for the dignity of human labor. Of course, there are still situations where workers are under-paid and poorly treated, but these cases are much rarer now than they were 100 years ago.
For example, when the media revealed that Kathie Lee Gifford's clothing line was being produced under deplorable working conditions in developing countries — evidently this came as news to her — the nation was outraged and Gifford took her business elsewhere. In the 19th century, the same conditions would have scarcely raised an eyebrow.
Also frequently forgotten is that, a century ago, if you were a Catholic in the United States, you were almost certainly a laborer. Today, thanks in large part to the success of Catholic schools and the stability of strong families and parishes, Catholics are well-represented throughout all levels of labor and management — including at the very top of many companies and organizations. This is one of the “new things” in our day.
Of course, there are those Catholic business leaders for whom the faith is, if not a marginal factor in their lives, at least something to keep hidden while on the job. But there are also many who fully live their Catholicism on and off the job.
Following these two massive cultural changes, the social teaching of the Church now addresses itself more explicitly to owners and managers.
In contrast with Pope Leo's 1891 appeal to the Church, governments and workers, Pope John Paul II's 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus (On the Hundredth Anniversary) more directly addressed owners and employers. In fact, whenever our present Holy Father proclaims the social teaching of the Church, he makes sure to engage management in a discussion of a developing theology of business.
On Sept. 12 of this year, the Pope spoke to members of the Centesimus Annus Foundation on the topic of ethics and international finance. Addressing an audience of business leaders, he said, “Globalization will have very positive effects if it is grounded in a strong sense of the absolute character and dignity of all human persons and the principle that the earth's goods are for all.” He then asked them to consider: “What are the value judgments that should direct your choices?”
Are Catholic business executives listening to the questions raised by the Pope? Consider Ken Trupke, vice president of administration at Kalfact Plastics Co. Located in Michigan and employing about 100 people, Kalfact uses injection molding to produce small parts for automobiles. Ken has to make decisions about wages, the work environment, pricing, production and just about all it takes to run a company of that size. Ken is an active Catholic, and he and his wife have strong pro-life convictions. I asked him, “Do you ever bring those concerns about morality and human dignity into your work?”
“Every day,” he told me. “In every decision I make, I try to remember to think about human dignity. I ask myself, ‘Does this decision treat everyone involved with dignity as a human being?’”
Ken points out that the company president places a strong emphasis on running the company using several basic guidelines. First, treat everyone — not only customers, but also suppliers and employees — with dignity and respect. From this follows a commitment to safety and quality.
“I see the basic philosophy of the company as strongly compatible with what I believe,” says Ken. “I'm not trying to preach to our employees or our customers, but I do study the Catechism and the teachings of the Church.
I am trying to work in a way that promotes human dignity. When I face a hard decision, I ask myself, ‘What would Jesus do? What would the Pope want me to do?’”
At the end of the last century, the Church developed a theology of labor. During the pontificate of John Paul II, we have seen the development of a theology of business. And at the same time, more managers and executives are Catholics. As we move into a new millennium, let us hope and pray for a fourth development: that more business leaders might learn and live this developing theology of business.
Gregory R. Beabout teaches philosphy at St. Louis University.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Gregory R. Beabout -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Little Flower Power : The Grand Tour DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:More than 10,000 people laid siege to St. Patrick's Cathedral on a dark and rainy evening Oct. 18, to venerate the relics of St. Thérèse of Lisieux.
They also came, in the words of the event's organizer, Dr. Fran Renda, “to thank her for her help.”
What Dr. Renda meant — and what will become immediately clear to anyone who takes part in the tour — is that people are not visiting the reliquary tour to see a curiosity. They are, in a very real sense, coming to see a friend.
In any group of Catholics, you are sure to find at least one who has received some favor from St. Thérèse. Her extravagance in giving is evident in the crowds that are coming to greet her. The size of the crowd at St. Patrick's was astonishing; Dr. Renda said the numbers would only grow.
“The draw is that through the years people have felt the promise of St. Thérèse that she would spend her heaven doing good on earth,” Dr. Renda said. “It's like at the Olympics when the winner takes a lap around the arena for the crowd. They are out to thank her. “
The atmosphere at St. Patrick's was, in fact, comparable to that of a sporting event. When the relics, which will be traveling around the United States through January, pulled up in front of the cathedral in the back of a silver Chevy Suburban, the crowd shouted and cheered. “Praise Jesus! Praise Jesus!” one woman yelled.
“What we would want the relics to be is not a cult of worshipping bones, but a real focus on the life of St. Thérèse and her spirituality, on the merciful love of Jesus,” Dr. Renda said.
A psychoanalyst by profession, Renda said people need the concrete in front of them, to see and touch and feel, in order to understand that which they can't see — God. She added that the crowds that have come out to see St. Thérèse indicate that she continues to actively fulfill her vocation of “being love” in the heart of the Church.
The relics will be reserved for different amounts of time at different churches around the country. In some places, they are there for a couple of days. Often, they are reserved in the presence of the exposed Blessed Sacrament for an all-night prayer vigil. In some places, the crowds are so thick that people are turned away at midnight.
Organizers expect crowds in the Southwest to dwarf the New York scene. In Texas, stadiums have been rented out for tens of thousands of people to visit the relics.
Presentation of the Relics
St. Thérèse's bones are contained in a small cherry-wood casket with gold detailing. The casket is itself surrounded by a Plexiglas shell.
Typically, an honor guard will gather outside the church. The local chapter of the Knights of Columbus will probably be on hand; maybe even the Knights of Malta. One surprise is seeing so many religious in the same place at the same time.
For some, it will be somewhat reminiscent of the old May Day processions. If you can, try to make it to an evening welcoming ceremony. The candlelight vigil delivers the same warmth as it does at the Holy Saturday liturgy. The crowds exude the same sense of excitement and eager anticipation.
Standing outside St. Patrick's, crowds were able to see the lit sanctuary through the open doors of the church. No one was allowed in until the procession had made its way through.
It took a very long wait to have the opportunity to kneel before the relics. Visiting with St. Thérèse, one is forced to reacquaint oneself with the central mystery of the faith — that if a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it will bring forth much fruit. St. Thérèse was well aware of this reality and spoke of her “Little Way” with disarming frankness and simplicity.
She spoke openly about her desire for sanctity — “I don't want to be a saint by halves” — and never sentimentalized the path toward that goal — “I'm not afraid to suffer for You. I fear only one thing: to keep my own will; so take it, for I choose all that You will!”
A friend was asked by his ninth-grade class to explain the life of St. Thérèse. He responded with the simple, “All she ever really did was say her divine office and do the laundry.” That such a woman would be the object of so much attention and admiration is surely a case of a hidden grain bearing great fruit.
A Significant Event
Many people are calling the visit of the relics of St. Thérèse one of the most significant events in memory for the Church in America.
Dr. Renda explained it like this. She said that while the Pope's visits are always thrilling, he is never able to tour the whole country. Nearly every Catholic in America, on the other hand, will have the opportunity to visit with St. Thérèse.
The box carrying the relics is being transported around the United States primarily by car. After its time on the East Coast the reliquary moves on to the Midwest for a while before being flown to Miami. Then, it travels through the South to the Southwest and up the West Coast.
The great significance of St. Thérèse's grand tour is that she once confessed a desire to travel to all five continents proclaiming God's mercies until the consummation of the age. In life, she never left the confines of her monastery. In death, her wish is being fulfilled in an extraordinary way.
Thérèse is famous for using the image of an elevator to describe her ascent to God. A new technology in her day, the elevator seemed to her the perfect analogy for God's work of lifting man up from his lowliness to the heights of love. It is fitting that today, God continues to spread his Gospel of mercy through this young girl by means of a 747 jetliner and a Chevy Suburban.
It gives added emphasis to Isaac Bashevis Singer's quip that “God created man because he likes a good story.”
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Brian Mcguire -------- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: Barbara Nicolosi DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:‘The best preparation I had was an undergraduate degree from the Great Books program at Magdalen College in New Hampshire.
‘The liberal arts and especially philosophy gave me a sense of story and universal themes which is definitely a head start for a writer in any genre.
“On top of that, I have an MA from Northwestern University in film and television with an emphasis in screenwriting.
I was the director of development for Paulist Productions for two years. … I co-created a children's live action series currently being developed by Paulist, and am a consultant on a network midseason replacement series starring Joan Cusak.
“My own screenplay on the spiritual journey of Emily Dickinson was optioned by Reel Life Women Productions of Bel Air. It's currently making its way around the studios. For two years I was a reader for the Humanitas Prize (the “Pulitzer Prize” of screenwriting) and the coordinator of Open Call, a fellowship and networking organization of Christians in the entertainment industry.”
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Sweeps Month Doesn't Bring Out the Best DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:Under normal circumstances, November is the time of year when you grab your TV's remote control and throw it out the nearest open window. It's a time of particularly egregious excess. Bad taste. Vulgarity. The reason is, it's a “sweeps” month — the time local ad rates are set in cities around the country. The more viewers they can draw in for any given show, the more they can charge advertisers for a “slot.”
This means it's also a time when financial interests take precedence over everything else. And that means everything else.
The good news is, this year sees a slight break from “normal circumstances.” It seems the networks — feeling pressured to present something valuable to families, overlooked in the mad rush to court younger viewers over the past several fall seasons — will actually have a few offerings that won't insult the intelligence or offend the moral sensibilities.
Let's not get too excited: The bulk of quality programming will air on PBS (as usual), which has some truly outstanding specials lined up to celebrate its 30th anniversary (which officially takes place Nov. 3). Also, one major network movie will be of interest to Catholics, NBC's “Mary, Mother of Jesus,” which will attempt to cast the Virgin Mary as something of a modern-day woman, burdened by stress and domestic concerns. “Mary, Mother of Jesus” is at the vanguard of a handful of upcoming network movies on Jesus, several of which will air early next year. The movie self-consciously tries not to offend, and many Catholics will be happy to see the language of the Hail Mary restored in Gabriel's greeting to Mary. But don't expect the show to be an inspirational accompaniment to your family rosary.
Also, network schedules will be given over to experimentation of sorts this month. ABC's summer hit “Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?” returns on Sunday, Nov. 7, and will air week-nights at 8:30 (all times listed are Eastern) for two solid weeks (except Sundays, when it will air at 9). A programming stunt like this may be unprecedented in November. CBS, meanwhile, has filled its schedule with music specials and music-related miniseries. Of note, CBs' special on Latin pop sensation Ricky Martin (Friday, Nov. 26, at 8), Celine Dion (Wednesday, Nov. 24), and Shania Twain (Nov. 25.) There is also a musical miniseries — “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” (Sunday, Nov. 7, at 9, and Wednesday, Nov. 10, at 9).
But, if you choose carefully, you'll be able to find some programming of genuine interest. Here's a sampling:
MONDAY & TUESDAY, 7 & 8
The Magical Legend of Leprechauns NBC, 9–11 p.m.
And now for a miniseries offering something completely different. Robert Halmi Sr. (the veteran TV producer of mega-special-effects movies and miniseries like “Gulliver's Travels” and “Noah's Ark”) heads to Ireland this time, but this movie is more palatable to younger tastes than past efforts. Jack Woods (Randy Quaid) is an American businessman who goes to Ireland to scope out a major land development deal. His home away from home is a charming, thatched-roof cottage, without electricity (“too far to carry it,” his landlord informs him), but with other unusual qualities. Woods eventually meets the real tenants of the house, 5-inch-tall Seamus Muldoon (Colm Meaney) and his family. Woods saves Muldoon from drowning and the little guy is forever in his debt. And so it goes. As usual, there are wild and wooly special effects (check out the headless horseman), but for the most part, Halmi serves up mostly harmless fun. But be warned: There are numerous battle scenes and the occasional “romantic moment” (TV euphemism for sex), all of which may be inappropriate for younger viewers. But the miniseries is worth checking out if only to see the verdant glorious Irish countryside.
WEDNESDAY, 17
Canyonlands: America's Wild West PBS, 8 p.m.
And speaking of natural glories, PBs' superb nature series “Living Edens” heads to Utah's Canyonlands this month. For those unfamiliar with this landscape, it is a harsh, severe and little-known place. The Grand Canyon, a couple of hundred miles to the south, commands more attention, but to those who appreciate such marvels, Canyonlands is, in its own way, just as grand.
Meanwhile on PBS, the worthwhile “Nature,” entering its 18th season, began on Oct. 24 with a two-part special on Antarctica, which concludes Oct. 31 (both nights at 8 p.m.).
MONDAY, 22
Apocalypse! PBS 9–11 p.m.
The public-broadcast network describes this two-hour offering as a look at “the origins of the Book of Revelation and how it has shaped Western ideas of the apocalypse.” A review cassette was not available, but the special is clearly part of TV's ongoing millennial frenzy (CNN is also airing a Sunday 10 p.m. millennial retrospective this month and next). Naturally, if Christians tune it at all, they should do so with an awareness that PBS is ill-equipped to deal seriously with theological issues from a standpoint of informed faith and reason.
SUNDAY, 7
Annie ABC, 7 p.m.
Here is another rare all-family program that also happens to be solid and well-produced, with newcomer Alicia Morton playing the role of Annie. Producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron have dispensed with some of the more cartoonlike elements of the famed stage production, but the music (by Charles Strouse, with lyrics by Martin Charnin) remains the same.
SUNDAY, 14
Mary, Mother of Jesus NBC, 9–11 p.m.
This movie is a cherished project of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who has worked on it with son Bobby for three years. They're not generally noted as historians or theologians, let alone storytellers. In all likelihood, they'll try their best not to offend anyone except, perhaps, devout Catholics; don't be surprised if, in the process, they offer up some superficial blather that only serves to further confuse the masses about Catholic doctrine on the Mother of God.
As Kennedy Shriver said at a recent press event, “I think [Mary] has a message that she carries and I think she is a great symbol for the female side of the Church, the social activities of the Church. … But in all churches, I think she represents a common bond for women and she's very timely and very relevant to the young people who struggle with many of the problems she had.”
Bobby Shriver elaborated: “You've seen Jesus portrayed 5,000 different ways, but Mary is really generally portrayed in one way, and that's not the way it is in this movie.”
WEDNESDAY, 10
Life Beyond Earth PBS, 8–10 p.m.
This beautifully rendered production, written and produced by science writer Timothy Ferris, is well worth a visit, if only to catch the stunning, computer-generated graphics and photography of deep space. “Life” doesn't wander into the theological debate associated with its subject, but instead tracks the long scientific debate over life on distant worlds — whether it exists and, if so, in what variegated forms. Ferris, by the way, is an accomplished writer on the subject, and his book, “Coming of Age in the Milky Way,” remains popular a decade after publication.
SUNDAY-THURSDAY, 14–18
New York PBS, 9–11 p.m.
And finally, the reason for keeping a TV handy this month, at least for lovers of America's biggest city. “New York” is said to be the biggest, grandest, most elaborate documentary on the city ever to be produced. At ten hours,
And finally, the reason for keeping a TV plugged in this month, at least for lovers of America's biggest city: “New York” is said to be the biggest, grandest, most elaborate documentary on the city ever to be produced.
At 10 hours, it is indisputably the longest. This program comes by way of Ric Burns, best known for being the brother of Ken (of PBs' “Baseball” and “The Civil War” fame). As it turns out, Ric is an excellent documentarian in his own right.
Verne Gay writes about television for Newsday.
----- EXCERPT: November TV Previews ------- EXTENDED BODY: Verne Gay -------- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Prizer's Video Picks DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:LITTLE WOMEN (1994)
Louisa May Alcott's popular novel has been adapted to the screen four times. The 1933 George Cukor production, starring Katherine Hepburn, is on the Vatican's list of 45 best films. This most recent version, directed by Gillian Armstrong (My Brilliant Career), emphasizes the trade-offs between marriage and a passionate commitment to career — an important issue for many women today. But it also remains true to the spirit of the original in presenting family as the place where our basic values are formed.
Little Women's emotional spine is the coming-ofage of Jo March (Winona Ryder), an aspiring writer in New England during the Civil War. She and her three sisters are being raised by their mother (Susan Sarandon) in genteel poverty while their father is off fighting. They learn how to cope with illness, suitors and a mean-spirited rich aunt. Their deep love for each other sustains them through disappointments and success.
TENDER MERCIES (1983)
Most of us mess up our lives pretty badly at one time or another. Christianity teaches us that redemption is one sincere change of heart away, and God usually shows us the way if we're willing to listen.
Mac Sledge (Robert Duvall) is a talented country-western singer-song-writer who's destroyed his career and personal life through alcoholism. A relationship with a widowed motel owner (Tess Harper) and her young son offers him a chance start anew. But life's twists and turns have a few nasty surprises left. “I don't trust happiness,” the singer declares. “I never have, and I never will.”
Australian director Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy) and screenwriter Horton Foote (To Kill A Mockingbird) show that the path to redemption isn't easy but always worth the effort. The Oscar-winning Tender Mercies is filled with simplicity, grace and true-to-life emotions.
TO KILLA MOCKINGBIRD (1962)
People's values are usually formed in childhood, and a parent's influence is the determining factor. The Oscar-winning To Kill a Mocking Bird dramatizes a widowed father's attempts to raise two pre-adolescent kids in a small Southern town during the depths of the Depression.
Jean “Scout” Finch (Mary Badham) nostalgically recollects the summer and fall of 1932 when she was a 6-year-old tomboy. But the bitter is mixed with the sweet. When her lawyer-father, Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck), defends a black man falsely accused of raping a white girl, most of the townsfolk ostracize the family.
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view,” Atticus advises, “until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” The kindly patriarch walks the talk, teaching his children to always stand up for their beliefs and extend charity even to those who are different.
Arts & Culture correspondent John Prizer writes from Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Patron Saints of Halloween? DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:Today's Halloween may not much resemble the old way of celebrating All Saints' Day, but some saints' stories fit well with the new emphasis on graveyards and ghosts.
St. Benedict (480–547) is widely reported to have inserted himself in medieval affairs. He appeared to a monk at Fleury during the 10th century, for instance, and threatened to leave the buildings of the monastery when the monks tried to thwart the reforms of Odo of Cluny, according to a story recounted in Thomas Head's 1990 book Hagiography and the Cult of Saints.
St. Joan of Arc (1412–1431) might be called the patron saint of Catholic apparitions, since she was burned at the stake at least partly because she refused to renounce that she heard the voices of St. Michael, St. Catherine and St. Margaret.
Several friends of St. Catherine of Genoa (1447–1510) actually saw or otherwise experienced her going to paradise when she died Dec. 14, and her confessor had a clear vision of her sufferings on earth while celebrating Mass the next day.
In this century, Blessed Faustina Kowalska (1905–1938) reported in her diary seeing St. Joseph, St. Michael and St. Barbara.
Perhaps most fitting is the little-known St. Christina the Astonishing (1150–1224). She died three times, according to her biographer Thomas de Cantimpré's Vita Christina Mirabilis, written eight years after her (final) death.
The first time she died God asked her to take on suffering to save souls. She was reportedly resurrected during her funeral Mass and flew up to the ceiling of the church, apparently unable to stand the smell of sinful human flesh.
For years she suffered terrible pains, including coldness and burns, without visible damage to her body.
Later, when a dear friend of Christina's, Count Louis of Looz, was dying, he called her into his room and told her all his sins, hoping to move her to pray for him. After his death, he appeared to her to ask her for help with purgatory, and she agreed to suffer half his punishment.
“Having taken on these burdens,” writes her biographer, according to a 1986 translation by Margot H. King, “for a long time afterwards you might have seen Christina in the middle of the night being tormented with burning smoke and at other times with freezing cold. Indeed, she suffered torments in turn according to what the soul of the Count was suffering.”
The second time she died she was as an old woman living in a convent, but she returned when the superior of the convent upbraided Christina for not answering a question she had asked before she went. Christina answered the question, then died for the last time.
Anticipating skepticism, the biographer comments: “We admit — and it is true — that our account surpasses all human understanding inasmuch as these things could by no means have occurred according to the course of nature, although such things are possible to the Creator.”
—Matt McDonald
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Matt McDonald -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Education Notebook DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:Notre Dame Mourns a Loss
NOTRE DAME UNIVERSITY, Oct. 21-Holy Cross Father Robert Griffin died on Oct 21. He was 74 years old and had been in ill health for some time.
“One of Notre Dame's most affectionate and affectionately regarded characters, the chain-smoking Father Griffin, invariably accompanied by a golden cocker spaniel named Darby O'Gill, was a ubiquitous campus presence for three decades,” said a Notre Dame press release.
U.S. Premiere of Pope's Play at Santa Clara
SANTA CLARA UNIVERSITY, Oct. 8-The American premiere of “Our God's Brother” is coming to Santa Clara University, the school announced in a press release. Karol Wojtyla, now Pope John Paul II, wrote the play in 1947. It debuts on the Nov. 12, under the honorary patronage of Bishop Patrick J. McGrath of San Jose and the direction of Jagienka Zych-Drweski.
The play focuses on the life of Adam Chmielowski, a Polish artist and invalid who loses his leg in a war fighting for Poland's freedom.
After becoming a famous painter, Chmielowski realizes another vocation. With tremendous compassion for the impoverished, he transforms his studio into a shelter to accommodate the many homeless strangers he encounters on the streets.
“Our God's Brother” touches on the fundamental question of individual freedom vs. service to other people. Pope John Paul II has written six plays, three since his pontificate.
Drweski traveled to Rome and received the Pope's blessing to perform the play. Drweski, a Polish native, joined Santa Clara University in 1984.
Back to the Drawing Board
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY, Oct. 18-The university announced that it has formed a committee to revise its mission statement, which was last rewritten in the early '80s. The mission statement is a document with legal ramifications, since it will clarify the school's position on implementing Ex Corde Ecclesiae (From the Heart of the Church), Pope John Paul II's 1990 apostolic constitution on Catholic higher education.
New Law School Offers Millions In Scholarships
AVE MARIA LAW, Oct. 12-In preparation for the start of the class of 2003, Ave Maria Law, located in Ann Arbor, Mich., announced $5.1 million in scholarships over the next three years.
Bernard Dobranski, dean of Ave Maria Law, announced the annual tuition for the first students to be $19,750, placing a full, three-year scholarship at $59,250.
The law school also announced that 75% scholarships would also be available, worth $14,812.50 each year. Both scholarship packages are renewable, if the student maintains a 3.0 grade point average. As well, Ave Maria will not raise a student's tuition once he has entered the school.
Dobranski said that Ave Maria plans to start classes next fall with 40 to 50 students. The school has received more than 500 inquiries from 42 states and the District of Columbia.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: In Mexico, a Feisty Movement Works to Keep the Flock Intact DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:MEXICO CITY-The highly polite environment of the Church in Mexico was disrupted a few months ago when a popular priest addressed an open letter to Bishop Raul Vera López, coadjutor of the Diocese of San Cristobal de Las Casas in the state of Chiapas.
“Your appointment was received with great signs of satisfaction, creating the hope that you would balance the situation,” wrote the priest. “But … your actions have totally disappointed me and many other people.”
“For what were you appointed coadjutor?” continued the letter. “You speak words in favor of the poor, but with your actions you are shattering them.”
Who was this fearless cleric, asked Mexico's secular media, to take such a stance with a bishop?
While a mystery to many in the media, the priest was well known in Mexican Church circles and among many in the laity.
The answer: Father Flaviano Amatulli.
The stocky 60-year-old Father Amatulli is a colorful figure with a long beard and thick Italian accent. But make no mistake: This dogmatic theologian is founder of a fast-growing movement dedicated to strengthening Mexico's Catholic roots through an effort of evangelization and apologetics.
The movement, known as the Apostles of the Word, also doesn't hide one of its principal goals — to so educate Catholics in their faith and spiritual lives that they will not be susceptible to enticements from evangelical Protestant sects.
“Catholics have a very weak faith; they are emotionally Catholic but don't know the answers that faith provides for doubts and problems,” Father Amatulli told the Register. “And since so many sects are out there trying to corral them, it is urgent that we start by evangelizing those baptized who are not living their faith.”
Father Amatulli's movement is centered on knowledge of the Bible and on Church teaching as articulated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. In short, “the recovery of old apologetics in a renewed way,” said the priest.
‘Going Along’ Not an Option
Father Amatulli has been successful despite his sometimes aggressive style that is clearly at odds with the personable gentility that dominates Mexican society.
Father Amatulli's letter to Bishop Vera is an example of his approach: “Do you know that hundreds, even thousand of children are not baptized in your diocese because their parents don't want to make contact with your ‘liberationist’ priests and catechists?
“Has liberation theology become a dogma that has to be sustained by all means, even at the cost of seeing so many poor Catholics go away in search of peace in the numerous sects?”
“If that is the case,” Father Amatulli's letter continued, “we have nothing left but to pray God more than ever: ‘Oh Lord, liberate us from the liberators.’”
The Apostles of the Word are prohibited from working in the dioceses of Aguascalientes and Bishop Vera's Chiapas. Both Bishop Vera and the controversial ordinary of the diocese, Bishop Samuel Ruiz, have formally accused Father Amatulli before the Mexican bishops' conference of joining forces with Mexico's dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party, known by the Spanish acronym PRI, to do them harm.
Bishop Ruiz will reach the mandatory retirement age of 75 later this year and it is assumed by most observers that he will not be replaced by Bishop Vera.
The idea that Father Amatulli would take up with the PRI — which he routinely and openly criticizes — has prompted most observers to dismiss the charge.
Mexican advocates of liberation theology, who tend to dwell on social problems more than evangelization, have depicted Father Amatulli as, in the words of one, “an ally of the imperialist forces with an ideological agenda.”
Nevertheless, the Apostles of the Word continues to grow.
Power of God's Word
The organization describes itself as “a group of men and women who have experienced the power of God's Word in their lives and feel a great need to communicate it to others without measuring the difficulties and sacrifices demanded by this mission.”
Their primary work consists of door-to-door evangelization, usually in remote regions of the country in order to reach Catholics who have not been well formed in their faith and who may not know how to defend their faith when it is ridiculed by the evangelicals.
Starting with the original group that gathered around the charismatic Father Amatulli, the Apostles of the Word have turned into a large organization with several branches.
The lay branch, which includes separate groups for men, women and married couples, is the oldest and largest section of the movement. Members participate in a week of Bible studies and catechesis every two months, and work full or part time in evangelization. The methodology is designed to counter Protestant critiques of Catholicism by training members to make extensive use of the Bible, which they must be able to quote in order to support doctrine.
The Apostles of the Word's mission also calls on members to build “true Christian communities that fully live the demands of the Gospel,” which also “reject vice and helps build a society founded on solidarity, justice and love.”
Leaders are identified and invited to undergo additional theological training before they are invited to take on lay ministries or even the permanent diaconate. It is through these leaders that the Apostles of the Word finds most of its new members.
The commitment of many young women led Father Amatulli several years ago to create a branch of consecrated women that he hopes will one day become a congregation of religious. After a year of formation, the sisters take private vows of obedience, poverty and chastity.
Because of their availability for full-time involvement, the consecrated women, including some former evangelicals, constitute the leading edge of Father Amatulli's movement.
Most recently, some male members have discerned vocations to the priesthood. Current plans call for the seminarians to become incardinated in individual dioceses while retaining close contact with the group's apostolic work, especially by providing sacramental and pastoral attention to their lay colleagues.
Father Amatulli said priest-apostles may soon become a clerical society of apostolic life, a means by which diocesan priests can ban together in the manner of a religious community for a common apostolic work.
Sister Juanita Rodríguez, who serves as the movement's secretary, told the Register that the organization has 399 full-time lay workers.
The sisters number 70, including nine who have made permanent vows.
The clerical branch includes three priests, nine seminarians and 15 students of philosophy.
“The [Apostles of the Word are] active in almost all Mexican dioceses, either as a movement or else as part of diocesan efforts to promote and defend the faith,” said Sister Juanita.
The group's presence has been extended to other Latin American countries and the United States, where they work in the South.
The group counts on the support of many of Mexico's bishops, including Cardinal Juan Sandoval of Guadalajara, said Sister Juanita.
While the movement's literature does not identify the evangelical movement as its main concern, Father Amatulli does not conceal the fact that the growth of fundamentalist Protestantism and New Age groups prompted him to found the Apostles of the Word.
“Despite the sects' exaggeration of their numbers, it is true that in many regions they comprise as much as 30%” of the population,” said Father Amatulli.
Style Over Substance
Many agree with him, but still raise questions about the priest's confrontational style.
The Apostles of the Word are “a new and energetic group, committed to the poor,” said Father Daniel Gagnon, director of REDIMIR, an organization that is also dedicated to counteracting evangelical proselytism. But, he told the Register, “they are too aggressive, and some of their evaluations of the sects are superficial.”
Father Gagnon disagreed with what he called Father Amatulli's tendency to “mock and attack” the sects, which only hardens relations with Protestants. “Nobody takes a positive attitude when he is being attacked,” he added.
Others, including Chihuahua Archbishop José Fernandez Arteaga, said that Father Amatulli's style has created division within the Church.
Father Amatulli said that division and tension within the Church has not been created by him, but by “those who have promoted a pastoral theology distorted by a political and ideological approach, thus generating a sort of Balkanization of the Church.”
Advocates for the Apostles of the Word note that the Protestants have been successful precisely because they are aggressive and are not afraid to attack their opponents.
They point to a recent episode in the town of El Pueblito, Guadalajara, where the presence of the Apostles of the Word persuaded an active group of Seventh-day Adventists to leave town.
Father Amatulli said he is not interested in debating points of doctrine with non-Catholics. He wants to prevent Catholics from becoming Protestants, “rather than converting them back to the Catholic faith after they have become evangelicals.”
Alejandro Bermudez writes from Lima, Peru.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Alejandro Bermudez -------- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Nazareth Mosque Ruling Irks Christians and Muslims DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:JERUSALEM-The Israeli Government has angered church leaders and Muslims by announcing approval for the construction of a new mosque next to a major Christian holy site in Nazareth, the town where Jesus spent his childhood.
There have also been suggestions that the plans for the mosque could affect a visit to Nazareth by Pope John Paul II, tentatively scheduled for next year.
The new mosque is to face the Basilica of the Annunciation, a church built on the site where, according to Christian tradition, the Angel Gabriel told Mary she would give birth to Jesus.
The plan is strongly opposed by some Christian leaders in the Holy Land, who have privately threatened to close churches at Christmas this year and force the cancellation of the Pope's planned visit during the year 2000.
The announcement follows a dispute which began when a plot of land, formerly the site of a school near the basilica, was designated by the Nazareth municipality to serve as a plaza for the large numbers of pilgrims expected to arrive in the Holy Land for celebrations to mark the new millennium.
More than a year ago, Muslim activists seized part of the land, claiming that the school, which had been demolished, once housed a mosque, and that the entire plot belonged to the Wakf, an Islamic religious trust. On Christmas Day last year and at Easter this year violent clashes erupted at the site between Muslims and Christians.
Israel's Public Security Minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, released details of the new plan last week shortly after meeting Christian and Muslim groups from Nazareth. Ben-Ami said the mosque must be limited to 700 square meters. A large barrier would be built between the mosque and the church, a Muslim protest tent currently on the site would be removed next month, and extra police would be posted in the area.
He said a police station would be established in the location to provide security for tourists and pilgrims -whether they attend the mosque or the basilica.
“This is the basis of our resolution and we expect the two parties to accept them,” he said. “If they do not accept them, we will have to take unilateral steps.”
Ben-Ami said construction of the mosque would begin after planned millennium celebrations which may include a visit by Pope John Paul in March next year.
The announcement about the mosque also drew criticism from Muslim officials. While generally supporting the proposed size of the mosque, they immediately criticized other details of the plan and warned there could be violence in Nazareth if it was implemented.
Many Christian leaders in the Holy Land argue that it is not appropriate to build a mosque so close to one of the most important sites in Christianity.
Ecumenical News International has obtained a copy of a letter sent last month to the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak and signed by the Greek Orthodox Patriarch Diodoros, the Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, the Armenian Patriarch, Torkom Manogian, and the Custos (Roman Catholic Custodian) of the Holy Land, Giovanni Batistelli.
“We believe that the place currently proposed for the building of a mosque — besides being a government-owned property — is not compatible with the larger vision of peace and harmony amongst all the faith communities in Nazareth, and will remain an unfortunate source of friction and dispute in future,” the letter states. “With the upsurge of Christian pilgrimages and tourism only a few short months away, we believe that Israel should act decisively in order to resolve once and for all this dispute so that Nazareth can regain its authentic character as the City of the Annunciation — an open and welcoming city for all.”
These sentiments were echoed by Wadie Abu Nassar, executive director of the office of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 of the Assembly of Catholic Bishops of the Holy Land. He said that the issue could affect plans by the Pope to visit the Holy Land in March.
Pope John Paul's envoy to Israel, Monsignor Pietro Sambi, has lashed out at the plan to build a mosque in the town where Jesus grew up, calling the idea “provocative.” If a mosque was needed, it should be built somewhere else, he said.
Another letter, also signed by Patriarch Michel Sabbah, has been sent to the Israeli President, Ezer Weizman, on behalf of church leaders in Jerusalem. In it the patriarch said that the plan to build a mosque near the Christian shrine of Jesus' boyhood home of Nazareth was an act of discrimination against Christians. “We deplore this decision,” he wrote. “It is the legitimization of and approbation of all threats, insults and attacks against Christians carried out to date by the Islamic group leading the campaign to build the mosque.”
The Vatican backed up the patriarch's complaint with strong statements of its own, saying the proposal to erect a mosque at the site is a hindrance to preparations for a visit by Pope John Paul to the Holy Land and Nazareth in particular. “It is not superfluous to observe that such a situation does not help in the preparation of a possible pilgrimage by the Holy Father to that illustrious sanctuary,” the Vatican spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls said.
A Muslim leader from Nazareth, Aziz Shehadeh, said: “There will be bloodshed.
There will be something which people will remember for the coming 50 years. There will be tension in the city ,and there will be tension with Israeli authorities, and this will create tension in the city among all the citizens.”
Salman Abu-Ahmad, a leader of the Islamic Movement in Israel and a member of the city council in Nazareth, he said. He objected to a police station being placed in the middle of the square.
“We are against putting a wall around the mosque. We are against a ‘Berlin’ wall in Nazareth,” he said. “We would also like to begin the building of the mosque immediately.”
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Ross Dunn -------- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Calif. Mandates Contraception Coverage DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:SACRAMENTO, Calif.-Gov. Gray Davis has signed into law dual provisions making California the 10th state to mandate contraception as a part of any prescription-drug package offered to employees by their employers.
Under the Women's Contraceptive Equity Act, employers will have to fund contraceptive benefits for their employees even if they have legitimate faith-based objections to artificial birth control.
A similar bill passed in 1998 included a “conscience clause” exempting religious employers and their subsidiaries. But the new conscience provision excludes only those organizations whose primary purpose is the inculcation of religious values and who primarily serve persons of the same faith. Many believe this will force Catholic hospitals, charities and parochial schools to provide contraceptive coverage since inculcating values is not their primary purpose, nor do they primarily serve Catholics.
The California Catholic Conference, along with Republicans, were rebuffed when they tried to reach a compromise with the authors of the act, Sen. Jackie Speier and Assemblyman Robert Hertzberg. Davis, Speier and Hertzberg are Democrats.
During the debate leading up to the final vote on the bills in the Assembly, Hertzberg was asked why he opposed the stronger conscience clause he had favored just the year before. He gave no reason other than to say, “There has to be a nexus between employment and faith.”
Republicans said this proved proponents simply want to force Catholic entities to go against the teachings of their faith. Indeed, Assemblywoman Audie Bock, an Independent from Oakland, and Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson, a Democrat from Santa Barbara, said the bills were needed because they would essentially force Catholic employers to provide contraception for their employees. They argued that, absent these bills, employers could “impose their morality” on employees.
Both bills passed with Catholics providing the margin of victory. Speier and 10 other Catholics in the state Senate, along with 14 Catholics in the Assembly, voted for the legislation to mandate contraception coverage. All are Democrats, though some Democrats voted against the bills and others abstained.
In a statement after the signing ceremony, bill sponsor Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California said, “Today common sense has prevailed. Women in California will now enter the new millennium free from the long-standing gender discrimination that currently exists in insurance prescription contraceptive benefits.”
Opponents agreed that this was about discrimination, but not the kind of discrimination those in favor of the law had in mind.
“It's the responsibility of the government to protect religious freedoms,” said Assemblyman Roy Ashburn, a Republican from Bakersfield and a Catholic. “And yet on this very issue, the authors and majority party were more interested in imposing their views on people who have deeply felt religious convictions to the contrary.”
The California Catholic Conference's executive director, Ned Dolejsi, agreed with this assessment. “It's naive to think that this is not their agenda,” he said. “They talk about us imposing our morality on employees, but if you work for Catholic Charities, were you not clear what Catholic Charities believed and stood for when you came to work for them? This is them imposing their moral agenda on us.”
Skip O'Neel is a free-lance writer living in Sacramento, California.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Skip O'Neel -------- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:In the Plaza de las Americas in San Juan, Puerto Rico, John Paul II presided at a eucharistic celebration on Oct. 12, 1984. Long before partial birth abortion had become a legal issue in America, the Pope in his homily cited abortion and infanticide as both condemned by the Second Vatican Council.
Remember also in the words of the last Council — that life, from the moment of conception onwards, must be safeguarded with the utmost care; abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes (Gaudium et Spes, No. 51). Hence, no human law can morally justify induced abortion. Equally inadmissible from the standpoint of morality are any actions taken by public authorities which seek to limit the responsible freedom of parents to decide the number of their children.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Mission Means 8 Hours a Day Outside Clinic DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:He endures long fasts, works tirelessly and, after 33 years of pro-life ministry, is long-suffering.
But his practice of spending eight hours every day in prayer in front of abortion clinics has caught the attention of people in high places. Cardinal Francis George and other bishops have participated in the peaceful prayer vigils of Helpers of God's Precious Infants, which he founded. A June 30 Chicago Sun-Times editorial compared the apostolate to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s peaceful marches.
Msgr. Reilly spoke recently with Register staff writer Brian McGuire.
McGuire: When you approach the abortion clinics each day, what is your first order of business?
Msgr. Reilly: We go our there for the conversion of the heart of the mother and the abortionist. In other words, our first order of business is not to save the physical life of the baby. You see, before the baby is physically aborted, it is spiritually aborted. So our purpose is to pray for conversions of heart. You have to change the spirit of the mother and the doctor, and this change does come about through our fasting and our prayer.
Msgr. Philip Reilly Founder, St. Joseph's Helpers of God's Precious Infants
How is it that so many of us, and so many mothers, have become convinced of the worthlessness of unborn babies?
In Evangelium Vitae the Holy Father says that the root cause of the culture of death is the loss of the sense of God and with that comes a loss of the sense of who we are. The creature cannot understand himself apart from the creator. The infants are precious because they belong to God.
So, the first thing we are out at the clinics witnessing to is the presence and the reality of God.
You see, once you restore God to the discussion, the reality of the child as one of his creatures becomes more apparent. The infants are precious because they belong to God, not because they belong to the mother or the state. This whole discussion of the body and our rights to control it is horizontal and, in the end, fruitless. It doesn't take God into consid eration.
Once we can convince the woman that both she and her baby are precious to God, then we have circled around court decisions that ignore this reality — we have gotten to the reality that precedes court decisions.
Who is the “enemy” to the culture of life — abortion doctors?
God wants the salvation of the doctor, the child and the mother. They are not his enemies. It is we who turn away from God, not him from us. When we go to pray in front of the clinic our goal is to view the situation with the mind of God. We must make present his unconditional and everlasting love.
You can't lash out at people or condemn them and expect them to be converted. How could you ever sell your product by being nasty? We are called to be faithful witnesses to the truth, that's all. And so we must do it in a peaceful and prayerful manner. Again, to see with the eyes of God dictates that we be concerned primarily with the conversion of souls.
How would God treat those who kill?
God died for the conversion of those who put him to death. In the same manner, God's providence allows for the physical evil of the deaths of the unborn if that's what it takes to convert those who put them to death. If God permits abortion, it is to pave the way for greater conversions. And if those who today support abortion turn their hearts toward God tomorrow, then the victory is ours. God never forces us to love him. He had to hang on the cross there for awhile, and so do those in the pro-life movement.
People argue that it is important to save the lives of babies who are being killed right now.
Even if you feel justified in attacking the oppressor, if there is hatred in your heart, you are both destroyed by the evil. We have to practice the love of Christ if we want to be saved and help bring about the salvation of others. As Christians, we don't have the right to hate or even to be uncharitable.
This is called Christian love, and it's very demanding. I stress to people that God is calling them to holiness. You can't win the battle and lose your own soul. This struggle is a real source of sanctification for us.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: Philip Reilly -------- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Did You Know? DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:The U.S. Senate, in a 51-47 vote, adopted an amendment expressing “the sense of the Congress” that “Roe v. Wade was an appropriate decision and secures an important constitutional right; and such decision should not be overturned.”
That means the U.S. Senate is more pro-abortion than the public at large:
• A May 1999 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll reported that 58% of the public believed that abortion should be “illegal in all circumstances.”
• A July 1998 survey of American women conducted by the Princeton Survey Research Associates for the pro-abortion Center for Gender Equality found that 70% of American women favor “more restrictions” on abortion and 53% believe that abortion should be illegal except in cases of rape, incest or to save the mother's life.
—National Right to Life Committee, Oct. 21
----- EXCERPT: Facts of Life ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Life Notes DATE: 10/31/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: October 31 - November 6, 1999 ----- BODY:DesignerBabies.com
Fashion photographer Ron Harris launched www.ronsangels.com to cell the ova of beautiful models to infertile couples, reported a columnist in the Post.
“Natural selection is choosing genes that are healthy and beautiful,” Harris said. “This celebrity culture that we have created does better economically than any other civilization in our history.”
Critics contend that this is simply taking sperm banks to their next logical step, the customization of our offspring.
“This Web site is the product of a materialist society that has decided pleasure and the avoidance of suffering are its highest virtues,” writes Post columnist Rod Dreher. “When life itself is not believed to have intrinsic worth, this is what we get.”
If the demands of consumerism are invited into the process of having children, we face a grave danger, Dreher writes.
“On what grounds will ethicists lecture parents that they must abort their unborn child becuase she is likely to be fat, or homely, or handicapped, or gay, or anything else that might disadvantage the child in the real world?”
Hospital Changes Policies, But Not Enough, Lawmaker Says
Starting on Jan. 1, only two hospitals under Advocate Health Care will perform the abortions, and then, only in the cases of rape, incest, when the child would not survive, or to save the life of the mother.
So-called therapeutic abortions occur when, after learning that a baby will be born with mental or physical handicaps, labor is induced and the child is born, only to be starved or asphyxiated.
Illinois State Sen. Patrick J. O'Malley resigned from the hospital's board saying that the hospital's new provisions did not go far enough.
“I'm a big cheerleader for Christ Hospital, but you have to draw the line somewhere,” O'Malley told the Chicago Sun-Times.
Hospital executives sent a letter to O'Malley in which they thanked him for four years of service and said they have “great appreciation of your personal views on pregnancy termination and respect your choice to resign.”
Congress Urged to Study Fetal Body Parts Claim
CNS-An official of the U.S. bishops' pro-life secretariat called for a congressional investigation and “in-depth investigative reporting” into claims by a U.S. senator that abortion clinics are selling fetal body parts.
Sen. Bob Smith, I-N.H., made the claim on the Senate floor Oct. 21 during debate on the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.
Helen Alvare, director of planning and information for the bishops' Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, said Smith had “produced credible evidence that some U.S. abortion clinics have worked hand-in-glove with wholesalers of fetal body parts.”
Smith said some clinics were committing infanticide and performing abortions in ways calculated to produce the maximum of fresh human body parts for sale.
“No matter if this is going on in one clinic or 500, it would be an intolerable situation, a statement that some children are worthless as persons but valuable as parts,” Alvare said.
“There ought to commence as quickly as possible extensive congressional hearings as well as in-depth investigation reporting on this unthinkable violation of the dignity of the human person,” she added.
Maine Voters Urged by Bishop To Be Faithful to Lord of Life
CNS-As Maine voters prepared to decide by referendum whether to ban partial-birth abortion in their state, Bishop Joseph J. Gerry of Portland has called on Catholics to be “faithful to the Lord of life.” Question 1 on the Nov. 2 ballot asks whether partial-birth abortions should be banned in Maine, except when necessary to save the mother's life. In a pastoral letter called “Faithful to the Lord of Life,” Bishop Gerry noted that Catholics in the state also are likely to face a vote next year on physician-assisted suicide and efforts in the state Legislature to reintroduce capital punishment.
----- EXCERPT: ------- EXTENDED BODY: -------- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Vanity Fair Denies Anti-Catholic Bias DATE: 11/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:NEW YORK — The Catholic League of Religious and Civil Liberties is demanding that Vanity Fair owner Condé Nast explain what it views as the magazine's “problem with Catholicism.”
In a full page ad in the Oct. 26 New York Times, the Catholic League listed three separate articles published in Vanity Fair over the past nine years which, according to Catholic League spokesman Patrick Scully, “demonstrate a nine-year record of doing hatchet jobs on people who are revered by Catholics around the world.”
The first incident was a 1990 piece which, the ad said, portrayed New York's Cardinal John O'Connor as “a priest who [is] indifferent to suffering, even to children with AIDS.” “In 1995,” the ad continued, Vanity Fair painted Mother Teresa as “a lap dog to dictators all over the world … a hypocritical cynic who curried favor with fat cats and tyrants.”
The third incident surrounded the controversial book Hitler's Pope, serialized in Vanity Fair and written by the magazine's own David Cornwell.
“In 1999, Vanity Fair painted Pope Pius XII as an anti-Semite who helped Hitler come to power,” the Catholic League ad said. “The portrait that emerged was that of a war criminal who did nothing to help Jews during the Holocaust.”
A statement issued to the Register by Vanity Fair spokeswoman Beth Kseniak denied the Catholic League's charges of an anti-Catholic agenda.
“Any claim that Vanity Fair has an anti-Catholic bias is untrue,” the statement said. “Vanity Fair encompasses a broad and diverse range of topics and opinions, some of which are contradictory. On any given story there are going to be people who are in agreement and those who are not.”
Catholic League spokesman Patrick Scully thought the statement rang hollow.
“Their denial — that they print a variety of perspectives — doesn't address the issue,” Scully said. “The question is, how can they explain and defend the pattern.”
Roger Kimball, managing editor of The New Criterion, a monthly review of culture and the arts, told the Register that he thinks it's important for Catholics to point out media bias against the Church. Nevertheless, Kimball said, “anti-Catholicism is just one item in a long menu of things [Vanity Fair] would be guilty of.
“They reflect the urban left liberal elite mentality which, among other things, is anti-Catholic. … They represent a materialistic hedonism which by its very nature is anti-Catholic and anti-family. They are confirmed moral relativists.”
Asked about the Catholic League's concern that Vanity Fair employed “bogus history” in its alleged assault upon prominent Catholics, Kimball added, “They have a cavalier attitude about facts. As confirmed moral relativists, why wouldn't they?”
Repeat Offenders
Scully said the Catholic League has noted Vanity Fair attacks on prominent Catholics in the past, but that the recent serialization of Cornwell's book was “the straw that broke the camel's back.” He said part of the reason the Catholic League ran its ad — which reportedly cost $34,000 — was “to educate readers and to put all of the offenses in one place.”
Scully said the public response to the Catholic League's challenge to Condé Nast has been “overwhelming.”
“We've gotten feedback from every sector, from people of all religious backgrounds,” Scully said. “They are saying that they are behind us and that they don't think Vanity Fair should denigrate people that are universally revered by Catholics.”
Vanity Fair, a glossy, supermarket mainstay, boasts a circulation of over 1 million. In recent years its controversial style included a cover photo of a nude, pregnant actress. Many expected the magazine's edge to dull with the departure of the feisty Tina Brown in 1992, but current editor Graydon Carter has not disappointed those who enjoyed Brown's antics.
Scully told the Register that in a Nov. 15, 1998, interview with the Ottawa Citizen, Carter discussed his magazine's editorial stance on stories like the one criticizing Mother Teresa. “He said if Mother Teresa had been a Jewish icon, we [Vanity Fair] couldn't cover the piece,” Scully said. “For good reason he shouldn't get away with it. We're just asking that he show Catholics the same respect he would show other religious faiths.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian McGuire ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Is England 'Coming Home' to Rome? DATE: 11/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:BIRMINGHAM, England—It may come as a surprise to some but pre-Reformation England was one of the most devout Catholic countries in Europe.
A series of speakers at a Path to Rome Conference held here in October made just that point and speculated that the country is quietly becoming Catholic once again.
The fourth International Path to Rome Conference was the first to be held in England. An apostolate of the Miles Jesu apostolic institute, the conferences are designed to promote the important role of converts in the life and ministry of the Church, including Catholic apologetics and evangelization.
“One of the common experiences [expressed in the stories of recent English converts] is the sense of coming home,” said Dwight Longenecker, a former Anglican minister. “No matter what the person's background, no matter what the previous denomination, it was this sense of fulfillment” that convinces the convert to enter the Church.
The Catholic Church in England was suppressed by King Henry VIII in the 16th century and was not legally restored until 1850. A second springtime for the Church began almost immediately with Cardinal John Henry Newman, a convert, in the vanguard.
And the movement has continued in contemporary times — despite the problems afflicting the Church in the West in recent decades.
The number of those received into the Church increases year by year while the reality of the country's Catholic history and the Church's influence on English culture is more openly acknowledged.
A current exhibition at the British Museum of London includes artifacts belonging to St. Thomas More, who met a martyr's death for refusing to renounce the pope's authority. Such an exhibit would have been unthinkable not long ago.
This process received a major boost in 1992 with the publication of a landmark historical work, The Stripping of The Altars, by Cambridge University's Eamon Duffy. The book exploded the myth that the Reformation was embraced by the ordinary people. Instead, Duffy demonstrated that the Reformation represented a violent rupture from a popular and theologically sound English Catholic culture.
The 1990s has seen a new wave of high-profile converts which even included members of the extended royal family, academia, the media and the world of politics.
The late Cardinal Basil Hume, archbishop of Westminster, openly talked of “the conversion of England,” and few would disagree that conversions to Catholicism is a major factor in English religious life that cannot be ignored or dismissed as a passing fad.
Conference speakers included Father Graham Leonard, the former Anglican bishop of London, along with members of Parliament John Gummer and Ann Widdecombe.
Widdecombe, the opposition spokeswoman on crime and justice, told the conference that her conversion had become inevitable as the Church of England seemed to be losing its moral authority. “The vote to ordain women was the last straw for me,” she said.
Widdecombe said that she needed only 15 minutes with Cardinal Hume to dispel the doubts of a lifetime about the Catholic Church.
Cardinal Hume is credited by many with leading the Church to new levels of social acceptability in England, helping to shed the Church's image among the majority Anglicans as a religion for Italian and Irish immigrants.
According to William Oddie, a former Anglican clergyman and current editor of The Catholic Herald weekly newspaper, social acceptance is only one aspect of a wider sea change in the religious attitudes of Britons.
Oddie, whose newspaper sponsored the conference, told the Register, “The Roman Catholic Church used to have a rather working-class image but things began to change [in the 1980s] with the production on national TV of Brideshead Revisited,” Evelyn Waugh's novel about an aristocratic family that was both English and Catholic.
“I also think, on a more serious note, this coincided with a feeling that history had to be put right after a major distortion,” he said. “It was about this time that Eamon Duffy's book appeared on the scene.”
Oddie and others agreed that the book produced a genuine paradigm shift in the way English historians view the Reformation, making it difficult for any scholar to deny England's Catholic roots.
It was Oddie's predecessor at the Herald, American-born Christina Odone, who, in the early 1990s, was the first media figure to note that it had become “chic” to be Catholic.
Not a single national magazine or newspaper failed to pick up on the trend. Gossip columns reported on high society converts throughout the '90s, and continue to speculate on which celebrities are thinking about becoming Catholic.
There has been “an element of fun in this,” acknowledged Oddie, who has chronicled the serious aspects of the trend, including in a 1996 book, The Roman Option, that chronicled the conversions of Anglican clerics.
He said, “The prayer for the conversion of England [formerly said after Mass] has been neglected but the conversion of England is a constant theme of my editorials.”
World-renowned Newman authority Father Ian Ker said the Catholic Church has little room to be triumphal at the present time, despite the declining state of the Church of England.
Father Ker reminded the conference of Newman's prophetic words shortly before his death that a combination of liberal and evangelical influences would destroy Anglican claims to be part of the Catholic Church. “This became true in 1992, a century after [Newman's] death with the vote to ordain women as priests in defiance of both [Orthodox] Constantinople and [Catholic] Rome,” said Father Ker.
Paul Burnell writes from Manchester, England.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Paul Burnell ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: New Brand of Feminists Challenges NOW DATE: 11/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—Catholic women have long known that the National Organization for Women does not speak for them.
Now, the media dominance held by NOW and its brand of radical feminism is being challenged by the Independent Women's Forum, a small but feisty upstart in the marketplace of ideas.
Although not explicitly religious, the forum is proving to be an ally for women with traditional religious and social views, including many Catholics.
It's sympathetic but less-than-explicit stand on abortion makes the forum an ally to some but leaves others wondering how a forthrightly conservative “women's” political organization can avoid taking a clear side on the most important women's issue of the century.
Said Anita Blair, the forum's president, lawyer and Catholic, “The forum is nonsectarian because we wanted to provide a voice for women of intelligence and traditional morality, regardless of their religion. Actually, we have many Catholics and Jews as members. NOW's feminism is really a form of extreme individualism and quite removed from the realities of ordinary women's lives. Our goal is to make the arguments for morality, common sense and the true interests of women.”
NOW spokeswoman Elizabeth Toledo counters that NOW is more in touch with women's daily lives because it is a grass-roots organization with local chapters around the country. On its Web site, NOW calls the Independent Women's Forum “faux feminists” and a “small circle of Beltway conservatives.”
The forum, based in Washington, developed from a network of young women lawyers in the Reagan and Bush administrations. After Bush left office in 1992, Anita Blair and Barbara Ledeen began shaping the group into a media presence.
The group has grown to include more than 2,000 members and its witty and impudent journal, The Woman's Quarterly, goes out to 5,000 subscribers.
Meeting a Need
The forum is filling a gap, said Blair, because the average American woman is disenchanted with NOW and other like-minded organizations.
“The Concerned Women of America [an Evangelical group] did a poll in the early ‘90s,” she said, “and the majority of women refused to identify themselves as feminists. It's because NOW is so extreme that ordinary women who don't hate men or children, or who aren't lesbians, don't want anything to do with it.”
NOW's Toledo said such polls don't tell the full story. The media almost always use the term feminism with a qualifier, she said, prefacing it with such words as “radical,” “militant” or “liberal.” This has turned “feminism” into a pejorative, she said, and polls reflect that. “When you break down the term and ask about particular issues” such as concerns about discrimination against women, feminism does well, she added.
Blair said that may have been true at one time, but NOW has become more radical. “Back in the ‘70s, when NOW was working for reasonable objectives such as equal pay, women could relate. … What went wrong with NOW and other feminist groups is that they made women into a special interest group instead of part of the human race.
“They'd pit women against men and against children for the sake of making women's interests prevail. But women don't win that way.”
With a handful of paid staff and scores of high-powered intellectual affiliates, the forum is making its voice heard. In op-ed pieces, on “Larry King Live,” C-SPAN, “Crossfire,” cable TV and talk radio, the group tackles the victim status of women (women are not victims of a patriarchy, according to the forum); the wage gap (misleading because it doesn't account for all statistical factors); and the corporate “glass ceiling” that keeps women from the top levels of management (it doesn't exist except in the minds of feminists).
At every opportunity, the forum champions the traditional family as the necessary foundation for civilization.
Forum members also consider free enterprise the best and fairest economic system. They support equal opportunity for women but reject quotas and decry preferential treatment, and appeal for a return to common sense and civility.
They sponsor speakers on ethics and political responsibility.
They testify before Congress.
They've spoken out against the United Nation's Beijing women's conference.
They sponsor conservative student women's groups at Yale and the Jesuits’ Georgetown University, where they were harassed by a student group called the Lesbian Avengers.
Among its other projects, the forum works with a Quaker group against the female slave trade in Mauritania, and it has trained the wives of Promise Keepers to defend their husbands against a hostile media.
The forum's leaders plan to develop a legal defense fund to support traditional legal advocacy, and they recently acquired a status as a lobby.
Does Ledeen believe that the forum can succeed in redefining feminism?
“We've got a good shot,” she said. “I don't know that we can carry the entire burden, but at least when NOW claims to speak for all women, people know it's just not true.”
Elizabeth Toledo retorted that NOW is interested in addressing the “root causes” of discrimination against women, and that “collectively we have persistently exposed discrimination and pushed … power brokers to challenge [demeaning] stereotypes of women.”
But, said Ledeen, “NOW and other feminist groups did themselves tremendous damage with their reluctance to denounce Clinton's sex scandals. People now know they are just a subsidiary of the Democratic Party.”
Ledeen has lobbied state legislatures to permit doctors to inform mothers if their babies test positive for HIV. She also educates college women about the deadly danger of the Human Papilloma Virus. Despite the ubiquitous “safe sex” campaigns, condoms do not stop this virus, which frequently is found to cause cervical cancer.
“I don't have any problem with abstinence,” said this Jewish mother of three, “it's just that many times, people can't hear you when you use those words. So rather than talk about abstinence or virginity, we talk about the right to know. I tell these girls that condoms are useless against HPV. They are shocked. Then I tell them to make their own decision. That's much more powerful and lasting.”
What About Abortion?
One issue that the forum does not take a position on is abortion, although members generally favor parental notification laws, are horrified at partial-birth abortion, and have published articles about unsafe abortion clinics.
“That was a strategic decision,” explained Blair. “And it doesn't mean that we are for abortion, by any means. But we felt that there are many groups that address this issue exclusively. It gets a lot of coverage, perhaps at the expense of other issues — such as taxes and child care — that need intelligent attention. We wanted to make sure some other issues got a hearing.”
Some on the pro-life front line take exception to this reasoning. Said Judy Brown of the American Life League: “It seems to me that women who call themselves independent and conservative would publicly want to proclaim that all women from the moment of fertilization deserve equal protection under the law. I am horrified that they have not taken a position on abortion.”
Register columnist Mary Ellen Bork, a member of the forum's national board of advisers, sees many advantages to supporting a sophisticated, media-savvy organization of high-powered women who promote genuine values while avoiding sectarian classification or the taint of being a “one issue” pressure group.
“I can understand the criticism [over abortion], but on the other hand there were other things this group wanted to accomplish,” said Bork. “So they knew the abortion issue was there, but they just didn't deal with it directly. They decided they would do other things. So far, I don't have a problem with that. I would say many members are quietly pro-life because they are pro-family and pro-woman. If they were actively pro-choice I wouldn't have anything to do with them.”
Una McManus writes from Columbia, Maryland.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Una McManus ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: U.S. Court Reconsidering Room Rentals To the Unwed DATE: 11/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:SAN FRANCISCO—A federal appeals court decided Oct. 19 to reconsider a January ruling that allowed landlords not to rent to unmarried couples.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last January that enforcing state and local anti-discrimination laws on marital status would violate the free expression of the religious beliefs of landlords.
A majority of the 21 active judges in the appeals court ruled to set aside the January ruling and referred the case, known as Thomas, et al. vs. Anchorage Equal Rights Commission, et al., to a new 11-judge panel that will hear oral arguments in late March.
“We're pleased to have a full hearing and look forward to making our case,” said David Levi, executive director of the Equal Rights Commission in Anchorage, Alaska.
“From our perspective, marital status is the law,” Levi told the Register. “We're just enforcing the law.”
Many religious groups such as the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family and even the Mormon church sided with the landlords, stating that this isn't about discrimination but about religious freedom.
“If you enforce these laws, you are burdening the free exercise of religion,” said the landlords’ attorney, Kevin Clarkson.
Tenant activist James D. Smith, who filed a friend-of-the-court brief for a similar California case in 1996, argued that religious convictions do not justify discrimination. “The owner of the rental commodity has never been able to place religious norms on the transaction,” he said.
Clarkson said that the landlords have no intention of imposing their religious beliefs on anyone else. “They just want to manage their property consistent with their religious beliefs,” he said.
He added said that if unwed couples find that too intrusive they are free to find apartments elsewhere. In good conscience, he contended, the landlords believe they should not have to choose between obeying God and respecting the law.
Smith countered that landlords had more options.
“They can turn over the renting of the apartments to a Realtor that won't necessarily adhere to their religious beliefs but will comply with the state law,” he said. The landlords could also use the property in another manner or leave the housing market altogether.
“They don't need to lease property,” Smith said.
Smith said he thinks that the January decision by a federal court of appeals was an unfair judicial intrusion into the state of Alaska's anti-discrimination laws. “This is just gross judicial activism,” he said.
Clarkson also blamed judicial activism, but blamed the Alaska Supreme Court. “I think the judicial activism is from those who tried to change the Alaska law to include cohabitating couples under the marital status category,” he said.
“Cohabitation is a conduct, not a marital status,” Clarkson told the Register, and thus should not be defined as a class with legal protection under anti-discrimination laws.
The Thomas vs. Anchorage case is the first to enter federal courts, but a few similar cases have risen to state supreme courts in recent years.
Last December, the Michigan Supreme Court refused to recognize the right of a married couple not to rent to unmarried couples.
In McCready vs. Hoffus, Judge Marilyn Kelly wrote that unmarried cohabitation is included under the marital status in Michigan's anti-discrimination laws.
In 1996, the California Supreme Court ruled that the state's need to provide “equal access to such a fundamental need as housing outweighs defendants’ religious beliefs that they should not rent to an unmarried couple.”
The court added that the defendants did not have the right to interject their personal beliefs on private conduct into a contract which the state is responsible for overseeing.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Josh Mercer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Where His Real Treasure Lies DATE: 11/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:William E. Simon
He was U.S. treasury secretary under Presidents Nixon and Ford and later made his fortune in leveraged buyouts. Like Andrew Carnegie, he wants to give away his wealth to good causes before he dies. He recently spoke to Register correspondent John Burger in New York.
John Burger: What's it like being an extraordinary minister of the Eucharist, and why did you become one?
William Simon: Back when I was too poor to give money, I became involved in many organizations such as Covenant House. … I went once or twice a week, and every Christmas I'd bring gifts to the children there. When I became successful, I started to give money to charity.
The idea of giving money is important, and if you pay as much attention to your charitable giving as you do to your investments, you ought to do very well. I don't just write a check; when I provide scholarships, I want to know about the children, keep track of them, become part of the family.
So it came natural to me to become a eucharistic minister. A Dame of Malta named Cissy Ix invited me in 1990 to go with her to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, and I found something I absolutely love. To go and pray and be with people and give them holy Communion is the most wonderful thing I've ever done. It's absolutely inspiring. I go at least once a week to a hospital in New York or New Jersey, and also in California when I'm there.
Besides bringing Communion to patients, what else do you do with them?
You go in and you pray. I bring Lourdes water, I bring rosary beads that are blessed at Lourdes and put Lourdes water on them. Some are quite ill. I try to make them feel better, show them somebody cares, as I did with AIDS patients for many years at Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center in Harlem.
Tell me about some of the people you've ministered to.
At Cardinal Cooke, there were people ranging in age from their 20s to their 40s. Science has come up with new drugs that prolong life for AIDS patients, and some became very good friends. They really wanted God — and [continue to] really want God. It's the same thing at Sloan-Kettering. You find very few atheists in a place like that. They want to hear about God; they want to hear about heaven. And they want to hear about baseball and football games.
I was surprised that I was recognized by an awful lot of people after all these years since I've been secretary of the [U.S.] Treasury. They want to hear what it was like to be in government, and I sometimes give them $2 bills that I signed. I also stay in touch with widows and see if they need any help.
Have you witnessed any conversions because of your visits or because of the Eucharist?
People with AIDS are sometimes very angry. They don't want anything to do with you. So you say, “Look, I'm here to visit. What can I do for you? I can give you Communion, but if you don't want it, fine.” After a few visits, they find out you're not such a bad fellow.
I tell them about Lourdes, how I go every year. They love to hear stories like that. They've got problems; life isn't so fine. I tell them neither is mine. You leave there and you're exhausted but so satisfied that you can truly help human beings who are going through a terrible trial. And they're scared, but you remind them that we're all going to die, it's just a matter of when. You tell them, “You're lucky to know when, so you can make preparations.”
Eventually, you find them becoming very friendly. They want to talk about all sorts of things. They know you're a person of God, and you can make them feel better, make them laugh, get them some ice cream, whatever. They're all human beings. This is what the corporal works of mercy are all about.
Tell me about some of the charities you support and why you support them.
I support schools, first and foremost. I like the idea of helping to make literate people out of children who otherwise would grow up being semiliterate. If we want to give them an equal footing in society, we have to give them a good education.
We never give a grant and just walk away. We make sure it's used properly. We make sure the money is not wasted. And we don't just give someone a scholarship for one year but for two or three years. But they have to maintain a certain grade average.
The John M. Olin Foundation supports free enterprise, which is at the foundation of everything I do. [Philanthropist Andrew] Carnegie [1835-1919] believed we have to help people help themselves: You give heart, inspiration and support to people who need it. A lot of the people we give scholarships to are in grammar and high school because if they never get through high school they'll never get to college. Usually, it's a family with a single mother, who can't afford to send her children to a good school. The doorman at my building has six or seven adopted kids, and he sends them all to Catholic schools.
He has to work three jobs to afford it, so I help him. He's taken the kids who are the least wanted, and he'll raise them, teach them about the faith.
I don't just focus on people of the Catholic faith, however. I want to help human beings. I also work with the Olympics, for example, and we help people who are training to be athletes.
As a eucharistic minister, what do you think of the increase in eucharistic devotion in the Church?
It's absolutely wonderful. I live part time in [New York] … half a block from St. Vincent Ferrer. At St. Agnes, a couple of blocks from my office, there's Mass every half-hour [and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament every afternoon]. There's always a considerable amount of people there. I see more people doing the Stations of the Cross. Generally, there's a tremendous resurgence of religion.
What role does prayer have in your life? Is it more important to you today than in the past?
Absolutely. I'm a daily communicant, and I try to say the rosary every day. I don't need many hours of sleep, so I wake up at 3 or 4 every morning. It's nice and quiet then.
Tell me about some of the influences on your life and faith development.
I grew up in Paterson, N.J., and went to Catholic schools in the slums of Jersey. I lived uptown, the son of a once well-to-do family. We went to Mass together every Sunday, as families did then. I'm still very close to the nuns. We just celebrated the 90th birthday of a nun who taught me in the fourth grade. She's as sharp today as ever and has a great sense of humor.
Going to Mass with the family every single Sunday, and going to Catholic schools in a day when nuns were disciplinarians and you did all sorts of things like going to church and singing in the chorus that were part of the curriculum, not extra — the faith just became a part of you. That doesn't mean I was always devout.
Going through the teen years, I'd miss Mass sometimes; I'd get pretty lax. But I never felt good about it. It's kind of like saying the rosary. Some days you're better than others, like baseball. But if you really work at it, you're a happy fellow.
My religion has become very important in my life. That doesn't mean I don't go to football games; I do. It doesn't mean I don't go to movies; I do. But helping people is the most satisfying thing to me.
I think my experiences in the hospitals and going to Haiti with the Knights of Malta, working with the poor down there, tended to bring me even closer to God.
Andrew Carnegie, in The Gospel of Wealth, [argued] that anyone who died with money was damned, that he lived a fruitless life. So he gave it away. Not that I'll be anything like he ever was, but between the Olin Foundation, the Simon Foundation and the Templeton Foundation, there's a lot of money that will be given away. But it's given away with great care and attention; it's done properly.
What was it like being a Catholic in public service? Were you able to bring Christ to the workplace or to public policy?
You'd be surprised [how many] people in government [are] Catholic. You [have] trouble getting to Church on Sunday because you work seven days a week. You [are] preoccupied, and you [are] always traveling. But faith becomes inculcated into your mind and body, and you just try to be a Christian at all times, whether you're dealing with the Arabs or the French or the British.
What do you think of the presidential field as we go into next year's election?
I pay very little attention to it. It's all idle speculation. Anyone who is a front-runner at this stage in the game has never become the nominee.
What do you think about New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's opposition to the Brooklyn Museum's exhibit that included an image of the Virgin Mary covered with elephant dung?
He's absolutely right. The museum is crazy, and the trustees are worse. How they allow that, I don't know. When the Senate votes 95-0 to remove federal funds, and the mayor says, “Remove city funds,” they ought to think twice. What they're doing is despicable. And don't tell me it's art. It's nothing but thinly veiled pornography. It's disgusting and debasing. If they persist, they ought to close the museum down. I'm not talking simply from a Catholic point of view. Whatever the religious symbol it is, it's desecration of religion.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: William E. Simon ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: U.S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 11/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:Vandals Deface Murals of Our Lady of Guadalupe
ASSOCIATED PRESS, Oct. 24—A mural of our Lady of Guadalupe, which had gone untouched in a tough Los Angeles neighborhood for 15 years, was recently vandalized, the AP reported.
“Vandals splashed black paint across the street-side mural, shocking some residents who view her as their protector,” the AP said. “'This is the first time they have put paint on the Virgin,’ said store owner Miguel Bernard, 59, who has seen his share of graffiti in the neighborhood. ‘I saw it and said, This is not good.’ That sentiment is being echoed throughout this predominantly Hispanic area in South Central Los Angeles where murals of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the beloved patron of Mexico and all America, have been defaced over the past few weeks on about a dozen businesses.
“The graffiti is unusual because images of the dark-skinned Virgin, who is typically depicted in a royal green robe and surrounded by a bright halo of light, are revered by Catholics everywhere. The image is so strong among many Hispanics that men wear T-shirts with the Virgin's image to the market; gang members tattoo her on their bodies and graffiti artists refuse to scribble on her image. ‘Most of these businesses paint it because 80% of our kids here who would be responsible for graffiti are gangsters and they are not going to disrespect her like that,’ said Officer Cathy Reyes of the Los Angeles Police Department. The vandalism started in the neighborhood about a month ago, said resident Elvia Partida, after a reproduction of the Virgin of Guadalupe arrived for a three-month pilgrimage in Los Angeles-area churches.”
Ventura Gets History Lesson
SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER, Oct. 17—In a letter to the editor entitled “Cheap Shots,” Father Lee Kaylor, pastor of San Francisco's St. Sebastian Church, took issue with Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura's recent claim that religion is “a crutch for the weak-minded.”
“[Gov. Ventura] may snatch a few headlines by taking cheap shots at religion, but let's come home now from rhetorical wonderland to reality,” Father Kaylor wrote. “Statistics show the vast majority of private charity in this country is done through churches and synagogues. From the abolition of slavery to the civil rights movement, the churches of this country have led the way in the fight for human dignity.
“About the so-called evils of religion, it bears repeating that more murders have been committed by the atheistic ideologies of the Communists and Nazis in this century alone than in the last 1,000 years by all organized religions combined. Since the Catholic Church seems to be the favorite target of the self-anointed elite, it might be mentioned that the Church also gave birth to the first universities and hospitals, and played a major role in bringing down communism in our own time. I'd put the intellects of such ‘believers’ as Newton, Copernicus, Fermi and Pasteur above the likes of Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura any day. Without organized religion to hold in check the totalitarian tendencies of government by reminding people of the existence of a higher authority than themselves, how long does anyone think our freedoms would last?”
----- EXCERPT: From Selected Sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Concern for Holy Places Extends to Community, Vatican Official Says DATE: 11/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:NEW YORK — Vatican concern for Jerusalem's holy places is tied to the Church's concern for communities with a living connection to those places, said a Vatican official who is the Church's equivalent of foreign minister.
Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, secretary for relations with states, said in a lecture in New York Oct. 23 that attempts to separate access to holy places from the broader questions related to the status of Jerusalem were “unacceptable to the Holy See.”
The holy places gain meaning from their place in an environment that is not only geographical but also involves communities, and without the dynamic aspect of these communities, the holy places as static entities could become “mere museums or tourist attractions,” he said.
“For this reason, the Holy See is not only concerned with the religious aspect of the city,” he said. “It also has the right and duty to concern itself with the political and territorial aspect insofar as this remains unresolved, or even, more, when it becomes a cause of conflict, injustice, violations of human rights, fear or insecurity for its people.”
Archbishop Tauran said the political aspect of the situation “becomes an obstacle for the free expression of faith.”
“Hence, with regard to the question of Jerusalem, the Holy See has always maintained that this question cannot and should not be reduced simply to one of unimpeded access to the holy places,” he said.
The Vatican official was in New York for the 50th anniversary observance of the Pontifical Mission for Palestine. He delivered the lecture to members of the Eastern Lieutenancy of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem, an order that traces its history to 1099 and the knighting of members in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
Pope Piux IX reorganized the order at the time of the establishment of the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem in 1847, and the order's work in the Holy Land includes a special commitment to aid the patriarchate.
Following the lecture, Archbishop Tauran celebrated a Mass for the order at the Church of St. John the Evangelist, and in his homily spoke of the Catholic community in the Holy Land, and the “particular interest” in its members as successors of “the first Christian communities founded by Jesus and his apostles.”
The Vatican seeks to preserve the status of the city as “a religious center” that is “unique and pre-eminent in the history of humanity,” Archbishop Tauran said.
Maintaining this character of the city requires recognizing that the Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities serving as guardians of their respective holy places are part of a “living fabric,” he said.
Archbishop Tauran reiterated the Vatican's call for a “special internationally guaranteed statute” for Jerusalem.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 11/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:Galileo, Faithful Catholic to the End
“Galileo, remembered as the father of modern science, is lionized as a man who faced the Inquisition and stood for scientific truth against religious dogma,” a review in the California paper said. “But the Florentine astronomer never meant to challenge the Roman Catholic Church, Dava Sobel argues. Galileo believed in God, Scripture and papal authority: He cloistered both his young daughters in a convent he supported financially throughout his long life. When the daughters became nuns, the eldest, Virginia, called herself Maria Celeste, in honor of her father's observations of the heavens.
“The events that have become history's most famous story of science vs. religion are worth considering again — especially as the state of Kansas retreats from teaching evolution, and society debates whether genetic engineering usurps the role of God. Dava Sobel, author of the bestseller Longitude, has the potential to be a good guide in this matter. Using letters to Galileo from Suor Maria Celeste, Galileo's Daughter explains the scientist's attempts to reconcile his belief in what he could see through his telescope with what the Church regarded as truth.”
In 1983, Pope John Paul II convened a commission which ruled that Galileo's work should not have been condemned.
Latin Losing Ground
Latin, which for centuries has served as a common tongue for the Church's leaders, and which remains the official language of the Vatican, seems to have lost its dependability. This, the Herald reported, was admitted by Vatican officials during the synod.
Said the report, “The nine bishops and archbishops from Britain and Ireland attending the synod would have been permitted to use English anyway, but the English group will be joined by other prelates who would in the past have discussed the crisis of faith in late 20th century Europe in the language of Julius Caesar.”
Abbot Carlo Egger, senior Latinist at the Vatican, told the Catholic Herald, “Latin now stands little chance of survival in the Catholic Church. The simple truth is that many, too many, bishops no longer know how to speak it.”
----- EXCERPT: From Selected Sources ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: EDITORIAL DATE: 11/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:New books and a recent TV documentary have asked: What motivates Pope John Paul II? The answer isn't hard to find. The Holy Father has revealed the secret himself, when he wrote that “preparing for the year 2000 has become as it were a hermeneutical key of my pontificate” (Tertio Millennio Adveniente [As the Third Millennium Draws Near], No. 23).
The Pope says that for 21 years he has been looking to this coming Christmas and the yearlong celebrations following it. He expects great things to come from it.
In this week's Christmas supplement, the Register explores some aspects of what the Holy Father expects from Christmas 1999. It also offers some helpful insights about how to find Christ amid an often overly commercialized season.
Along with gift suggestions, the supplement offers practical ways to help make this Advent and Christmas more meaningful — and the guidelines the Pope himself issued on how to get the most out of the coming year.
For too many, any discussion of contraception as a moral issue is a personal challenge that is difficult to face objectively.
Nonetheless, recent developments in the news demand that we look at Catholic attitudes toward contraception closely. Item: The Archdiocese of Washington is criticized in the Oct. 22 Washington Post for cutting funding to a pregnancy crisis center when it began to provide contraception to clients. “Just because we give out birth control doesn't mean we're not pro-life (but) our church cannot see that anymore,” center director Mary Jelacic told the paper.
Item: New York Times columnist Peter Steinfels (the husband of Margaret Steinfels, editor of the Catholic biweekly Commonweal) is quoted in the Oct. 17 Register opposing Roe v. Wade's establishment of a “right” to abortion. Yet he also opposes Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI's reaffirmation of the Church's teaching against contraception.
Item: A majority of the U.S. Senate (including many Catholic members) voted for a “sense of the Senate” proclamation of support for Roe v. Wade.
It is clear that many Catholics have parted ways with the Church on the issue of contraception. A consequence of this is that until we address contraception, abortion will continue to plague our society.
The contraception-abortion link is undeniable. As early as 1968, even Planned Parenthood's Alan Guttmacher saw that a rise in abortion rates follows greater contraception use. A decade later, the Abortion Rights Action League in a handbook saw the promotion of contraception as a way to pave the way for abortion. In 1992, the Supreme Court in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey said, “Abortion is of the same character as the decision to use contraception” — and justified abortion because contraceptive users have come to rely on it.
Pope John Paul II in his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life) also insisted that “despite their differences of nature and moral gravity, contraception and abortion are often closely connected, as fruits of the same tree” (No. 13).
Why the link? Because the availability of contraception allows a society to open sexual activity to all, regardless of marriage or readiness to support a family. Sex then too often becomes more like a form of entertainment and far from an expression of unity and openness to life within the bond of marriage. When contraception fails — which is not infrequently — tolerance for the contraception of last resort, abortion, grows.
For Catholics to be truly pro-life, the contraception question will have to be faced forthrightly. The jubilee anniversary of Christ's birth in the year 2000 is a time for us Catholics to own up to what we have done wrong, seek reconciliation from God and start anew as a Church.
In a special way, given the plunge in birthrates in the West, it must apply to all of us who have aided and abetted — by word, deed or omission — the cause of contraception.
A tough teaching? Certainly. But earlier generations accepted it, recognizing the wisdom and wonder of procreation through which God renews the world.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: The Heart of a Poet, Exposed DATE: 11/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:by Robert Waldron
(Ignatius, 1999 90 pages, $8.95)
All earnest followers of Christ pray for virtue in the midst of a cunning world whispering sweet enticements. What must it be like to have to beg God, hour by hour, for the will to resist a siren song coming from a bottle, vial or pill in the cupboard? And how much more torturous must be such an interior war when it's fought by a sensitive soul capable of composing some of the most sublime and personal poetry ever penned by a fervent Catholic?
Francis Thompson could have told you. Best known for his poem “The Hound of Heaven,” an aesthetic meditation on God's unwavering pursuit of the author's soul through life, Thompson was both deeply religious and hopelessly addicted to opium most of his adult years.
Much of Thompson's story is familiar to lovers of literature. Born in Lancashire, England, in 1859, he set out first to be a priest, then a doctor. Neither seminary nor medical school held him, however, and, after his mother died and his father evicted him, he ended up hooked and homeless on the streets of London. He attempted suicide at least once before submitting smeared and tattered samples of his writing to Merry England, a Catholic monthly magazine. The publication's editor, Wilfrid Meynell, ran two of Thompson's poems in 1888; their brilliance was confirmed by the enthusiasm they inspired in the great Victorian poet Robert Browning.
Meynell went on to befriend the bedraggled writer, nurse him through a short-lived recovery and encourage him to continue writing. The support helped: By the time Thompson died a month before his 48th birthday, he had published three books of critically praised poetry plus nearly 300 essays and book reviews.
In the late 1880s, Meynell convinced Thompson to spend some months convalescing in the quiet of an English monastery, and that's where Robert Waldron picks up the story. What if Thompson had kept a diary while living at the monastery, and what if that turned out to be the time he composed “The Hound of Heaven”?
Waldron entertains these tantalizing possibilities by employing a clever, if initially confusing, device. Billed as a novel, the book opens with a prologue explaining that Thompson did indeed keep a diary while at the monastery. He hid it beneath a loose floorboard in his cell. The author of the prologue has recovered the literary treasure and here presents it in its entirety. Both the prologue and the diary are, of course, fiction.
Why has Waldron chosen to write an imaginary diary instead of a straight biography? The answer may lie in what he accomplishes.
Like every artistic genius, but particularly those who died young after suffering unrelenting interior conflicts, Thompson inspires in many of his enthusiasts a hunger to know more of what fueled his passion. It's clear from this penetrating little exercise, easily read in one sitting, that Waldron is a serious devotee of Francis Thompson. Waldron has perceived that no amount of biographical research could uncover what it is of Thompson that he wants to bring into the light: the heart of a magnificent artist with much to teach Christians of today.
He succeeds. While this work might merely intrigue readers looking for insight into a marginally important literary figure, it will feed those who read primarily for spiritual sustenance.
Waldron's Thompson is a man desperate to prove his love despite the most abject discouragement over his own inability to change for the object of his adoration. Like any addicted Christian, he's built a long track record of broken resolutions, deaths to sin and rebirths in Christ. From such failure Waldron fashions a concise case study of the power of perseverance. Best of all, he pulls this off while avoiding didactics; the book's strength lies in its success as a character study and a story.
“I am not afraid of being alone,” reads a journal entry Francis Thompson never wrote but may well have muttered to himself. “Loneliness accosted me when I was young — and won me for life.”
Later, Thompson records his humiliation upon first meeting Meynell. He's self-conscious about his filthy clothing and offensive body odor. But Meynell, he comes to realize, doesn't see a vagabond. He sees a poet.
Thanks to Waldron, so do we. “Pain, which came to man as a penalty, remains with him as a consecration; by a divine ingenuity, he is permitted to make his ignominy his exaltation,” reads one journal entry. “How many among us, after repeated lessonings of experience, refuse to comprehend that there is no special love without special pain! Dear Jesus, I thank You for my cross; never permit me to forget its special weight, its power, its saving grace.”
Evident in the writings Thompson did leave behind is that he was consumed by love for his Lord; his addiction severely compromised his free will, but could not extinguish his faith. Among all those after God's own heart, who doesn't carry a similarly crushing cross, even if it's not so completely crippling?
Robert Waldron has done contemporary Catholicism a fine service. He's seen to it that a world inebriated on its own sick will gets reintroduced to a forgotten, gifted poet and a suffering Christian — a determined pilgrim who was, despite his bouts with despondence, ever prepared to give account of the hope that was in him.
David Pearson is a Register assistant editor.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: David Pearson ----- KEYWORDS: Books -------- TITLE: LETTERS DATE: 11/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:Only Serious Concerns Justify NFP
If all married couples stopped using artificial birth control and started using natural family planning (“They're Throwing the Pill Away. But Why?,” Oct. 17-23), at least they'd not be using these heinous, often abortifacient devices. But what this article and others fail to mention is that NFP is only allowed for serious reasons. Humanae Vitae details these reasons, which include severe health problems and serious financial situations (not being able to afford college costs is not a valid reason!).
As the expert quoted in the article stated, NFP, when used correctly, is “quite effective.” Unfortunately, NFP users can also have the contraceptive mentality. Because they are “open” to having children does not mean that they will willingly accept every child God would send them if they did not use NFP. To be blunt, NFP should not be used for any old reason or to space children beyond what nature provides as a normal spacing for most women (two to three years). Perhaps I would be a bit more encouraged if your recent articles on NFP mentioned that these couples had or were expecting their second, third, fourth or even fifth child.
Christina Watkins
Oxford, Connecticut
I was amazed to find, in an article titled “Faith and Family Planning” (Oct. 17-23), [apparent] enthusiasm that an organization called GIFT (for God-Intended Fertility Technique) is planning to give “kits” to newly wed couples concerning family planning. The implication is that family planning is somehow a “natural” part of marriage. I can only conclude that the writer of the article has lost sight of the primary end of marriage.
From the beginning, God's plan for married couples is to “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Genesis 1:28; 9:1). … The Church reiterated this teaching in Vatican II in no uncertain terms: “Marriage and married love are by their character ordained to the procreation and bringing up of children” (Gaudium et Spes, No. 50).
These words make it clear that, no matter how much our culture would like to obscure the issue, the primary end of marriage is to have children.
To be sure, there is a well-known phrase that often appears in discussions of this sort: “responsible parenthood.” But in order to avoid the common mistake of jumping to an uncritical interpretation of this phrase, it is worthwhile to read how Pope Paul VI defines the phrase. He gives two definitions. The first is noteworthy because it is rarely (if ever) cited: “Those are considered to exercise responsible parenthood who prudently and generously decide to have a large family” (Humanae Vitae, No. 10). Even though this definition reflects precisely the idea that children are a blessing from God, it is rare to come across this definition in contemporary discussions of marriage.
Much more commonly cited is the second definition of Pope Paul VI: “those … exercise responsible parenthood … who for serious reasons … choose to have no more children for the time being or even for an indeterminate period” (Humanae Vitae, No. 10). The words “for serious reasons” are significant. Because marriage is primarily about having children, a decision to have no children for a period of time must be regarded as a particularly serious event in the marriage.
There is no denying that, in the lives of many couples, periods of time may occasionally arise when “serious” reasons (as defined by the Pope) do arise. During such periods, NFP becomes an appropriate topic for discussion. But such periods should be entered into with a sense of regret, and with a hope that the serious reasons will be short-lived, so that the couple can soon return to their natural state of openness to the “outstanding gift of marriage": children. In this natural state of marriage, the topic of family planning (natural or otherwise) need not arise.
Newlyweds are in an ideal position to enjoy this natural state. I cannot understand why the National Catholic Register contains an article that encourages a couple to enter marriage with plans to limit the greatest blessing of family life. The secular culture in which we live does enough of that. Why can the Register not break the mold and encourage newlyweds to be open to having a large family?
Dermott J. Mullan
Elkton, Maryland
Eye of the Beholder?
The thing to remember about the Brooklyn Museum of Art's “Sensation” exhibit is that it's not only not art, but it's anti-art (“'Desecration’ Is Not Art, Catholic Protesters Insist,” Oct. 10-16).
For centuries we understood that, as St. Thomas Aquinas put it, “beauty” was the mind's appreciation of the goodness of God's creation, and that the decorative arts provided us with a reminder of that goodness in their wholeness, proper proportion and clarity. Art ennobled, because to appreciate art you had to understand that creation was good and, therefore, God was good. Art could also be used to symbolize virtue and encourage us to live as God intended us to. Art could even lead us to pray, if the contemplation of creation's beauty led us to contemplate the Creator.
If earlier artists argued with their patrons about art, at least both artist and patron agreed about what art was. That's why Brooklyn set up its art museum, whose 1893 lease states that its purpose is to serve the public and the city's schoolchildren. And Mayor Giuliani argues (correctly) that a show like “Sensation” violates the terms of the muse-um's lease. … [T]he same people who argue that you shouldn't be allowed to display our Lady in a manger scene at Christmas are now arguing that the taxpayers have to pay for “Sensation” because the government should promote art.
Don Schenk
Allentown, Pennsylvania
Conscience in Connecticut
In reference to your editorial “Conscience in California” (Oct. 24-30), I would like to point out that the state of Connecticut, where more than 40% of the population is Catholic — it's second only to Rhode Island — signed into law an act requiring health insurers to cover prescription birth control. This happened on June 3, at the hand of our Catholic governor. The vote was overwhelmingly anti-Catholic. Of the 145 votes in the House, only 20% voted against this bill. In the Senate, only one of the 18 members voted “against.” It deeply saddens me that there are a large percentage of Catholics who do not understand the true beauty and benefits of our Church's teachings.
Suzanne Donofrio
North Haven, Connecticut
Joys of Adoption
We loved all the coverage in the Oct. 24-30 Register on adoption throughout our country. Many years ago, after our natural child (now 26 years old) was born, we chose to adopt. At the time, the main argument for abortion was “so many unwanted children.” [But] there are no unwanted children — only uncaring parents.
In 1996, our state had no child abandonment laws on the books. We tried in vain to adopt an 11-year-old girl who had been lost in the system for eight years. Unable by law to sever parental rights, she was never free to find a loving family. In 1997, with the help of state Sen. Bill Armistead, we lobbied, we called, we begged 54 senators, the whole House of Representatives. We finally received the governor's backing if he ever received the bill.
In 1997-98, Alabama's Child Abandonment Law was passed and signed. On that date, we were asked to attend the ceremony, but chose instead at that time to kneel before our Lord at our Catholic church. To him was the glory of that day!
This year, we finalized the adoption of three more children, ages 12 (twin girls) and 14. Now, as a result of the new law, more than 500 children are free to be adopted; they're just waiting for families. Once again, we take a public stance to reach families for these little gifts from heaven. In our work and in our hearts, may we give glory, praise and honor to God.
Bob Boffa
Gardendale, Alabama
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: How the GOP Could Neutralize Buchanan's Exit DATE: 11/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:Republicans are concerned that Pat Buchanan's bolt from the Grand Old Party might prevent a Republican from winning the presidency in 2000. Polls give Buchanan in a three-way race only about 6% of the total vote — coming mostly from Republican ranks — but this could be enough to throw the election to an Al Gore or a Bill Bradley.
A surefire antidote to any such “Buchanan effect” is readily available, however, and exists for the taking right now. Unfortunately, though, neither Republican Party officials, nor the high-paid experts who manage the campaigns for some of the candidates, seem yet to have tumbled to the obvious solution to the problem posed by a Buchanan defection. Yet this solution is a transparently simple one.
It is this: The Republican Party (or the candidates) should declare strong and unqualified adherence to, and determination finally to try to do something serious about, a plank that has been in the Republican Party platform since 1980.
The platform plank in question is, of course, the one which puts the Republican Party behind the enactment of a Human Life Amendment. This would guarantee children not yet born the equal protection of the laws which the Fifth and 14th Amendments to the Constitution are already supposed to ensure. It would also mean a repeal of the deeply flawed 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision which legalized abortion in the United States.
Pro-life voters, who now constitute a significant portion of the Republican base, are not convinced that the party is serious in its pro-life stand. If they were, few of them would ever follow Buchanan into the Reform Party merely to register what everybody understands would be nothing but a conservative protest vote (since Buchanan cannot possibly win). The Reform Party, whose nomination he is now officially seeking, is itself nothing but a vehicle to register protest votes against “the system"; even those who vote Reform do not expect victory. They simply want to “protest.”
Many pro-life voters think they have more to protest than most other folks. The Republican Party courts their votes but continues to shrink from even mentioning their cause unless it seems absolutely necessary politically (usually when talking directly to the pro-lifers themselves). Buchanan, like some of the other minor candidates, has attracted support from many pro-life voters simply by being willing to bring up and seriously debate the abortion issue.
But the famous Buchanan Brigades would probably break up very quickly if there were no longer any perceived need for pro-lifers to register protest votes — if the Republican Party itself showed in more tangible ways that it really was committed to what it says in words it is committed to. An honest Republican declaration that it really does take its own platform seriously — along with a more credible pledge that it really does intend to work harder to restore the right to life to the unborn — could deal something close to a death blow to the threat posed by a third-party Buchanan candidacy.
Such a Republican move would have the further merit of being something the party has officially been committed to for nearly two decades anyway. As such, it should not be unduly upsetting to any of the party's other constituencies (which presumably have long since had to come to terms with the fact that the Republican Party goes on officially claiming to be “the pro-life party”).
The same logic applies to the various Republican candidates. All of them without exception have declared themselves to be “pro-life,” of course — a fact which no doubt accurately reflects the reality of what the party's current base consists of. All three of the front-runners, though — George W. Bush, John McCain, Steve Forbes and, alas, Elizabeth Dole, who has already dropped out of the race — have badly bungled their handling of the abortion issue. But why should it be a liability for a candidate to be favor of what the party itself has officially favored since 1980?
Why should it be so hard for candidates supposedly in favor of strict constructionism to state plainly that the Constitution is necessarily undermined when Supreme Court decisions deny the equal protection of the laws to whole classes of people? It is a weak cop-out to argue that there is no national consensus for the repeal of Roe v. Wade; it is the task of serious political leadership to create the consensus necessary for the continued integrity of our democratic and constitutional system.
If Republicans really want to neutralize the Buchanan effect, they only have to show in a few more concrete ways that they really are pro-life.
Kenneth D. Whitehead was a senior official in the Reagan administration.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Kenneth D. Whitehead ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: Will 'Partnerships' Render Marriage Meaningless in France? DATE: 11/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:The French National Assembly dealt a blow to the state of marriage in the West when it approved legislation Oct. 13 creating “civil solidarity pacts” (le pacte civil de solidarité, “PACS”). PACS institutionalizes a legal alternative to marriage, recognizing homosexual and unmarried heterosexual couples as bona fide social units. Although PACS exists alongside marriage in the French Civil Code, it is essentially a distinction without a difference. With few exceptions, a PACS is a modern “marriage” (i.e., inherently unrelated to procreation and terminable at will).
Under the French legislation, any two unrelated adults can make a PACS. Sexual difference is irrelevant: A PACS is basically a homosexual “marriage” (although heterosexuals unwilling to tie the knot can also avail themselves of it). A PACS is a contract, recorded with the local civil registrar, by which two people “arrange their common life.” PACS “partners” acquire various legal benefits in France, such as tax benefits and the takeover of leases after a deceased partner. Also, a PACS partnership will suffice as proof of connection to France for foreigners who wish to acquire the right of residence there.
The PACS law speaks of “mutual and material” obligations by the partners, but, except for the social benefits automatically assigned to the partners by law, there is no specific content regarding the partners’ duties toward each other. They do not even have to live under the same roof. All duties are negotiable and set forth in the contract.
Partnerships last until one party dies, marries (one of the few things that still makes marriage distinct: a marriage is not yet dissolved by a partnership), by joint agreement, or upon three months’ notice by one side to the other.
The new French PACS finds its counterpart in “registered partnership” laws found elsewhere in Europe. Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Holland all have had partnership laws for several years and, in the Nordic area, partnership countries have given the institution international recognition by treating a pact in any one of them as valid in the others.
European PACS and partnership laws represent the triumph of two particularly baneful aspects of modern thought: the denaturalization of marriage and the aggrandizement of state power over it. Both are very much part of the current culture wars.
No Longer Natural
By “denaturalization” of marriage I mean that marriage ceases to have any inherent content deriving from natural law. Marriage is no longer a natural institution between a man and a woman; it is anything the state says it is, and not necessarily a sexually differentiated union. Keeping the external form of marriage might be useful, but this shell is divested of any of the characteristics usually understood as part of marriage.
In this view, marriage does not necessarily have anything to do with permanence, procreation, or even sexual difference. It is an agreement whose contents the partners themselves prescribe. The presence or absence of a man and woman vs. two men or two women is no more significant than an order for fruit being made of bananas and cherries or just bananas. (That this trend has been abetted by a widespread Catholic rejection of the values of indissolubility and fruitfulness in marriage is obvious).
Denying that marriage necessarily presupposes a man and a woman is, of course, possible when marriage is treated as a purely human invention, a creature of the state. France's long track record of interfering with marriage as a natural and religious institution dates all the way back to the Gallican heresy of the 17th and 18th centuries, when Regalist theologians posited a false dichotomy between the “sacrament” and “contract” of marriage, asserting exclusive state power over the latter while relegating the former to the sacristy.
The atheists of the French Revolution maintained the distinction, treating the religious nature of marriage as so much superstition. Napoleon completed the process by incorporating obligatory “civil marriage” into the law such that no Church marriage had any civil effect. With the dissemination of the Napoleonic Code as the basis for most non-Anglo-Saxon legal systems, it's easy to see why, even in various Catholic countries, citizens must submit to two weddings — and why only the ceremony before the civil registrar has public validity.
As a legal maneuver, PACS may cut like a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it attests to the fact that European legislators still do not have the temerity to introduce homosexual “marriage” by name. On the other hand, creating a practical institutional equivalence between PACS and marriage denigrates the latter by denying its qualitative uniqueness.
Catholics in the United States can take some comfort from the fact that the likelihood of any state legislatures conferring a social imprimatur on fornication and sodomy is almost nil. America's threat lies in an activist judiciary which conceivably could invent a constitutional right to “homosexual marriage” (as is threatened in Hawaii and Vermont). The American danger is far more remote from its elected representatives, but unaccountable judges could force an even more radical change in social policy. Those who doubt that should consider Roe v. Wade's perdurance.
One practical area where America's Catholics might take back marriage's lost ground is by demanding an end to the progressive erosion of the privileges and benefits hitherto reserved to the married. The French PACS legislation, for example, assures partners of tax and immigrant benefits and requires employers to take partners’ wishes into account when granting vacation and sick leave.
‘Chic’?
In America, various businesses and local jurisdictions deem it “chic” and “progressive” to award health insurance benefits to homosexual partners as if they were spouses. Others guarantee continuation as a “surviving spouse” in rent-controlled apartments. Benefits once intended to provide a “family wage” are now extended to unions inherently incapable of procreation. And much of this mischief has been wrought in the name of banning “discrimination” based on “sexual orientation,” statutes initially hawked as protecting “gays” against attack (as if the criminal law was insufficient) but in fact used as battering rams to advance a homosexual agenda.
The degree to which, on the threshold of the third millennium, Europe has lost its Judaeo-Christian roots is attested by the new state of affairs in that “elder daughter of the Church,” France. It is an important benchmark of how far in the new millennium Christianity needs to go to reclaim those cultures in the name of basic human dignity.
John M. Grondelski, a moral theologian, currently lives in London.
What Makes a Marriage, Anyway?
What is marriage and why is it here? Here's part of what the Catechism of the Catholic Church, drawing from the natural order and God's revelation to mankind through history, has to say on the matter:
Each of the two sexes is an image of the power and tenderness of God, with equal dignity though in a different way. The union of man and woman in marriage is a way of imitating in the flesh the Creator's generosity and fecundity: “'Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh’ (Genesis 2:24). All human generations proceed from this union” (No. 2335).
“By its very nature the institution of marriage and married love is ordered to the procreation and education of the offspring and it is in them that it finds its crowning glory. … [T]rue married love and the whole structure of family life which results from it … are directed to disposing the spouses to cooperate valiently with the love of the Creator and Savior, who through them will increase and enrich his family from day to day” (No. 1652).
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John M. Grondelski ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: Cuban Bishops Striking a Delicate Balance DATE: 11/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:Thanks to a visit from Pope John Paul II in January 1998, the Catholic Church in Cuba is now experiencing something of a rebirth. Part of its new “awakening” is being able to offer a safe environment for political dissenters who wish to express their opinions.
For example, prior to the papal visit, painters and sculptors had to express themselves within a framework of “socialist realism,” as dictated by the Castro regime. Now, however, they can move beyond these boundaries by entering Church-sponsored art contests and exhibitions. Also, writers and poets whose works do not glorify the “achievements” of socialism can now publish in the growing number of Catholic publications such as Vitral, at present the most respected cultural magazine on the island.
In a similar way, the recently gained right to celebrate open-air Masses has attracted a significant number of participants, among whom can be found many political dissenters along with the communicants. Of course, wherever the dissenters go, security police follow.
Recently, the archbishop of Santiago de Cuba, Pedro Meurice, urged both government agents and dissident groups to respect the religious nature of liturgical celebration and avoid using them as political fields.
Archbishop Meurice aired his concern after security government agents and members of dissident political groups exchanged insults and even physical aggression during two recent religious celebrations.
In El Cobre, on Sept. 8, during the celebrations in honor of Our Lady of the Charity, the patroness of Cuba, the police arrested several dissidents who were deploying banners of protest even as the consecration was taking place.
Another incident took place Oct. 4, during the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, a very popular saint in Cuba, but no arrests were made.
“Everybody is welcome in the house of God, believers and nonbelievers,” Bishop Meurice told the Mass attendees. “But any participation must be respectful and in accordance with the nature of liturgy, which cannot be distorted by any political or ideological content. I beg you all to be respectful during the celebration and to avoid causing an ugly situation in which I will have to openly eject someone.”
Church leaders in Cuba often express their sympathy to peaceful dissenters looking for a democratic transformation on the island. Yet the bishops must keep a door open to the regime as a way to gain more room for the Church and, as a consequence, more room for individual citizens as well.
At the very top of the bishops’ wish list are the right to create and administrate Catholic schools, and the right to have a voice in the state-controlled media. These rights, which the government has not yet turned down openly, would certainly mark a new stage for the future of evangelization in Cuba.
In order to obtain these rights, the bishops need to maintain with Castro's regime the relationship opened by the Holy Father. Of course, many, especially in the Cuban diaspora living in the United States, ask whether the Cuban bishops are not betraying principles in the name of achievement. The bishops do not believe so. They know that an open denunciation of the regime would be not only worthless, but also would jeopardize the real, if limited, room won by the Church and, indirectly, by civil society.
At the same time, the bishops have not shrunk from making their voice heard when a situation demands it. Recently, for example, they called for partial prisoner amnesty and greater access to prisons as a Jubilee Year gesture by the Communist government. They also requested the government to respect the human rights of political prisoners, and openly expressed concern for the approval of legislation that created new motives for political repression.
Moreover, Vitral, the cultural magazine of the Diocese of Pinar del Rio, has openly expressed its support of professor Sergio Lazaro Cabarrouy, dismissed from the local university for expressing his Christian faith and his criticism of the lack of freedom of conscience.
Nevertheless, the bishops also know that combining a timely denunciation with a policy of negotiations with the regime requires a great deal of balance. Thus, some of their decisions will find disfavor with either the regime or the Cubans in exile.
The human, pastoral and financial support now provided by sister Churches, especially from the Catholic community in the United States, is helping the Cuban bishops achieve their balancing act; they're clearly excited to be making plans for the next millennium and the post-Castro era. Just as importantly, they are thankful for the help that flows to the general Cuban population through local Catholic relief services.
This flow of material help is perceived by the government as “a Catholic way” around the embargo and, therefore, as an achievement that deserves some sort of compensation.
So, if the steps taken by the Cuban bishops in the short term look small to some, that is because they must be viewed in perspective. The bishops believe that a balance in the relationship with the government and the political dissenters is the best way to prepare for the future.
It is good to know that, in this process, the Church in America, with its unconditional support, is responding accordingly.
Alejandro Bermudez is the Register ‘s Latin America correspondent.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Alejandro Bermudez ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: THE SPOILS OF WAR DATE: 11/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:The 1991 Persian Gulf War proved a much-needed victory for the American military, restoring both here and abroad the credibility that the United States had lost in Vietnam. Support for U.S. intervention against Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait wasn't universal, of course. Pope John Paul II and many others argued that additional diplomacy might have prevented the conflict, and that the damage to innocent Iraqi civilians was immoral and unnecessary.
But when American public opinion swung toward the hawkish view, some opponents of the war shifted gears and tried to stir up sympathy for another set of victims — Iraq's Shiite minority, whom the United States encouraged to rise up against Saddam Hussein but abandoned when the going got tough. This line of thinking went down badly with the public, because supporting the Shiites would have involved substantially more U.S. casualties. Furthermore, the Shiites have never done America any favors. From the hostage crises in Iran and Lebanon through the recent bombing of U.S. facilities in Saudi Arabia, the fundamentalist wing of this Muslim sect has schemed tirelessly to humiliate us as the Great Satan, killing American citizens in the process.
The Iraqi Shiites have given the U.S. other reasons to keep them at arm's length. Shiite persecution of Christians is well known. And our Saudi allies are afraid that, if they carved out a nation for themselves in southern Iraq, it would threaten the stability of the nonfundamentalist regimes in the region.
This complex but common-sense reasoning seems lost on the makers of Three Kings. Director-writer David O. Russell (Spanking the Monkey) and coscreenwriter John Ridley attack ex-President Bush by name for having gotten us into the war and, once involved, for allowing Saddam to crush the Shiites. Our former commander in chief is presented as an off-screen villain almost as bad as the Iraqi dictator.
But the filmmakers have more on their mind than politics. Their intention is to reinvent the war film, pushing the genre's conventions to its outer limits and adding something new to what's left. The result is a movie with plenty of attitude — an edgy, irreverent, unpredictable telling of a familiar story with the jagged rhythms of hip-hop and grunge music.
The opening sequence sets the tone. “Are we shooting people or what?” asks Sgt. Troy Barlow (Mark Wahlberg), who, out of ignorance or fear, guns down an Iraqi holding a white flag. The U.S. Army reservist shows a glimmer of conscience and expresses remorse, but this is quickly forgotten in the raucous celebration that greets Iraq's surrender. This lightly sketched moral conflict will be further developed when circumstances put him to the test.
While Barlow and his hillbilly buddy, Pvt. Conrad Vig (Spike Jonze), are rounding up prisoners, they discover a map with directions to Saddam's hidden bunkers, where millions in gold bullion are stored. As they wonder what to do, some other American combatants decide to cut themselves in for a piece the action: Special Forces Capt. Archie Gates (George Clooney), a take-charge cynic who's scheduled to retire from the regular Army in a month, and another reservist, Staff Sgt. Chief Elgin (Ice Cube), who's a baggage-handler back in the States and a born-again Christian. Ethically, these two are polar opposites, but greed overwhelms them both.
“What's the most important thing in life,” the officer asks after he's persuaded the enlisted men to go AWOL in pursuit of fabulous and illicit wealth. “Respect,” “love,” “God's will,” are some of the answers. “Necessity,” Gates replies, reflecting the pragmatic, dogeat-dog set of moral values he uses to justify their conduct.
At this point the movie looks like it's going to be just another ultraviolent, action adventure, buddy story. But our four heroes get tangled up in some unexpected complications which change their point of view. While hunting for the treasure, they are caught in the cross-fire between Saddam's Republican Guard, who are protecting his spoils of war, and the Shiite civilian populace, who have used the conflict to advance their own fight for freedom.
Barlow is taken prisoner and subjected to the same savagery which our heroes have seen inflicted on the Shiites. In a sick joke that underlines what the filmmakers think the whole war is about, he's tortured and forced to drink a quart of motor oil. Our heroes are forced to choose between going for the gold and doing the right thing, which the filmmakers define as helping the Shiites in a way that defies Bush's orders.
The movie's title is suggested by the three kings who followed a star to Bethlehem to worship the infant Jesus. It echoes a theme of two John Ford classics, Marked Men (1919) and Three Godfathers (1948), in which a trio of badmen redeem themselves during a desert trek.
American foreign policy has been at loose ends since the end of the Cold War. Our leaders can't decide to what degree policy should reflect moral principles while protecting our economic and political interests. Three Kings should be applauded for creating protagonists who must wrestle with these issues on personal terms. Their dilemma dramatizes Christian values like sacrifice and personal redemption. But it all seems too easy. They pay no price for their choices.
Where the film also fails is in its blend of excessive violence, profanity and sex scenes which ultimately numbs the audience and torpedoes any chance of it making a credible moral assessment of the Gulf conflict. Veterans Day fare it's not.
Arts & Culture correspondent John Prizer writes from Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: Three Kings comes bearing a dark view of Gulf conflict ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Videos in Release DATE: 11/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999)
One of the reasons America so dominates the global economy is that it treats its entrepreneurs with a semi-mythic respect. We're the only society that turns them into culture heroes. Pirates of Silicon Valley, originally a TNT movie of the week, is a well-crafted examination of our latest romance with bare-knuckles capitalism. Computer billion-aires Bill Gates (Anthony Michael Hall) and Steve Jobs (Noah Wyle) are depicted as counterculture mavericks — high-tech Davids who slay the corporate Goliaths that get in their way.
Even though this re-creation of the early days of Microsoft and Apple is at times more myth than fact, it does show how these ambitious nerds cut corners and ripped each other off. Their success is shown to be more inspiring than their moral codes, but that doesn't seem to have impeded the growth of their legends — to which this movie, of course, contributes.
Jane Eyre (1996)
When romantic love overcomes suffering and expands to include forgiveness, it sets down deep roots that can survive bad fortune. C h a r l o t t e Bronte's 19th-century novel has been adapted to the screen three times. The most recent version, directed by Franco Zeffirelli (Jesus of Nazareth), downplays the dark, gothic atmosphere to better explore the moral dimensions of an unusual romance.
After spending her formative years in a cruel orphanage, the young Jane (Charlotte Gainsbourg) finds a position as a governess on a large country estate. Its master, the brooding, sarcastic Edward Rochester (William Hurt), is usually absent. But when in residence, he treats her with an intellectual and emotional respect she's never encountered. Her heart is touched, and even when nasty secrets from his past seem to doom their relationship, she responds to all those who wrong her with compassion and charity. Her quiet dignity is deeply moving.
Lean on Me (1989)
Everybody knows our public-school system is a mess and that the poorest students, often minorities, suffer the most. But few are willing to take the drasticaction required to set things right. Lean on Me is the real-life story of principal Joe Clark (Morgan Freeman). In 1967, the New Jersey high school where he taught became an academic success story. After a 20-year absence, he returns as principal to find drugs openly peddled, teachers bullied, and students in fear for their lives. Only a third of the kids have basic skills in reading, writing and math.
Wielding a baseball bat and shouting orders through a bullhorn, he uses a take-no-prisoners discipline to put the school back on top. This makes him enemies in high places. But Clark understands that learning and character formation must go hand in hand — a lesson many public schools still seem determined to ignore.
High Noon (1952)
All of us hope we will have the courage to stand up to evil when we encounter it. Equally important is the ability to discern when to draw the line in the sand and when to back down in hopes of making a better fight at another time.
Like many classic Westerns, the Oscar-winning High Noon dramatizes these issues in easy-to-understand terms. Will Kane (Gary Cooper) is everyone's idea of a hero. As marshal, he cleaned up a small frontier town so that decent folk could raise their families and prosper. But, on his wedding day, an outlaw he'd once locked up returns, seeking vengeance, and none of the townspeople, including his bride (Grace Kelly), will come to his aid. Kane must decide whether to turn tail or face the bad guys alone. Tightly constructed and well-paced, the movie mixes exciting action with a carefully thought-out message.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Catholic Evangelists Rush To Catch Up on Campus DATE: 11/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:Today's young Catholics see the obvious failures of a society obsessed with material gain. They hunger for truth — and for a meaningful encounter with Jesus Christ.
The search, however, doesn't always lead straight to the Catholic campus center or the nearest Catholic parish. Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses and an array of Protestants are recruiting Catholics on campuses like never before.
Money magazine calls Campus Crusade for Christ, a campus-based Protestant recruiting organization, the largest and most efficient evangelical organization in the world. It comprises 20,500 full-time staff and 663,612 trained volunteers around the world. Similar groups, such as Navigators, Inter-Varsity and Christian Challenge, are also thriving by recruiting hungry-but-lost Catholic souls on campuses.
“Most Catholic college students stray from the Church,” said Curtis Martin, founder and chairman of the Fellowship of Catholic University Students — FOCUS, for short — an outreach of Catholics United for the Faith International. “They are trying to find themselves, in an environment set up to lead them away from Christ. However, all students come to college to search for truth. Jesus Christ is truth, so everyone on a college campus is seeking Jesus whether they know it or not.”
Tre Cates, an unpaid Southern Baptist minister, knows that too. He devotes his life to helping students, including many wayward Catholics, find Jesus. He left a huge church in Dallas three years ago to start an outreach ministry called Quest, in Boulder, Colo. He said Quest offers all the same tenets of the Southern Baptist Church without the traditional formal services and organizational hierarchy.
“I chose Boulder because there's a revolving body of 25,000 college students and almost none of them attend church,” Cates explained. “There's a huge hunger for spirituality among Generation X and Generation Y, but they couldn't care less about church structure, ritual and full-time preachers working for salaries. They want Jesus Christ, and that's it.”
Eager Young Ears
While many campus evangelists stand on street corners handing out tracts and questionnaires, Quest has a slightly different approach. Cates devotes his energy to recruiting campus leaders who then bring students from their organizations. Quest services, held in a former Salvation Army homeless shelter, consist of live Christian rock music and Scripture-based preaching.
“The local leaders of Christian Challenge, Navigators and Campus Crusade are all involved with Quest right now,” Cates said. “They go back to campus and tell their friends about us.”
Catholics are easy to recruit, Cates said, because they already have a spiritual foundation and an understanding of Jesus as savior. Many have been turned off by “unnecessary” rituals and structures, he added, claiming as examples “the Mass and the hierarchy.”
Martin knows firsthand just how successful Protestants can be at recruiting Catholics on campus. He attended Louisiana State University in the 1980s, during a time when he had lost touch with his Catholic roots. Back then, he said, about half of the 40,000 students at LSU were Catholic, but only about 400 practiced their faith.
While he stood in a cafeteria line on campus, he was approached by members of Campus Crusade for Christ. They were passing out a questionnaire that asked about a “personal relationship” with Christ, and his desire to become better-acquainted with God. Martin filled it out and, within a week, volunteers from Campus Crusade showed up at his door and invited him to a meeting.
“As a young adult, I had put Christ on the shelf,” Martin said. “My Protestant friends taught me how to pray, how to live a Christian lifestyle, and the importance of surrounding myself with Christian friends.” He left the Catholic Church and became a “Bible Christian.”
Martin pointed out that there are as many views of the Catholic Church as there are Protestant and pseudo-Christian bodies. Some believe the Church is simply in error on certain doctrinal points; others don't hesitate to apply a label pulled from the Book of Revelation — “the whore of Babylon.” Most fall somewhere between the two extremes.
“Some are convinced Catholics aren't Christians at all,” he added, noting that most holding this viewpoint — evangelicals, fundamentalists and “nondenominational” Christians — also tend to lump “mainline” Protestants such as Lutherans, Episcopalians and Methodists in the same category with Catholics: the “unsaved.”
Attractive Zeal and Conviction
Martin recounted how, as he grew in his Bible-based faith, and in his relationship with Jesus, he began studying Scripture more closely. The more he learned from and about the Bible, the more evident its Catholic roots became. Eventually this discovery led him to “revert” to his Catholic faith.
Having experienced the zeal with which Protestants recruit, however, Martin understood the passive approach Catholics have taken for decades on college campuses. If that didn't change, he thought, few Catholic students stood a chance of maintaining their faith.
“The Catholic Church has a kind of older-brother mentality,” Martin contended. “Because we're the biggest and oldest Christian church, we've had a desire to be respectful of other religious traditions. So we've stood back. As a result, we haven't taken our message to the streets like others have.”
Martin hopes to change that with FOCUS. The group's official mission is “to fulfill the great commission of Jesus Christ [Matthew 28:19-20] on college campuses.” FOCUS, based at the University of Northern Colorado, in Greeley, is only 2 years old but already has offices at five other campuses, including the University of Kansas, Benedictine College in Kansas, the University of Colorado, Denver University and the University of Nebraska.
FOCUS plans to open dozens more chapters throughout the country in the next few years. At each university, the group works with local parishes. Staff members and volunteers conduct student surveys that introduce the subject of Christ. They sponsor Christian speakers on campus and host Catholic retreats. They evangelize Catholics and non-Catholics alike.
“This simply wouldn't have worked in the ‘70s and ‘80s, because young Catholics were not pursuing Christ the way today's students are,” Martin said. “Our message would have been a turnoff to most students back then, but today it's exactly what they want to hear. They are rejecting the ways of the secular world.”
Father Paul Montez, a Benedictine priest in Grand Junction, Colo., agreed that young Catholics are ripe for recruiting, either by Catholics or others who take the initiative. As a youth leader, he said he recently helped persuade five high school seniors from one small parish to enter the seminary.
“Kids today are starving for Jesus,” Father Paul said. “All we have to do is be there for them, and help them in their journeys. Teach them Christ is in the Eucharist and they will stay with the Church.”
Cates, of Quest, said he hopes FOCUS catches on nationwide and brings most wayward Catholics back to their roots. He won't be bothered if former Catholics in Quest ever leave his church and return to Catholicism.
“All I care is that students end up in a place where they can grow and strengthen their relationships with Christ,” Cates said. “What FOCUS is doing is absolutely amazing, and I wish them all the success in the world. Whatever gets you to Jesus, I'm in favor of.”
Martin said a minority of religious recruiters are blatant in their efforts to turn Catholics against their faith, says Martin.
Although Martin said he hoped Catholics soon take the lead role in campus evangelizing, he holds no hard feelings toward the mainstream Protestant and evangelical recruiters who hooked him. “I do not wish my path on anyone, but it happened to work for me,” Martin said. “Whatever leads one gets to Christ, however, it's important to realize that a full relationship with him requires the Catholic Church and the Eucharist.”
Wayne Laugesen writes from Boulder, Colorado.
----- EXCERPT: FOCUS enters a field where non-Catholics have excelled ----- EXTENDED BODY: Wayne Laugesen ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Education Notebook DATE: 11/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:Xavier Celebrates
XAVIER UNIVERSITY, Oct. 17—Xavier's philosophy, theology and honors departments hosted a symposium Oct. 16 on Pope John Paul II's encyclical Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason) to mark the 21st anniversary of his election as Pope.
Jesuit David V. Meconi, who organized the conference, said: “As philosophers and theologians, we found it quite telling that the last encyclical of this millennium has to do with the promotion and defense of human reason and the intelligence and sanity of the faith. The Holy Father argues that philosophy and theology ultimately depend on one another for mutual insight and guidance.”
‘Morning-After Pill’ Prescribed at Fairfield
FAIRFIELD UNIVERSITY, Oct. 27—In addition to recently inviting abortion advocates Gloria Steinem and lawyer Morris Dees to the Jesuit campus, Fairfield is permitting the prescription of abortifacient pills to its students.
The student newspaper, The Mirror, reported that the campus gynecologist, Dr. Joanna Wynne, complained that Fairfield prevented her from widely distributing the “morning-after pill,” which is used to kill a newly created life. Wynne noted however, that she is permitted to prescribe the pill to students. She also said that incoming freshmen are given information on abortion and contraception.
Fairfield is also allowing SAYSO, a homosexual group on campus, to sponsor a drag queen dance on campus and a “Gay Jeans Day.”
Scholar Calls Attacks On Pius XII Unjust
STUEBENVILLE UNIVERSITY, Oct. 28—Sister Margherita Marchione defended Pope Pius XII's role during the Holocaust and encouraged Catholic social scientists to “fight the good fight” for truth about the Church's history.
Sister Marchione said accusations made in a new book, Hitler's Pope, were an “injustice” not only to the papacy, but to the entire Catholic Church. She said the attacks also insult the Jews saved by the Vatican who are speaking out in the Pope's defense, testimonies that Sister Marchione catalogued in her book on Pius XII, Yours Is a Precious Witness.
Pope Pius XII is credited by Isreali scholars with having saved the lives of 860,000 Jews. Sister Marchione also cited several instances where Pius XII spoke out against anti-Semitism. Pius XII continued to speak out against Hitler using telegrams, encyclicals and Vatican radio despite threats and a plan by the Nazi dictator to kidnap the Pope.
Sister Marchione, speaking to members of the Society for Catholic Social Scientists, noted that during World War II, The New York Times praised the efforts of the Vatican, and specifically Pope Pius XII, on its editorial pages.
Today the intellectual trend has turned on its head, she said. “The present indictment is an injustice,” said Sister Marchione, who called on the bishops to issue a statement of truth to be proclaimed to the world. “We have nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to be afraid of.”
Cardinal Arinze to Visit Notre Dame
NOTRE DAME, Oct. 26—Cardinal Francis Arinze, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, will give a lecture on “The Message of the Gospel to a Religiously Pluralistic World at the Threshold of the Third Millennium” on Nov. 2.
Cardinal Arinze, a Nigerian, directs the Vatican's efforts to promote mutual understanding, respect, and collaboration between the Catholic Church and other religious bodies.
His African roots are increasingly significant in light of estimates that by the millennium, 75% of the world's 1 billion Catholics will live in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and his experience of the uneasy relations between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria is increasingly significant in his ecumenical commitment.
“Religious plurality is a fact,” he told the 1999 graduates of Wake Forest University in a commencement address earlier this year. “Many problems and challenges do not respect religious frontiers. There is no Catholic hurricane or Baptist drought. There is no Jewish inflation or Muslim unemployment. There is no Buddhist drug addiction or Hindu AIDS.”
Religions need to “join hands,” he said, “to defend the family and its positive values, to promote a society where the individual is appreciated, respected and cared for.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Physician Saw Persons -- Not Just Patients DATE: 11/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:When the great Italian tenor Enrico Caruso was dying in 1921, the best doctors in Rome and Naples were summoned to attend to him. Among them was Dr. Giuseppe Moscati, a devout Catholic. Moscati said that the end was near for the famous singer, just 48 at the time, and advised Caruso to consult the greatest physician: Jesus Christ.
“Professor, please do whatever is necessary,” Caruso responded. Moscati immediately summoned a priest to administer the last sacraments. Caruso died a few days later.
In retrospect, we see how blessed Caruso was to have a saint attend to him, body and soul, just before he died. Most of Moscati's patients were not famous. He lived a routine life made remarkable only by his skills in medicine and his deep faith. Day after day saw him busy in his clinic, medical classrooms and scientific conferences. But he began each day in the chapel, attending Mass and receiving Communion, and he aimed everything else he did during the day toward bringing Christ to all he met.
Giuseppe Moscati was born into a pious family in Benevento, Italy, on July 25, 1880. When he was 4, his family moved close to a hospital for incurables in Naples. The young Giuseppe was a quiet boy, excelling in his studies and serious about his future. His exposure to the hospital made him sensitive to the plight of the sick and after much prayer, he enrolled at Naples University to study medicine.
By 22 Moscati had already distinguished himself in medicine. He became a lecturer in the medical school, conducted medical research and was appointed to senior administrative positions.
“Giuseppe Moscati's life was an example of harmony between science and faith,” Pope Paul VI declared when beatifying him during the Holy Year of 1975. The Holy Father noted that Moscati had been an expert scientist and medical practitioner, and never lost sight of the fact that his patients had souls as well as bodies. His treatment of their souls was the apostolic fruit of his deep life of prayer and generous service to the poor and the sick.
“Happy are we doctors,” Moscati said, “who are so often unable to alleviate sickness; happy if we remember that, as well as the body, we have before us the immortal soul, concerning which it is essential to remember the Gospel precept to love them as ourselves. The sick represent Christ for us.”
Moscati built an excellent reputation. He was not a miracle-worker, only a first-rate doctor dedicated to his patients. Often sought out by the wealthy, he preferred to treat the poor. He would frequently refuse to take money, sometimes secretly leaving donations for his indigent patients. At his office he kept a basket into which patients could put whatever they wished to pay, and from which those in need could draw.
Moscati was a skilled scientist and a devoted doctor who knew that, in order to treat a patient well, it was necessary to treat the patient as a person.
His deep love for his patients mirrored Christ's love for the poor and the sick, and nothing made him happier than when one of this patients was also close to the Lord. Often Moscati was the instrument by which a conversion or a return to the sacraments came.
Medical advances are among the finest achievements of the 20th century. Doctors today can do what Dr. Giuseppe Moscati could only dream about. But today's doctors — the new high priests of a culture devoted to the worship of the body — can learn much from St. Giuseppe Moscati.
For starters, there's the fundamental reality of their profession: Every patient will die. And every person has received life from the author of life, who came that all may have life, and have it in abundance (cf. John 10:10). That abundance extends to the fullness of life eternal — which no doctor, no surgeon, no medical machine can provide.
“A unique responsibility belongs to health-care personnel,” wrote Pope John Paul II, who canonized Moscati in 1987. “Their profession calls for them to be guardians and servants of human life. In today's cultural and social context, in which science and the practice of medicine risk losing sight of their inherent ethical dimension, health-care professionals can be strongly tempted at times to become manipulators of life or even agents of death. In the face of this temptation their responsibility is today greatly increased” (Evangelium Vitae, No. 89).
Moscati did not live to see 50, so completely did he pour himself out in the service of others. After intense prayer and spiritual direction as a young man, he decided neither to marry nor to enter religious life, but rather to devote himself entirely to his professional work and apostolic mission in the center of the world.
This did not mean any retreat from the demands of the world, as Moscati was a high achiever according to both scholarly and professional criteria for success.
Yet Giuseppe Moscati, saint and physician, did not let professional competence and worldly advancement crowd out ambition in the spiritual life. “Let us love the Lord to the limit that is without measure,” he wrote.
Many threats to life today result from a lack of love, an unwillingness or inability to love without measure. In the midst of the world, in a prestigious profession, St. Giuseppe Moscati taught us that only love without measure has a place in medicine.
Raymond de Souza writes from Rome.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond J. De Souza ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Force Behind 'the Work' DATE: 11/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:Spain has been fertile ground for saintly founders. In the 13th century, St. Dominic founded the Order of Preachers, known as the Dominicans, and his successor St. Raymond of Penyafort gave them their definitive constitutions. In the 16th century, St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross jointly undertook a great reformation of the Carmelites. At the same time, St. Ignatius Loyola and his lieutenant St. Francis Xavier were launching the Society of Jesus — the Jesuits.
Perhaps the 20th century will be remembered for the foundation of Opus Dei (Latin for the Work of God) or as its members prefer to call it, “the Work.”
Blessed Josemaría Escrivà was born in Barbastro, Spain, on Jan. 9, 1902. The family was pious and refined, and Josemaría sensed as an adolescent that God wanted something special of him. He entered the seminary in order to make himself more available to that call. Ordained a priest in 1925, he was a hardworking young priest, zealous in his pastoral care of students, women religious, the poor and the sick. In 1928, while making a retreat, he received a supernatural vision or illumination, in which he reported that he “saw” Opus Dei.
Father Escrivá immediately began to gather young men around him (Opus Dei would begin work among women two years later) to preach his new message of lay holiness. He called his followers to live a life of intense prayer, mortification and apostolic work, while remaining employed in their normal secular occupations. In a favorite phrase, he asked his disciples to become “contemplatives in the middle of the world.”
Opus Dei is not a religious order like the others. It is a something entirely new in the Church, a personal prelature (which has a nonterritorial status akin to a diocese) consisting mostly of lay people who freely incorporate themselves into it. This new structure, foreseen by the Second Vatican Council, was established in 1982, and Opus Dei now has nearly 80,000 members across the globe, overwhelmingly lay, with both married and permanently celibate members. It also has its own priests who look after the spiritual formation of the lay members.
Opus Dei's extraordinary growth and the rapid beatification of its founder, only 17 years after his death in 1975, have established it as a major new influence in the Church. Its mission also marks a distinctive aspect of the Church in the 20th century, namely a renewed focus on lay holiness.
“As old as the Gospel, as new as the Gospel,” Msgr. Escrivá was fond of saying about Opus Dei. What was new was the structure of Opus Dei, which provided for, especially in the case of the celibate members, a highly educated, well-formed lay apostolate that would reach as far into society as the occupations of its members would take it.
The insistence of Msgr. Escrivá and others that every person was called to holiness, exactly in the place where he was, won vindication at Vatican II, which taught that “everyone is called to holiness” (Lumen Gentium, No. 39), including lay people, who “in their daily work, should climb to the heights of holiness and apostolic activity” (No. 41).
While the vocation to holiness of every baptized person was taught by St. Paul — For this is the will of God, your sanctification (1 Thessalonians 4:3) — and explicated by such distinguished spiritual writers as St. Francis de Sales, the 20th century needed a strong reminder that it was the role of the laity to transform the world, through their work in the world, and their witness in the world as saints.
As the Church marks the feast of All Saints, Nov. 1, to celebrate the millions of ordinary men and women who are in heaven without formal canonization, the preaching of Msgr. Escrivá is particularly apt.
Josemaría Escrivá, paradoxically, lived quite an extraordinary life. Like most founders, he encountered opposition to his innovations, and exercised patience in waiting for ecclesiastical approval, while insisting upon the specific mission that he believed was entrusted to him.
He endured the anti-clerical persecutions of the Spanish Civil War, living clandestinely in Madrid as a priest, taking refuge in the Honduran Consulate, and finally escaping — in harrowing and dramatic fashion — over the Pyrenees on foot.
From his youth, he knew well the turmoils that were rocking Spain; the prelate who admitted Josemaría to minor orders in 1922, Cardinal Giovanni Soldevila, the archbishop of Saragossa, was assassinated by anarchists the next year. Finally, he has suffered from attacks on his reputation even after death.
He endured all this, and his heavy responsibilities as a founder, with remarkable devotion to prayer, severe corporal mortifications, and an untiring devotion to his priestly ministry. By all accounts, his was a winning personality that drew others with refinement and good humor. Even when calumniated by his opponents, he maintained a charitable disposition toward all.
“For me, I only want to hide and disappear, so that Jesus alone is in the limelight,” said Msgr. Escrivá. According to his own public statements, he would eschew anything that would indicate a cult of personality. In time, as Opus Dei matures, it is to be expected that the holiness of its founder's life will speak for itself, and will be freed from either partisan attacks or hagiography.
“The crisis of the world,” Msgr. Escrivá said, “is a crisis of saints.” His life was one answer to the crisis of the 20th century, and he devoted himself to exhorting others — all others — to resolve the crisis of the world in similar fashion, i.e., by becoming saints.
Raymond de Souza writes from Rome.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond de Souza ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Roe Could Get Worse, Activist Warns DATE: 11/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:CHICAGO — A leading pro-lifer warned that a new battle over partial-birth abortion could open the door to a frightening precedent.
That precedent: a Supreme Court decision that would effectively extend a mother's “right” to kill her child outside the womb.
Douglas Johnson, director of National Right to Life, made his warning after a federal appeals court Oct. 26 upheld the constitutionality of Wisconsin and Illinois laws prohibiting partial-birth abortions.
A month earlier, another federal appeals court struck down bans on partial-birth abortions. This means the U.S. Supreme Court may have to decide the issue.
If the Supreme Court decided to strike down state bans on partial-birth abortions, it would be an expansion of Roe, Johnson said, because it would extend the moth-er's right to kill the child outside of the womb.
“This baby is mostly born,” Johnson told the Register. “You never said anything about that in Roe. They would have to expand Roe to include partial-birth abortions. I think that would be unacceptable to many Americans.”
The Oct. 26 decision on the Wisconsin and Illinois laws was made by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is based in Chicago.
In reaching the majority ruling, Judge Frank H. Easterbrook said that women have not been denied an abortion because of the law, and that other, safer forms of abortion were available. The judge drew a distinction between two types of abortion.
Partial-birth abortions, known as dilation and extraction, or D&X, involve delivering a child feet-first while leaving just the baby's head inside the mother. The abortionist then uses a scissors to slice the child's neck and then vacuums out the brain to collapse the skull in order to cause death and finish delivery.
A dilation and evacuation abortion, or D&E, occurs when the abortionist inserts a sharp instrument into the womb tearing the child into pieces. A vacuum is then inserted and the baby's parts are placed on a table to make sure a foot or a piece of skull is not still inside the womb.
‘We are shocked by the decision,’ said Planned Parenthood President Gloria Feldt of an appeals court ruling to uphold a ban on partial-birth abortions.
While in either case the abortion involves the death of a child, there is a fundamental legal distinction, because of Roe v. Wade. No matter how developed the child is, the state is under no obligation to protect her life until she is born.
“Birth is what matters” to the Supreme Court, said Johnson of National Right to Life. Under a partial-birth abortion, “the baby is deliberately pulled four-fifths across this plane where, according to Roe, she becomes a human.”
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court decided that Illinois and Wisconsin could defend the right of the child against this type of abortion because the child is being born.
Judge Easterbrook wrote in the majority decision, “It is this combination of coming so close to delivering a live child with the death of the fetus by reducing the size of the skull that not only distinguishes D&X from D&E medically, but also causes the adverse public and legislative reaction.”
Easterbrook continued, “Even for the class of women who seek late-second-trimester abortions, there is always one or more other safe methods of abortion in addition to D&X.”
Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson immediately applauded the ruling.
“The partial-birth abortion is a gruesome, abhorrent way to take a life,” the Republican said. “There's no place for partial-birth abortions in Wisconsin, and I'm glad the court upheld our efforts to ban them.”
Abortion providers seemed to be caught off-guard by the court's decision.
“We are shocked by the decision,” said Planned Parenthood President Gloria Feldt. “However, we must be vigilant. Fundamental issues of privacy and individual civil liberties affecting all women throughout pregnancy are at stake.”
Johnson of National Right to Life said that the Supreme Court could uphold the ban on partial-birth abortions while maintaining the 1973 Roe decision.
“Ethically, we have never considered partial-birth to be worse than other abortions, which are also horrific,” Johnson said. “But the lawmakers looked at the law that the Supreme Court created and said, ‘At least a state should be able to protect that child — at least when the child is being born.’”
The State Next Door
In September, the 8th U.S. Circuit in St. Louis overturned bans on partial-birth abortions in Arkansas, Nebraska and Iowa.
The two separate court rulings have established opposing standards. In Illinois partial-birth abortion is a crime, but on the other side of the Mississippi River in Iowa the procedure is a constitutional right.
“You have an inconsistency in the federal court system — it almost demands a Supreme Court ruling,” said Johnson. The case might be heard before the high court during this term, he added.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Josh Mercer ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Hot Line Is Changing Minds One at a Time DATE: 11/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:MINNEAPOLIS — After nine months of strict bed rest during her third pregnancy, Theresa Cotnoir and her husband, Eugene, decided to do what everyone else in their families had done for two generations — get sterilized. Encouraged by a priest who claimed it was the lesser of two evils, both Theresa and Eugene underwent sterilizations in 1995.
Several months later they realized the lesser of two evils was wrong.
After praying, fasting and asking God what to do, the Cotnoirs discovered One More Soul, an apostolate dedicated to spreading the truth about the harms of contraception and the blessings of children.
One More Soul, based in Dayton, Ohio, referred the Cotnoirs to Peggy Powell, who manages the organization's Sterilization Reversal Hotline in Minneapolis. She told them about two doctors in Texas who performed reversals for a reasonable cost as part of their mission. The Cotnoirs decided it was cheaper to travel to the Lone Star State than to get reversals in their home area of Woonsocket, R.I.
“The Church doesn't recommend we have [sterilization] reversed for forgiveness; we go to confession for that,” said Theresa. “But we had ruined our bodies, and by the grace of God the opportunity was there to fix it.”
One More Soul launched the national hot line in 1997 to provide spiritual and practical support for people seeking reversals.
Powell has answered 350 calls from people of all generations experiencing the pains of guilt and remorse in the wake of their decision to become sterilized. She not only lends an ear, but also has a growing database of doctors she can refer people to, depending on their location and financial circumstances.
“What I'm seeing a lot of is conversion,” said Powell. “Many Catholics are coming to understand the full teaching of the Church. They want to be right with God. They've gone to confession, but something within keeps making them want to reverse [the procedure]. I just tell them it's God touching their heart.”
Some survey figures show that some 80% of married couples, including Catholics, are contracepting. Sterilization — tubal ligation for women, vasectomy for men — is one of the most commonly used forms of artificial contraception. Peggy Powell said that, prior to their second thoughts, many of her callers had either chosen to ignore Church teaching on sterilization or, like she and her husband, Rick, simply did not know about it.
Pope Paul VI in his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life) wrote, “the direct interruption of the generative process already begun and, above all, all direct abortion, even for therapeutic reasons, are to be absolutely excluded as lawful means of regulating the number of children. Equally to be condemned, as the magisterium of the Church has affirmed on many occasions, is direct sterilization, whether of the man or of the woman, whether permanent or temporary” (No. 14).
It was only after they realized that sterilization was wrong that the Powells felt guilty about Rick's 1981 vasectomy. They went to confession, and also prayed before abortion clinics in reparation for the times that they had not allowed the possibility of life. In 1991, Rick had his vasectomy reversed and the Powells now have a 3-year-old daughter.
“You realize afterward what a gift it is that you gave up,” said Peggy Powell.
Father Daniel McCaffrey, from the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, said many people are confused about the Church's teaching on contraception and sterilization because they lack knowledge of their faith, and it has not been taught or preached about from the pulpit. With encouragement from his ordinary, Archbishop Eusebius Beltran, Father McCaffrey travels around the country giving parish missions and natural family planning weekends where he speaks about contraception and sterilization.
“I don't think I've found one person, even at the age of 80, who has ever heard a sermon on sterilization,” said Father McCaffrey. “Yet to go into our bodies and mutilate the sacred powers of procreation, through which God brings new life into the world, is to seriously offend against the Fifth Commandment.”
Father McCaffrey added that, while both contraception and sterilization cut the procreative element out of the marital act, sterilization is particularly offensive to God because of its finality.
“There will always be hard cases, and those hard cases will always be thrown at the Church,” he observed. “But hard cases do not make good law, and the Church realizes that. Just because these immoral means are available doesn't mean that we can use them to help us get through an unfortunate situation we're in.”
Moral theologian Germain Grisez, author of the seminal work on moral theology, Living a Christian Life, told the Register, “There is not a general, unconditional obligation to get [a sterilization] reversed.” In his book, he writes that the financial burden of the expensive procedure, the age of the patient and the dependability of the procedure can mitigate or even eliminate the obligation to undergo it.
But he adds, “Some couples will rightly judge that they still should have one or more children if they can, and that they can and should accept the burdens of an attempt at reversal” (Question G, No. 1f).
Eugene Cotnoir doesn't claim ignorance, but he does attribute his decision to get a vasectomy to spiritual sloth and not searching for the truth. “It comes down to a lack of trust in God,” he said.
One More Soul has asked a number of couples like the Cotnoirs and the Longs to write the story of their awakening. The accounts will be compiled and published in a book slated for 2000 release. Peggy Powell said part of the goal is to provide a resource for individuals who have been sterilized and want to be restored to fertility. She hopes the book will help educate people who are considering sterilization about the spiritual, emotional and physical ramifications — and encourage them to prayerfully reconsider.
Barbara Ernster is based in Fridley, Minnesota.
One More Soul can be reached at (800) 307-7685 or online at www.-OMSoul.com. The National Sterilization Reversal Hotline is at (612) 755-7706. Father McCaffery of NFP Outreach can be reached at (888) 637-6383.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Barbara Ernster ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Can Catholics Support Death Penalty? Debate Asks DATE: 11/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:NEW YORK — Can Catholics who disagree with the Pope's teaching on the death penalty still call themselves good Catholics?
That's a growing question in the wake of Pope John Paul II's strong pronouncements against the death penalty and the strong anti-capital punishment language in the revised edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
On Oct. 27, two faithful Catholics who hold conflicting views on the death penalty engaged in a friendly debate at the Union League Club in New York. Popular author and television commentator Father George Rutler argued for its use, and National Catholic Register correspondent Alejandro Bermudez came out against it.
“I'm for the death penalty for the same reason the Pope is against it,” Father Rutler said to the crowd of about 85 professionals who had gathered for the event. “I'm for it because I believe in the dignity of human life.”
By exacting the ultimate price for murder, Father Rutler explained, the state reaffirms the importance of the life taken and the evil of the act committed. He added that the essential point to remember is that the Pope has not called capital punishment intrinsically evil.
Father Rutler said he would defend anyone's right to oppose the death penalty, but said he fears that some Catholics have become so concerned about defending the Pope from secular assailants that they end up assuming he can't ever be disagreed with.
“The Catholic tradition has always defended the legitimacy of the death penalty on the basis of the natural law principle that the state has the right to protect itself, with whatever means necessary, from threats to the common good,” Father Rutler told the Register. “I am very concerned that second-rate theologians will exploit the Holy Father's teaching in order to sentimentalize the logic of the Church's traditional defense of capital punishment.”
But Father Rutler's sparring partner, Alejandro Bermudez, had his own fears, which he made clear in a conversation with the Register after the debate.
“I became concerned with capital punishment,” Bermudez said, “when I began to see many loyal defenders of the Church opposing the Pope on the death penalty, people who are very supportive of the Pope on most other issues. It gave me the feeling that many of them are supporters of the Pope insofar as he supports their politics.”
“It seemed to me that this was a case of Americanism,” added Bermudez, a native of Peru.
Bermudez opened the debate with the surprising claim that he considered the death penalty legitimate — but not in developed countries such as the United States. He said countries that lack civil order or which have no organized penal system, the death penalty might be necessary. He cited Peru as an example of a country that, in the fight against terrorism, has used the death penalty to good effect.
“Since death is a mystery,” Bermudez said, the death penalty should be a last resort, not one of many forms of punishment available to magistrates in a civil society.
“Popes who have defended the death penalty in the past were not making definitive teachings,” Bermudez said. “[We should recognize] a development in the Church's doctrine here. The Pope is teaching that we should move away from the death penalty in a civil society to avoid playing with a mystery. We shouldn't go looking for excuses in theologians who disagree with the Pope to defend our own views,” Bermudez said. “In the end, it is the Pope who has the supreme right to make final statements, not the theologians.”
Father Rutler minimized the extent to which Catholics are bound to follow Pope John Paul's teaching on capital punishment, saying it represents a mere “prudential judgment” of the Holy Father.
But Father Rutler's view would likely prove problematic for many in the Church.
For instance, Notre Dame law professor Charles Rice, an author and specialist on the natural law and questions of fidelity to the magisterium, told the Register in a recent unpublished interview: “You've got to ask is this the successor of Peter? And the answer is: He is the successor of Peter. Evangelium Vitae is not merely his personal opinion [on the death penalty]. They've put it in the Catechism.”
Rice, who once supported the death penalty, said the teaching is a challenge for many, and called it “the Humanae Vitae of orthodox, conservative Catholics.”
In Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life) No. 56, the Pope wrote, “the nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, reflecting the Church's preference for nonlethal methods of maintaining civil order, says in No. 2267, “If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority should limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.”
The debate between Bermudez and Father Rutler was held under the auspices of the Youth Auxiliary of the Knights of Malta. Proceeds from the event went to support ACI-PRENSA, an organization directed by Bermudez that is committed to educating and catechizing the 5 million poor who surround Peru's major cities. Many of the poor had fled from rural locations in fear of the Shining Path guerrillas, who terrorized the country between 1984 and 1994.
At the end of the death penalty debate, its organizer Bill Grace said, “What remains to be seen is whether or not the Pope could declare his teaching on this infallible in the future.”
(John Mallon contributed to this article.)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian McGuire ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 11/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:In a homily given to a congregation of more than 100,000 in March 5, 1983, Pope John Paul II told Panamanian families to strengthen their families and avoid practices that undermine them (see story by Barbara Ernster on this page).
Beloved husbands and wives: renew in this Eucharist your promise of mutual fidelity. … The authentic Christian, even at the risk of becoming a “sign that is opposed,” must be able to carry out well the practices chosen in conformity with his faith. For this reason, he will have to say no to unions which are not sanctified by marriage and to divorce; he will say no to sterilization, above all if it is imposed upon any person or ethnic group for deceptive reasons; he will say no to contraception and he will say no to the crime of abortion, which kills innocent beings.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Facts of Life DATE: 11/07/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 7-13, 1999 ----- BODY:Did You Know?
Contraceptives are still touted as a way to reduce abortion rates — in America and abroad. But even abortion advocates have admitted that the use of contraceptives makes possible the conditions that often result in abortion.
The medical director of Planned Parenthood Federation wrote in a 1991 letter to The Wall Street Journal:
“More than three million unplanned pregnancies occur each year to American women; two-thirds of these are due to contraceptive failure.”
—Quoted by the Population Research Institute Review, February/March 1999.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Post-Hurricane Hazards Test Nicaragua's Resolve DATE: 11/22/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 22-28, 1998 ----- BODY:CHINANDEGA, Nicaragua—For miles in every direction, the devastation caused by Hurricane Mitch litters the slowly drying volcanic soil of this important agricultural province in the Pacific northwest of Central America's largest country.
Enormous, uprooted trees lie in tangled clumps where the swirling floodwaters dumped them. Scraggly thatched huts crouch half-buried in the mud that engulfed these former family homes during the intense three-day storm that dropped 58 inches of rain on Nicaragua at the beginning of November.
Wide swaths of dirt left by the receding waters cover fields of sugar cane, tomatoes, beans, wheat, coffee, and a variety of other bumper crops that had been awaiting harvest. A light yellow scar slashes down the side of the Casitas Volcano where tons of rock, mud, and water gave way and buried a string of villages at the base of the dormant volcano.
Alongside a raised spur of the Pan American Highway, thousands of campesinos (peasant farm laborers) perch with their scant belongings and sketchy shelters on the highest ground they can find, in a wide green valley that resembles the African savannas.
The devastation “Hurac·n Mitch” brought to Nicaragua can easily be seen in their faces and in the stories the campesinos tell of the raging waters.
One woman recounts how she grabbed her children, placed them in bags, and hung them in trees. Another describes how she stood in swirling water up to her waist for two days, until the flooding began to recede. A third said all she did was “climb.”
Many of those living in Chinandega, LeÛn, and other provinces in Nicaragua's west and north, have lost family members and the few goods they owned. Few had much to begin with.
After Haiti, Nicaragua is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. More than 75% of its 4.5 million population live in poverty or extreme poverty. Unemployment hovers around 16% and underemployment around 36%, but Mitch, which has been called Central America's worst storm in two centuries, is expected to make those numbers climb.
History of Disaster
The plight of the Nicaraguan poor, most of whom are Catholic, has been exacerbated over the past three decades by a series of natural and man-made disasters.
In 1972, Managua was leveled by a deadly earthquake. During most of the 1980s, the country suffered from a war fought by the Marxist-oriented Sandinistas and the American-supported Contras. In 1996, Nicaragua's Pacific coast was battered by a powerful tidal wave that destroyed several ports. And now Mitch has killed at least 4,000, injured many more, and left nearly 1 million Nicaraguans homeless.
The death toll is certain to rise. Medical, government, and Church personnel are grimly waiting to see how many will succumb to several fatal diseases that were expected to start manifesting themselves in great numbers in mid-November. Already there have been confirmed cases of cholera and hemorrhagic fever.
Many more cases are expected because thousands live in areas contaminated by the corpses of humans and domestic animals. Although piles of human and animal bodies have been burned in gasoline-fed fires, many more remain to be discovered. It's their decaying presence that may prove to be so dangerous, particularly for the children who swim in fetid water.
Officials from the Nicaraguan government, the Catholic Church, and a variety of international aid organizations are attempting to dispatch clean water, food, medicines, clothing, tents, and building supplies to the hundreds of thousands affected by the devastation, but the humanitarian efforts are hampered by a series of factors.
The first is the sheer difficulty of reaching the suffering.
Dozens of bridges were swept away by the torrents, making many roads impassable. The government and several private construction companies have started to build up rubble and debris in the shallows of streams and smaller rivers, making fords that can be handled by trucks and four-wheel drive vehicles, but many expect it will be years before the bridges are rebuilt. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is sending advisors to evaluate the situation; in a few key areas, pontoon bridges may be built.
Adding to the problem is a lack of helicopters. The Nicaraguan government has only a few. This scarcity made it difficult for officials to rescue people during the hurricane, or to discover in the subsequent weeks how many had been affected. The U.S. and Mexican governments have since sent a score of helicopters to Nicaragua to aid in the humanitarian efforts. Some food and water is getting through by air, but the need is so great that the helicopters can do relatively little.
Humanitarian efforts are also being hindered by the enormous proportions of human demand.
The flooding left hundreds of thousands with little in the way of food, medicine, and material goods. Various aid organizations, including those run by the Nicaraguan Church, rushed whatever they already had on hand to the suffering, but their supplies were quickly exhausted. This lack has created a problem both for those affected by the storm's devastation and for those regularly helped by Caritas, the Nicaraguan-American Foundation, Food for the Poor, and other development organizations.
As the size of the Mitch-related disaster in Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador became apparent, material help began flowing in from outside the region. However, aid workers didn't always know what to do with the goods, since the distribution channels are still sketchy.
AgustÌn JarquÌn Anaya, the comptroller general of Nicaragua, noted that some areas are getting nothing, while others seem to be getting extra supplies. He is looking into making the distribution more efficient.
Assessing the Damage
The Nicaraguan government is also conducting a disaster study to discover exactly what damage has been done, and to determine what the country's needs will be in the next few months and years.
More than $200 million in foreign aid has been received in the devastated region so far, but this is only a pittance in light of the billions of dollars of damage caused by the storm. Nicaragua alone is estimated to have suffered more than $1 billion in damage to its infrastructure.
Government and Church officials in Nicaragua are particularly worried that the humanitarian aid flowing in from outside will soon dry up when the world turns its focus to other matters. These officials say that nearly 1 million Nicaraguans will have to be fed a month from now; they also fear that an equal number will have to be fed six months from now.
The country will have a tough time feeding its people from the breadbasket regions of Chinandega and LeÛn. Mitch flattened many crops and drowned thousands of steers in those fertile areas. Most of the crops that survived are ready for harvesting, but the poor road conditions will prevent them from being brought to market. And with the rainy season just ending, no more crops can be planted until May.
Mitch compounded its devastation by wiping out numerous businesses and the employment they offered. Many of the homeless no longer have a job whose salary could be used to rebuild their homes and lives. Widespread unemployment is expected to have a debilitating effect on the country's overall economy.
Noel Ramirez, the chairman of the Nicaraguan federal bank, thinks his nation will have to spend $1.5 billion to revive the economy—presupposing that Nicaragua's $6 billion foreign debt will be forgiven. Many of Nicaragua's highest-ranking leaders, including Vice President Enrique BoloÒos and Miguel Cardinal Obando y Bravo of Managua, have called for the total forgiveness of the nation's foreign debt.
So far France, Cuba, Austria, and several other countries have renounced their shares of the debt. The United States and Great Britain are discussing the matter.
At the moment, things look grim for the people of Nicaragua. However, government and Church officials are hopeful that, if the country's foreign debt is forgiven, if aid continues to be dispatched, and if Nicaraguans themselves work hard to overcome the aftereffects of Mitch, it will take about five years to bring the nation back to an economic status comparable to that existing before the disaster.
If any of these conditions are not met, officials will not be surprised if it took decades for the effects of “Hurac·n Mitch” to be overcome.
For more information about helping the victims of Hurricane Mitch, contact: Food for the Poor, Dept. 19054, 550 SW 12th Ave., Deerfield Beach, Fla. 33442.
Church Playing Key Role in the Relief Efforts
The Catholic Church in Nicaragua is playing an important role in the country's effort to evaluate the overwhelming disaster caused by Hurricane Mitch, to help those deeply affected by the storm, and to plan for the future.
Miguel Cardinal Obando y Bravo of Managua has named Msgr. Eddy Montenegro, the vicar general of the Archdiocese of Managua and the head of the archdiocese's social-outreach projects, to lead the Church's disaster-relief efforts in Nicaragua. The monsignor also represents the Church on the country's disaster-relief committee, which is headed by Vice President Enrique BoloÒos.
Msgr. Montenegro said that the Church has two roles in helping to deal with the disaster. The first is serving on the national committee that is “planning the general response to the disaster.” The second is that the bishops of the most affected dioceses have been “placed in charge of coordinating humanitarian aid in their dioceses.”
The monsignor noted how logical it is for the Church to handle this task, since it already has a variety of aid organizations in place: among these are Caritas, the Church's international charity; various social justice organizations; and a variety of diocesan- and parochial-aid programs. The two organizations that will do the bulk of the direct distribution are the American-Nicaraguan Foundation and COPROSA, the archdiocese's social-justice committee.
Another reason for the Church's prominence in organizing and distributing disaster relief is Nicaraguans' lack of trust in the government's ability to undertake the task fairly. Most feel that the Church can be trusted to distribute aid to all those who need it, not just to those whom might be politically sympathetic. Many communities have begged the national government, which is headed by President Arnoldo Alem·n of the Conservative Party, to channel all aid through the Church for this reason.
Cardinal Obando y Bravo has told the priests and religious of his archdiocese, which covers about half the country, that there will be no discrimination in the distribution of resources. They seem to have taken his injunction to heart, since some pastors have been forced to mediate between groups on the left and right about the distribution of resources in certain villages.
“Typically,” said Msgr. Montenegro, “a liberal mayor may only want to take care of the liberals. As of now, most of these problems have been addressed. In the face of this disaster, the people have learned to work together better.”
He noted that the Nicaraguan Church is depending on help from Catholic organizations, ranging from the Vatican to local parish groups. The Vatican itself has sent $50,000 to Nicaragua and Honduras, and the money is being distributed by the two countries'dioceses.
Msgr. Montenegro added that many ordinary Nicaraguan Catholics who weren't directly affected by the disaster immediately organized efforts to help the stricken. One of the first was a telethon called the Chain of Love.
In the areas most directly affected by the disaster, many middle-class and upper-class Catholics immediately began helping Mitch's victims. Some left their jobs and began volunteering at clinics, food-distribution centers, and the schools that had been turned into shelters for the homeless.
Many of the very poorest Nicaraguans living outside the disaster areas made a point of immediately sending aid to their victimized neighbors. They gathered materials and monetary donations, and dispatched them to the Church. They also helped the priests, nuns, and medical personnel who have been working almost non-stop since the rains hit.
“The hearts of the poor always respond much faster than the organized groups,” said Msgr. Montenegro. But he added that “everybody is making a special effort to unite in the face of the disaster.”
—Loretta Seyer
Loretta Seyer, editor of Catholic Faith & Family, recently returned from Nicaragua.
----- EXCERPT: Impoverished Country Braces for Expected Onset of Deadly Diseases ----- EXTENDED BODY: Loretta Seyer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Religious Freedom Act Shines Spotlight on Persecution Problem DATE: 11/22/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 22-28, 1998 ----- BODY:If you think that the age of the martyrs is something that belongs to Christianity's past, you've not been paying attention to the 20th century. In fact, religiously motivated persecution is as much a mark of the last hundred years as the invention of the automobile or the spread of mass technology.
“In sheer numbers, this has been the worst single century of persecution for Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism,” says human rights activist Nina Shea, author of the 1997 study, In the Lion's Den, chronicling the oppression, murder, and torture of Christians in countries around the world today. Vast numbers have died simply because of their religious identity.”
Verifiable figures are hard to come by. But, given a century that began with pogroms against Jews in Russia, saw the destruction of more than 1 million Armenian Christians by retreating Turkish armies in World War I, witnessed the midcentury genocide of European Jewry, the destruction of countless numbers of Chinese Christians under Mao, and 70 years of a Church silenced behind an Iron Curtain—few will quibble with the notion that the 20th century has earned a special distinction in the annals of religious hatred.
Worse yet is the situation is not improving. While religion-based discrimination may have eased in much of the former Soviet bloc, for Christians in Sudan, Algeria, China, Vietnam, Pakistan, India, and other countries, it's still the age of martyrs.
In Sudan, the militant Islamic government of Hassan al-Turabi threatens the lives of millions of Christians and animists through war and starvation. While seeking expanded trade relations with the United States, China continues a brutal four-year crackdown on Protestant underground churches and Catholics who maintain ties with the Vatican. In Pakistan and India, the policies of Muslim and Hindu nationalists have created a growing climate of intolerance and violence against religious minorities.
“There seems to be the assumption that everything is all right now that the Berlin Wall has fallen,” said Wilfred Wong, who works with Jubilee Campaign, a British-based human rights group, in a recent interview in Christianity Today. “There is a lack of recognition that Christians are still facing severe persecution in many places.”
‘The Persecution Movement’
The good news is that that perception is changing. In the United States, a newly energized movement of Christians—The New York Times recently dubbed it “the persecution movement”—has risen in the past several years to counter the widespread ignorance and indifference to the plight of persecuted religious minorities by pressing for political and social change, and by coordinating the efforts of missionaries, human rights groups, and relief organizations.
Better still, last month, over much opposition, a coalition of religious and human rights groups, including the U.S. Catholic Conference (USCC), the policy arm of the U.S. Catholic bishops, and the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), persuaded lawmakers and eventually the Clinton administration to make religious liberty a key foreign policy consideration of the U.S. government.
In early October, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (S 1868) which would require the president to take action against countries that engage in a pattern of egregious systematic religious persecution.
The measure was husbanded through Congress over a period of two years by Senators Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), Don Nickles (R-Okla.), and Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), along with House members Frank Wolf (R-Va.) and Christopher Smith (R-N.J.).
The Senate bill, similar to a measure passed by the House last May, establishes an independent 10-member federal Commission on International Religious Liberty with a $3 million budget to investigate religious persecution abroad, report on it annually in May, and recommend courses of action to the president. Further, each fall the State Department will be required to file its own report on violations of religious freedom, and outline possible U.S. responses in each case.
In addition, the measure creates a special State Department post of ambassador-at-large for religious liberty.
This “double reporting,” advocates say, will put pressure on the administration to speak out against, or even penalize scores of nations that are imprisoning, torturing, or, in some cases, killing people because of their faith.
According to State Department figures, more than 70 nations have a record of serious violations of the religious rights of citizens and foreign workers.
A Range of Punishments
The range of punitive options include private rebuke, public condemnation, opposition to invitations to host the Olympic Games, halting scientific and cultural exchanges and state visits, forbidding any U.S. bank from loaning more than $10 million to the offending country, halting government aid or security assistance and, most seriously, imposing trade sanctions, including a ban on export licenses of goods and technology.
“The big thing that the bill does,” said Gerry Powers, director of the USCC's Office for International Justice and Peace, “is give religious persecution a profile in public policy debate that it hasn't had before. It provides an overall framework that ensures that the issue is on the front burner.”
In the past, Powers told the Register , U.S. responses to instances of religious persecution have lacked consistency: “All rights are linked. Even the secular human rights community has come around to the notion that if religious rights are violated, then other human rights will be, too. The point of the legislation is to ensure that religious liberty gets the same attention that other human rights get.”
It was the threat of legislation mandating automatic trade sanctions on countries that engage in persecution that, in part, “spooked” the Clinton administration.
The earlier House bill, sponsored by Wolf and Specter, called for cutoffs of U.S. aid to systematic offenders, including access to loans by international financial organizations—a stipulation that government officials feared would hamper U.S. foreign diplomacy, and which were also a source of concern to Catholic Church officials who oppose comprehensive economic sanctions regimes on moral and humanitarian grounds. (The House bill also highlighted the persecution of Christians, while the bill the president signed expresses concern for the rights of all religious groups.)
Trade and commerce organizations, including the Chamber of Commerce and free-trade and agriculture lobbies such as USA*Engage also vigorously opposed the legislation.
The Senate bill, however, while requiring government response to the most serious violations of religious rights, permits a broad, flexible range of actions on the part of the president, with exemptions for humanitarian aid and waiver authority for cases where action would be counterproductive or where national security interests intervene.
It's worth noting that the law targets only the most egregious forms of systematic repression—torture, rape, killing, imprisonment—not all instances of religion-based discrimination. (Russia's new anti-proselytism law would be an example of the latter.)
White House's Grudging Approval
The president signed the bill into law Oct. 28 with a less than hearty endorsement.
“I commend the Congress for incorporating flexibility in the several provisions concerning the imposition of economic measures,” Clinton said after the signing. “Although I am concerned that such measures could result in even greater pressures, and possibly reprisals, against minority religious communities that the bill is intended to help, I note that Section 402 mandates these measures only in the most extreme and egregious cases of religious persecution.”
Administration officials have also worried that the measure might interfere with Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) attempts to deport aliens who claim asylum on the basis of religious persecution abroad, and create a “hierarchy” of human rights in which religious liberty considerations predominate.
That last objection has not only been challenged by religious leaders, but by some policy analysts as well.
“Of course there's a hierarchy of rights,” says Joshua Muravchik, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “Keeping people from practicing their faith is doing something far more cruel to them than keeping them from reading a newspaper. The freedom to worship God is as essential to human life as nourishment and oxygen. To deny that right cuts a very deep wound, indeed.”
Most Basic Human Right
That echoes Pope John Paul II's widely noted remarks to the Vatican diplomatic corps last January where he called religious freedom “the most fundamental human freedom, that of practicing one's faith openly, which for human beings is their reason for living.”
At an April 28 White House meeting with members of the NAE, the president even suggested that the threat of mandatory sanctions might put pressure on him and the rest of the government to “fudge facts” in order to avoid imposing penalties on trading partners, according to Rev. Richard Cizik, acting director of the NAE's office for governmental affairs, who was present at the meeting.
“I was astonished,” Rev. Cizik told the Register. “It was an unintended admission that our own government doesn't tell the whole truth about the facts and circumstances of religious persecution” when that cuts across economic interests. That makes the new law's provision for independent watchdog committees all the more essential, he added.
Nevertheless, said Rev. Cizik, who spearheaded the call in January 1996 for “a movement of conscience” to curb international religious persecution, the passage of the bill represents “a milestone in the fight for human rights for believers. In the end, everybody got on the same page. In the midst of the partisan acrimony of the last session of Congress, the bill's success is a remarkable achievement. It gives us some leverage to get our own government to do what it ought to do.”
Rev. Cizik worries, however, that, given the climate of political acrimony in Washington, D.C., these days, “the new commission will become a forum for partisan attacks on the administration.
“We're going to need a great deal of wisdom and sophistication in order to work together with our own government and with officials overseas. Will we be up to it? That's the question.”
But for human rights activists working in the field, the new awareness of the plight of persecuted believers overseas, and attempts to relieve conditions, can't come too soon.
Buzz Word for Inaction
To critics who charge that persecution activists reduce complex political situations which may have economic, cultural, and even ethnic dimensions to a simple conflict of religions, Shea responds that “the word ‘complicated’ too often is a recipe for paralysis. Every human situation is complicated. Bosnia is complicated, Kosovo is complicated, South Africa was complicated. That's always true.”
But in every case, said Shea, “the idea is invoked in order to bring paralysis, and to justify a lack of action.”
Many commentators have voiced the concern that unless the issue of religious liberty is faced squarely in these waning days of the 20th century, and on a global scale, darker crises may well be awaiting us around the millennial bend.
Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington's provocative 1996 book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, raises fears that, unless there's a renewed appreciation of the part religion plays in culture, the new century may be marked by “conflicts of civilizations that are at heart religious.”
Whereas the 19th century was marked by conflicts between nation-states, and the 20th by ideological conflicts, the author says, the coming century may be driven not by economics or ideology, but by the clash of cultural and religious values.
Rev. Cizik agrees. “The good news is that we have choices,” he said. “We can bridge differences between cultures, we can come to common understandings about universal principles.”
It doesn't have to be a century of conflict.
“The developments of the past two years, the signing into law of the International Religious Freedom Act,” he said, “are positive steps in that direction.”
Senior writer Gabriel Meyer is based in Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Gabriel Meyer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Ex-Irish Chief's Abortion Call Is Only Her Latest Bombshell DATE: 11/22/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 22-28, 1998 ----- BODY:DUBLIN, Ireland—Former President Mary Robinson has shocked pro-lifers by calling for abortion to be legalized in this country.
The call comes in Mary Robinson, The Authorized Biography , a new book by journalists Olivia O'Leary and Helen Burke. It reveals many details about the complex and ambivalent relationship Ireland's first female president has with the Church and with Catholic teaching.
But it is her stance on abortion that has shocked Catholics the most.
“I would make abortion available in this country,” the book quotes Robinson as saying. “It would be healthier and more mature about ourselves, more honest. Even for a country that regrets and feels a great sense of loss at the termination of life, it would be a preferable solution. It would be a kind of coming to terms with the problem, instead of exporting it and moralizing about it.”
Abortion is illegal in Ireland, but hundreds of Irish women travel to Britain each year to terminate their pregnancies.
Already, a former presidential chaplain to Mary Robinson, Father Dominic Johnson OSB, has staged his own “silent protest” over her call. The Benedictine prior of Glenstal Abbey in County Limerick kept a photograph of himself and Robinson in his office as a souvenir of his brief time as her chaplain. But he has since removed the photograph and destroyed the negative. He said, “Mrs. Robinson's office at present is United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. What a contradiction in terms! Unborn children are human beings with the basic human right to life. The commissioner would deny them their human right to life.”
Caroline Simmons, legal spokesman for the Pro-Life Campaign in Dublin, said Robinson is “now seeking to legalize the most notorious abuse of human rights in the Western world.” Simmons described her reaction to Robinson's call as one of “shock and deep concern.”
“This is tragic,” she added. “At the very time when people of all shades of opinion on abortion were coming together to seek positive alternatives, we have a call for the legalization of abortion.”
Maurice Colgan of the pro-life group Youth Defense said: “We have been saying for years that this woman had her own agenda, and this is no surprise to us. What is shocking is that as U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights she is going around criticizing governments for human rights abuses, yet she would deny the fundamental right to life to the unborn child.”
The authorized biography also reveals that Robinson believes her presence as president probably influenced the outcome of the constitutional referendum on divorce in 1995. Before that ballot, which was carried by a slim majority, Robinson gave a television interview where she supported the pro-divorce side. Ger Casey, a member of the No Divorce Campaign at the time, said: “We said then that it was an inappropriate intervention by the president in that campaign. Now she has admitted that she did indeed influence the outcome of the divorce referendum.”
The chairman of the No Divorce Campaign, Des Hanafin, said he is considering making a legal challenge to the referendum's result following Robinson's admission.
Robinson was born Mary Bourke into a prosperous family with a traditional Catholic background, in Ballina, County Mayo, in 1944. She attended a Catholic boarding school but began to question the Church while at a finishing school in Paris in the early 1960s. In the book she is quoted as saying, “I was very angry at a lot of what the Church stood for at that time, at how religion could become power-play and oppressive, undermining the true sense of spirituality and the true ethical norms and standards that are at the highest reaches of the human mind.”
After Paris, Robinson studied law at Trinity College. Because it is a Protestant school, her father had to obtain permission from Dubin Archbishop John Charles McQuaid before she could study there. At Trinity, Robinson met her future husband, Nick Robinson. Her family objected to the engagement, because Nick Robinson was not seeking a traditional career: He wanted to become a cartoonist. Her family did not attend her wedding.
She was elected as a senator to Ireland's upper house, Seanad. In 1971, according to her biographers, “holy war” broke out between Robinson and the Irish hierarchy when she unsuccessfully introduced a bill to legalize contraception. By this stage she had reconciled with her family, but relations were endangered, the book says, when Robinson was denounced at her parents' local church in Ballina. Perhaps naively, not understanding the full weight of the Church's objection to artificial contraception, Robinson traveled to Dundalk to visit William Cardinal Conway in a bid to have him “accept the integrity” of her position. When he refused, Robinson branded him “a bully of the Church.”
The biographers, describing how Archbishop McQuaid outlined his objections to Robinson's contraceptive proposal, make a claim that many would find absurd: “If he had stuck an effigy of Mary Robinson on every church door and invited people to stick pins in it, he could hardly have targeted her more specifically.”
It was a time of great hurt—the hate mail that was sent to the Bourke family may have further increased Robinson's antipathy to elements within the Church. She continued practicing as a barrister and in 1986, she took a case to the European Court of Human Rights which abolished the “illegitimacy” status for children born out of wedlock.
Her liberal credentials were firmly established by 1990, when she was asked by the Labor Party to stand as their candidate in the presidential election. She won the contest in November 1990 with an overwhelming majority—her main opponent had been discredited earlier in the campaign when it became known that he had lied to the Irish public.
Unlike the United States, the office of president in Ireland carries little executive power and is seen as a mainly ceremonial post. But Robinson played politics like no other president before her.
Many Catholics said she demeaned the office and used it for her own ends, particularly in securing her U.N. human rights post. Almost every time she visited New York, she visited the U.N. headquarters, and the United Nations—its potential, its failures, and its future—were a frequent theme in her speeches and interviews. She had a troubled relationship with the Irish government, particularly as she went against its wishes when meeting controversial figures such as Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Fein, the political wing of Northern Ireland's largest terrorist organization, the Irish Republican Army.
One of her last acts as president in 1997 was a visit to Rome to address a U.N. conference on International Women's Day, during which she met the Pope in the Vatican. It proved to be one of her more controversial meetings. It was claimed that the ad hoc nature of Robinson's visit showed disrespect to the pontiff and that she broke Vatican protocol by not being properly dressed during the papal audience.
In the biography, Robinson is quoted as saying: “When I recognized that, I was delighted that I had taken the decision that I had. Far from feeling awkward about it, I felt this was what I was about.” Father David O'Hanlon, who was in Rome at the time and who provoked controversy in Ireland by describing the president's gesture as “cheap,” said the biography has reinforced his view of Robinson's actions.
“There was much made of the fact that no offense was taken in the Vatican, but that does not mean offense was not intended,” Father O'Hanlon told the Register. “She did not have to wear a veil; Vatican protocol does not require it. She could have steered the middle ground as Hillary Clinton and Nancy Reagan did, not wearing veils, but suitably dressed. Mary Robinson's actions were calculated to make a point.... She claimed to promote equality and pluralism, but she exploited her visit to Rome in a way that was offensive to the Catholic community—it was an action that was non-pluralistic and non-inclusive.”
In a graver matter, Robinson's view that abortion be legalized goes against Church teaching, set out most recently in the papal encyclical Evangelium Vitae, which says Catholics must oppose the legalization of direct abortion under all circumstances.
The one area where she and Church agencies share the most in common is in the area of development and other assistance to the Third World. She is credited with bringing the Somalian famine in 1992 to the attention of the international community, but it was a priest who helped her do this. At a briefing with Irish aid agencies, she asked “What can I do to help?” to which Father Aengus Finucane of the relief agency Concern, replied, “Why don't you go there yourself, President?”
While her work highlighting famine in Africa helped secure her U.N. post, there is no doubt that the aid agencies benefited from her interest. Indeed, there was competition among them for her attention. According to the biography: “Justin Kilcullen of Trocaire [the Irish hierarchy's overseas aid agency] admits cheerfully that he created a bit of a scene in the Foreign Affairs Department in 1994 when he heard Mary was going to visit the camps run by other agencies at the borders of Rwanda. ‘I went in banging the table,’ says Kilcullen. ‘I said, She's going to Zaire where GOAL is. She is going to Tanzania where Concern is. She has to go to Rwanda itself where Trocaire is.’”
It is in this area that Mary Robinson made the biggest impact. It is thanks to her, working in tandem with Irish aid agencies, most of them Catholic, that the governmental post of Minister for Development was recreated and that Irish overseas aid has increased.
Cian Molloy writes from Dublin, Ireland.
----- EXCERPT: Former president, now U.N. human rights head, calls it 'healthier, more honest' ----- EXTENDED BODY: Cian Molloy ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: As School Choice Gets a Breather Momentum for the Idea is Growing DATE: 11/22/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 22-28, 1998 ----- BODY:MILWAUKEE—To pay tuition for her three children at St. Albert School in Milwaukee, Linda Cruz begged, borrowed, and worked overtime. But this year, because of Wisconsin's school-voucher program, the full-time crane factory worker can “be more of a mom,” she says.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Nov. 9 let stand the Wisconsin program, which offers tax-supported tuition aid to low-income students in Milwaukee. Church-state separation organizations had launched a legal challenge.
“I struggled for many years to keep my kids in there,” says Cruz, a member of St. Albert Parish. “It's because the education is just perfect for them. I've tried to put my kids in public school. They flunked and could not even read.”
Though the debate over vouchers is far from over, parent-business coalitions in a handful of other cities are trying to match Milwaukee's success. Catholic officials across the nation have plenty at stake. And though they have not taken the lead in school choice campaigns, they play a key supportive role.
In June, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the 3-year-old voucher program is based not on peddling religious belief, but on parental choice. That is the ruling the U.S. Supreme Court refused to revisit. But the high court decision came not on legal merit, but because no other court in the nation has rendered a conflicting judgment on vouchers. If and when that conflict comes, perhaps over another state's law, the justices probably will rule definitively on school choice.
Those challenging the Wisconsin law include the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the National Education Association, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). These groups argue that the program supports religious catechesis with public funds. The Milwaukee program provides tuition vouchers of up to $4,900 per year per child for use at any school. To qualify, a family of four can earn no more than about $26,000 annually.
Now, 7,500 low-income students take advantage of the program. Most are minorities and most attend religious schools. Almost half of the 88 participating institutions are Catholic.
Walter Jackson Williams III, a 17-year-old senior at Messmer High School, had his full tuition of $4,800 paid this year by the school choice program. “It has helped me and lots of other people I know get an education that would be hard to come by,” says Williams. “If we had gone to public school, we would have missed some of the positive influences, things we experience at Messmer. Some people may have gotten into trouble.”
Williams plans to study political science and journalism at Marquette University. Gail Beanland, Williams'mother, suspects her son would have achieved academically wherever he went to school.
“I'm not going to say public schools aren't good,” says Beanland, a divorced parent who receives federal disability aid because of a job injury. “I just wanted something better, a better environment for him.”
The school aid program may help Messmer continue its rejuvenation. The inner-city school, founded in 1929, had its heyday in the 1950s and '60s. Enrollment declined in the 1980s.
But Messmer is thriving again. This year, the school grew by 16 percent, the largest increase in enrollment of any school in the region. Civic officials are pointing to it as a yardstick of efficiency. Unlike many Milwaukee public high schools, which feature armed police, Messmer manages to avert inner-city woes and produce top-notch graduates. Of a student body of 355, 190 pay tuition with vouchers.
“There have always been kids who were afraid to apply because they were afraid they could not afford the tuition,” says Capuchin Brother Bob Smith, principal of Messmer. “A lot of people said the culture of a school would change if we brought those students in. But our program has not changed one iota in terms of behavioral, social, spiritual, or academic qualities. If anything, they have increased. The key is high expectations.”
Some Catholic schools are facing a sort of chaos intensified by the choice program. At St. Albert School on the south side, 189 of the 210 students receive vouchers for the $900-per-year tuition. Most of the student body is Hispanic, with the rest is made up of Hmongs and African Americans. One in 10 children speaks no English. More than 100 students speak limited English.
“The vouchers provide an opportunity for families who are low income to meet their educational desires,” says Julia Hutchinson, principal of St. Albert's for 11 years. “But it's challenging for the teachers. Kids coming out of public school are behind. Behavior can be a problem. Everything that is allowed in public school is not allowed here.”
Advocates for school choice in Wisconsin succeeded in part because of uncommon partnerships. In Wisconsin, backers of the voucher program include low-income parents, the Wisconsin Catholic Conference, African American separatists, conservative businessmen, a school board member who calls himself a “leftist,” libertarians, Latino activists, and a retired public schools chief. “This succeeded because people decided to have parents be lead-advocates for themselves instead of having people do it for them,” says Zakiya Courtney of Marquette University's Institute for the Transformation of Learning.
Howard Fuller, Milwaukee's superintendent of public schools for four years, became one of the primary backers of school choice. In 1995 he resigned in disgust, convinced that the system suffered from inherent flaws that left some students poorly served.
Fuller expects foes of vouchers will attempt sabotage. Some legislators may act to impose a slew of regulations on participating schools. “It gets into the political realm,” Fuller says. “We will always have to be vigilant about that.”
The Archdiocese of Milwaukee is part of the coalition that obtained school choice, but was not out front. Organizers like Courtney and Fuller say that no one wanted the effort to be seen as a “Catholic movement.” The archdiocese tends 158 schools with just more than 40,000 students. It is by far the largest private educator in the state. Thirty-seven Catholic schools take part in the voucher program.
“We supported the program as it went through the legislature,” says Jon Huebscher, director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference. “We were trying to make it as palatable to religious schools as possible.”
Despite objections from the Church, legislators amended the school choice law, allowing students to opt out of religious activity.
The most ardent supporters of school choice in Wisconsin have been a group of business owners fed up with the quality of job seekers.
In the early 1990s, the businesses amassed a private financial aid fund. The business owners wanted to inject competition into the world of education, convinced that public schools would respond by improving. “We are talking about the education of children here,” says John Stollenwerk, a shoemaker and fund co-chairman. “This is not selling shoes or airline seats. It is something much more important. We have to do what works.”
At the state capitol in Madison, legislators could not help take notice when the business lobby made school choice its top priority for 1995. The aid fund also helped build a constituency of low-income parents who were sold on school choice and let their lawmakers hear about it.
The U.S. Supreme Court's Nov. 9 action is not the last word on the constitutionality of school choice. Appeals went through state channels to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Foes have other avenues of protest. “As night follows day, the next level is that the ACLU or teachers' unions will go to federal court to try to get it knocked out,” says Robert Destro of the law school at The Catholic University of America. “In the long run, I think the school choice side will prevail, but it will be a long time.”
If the issue returns to the current Supreme Court, Destro foresees a close vote, with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor as the deciding voice. Chris Wolfe, a political scientist at Marquette, also predicts a 5-4 split, with school choice coming out on top.
In this century, Supreme Court cases on education have alternately favored and hampered private schools. In 1922, the court overturned an Oregon law that would have banned private schools. Beginning in the 1940s and through the 1970s, the court “got more serious about secularizing public schools,” Wolfe says.
But in three cases between 1983 and 1993, the court upheld public aid to special students at religious schools. In those rulings, the justices said that religion was incidental to the purpose of the programs. Last year, the court ruled that public special education teachers can travel to religious schools to aid children.
Legal fights over tuition vouchers are under way in Arizona, Maine, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Puerto Rico. Legislatures of about half the states have considered voucher programs in recent years. A new ballot measure may come in the next few years in California, says Phillip Jordan.
Jordan, a 30-year veteran of the Los Angeles School District, now helps the Archdiocese of Los Angeles compile a financial aid endowment for Catholic schools. Since 1988, the archdiocese has collected $94 million, the largest fund of its kind in the nation.
In 10 years, the archdiocese has granted $24 million in financial aid to 32,500 needy students. As hefty as this fund sounds, Jordan says it covers less than half the need.
“We would applaud any effort to create new revenues through vouchers or whatever means,” he says.
In 1993, California voters rejected a school choice initiative. But the past five years of private scholarships and success stories is winning converts, especially among low-income parents, Jordan insists.
Meanwhile, a California business coalition has pledged to help some 3,000 needy urban students through private schools.
Smaller business-backed school choice funds also exist in New York, Indianapolis, San Antonio, and Baltimore. As in Wisconsin and California, the funds are seen as stopgap aid until voucher programs succeed.
Ed Langlois writes from Portland, Oregon.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Edward Langlois ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Lowdown on Real Love DATE: 11/22/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 22-28, 1998 ----- BODY:Mary Beth Bonacci
Mary Beth Bonacci is a popular youth speaker and the founder of Real Love Inc., a program to help educate and challenge young people to live chastely. She is the author of Real Love (Ignatius Press), a question-and-answer book on chastity for teen-agers and their parents, and We're on a Mission From God , a “Generation X” guide to Pope John Paul II and the Catholic Church. She is probably the only person to have appeared on both MTV and EWTN, the Catholic cable network. Her video, Sex & Love: What's a Teen to Do ?, is a dynamic presentation to teens about the “do's” of chastity. Recently she spoke with Register correspondent Mark Brumley.
Are young people receptive when you speak with them about chastity, or is this, as some people have described it, a “Lost Generation?”
They're extraordinarily receptive. They're only lost because no one is showing them the way. When someone comes and explains things to them clearly and honestly, they're extraordinarily receptive. It's standing ovations, they write me letters, it's amazing.
What is the reason for that receptivity?
I think there are two reasons. One, they know something's wrong. The sexual revolution didn't work; they're the ones who have inherited this mess and they know that that's not the way to go. That leads to reason No. 2, which is that my message is different from that of some chastity speakers. I base everything on not what can happen, the consequences, the horrible things, but on love, and understanding that chastity is a way to find and live love. That's positive, it's what they really want. They respond.
How do many adults respond to young people regarding sexuality today?
We leave them to decide for themselves; we don't give them guidance or tools to decide with. You have a generation of adults who don't know what to say because we were never told. The sexual revolution rolled around and everyone said, ‘Make up your own mind.’ So that now all many parents can say is, ‘Just don't do it—but I don't know why you shouldn't except that all these bad things can happen to you.’ As true as that is, it's not terribly effective.
It often comes down to ‘Don't do it because I said so.’ Right?
Exactly. Or even, “Don't do it because it's a sin, but I can't exactly tell you what sin is.” No one's giving [young people] adequate answers and guidance, and something to get excited about.
What are common misconceptions that young people have about sex and the Church's teaching about it?
That the Church teaches that sex is somehow bad or dirty or evil. That's why they respond when I give them true Church teaching, which is that sex is beautiful, it's sacred and holy. I spend a lot of time helping young people understand why sex is holy and how incredible it is, how it's this ultimate gift of one person to another and how new life comes from it. I try to help them see that when you take sex out of context and use it in a context you're not supposed to, it can do damage. I say that it's like using an antique vase to jack up a car. It's not that the antique vase is bad—it's a good thing—but you're using it in the wrong context and that destroys it.
You distinguish between chastity and abstinence: what's the difference?
I don't like the word “abstinence.” I have no problem with abstinence education, abstinence programs, but I don't like the word. It's negative, it's about what you're not doing. It's not even necessarily about sex. Fridays during Lent are days of abstinence for Catholics—not abstinence from sex, but from meat.
You can't get enthused about the word abstinence. I love the word “chastity.” There's a generation that shies away from it because the word was abused in the '40s, '50s and into the '60s. It came to mean repression or the idea that sex is bad. That's not the case at all. Chastity means that sex speaks a language. It speaks the language of permanent, committed love. It has a meaning, it has a logic. It's positive: chastity means respecting the language of sex so that we can find love in our lives. Part of chastity is abstaining—abstaining from speaking that language when you can't speak it honestly—which is outside of marriage. But it's only part of it.
Are young people looking for chastity?
They don't all know it, but they are. What got me into this work in the first place was realizing that teen-agers, especially teen-age girls, are not having sex because they can't control themselves or because they're incredibly curious. They're sexually active because they're looking for love. And they're not finding it in sexual activity. But as long as all we're doing is saying, “don't do it so you don't get diseases, or so you don't get pregnant,” it's not going to work.
Sure, young people are afraid of getting a disease or getting pregnant—well, some are afraid and some aren't. But whatever they're afraid of, they're more afraid of not being loved. So if all you're doing is taking away the one thing they think is going to get them love, it isn't going to work. But if you say, “No! Here, look! This is where you're going to find real love,” it will.
How do you answer those who say that while they're not for teen-age sex, they think teen-agers should be told how to avoid pregnancy, since kids are “going to do it anyway”?
I answer that simply: cattle are “going to do it anyway.” They have no control. We have different ways of handling cattle because we can't keep them away from each other. So we perform a crude form of surgery on them. Now do we really believe that about our teen-agers—that they can't control themselves, that they're “going to do it anyway”? On so many levels, that's a dangerous message. Do we think they don't hear that? “You're going to do it anyway.” So they think, “Oh, OK, I guess I am.”
From Mary Beth Bonacci's book,
Like every unmarried Christian, I had struggled with questions. How far is too far? How do I know when I am in love? How do I say “no” nicely? ... Thus, what I heard in my senior year in those chastity talks enthralled me. The word “chastity” brought my understanding of the gift of sexuality to a whole new level. This was not just about avoiding unpleasant consequences. This was a complete “owner's manual” for our bodies. This was about understanding, finding and living love!
When I was in high school, if they had said that there are some teen-agers who are ready for sex and some who aren't, I would have raised my hand to be in the ready line. Who wouldn't? So it's dangerous on that level. It's also very dangerous as a way of trying to protect young people. These devices which supposedly make them safe, don't. When you look at their failure rates, you see they don't work very well. The condom has a 31% failure rate in preventing AIDS and even worse in preventing other diseases. Not to mention the fact that these things can't protect young people emotionally and spiritually. The emotional and spiritual consequences of teen sexual activity, I am convinced, are more severe than the physical. The impact of teen sex on young people's emotions, their ability to date well, on their ability to make a good marriage decision which affects the next generation, on their relationship with God—those bad consequences you can't protect them from. None of this is to say that I think young people shouldn't know the consequences—they should and I tell them the prevalence of sexually transmitted disease, we talk about teen pregnancy, we talk about the emotional consequences and the spiritual consequences. I'm just careful to put it in the context of what happens when we abuse something beautiful.
What about the media, young people, and sex?
The single biggest problem is the fact that across the board, on every TV show I watch that features indoor plumbing—which means every show not depicting life in the 1800s—every show that features single people, depicts them as having sex with virtually every person they date. It's a given. This is on the most popular shows and it's really a fairly new development. You didn't see it in the '60s.
In the '70s, you got the shows with the side characters who were sleazes and it was the big joke that they were promiscuous. Now, the central characters on the show are promiscuous and they're not portrayed as such; they're portrayed as normal. I find that very disturbing because it's happening on otherwise very entertaining, very interesting shows.
How do parents handle that? These TV shows are part of the ubiquitous popular culture.
There's a two-pronged approach. There are two different assaults on young people when it comes to this. One is actual sexual activity—seeing things of a graphic sexual nature. You'll see more of that in the movies; you might see borderline things on television. The second is something like we're talking about—on a Friends or a Seinfeld where you don't actually see them do anything but it is just assumed that they do. Now with the first situation—graphic sexual information—at all costs they should not see it. It's dangerous and damaging. It imprints on the brain in ways not many other things do and it will come back when they don't want it. The second kind of influence you get on Friends or Seinfeld. I have absolutely no problem with sheltering kids from those shows; I think it's an excellent idea. However, given the fact that the chain is only as strong as the weakest parent, you can count on the fact that your teen-agers are probably going to see those shows somewhere. They need to know how to watch critically. I think parents need to teach them, not by letting them watch those shows but by periodically watching something together and saying, “What's wrong with this? What's going to happen because of it?” They're going to need these skills in life because they'll see this stuff. However you do it, give young people the skills to analyze popular culture and to view it critically. A lot of times these show unwittingly make our point. I watch Friends because I know many of the teens I talk to watch it. You see clearly these massively promiscuous people who've slept with everyone they've ever dated and then suddenly when they're dating they sleep with somebody else and it makes the whole relationship fall apart. Why? You can ask those questions. It's amazing how [these shows] won't mean to but they'll make our point if your eyes are open wide enough to see it.
What about your experience with single young adults? What do you tell them, especially if they've been sexually active?
There's kind of a progression. In junior high, you get a lot of “When is it OK to kiss somebody? When is it OK to go on a date?” Certainly, sexual activity is creeping down into those ages but it's at high school where [if they've been sexually active] they start to say, “How can I start over?” By single adulthood, they're saying more articulately than the high school students, “Are there support groups for adults who want to live [chastely]? Where can we turn? What can we do to recapture this, to embrace this?”
Some people talk about “secondary virginity.”
I don't use the term—not that there's anything wrong with it; I find it simpler to talk about chastity and make it clear that chastity is about the future, beginning today. Those who are starting over shouldn't have a different label on their heads. I just tell them virginity is about the past, it can't be changed. Chastity is about the future and it's wide open. If you're living a life of chastity, it's no one's business about what happened in the past. I think it's extraordinarily important to stress that chastity is about the future; it's not an “I made a mistake so it's too late for me” kind of issue.
There's a perception many parents have that sending their children to Catholic schools will solve their problems regarding teens and sex. What do you say?
I'd call that passing the buck. Parents are the primary educators of their children and I think that the whole “sex education establishment” has taken that burden from them. Parents have this attitude that, “Well, it's a difficult issue to deal with and now I don't have to—the school will. And because it's a Catholic school, it will all be fine.” Wrong. Children need to hear the facts of life from their parents. It's a personal matter, it's private, it's sacred and the home is a sacred space. And the parent child-relationship is a sacred relationship. I think the schools have a twofold role. One is to help the parents, especially in the elementary grades, to support them, to teach them what the Church teaches and why, to teach them about the development of their children—what they're prepared for, at what age. Then, I think that the school has a responsibility to children to inculcate virtue and among those virtues is chastity. I think on the junior high and high school level, schools need to be promoting chastity. Helping children understand how to date well, to understand what the consequences of unchastity are—that's fine.
But the real “sex education”—plumbing stuff—I really believe needs to come from the parents.
How would you sum up your message about chastity?
It all boils down to love, and love means wanting what's best for the other person. Once we really understand that sex speaks this language—the language of “I give myself to you forever”—and that outside that context it causes damage, everything else falls into place. Sex outside of marriage is not looking out for what's best for the other person. It's putting that person at physical, emotional, and spiritual risk. Chastity is love; chastity means looking at this other person and saying, “I want what's best for you. Sure, I'd like to do this; sure, it would feel good. But because it's not what's best for you, I'm not going to.” Chastity leads to love, helps us date better, helps us make better marriage decisions, helps us find love; it's about love.
Mary Beth Bonacci
Personal:
Born 1963. Single. Full-time writer and speaker on chastity since 1986. Founder and director of Real Love Productions, an organization devoted to upholding and disseminating the message of chastity. Holds a bachelor's degree in organizational communications from the University of San Francisco and a master's in the theology of marriage and the family from the John Paul II Institute in Washington, D.C.
Accomplishments:
Author of two books (We're on a Mission from God and Real Love , both published by Ignatius Press); writer of a regularly syndicated newspaper column, and consultant to the national Life Teen program. Speaker at 1993 World Youth Day in Denver. Has developed numerous videos, including a series, entitled Real Love , which is currently in release. Her video Sex and Love: What's a Teenager to Do? was awarded the 1996 Crown Award for Best Youth Curriculum.
—Mark Brumley
For more information, call Real Love Inc. at 602-854-1594.
----- EXCERPT: Why young people respond to chastity-promoter's message ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mark Brumley ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Younger Catholics Staying in the Church DATE: 11/22/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 22-28, 1998 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—In a major new study of post-baby boom Catholics ages 20 to 39, researchers have found nine in 10 people who were confirmed as adolescents have kept the faith of their youth, and three in four said they could not imagine belonging to any other Church.
The findings, reported Nov. 6 at the annual joint meeting of the Religious Research Association and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, stand in stark contrast to a similar study of mainline Protestants finding large numbers abandoning the Church as young adults.
The new study also found Catholic identity remains strong despite high rates of intermarriage.
While denominational boundaries may be vanishing among conservative and liberal Protestants, there is little evidence of a Protestant-Catholic melting pot, researchers found.
“I went into this study... with the idea the Catholic scene is going to replay the mainline scene,” said Dean Hoge, a Catholic University of America sociologist involved in both studies. “It took me by surprise.”
Hoge and colleagues William Dinges of Catholic University, Notre Dame Sister Mary Johnson of Emmanuel College in Boston, and Juan Gonzalez Jr. of California State University at Hayward conducted telephone interviews of 427 non-Hispanic Catholics and 421 Latino Catholics in 1997.
In the 1990 study of Protestants, Hoge, Benton Johnson of the University of Oregon and Donald Luidens of Hope College in Holland, Mich., interviewed 500 people, ages 33 to 42, who were confirmed in Presbyterian Churches in the 1950s and 1960s. Only 29% remained active Presbyterians. Twenty-three percent joined other Churches and 48% were classified as “unchurched,” meaning they were either unaffiliated or attended church fewer than six times a year.
In the new study of Catholics, Dinges reported, “First, there is no evidence that young adult Catholics today are a generation of irreligious scoffers.”
Despite an intermarriage rate of 50% for non-Hispanic Catholics and 24% for Latino Catholics, only 10% of the respondents reported leaving Catholicism, and of that number only 4% reported they are non-religious, the researchers said. Six percent left for other Christian Churches.
Three-quarters of non-Hispanic Catholics and 81% of Hispanic Catholics said they could not imagine being anything other than Catholic. And more than two-thirds of each group said there is something very special about being Catholic which you can't find in other religions.
In defining some elements of their faith, about nine in 10 current Catholic respondents said the bread and wine actually becomes the body and blood of Christ during Mass. Nearly nine in 10 said Catholics have a responsibility to end racism and more than three-quarters said they have a duty to close the gap between the rich and the poor.
Johnson said some religion scholars, who predicted as many as 50% of young adults would no longer consider themselves Catholic, were “stunned” by the results.
The 10% of those contacted for the study who are no longer Catholic “are more theologically conservative, less individualistic, and less relativistic than the Catholics,” reported Hoge.
The researchers said this discovery “was an unexpected finding” because the earlier research on young adult Protestants had brought exactly the opposite result—those who had left the denomination they were raised in “were less conservative and more relativistic in religious beliefs.”
“The non-Catholics in the present study were more firmly Christian than the Catholics, not less so,” the team reported. “They have not fallen away from the Christian faith; rather they have switched Churches or kept a personal religion while rejecting Catholic churchgoing.”
Interfaith marriage was the main reason most ex-Catholics gave for having left the Church.
Among those who remain Catholic, 75% of the Euros and 81% of the Latinos agreed with the statement, “I cannot imagine myself being anything other than Catholic.”
However, 64% agreed that “one can be a good Catholic without going to Mass,” although Church law says Catholics are obliged to worship every Sunday and on certain holy days.
In addition, 87% thought the Church “should allow women greater participation in all ministries,” although recent Church statements have called the exclusion of women from priestly ministry an infallible teaching pertaining to the deposit of faith.
While 55% of the current Catholics reported attending Mass weekly or at least twice a month, only 37% of the Euros and 42% of the Latinos said they had gone to confession within the past two years.
In response to a series of other questions on prayer or devotional activities within the past two years, responses included:
• Kept religious images in the home: Latinos 83%, Euros 61%.
• Wore medals, scapulars, or other devotional items: Latinos 70%, Euros 51%.
• Said the rosary: Latinos 64%, Euros 46%.
• Read the Bible at home: Latinos 58%, Euros 53%.
• Made the Way of the Cross: Latinos 44%, Euros 29%. (RNS—Religious News Service and CNS—Catholic News Service)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Dallas Bishop Suspends Father Ken Roberts DATE: 11/22/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 22-28, 1998 ----- BODY:DALLAS—Bishop Charles Grahmann of Dallas suspended 68- year-old Father Kenneth Roberts from the active priesthood Nov. 13 after the priest disregarded orders to discontinue a national online ministry, which received as many as 50,000 hits a day and included work with Catholic young people.
Bishop Grahmann had wanted the priest to end the ministry for some time because of several accusations of improper sexual behavior dating to the '70s, including one case the diocese settled out of court for $30,000. Because of those past incidents Roberts had been required since 1995 not to work with adolescents or men younger than 30.
A spokesman for the diocese, Lisa LeMaster, said that Roberts was warned in July, August, and October to end an Internet ministry on AOL, including a cyberspace club for young Catholics interested in vocations. LeMaster said that Roberts had been given a deadline of Nov. 5 but had not complied.
Suspension from the active priesthood does not mean that Roberts is returned to the lay state. Rather, he is forbidden to celebrate Mass, perform any other sacraments, or wear clerical garb. In order to avoid the implication that he is a priest in good standing he is also forbidden to use the title “Father.”
Roberts became nationally well-known as a result of an autobiographical book, From Playboy to Priest and was in demand as a speaker and pilgrimage leader. He also wrote audio and video tapes and magazine articles about reported visions of Mary in Medjugorje.
The dioceses of Dallas has also requested that his television shows be removed from EWTN. (Staff)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: U.S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 11/22/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 22-28, 1998 ----- BODY:Fox to Catholics—No Apologies?
According to the Washington Post, it did. It was reporting on the recent episode of the show about a nun suing the Church after being forced out of the religious life for violating her vow of celibacy. The show, apart from its premise, offended Catholics by casting pedophilia by priests and lesbianism by nuns as commonplace. It also featured a priest who videotaped confessions.
Rick Henshaw of the Catholic League was quoted as telling the Washington Post that the network had promised that, “they would see that this kind of thing does not happen again. We were quite pleased with their forthright response.... They said they totally understood and totally sympathized, and promised to monitor the show more closely.”
According to the Hollywood Reporter, however, no assurance was made. It said sources at Fox “merely said—in an off-the-record conversation—that they were sensitive to the Catholic League's concerns, but weren't issuing any apologies or assurances.”
Catholic News Service reported Nov. 10 that Fox's new official response to Catholic concerns about the show was “no comment.”
Nuns Are Sports Fans, Too
The story noted that Catholic nuns from the Sisters of St. Joseph order in Boston had recently “described their obsession with the Red Sox, admitting that they frequently call in to sports talk radio and get rowdy at the games. One nun said the sisters especially enjoy dogging former Red Sox players like Jose Canseco: ‘It is not un-Christian to boo,’ said one.”
The report also said, “The sisters of the Precious Blood order in Edmonton, Alberta, believe they were instrumental earlier in the year in saving Edmonton's hockey team, the Oilers, by praying that the team would not be relocated.”
An archdiocesan spokesman there confirmed that members of the order are hockey fans. He also said the sisters enjoy booing the Calgary Flames.
New Latin Mass Center to Open in South Jersey
The group plans to take over a property which was owned for three decades, said the paper, by “a band of lay people who called themselves monks but were not associated with the Catholic Church.”
“Now Opus Mariae is converting the 34,000-square-foot property into a home for Philadelphia-area seminarians, priests who join the association, and others who want to learn more about Latin rituals,” said the paper. Renovations should take another six months, it said.
Founded by Father William Ashley, the 2-year-old organization, which has some 4,500 supporters nationwide and 200 locally, will move its headquarters to the renovated site. The diocese and the local government have both been very helpful to the new group in expediting its move to the facility, said the paper.
----- EXCERPT: Excerpts from select publications ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Catholic and Protestant Scholars Speculate On Task of Bringing Social Teaching to Life DATE: 11/22/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 22-28, 1998 ----- BODY:GRAND RAPIDS, Mich.—A landmark conference brought together Catholic and Protestant thinkers Oct. 30-31 to reflect on the past century of Christian social teaching, focusing on the remarkable achievements of Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903) and Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920), a Calvinist theologian and Dutch politician.
The conference underscored the basic compatibility of Christian social teaching with liberal institutions—democracy, free markets, cultural pluralism—but also raised unanswered questions about the practical difficulties of living the Christian faith in contemporary free societies.
The conference, entitled “A Century of Christian Social Teaching: The Legacy of Leo XIII and Abraham Kuyper,” was sponsored by the Acton Institute and Calvin College, a Protestant theological college and seminary. It was held in Grand Rapids, Mich., where both institutions are based.
The conference boasted influential figures from both the Catholic and Protestant world, including Templeton Prize winners Chuck Colson and Michael Novak, Mark Noll, Fr. Avery Dulles, and Archbishop F.X. NguyÍn Van Thu‚n, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. It was held this year to mark the centenary of Kuyper's 1898 Stone Lectures at Princeton, a series in which he outlined his vision of a Christian social order.
Pope Leo XIII began modern Catholic social teaching – theological reflection on the political, economic, and cultural ordering of society – with his famous 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum. In the same year, Kuyper delivered a major address on poverty that paid tribute to Leo's work. Yet conference participants judged that Kuyper's achievement, based on a Calvinist framework, eventually reached many of the same conclusions and principles as Leo XIII. Reflecting on the degree of agreement gave hope that contemporary Christians will find areas of common witness in the field of social teaching.
In fact, the areas of general agreement for the conference participants will not surprise those who have followed the work of the Acton Institute, which works to advance the compatibility between Christian social teaching and classical liberalism, as understood to mean political liberty and free-market economics.
Speakers of both traditions emphasized the centrality of human dignity and human freedom, and the need for the state to leave room for human creativity and solidarity.
Mark Noll, author of the widely acclaimed book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, focused on the the human person as key. “Much of the power of Kuyper and Leo's work derives from their attractive picture of the ways that a Church-anchored social policy preserved the dignity of God and the well-being of humans in ways that neither the varieties of socialism nor the plans of individualistic liberalism could.”
Noll was one of several speakers who raised the thorny question of whether free—and often prosperous—societies are hospitable environments for the development of virtue. He asserted, “It is clearer now in 1998 than it was in 1989, at the point of collapse of state communist regimes, that mere markets and freedom by themselves cannot revive economic life and restore societies. A wide range of commentators seem now to agree that for these goals to be reached it will take markets with morality, enterprise with ethics, and opportunity with responsibility to nurture an improved economic and social life.”
Professor Bob Goudzwaard of Amsterdam took the question further: “Now the greatest threat comes from a far too dominant economic sphere and the corresponding business activities, which tend to commercialize almost all elements of human culture, infringing deeply (think of aggressive advertising campaigns) in the sphere of family life, making it very difficult to educate young children in a non-materialistic way.”
Reflecting on more than 100 years of Catholic and Protestant teaching, in the end the conference clarified perhaps the most fundamental challenge for the future: how to strengthen free markets and democracy without allowing them to dominate every aspect of society and the lives of its individual members. (Raymond de Souza)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: World Notes & Quotes DATE: 11/22/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 22-28, 1998 ----- BODY:In Rural Ireland, Church Much Stronger
Irish Archbishop Dermot Clifford said that he would like to see an increase in numbers attending confession and saying a family rosary, but he was quoted saying, “The prevailing wisdom that the Catholic Church is in terminal decline is given the lie here and in rural Ireland in particular.”
Conducted by Irish Marketing Surveys, the attendance study found that the national average of 65% of Catholics attending Sunday Mass was significantly different in rural archdioceses, like the one including much of Tipperary and Limerick. There, even the least-interested age group—18 to 34 year olds—almost met the national average, with 60% attending. For other age groups, the number was 94%.
Other rural findings: 65% of adult Irish Catholics pray daily, and 70% use holy water frequently. Nearly all were faithful to the magisterium: only 5% thought priests should be allowed to marry, and only 3% even considered dissenting on Church teaching that women can't be ordained.
Hit Pop Singer says “Abortion is Murder”
The interviewer asked her if she wasn't a little frightened by the violence of “right-wing Christian fundamentalists” who might not like the cover of Merchant's album, where the singer is dressed as a nun. The interviewer even mentioned the recent killing of an abortion doctor as cause for alarm.
Merchant responded that she grew up Catholic and admires the Church, has great respect for nuns, and that she was not, “one of those moderns who totally discounts the convictions of thousands of people who go to their death for those beliefs.”
“Don and Karen Peris, who play on my album, are devout Catholics. I don't mess with that!” she told the paper.
She added: “And, as for the murder you mention... of course, I don't take things like that lightly.” Nevertheless, “it is criminal that so many out-spoken feminists, and members of the ‘pro-choice’ movement, deny the argument that life begins at conception.
“As much as I am annoyed by the tactics of the so-called pro-lifers, I'm also annoyed by the tactics of the ‘pro-choice’ people.... They both have valid arguments and in the work I've done with the pro-choice movement, I'm the one who stands up and says ‘personally, I think abortion is murder and that's why I've never had an abortion.’ But most of my friends have had abortions and I don't judge them on that. So all I'm saying is, let's not stifle the argument, let's not try to silence one side of the debate. Too many in the pro-choice movement do just that, shouting down the opposite point of view.”
----- EXCERPT: Excerpts from select publications ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Bishops Move to Avoid Infractions over Communion DATE: 11/22/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 22-28, 1998 ----- BODY:LONDON—In a year when U.S. President Clinton's reception of holy Communion sparked a worldwide controversy, bishops in Britain and Ireland have published a document to clear up public confusion that has arisen over similar infractions in their own countries.
One Bread, One Body, issued last month by the Bishops' Conferences of England and Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, calls on the faithful to refresh and renew their belief in the holy Mass, firmly restates the Church's Eucharistic teaching and discipline, and stresses the need for other Christian denominations to respect Catholic teaching on inter-communion.
Earlier this year, Irish President Mary McAleese caused a storm when she received communion at a Church of Ireland service. Even mild-mannered Cahal Cardinal Daly, the retired Irish primate, admitted she was wrong, although he also said she had been placed in the awkward position of avoiding an appearance of rudeness to her hosts.
He called on Protestant churches not to pressure Catholics on such occasions; this plea is reiterated in the new document.
In England, a similar controversy arose concerning Prime Minister Tony Blair, a committed Anglican whose wife, Cherie, is Catholic. In the summer of 1996, reports of Blair's receiving Communion at a Mass in London appeared in the Catholic press. A hastily issued statement promised that he would not receive again, so as not to offend Catholics. England's Basil Cardinal Hume privately rebuked Catholic newspaper editors, asking, “One wonders what purpose running these stories served?”
Speaking at the new document's launch, Cardinal Hume said he had written to Blair, informing him that he should not receive Communion.
But the cardinal also said Blair had been entitled to receive Communion while on vacation in August in Italy, where “he couldn't get to his own church.”
“He had a spiritual need,” the cardinal said. “He believes what we believe. So he responded entirely to Catholic teaching.”
The statement, issued by Cardinal Hume as primate of England and Wales, along with Thomas Cardinal Winning, primate of Scotland, and Archbishop Sean Brady, primate of Ireland, acknowledges the pain and ecumenical difficulties which the issue raises: “We look forward to that day when all obstacles to full visible communion are overcome, and all Christians can celebrate the Eucharist together, sharing as ‘one body,’ the ‘one bread’ of the Lord.”
The bishops said the document's primary purpose was to present the Church's teaching on the mystery of the Eucharist, adding that the Mass was the hallmark of Catholic identity. They urged Catholics to renew their reverence for the mystery of the sacrament, adding that “the fundamental principle which underlies our norms, is that ‘the Eucharist is properly the sacrament of those who are in full communion with the Church’ (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1395).
“It is important that Catholics themselves understand this doctrine. We appeal in love and truth to the whole Catholic community in our countries for their faithfulness to the deepest meaning of the Mass.”
One Bread, One Body also acknowledged, “We know only too well that the Catholic Church's understanding of itself, and our convictions about who may or may not be admitted to Holy Communion, can and do cause distress to other Christians and to some Catholics.”
But it added, “It is not, however, the Church's norms on sacramental sharing which cause division: those norms are simply a reflection and consequence of the painful division already present because of our Christian disunity.
“People often ask ‘What would Jesus do?’, implying that he would offer the gift of himself to anyone who asked. Jesus himself was often the cause of division. His will was that all be one, but his teaching and action led to people going away from him. This was even true of his ‘hard saying’ on the Bread Of Life.”
Seeking to quell misunderstandings which have grown up in recent years, the document stated that the sacrificial understanding of Mass needs renewed emphasis even among Catholics. “In some Catholic circles, there can appear to be a confusion between the celebration of Mass on the one hand, and a Communion Service or ‘Celebration of the Word and Communion’ on the other.
“The Eucharist or Mass is much more than a service in which we are led in prayer, hear the Word of God and receive Holy Communion,” the document said.
It noted that there are proper occasions for Communion services, such as Good Friday or when no priest is available. But it stressed that such services in the absence of a priest are not the same as Mass. “No Communion Service can substitute for the celebration of the Eucharist, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass,” the document said.
It also outlined why it is impossible for mutual Eucharistic sharing between Catholics and Protestants. Restating Catholic teaching that only a validly ordained priest can consecrate the bread and wine, the bishops noted, “It is therefore essential that the one who presides at the Eucharist be known to be established in a sure sacramental relationship with Christ, the High Priest, through the sacrament of Holy Orders, conferred by a bishop in the recognized apostolic succession.
“The Catholic Church is unable to affirm this of those Christian communities rooted in the Reformation. Nor can we affirm that they have retained ‘the authentic and full reality of the Eucharistic mystery.”
Paul Burnell writes from England. ----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Paul Burnell ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes & Quotes DATE: 11/22/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 22-28, 1998 ----- BODY:
Hollywood vs. the Vatican?
“By far the biggest offender is Vampires,” it added, but said that the movie was so bad that Catholics probably wouldn't notice or mind the offensive references to the Vatican, the home of the story's vampire hunters.
Catholic League President William Donohue agreed. The Vatican and the Catholic Church are “treated in a rather insulting manner in John Carpenter's Vampires,” Donohue told the Philadelphia Inquirer Nov. 5. “But the reviews were so horrendous, the movie sounds so vile—the gore, the violence—I can't imagine anyone in their right mind thinking it will have an impact on culture.”
Expert Defends Pius XII, in
He didn't waste any time correcting a New York Times report. In a letter to the editor printed Nov. 5, he wrote: “A Nov. 4 news item about the Holy See's request to be involved in discussions over Jerusalem's future includes a quote in some editions from Aharon Lopez, Israel's Ambassador to the Vatican, seeking publication of all Vatican records concerning the attitude of Pope Pius XII during the Holocaust ‘to eliminate any doubt’ about his character before his beatification.
“Such a request, apart from being irrelevant to the issue of Jerusalem's future, overlooks the fact that the Holy See under Pope Paul VI opened its archives to historians and published 11 volumes of documents. This was perhaps a more comprehensive publication than that of any other prominent international agency or state for that tragic period of history.
“It appears that few authors critical of Pope Pius XII have used this collection, which documents the help the Roman Catholic Church gave to Jews during the Holocaust.”
----- EXCERPT: Excerpts from select publications ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: The Pope's Week DATE: 11/22/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 22-28, 1998 ----- BODY:AUDIENCES
Saturday Nov. 7:
Lucas Cardinal Moreira Neves, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops.
Monday, Nov. 9: Jorge Arturo Cardinal Medina Estevez, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments.
Tuesday, Nov. 10:
Archbishop Zenon Grocholewski, prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signature.
Wednesday, Nov. 11:
Archbishop Francois Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and Msgr. Diarmuid Martin, secretary of the same council.
Thursday, Nov. 12:
Archbishop Paul Josef Cordes, president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum.
Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte, archbishop of Montreal, president of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Canada, accompanied by Bishop Gerald Wiesner of Prince George, vice-president, and secretaries Fr. Emilius Goulet PSS, and Msgr. Peter Scholnenbach PH
Friday, Nov. 13:
Carlos Saul Menem, president of the Republic of Argentina, accompanied by his entourage.
Mary Robinson, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
OTHER ACTIVITIES
Monday, Nov. 9:
Approved the election of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, as vice-dean of the College of Cardinals. The election was held by the cardinals of the Order of Bishops on Nov. 6.
Tuesday, Nov. 10:
Appointed Msgr. Thomas Yeh Sheng-Nan, councilor of the apostolic nunciature in London, as apostolic nuncio in Sri Lanka, elevating him to the dignity of archbishop. The archbishop-elect was born in Kaohsiung, China, in 1941, was ordained a priest in 1971.
Wednesday, Nov. 11:
Appointed Bishop Jose Vieira de Lima TOR of Maraba, as bishop of Sao Luis de Caceres, Brazil.
Thursday, Nov. 12:
Appointed Bishop Anthony O'Connell of Knoxville, as bishop of Palm Beach
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Faithful Reason, Reasonable Faith DATE: 11/22/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 22-28, 1998 ----- BODY:Although formally addressed to the bishops of the Catholic Church, Pope John Paul II's 13th Encyclical, Fides et Ratio [“Faith and Reason”], speaks to cultural problems found far beyond the Church's boundaries. These problems revolve around a single, urgent question: Can human beings know the truth of things?
People who don't spend much (or any) time around intellectuals shake their heads and ask: Why is that even considered a question? Of course, they say, I know that some things are true. I know that that is a chair and that this is a glass of wine; that Gettysburg was fought on July 1-3, 1863, and that D-Day was June 6, 1944; that freedom is better than slavery and that children must never be tortured. There are truths of all sorts and we can know them. What's all the fuss about?
But you won't find that robust confidence in the human capacity to know the truth in the places that shape much of our high culture—our colleges and universities. And the leading skeptics about there being anything called “the truth” can be found in university philosophy departments. This, too, strikes many people as bizarre. Isn't truth-seeking what philosophy is for?
Well, yes, once upon a time. During the past two centuries, though, philosophers have been intensely preoccupied with how we can know anything, to the point where philosophy has become thinking-about-thinking-about-thinking, rather than thinking about the truth of things. This intense self-absorption has taken several forms. The most prominent today argues that truth is culturally constructed “all the way down.” There is your truth (based on your cultural conditioning) and my truth (similarly “constructed”), but there is no such thing as the truth.
All of which, John Paul II suggests, has made for immense human suffering. Ideas, as always, have consequences. If there is only your truth and my truth and neither of us recognizes a standard by which to judge whose truth is truer (so to speak), then there is only one way to settle things when we disagree: you will impose your will on me, or I will impose mine on you. Why has the history of the 20th century been replete with political violence? One crucial reason, the Pope proposes, is that philosophers have lost their nerve and their sense of vocation.
Fides et Ratio argues that it's time to recover a sense of the awe and wonder with which real philosophy begins, and to reopen the great questions that philosophy is meant to examine: Why is there something rather than nothing? How can I tell good from evil? What is happiness and what is illusion?
The human mind, the Pope suggests, has a built-in affinity for these questions. To deny that the questions are meaningful (as many contemporary philosophers do) not only demeans philosophy; it demeans the human spirit. You are greater than you imagine, John Paul is telling his fellow philosophers (and the rest of us). Recover your nerve. Don't retreat into a bunker without windows or doors. Don't prematurely close yourself to an encounter with the realm of the transcendent, with the mystery that bounds reality.
Fides et Ratio is also a challenge to Christian believers. Faith without reason risks decaying into superstition. Christian faith is something to be thought about and analyzed, not simply experienced. Here the Pope offers a powerful citation from St. Augustine: “Believing is nothing other than to think with assent. Believers are also thinkers; in believing they think and in thinking they believe. If faith does not think, it is nothing.”
It's a quote that might usefully be posted over every Catholic classroom in America, mounted over every religious education director's office, and attached to every preacher's notepad.
Fides et Ratio is also an appropriate marker for John Paul II's 20th anniversary. A pontificate that began with the great antiphon, “Be not afraid!” continues into its third decade with a related challenge: “Be not afraid of reason!” That the Catholic Church is the world's premier defender of human reason on the edge of the 21st will strike many of the makers of modern culture as ironic at best, and absurd at worst.
But as Walter Cronkite used to say, “That's the way it is.”
George Weigel is a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Handbook of Spiritual Treasures DATE: 11/22/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 22-28, 1998 ----- BODY:(Magnificat USA LLC, New York, 1998, 421 pages, $5.95)
It is not often that we get, in one slim, pocket-sized volume, the cornucopia of spiritual bonuses that comes pouring out with Magnificat for December, 1998. The volume under review is the equivalent of a daily missal for the month of December, 1998, 3/8” thick and measuring 4.5” by 6.5.” It is this, and so much more.
In the opening editorial, Father Romanus Cessario, OP, senior editor at Magnificat (and, like Magnificat editor-in chief Father Peter John Cameron, a senior writer at the Register) explains that “the French framers of Magnificat borrowed the title for this new monthly missal from the words that our Blessed Lady spoke when, already pregnant with the Infant Christ, she visited her cousin Elizabeth: ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden.’ Since its European debut in 1992, Magnificat has helped countless Christian men and women to join in Mary's canticle of praise and thanksgiving to God. Now, Advent 1998 commences the publication of this highly acclaimed, low-cost missal for use by English-speaking Catholics in North America. Its widespread success in Europe persuades its American editors that many readers will want to become part of the rapidly growing Magnificat worldwide family.”
A first glance at the attractive booklet, its front a cover reproducing a 16th century study of Boccaccino's painting of The Virgin Mother and Child in glowing colors, and its back cover unfolding in four laminated pages containing the Te Deum and the three canticles of Zechariah, (prayer for the morning), Our Lady, (prayer for the evening), and Simeon, (night prayer), leads to a quick dive into the contents.
There are antiphons, prayers, Scripture readings and commentaries for the daily Eucharist covering Sundays, feasts and weekdays. A special feature entitled “Saints of Today and Yesterday” introduces many new and unsuspected friends in the Church Triumphant, both modern and ancient, who will stand us in good stead today and tomorrow. Throughout the text at strategic points are “meditations of the day,” brief selections from such disparate writers as Guerric of Igny, Dorothy Day, Pope John Paul II, Madeleine l'Engle, Henry Suso, St. Therese of Lisieux, T.S. Eliot, Jessica Powers, and St. Catherine of Siena, to mention only a few.
Hymns, psalms and canticles, readings, intercessions and prayers, all adapted from the Liturgy of the Hours, are given for morning, evening, and night prayers, which can be used individually, or by prayer groups. Add to this: reproductions in color of great works of Christian art, one each month, paired with art essays that delight as they inform. And for music lovers, there is a bevy of hymns, some even done in Gregorian chant notation with Latin and English texts. A central section of 26 pages edged in red gives the complete Ordinary of the Mass, including the Latin for the Gloria, Creed, Our Father, and Lamb of God.
The end result of this comprehensive and exquisitely crafted work is a book of enduring beauty and integrity, directed to the spiritual joy and growth of American Catholics. The production of the American Magnificat coincides aptly with the final year of preparation for Jubilee 2000. Coming in Advent, the season when the whole world is in waiting mode, and the whole Church participating in Mary's time of expectancy “in joyful hope,” it is a symbol of that joy and hope, and points us to another world, where our deepest longings will be fulfilled.
Rich in its offering of spiritual reading from the Fathers of the Church, renowned masters and teachers of the spiritual life, and modern writers outstanding for their perceptive orthodoxy, Magnificat is of special significance for today's lay Christians. Following its simple program of prayer and reflection, we enter easily into the rhythm of the Church's life from day to day, without prejudice to the needs of our apostolates at home or abroad. And we enter into a whole new world of gladness. Such an experience is captured by the Carmelite nun, Jessica Powers, in her poem offered for meditation in the first Week of Advent. Her insight cannot fail to move us at a time when the child in the womb is kept in the forefront of our consciousness by the media. It cannot fail to delight us in a season when the divine Child in Mary's womb is the focus of our daily prayer:
I live my Advent in the womb of Mary.
And on one night when a great star swings free from its high mooring and walks down the sky to be the dot above the Christus i, I shall be born of her by blessed grace.
I walk in Mary-darkness, faith's walled place, with hope's expectance of nativity.
I knew for long she carried me and fed me, guarded and loved me, though I could not see. But only now, with inward jubilee, I come upon earth's most amazing knowledge: someone is hidden in this dark with me.
Pope John Paul II, in his apostolic letter announcing the Great Jubilee, exhorts every Christian to expect a special grace of the Lord for the Church and for the whole world (No. 55). It would seem that this book could well be the channel of such a grace.
Domincan Sister Mary Thomas Noble writes from Buffalo, N.Y.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Domincan Sister Mary Thomas Noble ----- KEYWORDS: Books -------- TITLE: Bewildering, Indispensable Original Sin DATE: 11/22/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 22-28, 1998 ----- BODY:“
Jesuit author Edward T. Oakes tries to follow Thomas Aquinas' example by setting out the arguments against original sin before he responds to them. He writes: “[H]ow can guilt, an ethical and spiritual category, be inheritable, a category drawn from nature? As with the doctrine of predestination, to which it is often married, there seems to be a kind of ‘damned if you do, damned if you don't’ aura to the theology of Original Sin: Free will may be free, declares Augustine without apparent embarrassment, only it is not free to do good.
“What is remarkable about [original sin] is how even its most ardent defenders admit its blazing paradoxicality. Reinhold Niebuhr... began by openly admitting the strange logical status of the doctrine: ‘The Christian doctrine of sin in its classical form offends both rationalists and moralists by maintaining the seemingly absurd position that man sins inevitably and by a fateful necessity but that he is nevertheless to be held responsible for actions which are prompted by an ineluctable fate.’
“[O]ne must also admit that the Bible never attributes to Adam the role of biologically tainting us with his guilt, as can perhaps best be seen in the history of Jewish interpretation of Genesis up to and just past the beginnings of the Christian era: for it was the much more common Jewish interpretation of Genesis... that the human proclivity to evil (insofar as it came from anywhere else than man's free will) was the product not of the sin of our first parents but of that strange episode narrated in Genesis 6 of the mating of ‘the daughters of men with the sons of God.’...
“It is generally believed that theological schools such as Jansenism and denominations such as Calvinism bring in their wake legions of members with withered emotional lives, censorious views of their less austere neighbors, and a bleak, nearly blasphemous, view of God's love.... And so, it would seem that Original Sin ought not be believed.
“[But] first of all, the doctrine of Original Sin is... really, when soberly examined, an inference that arises from reflection on the reality of evil when considered in the light of ethical monotheism. John Henry Newman, for one, always insisted that Original Sin is the only way believers can make sense of the world when they contrast that world to their faith in God... the doctrine of Original Sin... is a secondary implication arising from a prior belief in God's goodness and omnipotence.
“What is more, the consequences of abandoning the doctrine are nothing short of disastrous.... I am reminded in this context of a shrewd observation by Anatole France to the effect that never have so many been murdered in the name of a doctrine as in the name of the principle that human beings are naturally good.
“The reason we are drawn, despite the theory of evolution, to Augustine's and Milton's portrait of paradise before the Fall is the memory of that original justice we once had with God but lost through sin.... The term ‘Original’ Sin still retains its validity... even when applied to Adam and Eve, for the narrative definitely holds that, in St. Paul's terms, sin entered the world through the sin of our first parents and henceforth takes on the specifically human form of ‘giving in,’ of yielding to a force already heavily at work in the world of creation.
“Finally,... I would like to add my own version to this argument: to deny this doctrine is not to escape the gray doldrums of Jansenist/Calvinist Christianity, but to warp the very core of the Christian Gospel: that God so loved the world that he sent his only Son to save that world from its sin.... There is no doubt that Original Sin is a hard doctrine. For if we are infected with an original corruption to the very core of our natures, then there is a great deal of evil that cannot be uprooted.... [But] it is my deep conviction that any mitigation of the doctrine of Original Sin will prove disastrous for the health of the Church in the future....
“But as St. Paul knew, this need not be a morbid doctrine. For our diagnosis has come with a cure.... As Pascal—who can set forth in two lines what it takes other theologians two books to show—says with his usual precision: ‘... Certainly nothing offends us more rudely than this doctrine, and yet without this mystery, the most incomprehensible of all, we are incomprehensible to ourselves.’”
Ellen Wilson Fielding writes from Davidsonville, Maryland.
The Definite Article is a digest of the Register's choice from the nation's top journals.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding ----- KEYWORDS: Book -------- TITLE: Persecuted for Faith DATE: 11/22/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 22-28, 1998 ----- BODY:Iam writing to commend the Register for running such a fine article on the International Day of Prayer (IDOP) for the Persecuted Church (“Churches Gear Up for Day of Prayer...,” Nov. 1-7). This was only the third year for the IDOP, and your article will undoubtedly “get the word out” and encourage many more people to pray for the needs—both spiritual and temporal—of Christians worldwide who are forced to suffer terribly for their faith.
Unfortunately, their numbers are only growing, and they include both Catholics and Protestants. The latest report from the Helsinki Commission cites no fewer than 19 European nations for religious liberty violations. In countries such as Congo and India, Christian towns have been looted and burned. In countries such as Laos, Nigeria, and China, Christians are arrested and jailed for practicing their faith. Atrocities such as rape and torture are not uncommon.
It was for the sake of these victims that the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews established its Operation Alert project. We must pray for these poor souls every day, but let us raise up our petitions with particular fervor each year on the International Day of Prayer, imploring God to show them mercy, to ameliorate their sufferings, and to give them the grace of unfailing courage.
Fr. Stanley de Boe
Director, Center for Jewish and Christian Values
Washington, D.C.
Ursuline and Knowing It
Orchids to Mary Ann Fanning for pointing out the mistaken reference to Marie of the Incarnation as a French Sister of Charity in my review (“Heroines Without Knowing It,” Oct. 4-10, 1998). Marie of the Incarnation is, of course, one of the best-known members of the Ursuline Order, and the first Ursuline missionary to the New World, leaving France for Canada with two companions in 1639. The foundation she made in Quebec was the first convent devoted to the education of girls in North America. Twice burned to the ground, it was rebuilt each time. Mary Ann Fanning can well be proud of her Ursuline education.
Sister Mary Thomas Noble, OP Buffalo, N.Y.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Sister Mary Thomas Noble ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: In Forgotten Literary Giants, a Chance to Revive Catholic Culture? DATE: 11/22/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 22-28, 1998 ----- BODY:A friend, a late vocation, left town for a distant seminary. Wanting to travel light, he donated a box of old books to the Catholic Answers library. Among them were six volumes comprising The Book of Catholic Authors. The first bears a copyright date of 1942; the sixth, undated, seems to have been published around 1961. The editor of the series was Walter Romig, who produced a work, The Catholic Bookman, which I have in my home library.
Of the sixty or so writers profiled in the first volume, I recognize only five: David Goldstein, a Catholic apologist who converted from Judaism; Winfrid Herbst, SDS, author of books on spirituality; Daniel Lord, SJ, known for his novels and dramas; Msgr. John A. Ryan, whose topic was social ethics; and Daniel Sargent, poet and biographer. The other names are strange to me: Mabel Adelaide Farnum, historical novelist; Thomas A. Lahey, CSC, author of children's books; Sister Mary Madeleva, poet; Father Will W. Whalen, playwright. And so with all the rest.
The six volumes are subtitled Informal Self-Portraits of Famous Modern Catholic Writers, and a promotional line notes that the books are “fully illustrated by [photographic] portraits.” The photographs are what first caught my attention. All of them are black-and-white, and the older ones have that ethereal quality that makes the eyes seem especially piercing, the skin almost translucent.
About half the profiles, and so half the photographs, are of women. There's Covelle Newcomb, a writer of children's books; with bangs pasted against her forehead and a lost look on her face, she reminds me of Flannery O'Connor. Mary Perkins, author of At Your Ease in the Catholic Church, looks like a young Katharine Hepburn, only less angular and more attractive. Eva J. Ross, a sociologist, faces away from the lens and reminds me of another Eva, General Peron's wife.
Most of the writers composed their own sketches, but the one on the then-deceased Margaret Yeo, a writer of historical novels and a convert from high-societyism (she wears pendant earrings and her neck is framed in fur), is by Msgr. Ronald A. Knox. He notes that “her husband, who remained a delightful pagan, was a chronic invalid and no breadwinner,” while Mrs. Yeo “was a loyal and active Catholic, without a trace of the fussiness and stuffiness which sometimes dim the luster of good example.” (That last line echoes the style of Samuel Johnson.)
In six volumes are profiled at least three hundred Catholic writers I've never heard of. I don't think of myself as ill-educated, and I'm familiar with many more writers than I've read, but still ... What happened to them? They disappeared down the memory hole. Some may say that they deservedly disappeared, that their writings weren't worth preserving. Maybe so, in some cases. But even the names I recognize—good writers all—are known to few Catholics today. Goldstein? Herbst? Lord? Ryan? Sargent? Few literate Catholics under fifty have heard of any of them. We have lost our literary consciousness, and we won't be able to hope for a Catholic society until we get it back.
“Whoa!” you may say. “Just look at what happened in the recent election. The bad guys won and the good propositions were defeated. If we're to clean up our society, we need to attend to the next election, starting right now. Let's not waste time talking about forgotten Catholic writers.”
I see the point, but I disagree. I don't want to discount the importance of politics, but we need to recognize that salvation doesn't come out of a ballot box—not even cultural salvation. If our society is to be turned around, it has to be turned around on a lot of fronts, including the literary.
Something we should be seeing by now, having hit our collective heads against the political walls for decades, is that there is no prospect that new faces will make much difference unless they are backed by brains filled with the right ideas. You can't just vote a Christian culture into being. It has to be lived into being, and it has to be lived on all fronts, including the literary—and the political. If we neglect any front, we lessen the chances of a revival. If there were no Catholic writing, there could be no truly Catholic candidates for political office—at best they would be Catholic in name only, entertaining no Catholic thoughts. If they have no Catholic thoughts, they can engage in no Catholic form of politics. At that point I, for one, would lose interest.
Yes, I look forward to the next election. I relish the prospect of political foes biting the dust and good guys riding in and taking charge. But white hats won't be enough. Our society needs good guys with good ideas, and I don't mean just good political ideas. Political ideas can't survive without support. They need a cultural matrix, as a plant needs good soil. I hope the right people run two years from now, and I hope they spend plenty of time, between now and then, reading good Catholic writing, including the “forgotten” stuff. If they don't, they likely will wither in office.
Karl Keating is the founding director of Catholic Answers.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Rediscovering Human Dignity DATE: 11/22/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 22-28, 1998 ----- BODY:Following is a statement by Archbishop Renato Martino, in response to Item 108 of the Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, concerning Questions Relating to Refugees and Displaced Persons and Humanitarian Questions, delivered before the Third Committee of the 53rd session of the General Assembly on November 1, 1998.
This Committee has discussed the issue of refugees and internally displaced persons for years. Suggestions were made during each session to address this complicated and urgent problem. But as we all know, this “wound which typifies and reveals the imbalance and conflicts of the modern world” (Pope John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 24) has continued to bleed all the more and affect more people.
The New Refugees
The problem of displacement has seen significant changes and assumed complex and unparalleled proportions in the last two decades. One remarkable feature is that in addition to the almost 25 million refugees in the strict sense, people who have fled across borders, more than the same amount of people have been internally displaced by the unwar-ranted conflicts of these recent decades. Unlike refugees in the strict sense, those forcibly displaced within the borders of their own countries suffer from an absence of legal or institutional bases for their protection and assistance from the international community. These displaced persons are at the greatest risk of starvation, have the highest rates of preventable disease, and are the most vulnerable to human rights abuses. Some countries have deliberately starved the displaced while invoking their sovereignty. Sovereignty, one of the pillars of international relations, when it excludes the necessary responsibility to provide protection and assistance to citizens, becomes a modern disguise to uproot entire societies.
Further, refugees are no longer the byproduct of a conflict, but in many cases are its very substance and scope. The “immoral strategy of ethnic cleansing,” the unpunished attempts of total annihilation of communities, and armed pursuit of the displaced until they are exhausted to death, are just some of the new and abominable techniques in recent conflicts. Attacks on refugee camps or making them abodes of criminals, blocking humanitarian aid to the starving victims, and killing and hostage-taking of humanitarian aid workers, are some other violations of international humanitarian law.
Every humanitarian aid worker and every organization which extends a helping hand to the displaced, deserves the recognition and commendation of the international community. Many of them operate in often dangerous situations at the risk of their own lives. In this context the roles of the UNHCR, of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Internally Displaced Persons, of the Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the ICRC and of the numerous religious relief agencies deserve special mention and praise. No doubt, humanitarian aid is and will continue to be crucial in protecting refugees and displaced persons, because survival is the first requirement in that situation.
Still, the problem of refugees and internally displaced persons cannot be resolved by providing humanitarian help alone. The problem itself and its lasting solution should be approached from deeper human and moral perspectives. Humanitarian aid, however crucial it might be, should be seen as a temporary emergency provision. The international community cannot be satisfied with providing humanitarian aid while lacking the necessary political will to solve the problem
A Human Issue
The plight of millions forced from their countries of origin or from their homes is in every sense a human problem The conflicts of recent years have made one out of every 120 people on earth a refugee or a displaced person. The saddest note of all is that the most vulnerable members of society, women, children and the aged, are the most affected and afflicted victims of unwarranted and violent conflicts. They are forced to leave their homes, go to environments strange and often unfriendly, confined to situations humiliating and hostile without any hope of returning home. By becoming dependent on the mercy of others for survival, their personal dignity is wounded and their identity destroyed. They carry with them the unjustly imposed burden of becoming strangers in a world which should belong to all
Mr. Chairman, most of today's refugees and displaced persons comes from developing countries, and a considerable majority from Africa, Most of them were bearing the sears of poverty long before becoming refugees or displaced persons Over 12 million children are on the move without the possibility of living a life worthy of children, nor having the ability to prepare for their future. Opportunities for education or vocational training become rarities
Since the question of refugees is a human issue, it has also serious moral implications. Behind every single conflict, there is a long story of continued and systematic violation of fundamental human rights. History has taught us that contempt for the dignity of the human person and denial of human rights will sooner or later lead to conflict situations. The best method to prevent conflicts is to create respect for the dignity of the human person and guarantees for human rights.
The Root of the Problem
The over fifty direct or indirect conflict fields of the world in this decade have produced over fifty million uprooted people. The international community itself has difficulties in finding the financial resources to procure the much-needed humanitarian aid to keep them alive. But none of those conflict fields lack in weapons. Weapons are what the warring countries have in abundance. In supplying arms to war-mongers and power-brokers, some countries turn out to be extraordinarily generous. The illegal and exaggerated sale of weapons to impoverished people, from whichever source or under whatever disguise they may come, is morally wrong. Stop the illegal flow of weapons and many conflicts will thus be prevented. Stop the flow of weapons, and most of the actual conflicts will considerably subside.
Behind the immediate causes of flight, there may also be interdependent economic and social factors. Poverty, the deterioration of economic conditions, social inequalities, conflicts concerning the distribution of resources, especially in times of economic recession, exacerbate already existing ethnic and social tensions. Minority groups become the main victims of economic crises. When already precarious conditions of life are worsened by war or civil and ethnic conflicts, famine and illness often claim more victims than the conflicts themselves. Sometimes, even economic decisions aimed at achieving economic growth that reach only certain sectors of the population, or that are not combined with human development and respect for the environment, can create a context for violence, armed conflict and the deterioration of the habitat. This may oblige many to leave their homes. States have a special responsibility in orienting their policies towards a participatory and environment-friendly development. This task is not, however, the monopoly of the state; it can and must be shared by the private sector as well as by the international community through a renewed effort of cooperation for development.
To the millions who are presently suffering from the pain of displacement, the right to protection in its diverse aspects, the right to remain in conditions worthy of human persons, and the right to return in security and dignity should be guaranteed. Return to situations of fragile peace might be the start of new cycles of renewed displacement, as cases in some parts of Africa and elsewhere have shown. Along with peace-making and peace-keeping, concrete action towards peace-building becomes a must in such situations.
Finally Mr. Chairman, the issue of displacement is not only a matter of humanitarian concern, but also of international peace and stability. The condition of refugees, with their sufferings and pains, becomes a pressing appeal to the conscience of the international community. It becomes, at the same time, an authentic challenge to solidarity and concerted action. Let the close of the second millennium be, for millions of refugees and displaced people, a time of new hope, marking a new page in history where displacement no longer exists.
Archbishop Renato Martino is Apostolic Nuncio and Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations.
----- EXCERPT: Will the New Millennium Bring Hope to the World's Refugees and Displaced Persons? ----- EXTENDED BODY: Archbishop Renato Martino ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Utilitarian Philosophies Bless Morally Suspect Bio-Tech Advances DATE: 11/22/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 22-28, 1998 ----- BODY:We now receive the news that biologists are taking cells from very young human embryos and multiplying them in petri dishes. These cells are so primitive, they are so early in their development, that they may be able to develop into various kinds of tissue to be used in curing diseases or to grow human skin or cartilage. These developments in biology seem to be coming along faster than our ability to think about them ethically.
Almost everyone wants to act morally. Regrettably the kind of ethical thinking which is dominant in the United States is one which is derived mostly from English and American thought and is ill-suited for helping us make moral decisions about these challenging developments in biotechnology.
England and the United States have been the sources of the industrial and technological revolutions which have radically altered our life on earth. But the techniques which worked very effectively to enhance manufacturing are now being applied to human beings, so that in the realm of biotechnology, the human person is increasingly viewed as a machine which can be altered and/or discarded, not according to the laws of morality but according to the laws of efficiency.
Philosophers in England developed an approach to morality which considered human actions good or bad according to their utility, their usefulness. Their measuring stick for determining if something was right or wrong was a function of “the greatest good for the greatest number.”
If you asked these philosophers what constituted “the greatest good,” they responded that it was whatever maximizes pleasure and minimizes pain. It can easily be seen how such a philosophy would come to value only those humans capable of enjoying the greatest pleasure. Those who can no longer “enjoy” life may indeed, according to this kind of thinking, be locked in “a life not worth living” and would be better off dead. There is no question that such thinking lies behind the abortion and euthanasia movements in our day.
Such a way of thinking was easily exported to the United States, where it was developed into a “philosophy” known as pragmatism. Americans have enjoyed remarkable growth in wealth and power because they are very pragmatic. They look at a problem and find ways to solve it, without being bound by old ways of doing things. This may work very well in manufacturing, but it is a poor way to deal with human beings.
The man who developed pragmatism was a professor at Harvard named William James. He applied the same measuring stick to both thinking and to acting. Does it work? As he put it, “the true ... is only the expedient in our way of thinking, just as the right is only the expedient in our way of behaving.” Whatever works is true; whatever works is good.
Joseph Fletcher was an Episcopal theologian who worked hard to introduce this way of thinking into Christian circles. He developed what he called “Situation Ethics.” He insisted that we could judge something to be good or bad only by its consequences. As he said, “for the situationist there are no rules—none at all.” He did not shrink from teaching that “the end justifies the means.”
Fletcher one time addressed a Planned Parenthood convention and had reassuring words for them. “I want to say carefully and without elaboration: Sex is morally acceptable in any form. Hetero, homo, auto, bi or poly. And looked at from the ethical perspective ... I want to add that what makes any sexual act right or wrong is its consequences.”
This man went on to teach medical ethics at the University of Virginia medical school. It is this kind of thinking which is dominant in the field of biotechnology today. Do we think that the brain cells from unborn babies will help improve the condition of people suffering from Parkinson's disease? Well, then we will simply procure the brain cells from them and try it. And we have done just that. Do we need organs to transplant? Does this dying person have a life worth living? Clearly not, in the minds of these people. So let's not wait until they die before we harvest their organs. We will put these poor people out of their misery, and we will have fresh organs to use for those who are suffering.
Only one moral tradition will keep us from preying on one another. Only one moral tradition will keep us from reducing human beings to machines or manufactured products or mines from which we harvest organs and cells. It is the moral tradition of Moses, of the noble pagan physician Hippocrates, and of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the moral tradition which insists that the human person is noble, that he is the image of the divine and therefore sacred. It is the moral tradition which says that virtually everything which was created can be used for the good of man. There is only one thing which cannot be used for the benefit of the human person—and that is another human person.
Dr. John Haas is president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Boston.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Haas ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A Muddy Condemnation of Slavery DATE: 11/22/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 22-28, 1998 ----- BODY:Toni Morrison is one of the high priestesses of political correctness. A Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, she argues that America is economically, politically, and culturally structured to oppress women and minorities. In a recent New Yorker article, she urged African-Americans to ignore President Clinton's impeachment problems and vote for Democrats who support him because of their common backgrounds of victim-hood. In return, the night before the election Hillary Clinton hosted a White House screening of Beloved, based on Morrison's novel of the same name.
The movie's director, Jonathan Demme (Philadelphia), and screenwriters, Akousa Busia, Richard LaGravenese, and Adam Brooks, are faithful to the author's purposes which, in themselves, are admirable. Morrison wants to force Americans to confront the harsh legacy of slavery—not just the physical pain but also the psychological scars carried by the victims even after they were freed. It's a terrible, hidden inheritance which rightfully should be exposed and analyzed.
Both the movie and the book use the conventions of the fantasy-horror genre to tell their stories. These clash with emotional and political points that are being dramatized, resulting in an uneven hybrid which is slow moving and confusing.
The action is set in 1873 in a black community on the outskirts of Cincinnati. Sethe (Oprah Winfrey) lives in a haunted house which everyone in the neighborhood avoids. Inside, furniture mysteriously moves around; her dog is attacked by strange forces; and the walls shimmer with a red glow. Her teen-age daughter, Denver (Kimberly Elise), who is too shy to venture outside, states the obvious when she declares: “We have a ghost here.”
Into this deranged world come two outsiders, Paul D (Danny Glover), who had been a slave with Sethe on the “Sweet Home” plantation across the river in Kentucky. A sane, rational, decent man, he's supposed to represent the audience's point of view. He has always loved Sethe and hopes to turn her house into a home for both of them.
The few moments of calm which he brings are disrupted by the appearance of the second visitor, Beloved (Thandie Newton). A beautiful, developmentally disabled woman-child, she seems to come out of nowhere and attach herself to Sethe. Her eyes rolling from side to side and her mouth drooling saliva, she speaks in a deep guttural voice that seems demonic.
Is she another ghost, the spirit of Sethe's long-dead daughter? The movie deliberately keeps the answer ambiguous. She's meant to be a kind of grotesque symbol of the effect of slavery's evils on its victims. She is Morrison's metaphor for the way the damage inflicted on slaves can haunt them for the rest of their lives.
Beloved's presence triggers a series of flashbacks about Sethe's past. We see the sadistic cruelty with which the slaves on the Sweet Home plantation were treated. For example, Sethe's mother is lynched in front of her for reasons that are never explained to her.
Even though pregnant, Sethe and the father of her children plan an escape, but only she makes it. While fleeing through the woods, she gives birth with the help of a young white woman who continually invokes the name of Jesus.
Sethe herself isn't a particularly spiritual person. But she takes refuge in free Ohio in the home of her grandmother, Baby Suggs (Beah Richards), a self-anointed preacher. Her message is a syncretic mixture of Pentecostal Christianity and folk religion. She attracts a large following of freed slaves who gather in the woodlands behind her house and respond enthusiastically to her words with spontaneous, self-created rituals.
Morrison depicts Baby Suggs as a saintly personality whose earthy, unorthodox sermons function as a Greek chorus and spiritual center to the action. But Sethe seems untouched by them, and she's forced to make certain horrible, moral compromises to survive when the plantation owner finally catches up with her.
Back in the present, Beloved begins to behave in ways that threaten to destroy Sethe's fragile family unit. But the ex-slave refuses to take any action to protect herself. Paul D decides to leave. “Your love is too thick, Sethe,” he warns. “Thin love ain't no love at all,” she replies.
The movie slowly loses itself in scenes of melodramatic and allegorical excess. Morrison believes that America continues to oppress black people even after the Emancipation Proclamation. “Just because you can't see no chains, that don't mean they're not there,” another ex-slave tells Sethe. “As long as the world is white, that's the way we stand.”
Morrison's good intentions aren't enough. Her laudable desire to set the record straight on slavery is overwhelmed by her negative, deterministic view of what she believes are America's systemic evils. There's no redemption or catharsis in her sad tale, only unrelenting pain. Despite a halfhearted attempt at an upbeat ending, the filmmakers remain true to her bleak vision.
Arts and Culture correspondent John Prizer writes from Washington, D.C.
Beloved is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America.
----- EXCERPT: Despite some bright moments, Beloved gets sunk by its makers' pessimism and confusing story ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Videos on Release DATE: 11/22/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 22-28, 1998 ----- BODY:In 1923, a quarter-century after the death of ThérËse in the Carmel of Lisieux, a new parish was formed in the northwestern corner of Rhode Island. Although ThérËse had not yet been canonized, the bishop of Providence, William Hickey, suggested that the church be placed under her patronage, and offered special permission for a shrine to be established to her honor.
“We're sure it's the first shrine dedicated to St. ThérËse in the Americas,” says co-director Jerry Finelli, who shares administration duties of the shrine in Nasonville with his wife, Shirley.
Immediately following ThérËse's canonization in 1924, the current brick combination church-school, one of three new buildings on the grounds dedicated by the bishop, officially became St. Theresa Church—using the American spelling of her name, which the shrine has retained. An outdoor shrine and altar were added in 1927, and a Scala Sancta and outdoor Stations of the Cross in the mid-1930s. By the war, pilgrimages and events drew as many as 7,000 people to the shrine each year.
One more event in the birth of the shrine happened just after the parish was formed. A parishioner named Olivier Faford, who had been ill for years, became bedridden, unable to speak or eat, and was considered incurable by Boston doctors. The first pastor of the parish, Father A.P. Desrochers, brought her Communion and told her to turn to the saint. That very afternoon, the woman got out of bed by herself and ate a hearty meal. Her doctors called her recovery a miracle.
Today, the thriving parish has 550 families, including relatives of Faford. With the last decade bringing a renewal to the shrine, with renovations and expansions establishing new devotional sections, it continues to grow and flourish on the grassy, woodsy acres around the church.
As the shrine unfolds toward the outdoor chapel, the first stop for pilgrims is the Scala Sancta. These granite and limestone Holy Stairs, which replaced wooden ones in 1956, rise nearly three stories to a marble Crucifixion scene under an open chapel. The Holy Stairs are wide enough to accommodate at once those making the journey on their knees, with or without cushions, and those unable to do so. The stone courtyard before the Scala Sancta boasts new outdoor pews, for those who wish to linger in prayer. The canopy of trees continues to extend outward, toward the stations.
These unique Stations of the Cross form a huge semicircle around the Holy Stairs. The stone relief scenes, begun in 1941 by internationally known sculptor Amedeo Nardini, are sheltered within tall arched wayside shrines. These arches were patterned of stones gathered from the 48 states of the continental United States, to reflect the devotion of the whole nation; the stones used are different sizes, colors, and textures, from smooth, to craggy and coral-like. Shades of red and white predominate in the 11th station, while black stone is used in the 12th station. The 13th mixes granites and marbles. Five of the stations have had to be entirely reconstructed, and volunteers from the church and the area worked painstakingly on the process.
The shrine extends to the outdoor altar and stone sanctuary with statues of Mary, Joseph, and St. Thérèse. The large sanctuary of Vermont granite, marble, and Tennessee stone replaced the original wooden altar at midcentury. Everything from the tabernacle to Communion rails are made of stone.
Parish workers have recently built wood and cement pews, under twin canopies arched to resemble a chapel roof. They protect pilgrims—up to 1,500 at a time—during services celebrating the feast of the Little Flower, which the shrine conducts about six weeks before her feast, on the third Sunday of August, when weather is more predictable.
Italian-made stations line the outdoor “side aisles” of the nave, and the “center aisle” is paved. Many of the faithful have offered donations for memorial plaques for the pews, just as they have for each bead of the monumental rosary which hangs beyond the shrine to St. Michael the Archangel.
Preceded by a rose garden and a statue of the Sacred Heart, and over-spread by countless leafy boughs, the 15-decade rosary was blessed and dedicated in 1994. The large beads were shaped from timbers; each decade drapes between the “Our Father” beads resting on top of posts. A rosebush adorns each, and the particular mystery is illustrated. Outdoor pews with kneelers accommodate visitors.
In the great circle of the rosary, a flower-lined walk leads to a stone pool and fountain overlooked by a statue of Our Lady of Peace. The paved path also follows around the rosary itself. The director, who designed this rosary, aims to make the entire shrine completely accessible to all visitors.
Across the lawns and parking area, a section of the former convent is being readied as a gift shop. The brick parish church itself has been enlarged and renovated. The crutches, wheelchairs, and ex-votos which had been stacked around the sanctuary for years were removed, and the church's white interior, trimmed in blue, is simple and soothing. By the statue of St. Thérèse, a relic is displayed for veneration. For major celebrations, a larger reliquary with multiple first-class relics is used.
Bus groups and carpools can call ahead to arrange to meet the shrine directors for a personal explanation; groups with a priest can arrange for a Mass. Besides weekend Masses, there is 8:30 a.m. Mass Monday through Friday, and first Saturday Mass in the rectory chapel.
The only official shrine in Rhode Island, this first shrine of St. Thérèse in America is a bough from which the Little Flower continues to “let fall from heaven a shower of roses.” For the 50-mile drive from Boston, use Interstates 95W to 295W. Take exit 8, Route 7, a few short miles north, to the intersection with Route 102. The shrine is just past the corner in Nasonville. From New York, use I-95E to Route 146N, to Forestdale/Slatersville exit, to Route 102N.
For information on the shrine and Confraternity of St. Thérèse, write the Shrine at 35 Dion Drive, Nasonville, RI 02830, or phone (401) 766-0917, or (401) 568-8280.
Joseph Pronechen writes from Trumbull, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: Peace awaits visitors to St. Theresa's Shrine, the first to the Little Flower in the Americas ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Pronechen ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Newman Society Strikes a Bullish Tone DATE: 11/22/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 22-28, 1998 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—“What's at stake for Catholic education is important for the culture as a whole,” Mo Fung, executive director of the Cardinal Newman Society, said at the beginning of the organization's third annual conference.
The society was founded in 1993 to encourage Catholic colleges and universities to more fully emphasize their roots. Its patron, John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-90), was an English convert to Catholicism, university administrator, and author of The Idea of a University.
Speakers meeting at The Catholic University of America, Nov. 7-8, cited the thoughts of Newman as well as the teachings of Pope John Paul II in his 1990 apostolic constitution Ex Corde Eccelsiae and his recently released Fides et Ratio.
The society's previous conferences were held at Marymount University and Georgetown University. At this year's meeting, administrators and students from 22 institutions heard talks from Dr. Jude Dougherty of Catholic University, Father Benedict Groeschel CFR, Dr. Robert Royal of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and Connaught Marshner, formerly of Christendom College. There also were panel discussions on mentoring students and campus witness.
Dougherty, the dean of Catholic University's philosophy department, gave the opening address. He discussed the decline of moral grounding at U.S. universities and added, “Unfortunately, Catholic institutions have not escaped the drift toward secularism.”
Citing historian Christopher Dawson, he noted that “the secular state school is an instrument of the Enlightenment.” He added that the secular worldview was exacerbated by Emile Durkheim, the French sociologist, and by American philosopher and educator John Dewey.
Durkheim believed the state would free the individual from such mediating influences as religion and the family. Dewey, his disciple, crafted a philosophy of pragmatism. In doing so, he “had no use for religion,” Dougherty said. “Religion was socially dangerous, it was an undesirable course for knowledge.
“By 1910, nearly every university chair was held by materialists,” he added. The secularist trend then intensified, leading, among other things, to Supreme Court decisions that have transformed public education. A once Protestant-oriented educational system has been replaced by a secular humanist system.
This creates a problem for society. Dougherty said, “We have no experience of being under wholly secular auspices. As early as the 1830s the great observer of American life Alexis de Tocqueville noted that ‘liberty can't govern without religious faith.’” Yet, what de Tocqueville said would not work is the dominant approach in the United States today.
Dougherty argued that to counter this development there needs to be a thorough grounding in philosophy, a reestablishment of morality, and a rededication to our Catholic heritage. “There can be no ecumenism in the intellectual order; Catholic tradition must be maintained,” he said.
Father Groeschel, a prolific writer and director of the Office of Spiritual Development for the Archdiocese of New York, asked, “How do we get higher education back to Catholicism?” In his lively keynote address, he said the answer is in Ex Corde Ecclesiae.
“I love the Holy Father,” he said, “because he gloriously and consistently ignores what's going on. He says it as it is—with an incredible practicality. I'm glad the Holy Father has never studied public relations.”
The apostolic letter encourages Catholics to aspire to an ideal with its educational institutions. In so doing, Father Groeschel noted, the Holy Father is telling the Catholic universities to build on the basis of truth.
Rather than treat universities as mere consumer institutions content to train people, society needs to return to the mind-set behind the first Catholic university, founded 1,850 years ago in Alexandria, Egypt. Its founder, St. Clement, defined a Catholic university as a reflection of only one teacher, Jesus Christ.
Even today “a Catholic institution—even a truly Protestant institution—should be built on faith in Christ,” Father Groeschel said. In order to accomplish that “radical” notion, “we have to become a countercultural phenomenon.” In doing so, Catholics will come to understand Newman's point that “truth has two attributes: beauty and power.”
Father Groeschel was optimistic about this happening. Telling the many students who attended the conference “you are the children of a generation of destiny,” he ended with a moving anecdote about the late Terence Cardinal Cooke of New York.
On his deathbed in 1983, the prelate told him, “Benedict, don't be disheartened—because you can hear the bagpipes.” Those bagpipes proclaiming victory, Father Groeschel noted, are now closer. “I will die happy because I lived to see the turning of the tide,” he said.
In more reserved style, Robert Royal offered an analysis of the importance of science in reversing secularism. There is, he said, no conflict between religion and science, but rather a complementarity.
Royal emphasized the importance of the encyclical Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason), which was released Oct. 15. The document shows how Catholics can confront the “isms” of the modern world—secularism, relativism, materialism, and the rest—by recognizing that faith, through Scripture, tradition, and the magisterium, will withstand any test.
The professor lauded the Holy Father, who “puts no prior limits on the Gospel. He trusts the truth. Be faithful and confident in that spirit, and you will be astonished because there is nothing else in the modern world.”
Other discussions instructed conferees in how to implement changes suggested by these principal speakers. Connaught Marshner, who served as student affairs director at Christendom College, said, “To be authentically Catholic, the institution has to swim against the tide.
Christ showed us a way to live that is radically different from the way we live today.”
To capture that spirit, then, Marshner said students need to be taught the truth, see it lived, experience it, and pray. “All of the campus should be ordered so students can pursue the truth.”
Dr. Susan Matthews, of the University of Scranton and a member of the Cardinal Newman Society's faculty council, was one of several people who discussed ways faculty can mentor students to meet these ends. “To help our students engage the culture, do it with them,” she said.
A co-founder of a Catholic Studies Program at her institution, she encouraged professors to nurture students by bolstering the curriculum. She also suggested they “light fires of passion to help build alternative communities.... A virtuous kind of life is wonderful, liberating, and fun. Help students understand [Catholic] wisdom, particularly regarding sexuality.”
Another commentator on mentoring, Jesuit Father Joseph Koterski of Fordham University, offered four practical suggestions: give students time, create supportive Catholic groups, encourage religious activities such as eucharistic adoration, and share books.
In addition to offering conferences for students and faculty, the Cardinal Newman Society has been actively involved in efforts to adopt norms for the U.S. implementation of Ex Corde Ecclesiae , which is scheduled to be discussed at the U.S. bishops' meeting this month.
Such involvement is exactly what the group needs to focus on, according to the society's executive director, Mo Fung. He told the Register , “A lot of institutions are going with the flow and not very conscious of where they're going. If we can direct that flow, corporate personality can be transformed.”
Joseph Esposito writes from Washington, D.C.
The Cardinal Newman Society can be reached at 207 Park Ave., Suite B-2, Falls Church, Va. 22046; telephone: (703) 536-9585; e-mail: cardnewman@erols.-com; and website: www.rc.net/cardinal newman.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Esposito ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Notre Dame Wrestles With Tolerance-of-Abortion Questions DATE: 11/22/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 22-28, 1998 ----- BODY:University of Notre Dame officials want to ensure that the school's catholicity runs deeper than the surface. Many Americans can recognize campus landmarks such as the Golden Dome—on which stands a statue of the Virgin Mary—and “Touchdown Jesus,” an enormous mosaic on the side of the school's library near the football stadium.
Despite protests from some faculty members, Notre Dame officials last May placed the university's Women's Resource Center (WRC) on probation for two years for providing students with literature from a local abortion clinic.
“Official recognition by the university is contingent on an organization's not violating Church teaching,” explained Notre Dame spokesman Michael Garvey.
On April 16, undergraduate student Catriona Wilkie visited WRC and picked up a pamphlet for the Michiana Abortion Clinic in nearby Niles, Michigan. The brochure listed prices for abortions according to the unborn child's gestational age, and it had a map to the clinic, she said.
Wilkie also found what she called “propaganda brochures” from abortion-industry groups such as National Abortion Rights Action League, which listed “pro-choice” and “anti-choice” arguments.
WRC has distributed abortion information since at least the fall of 1995, claimed Maureen Kramlich, a Notre Dame law student who received her undergraduate degree at the university. During a 1995 student activities night, Kramlich picked up information with the telephone number and address of the Women's Pavilion, a nearby South Bend, Ind., abortion clinic. “The description of what the clinic does said nothing about abortion,” she recalled. “It said something like ‘provides birth control, Pap smears, and other gynecological services.’
Helping a person to obtain an abortion is a grave offense, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (No. 2272): “Formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense. The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life.”
Although university officials want to preserve Notre Dame's Catholic identity, some faculty members and students have opposed their actions.
On Oct. 12, about 40 people, including 10 or more faculty members, attended a forum to support WRC, said Ava Preacher, assistant dean of Arts and Letters. “There was a consensus among those present that the WRC is perhaps being held to a different standard than other clubs, and that the stated violation of (Notre Dame's student handbook), of which they have been accused, is at best vague and arbitrarily applied,” she said.
Daniel Sheerin, a classics professor, argued that WRC's probation was an “act of censorship.” During the meeting, “I found particularly useful the suggestion that this controversy is a manifestation of a fundamental difference of opinion about whether the university's goal is to provide religious formation or education,” he told the Register.
The Notre Dame Faculty Senate's Student Affairs committee plans to issue a report about the probationary status of the WRC in December or January, said Preacher, who is the committee chairwoman. “Given that the investigation is in progress, I am not prepared to discuss the status of it at this point.”
Parents of prospective students complained at Notre Dame last spring following the publication of an exposé on the WRC in the student publication Right Reason. Their outcry led to administrative action against the WRC.
John Imler, assistant director of admissions, said he notified the Student Activities office about the “problematic situation created by the WRC and visiting parents' reaction to it.”
Imler recalled speaking with WRC officials about how the abortion literature “ran counter both to the university presented by admissions and to that expected by parents and families coming to us,” before he wrote the letter. After Student Activities became involved and sent a letter to WRC, the university placed the center on probation.
The WRC incident “demonstrates that Catholic campuses are under siege by secularizing forces that are both overt and covert,” said Luke White, editor in chief of Right Reason.
The school's handling of WRC “provides an excellent case study of how the administration of Notre Dame is still very willing and able to protect its Catholic character,” the undergraduate remarked. “Where other Catholic universities have failed, Notre Dame has succeeded due to the fortitude of administrators who aren't afraid to be vilified for preserving Notre Dame catholicity.”
But one faculty member had the opposite interpretation. “It is certainly a very serious error of educational judgment for a university to prohibit the collection of any kind (of) information that is legally available (for instance, in the telephone book),” said Mary Rose D'Angelo, a theology professor at Notre Dame, who attended the Oct. 12 forum.
“It's also very imprudent to suggest that Catholic teaching is so weak that students may not even collect information that reflect other perspectives,” D'Angelo said.
Notre Dame spokesman Garvey disagreed. “This has nothing to do with academic freedom. The university does-n't want to extinguish free speech. This is a case of an official university group that receives funding that we collect from student fees. This is not the case of a dispassionate debate about abortion.”
Garvey attributed the WRC situation to an “oversight problem, rather than maliciousness. (WRC officers) have been very cooperative” with Notre Dame's administration. “In some respects, as passionate an issue as abortion is, there's less here than meets the eye.”
Other observers are more skeptical.
While applauding the university's response to the WRC, Mo Fung, executive director of the Falls Church, Va.-based Cardinal Newman Society, pointed out that “there are still many problems at Notre Dame. They had to know they were sending a message” with the appointment of former Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) to a visiting professor position. Bradley consistently voted for abortion rights legislation during his political career.
But Auxiliary Bishop Daniel Jenky, of the Fort Wayne-South Bend (Ind.) diocese where Notre Dame is located, was quoted by Right Reason earlier this year as saying the Bradley appointment did not concern him much because the Princeton graduate is a visiting professor. Bishop Jenky is a member of the Holy Cross order which runs Notre Dame, and a former rector of the Sacred Heart Basilica on campus.
But Charles Rice, a Notre Dame law professor, called Bradley's appointment “indefensible”: “It sends a message to the students that it is acceptable and even commendable for a legislator to support abortion.” The university's announcement of Bradley's appointment, Rice pointed out, touted his record as a national leader in tax reform, international trade, pension reform, community building, and building race relations, but did not mention abortion.
The Pro-Life Action League, run by alumnus and former Notre Dame instructor Joseph Scheidler in Chicago, rented two planes with banners to fly over Notre Dame stadium during the Sept. 5 Notre Dame-Michigan game. The banners read “Dump Bradley” and “Bradley supports abortion.”
According to a Pro-Life Action League press release, Bradley answered a Scheidler question during a Sept. 3 campus lecture by stating that he “stands by” his voting record on abortion, including his support of President Clinton's veto of the partial-birth abortion ban.
“Can we have a serious Catholic university that is on the cutting edge of academic teaching and research? I'd say ‘yes,’” said Fung, whose Newman Society promotes Ex Corde Ecclesiae, Pope John Paul II's 1990 apostolic constitution on Catholic universities. “There's room for non-Catholics at a Catholic university, but you need to have 100% of the faculty committed to the university's mission.”
William Murray writes from Kensington, Maryland.
----- EXCERPT: Some faculty support inclusion of clinic literature at campus women's center ----- EXTENDED BODY: William Murray ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Natural Family Planning Advocate Knows No Borders DATE: 11/22/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 22-28, 1998 ----- BODY:DALLAS—The population control cartel pressuring Latin America was disrupted last month in Argentina, when natural family planning (NFP) promoter Mercedes Arzu Wilson addressed television and radio audiences, as well as the national legislature in Buenos Aires. She warned against contraceptive imperialism, abortifacient chemicals being sold as contraceptives, and a non-replacement population growth of 1.4 children per family that threatens to leave the country “empty.”
Wilson followed her South American visit with a trip to Dallas to lecture against “the culture of death” and to train Spanish-speaking couples in the ovulation method of NFP. She said she was invited to address a one-day conference of the Argentine legislature by Rita Drisaldei, a representative from Santa Cruz who had heard Wilson speak in Brazil last year.
Like other Latin American nations, Argentina is facing pressure for “sustainable development” (that is, population control) as a result of U.N. conventions in recent years, even though its population growth is below replacement levels, Wilson said. The country's leaders also raised concerns regarding the absence of governmental regulation of “test tube” babies and the specter of fetal experimentation, she added.
“(Wilson) came with some views which hadn't been broadcast here previously,” said Father Pedro Richards, a fellow NFP promoter and founder of the 50-year-old Movimiento Familiar Cristiana (Christian Family Movement) in Latin America and Spain. “She was quite a novelty, since she placed NFP and sex education on the table.”
And Wilson, whose enthusiasm for NFP has not dampened in her 30 years of international promotion and education, is looking forward to future visits to train NFP teachers through Argentina's Ministry of Health, and also to address priests and religious at the request of Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio. During her five-day trip, she also updated teachers from Uruguay, Peru, and Argentina in the ovulation method, which she learned from John and Evelyn Billings in 1968 and for which she developed the popular color stamps for women to use in charting their fertility.
“It's always the same: The lower the income, the poorer the people, the better the response,” declared Wilson, founder and president of the 21-year-old Family of the Americas Foundation, based in Dunkirk, Maryland. In Argentina and Guatemala “we had to turn people away because we didn't have enough space or materials for everyone,” she added.
Father Richards is not overly optimistic about the immediate impact of Wilson's visit to his native country of Argentina, where the Catholic president speaks broadly in defense of life but where his supporters throughout the country promote “reproductive health,” a euphemism for government-sponsored contraception and abortion.
Nevertheless, at least the representatives and senators have been “alerted to new things,” Father Richards said.
Ultimately, he added, “what else can we be but hopeful, because (Wilson) is a heavyweight, she knows how to do things, and she is engaging.”
To further spur her work in Latin America, Wilson's book Love and Family (Ignatius Press, 1996), a comprehensive sex education resource for parents, has just been published in Spanish.
She is also focusing on her native Guatemala where her brother, Alvaro Arzu, is president. She is working on a large-scale campaign to promote NFP there while the government is friendly toward it.
“If the same party is not re-elected, we're in trouble,” she said. “This is our chance to try to expose the harmful programs of Planned Parenthood and its affiliates around the world.”
Shortly before her trip to Argentina, Wilson was among the more than 2,000 people attending an international NFP conference in Peru. The Andean nation's president, Alberto Fujimori, has pushed birth control as the answer to his country's poverty and has vocally attacked the Pope for the Church's teachings against contraception and sterilization. Earlier this year The New York Times and the Register chronicled the Peruvian govern-ment's “ambitious” family planning program that has resulted in hundreds of poor women being coerced into, or injured by, sterilization.
Wilson also spent time in Mexico in February to protest massive vacci-nation programs against tetanus in women of child-bearing age. Lab tests have shown the shots to contain the component HCG, which would, in effect, “vaccinate them against their own pregnancy,” she said.
Wilson might get discouraged but for her noted ability to gain access to further her work and for her unflagging belief in the wisdom of the poor, who continue to be more receptive to natural methods of family planning than developed peoples are.
“It's like in the times of Christ,” Wilson explained. “Who were the ones who listened? It wasn't the learned, those of high cultural levels, the priests, the lawyers—no. It was the poor who followed him.
“God seems to put some kind of inborn wisdom into the poor to defend them. They have natural childbirth, they breastfeed, and then they have everything natural. They are the last ones to accept artificial methods, because they are so dependent on nature, for their crops, for everything, that a natural method just seems logical, just makes sense to them.”
Other developing nations responding to the message of NFP include, perhaps surprisingly, China. Behind the scenes of the country's extreme population control policies, where city-dwelling women are limited to one legally recognized child, NFP continues to win converts among government officials, doctors, and couples hoping to avoid the alternatives of sterilization and abortion. Wilson has been to China nine times for lectures and training, and to date has distributed 20,000 copies of her instruction book Love and Fertility there.
“Even in China, we can't go back enough; I have an open invitation to go back,” said Wilson. “We get standing ovations from the students, the doctors, even the government officials who attend our lectures. My lecture is against contraception, against abortion; I even talk about the moral aspects, spiritual and moral benefits, and I get standing ovations. I tell them that the government has no right to tell a husband and a wife how many children they can have.”
The leading advocates of the ovulation method—arguably the simplest and most popular modern natural method used around the world—include Dr. Zhang De-wei, an adviser to the State Family Planning Commission of Shanghai and the vice president of an advisory committee of a Ministry of Public Health.
Her study of 688 couples reported a rate of 98.82% effectiveness in postponing pregnancy and a continuation rate (the percentage of couples who used the method through 12 months) of 93.04%.
“These clinical results were very satisfactory and encouraging,” Dr. De-wei wrote in her award-winning report, updated in 1994. “Because it has no contraindications, side-effects, and requires no government investment for manufacturing contraceptives and devices, etc.; it is a very good method which benefits the nation and the people.”
Wilson and De-wei say the Chinese are delighted with the ovulation method because they see it will decrease induced abortions. And the fact that the people “all say they hate abortion” puts China in a better moral position than the United States, Wilson believes. “(China is) a country (where) a small group in government, dictatorial government, is forcing mothers to abort their babies, and some courageous women choose to keep their babies or hide their babies so they are not killed... whereas in the West, the United States being at the top of the line, people get in their cars, and go kill them.
“Who is worse off morally—the one who's forced to abort her baby, or the one who freely goes to kill her own child? I am sick and tired of hearing the Chinese people get criticized, because they are being forced to kill their babies. In the West, not only are mothers willingly killing their babies, but [pro-abortion forces] are forcing legalization of abortion on the rest of the world.”
Ellen Rossini writes from Dallas.
----- EXCERPT: Government policies are no obstacle for Mercedes Arzu Wilson ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Rossini ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Efforts to Elect Pro-Life Women Are Paying Off DATE: 11/22/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 22-28, 1998 ----- BODY:ALEXANDRIA, Va.—In a decade in which the importance of money in election campaigns has reached new heights, a unique pro-life political action committee (PAC) has become a growing force. The Susan B. Anthony (SBA) List helped re-elect eight members of the House and one new senator in the Nov. 3 election.
Named after the 19th-century women's rights leader, the SBA List was founded in 1993 to help seat more pro-life women officeholders. It was a response to the influx of pro-abortion women elected to Congress in 1992, which was called the “Year of the Woman.”
The effort was launched also to compete with EMILY's (“Early Money is Like Yeast”) List, which was started in 1985 and had become a mainstay of pro-abortion Democratic politics. They identify themselves as “the nation's biggest source of contributions for federal candidates.”
The SBA List's first public event was held at the National Woman's Party building at Washington, D.C., in February 1993. Susan B. Anthony was selected as the patron because she was a staunch opponent of abortion, calling it “infanticide” and “child murder.”
The early organizers of the SBA List were dedicated, but lacked any campaign background. Susan Gibbs, one of the founding board members and now director of communications for the Archdiocese of Washington, said, “None of us had political experience. None of us had PAC experience. We just had a passion for being pro-life.”
That soon changed. First Marjorie Dannenfelser and then Jane Abraham, both of whom had worked in politics and government, were brought in to run the effort. Dannenfelser is now chairman of the board, and Abraham, the wife of Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.), is president.
In the 1994 elections, 15 women were endorsed and financially backed for House, Senate, and gubernatorial contests. Eight of those were elected, and the number of pro-life women in the House quadrupled. Two more were elected in 1996, while the List helped return five others.
Last year, the organization became a 501(c)4 not-for-profit organization to provide educational outreach. The PAC continues, but is now known as the Susan B. Anthony Candidate Fund and is attached to the parent entity. This structural change allows for issue advocacy and training schools.
The training schools, which are for candidates, future candidates, and political staffers, comprise what Abraham calls “a state-of-the-art campaign academy.” Candidates have a virtual one-to-one consultation on how to articulate their message and work on such things as dealing with a hostile press.
In addition to political activists, the faculty includes Helen Alvaré of the U.S. Catholic Conference and Mary Ellen Bork, both of whom are columnists for the Register. Another instructor has been Carol Long Tobias, the PAC director of the National Right to Life Committee.
“There are some great pro-life women candidates,” Tobias told the Register. “But like many pro-lifers, they are not always sure what to do. The school helps prepare them.”
This activism has paid off. Membership for the List has increased from 2,000 to 9,500 over the past year and a half. That's still only about 20% of the membership of EMILY's List, but its leaders are excited about the progress.
They're also pleased with the results of the Nov. 3 election.
All eight of the endorsed pro-life House members were re-elected, even though several were locked in tight races. This year, for the first time, men were endorsed in a pilot program, and all three were successful. One of those was Peter Fitzgerald, a Catholic state senator who unseated pro-abortion incumbent Carol Moseley-Braun in Illinois.
This was partly accomplished by a rapid increase in fund raising. Money raised has climbed from $60,000 in 1995 to $262,000 in 1996, $475,000 in 1997, and $806,000 in 1998. In short, more than $1.2 million was available for this last two-year “election cycle” to support candidates and run the education component of the SBA List.
While such fund raising is impressive, it still pales in comparison to money contributed to EMILY's List. A total of 66,000 people—21,000 more than its membership—contributed at least $13 million over the past two years. Still, all this money was not enough to elect many key pro-abortion candidates.
Moseley-Braun was strongly supported by EMILY's List. In addition, all three endorsed gubernatorial candidates lost, three of its six senatorial candidates were defeated, and only five of its 11 nonincumbents were elected. Its six endorsed House incumbents were re-elected, but this was a year in which 98% of all members there were returned.
Abraham said, “I'm disappointed we missed the opportunity to elect some very talented pro-life women. But we can look back as a pro-life movement and take a lot of encouragement from this election.”
This is the kind of competition the SBA leadership is seeking to promote. However, in addition to political success, it seeks, as Susan Gibbs notes, “to give extra confidence to other women and to be a role model for younger women.” Such encouragement will help them better present the pro-life message in all venues.
Because of this positive message, the list of prominent supporters continues to grow. Mary Cunningham Agee, a member of the executive committee, told the Register, “This is one of the bright lights in the pro-life movement.”
Aformer board member and now vice chairman of the executive committee, Cathy Deeds of the U.S. Catholic Conference staff discussed the significance of the SBA List. “Working as a staffer on Capitol Hill and in the pro-life movement, I know the importance of pro-life women publicly engaging in the abortion debate.
“SBA seeks qualified women who are committed to public service in their state. We also need more pro-life votes in Congress. We seek dedicated spokespersons who will elevate the abortion issue, educate their colleagues and the public, and end this national tragedy.”
Twelve past and current members of Congress also serve on the advisory board. Among these is Rep. Sue Myrick (R-N.C.), who said, “The Susan B. Anthony List helps to get our grass-roots, pro-life citizens involved in the political process.”
Serrin Foster, an SBA List advisory committee member and executive director of Feminists for Life of America, added, “They have proved they are a force to be reckoned with on the national level. My hope is that one day the Susan B. Anthony List will extend itself to the state level, and do similar work there.”
For those associated with the SBA List, politics and morality intertwine. Many faiths are represented on its executive and advisory committees, and a large number are Catholics, according to Gibbs.
This Catholic involvement is appropriate, she said, because “we're called to understand the Church's pro-life teaching, accept it, and believe it. The Susan B. Anthony List is one way to carry out the teachings of the Church.”
As the Second Vatican Council said in its December 1965 “Message to Women”: “The hour is coming, in fact has come, when the vocation of women is being acknowledged in its fullness, the hour in which women acquire in the world an influence, an effect and a power never hitherto achieved. That is why, at this moment when the human race is undergoing so deep a transformation, women imbued with a spirit of the Gospel can do so much to aid humanity in not falling.”
The Susan B. Anthony List can be contacted at 228 South Washington St., Alexandria, Va. 22314; telephone: (703) 683-5558.
Joseph Esposito writes from Washington, D.C.
Jane Abraham (at podium), president of Susan B. Anthony List, with Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC), a member of the List's advisory committee.
----- EXCERPT: In short time, political neophytes' initiative has become a growing force ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Esposito ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 11/22/1998 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: November 22-28, 1998 ----- BODY:A Culture of Life requires renewal and transformation of society—especially as regards education. As the Holy Father writes in Evangelium Vitae, teachers, educators, and intellectuals, particularly those active at Catholic institutions of learning, have special roles in propagating the Gospel of Life:
In this mobilization for a new culture of life no one must feel excluded: everyone has an important role to play. Together with the family, teachers and educators have a particularly valuable contribution to make. Much will depend on them if young people, trained in true freedom, are to be able to preserve for themselves and make known to others new, authentic ideals of life, and if they are to grow in respect for and service to every other person, in the family and in society.
Intellectuals can also do much to build a new culture of human life. A special task falls to Catholic intellectuals, who are called to be present and active in the leading centers where culture is formed, in schools and universities, in places of scientific and technological research, of artistic creativity and of the study of man. Allowing their talents and activity to be nourished by the living force of the Gospel, they ought to place themselves at the service of a new culture of life by offering serious and well documented contributions, capable of commanding general respect and interest by reason of their merit. It was precisely for this purpose that I established the Pontifical Academy for Life , assigning it the task of “studying and providing information and training about the principal problems of law and biomedicine pertaining to the promotion of life, especially in the direct relationship they have with Christian morality and the directives of the Church's Magisterium.” A specific contribution will also have to come from Universities , particularly from Catholic Universities, and from Centers, Institutes and Committees of Bioethics. (98)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Activists Say Trade Won't Right China's Wrongs DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—Human rights abuses are escalating in China, and the government crackdown on religious freedom has intensified, according to Chinese dissidents and U.S. experts meeting to mark the 50th anniversary of the Communist takeover of China.
The tragic situation is unlikely to improve with the surprise trade deal signed by the United States and China on Nov. 15 which will lead China into the World Trade Organization, said one pro-democracy Chinese activist.
“Is the White House sending the message to China that human rights will have to be respected?” asked Wei Jingsheng, who was jailed in China for 20 years. “No, they are sending the opposite message. Those concerned about human rights and democracy in China view this agreement as a catastrophe.”
“Every area in China has human rights problems,” he told attendees at “Human Rights in China: 50 Years Later,” a conference sponsored by the Population Research Institute. Conference participants were largely opposed to China's accession to the World Trade Organization.
Administration officials say they expect the trade agreement to have a “positive impact” on China's respect for human rights by introducing Western ideas into the country through trade. President Clinton has said he considers the trade deal one of his greatest foreign policy accomplishments.
But while American negotiators met in Beijing to arrange the trade agreement, a Chinese court was in the process of sentencing four members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement to prison.
The harassment of Falun Gong is the latest high-profile sign of the Chinese regime's intolerance of spiritual or religious expression not sanctioned by the state. But in every area of concern — from the government's one-child policy, to the forced sterilization of Chinese minority populations, to the imprisonment of Christian clerics and believers — China experts at the Washington conference report that things have gotten worse.
Contrary to a recent U.N. report that China's policy of allowing one child per family was ending, Prime Minister Zhu Rongji declared on Oct. 13, “China will continue to enforce its effective family planning policy in the new century,” according to Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute.
Mosher has been tracking the one-child policy since 1979 when, as one of the first American academics allowed to do field research, he spent a year studying Chinese village life.
“I was an eyewitness to forced sterilization and abortion,” he told the Register. “It traumatized families and still does. The government has pledged to continue this practice because it want to reduce the number of Chinese, not just hold population at current levels.”
The Chinese government claims that abortion is voluntary, but Mosher claims women are pressured into complying: “As long as the targeted women walk the last few steps to the local medical clinic, then the abortion that follows is said to be ‘voluntary.’”
He said that rather than use brute force to make sure Chinese women abort, the government often uses other Orwellian tactics to make the abortions “voluntary.”
“[Y]ou can fine the woman,” he said. “You can lock her up. You can subject her to morning-to-night brainwashing sessions.You can cut off the electricity to her house. You can fire her from her job. You can fire her husband from his job. And you can fire her parents from their jobs.”
Conference participants also charged China with a eugenics policy toward minority populations such as the Muslim Uyghur people. One Uyghur representative, Adil Ahmat, unveiled documentary evidence of the systematic forced abortion and sterilization of Uyghur men and women in western China. He said evidence exists that the government wants to reduce their population of 7 million to 3 million.
Catholic activist Joseph Kung, president of the Cardinal Kung Foundation in Stamford, Conn., said recent increased religious persecution shows the folly of international acceptance of China as a full trade partner.
“Obviously, the current policies of many countries in the free world to delink human rights from trade has failed to convince China to stop the religious persecution,” Kung asserted. “On the contrary, the policies make the Chinese government contemptuous, allowing it to continue persecuting religious believers without fear of damaging its international relationships.”
U.S. Reps. Frank Wolf, R-Va., and Christopher Smith, R-N.J., reminded attendees that Congress will vote next year on whether to permanently normalize trade relations with China. Although Congress doesn't vote directly on Clinton's agreement or on Chinese membership in the World Trade Organization, it will vote on whether to grant permanent tariff preferences to China. Now called “normal trade relations” status, this designation was formerly called “most favored nation” status. Only if the United States gives China this new status can the administration's trade deal with China become effective.
Some Republican leaders in Congress argue, along with Clinton, that more trade will mean more openness of China to reform.
In a press statement, Rep. Bill Archer, chairman of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees trade, said: “I continue to believe that the U.S. is best served by an open trade policy with China, and am encouraged by the progress announced ... by President Clinton.”
Beyond Trade Sanctions
Nevertheless, Rep. Wolf contended that Congress is undecided regarding the issue. But, Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Washington human-rights organization Freedom House, said, “There's no way to fight the WTO accession. It's a dead end.”
She advocates sanctioning the Chinese government by controlling Chinese access to capital markets.
“Religious persecution has been more visible since April and the crack-down on Falun Gong, but what is happening to the Falun Gong has been happening to Catholics since Tiananmen Square in 1989.”
Shea cited State Department rankings that place China as one of the five worst persecutors of religion in the world. “Yet the United States has no human rights policy” as regards China, she said. “We have a trade policy, but no religious freedom or human rights policy. I advocate taking steps to sanction Chinese government-controlled companies’ access to U.S. capital markets. We need to organize activism around investment or finance sanctions. The trade-sanctions debate is dead.”
Steve Mosher said Population Research Institute and other China critics will focus on trade sanctions. “If we can build a bipartisan coalition on this with religious groups, major human rights groups, get the Chinese dissidents involved, the labor unions, which have been adamantly opposed to WTO, we can challenge unconditional acceptance of China into WTO as undeserved.”
He said congressional action is expected by March or April.
Mosher and pro-democracy activist Wei Jingsheng pointed to American public opinion polls showing skepticism about China. A Zogby poll published early in November showed that 68.5% of the Americans surveyed thought the United States shouldn't give China trade benefits without significant improvement in its human rights record.
Eleanor Kennelly and Victor Gaetan write from the Washington, D.C., area.
The Suffering Church in China
As a Catholic and a China scholar, Steven Mosher is particularly interested in the plight of the “suffering Church in China.”
The president of the Population Research Institute explained that the Catholic Church in China has been forcibly divided. The government created a Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, or Patriotic Church, to replace the Roman Catholic Church, which was declared illegal. The Patriotic Church is banned from recognizing the authority of the Pope, yet an underground Church, loyal to the magisterium, continues clandestine activity.
“Even in the Patriotic Catholic Church, the majority are faithful to the Holy Father,” said Mosher. “I'd estimate that two-thirds of the Patriotic bishops are, in fact, loyal.”
Asked about the number of Catholics in China today, Mosher said accurate numbers are hard to come by. The government admits the number of believers is on the rise, and officially acknowledges 10 million Protestants and 8 million Catholics. Most observers, however, think the real numbers are much higher.
“I know an evangelical priest who had dinner with the Chinese minister of education,” said Mosher. “After a few drinks, the minister confided that Beijing officials fear there could be around 80 million practicing in the country. That means we're closing in on 10% of the Chinese population.”
Fear of the Christian challenge might explain renewed attacks on Christian clerics and believers.
Joseph Kung, president of the Cardinal Kung Foundation, addressed the recent Population Research Institute conference in Washington, D.C., on the status of the Chinese underground Church. Kung is the nephew of Cardinal Ignatius Kung, who became bishop of Shanghai Province in 1950. He was elevated to cardinal secretly by Pope John Paul in 1979.
The Kung foundation has documented an increase in arrests of underground Church members over the last few years, including the arrest of Bishop Jia Zhiguo in Hebei Province on Aug. 15 and the prosecution of seven young underground Church members in Jiangxi Province two days before.
—Eleanor Kennelly and Victor Gaetan
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Eleanor Kennelly and Victor Gaetan ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Eucharistic Adoration: New Spirit of St. Louis DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:ST. LOUIS—The Gateway City has a new passion, and it isn't baseball slugger Mark McGwire.
Nearly two years after the St. Louis Archdiocese began promoting it, every one of its 227 parishes has some form of eucharistic adoration: 24 perpetually, 125 weekly, and the rest at least monthly.
The reason: Archbishop Justin Rigali has made eucharistic adoration a top priority. His effort has made St. Louis a leader in a spiritual movement that has had appeal throughout the United States and abroad.
“The theme of eucharistic adoration emerged very felicitously during discussions of the [archdiocese's] Strategic Pastoral Plan,” he told the Register. “It wasn't a question of imposing this at all; people were very pleased at the benefits when it was promoted.
“Yesterday, a man on the plane next to me tapped me on the shoulder and thanked me for the adoration in his parish. The hour he and his wife spend from 8 to 9 in the evening is the most important of their day.”
In February 1998, when the program began, those benefits were less obvious.
Back then, the biggest concern of lay organizers of eucharistic adoration was how to deal with unresponsive, or even resistant, pastors. A story circulates about a group of friends who fasted and prayed for a month before approaching one such pastor whom they were certain would be reluctant to start adoration. He was worried, in part, because it would mean leaving the church open after hours. That parish now offers adoration weekly.
In eucharistic adoration, worshippers pray before the Blessed Sacrament which usually is reverently exposed in a monstrance. The challenge — especially for programs with extended hours — is to have an adorer present at all times, which is required when the Eucharist is exposed.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says: “Because Christ himself is present in the sacrament of the altar, he is to be honored with the worship of adoration. ‘To visit the Blessed Sacrament is ... a proof of gratitude, an expression of love, and a duty of adoration toward Christ our Lord’ (Paul VI, Mysterium Fidei 66)” [No. 1418].
A witness book kept by St. Ferdinand's parish contains dozens of testimonies about the fruits of adoration. “I look at Jesus and Jesus looks at me,” said one testimony, “... I tell him everything and he reveals himself to me in many ways.” Said another, “My hour in the chapel is the most rewarding of my week.” Others talk of resentments lifted, families reconciled, strength to combat illness.
Commitment to eucharistic adoration can be clearly seen in the archdiocese's Strategic Pastoral Plan.
Action Step One of Goal One called for pastors, religious and laity to “promote adoration of, and reverence for, the Blessed Sacrament, both exposed on the altar, and in the tabernacle.”
The plan has only two “super-priorities”: Eucharistic adoration and the fostering of religious vocations. The two are closely linked: Adorers are urged to pray for increased vocations whenever they make their hours.
St. Louis’ eucharistic renewal did not occur overnight. A small group of lay men and women, some involved in adoration since the 1970s, “started meeting on our own to develop an approach deserving of the archbishop's attention,” said George Knollmayer, an original member of the group.
Archbishop John May approved the group's proposal just before his death from cancer in March 1994. When Justin Rigali, who had spent many years of service in the Vatican, was installed as archbishop that same month, he told the group that their wishes coincided completely with his own, “so the timing was right,” concluded Knollmayer.
In 1997, Archbishop Rigali founded the Committee on Eucharistic Adoration, on which Knollmayer now serves. The committee laid the groundwork for a series of diocesan events promoting adoration.
In January 1998, the archbishop sent a letter to all parishes urging them to “use every means possible to ensure a renewed devotion to and appreciation of the Eucharist as the source and summit of our Christian life.”
Archbishop Rigali brought up the topic of adoration at the Vatican's Synod of the Americas, calling it “an emerging sign of the times, confirmed in the experience of many bishops throughout the world.”
“Bishops are very pleased about where this is going,” he said. “It leads people back to the sacrament of reconciliation, to greater solidarity with each other, and to more active participation in the Mass.”
The St. Louis program is the first of its kind for an American diocese, according to the Apostolate for Perpetual Adoration in Mount Clemens, Mich.
“Other bishops are very supportive of adoration and they invite our priests in — even on a permanent basis — to preach in their churches and establish programs,” said Pat Fortun, an administrator of the apostolate. “But we have never heard of a program like this — in which the initiative has come from the top along with detailed follow-up coming from the chancery.”
Why did eucharistic adoration, once a mainstay of Catholic devotion in other forms, decline in recent years?
One reason, according to Mark Holtz, assistant professor of theological studies at St. Louis University, was that many interpreted the Second Vatican Council as emphasizing the centrality of the Mass to the point of discouraging extraliturgical devotions.
But the new generation also finds the old post-conciliar debates increasingly irrelevant, making them ripe for the new evangelization. Holtz believes that much of the involvement in adoration today comes from the under-35 crowd.
“The question they're asking is, ‘Where shall we go to find models of worship?’” he said.
Archbishop Rigali stressed the link between adoration and the fostering of vocations. Not only are adorers praying for vocations, the easy availability of time before the Blessed Sacrament has been shown to attract young people and to equip them with the grace they will need to answer God's call.
The Committee on Eucharistic Adoration is led by Father Ed Rice, who has preached on adoration at parishes and hosted conferences while serving as director of Kenrick College at Kenrick/Glennon Seminary.
Father Rice credited recent enrollment gains — from 68 seminarians in 1996 to 103 today — at least partly to the benefits that come with adoration.
A new front of Father Rice's efforts are high school and Catholic colleges; St. Pius X and Duchesne high schools have adoration programs, and youth programs such as Life Teen, God's Gang and Christ Power also have made it part of their programs.
“It's almost like we're discovering the Eucharist once again,” said Father Rice.
At Kenrick/Glennon Seminary, seminarians attend adoration in half-hour shifts from 12:40 to 5 every weekday afternoon. For many, the practice is a new one; they've grown up in parishes without such traditions as Benediction or Forty Hours.
“I like the way they do it here; a simple exposition and silent adoration,” said Brother John Paul Joyce, a seminary student and a member of the Intercessors of the Lamb, a religious congregation founded in 1983. “I have too much noise in my life, so I need the quiet time with Jesus.”
Noted Archbishop Rigali, “Even high-schoolers are starting to pray before the Blessed Sacrament on their own. They're responding to a deep-felt need people have for union with God. In the Mass and in eucharistic adoration, we meet the merciful love of God which passes through the heart of Christ.”
David Murray writes from St. Louis.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: David Murray ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Homosexual-Tolerance Book Misses the Point, Critics Say DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—Family groups and Catholic observers warn that a new booklet recently sent out to educators promotes an unhealthy view of homosexuality.
The 12-page booklet, called “Just the Facts About Sexual Orientation & Youth,” lambastes attempts to encourage homosexuals to embrace a chaste lifestyle. It was sent out to the heads of all 14,700 public school districts by a coalition of teachers, school administrators, psychologists and homosexual activists called the Just the Facts Coalition.
“Because of the religious nature of ‘transformational ministry,’” the booklet said, “endorsement or promotion of such ministry by officials or employees of a public school district in a school-related context could raise constitutional problems.”
The booklet drew quick criticism.
Princeton natural law philosopher Robert George, a longtime observer of education, said “the guise of science” hides the true message of the booklet.
The booklet's real “agenda,” he said, “is the consolidation and further promulgation of the sexual revolution. To succeed, it is necessary that children not be taught their parents’ values.”
He added, “Parents have a constitutional right to direct the upbringing of their children.”
Against claims that the religious nature of programs to dissuade homosexual behavior raises “constitutional problems,” George pointed out:
“If they were truly concerned about providing the facts, they would point out that the overwhelming majority of Christian denominations and the Jewish faith firmly condemn homosexual conduct and reject the idea that valid relationships can be integrated around acts of sodomy.”
The coalition that published the booklet comprises the National Education Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Association of School Administrators, and seven other groups.
Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, who runs the Thomas Aquinas Psychological Clinic in Encino, Calif., took the booklet to task when it claimed that “the idea that homosexuality is a mental disorder or that the emergence of same-gender sexual desires among some adolescents is in any way abnormal or mentally unhealthy has no support among health and mental health professional organizations.”
This idea is “dangerously” wrong, Nicolosi told the Register. Empirical evidence, he insisted, shows that homosexuality is the result of a traumatic childhood development.
“For all this media hype for finding the ‘gay gene,’ there is much more evidence for the classic triadic family pattern” as the underlining cause of homosexual tendencies, said Nicolosi, who treats more than 30 homosexuals a week.
The triadic family environment, he said, “involves an emotionally distant, emotionally detached father and an overly involved, intrusive, dominating mother - which results in a temperamentally introverted, artistic, timid boy.”
Instead of teaching children that they should affirm homosexuality as healthy, he added, children's advocates should treat students who suffer from these tendencies in order to prevent a dangerous lifestyle.
The booklet drew strong support from the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, a New York homosexual activist group.
In a statement, its executive director, Kevin Jennings, said, “Our nation's educators have been struggling for too long with too little information about sexual orientation development and youth - and this has taken a heavy toll on the health and well-being of lesbian, gay and bisexual students. Educating the educators is a necessary and much-welcomed step in the right direction.”
Nicolosi acknowledged that homosexual students deal with grief and scorn from their peers, but he insisted that the fundamental problem associated with homosexuality will not be eliminated with a placid environment.
“Homosexuality is at odds with a person's identity,” the psychologist said. “Homosexuality often involves promiscuity, narcissism, loneliness and depression.”
The Church's View
The Catholic Church's stance on homosexual behavior is frequently misunderstood, according to Chris Wolfe, political science chair at Marquette University, who organized a conference on homosexuality last year at Georgetown University.
“Homosexual acts are wrong,” Wolfe said. “The orientation towards the behavior is a disorder. The acts are a matter of choice - that's where it's immoral. The orientation is not a sin, but it is an intrinsic disorder.
“There are sound reasons for understanding homosexuality as a disorder. What is the end of sex? Marriage, family and children. By definition, it's against marriage, family and children.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches about the evil of homosexual acts but urges compassion toward homosexuals: “[Homo-sexuality's] psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered....
“The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. They do not choose their homosexual condition; for most of them it is a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.
“Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection” (No. 2357-59).
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Josh Mercer ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Vatican May Step In on EWTN-Mass Case DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:BIRMINGHAM, Ala.—The Vatican likely has been asked to resolve a liturgical dispute involving the way Mass is celebrated on Mother Angelica's EWTN and the local bishop, observers said.
Birmingham Bishop David Foley issued a decree Oct. 18 prohibiting priests in his diocese from celebrating Mass while facing in the same direction as the congregation.
It was immediately interpreted by observers as being directed at Mother Angelica's Eternal Word Television Network, which is based at a monastery located in the diocese. EWTN televises Mass four times daily to a potential audience of 44 million U.S. households.
Neither Bishop Foley nor the typically outspoken Mother Angelica has said anything publicly about the directive and neither has returned repeated phone calls from the Register.
Philip Grey, a canon lawyer who has followed the Birmingham case closely, said that the lack of discussion of the matter by Bishop Foley or Mother Angelica is telling.
“Surprisingly, it has been very quiet,” Grey said. “That leads me to believe it [an appeal] is happening.
“There are enough organizations and bishops that would be concerned that this would become a normal course of action that they would appeal it. This is a very serious issue. I can't stress that enough.”
A noted canonist contacted by the Register would not comment on the case.
Jesuit Father Joseph Fessio, founder of Ignatius Press and a leading figure in Catholic media circles, said:
“Anybody who would be able to say [that there was an appeal] would not be able to speak about it.
“This is a very delicate thing. [The decree] is a public statement and the Vatican would not want to embarrass anyone” by saying anything publicly about it.
About the silence, Helen Hull Hitchcock of Adoremus, an organization which promotes renewal of the liturgy along traditional lines, said, “Maybe no news is good news.”
Hitchcock said the letter in which Bishop Foley issued the prohibition “raises questions that are sore spots with a fair number of people,” but added that it may provide “a good opportunity to clarify” those concerns.
One of those concerns, Hitchcock said, was “where the universal norms [for how to celebrate Mass] begin and how far a bishop can go” in changing them.
Grey questioned the legitimacy of the bishop's move. He said that the liturgical books of 1970, which dictate universal norms, presume that priests will say Mass ad orientem. The practice of facing the congregation, Grey said, is only an “option.”
Some have argued that priests have celebrated Mass facing the congregation so widely for so long that it now has the force of custom, but Grey disagreed. He said that ad orientem posture is “the most ancient posture” and that it was treated “as law” in the liturgical documents flowing from Vatican II. That law, Grey added, has not yet been abrogated.
“Bishops have no authority to abrogate a universal law” of the Church, he noted.
Grey said that priests began exercising the option of celebrating Mass facing the congregation for pastoral reasons. “It allows for the congregation to see what is happening on the altar.”
Bishop Foley's decree was issued “to all priests and juridical persons” of the Birmingham Diocese. It sought to address what he referred to as “a well-intentioned but flawed and seriously misdirected movement [in which] priests are encouraged on their own initiative [and] without the permission of their local bishops, to take liberties with the Mass by celebrating in a manner called ad orientem,” which, the bishop added, “amounts to making a political statement, and is dividing the people.”
One Birmingham priest contacted by the Register, Father Pat O'Donoghue of Holy Infant of Prague Church, said that except for an “unusual situation” at Our Lady of the Angels Monastery, where Mass is regularly celebrated by the priest “with his back to the people,” he wasn't aware of any other priests in the diocese who did so. The diocese has 71,958 Catholics, or 2.7% of the local population, according to The Official Catholic Directory, 1999.
The second paragraph of the general decree attached to Bishop Foley's letter said:
“At any Mass that is or will be televised for broadcast or videotaped for public dissemination, the priest is to use a free-standing altar and face the people. These norms apply to all priests who celebrate the public Eucharistic liturgy of the Roman rite within the diocese of Birmingham, including visiting priests.”
“A priest who violates either of these laws is liable to suspension or removal of faculties,” the decree added.
A new, much larger, chapel has been built for Mother Angelica and the other nuns in her community. Bishop Foley dedicated the new chapel earlier this year and a Mass of consecration was scheduled for late October. The Mass was postponed after some of the appointments of the Church's interior were late in arriving from Spain. The Mass has been rescheduled for Dec. 15.
Bishop Foley, who was installed as bishop of Birmingham in 1994, has his own show, Pillars of Fire, on EWTN. He is also on its board of directors.
Father Fessio said, “I respect and support the duty of a bishop to ensure the integrity of the liturgy in his diocese. [But] I think this one is ill-advised because he implies that the ad orientem posture is an innovation and a sacrilege. ... How can you call it a sacrilege when it's been the norm for 1,700-1,800 years? I would hope that this is an opportunity for the Vatican to clarify the teachings of the Second Vatican Council.”
Code of Canon Law
Canon 838.1: The supervision of the sacred liturgy depends solely on the authority of the Church which resides in the Apostolic See and, in accord with the law, the diocesan bishop.
Canon 839.2: Local ordinaries are to see to it that the prayers and other pious and sacred exercises of the Christian people are fully in harmony with the norms of the Church.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian McGuire ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: 'No More Contraceptives' DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:Dr. Paul Hayes
He was a self-described pagan for nearly 20 years. He not only came back to the Church, but also gave up a growing obstetrics-gynecology practice in Florida to help establish Holy Family Medical Specialties in Lincoln, Neb., which now serves more than 7,300 patients. He recently spoke about his no-contraceptives practice with Register Features Correspondent Tim Drake.
Drake: Tell me about your upbringing and your journey away from the Church.
Dr. Paul Hayes: I was baptized a Catholic and raised in a nominally Catholic home. My upbringing by my parents was inconsistent. I attended my grandmother's Serbian church each weekend in Kansas City, Kan. I nurtured a strong desire to be a priest. At the age of 15, I got involved with drugs and started looking for the truth I could not seem to find in traditional Christianity. I started practicing Transcendental Meditation in 1972 as a way to get out of drugs, and ended up practicing it for 20 years. Interestingly, I practiced meditation in front of a picture of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
What brought you back to the Church?
In 1978, when our first child was born, I started to see cracks in the TM theology and realized that there had to be some absolute truth. In 1993, after seeing a billboard about praying the rosary I began praying the rosary daily. Also, at about this time, while channel surfing, I ran across an EWTN show about the dangers of New Age. About a month later, while praying in front of the crucifix I heard in my heart a woman say twice, “Look what he has done for you.” It was a very powerful emotional experience and I cried. For the first time I realized what the crucifix meant to me.
I fell head over heels in love with Mary and realized that I couldn't have her without having her Son. I began studying everything ... Church doctrine, apologetics, theology, Marian apparitions. I had been hoodwinked by TM for 20 years and I did not want to be hoodwinked again. I had to be able to defend my decision to the hilt and know absolutely that it was indeed the truth.
It culminated with my wife's search for a church. We found ourselves going to our local Catholic parish in Florida. The Friday before we had our marriage blessed, my wife showed me a Catholic Answers article about Church teaching prohibiting contraception and sterilization. On Saturday, our marriage was blessed, and on the following Monday all of my patients received a letter stating that I could no longer offer contraception or sterilization, but could offer natural family planning.
What impact did this decision have upon your practice?
The immediate impact was that my production was reduced by 50% — $30,000 per month walked out of my practice. What many people, and many doctors, do not realize is that birth control has become synonymous with women's health care. Everything an OB-GYN does revolves around birth control. If a woman bleeds heavily or irregularly, if a woman has painful periods, or if a woman has ovarian cysts or PMS the doctor prescribes the birth control pill. It is the treatment for everything. If an OB-GYN doesn't offer patients who do not want to get pregnant again birth control or tubal ligations, the patients won't come to you to have their babies.
In October of 1993, we adopted Mary Elizabeth. In June 1994, I sold my Florida practice and moved to study natural family planning under Dr. [Thomas] Hilgers at the Pope Paul VI Institute in Omaha. I had to give up everything that I was taught in residency and spent the next 18 months with Dr. Hilgers.
In October of 1995, Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz asked me to come to Lincoln. I did not feel I could refuse an apostolic request.
Your wife had a tubal ligation. Explain the result of having it reversed.
JoLynn was frustrated because when she would go to confession the priest would tell her that she had confessed this before and that it was forgiven, forgotten, and done. But, for her, it wasn't. We were still living with this “break” in our love. She finally recognized that the only way to correct that “break” was to fix it.
She had the tubal ligation reversed in July 1996, and the very next day I looked at my wife completely differently. It was, and continues to be, very dramatic. It's hard to imagine that a couple can put an obstacle like that in their way and not recognize how their behavior is influenced. Having it reversed restored a normal relationship in that intimate area which had earlier been disrupted. It greatly affected how I looked at and treated JoLynn.
There is the misconception that a reversal is difficult, unsuccessful or expensive. It is no more so than having the tubal ligation done in the first place. We wanted to correct the wrong and restore, as best we could, that aspect of our relationship with one another and with God. Our penance has been that we have been unable to have more children since the reversal.
How did you come to start Holy Family Medical Specialties?
A colleague had asked me to join in praying the rosary with their group every Wednesday evening. It was out of this group that Holy Family Medical Specialties was born. In June 1996 we began talking about trends in medicine and our concern for medical care in Lincoln. I was probably more vocal about it. As an OB-GYN you are on the front line ... you are clearly either with the Church or against it. If you are even slightly askew you are running away from Church teaching.
We all had individual practices, but as a group we recognized that something more was being asked of us. Women and their children had no place to go where everyone involved would be on the same page with them in their respect for life and advocating Catholic Church teaching. Holy Family Medical Specialties started in 1997.
How are you now able to make your faith a part of your work?
When you are surrounded by an environment that is physically edifying, you find yourself continually spiritually influenced. Our practice is truly Catholic. We have a crucifix in every room. There are holy water fonts throughout the building, paintings of the Holy Family on the walls, magazines of faith sitting in the waiting area, and books about the Saints. We have a conference room dedicated to reading and silent prayer. Our staff starts each day with morning prayer.
Such an environment enables a physician to quickly and easily reference Scripture and the support of our Lord and our Lady in counseling patients. Many non-Catholic patients have said that they appreciate the environment because it is full of faith and they feel protected by that. The practice becomes its own witness.
Every aspect of our practice is timed with NFP [natural family planning]. For example, timing surgery so that it will not disrupt a woman's cycle, or helping couples to understand that a miscarriage is the loss of a baby. It is a practice which affirms patients with pregnancies in any situation.
When Dr. Timothy Fischer joined us he was not sure if his patients would follow him. He had a large, established and well-known practice. Most followed him. He has said that what he has found most edifying is that his patients are now comfortable sharing with him about their faith, something which they had never shared with him before. It's a twoway street. The physician probably gains more than the patient.
What do you see as the future for Catholic medicine?
Couples see doctors who practice morally aberrant methods of family planning because they choose to. The face of Catholic medicine would change overnight if Catholics would exclusively patronize Catholic physicians who adhere to the teachings of the Church.
Yet, there are all kinds of reasons why patients will not switch. Many Catholics do not value what the Church teaches in this area. Only 2-4% of Catholics practice natural family planning. Those who do have access to NFP-only physicians, do not avail themselves of them. Some do so perhaps out of personal guilt.
Others will say that they are “evangelizing their doctor through their witness.” My response to that is that the only thing you are evangelizing is that this truth is so unimportant to you that you will not switch doctors because of it. All this tells the doctor is that if they make the change to an NFP-only practice it won't make a difference to anybody.
What about the future of natural family planning?
An NFP-only practice works in cooperation with a patient's beliefs and cycle. It is a practice which educates and empowers women. Sooner or later, many will recognize that the contraceptive mentality treats them as objects and they will flock to NFP. They will hold the physicians who did not tell them the truth accountable, and those doctors will be left behind.
I see more patients who have discontinued oral contraceptives because of a desire for a more natural approach rather than for moral reasons. We see many young women who reject contraception because of the side effects, and many menopausal women who are looking for natural hormone replacement. Natural medicine has been catching on in all areas but reproduction. It is just a matter of time.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Dr. Paul Hayes ----- KEYWORD: Inperson -------- TITLE: Catholic Youth Gather in Huge Numbers DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:ST. LOUIS—Teaching teens about sin and forgiveness was the order of the day when keynote speaker Jesuit Father J-Glenn Murray spoke to some 23,000 youths at the 1999 National Catholic Youth Conference in St. Louis.
Held every two years, the conference attracted one of the largest crowds since the gathering began in 1951.
The Nov. 18-21 conference was sponsored by the National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry and was hosted by the Office of Youth Ministry of the St. Louis Archdiocese.
Archbishop Justin Rigali welcomed participants at the opening session, and was the main celebrant among eight other bishops and 100 priests at the closing Mass.
In addition, some 30 bishops were on hand to participate in activities, including a youth congress on Scripture, which gave several hundred teens the opportunity to tell the prelates what they need to help them better understand Scripture and apply it to their daily lives.
“We are mindful that we are not always what we want to be or what we should be,” said Father Murray, a teacher of homiletics and the director of the Office for Pastoral Liturgy of the Cleveland Diocese.
“And yet we stand in the presence of a God who is slow to anger and rich in mercy,” he said.
Jesus was asked by Peter, “How often must I forgive my brother or sister when he or she wrongs me? As often as seven times?” and Jesus answered, “70 times seven,” the priest noted.
Father Murray said there is hope for sinners through reconciliation.
He encouraged all attending the conference to not let the day pass without receiving the sacrament of reconciliation from one of some 200 priests who were on hand to hear confessions.
“Christ Jesus does indeed come among us to fix us,” he said. “As my grandmother used to say, ‘There is a doctor in the house.”’
Other highlights at the national gathering included:
— Emcee Jesse Manibusan, a pastoral musician from California who has performed nationally at retreats, rallies and conventions, including World Youth Day.
— Steve Angrisano, a nationally recognized musician and youth speaker, who also served as a master of ceremonies at the papal youth rally during Pope John Paul II's visit to St. Louis.
— A social hangout for teens set up at Gateway Park, which measured more than three football fields in area and had games, music and faith-related activities.
— The New Millennium Eve Party, a collage of skits, musicians and dancing.
“There were glowing remarks” about the conference, said Father Robert Smoot, director of youth ministry for the archdiocese.
“You can't go wrong when you have so many young people gathered in the name of Jesus Christ,” he told the St. Louis Review archdiocesan newspaper.
The event “really revolved around prayer,” he added, which he said was an indication “that these young people have a deep faith.”
They enjoyed having fun and sightseeing, too, the priest said, “but they're here to go deeper in their faith and their friendship with Christ.”
This year's conference theme was “gateway@st.louis.ncyc99.” Each day had a particular theme, with accompanying workshops and liturgy. Themes included “Jesus Is the Gateway,” “We Are Here in Community,” “What Do We Offer?” and “Where Are We Going?”
The events were held at the Cervantes Convention Center and Trans World Dome at the America's Center in downtown St. Louis. Each evening concluded with a night prayer.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: U.S. Notes & Quotes DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:Pigrim Statue Wows Chicago
MILWAUKEE JOURNAL-SENTINEL, Nov. 22—A larger-than-life sized statue of Our Lady of the New Millennium is drawing crowds of curious onlookers to Chicago, the Milwaukee daily reported.
Commissioned by Catholic businessman Carl Demma, 68, the 33-foot, 8-inch tall statue has acquired an even larger mystique since it began making pilgrimages to more than a dozen Chicago-area parishes this May aboard a blue flatbed truck.
“Chicagowide, the response has been incredible,” said Father Anthony Brankin, pastor of St. Thomas More Church on the city's southwest side. “I don't think anyone has been able to count the number of people who have come. It is a beautiful statue, and powerful in its ability to draw out the devotion of the people,” said Father Brankin, himself a sculptor. The statue's popularity has grown so much that it is booked for parish visits in the greater Chicago area through 2001, and there have been inquiries from several states, said Alejandro Castillo, director of the Millennium Office for the Archdiocese of Chicago. The archdiocese coordinates the visits. Demma funds the operation with his own money and donations, the Journal-Sentinel reported.
Cross Raises Furor in Idaho
THE NEW YORK TIMES, Nov. 29—A white, sixty-foot-tall cross that has overlooked Boise, Idaho, for 43 years is now being called “blatantly unconstitutional” by Chicago talk-radio host Rob Sherman.
Sherman, a former spokesman for American Atheists, a non-profit group that promotes separation of church and state, told the Times, “Whenever government editorializes about religion by putting a religious symbol on public land, it creates a climate of bigotry, intolerance, hatred and tyranny against non-Christians in general and against atheists in particular.”
But cross supporters haven't let Sherman's remarks slide by. On Nov. 27, 10,000 people marched down Capitol Boulevard carrying “Save the Cross” signs and singing hymns, the Times reported.
Larry Butler, a truck driver, got so angry when Sherman challenged the cross that he used donated lumber to make and distribute 7,000 small crosses, the Times article said.
The report added that Boise is not the only city fighting for the freedom to erect religious symbols. “The debate is not limited to Idaho. American Atheists is challenging a 109-foot cross on Mount Davidson in San Francisco. A cross on public land in Eugene, Ore. has already been removed after a challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union.” In contrast, the Idaho cross is located on private land.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Vatican Notes and Quotes DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:Pope to Apologize for Crusades?
AVVENIRE, Nov. 16—Pope John Paul II is preparing to ask pardon for the crusades, the Italian Catholic daily reported.
The Pope's plans were made public by Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, president of the Council of European Bishops’ Conference. Cardinal Vlk said the Pope will submit a document to all the confessions and religions which suffered as a result of the bloody campaigns to re-capture the Holy Land and defend Christianity from Muslim invaders in the early part of this millennium.
A papal apology would follow a complaint — made earlier this year — by the Greek Orthodox Church that Catholics have never expressed repentance for cruelty towards them during the fourth crusade in 1204.
According to one Vatican official, a meeting between the Pope and the heads of the Orthodox Church may even take place in Bethlehem in the year 2000, Avvenire reported.
Pope Dedicates New Chapel at the Vatican
THE UNIVERSE, Nov. 21—East and West meet in a burst of color and stone in the newly decorated Vatican chapel that Pope John Paul II dedicated Nov. 11, the British Catholic weekly reported.
“Here East and West, far from opposing one another, exchange gifts in order to better express the unfathomable riches of Christ,” the Pope said during Mass in the Redemptoris Mater (Mother of the Redeemer) Chapel.
The chapel, named after Pope John Paul's 1987 encyclical on Mary, had been closed for three years while artists covered the walls and ceiling with mosaics that represent scenes and symbols common in Eastern icons. They were designed and executed by Slovenian Jesuit Father Marko Rupnik and Russian Orthodox artist Aleksandr Kornooukhov, the Universe reported.
North American College Seminarians Choose Ratzinger to Ordain Them
INSIDE THE VATICAN, Nov.—The selection of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to ordain 31 American seminarians to the diaconate at St. Peter's Basilica, Oct. 7, reflects a shift in the attitude of seminarians from the United States and Canada.
According to custom, the seminarians vote for the curial cardinal who will ordain them. Inside the Vatican said for nearly two decades, some seminarians have always opposed Ratzinger as their choice. “But,” said Inside the Vatican writer John Drogin, “the student body began to change in the 1990's. Lately, a growing number of seminarians have wanted to invite Ratzinger. This year, their enthusiasm for him was very clear.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Vatican -------- TITLE: After Prodding, German Bishops Withdraw From Counseling DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:COLOGNE, Germany—The German bishops have agreed to follow Pope John Paul II's instruction to withdraw from the state system of pregnancy counseling, while Catholic lay organizations are making plans to replace the Church's counseling centers with their own.
Following a meeting Nov. 23, the bishops announced that they would be reorganizing the Church's counseling provisions to conform with the Pope's requirements.
Counselors will no longer be allowed to issue a certificate allowing a woman to have a legal abortion. The action followed the Pope's most pointed remarks on the subject, delivered Nov. 20 to a group of German prelates in Rome on their ad limina visit. The talk also dwelt on the proper role of the laity in the Church's governance.
Under German law, a woman seeking a legal abortion must present a certificate stating that she has received counseling. The Church runs about one-sixth of Germany's 1,500 counseling centers.
The German bishops have argued that by offering counseling certificates, the Church attracts women who are considering abortion to its centers where counselors can try to convince the women not to terminate their pregnancies.
The Pope wrote to the bishops in September that they could no longer issue counseling certificates. He said a compromise proposal to state on the documents that they “cannot be used for legally carrying out abortions” had proved unsatisfactory because abortion clinics continued to accept the certificates.
The German bishops conference postponed implementation of the Pope's instruction, and said the Church intended to keep counseling pregnant women, “especially those in conditions of particular need and difficulty.” Some of the bishops, however, called for a new service that provides counseling without issuing certificates.
The bishops said they would explore the possibility of remaining within the state system without having to issue the certificate.
The chairman of the bishops’ conference, Bishop Karl Lehmann of Mainz, a supporter of the present system, said after the meeting: “We have fought and we have lost. Now we'll have to make the best of it for the future.”
Many people are claiming the right to construct the Church as if it were a type of ‘multinational’ governed by men who are more or less intelligent.
The most prominent supporter of the Pope's position, Archbishop Johannes Dyba of Fulda, said there were no winners and no losers: “The Holy Year is about to begin and we have quite different worries and joys.”
In his Nov. 20 ad limina address, the Pope also criticized lay groups for trying to exercise undue influence in the affairs of the Church, saying they were acting against the will of Christ.
The talk focused on the Church as mystery, an aspect the Pope said has escaped many lay Catholics who are pressing for change in Church policies.
“Many people are claiming the right to construct the Church as if it were a type of ‘multinational’ governed by men who are more or less intelligent. But in reality, the Church as mystery is not ‘ours’ but ‘his’: It is the people of God, the body of Christ, the temple of the Holy Spirit,” he said.
The Pope said the German bishops have had to spend a lot of time and energy countering “groups that try to provoke in the Church, through concerted action or insistent pressure, changes that do not correspond to the will of Christ.”
After emphasizing the fundamental difference that exists between the royal priesthood of believers and the ministerial priest-hood, the Holy Father said that one must reject, as being against Christ's will, any attempt to clericalize the laity or vice versa.
He reminded lay Catholics that obedience and respect for pastors was required for genuine renewal in the Church.
“In the contemporary age, in which there is much talk about emancipation both in civil society and in the Church, there is a growing idea that true freedom can be gained by detachment from the Church,” he said. Bishops should oppose this trend, pointing out that even the great reform-minded saints never left the Church, he said.
On the issue of women priests, the Pope said he was aware of a “growing unease” among Germans about how women are treated in the Church. He said the bishops should make it clear that while the Church does respect women, it cannot accept a confusion between their “human and civil rights” and the rights and duties of the ordained priesthood.
He said that in a 1994 apostolic letter, “the Church has no power whatsoever to confer the priestly consecration on women,” and had insisted that there be no further debate on the issue. He said this teaching against women's ordination shares in the infallibility of the ordinary magisterium, as taught unanimously by the Pope and all the world's bishops.
Consequently, the bishops should “reject all contrary opinion, whether proposed by individuals or groups,” and should correct misinterpretations among the faithful. (From combined wire services)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Vatican -------- TITLE: Pope Canonizes 10 Martyrs Killed in Spanish Civil DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—Pope John Paul II canonized 12 new saints, including 10 victims of the Spanish Civil War, and said they offered spiritual lessons for all modern Christians.
The two-hour-long liturgy Nov. 22 in St. Peter's Basilica was the last canonization ceremony of the 20th century.
With the latest group, the Pope has named 296 saints in his 21-year pontificate, almost as many as were named by all his predecessors since modern saint-making rules were established in the 16th century.
The 10 martyrs were all priests or brothers working in Spanish schools during the 1930s when members of a Marxist rebel movement led attacks against priests and religious. St. Cirilo Bertran and eight fellow members of the Christian Brothers, and St. Inocencio de La Inmaculada, a Passionist priest, were all shot to death.
The other new martyr to come out of the Spanish Civil War is St. Jaume Hilari, who was killed in Tarragona three years later.
In a sermon, the Pope said the martyrs were not anti-communist war heroes but witnesses of the faith, who with their deaths gave “the last lesson of their lives.”
He summarized the testimony of the martyrs by quoting St. Jaume Hilari's words just before dying: “Friends: to die for Christ is to reign.” The Holy Father spoke in Catalan, the new saint's native language.
“Not being afraid of spilling their blood for Christ, they conquered death and now participate in the glory of the Kingdom of God. That is why today I have the joy of inscribing them in the catalogue of saints,” the Holy Father said.
The Pope also canonized St. Tommaso da Cori, an Italian Franciscan well-known as a preacher and confessor until his death in 1729, and St. Benedetto Menni, an Italian member of the Hospitaller Order of St. John of God, who in the late 1800s founded the Congregation of Hospitaller Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and is credited with restoring the Order of St. John of God in Spain and Portugal in the mid 19th century.
Among the 11,000 people attending the Mass was Argentine President Carlos Menem, who traveled to Rome for the canonization of the country's first native-born saint. St. Hector Valdivielso Saez, one of the Christian Brothers martyred in Spain, was born in Buenos Aires to Spanish immigrants who later returned to Spain.
The Pope concelebrated Mass with Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco of Madrid, and the Pope's vicar for the diocese of Rome, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, as well as bishops from the new saints’ dioceses, the superiors general of the Passionists and Hospitallers of St. John of God, and several Franciscan superiors.
(From combined wire services)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Vatican -------- TITLE: JPII: Expense of Health Care Threat to Poor DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—While economic pressures exert constant pressure on the health care industry throughout the world, providers must reach out to the poor and reverse a dangerous trend of neglect, said Pope John Paul II.
The relationship between economy and health was the focus of a conference at the Vatican Nov. 18-20, organized by the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers.
In virtue of his dignity, every person has the right to “enjoy the benefits offered by progress, science, technology and medicine,” said the Holy Father, who acknowledged that it is not the Church's role to define the economic models and health systems that are the most appropriate to resolve the difficult relation between economics and health.
But, “in the context of globalization, her mission consists in doing everything possible so that the question will be addressed and resolved in light of those ethical values that foster respect and safeguard the dignity of every human being, beginning with the weakest and poorest.”
John Paul noted with “heartfelt sorrow” that the “breach between wealth and poverty” — which should be decreasing — is growing ever greater.
The solution, he explained, requires an awareness of the dignity of the person and of human interdependence, which should lead to an increase in the sense of duty in solidarity.
“Only from this horizon can a [purely] economic vision of health care be overcome.” Solidarity opens new horizons because it offers the virtue of charity — sharing the love of God — “especially with the weakest brothers, among whom are the sick.”
The Pope asked governments and international agencies to be guided by the common good in addressing the relationship between economics and health.
The Holy Father urged that “profit not prevail over human values,” and exhorted “the more advanced countries to make available to the less developed [countries] their experience, technology, and part of their economic wealth.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Vatican -------- TITLE: Christian Humanism Addresses All Cultures DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—Putting God into the picture of modern culture will answer people's deepest questions and provide them with a greater measure of protection, Pope John Paul II said in a Nov. 19 message to the plenary meeting of the Pontifical Council for Culture.
“Many of our contemporaries, especially young people, experience great difficulties when they realize that they are submerged and disoriented by the multiplicity of ideas prevailing on man, life and death, the world and their meaning,” the Pope wrote.
At the same time, John Paul II explained, too often “the ideas on man that modern society transmits have become real systems of thought that tend to distance themselves from truth and to exclude God, believing that by so doing, they are affirming the primacy of man, in the name of an alleged liberty and its full and free development.
These ideologies deprive man of the constitutive dimension of a person created in the image and likeness of God.”
According to the Pope, “this profound mutilation becomes a genuine threat to man, because it leads to thinking of man without any relation to transcendence.”
In the dialogue with culture, the Church has the essential task of “guiding our contemporaries in the discovery of a healthy anthropology that will lead them to know Christ, true God and true man.”
Christian humanism does not belong to any specific culture, the Pope explained, but is meant to penetrate all cultures. “In face of the wealth of salvation brought by Christ, the barriers that separate different cultures are demolished. The ‘folly’ of the cross, of which St. Paul speaks, is the power of a wisdom that overcomes all cultural limits.”
The global, multicultural society, can generate skepticism and religious indifference, the Pope warned.
“It is a challenge that must be addressed with intelligence and courage. The Church is not afraid of legitimate diversity, which highlights the rich treasures of the human soul. What's more, she counts on this diversity to inculturate the Gospel message.”
With just a few weeks left before the beginning of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, the Pope said it is “an exceptional time of grace — the mission to announce Christ becomes ever more urgent.”
The Church has an obligation to help people discover the true meaning of life by helping them discover “the greatness and beauty of Christ, the Word of God,” the Pope said.
“And it is certain that attracted to beauty, to esthetics, our contemporaries will be led to ethics, that is to say, to leading a beautiful and dignified life.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Vatican -------- TITLE: World Notes and Quotes DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:Criminalizing the Gospel?
RELIGION TODAY, Nov. 22—Preaching the Gospel in Israel would be a crime under a proposed law. A committee of the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, held a hearing Nov.10 on a bill that would impose prison sentences for any kind of direct or indirect evangelistic activity. It was proposed by Rabbi Porush of the National Religious Party, Religion Today's online news service reported.
The bill calls for a five-year sentence for those convicted of trying to persuade an Israeli citizen to change faiths, 10 years for tying to convert a minor or “needy” person, three years for using advertising to encourage people to change faiths and one year for bringing a minor or “needy” person to an event sponsored by a religious group other than their own. It also calls for a 10-year sentence for anyone convicted of persuading an Israeli to change faiths, even if the conversion occurs outside of Israel, Religion Today reported.
Persecuted Lao Christians Speak Out
SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST, Nov. 22—Christians in Laos say they have nothing more to lose and are speaking up about being persecuted, the Chinese daily reported.
After years of suffering in silence they are asking international leaders to address the situation, which they say has become severe. “Church leaders, detainees, and their families have requested outside intervention, saying it cannot get any worse,” a source in the country said.
Forty-six Lao Christians are in prison for their faith, including 15 in Savannakhet city, 11 in Attapeu and 20 in remote regions throughout the country, the report said. Several have been charged with “believing the Jesus religion” or “religious belief” and some are locked in stocks in primitive cells, the paper said.
Hmong Christians living near Vientiane, the capital, are being forced to sign affidavits pledging to forsake the faith, it reported. About 40 Lao and several western Christians were arrested at a worship service in 1998.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: EDITORIAL DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:Two extraordinary photos in the Nov. 28–Dec. 4 Register together offer a reason to hope for the success of efforts to build a culture of life in America. On the back page, we featured a photograph of Samuel Alexander Armas, who had not yet been born. A photographer was invited to document fetal spina bifida surgery. Unexpectedly, before the surgery was done, Samuel reached out of the incision in his mother's womb to grasp the doctor's finger.
The photograph of Samuel's gesture was given limited play in news outlets. But it became popular among pro-lifers, who e-mailed it to one another. One called it “the most amazing photo I've ever seen.”
It's no wonder. Samuel is 21 weeks old. In the United States, it is legal to perform a partial-birth abortion on such a child. The procedure is used for children from 20 weeks old to full-term. In it, a doctor partially delivers a baby, feet first, and then crushes the baby's skull, removing its contents.
In a Web site that documents U.S. House hearings on partial-birth abortion, the National Right to Life Committee quotes one doctor saying he has performed 1,000 partial-birth abortions. He said they are chosen mostly for nonmedical reasons, and that 80% are “purely elective.”
And, as an interview on the back page of this week's paper reminds us, the indignity to the child does not always end at the abortion. When President Clinton lifted the ban on fetal tissue research in 1993, he made possible a trade in fetal parts. The U.S. House is investigating evidence that babies Samuel's age and older are being obtained by companies that offer them for profit as “specimens” for medical experiments.
This all goes to show how much ours has become the “culture of death” that Pope John Paul II has termed it.
But there's another photograph on the front page of the same issue. This one shows former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev at a celebration of the 10th anniversary of the revolutions that ended the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.
The picture shows Gorbachev smiling, framed by a large crucifix at St. George Orthodox chapel in Prague.
Before the sudden events of 10 years ago, Gorbachev led the “evil empire,” one of two “superpowers,” and perhaps the most feared nation in the world. The Cold War seemed unwinnable, and movies and television shows contemplated nuclear annihilation.
Gorbachev visited the Vatican on Dec. 1, 1989, making it obvious that the decades-long experiment in atheistic communism had failed. That day, the Holy Father crowned his years of effort to restore Eastern Europe by calling on Gorbachev to reopen the churches of the Soviet bloc.
Ten years later, it is fitting that Gorbachev should be photographed in a chapel, framed by an image of Christ. Not long ago, such a picture would have been unthinkable.
This should give us heart. It reminds us that history is not just the story of the things men and women do. It is most importantly the story of what God does.
If we are tempted to disillusionment by a culture that is capable of both fetal surgery and partial-birth abortion, we can remember that the same crucified Christ stands over our times, as well.
Pope John Paul II attributed the remarkable events of 1989 to the recommitment to Christ the Church made in the Marian year of 1986-87. What can we expect from the Jubilee celebration of Christ's birth in the year 2000?
----- EXCERPT: Images of Hope ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Opinion -------- TITLE: A Well-Mannered Defender of the Faith DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:What is Catholicism? Hard Questions — Straight Answers
by John Redford
(Our Sunday Visitor Books, 1999 240 pages, $12.95)
A parish priest from Canterbury, England, and a convert to Catholicism from Anglicanism, Father John Redford is well qualified to explain the Catholic faith to Christians with Anglican — or, in the United States, Episcopalian — sensibilities. That's what he does here, and with an unmistakably British flair that American Catholic readers will find both refreshing and stimulating.
Father Redford wrote What is Catholicism? — Hard Questions, Straight Answers as a detailed response to 53 questions posed by the Anglican scholar David Lawrence Edwards in a similarly titled book whose point of view is tipped by its subTITLE: What is Catholicism? An Anglican Responds to the Official Teaching of the Roman Catholic Church (Mowbray, 1994).
At first glance, American readers might be tempted to chalk up Father Redford's work as an entry in the growing body of popular Catholic apologetics drawing on authors’ personal experiences. Notable and successful books in this vein include Evangelical Is Not Enough by Thomas Howard, Born Fundamentalist, Born-Again Catholic by David Currie, Crossing the Tiber by Stephen K. Ray, By What Authority? by Mark P. Shea and Surprised by Truth, edited by Patrick Madrid. But Father Redford, a former Anglican deacon who entered the Catholic Church in 1967, takes a different tack. Drawing on questions raised in Edwards’ book, he allows himself to be interrogated on behalf of Catholic doctrine.
The questions fall into six subject categories — the exclusivity of Catholic truth claims, the authority and veracity of Scripture, the need for and meaning of a hierarchical Church, the relationship of faith and reason, Catholic teaching on sexuality and obstacles to institutional unity. Taken as a whole, the questions themselves can be seen as a sort of modernist anti-catechism in which everything is up for grabs except the requirement to question everything.
By allowing his “examiner” to frame the terms of the debate, the erudite Father Redford is able to accomplish two things.
First, in taking his questioner's difficulties seriously, and without suspicion of dubious motives behind the asking, he models Christian intellectual humility for those who find their faith similarly inspected by thoughtful, but skeptical, individuals. Second, in directly taking on the well-thought-out objections to Catholicism that Edwards previously posited, he provides answers that are concise, immaculately reasoned, and thoroughly grounded in the authentic teaching of the magisterium and the tradition of the Fathers.
American readers may find Father Redford's section on the infallibility and primacy of the Pope to be of the most immediate use since American evangelicals and fundamentalists frequently echo Anglican arguments against the papacy. Of course, Anglicans accept the idea of apostolic succession (even if they have breached it) while fundamentalists don't; both object to Rome's claims about the nature and scope of the Petrine office. Using Scripture, history and natural reason, Father Redford makes a convincing case that, since certainty about the truth is clearly the will of Christ, the need for a papacy that is infallible and pre-eminent is both sensible and biblically coherent.
Father Redford's section on faith and reason is an especially useful tool for Catholics interested in the challenge posed by that postmodernist cabal known as the Jesus Seminar. In a remarkable series of questions in which the divinity of Jesus Christ is at issue, Father Redford draws on more than 20 sources, ranging from Athanasius and Father Raymond Brown to the Council of Ephesus and the Second Vatican Council, to defend traditional doctrines about the Godhead and the person of Christ. In commentary that is both rich and readable, Father Redford provides every Catholic apologist with a demonstration of that loving engagement with the modern world that Pope John Paul II has called for so often.
Students of Catholicism in the English-speaking world will note that the “conversation” between Father Redford and David Edwards is reminiscent of two earlier conversations between British Catholics and their erstwhile Anglican brethren. In 1864, John Henry Newman, the former Oxford don and future Catholic cardinal, responded to the invective of Anglican clergyman Charles Kingsley in his now-legendary autobiographical work, Apologia Pro Vita Sua. What began as a slip of the pen, according to Kingsley, wound up revolutionizing the British view of the Catholic Church. Answers contains none of the personal animus displayed by Kingsley and, to a lesser extent, Newman, in their very public debate. In its serious but rather more polite tone, Father Redford's book is instead heir to the series of letters exchanged between 1930 and 1932 by Sir Arnold Lunn, an Anglican, and Msgr. Ronald Knox, a Catholic convert. (Published in 1932 as Difficulties: A Correspondence About the Catholic Religion, these letters reveal two sincere Christian intellectuals grappling over the veracity of Catholic doctrine.)
In the spirited repartee of Edwards and Father Redford, we find the same sort of well-mannered, rigorous exploration of truth that gives embodiment to the old Latin phrase fides querens intellectum — faith striving for understanding. What the result of this “conversation” will be for the interlocutors, we cannot know, though it is a source of hope that, in July 1934, Msgr. Knox received Sir Arnold into the Catholic Church. Perhaps the same glad fate is in store for Dr. Edwards? In any case, those listening in by way of Father Redford's book can't help come away with a new appreciation for the intellectual liveliness and robust defensibility of the Catholic faith.
Mark S. Gordon writes from Mystic, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mark S. Gordon ----- KEYWORD: Books -------- TITLE: Purgatory: Where the 'I' Disintegrates DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:by Peter John Cameron, OP
(Magnificat, November 1999)
Dominican Father Peter John Cameron, editor of the monthly devotional guide Magnificat and professor at St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, N.Y., writes about the meaning of “the most important moment of our life: death. ... St. Ambrose speaks about three different kinds of death: the death of sin, the death to sin, and the death which is the passing after our allotted course of time on earth. He says the death of sin is evil; the death to sin is good; and that physical death is indifferent. Unfortunately, the world turns this upside down, making the death of sin good, the death to sin indifferent, and physical death evil.”
As an antidote to such false values, Father Cameron recommends meditating on the nature and meaning of purgatory. He notes that Hans Urs von Balthasar has written that purgatory is experienced in total isolation. “There the soul exists in a kind of solitary confinement where one is entirely taken up with his or her relationship to God. ... In this isolation, the soul sees itself only in the Lord's mirror. The one being purified does not see his neighbor. Rather, he is wholly occupied with God and himself.” This is because “The soul can enjoy the company of loved ones only after being cleansed by the Lord's love, because then we can regard others with the Lord's own eyes. Then everything impersonal in our life is purged so that we can enter into the definitive community.”
Father Cameron explains that most of us leave life still attached to a fundamental reversal in values that must be corrected — the preoccupation with self over God and others. “In purgatory, the egocentric ‘I'becomes so disintegrated that the Thou of God takes over. There we arrive at a kind of collapse in which, once and for all, we bid farewell to our false identity. We cease being caught up with ourselves so that we can be situated fully in God.”
Father Cameron describes a play by Thornton Wilder called And the Sea Shall Give Up Its Dead, which recounts the purgatorylike experience of three characters who drown. One of these, Gertruda XXII, empress of Newfoundland in the 27th century, tells of the pain of “‘slowly liberating your mind from the prides and prejudices and trivialities of a lifetime. ... In my life I believed fiercely that everything of which I said MY had some peculiar excellence. I had a passion for genealogies and antiquities, and felt that such things merely looked forward to myself.’ But at the end of the play she cries: ‘O God, do not take away my identity! Do not take away my myself!‘The reality of purgatory convinces us that we cannot carry our own self. The imperfect ‘I’ that is destroyed in purgatory will be returned to us by God ... but as a new ‘I’ — an ‘I’ in God.”
Purgatory is the place where ultimate truths are faced as our eyes see everything that we have lived and everyone we have seen in their true condition and dimensions. There “we finally come to realize the extent of the world's sin and how our impurity is contained in it. There we stand before God helpless, stripped, naked ... realizing that the Lord has always seen us naked. But in purgatory we experience our impurity within the purity of God. The aim of the whole procedure is that we grasp how God wishes to be loved.“Another of the drowned characters in Wilder's play enjoyed fame and success during his life as a notable personage: “‘I was a theatrical producer, and thought myself important to my time — wise, witty and kindly. Now I am reconciled to the fact that I am naked, a fool, a child.’ The pains involved in this process of purgatory point directly to the cross where Christ is made King. Purgatory ends precisely at the point when, looking at the cross, God's love becomes who we are.”
Ellen Wilson Fielding writes from Davidson, Maryland.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Wilson Fielding ----- KEYWORD: Books -------- TITLE: LETTERS DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:Power of Prayer
A few comments on the article “Prayer From Strangers Good For Heart Patients” (Nov. 14-20):
Four years ago I almost died from a sudden, severe illness. During one of my lowest points I was nearly deluged with cards and calls from family, friends and acquaintances, some of whom I hadn't seen in years. Nearly all of them said they were praying for me (not just thinking of me).
While I wanted to recover, my primary prayer during that time was for the strength to face what was to happen.
I got well and, with daily thanks to God, have remained healthy. Since then I've often told people that the prayers of others played a big part in my recovery.
But after reading that article it dawned [on me] how we often equate successful prayer only with recovery. Had I died, the prayers of those concerned about me wouldn't have been wasted. God's answer to them would have been to give me the courage to face the end, I'm convinced.
We all need prayers daily, just as we need to pray daily for others, regardless of our situation. It seems diabolical that some medical professionals did an experiment with the lives of their patients to seek proof for prayer. We should never forget that prayer works, always, even if the answer we get isn't what we wanted.
Jim Rygelski St. Louis
Championing
I always enjoy the interviews which appear on the front page of the Register. But the interview with Steve Wood (Nov. 14-20) was especially interesting. Your interviewer did a great job of capturing the spirit that Steve brings to his newfound mission as a convert to the Catholic faith.
The Promise Keepers movement, which appeared in 1993, certainly helped to jump-start men's movements among Christians in this country. In my parish, we found the PK book helpful when a men's group started. But once we finished the book, the problem was: What should we read next? Steve Wood's book on Christian fatherhood was the answer. Here we found ideas which were specifically Catholic in tone. The book contains a wealth of references to papal teaching on family life, and would be profitable for any young man preparing for marriage.
A particularly striking aspect of Steve's book is the frank and open admission that a Catholic father needs to be pro-life according to the teachings of Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae. This is a remarkable turn of events. In the 31 years since Humanae Vitae was issued, I have attended about 2,000 Masses in many different dioceses, but I have never once heard a public proclamation of the teachings in that encyclical. It's not as if the topic was an obscure one, of interest only to theologians. On the contrary, the teaching has an impact on every family in every parish. It is totally inexplicable to me that such an important teaching of the Church has never been the subject of even a single homily [I have heard].
But with Steve Wood's arrival, the winds of change have started to blow. Since many priests and deacons are apparently reluctant to proclaim Church teaching in public, it seems that God is using a former Presbyterian minister to do the proclaiming. Steve Wood promulgates the teaching of Humanae Vitae, including encouragement to use the sacraments of penance and Eucharist, in exactly the way that Pope Paul VI recommended in 1968.
In our men's group, when the teaching on Humanae Vitae came up, the reaction was amazing. Some of the men confessed with regret that they had taken action in past years which had cut off the possibility of having further children. Their reaction to Steve Wood's words was pointed: Why were we never told about this teaching before?
Why indeed?
Dermott J. Mullan Elkton, Maryland
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Opinion -------- TITLE: Don't Let Them Distract You From Life DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:Pro-life advocates face a variety of obstacles in their conversations with their neighbors. While some people truly advocate the culture of death, far more of our neighbors and countrymen have merely acquiesced to it. Many of them never quite make it to seriously considering the core issues of life and death, because of what I call “decisive distractions.” These are issues that are really peripheral to the main issues of concern to the pro-life movement. Unfortunately, many people find the arguments on issues like overpopulation so compelling that they never quite give the fundamental issue a fair or complete hearing.
There are many such distractions. “If we don't have aggressive population control, we will completely destroy the environment.” ... “Overpopulation is the cause of poverty.” ... “If the U.N. doesn't fund birth control programs, Third World women will have no choice but to remain poor, destitute and uneducated.” ... “If you are against abortion and birth control, you must be in favor of women being barefoot and pregnant.” ... “Children are better off in small families.” … And so on.
We try to respond to these objections by saying that, no matter how serious these problems may be, killing innocent people can never be a permissible solution. All too often, the people we are talking with accuse us of changing the subject and tell us we only care about the fetus — not about the people who are already with us. We end up talking past each other.
There are too many decisive distractions to address in a single column. But it behooves us to inform ourselves about as many of these issues as possible. Today, I just want to consider one of these — the claim that there are already too many people in the world. Accept this premise, and it's easy to go along with the argument that aggressive population control is necessary, perhaps even a moral good, for both individuals and society.
Many people who live in densely packed urban areas find it easy to believe that the country is overcrowded. An overpopulation scare story is plausible to a person trapped in the daily traffic jam around the Washington Beltway, or on California's Highway 101, or on Chicago's Dan Ryan Expressway.
We should agree with our opponents where we can, and this is one such case. We feel that we are crowded, and many of us are. But the fact is, a lot of us are crowded into a few places — a very small percentage, in fact, of the available land. The solution to overcrowding is not to reduce the total number of people, or prevent new generations from taking their place in the world, but to spread out existing people.
According to the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas (www.ncpa.com), three-quarters of the American population lives on just 3.5% of the land. Only about 5% of U.S. lands are developed. More than three-quarters of the states have more than 90% of their land dedicated to rural uses. More than five times as much land is set aside in national parks, wilderness areas, federal forests and federal grazing lands than has been developed for housing and industry.
So the solution to the very visible irritant of city congestion and traffic gridlock is not necessarily fewer people. The solution involves figuring out why we are all bunched up like a bunch of bananas while most of the country sits empty. This focus leads to a whole series of new questions.
Why are people moving to the cities and suburbs? Are they moving from the farm sector in truly rural areas? Or are they moving from small towns? What policies might encourage people to move back to some of those less crowded, more livable environments?
Depending on the answers we find to these questions, we might have some very different policy options to talk about. For instance, some analysts advocate reducing or even eliminating the inheritance tax for farm families as a way of encouraging family farming. Many families must sell the farm in order to pay estate taxes on the property that provides the capital for their livelihood. People tend to move to large urban areas for the jobs. Perhaps some of the movement from small towns toward larger urban centers is generated by the expansion of large conglomerates at the expense of smaller businesses. There are probably many possible reasons for the proliferation of mega-businesses, and many policies that could curb it. Many labor market regulations have penalized small businesses at the expense of larger ones. Maybe larger businesses find it easier to comply with the whole panoply of regulations and case law that might threaten to put a smaller concern into bankruptcy. But people don't even ask these questions. Instead, we are stuck in traffic, nodding in agreement whenever National Public Radio runs one of its predictable overpopulation-scare stories.
These issues might seem peripheral to the main business of the prolife movement. In a sense, they are. But we have to face the fact that our opponents have been successful in part because they have inundated the culture with their assumptions and presuppositions. Christian civilization has been pecked to death in these minor skirmishes. It is not that there is a Catholic position on urban sprawl, or that the Pope should write an encyclical letter on the optimal size of business establishments. It is just that half the intellectual battle is framing the issues in our favor. As long as people can credibly talk about an overpopulation problem, we are going to have unnecessary trouble making our case. Our opponents are framing the questions, and we are continually on the defensive.
Any college students out there looking for a research project?
Jennifer Roback Morse, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, welcomes e-mail at jmorse@jps.net.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: J.R. Morse ----- KEYWORD: Commentary -------- TITLE: THE CRISIS OF LAW DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:On Nov. 10, the department of jurisprudence at the Free University of the Blessed Mother's Assumption (LUMSA) in Rome conferred an honorary doctorate upon Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The following was excerpted from his acceptance speech as recorded by the Zenit news service, based in Rome.
Church and law, faith and law are united by a profound bond and related in a variety of ways. Suffice it to recall that the fundamental part of the Old Testament canon is under the title Torah (law). Israel's liberation from Egypt did not end with the exodus — it only began. It became full reality only when Israel received a juridical ordering from God, which regulated its relation to God, with the community of the people, and with each individual in the community, as well as its relation to foreigners: Common law is a condition of human liberty.
As a result, the Old Testament ideal of the pious person was the zaddik — the man who lives justly and acts justly according to the order of the law given by God. In the New Testament, in fact, the word zaddik was substituted by the term pistos: The essential attitude of the Christian is faith, which renders him “just.” But how did the importance of law fade? Was the juridical ordering of the environment turned away from the sacred and allowed to become simply profane?
This problem has been intensely debated, especially since the 16th century Reformation, due to the fact that the concept of “law” (Torah) appears in Pauline writing with problematic accents and later, in Luther, is considered diametrically opposed to the Gospel.
The development of law in modern times has been profoundly characterized by these problems. Two current risks to law [present] a theological component and, therefore, refer not only to jurists but also to theologians.
Law at the Mercy Of the Majority
The “end of metaphysics,” which in broad sectors of modern philosophy is superimposed as an irreversible fact, has led to juridical positivism which, today especially, has taken on the form of the theory of consensus: If reason is no longer able to find the way to metaphysics as the source of law, the state can only refer to the common convictions of its citizens‘values — convictions that are reflected in the democratic consensus. Truth does not create consensus, and consensus does not create truth as much as it does a common ordering. The majority determines what must be regarded as true and just. In other words, law is exposed to the whims of the majority, and depends on the awareness of the values of the society at any given moment, which in turn is determined by a multiplicity of factors.
This is manifested concretely by the progressive disappearance of the fundamentals of law inspired in the Christian tradition.
Matrimony and family are increasingly less the accepted form of the statutory community and are substituted by multiple, fleeting and problematic forms of living together. The relation between man and woman becomes conflictive, as does the relation between generations. The Christian order of time is dissolved; Sunday disappears and is increasingly substituted by changing ways of free time. The sense of the sacred no longer has any meaning for law; respect for God and for that which is sacred to others is now, with difficulty, regarded as a juridical value; it is displaced by the allegedly more important value of a limitless liberty in speech and judgment.
Even human life is something that can be disposed of: Abortion and euthanasia are no longer excluded from juridical ordering. Forms of manipulation of human life are manifested in the areas of embryo experimentation and transplants, in which man arrogates to himself not only the ability to dispose of life, but also of his being and of his development.
Thus has the point recently been reached that the essential difference between man and animal is up for debate. Because in modern states metaphysics, and with it, natural law, seem to be definitely depreciated, there is an ongoing transformation of law, the ulterior steps of which cannot yet be foreseen; the very concept of law is losing its precise definition.
The Logic of Terrorism
There is also a second threat to law, which today seems to be less present than it was 10 years ago, but it can re-emerge at any moment and find a link with the theory of consensus. I am referring to the dissolution of law through the spirit of utopia, just as it assumed a systematic and practical form in Marxist thought. The point of departure was the conviction that the present world is evil — [characterized by] oppression and lack of liberty; [this] must be substituted by a better way of planning and working. In this case, the real and ultimate source of law becomes the idea of the new society, which is moral, of juridical importance and useful to the advent of the future world. Based on this criterion, terrorism was articulated as a totally moral plan: Killings and violence appeared like moral actions, because they were at the service of the great revolution, of the destruction of the present evil world and of the great ideal of the new society. Even here, the end of metaphysics is a given, whose place is taken in this case not by the consensus of contemporaries, but by the ideal model of the future world.
To eliminate law is to despise man; where there is no law there is no liberty.
... The fact that since the 1950s law and order have become an insult — even worse, they have become regarded as Fascist — stems from these conceptions. Moreover, to turn law into irony was a precept of National Socialism. In the so-called years of struggle, law was consciously castigated and placed in opposition to so-called healthy popular feeling. The Führer was successively declared the only source of law and, as a result, absolute power replaced law. The denigration of law is never in any way at the service of liberty, but is always an instrument of dictatorship. To eliminate law is to despise man; where there is no law there is no liberty.
At this point an answer can be given to the basic question I have been addressing in these reflections, but perhaps only in summary form. What can faith and theology do in this situation for the defense of law? I would like to attempt an answer to this question, in a summary and certainly very insufficient way, by proposing the following two theses:
How Faith Can Defend Law
First, the elaboration and structure of law is not immediately a theological problem, but a problem of recta ratio — right reason. Beyond opinions and currents of thought, this right reason must try to discern what is just. This is the essence of law, and is in keeping with the internal need of the human being everywhere to [recognize] that which is destructive of man. It is the duty of the Church to contribute to the sanity of ratio and, through the just education of man, to preserve in his reason the capacity to see and perceive. Whether this right is to be called a “natural right” or something else is a secondary problem. But wherever this interior demand of the human being can no longer be perceived [due to changing mores], the human being is undermined in his dignity and in his essence.
Second, the Church must make an examination of conscience on the destructive forces of law, which have had their origin in unilateral interpretations of faith and have contributed to determine the history of this century. Its message goes beyond the realm of simple reason and redirects [us] to new dimensions of liberty and communion. But faith in the Creator and his creation is inseparably joined to faith in the Redeemer and the redemption. Redemption does not dissolve creation and its order, but, on the contrary, restores the possibility of perceiving the voice of the Creator in his creation — and, consequently, of better understanding the foundations of law. Metaphysics and faith, nature and grace, law and Gospel are not opposed but are, instead, intimately connected.
Christian love, as the Sermon on the Mount proposes, can never become the foundation of statute law. It goes well beyond this and can only be realized, at least in an embryonic way, in faith. But this does not go against creation and its law; rather, it is based on it. Where there is no law, even love loses its vital context. Christian faith respects the nature of the state itself, especially of the state of a pluralist society. However, it also recognizes its co-responsibility, in order that the fundamentals of law continue, to remain visible. In this way, it [helps ensure] that the state is not deprived of direction and simply at the mercy of changing currents.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger ----- KEYWORD: Commentary -------- TITLE: There's a Reason Why Buddhism Is Booming DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:Milan recently joined the list of European cities to roll out the red carpet to the visiting Dalai Lama, on tour to garner support for his Tibetan homeland and expound the wonders of Buddhism. The predominantly Catholic city welcomed the spiritual leader of Tibet with all the fanfare accorded to movie stars. And with the copious attention Hollywood has recently showered on this 14th reincarnation of Buddha, the comparison is apt. In fact, at the Buddhist leader's sold-out Milan conference, many of the front row seats were occupied by well-known cinema personalities and political figures.
Whence the attraction of this smiling figure clad in a dark orange toga and sporting a crew cut? What's so special about this man and his message? Sympathy for the plight of the Tibetan people undoubtedly accounts for some of the Dalai Lama's celebrity, but not all. It doesn't explain, for example, the many conversions of Westerners to Buddhism over the past decade and the general enthusiasm Buddhism has sparked, especially among cultural progressives. What, then, is the secret to the appeal of Buddhism and the Dalai Lama?
For the political and cultural left, whose adherents make up the majority of the Dalai Lama's following, one selling point is his unabashed support for Maoist communism. “I'm not afraid of the word communism,” the Dalai Lama declared in a recent interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. “As a Buddhist monk,” he continues, “I can't help but have a leftist mentality. Marxism's social and economic doctrine was betrayed by totalitarianism, but it's good.” During the mid-1950s the Dalai Lama lived in Peking — now Beijing — and often met with Mao Zedong. “We used to have long conversations,” the Dalai Lama recalled in the article. “He was a great leader and a great revolutionary. If China had followed the genuine spirit of Mao's communism of the 1950s ... it would now be a more prosperous society.” Granted, it's hard to imagine China being less prosperous; still, such candid enthusiasm for Mao sends up a whole cluster of red flags for anyone with a little historical memory.
A second reason for the Dalai Lama's popularity, and more specifically, for the rise of Buddhism in the West, can be traced to Buddhism's religious and ethical code. Buddhism promises escape from the world through meditation techniques, and asks precious little in return. No Mass on Sundays, no cult to a divinity, no Ten Commandments to cramp one's style or stir the conscience. In short, Buddhism has become the religion of choice for those who yearn for spirituality in the broad sense, but find Christianity's moral precepts too exacting or simply wish to avoid the hassle of getting up for church on Sundays.
Yet another factor behind Buddhism's allure can be found in the boredom and superficiality brought on by Western materialism. Many, particularly in Europe, have adopted a sort of “been-there-done-that” attitude toward Christianity, and eagerly sniff around for something more exotic. When a reporter asked the Dalai Lama himself why there are so many Buddhists in the West, he chalked conversions up to the quest for novelty. “It's part of human nature to always want something new,” he mused, “a change of clothing, a change of hairstyle ... and many think, why not try a new religion? I might like it.”
One can imagine how the early Christian martyrs — who willingly suffered torture and death rather than betray their faith in Christ — would have responded to such religious fickleness: Is this the legacy we left to future generations of Christians? Changing religions as one changes hairstyle?
Buddhism, attractive as it may be to a certain modern mind-set, is not without its casualties. Rooted in the doctrine of the essential evil of the world, Buddhism preaches personal salvation through escape and total detachment. It's no surprise, then, that a country like Sri Lanka has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. Nor that many become deluded with Buddhism's promises. “I know Westerners who embraced Buddhism and now are worse off than before,” admits the Dalai Lama, “with great confusion in their heads.”
The Church is committed to sincere dialogue with other religions, but such dialogue supposes a profound understanding and firm adherence to the Catholic faith. Unfortunately this grounding in the faith is sometimes lacking. At the recent European Synod, Cardinal Francis Arinze, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, expressed concern about the inroads Buddhism has been making in Christian Europe, even among clergy and consecrated persons. “We see priests and religious sitting before a blank wall,” the Nigerian cardinal explained, “and this is religious suicide, not religious dialogue.”
All of this should give Catholics pause. Faced with a widespread thirst for authentic spirituality, Christians must rediscover their rich spiritual heritage. Christian mysticism, Pope John Paul wrote back in 1994, “begins where the reflections of Buddha end.” Where Buddhism presents a message of indifference and endurance, Christianity offers a message of hope in a loving personal God, which compels us to engage the world, and not abandon it. In today's environment of despair and diffidence toward the future, this uniquely Christian gift of hope is indispensable.
Father Thomas Williams is editor of the book Springtime of Evangelization.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Thomas Williams LC ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Lame Dogma For Me-Firsters DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:Why is anti Catholicism back in fashion? Some might argue that it's never gone away, but the release of three films (Stigmata, The Omega Code and Dogma) with these biases within the past two months indicates that this subject may be part of a new cultural trend.
Dogma is an inept, save-the-world fantasy about a pair of banished angels who are willing to risk humanity's destruction to get back into heaven. If you're willing to endure its two hours of sick jokes, crude plotting, unpleasant caricatures and sophomoric musings, clues can be found as to why the Church appears so threatening to contemporary consumer culture.
Loki (Matt Damon) was one of the avenging angels in the Old Testament. He and his buddy Bartleby (Ben Affleck) were exiled to Wisconsin thousands of years ago for disobeying God. By now, they've become fed up with life on earth, grumbling that humans have it better.
Back in New Jersey, Cardinal Glick (George Carlin) announces that all those who enter a particular church on its rededication day will be granted plenary indulgences. According to the movie's muddled logic, this means that if the banished angels show up there, their sins will be forgiven, and through this so-called loophole in Catholic dogma, they can sneak back into heaven.
The cardinal is too engrossed in his recently launched “Catholicism, Wow!” campaign to be aware of the possible consequences of his action. In a heavy-handed piece of satire, he's depicted as replacing all crucifixes with statues of a grinning Jesus in a thumbs-up gesture — the “Buddy Christ.” Determined to make the Church appear user-friendly, the prelate declares to his flock: “Christ didn't come to earth to give us the willies.”
Up in heaven, they smell danger. If the banished angels are granted those indulgences, this will prove God wrong and fallible. Reality will be undone, and earth and all its inhabitants will cease to exist.
None of this makes any sense, but it's enough to kick off what writer-director Kevin Smith (Clerks and Chasing Amy) thinks is suspenseful action. The Voice of God from the Old Testament, the seraphim Metatron (Alan Rickman), appears to abortion-clinic worker Bethany (Linda Fiorentino), who's supposedly a direct descendant of Mary and Joseph and thus a blood relative of Jesus. The young woman is asked to help save humanity by preventing the angels from entering the rededicated church.
Spiritual Narcissism
The filmmaker intends her to be the movie's moral center. She still attends Mass regularly even though she's lost her faith. “I'd give anything to feel that way again,” she laments.
The reason she no longer believes is revealing. After she suffered through some serious health problems and a divorce, her mother tried to console her by declaring: “God has a plan.” This statement made Bethany angry. She had her own plans, and God was interfering with them by putting misfortune in her way.
With an attitude that reflects the movie's point of view, she wants a religion that offers psychological certainty but makes no demands. It's a spiritual narcissism that goes down well with our me-first consumer culture, and the filmmaker understands that Catholicism and its teachings are the most eloquent opponents of this way of thinking.
As Smith has been raised in the Church, he knows exactly which buttons to push to enrage ardent defenders of the faith.
The movie shows an angel persuading a nun to discard her religion and use profane language. Loki and Bartleby then smoke marijuana with a pair of slacker-type prophets (Jason Mewes and Smith himself) whom Metatron has sent to help
Bethany. But beneath the filmmaker's foul-mouthed, alternative-rock, comic-strip sensibility is his own set of politically correct, left/liberal dogmas: God is a woman (Alanis Morrisette); the Bible is described as “gender-biased”; and there's a 13th disciple (Chris Rock) who was left out of the Gospels because the early Church was racist.
Ideas Over Beliefs
The movie's understanding of God's relation to the universe is derived from the Book of Genesis, despite the presence of some New Testament characters. God is distant and unknowable most of the time, and Jesus and the Holy Spirit are off-screen characters.
The filmmaker is fascinated by the biblical expressions of God's wrath, and Loki is portrayed as longing to revert to his former role as its instrument. The angel boasts he can always spot “a commandment breaker.” In an ultraviolent sendup of capitalism, he guns down most of the top management of a big business whose logo is a golden calf.
The movie also riffs on the relationship between faith and reason, coming down firmly on the side of reason. The filmmaker's mouthpiece, Bethany, argues for the primacy of ideas over “systems of belief” because “ideas can be changed.” She wants to accept God's existence without the bother of adhering to a transcendent moral code. The center of her universe should be her concerns — not God's. It's a comfortable way of “doing religion” which the film-maker knows orthodox Catholicism will never accept.
Dogma is his lame attempt to advance the Hollywood-friendly cause of discrediting Catholicism.
Arts & Culture correspondent John Prizer writes from Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORD: Arts & Culture -------- TITLE: A Martyr At Auschwitz DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:Courts of law give special weight to a man's last words. It is thought that a man, staring eternity in the face, will speak the truth. Catholic piety has given special attention to the “seven last words” of Christ, spoken from the cross, often meditating upon them for the three hours of Good Friday afternoon. Father Maximilian Mary Kolbe is best known for his last recorded words, spoken in the Auschwitz death camp, a place that Pope John Paul II has called the “Golgotha of the modern world.” On the 20th century's Good Friday, Father Kolbe, staring into the heart of evil, said simply: “I am a Catholic priest.” By now we know that he was much more than an ordinary Catholic priest.
Raymond Kolbe was born Jan. 7, 1894, into a poor, devout and patriotic Polish family. As a schoolboy, he was both pious and highly intelligent. Drawn to science, where mathematics and physics opened the world of astronomy to him, he was fascinated by the prospect of space flight. Along with his older brother Francis, Raymond entered the minor seminary of the Conventual Franciscans, taking the habit and the name of Maximilian Mary on Sept. 4, 1910, at age 16.
Maximilian was ordained in 1918, after completing doctorates in philosophy and theology in Rome. He celebrated his first Mass in the Roman church of San Andrea delle Fratte. The church is famous for a 19th-century apparition of our Lady to a Jewish agnostic who immediately converted; the apparition came after a friend had given him a Miraculous Medal to wear. The new priest was impressed by the story and reasoned that, if Mary could use the Miraculous Medal to work such an unusual conversion, then other souls could be reached too.
Father Kolbe, already a man of deep Marian devotion, founded the Knights of the Immaculata to spread devotion to Mary. Members were simply asked to wear the Miraculous Medal, and to pray daily to Mary for protection from the enemies of the Church and for the salvation of souls. The spirituality of the Knights was to bring souls to Christ through Mary, and for that purpose to become instruments in the hands of Mary.
Throughout the 1920s the organization grew, flourishing in Poland after Father Kolbe's return to Krakow. The need to communicate with the growing membership led to a new apostolate: printing. A newsletter, The Knight of the Immaculata, was produced, and Father Kolbe had the foresight to see the potential of new communications technology. He acquired the newest printing presses and, by 1938, Father Kolbe's “City of the Immaculata” community of Franciscan friars had more than 700 members and the newsletter nearly a million readers. During the 1930s Father Kolbe spent several years in Japan, spreading his publishing apostolate there, getting translators to produce Marian materials in the various languages of the Far East.
In 1939, Father Kolbe was recalled to Poland and made superior of the City of the Immaculata community. World War II broke out that same year, and Father Kolbe and his apostolate came under attack. He was arrested by the Gestapo in December 1939 and released. Harassment by the Gestapo continued until February 1941, when Father Kolbe was arrested in Warsaw with four other priests. On May 28, 1941, he was part of a larger group of prisoners sent to Auschwitz, where he was assigned to the especially difficult jobs given to priests. Beatings and cruel treatment were common.
“They will not kill our souls,” Father Kolbe is reported to have said to encourage his fellow prisoners. “They will not be able to deprive us of the dignity of a Catholic. We will not give up. And when we die, we die pure and peaceful, resigned to God in our hearts.”
According to the rules of Auschwitz, if a prisoner escaped, 10 prisoners would be put to death in reprisal. A prisoner escaped in late July 1941, and the camp commandant randomly selected 10 men to die in his place. One of them, Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out in concern for his wife and children. Father Kolbe then stepped forward.
“What does this Polish swine want?” demanded the commandant.
“I am a Catholic priest from Poland,” replied Father Kolbe. “I would like to take this man's place, because he has a wife and children.”
The commandant was astounded, but acceded to the request, allowing Father Kolbe to take Gajowniczek's place in the “death bunker” with the other nine men. The underground bunker was nothing more than a small room with a concrete floor where the completely naked prisoners were thrown to die from thirst and starvation. Father Kolbe comforted the other prisoners, leading them in the rosary and hymns to Mary immaculate. After two weeks, the Nazis needed the bunker for other prisoners, and so Father Kolbe and the three other prisoners who were still alive were given lethal injections of carbolic acid. He was killed on Aug. 14, 1941, vigil of the Assumption. Father Kolbe's body was burned in the camp crematorium.
In canonizing Father Kolbe on Oct. 10, 1982, Pope John Paul called him a “patron of our difficult century.”
Had Father Kolbe never entered Auschwitz, his name would still be known for the holiness of his life and the zeal of his apostolate. His work in the Catholic press was truly innovative, establishing him as a pioneer in the use of modern communications for the evangelization. He was a forerunner of the new evangelization, devoting himself both to increasing the zeal of those already baptized, and to seeking to preach the Gospel to those who had never heard it in Japan. Yet his mission was to confront evil in a more direct way, with the witness not of his words, but of his blood.
“Modern times are dominated by Satan and will be more so in the future,” wrote the future saint and martyr in the 1920s. “The conflict with hell cannot be engaged by men, even the most clever. The Immaculata alone has from God the promise of victory over Satan.”
In the darkest hour of the 20th century, Mary immaculate was already winning her victory through her son Maximilian even as she was present on Golgotha when her Son was the first priest to offer his own body as the sacrificial victim.
----- EXCERPT: Saints of The Century ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond De Souza ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Prizer's Picks DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:Shadowlands (1993)
“I'm not sure God wants to make us happy,” British professor and writer C.S. Lewis tells a 1950s audience of admirers. “Pain is God's megaphone to wake a dead world.” But these words of spiritual reflection are just cold, intellectual concepts to Lewis. He doesn't walk the talk. Played by Anthony Hopkins, the solitary Oxford don lives in an all-male universe surrounded by professorial colleagues.
American poet Joy Gresham (Debra Winger) is a longtime fan and, socially, everything he's not. Gregarious, boisterous and emotionally demanding, she breaks through his defenses and captures his heart.
Many know from Lewis’ popular writings that an unexpected illness struck Joy, and Lewis’ faith was put to the test. The film follows him as he experiences firsthand the states of mind and soul about which he's been writing. He begins to understand the connections between love, suffering and sacrifice on a visceral level. Shadowlands is an inspiring, romantic tale that's intelligent and deeply moving.
Great Expectations (1946)
Unexpected good fortune often comes with a price attached, and how a person deals with both sides of this equation can become the measure of their moral worth. The poor but good-hearted Pip (Anthony Wager) falls in love with the beautiful Estella (Jean Simmons).
However, her rich, eccentric guardian, Miss Havisham (Martita Hunt), considers him socially inferior. A mysterious benefactor underwrites an education which makes him a 19th-century English gentleman and her equal. But the mature Pip (John Mills) labors under false assumptions as to the source of his good fortune.
This version of Great Expectations is the best cinematic adaptation of Charles Dickens’ novel. Director David Lean (The Bridge on The River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia) reproduces the colorful characters and events of the original with a visual style similar to horror films of the period. You root for Pip both to succeed and to do the right thing.
Amadeus (1984)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri were composers in 18th-century Vienna, vying for commissions from the Holy Roman Emperor and the Catholic Church. The Oscar-winning Amadeus, based on Peter Shaffer's hit play, dramatizes their rivalry around issues of morality, God's will and aesthetic achievement. Salieri (F.
Murray Abraham) is correctly presented as the more successful of the two. But, in an inspired flight of fancy, he's also depicted as the only person among their contemporaries to recognize Mozart (Tom Hulce) as the greater genius.
Salieri calls Mozart's music “the very voice of God.” Once a devout believer, he destroys his crucifix and directly challenges his creator. “From now on you and I are enemies because you have chosen for your instrument a boastful, lustful, smutty infantile boy,” he says to God in a jealous rage. His conscious embrace of evil has horrendous effects on both him and Mozart. This melancholy film is filled with glorious music.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: The Root of All Kinds Of Licentiousness DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:U.S. News and World Report columnist John Leo takes on the popular culture in a frequently provocative and challenging way. Some of his writings have been compiled into books, Two Steps Ahead of the Thought Police (1998) and How the Russians Invented Baseball and Other Essays of Enlightenment (1989). Leo formerly covered social sciences and intellectual trends for Time magazine and The New York Times. He spoke recently with Register Radio News correspondent Rich Rinaldi about the sordid state of today's television.
Rich RinaldiI: What's your opinion of the new fall season, overall?
John Leo: There has been a giant leap toward bawdiness, vulgarity and coarseness — perhaps one of the biggest leaps TV has ever taken.
Bill Bennett and Sen. Joseph Lieberman gave what they call the “Silver Sewer Award for Cultural Pollution” to Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Fox network.
I think that Fox and, to some extent, HBO, Showtime and WB — TV's newcomers — have been the chief perpetrators of the coarseness. They are going for the teen and young adult market and they think that an in-your-face, transgressive attitude is what's going to get them an audience.
A few years ago you couldn't have imagined this kind of programming, and you could hardly imagine a show like “The Brady Bunch” in today's climate.
Some of today's creations are so coarse we would not want to discuss them. It's just a barrage of very bawdy scenes and images. Some of this comes from a couple of movies that had very gross sex jokes and made a lot of money. In some cases, TV is aping that “success.”
The feeling is that all standards and all rules are gone from all media, whether it's TV or movies or whatever. Any kind of attempted intervention to halt this tide is called illicit censorship. As a result, Bennett and Lieberman are right in their imagery — there really is a lot of sewage on the tube right now.
In your writing you've used the term “wall-to-wall sex” to describe TV, especially in the way it's being marketed to teens purely for profit. Why do you think they're intent on selling this kind of content to kids?
Some of it comes from really believing the point of view that says sex and foul expression are out of the closet and here to stay; it says, “This the way real people act.” This mind-set infects even potentially good shows. For instance, “Friends” is, at times, really very witty and funny. Yet everybody on that show jumps in the sack with everybody they meet, often just a few seconds into the show. This teaches young viewers an ethic of a kind of a casual, nonsense view of sex — like it's morally nothing more than a handshake. Of course, in real life, it involves many other emotions and passions and c ommitments and responsibilities. Yet those aspects never appear — it's just a wandering set of 27-year-olds going from bed to bed. If that's your view of life, you're an adolescent forever, I think.
It also seems as if parents are almost always absent from young peoples’ lives in these shows. And when they do appear, they're often portrayed as stupid, deceitful, cruel or simply impossible to relate to.
A lot of this starts with the companies that market their products to teens. They want to create a teen market detached from the adult market. Once you sell products that way, you know, “Don't let your parents know what your wants are — you can buy it for yourself,” the entertainment companies then also have to produce shows that complement those commercial messages. That means they have to show a teen world that it has its own values and its own monies, totally apart from adult values and monies.
“Dawson's Creek,” for example, which teen-agers seem to love, has all these absent parents, parents who are adulterers or in jail. The parents are always saying stupid things that annoy the teen-agers. Occasionally you'll see a grandparent being wise because they are harmless and don't inflict any discipline, but otherwise all these teens are on their own. The message of these TV shows is that adults are either oppressive — they try to make you adhere to old-fashioned rules that make no sense — or they are irrelevant. It's a vision of a world that would be a much better place if teen-agers ran it.
It's interesting that they go after teens’ money with such gusto.
It's called “market segmentation,” and it shows how runaway capitalism can contribute to an anti-traditional stance in morals and ethics. If you're trying to sell things directly to teens, you don't tell them that they have to listen to their parents. As we said, the show has to support this. The show and the commercials go hand in hand. Conservatives often miss this point — they tend to think there's this culture war going on, when actually much of the problem has to do with commerce.
Do you think it's a good thing to put pressure on people like Rupert Murdoch in the way Bennett and Lieberman did?
Yes, I really think so. We have to try and stop this. In the early part of this century, the primary teachers of young people were parents, school-teachers and clergy. Today the “teachers” are often celebrities.
When you watch one of these sitcoms as a teen-ager, you're not just laughing along; you're learning how to place your parents and other adults out of your world. The message is, “They really don't have much of a role in your life. Parents are irrelevant, so you run your own life.” This is repeated night after night — and, in the sitcoms, by the way, the kids always have a snappy one-liner ready whenever the adult says something. In other words, these clever kids are constantly putting down parents and other adults; the smart-aleck kid is the staple of the modern sitcom. He or she models enviable ways to defy tradition and family, and comes right into your living room to do it.
That's the part the parent can do something about — just don't let these bad role models in.
I think so, plus I think you have to be able to separate the trash from the shows that may be mostly good but contain some elements you don't like. You have to be able to sit down with your child and say, “I'm not going to demand that you not watch this show” — that may make it more glamorous — “but I have to tell you why I object to it and what I think you should look out for.”
The very young child you can easily tell not to watch, but it can be very hard to control a teen's viewing habits without raising conflicts that may cause other relationship problems.
For one thing, they may feel humiliated if they are told not to watch while all the other teens are watching. What you can do is point out the poisons and toxins in the show — often they will listen to that, and, even if they don't look like they understand or agree, some of it will sink in.
----- EXCERPT: John Leo says money is driving TV to new lows ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Arts & Culture -------- TITLE: Adoration at Notre Dame DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:NOTRE DAME, Ind.—Each Monday, Notre Dame senior Laura Yanikoski makes good use of her school's state-of-the-art phone and campus e-mail system. With just one call and a couple of clicks of the mouse, she's able to remind more than 100 students, faculty and staff about their commitment to attend weekly eucharistic adoration.
Held in a chapel on the west end of the university's sprawling campus, the day of adoration is sponsored by the Children of Mary, a loosely organized group that gathers daily to pray the rosary. Now in its second year, weekly adoration is gaining in popularity, drawing students at all hours throughout the 22-and-a-half-hour period the Host is exposed between 11:30 p.m. Monday and 10 p.m. Tuesday.
“There's tremendous interest,” observed Holy Cross Father Robert Moss, rector of Fisher Hall, the residence facility in which the chapel is located. “Between 200 and 300 people attend. There's a great resurgence in spirituality and in devotional spirituality among our students.”
The director of Notre Dame's campus ministry, Holy Cross Father Richard Warner, added that eucharistic adoration is just part of the encouraging picture he sees at Notre Dame on the eve of the new millennium. “Mass attendance here has always been strong, but I think that it is at an all-time high,” he said. He pointed out that, in addition to the weekly adoration, there's also exposition of the Blessed Sacrament each Friday afternoon at Sacred Heart Basilica; this, he noted, is especially popular among right-to-life activists.
The power of silent prayer before Jesus Christ really present in the Eucharist — body, blood, soul and divinity — is what seems to get the Children of Mary and their friends in Christ most excited about their college experience in Indiana. Some students who have made adoration a part of their lives knew little or nothing about it until recently. In fact, some admitted that they didn't come to Notre Dame to spend “extra” time in prayer. Those faithful to the devotion now say that they are slowly being transformed by it. Even making time in the middle of the night, which once would have seemed an unthinkable sacrifice, doesn't seem like an imposition to them now.
“It's kind of easy,” said senior Keith Bersch, “when you make [prayer] the central activity of your day.” He's in the chapel every Tuesday from 2 to 2:30 a.m. and again from 6:30 to 7 p.m. “Now when I go home to New Jersey, I try to find churches where they have adoration.” Majoring in economics and theology, he hopes to become a teacher, following in the footsteps of his parents and older brother.
“The period I signed up for is 4 to 6 a.m. on Tuesday, but I usually stay until 7,” explained Laura Yanikoski, a native of Kankakee, Ill., who's studying philosophy and government.
“This is just about when the sun starts to rise and the light comes in through the stained glass windows right behind the altar. Every Tuesday, this experience for me is like Christmas morning. It seems that the world is made new.”
Why spend time awake in prayer when she could be sleeping like most of the rest of the world? “The Eucharist is my God, my all,” she declared. “It is all the power and the love and mercy of the Lord, silent, humble and inviting. While I may have known this before I came to Notre Dame and before becoming involved with the Children of Mary, it was not a truth that owned my heart and filled it.”
Derek Van Daniker, a junior from Lexington, Ky., has also been profoundly touched by the practice. “I see the world in a totally different way now,” he said. “In a sense, nothing can be tainted because I know that everything has been redeemed by Christ. I fell in love with this — not at first, but over time.”
Beginning now to consider his postcollege future, he added, “I can only see myself as living a life completely for God and for others.” If not religious life, Daniker said that he will find a profession that gives him plenty of opportunity for service.
Matt Anthony, a freshman from St. Louis, goes to adoration from 3:30 to 4 p.m. each Tuesday. Very busy and still adjusting to college life, he's come up with a descriptive analogy to explain what eucharistic adoration does for his life.
“I think of a boiler or a furnace which heats the water that warms a house,” he asserted. “You know, you hear the pipes quietly crackling when the boiler is heating up. Adoration allows the hot water to move through the ‘house,’ heating it. It energizes you for the rest of his day.”
So enthusiastic are the members of the Children of Mary that they are petitioning the campus ministry for an additional day of adoration. “There's no better way to unify the many divisions (among students) on campus than through this,” suggested Derek Van Daniker.
Asked if the increased student interest in eucharistic adoration had raised any administrative concerns, Father Warner said, “Because we have people coming and going at all hours, we need to have security guards nearby.” He was quick to point out that the university is building a new campus-ministry facility, slated for completion in 2001 — and it will house a larger chapel that will be open 24 hours a day and allow for expanded adoration hours.
Unless they go on to graduate studies at Notre Dame, seniors like Keith Bersch probably won't be here to take advantage of the new facility. There's a good chance, however, that, when they graduate, they will bring their devotion to Christ in the Eucharist with them wherever they go.
“I have a very firm conviction about the supernatural graces, of the things we don't see which Jesus does for me during eucharistic adoration,” said Bersch. “It has become a big part of my life.”
Catherine Odell writes from South Bend, Indiana.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Catherine M. O'dell ----- KEYWORD: Education -------- TITLE: Education Notebook DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:Xavier Honors Archbishop Pittau
XAVIER UNIVERSITY, Nov. 29—Xavier University will confer an honorary doctorate in the humanities upon Archbishop Giuseppe Pittau on Dec. 2. The convocation will keynote the school's celebration of the 450th anniversary of St. Francis Xavier's arrival in Japan. Archbishop Pittau, who has served in Rome since 1981, including tenures as president of the Pontifical Gregorian University and secretary of the Vatican Congregation for Catholic Education, is a fitting choice for the distinction and the occasion. He is a former missionary to Japan and a former president of Sophia University in Tokyo, a close affiliate of Xavier.
A Jesuit and a native of Italy, Archbishop Pittau joined the Sophia faculty in 1963, serving as professor, academic dean, chair of the board of trustees and rector of the Jesuit community before being named president.
Merit Makes the Grade in Texas
In 1996, Texas’ last year of “affirmative action,” blacks made up 4.1% of the students at the University of Texas at Austin. In the second year of the new program, the number of blacks has returned to 4.1%.
The Hispanic population stood at 14.5% in 1996; it is now at 13.8%. The program has also been less divisive than “affirmative action,” which emphasizes racial quotas rather than meritorious performance.
Texas Gov. George W. Bush strongly supports the program and will likely use the positive results to help his presidential run next year.
The merit-based programs modeled in Texas are quickly spreading to other populous states. George's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, implemented a similar program that would grant the scholarships to high school seniors in the top 20%.
In California, where “affirmative action” was rejected in a statewide vote, Gov. Gray Davis has promised slots to students in the top 4%, the Times said.
The newspaper went on to say, “Over the past decades, U.S. Catholics have watched as the same secularizing trends that have all but erased the Protestant foundations of America's leading universities threaten to do the same to the country's 235 Catholic colleges and universities.
“Even non-Catholics would likely regard the prescription the bishops have endorsed as a tautology: that theologians advertised as Catholic actually teach ‘authentic Catholic doctrine’ and that a majority of a Catholic university's trustees and faculty be Catholic as well. From the outcry this has provoked you might think the bishops had called for reinstating the rack.
“There's nothing to prevent a Catholic theologian who does not have a mandate from his bishop from continuing to teach what he is teaching at the same school — he just can't call it ‘Catholic.’ Even more to the point, if the presidents of these nominally Catholic institutions really do believe that the implementation of Ex Corde Ecclesiae imposes a burden incompatible with their mission, there is nothing to prevent a Boston College or a Notre Dame from dropping the word ‘Catholic’ and continuing down their merry path. Either way, wouldn't we all be better off knowing who stood where?”
The editorial included an anecdote about the Pope's reaction to a group of American college officials who visited Rome to lobby against Ex Corde.
To their concern about losing federal dollars, the Pope is reported to have said with a smile, “Then I think you will have to learn to get along without the American government's money.”
Union Demands Dismissal of Volunteer Teacher
The complaint was filed by a paid, union-member teacher. When the Williamstown school district's finances hit a low point four years ago, Bill Corrow — a retired English teacher with a master's degree — began teaching “Conflict in the 20th Century” at Williamstown Middle High School.
School officials say Corrow has “an extensive reading list and a lot of expectations” for students — in other words, he piles on the work, but the kids are learning and improving, according to CNSNews.com
School Superintendent Clif Randolph says he stands firmly in support of Corrow. He said the case is about union control rather than teaching. “Our attitude is that, if Robert Frost was alive today, does that mean we couldn't use him to teach poetry to our students?”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Education -------- TITLE: Remember the Alamo DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:Remember the Alamo? Of course we do. But not so well recalled are the early days of the Texas landmark. For its first 75 years, before it was a fortress, the Alamo was a thriving mission that brought Christianity to native Americans.
As every schoolboy once knew, the Alamo in San Antonio was where Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and 187 Texas volunteers died in a valiant battle against 4,000 Mexican soldiers in 1836. A few weeks later, shouting “Remember the Alamo,” Texans defeated the Mexican army and ended Mexican rule over Texas.
The Alamo, sacred ground to Texans, was simply sacred ground as a successful mission from 1718 to 1793. The two histories of the site as a fortress and as a mission are intertwined. The famous Alamo building, the one seen on innumerable postcards, is the former mission church. The Long Barracks, where much of the decisive fighting took place, is the former living quarters of the Franciscan missionaries. Few American historic sites can claim such a dual background, religious and patriotic, and call forth such poignancy in visitors seeking an experience with either — or both.
An Air of Permanence
The limestone walls of the Alamo are being slowly eaten away by water and moisture. A stately, hulking shell, the Alamo nevertheless radiates an air of gravity and permanence. Displayed inside are Crockett's rifle, Bowie's knife and other relics.
For many reasons, especially for Catholics, the Alamo is an odd site that arouses complex emotions. It's located in the middle of busy San Antonio, not in a rustic setting, as one might expect. Just a two-minute stroll from the Alamo is the popular River Walk, jammed with shops, nightclubs and restaurants.
The front of the Alamo was once a walled-in section of the mission. Today, it's a city landscape. Also urbanized is the area northeast of the Alamo, where once grew the mission's vast beanfields and cornfields. The vast majority of visitors to the Alamo come strictly with visions of Crockett and Bowie. Men remove their hats at the Alamo out of respect to its proud military history. For the casual tourist, its history as a mission is regarded as a footnote at best.
The site is officially a state landmark. Since 1905, the Daughters of the Republic of Texas have been entrusted by the state with preserving the site as a memorial to it defenders.
To their credit, the Daughters oversee exhibits that encompass the site's entire history. The Long Barracks contain galleries that chronologically tell the site's history. A headless statue of St. Anthony (San Antonio in Spanish) is displayed in the gallery devoted to the mission period. It probably once sat in a niche in an outside wall of the mission. The statue likely was damaged sometime after the mission was secularized and subject to vandalism.
Also displayed are rosaries and crucifixes, but these postdate the mission days. The mission's secularization resulted in its sacred objects being given to other churches.
Most of the religious artifacts on display were given to the Alamo by descendants of Native Americans and Spaniards who lived at the mission.
San Antonio has a number of residents who can trace their ancestry to the mission. For them, the Alamo summons sometimes contradictory feelings. It represents who they were and who they became.
Catholics who visit the Alamo may likewise experience some confusion. The secular character of the site can drown out the mission aura. The headless statue, the secondhand artifacts, the urban location — all contribute to a vague unease. Visiting the Alamo is emblematic of being Catholic in modern society. Where evidence of contemplative Catholic religiosity meets that of brash, secular endeavor, however well-intentioned, it's not likely the former will be able to compete for attention or recognition.
Missionary Spirit
Interestingly, when Pope John Paul II visited San Antonio in 1987, his motorcade drove by the Alamo but did not stop. That was entirely fitting, given the Alamo's identity as a civic shrine.
That doesn't mean visiting the Alamo cannot be a powerful, spiritual experience. The convento courtyard, beautifully landscaped, invites prayer and reflection; the peace and serenity of the grounds suggest that the spirit of the missions will never be quenched. Also not erased by time: the words carved above the entrance to the church — “Ave Maria.”
The Alamo's original name was Mission San Antonio de Valero, named after the marquis de Valero, a powerful Spanish official in Mexico. Mission San Antonio was one of 36 missions founded by Spain in Texas between 1680 and 1793.
Mission San Antonio was the oldest of five missions in the town along the San Antonio River. The Franciscans came to convert Indians. The soldiers and settlers accompanying them were sent by Spanish rulers to expand their nations’ empire.
The San Antonio missions evangelized among the native Payaya and Coahuilteca, nomadic tribes who subsisted on pecans, mesquite beans and insects.
They two tribes lived under the constant threat of raids by the Apache. The Franciscans provided the Payaya and Coahuilteca with food, protection and spiritual sustenance.
In return, they worked in the mission fields and helped build the mission church in 1744 and other structures.
Mission San Antonio flourished for decades before disease and raids by hostile Indians rendered it ineffective.
The Church secularized the mission in 1793 and distributed the land to the remaining Indians. The site became a fortress.
Spanish soldiers in the early 1800s began calling it the “Alamo” (Spanish for “cottonwood”), in honor of their hometown Alamo de Parras, Coahuila.
Four other missions lie outside the city on a six-mile route. All are worthwhile stops for the Catholic traveler as all recall the hardships and glories of evangelization in a rugged land.
Remember the Alamo? Sure, but Catholics also may want to shout out, “Remember the Alamo mission!”
Jay Copp is based in Chicago.
----- EXCERPT: -- As a Mission, Not a Fortress ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jay Copp ----- KEYWORD: Travel -------- TITLE: Wisconsin Bills Aim to Protect Doctors and Preborn DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:MADISON, Wis.—Pro-lifers hope that two bills in Wisconsin will save unborn lives — by protecting doctors.
One bill would shield doctors from so-called wrongful life suits. Another would give doctors a conscience clause to allow them to refuse to perform medical procedures they consider immoral. The bills, which passed the Wis. Assembly Nov. 9, will go to the Senate some time next year.
Current state law has put doctors there on the defensive, said Dr. Cynthia Jones-Nosacek, a family practitioner in Milwaukee.
The Wisconsin courts have also allowed parents to sue doctors for neglecting to tell them of mental handicaps such as Down syndrome. In these “wrongful life” suits, parents insist that they would have aborted a child if they had known about the handicap.
State Rep. Neal Kedzie, the bill's sponsor, said doctors are expected to work directly against their instincts under current law. “When is abortion medical treatment for a disability? You cannot cure Down syndrome with an abortion,” he said.
Also, these “wrongful life” suits send an awful message to those who are handicapped, said Kedzie, a Catholic. “It says their life is not worth living or people with disabilities are less of a citizen.”
A chief opponent of the bill abolishing wrongful life suits is state Rep. Sheldon Wasserman. He says he fears doctors will abuse the bill's protection in order to withhold information or to lie.
“If a doctor doesn't believe in abortion, this bill allows them to lie or to not completely inform patients about prenatal tests,” said Wasserman, who is also a practicing obstetrician-gynecologist.
Susan Armacost, legislative director for Wisconsin Right to Life, said that Rep. Wasserman is wrong about the bill.
“This bill doesn't tell doctors what they can and cannot say, and Sheldon knows this,” said Armacost. “If parents think that doctors are lying to them they have an array of options. They can take the doctor to court.
“All this bill does is protect a doctor from a specific lawsuit that is discriminatory against disabled children.”
Jones-Nosacek, the Milwaukee doctor, who delivers some 30 babies a year, said she was stunned by statements made by abortion advocates debating the measure.
“They actually said, ‘How terrible that those children are now allowed to be born,’” she recalled. “It goes back to the idea that somehow a handicapped child is a lesser human being.”
Defending the need for protecting doctors, Jones-Nosacek pointed to the case of amniocentesis, which is often used to predict fetal disabilities. Many unborn babies who test positive for disabilities are “perfectly healthy babies,” she told the Register. Yet, she added, doctors may feel legal pressure to paint a dire picture of a child's health.
“The doctor is safer telling the woman to have an abortion than to risk a ‘wrongful life’ suit,” she said.
The other bill, called the “Conscience Clause” bill, would expand the rights of all medical professionals to decline any activity that conflicts with their religious beliefs. Previous Wisconsin law only protected doctors, and only for abortion and sterilizations.
The new measure would also include nurses and hospital workers in a protected category. In addition, pharmacists would not have to fill out a subscription for abortion drugs like Preven, or for barbiturates if they suspect the drugs will be used in an assisted suicide.
“[Medical professionals] said, ‘Don't force me to participate in this,’” the bill's sponsor, Rep. Scott Walker, told the Register.
Rep. Wasserman objected to including pharmacists in the protected category. “The doctor writes the script. The pharmacist is the recipient. He isn't educated like a doctor.”
He noted that methotrexate can be used for an abortion, but it is also used for chemotherapy, colitis and arthritis.
But Armacost noted that there are many sources for prescriptions: “You can get your prescription by e-mail ... if you have a disagreement with a pharmacist, you can also go anywhere else.”
Dr. Jones-Nosacek, who works with Rep. Wasserman at St. Mary's, a Catholic clinic in Milwaukee, said that the issue is not just a Catholic one.
“His rabbi yells at him about it, too,” she said. “The rabbi's pro-life.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Josh Mercer ----- KEYWORD: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: 'Body Parts Trade' Triggering Outrage DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:Alone voice has been joined by a growing chorus decrying the sale of human body parts.
In August, evidence that appeared to show companies harvesting and profiting from the unborn babies removed in late-term abortions was released by a Denton, Texas, pro-life group, Life Dynamics.
On Nov. 9 the U.S. House by voice vote called for hearings to investigate the “trafficking of baby body parts for profit.”
Then, on Nov. 23, the Boston Globe suggested that law enforcement agencies should be investigating as well. Referring to the anonymous woman who tells of life in the fetal-body parts trade, a Globe editorial said, “The practices Kelly describes, if true, must be stopped. She and Life Dynamics owe it to the nation, and to the babies they want to protect, to fully disclose all they know.”
Recently, Gail Quinn, a spokes-woman for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, talked with Register Radio News correspondent Rich Rinaldi about the claims.
Rich Rinaldi: How have the allegations about a fetal parts trade come to the attention of the U.S. bishops’ office?
Gail Quinn: It's been coming to light mainly through a pro-life group out of Texas, Life Dynamics. They seem to show a rather strong collusion between the abortion industry and people who traffic in the sale of fetal body parts. It was brought to light before Congress by Sen. Bob Smith and to the House of Representatives within a matter of days. They took a vote — not to affirm that that is in fact happening, although I'm sure it is — but to verify what is actually happening. That's what we are looking forward to in Congress come the early part of the year, hearings to find exactly what's going on.
Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., said babies “are being taken apart piece by piece, limb by limb and even being skinned.” Is this true?
Well, it's not a very pleasant thing to talk about, but he is right. From the reports that are coming out, we have people who are putting these body parts into the hands of researchers. They are going into abortion clinics, paying a clinic in what they call a “site fee.”
They basically pay rent for the area they are going to use to dissect the babies, and they do that dissection right there.
Isn't that illegal?
You're not allowed to sell human bodies or human body parts in this country, but they get around it, apparently, by paying a site fee, by paying for services.
If they are paying for generic site fees, then how are they paying for particular body parts?
If you look at some of the orders that have been made public, you have researchers ordering specific parts of a specific gestation age. So, for instance, if you have a researcher who orders fetal eyes or ears or lungs, a lot of them are for 24 weeks and older.
It's hard to believe that this happens.
It blows a great big hole in the assertion that late abortion are done because there is something wrong with the child. Most of these orders specify that they have to be in basically perfect condition. They don't want specimens, if I can call them that, where the abortion is done with chemicals ... because chemicals taint the specimen.
So what a lot of these researchers seem to be looking for are fetuses, dead fetuses of an older gestational age. They are looking for those specific parts, and some of them do say they are looking for only the skin of the baby, which means the baby has been skinned and that the material is then sold and shipped out.
I have a price list in front of me. Correct me if this is not true: “Pancreas, $100 under 8 weeks; ears under 8 weeks, $75; brains, $999.” They “offer” a “30% discount” if the material is “significantly fragmented.” Is this new or has this been going on for a while?
Yes, that list is true. The specifics are new to us. We have heard things like this in private, where people were talking about things like this going on, but no one really knew or had facts. No one could prove it. Now this pro-life group has gathered this information for the last two and a half years. We have it now in black and white.
We have the advertising brochures of abortion clinics [telling clients] to “Turn your patients’ decision into something wonderful.”
When they have a woman coming in for an abortion they say they can offer her the possibility of helping someone else by allowing her child to be dissected and sold.
Rich Rinaldi is director of Register Radio News.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:In a Nov. 19, 1991 letter to all the world's bishops entitled, On Combatting Abortion and Euthanasia, Pope John Paul II reaffirmed the Church's commitment to actively promote the culture of life.
All of us, as pastors of the Lord's flock, have a grave responsibility to promote respect for human life in our dioceses. In addition to making public declarations at every opportunity, we must exercise particular vigilance with regard to the teaching being given in our seminaries and in Catholic schools and universities. As pastors we must be watchful in ensuring that practices followed in Catholic hospitals and clinics are fully consonant with the nature of such institutions. As our means permit, we must also support projects such as those which seek to offer practical help to women or families experiencing difficulties or to assist the suffering and especially the dying. Moreover, we must encourage scientific reflection and legislative or political initiatives which would counter the prevalent “death mentality.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Life Notes DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:Federal Court Reverses Itself in Abortion Case
MILWAUKEE JOURNAL-SENTINEL, Nov. 19—In a surprise turn-about, a federal appeals court reversed a decision it made a day earlier, saying it would reconsider arguments from opponents of Wisconsin's partial-birth abortion ban who are trying to block the law from taking effect, reported the newspaper.
Saying it was acting on its own, the court, in a two-sentence decision, said it will reconsider a plea by pro-abortion rights groups that the Wisconsin law and an Illinois law be placed on hold until the Supreme Court can rule on its constitutionality, the paper reported.
The Nov. 19 decision means that Wisconsin cannot begin enforcing the ban. The court did not give a reason for the reversal, said the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
Pro-Abortion Feminists Oppose ‘Choose Life’ Plates
ASSOCIATED PRESS, Nov. 23—A specialty license plate with a crayon drawing of two children and the message “Choose Life” won final approval Nov. 23 despite criticism it is a political statement against abortion, reported the wire service.
Money raised by sales of the plate — which is expected to become available in two to three months for an extra $22 — will go toward organizations that serve pregnant women who plan to put their babies up for adoption.
Legislation for the “Choose Life” plate was first passed in 1998 but vetoed by Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles. Bush signed a similar measure in June, reported the AP.
The National Organization for Women has said it will go to court to try to block the tag's release. Toni Van Pelt, president of NOW's Florida chapter, called the plate “an attempt to interfere with a woman's right to choose.”
Supporters said the plate, which is the first of its kind in America, is not anti-abortion.
According to the AP, the governor said, “It's for adoption. If people want to politicize that, they'll politicize anything.”
Sex-Selection Abortions Expand to Japan and India
LOS ANGELES TIMES, Nov. 18—It started first with communist China's one-child policy. Parents reportedly aborted female fetuses so they could have a son.
Now, the practice of sex-selection abortion has spread throughout Asia. The newest countries include Japan and India, reported the Los Angeles Times. New statistics reveal that parents in Japan are aborting their baby boys.
Fifteen years ago, the Japanese public was biased toward boys, but social and economic pressures on the island's males have helped trigger an astounding reversal. “It's tough to be a man,” Yukio Nakayama, editor of My Baby magazine, is quoted saying. “There's a lot more pressure.” The report claims that Japanese boys are “condemned to endure a take-no-prisoners educational system, followed by a life sentence as a faceless drone.”
The desire for girl babies is anomalous on the Asian continent, where abortions of female unborn children are widespread. Significant imbalance in the sexes has resulted from sex-selection abortions in many nations: China has 118 boys per 100 girls under age 5, Korea has 117-to-100, and Taiwan is 110-to-100.
India's ancient bride-dowry tradition, which guarantees a generous stipend to a daughter's new husband, contributes to the pro-male sex selection abortions there. Impoverished families that adhere to this custom regard the birth of a girl as a bankrupting curse that must be aborted, reported the Los Angeles Times.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Did You Know? DATE: 12/05/1999 12.00.00 PM CATEGORY: December 5-11, 1999 ----- BODY:Pope John Paul II speaks of today's culture as a culture of death, pointing to abortion and capital punishment as examples of how death is used as an answer to problems. But as the Priests for Life point out in their November/December newsletter, abortion is by far the most prevalent offender.
• There have been 4,381 executions from 1930 until Feb. of this year. There were none in the 1968-1976 period.
• Since the early 1600's, in what is now the United States, an estimated 18,645 people have been executed.
• According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, in 1996 alone there were 1.37 million abortions in the United States alone. That's 3,753 per day, one every 23 seconds.
• The entire number of deaths by capital punishment, for our entire history, is less than the number of deaths by abortion every five days.
----- EXCERPT: FACTS of LIFE ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORD: News -------- TITLE: Infanticide Advocate Gets a Warm Welcome at Yale DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:NEW HAVEN, Conn.—Peter Singer doesn't mince words.
The high-profile bioethicist, whose views have triggered an uproar in academia and beyond, took to task politicians who defend partial-birth abortion but not infanticide.
“I think this issue exactly captures this problem of drawing lines,” Singer told the Register in early December. “I think there's a problem in defending all forms of abortion and totally rejecting infanticide.”
He noted that pro-lifers are understandably baffled at a society which claims to view life as sacred on the one hand but would tolerate abortion on the other. The solution, as Singer sees it, is to break away from the “remnant” of Judeo-Christian morality.
Those are the kinds of views that triggered a firestorm of protests earlier this year when Princeton University hired the native Australian to a prestigious chair in bioethics.
Protesters and handicapped-rights activists by the hundreds descended on Princeton's campus in New Jersey, condemning the school's hiring of Singer. Their signs read, “My Life Is Worth Living” and “Singer's Quality of Life Test: You Fail, You Die!”
On Dec. 2, the man known as “Professor Death” brought his views on infanticide to another Ivy League school when he addressed students and guests at Yale Law School.
He told the audience that news reports about his defense of infanticide for disabled children have led to cries that he discriminates against the handicapped.
In reality, Singer told the audience of about 300 students and guests at the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale, “I support that statement even if you remove the word ‘disabled.’”
Singer conceded, however, that in practice infanticide would be more common for disabled babies than for healthy babies.
“Most infants are fortunately cared for and wanted,” he said. “There are some cases in which it is not so, like infants with severe disabilities. Many believe there is no good future for that child.”
Singer's speech, titled “On Valuing Human Life,” was sponsored by the David and Goldie Blanksteen Lectureship in Jewish Ethics.
Singer claimed that the hostile public reaction to his beliefs is strange since his views are already so widely accepted.
He noted that today parents who give birth to severely disabled babies already choose to cut off life support, which he said is no different than infanticide.
“This is something that happens in every neonatal intensive care unit,” Singer contended. “We paper over the cracks so we can tell ourselves, ‘Let nature take its course.’”
From Anger to Zeal
The Yale audience applauded the speech and most seemed to agree with his views, even giggling when Singer poked fun at the traditional view that life is sacred. After the lecture, Singer told a group of students, “The purpose of my talk was to deflate the myth in the sanctity of human life.”
Marianna McKim, a librarian and self-proclaimed fan of Singer's work, thought the lecture proved that attempts to maintain the sanctity of human life as an absolute were futile.
“In policy and actual practice we don't behave consistently — even groups that claim to be in favor of the sanctity of human life,” she said.
Others in the audience weren't so agreeable. Undergraduate student Shamed Dogan was shocked by Singer's comments.
“I think it's odd that he was invited by a Jewish organization,” Dogan observed. He said Singer's idea that the worth of human life is based on utility rather than being an end in itself has historically led to dangerous conclusions.
“If there is a minority group and if they're not loved by society, their lives are not valuable,” said Dogan, who is black.
Devaluation of human life is a core concern of Pope John Paul II's encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life). In No. 14 he wrote, “The contemporary scene, moreover, is becoming even more alarming by reason of the proposals, advanced here and there, to justify even infanticide, following the same arguments used to justify the right to abortion. In this way, we revert to a state of barbarism which one hoped had been left behind forever.”
Another member of the Yale audience who found Singer's speech disturbing was Justin Zaremby. “How much credibility does Singer have?” he asked. Based on the crowd's reaction, Zaremby, who is Jewish, replied somberly, “A lot, apparently.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Josh Mercer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: U.S. Embryo Research Plan Under Fire from Both Sides DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—Pro-lifers say the National Institutes of Health is trying to make an end-run around laws banning federal funding of embryo research.
New guidelines, if approved, will allow the NIH, the principal biomedical research arm of the federal government, to fund research in which living embryos are obtained from fertility clinics.
According to the guidelines, researchers would seek pre-approval from the NIH for research on human embryos. Once approved, the researchers would make arrangements with fertility clinics to obtain embryos, which the research would then destroy.
Since 1996, federal law has prohibited federal funds from being used for research “in which human embryos are created for research purposes or destroyed, discarded or subjected to greater than minimal risk.”
Though the experiments would be directed from start to finish by the NIH, the guidelines would allow the NIH to deny that it actually funds the destruction of embryos.
National Right to Life Committee spokesman Doug Johnson said the new guidelines are equivalent to someone who isn't allowed to ship over bridges hiring a trucker and saying, “When you drive over the bridge, you're on your own time.”
Added Johnson, “Everything that precedes and follows the killing of the embryos is federally approved and federally funded, and it is a transparent and shameful pretense for the administration to claim that the killing itself is not federally sponsored.”
Richard Doerflinger, point man on life policy issues for the U.S. bishops, said that what can't be done “is to commission the destroying of embryos for the specific purpose of providing raw material for research.”
He added: “Up until now, the federal government has never provided funding for in vitro fertilization or experiments on embryos in laboratories. This will be its first foray into the field.”
The NIH guidelines say embryo research, particularly that which involves multiuse (pluripotent) “stem” cells, “promises new treatments and possible cures for many debilitating diseases and injuries, including Parkinson's, diabetes, heart disease, multiple sclerosis, burns and spinal cord injuries.”
The guidelines also “recommend procedures to help ensure that NIH-funded human pluripotent stem cell research is conducted in an ethical and legal manner.”
Stem cells, which can renew themselves and become different kinds of cells needed by the body, are obtained from embryos after they are destroyed. Doerflinger insisted that stem cells can be ethically obtained from adults.
The NIH guidelines continue: “NIH understands and respects the ethical, legal and social issues relevant to human pluripotent stem cell research and is sensitive to the need to subject it to oversight more stringent than that associated with the traditional NIH scientific peer review process.”
But opponents of research involving embryos were not satisfied with the cautionary language of the statement.
According to Doerflinger, the new guidelines, if approved, will provide incentives for people to donate embryos for research.
“I don't think there is any way to avoid the idea that this research agenda will provide a further incentive to donate embryos for destruction,” he warned. “The argument will be made that this is a way to bring medical benefit about. Women will have an altruistic reason [to donate human embryos].”
Like Doerflinger, Johnson fears that things could get worse if the guidelines are approved.
He cited a September document by President Clinton's National Bioethics Advisory Board which criticizes the NIH guidelines for not seeking to end the ban on federal embryo research.
The document said that separating cell research from the destruction of embryos “rests on the mistaken notion that the two areas of research are so distinct that participating in one need not mean participating in the other.” To solve the inconsistency, the board advises pushing for an end to the ban.
Asked to comment on the fact that pro-life organizations such as the Family Research Council have called the new NIH guidelines a legal sleight of hand, agency spokesman Marc Stern directed the Register to the NIH Web site.
“We're only saying what's on the site,” he said. “Obviously the agency doesn't agree that this is a sleight of hand in any way.”
Stern said the draft guidelines are posted “for 60 days of public comment” from Dec. 1. Anyone, Stern added, may comment on the draft before it becomes final.
National Right to Life's Doug Johnson said the new NIH guidelines and the statement by the bioethics advisory committee represent an unprecedented violation of scientific and medical ethics.
“These guidelines [would] violate established principles on experiments on nonconsenting human subjects,” Johnson said. “[The embryos] are living human beings. This is the first time the federal government is proposing to sponsor the killing of human beings to do federally funded research.”
***
The National Institutes for Health Web site for comments is www.nih.gov/news/stemcell/ draftguidelines.htm
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian McGuire ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Our Lady of Guadalupe Quietly Conquering U.S. DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:FAIRFAX, Va.—In 1531, the Blessed Mother's appearance at Guadalupe heralded the conversion of some 9 million Mexican Indians to Christianity and the end of the human sacrifices — usually of children — that had been practiced in the Aztec religion.
At the end of the 20th century, many Catholics see a renewal of emphasis on Our Lady of Guadalupe, as a unifier of Christians in the Americas and a healer of the wounds of abortion.
Pope John Paul II, in his January post-synodal apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in America (The Church in America), normalized the celebration of the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe throughout the Americas.
“With the passage of time,” he wrote, “pastors and faithful alike have grown increasingly conscious of the role of the Virgin Mary in the evangelization of America. In the prayer composed for the Special Assembly for America of the Synod of Bishops, Holy Mary of Guadalupe is invoked as ‘Patroness of all America and Star of the first and new evangelization.’
“In view of this, I welcome with joy the proposal of the Synod Fathers that the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mother and Evangelizer of America, be celebrated throughout the continent on Dec. 12. It is my heart-felt hope that she, whose intercession was responsible for strengthening the faith of the first disciples, will by her maternal intercession guide the Church in America, obtaining the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, as she once did for the early Church, so that the new evangelization may yield a splendid flowering of Christian life” (No. 11).
Many pro-life activists also refer to the image as Our Lady of Life. They see clear pro-life symbolism in the Guadalupe image, which shows Mary pregnant.
Promotion of devotion to the image received a boost earlier this year, when Redemptorist Father Pablo Straub told Mother Angelica on the Eternal Word Television Network about a private revelation: that Mary had said that if her Guadalupe image were brought to every abortion clinic in the United States, it would bring an end to abortion here.
Two home viewers who took a special interest in that show were Lorrie Anderberg and Deanna Aikman of Michigan. On July 1, the two started the Our Lady of Guadalupe Mission in Ann Arbor.
Using Internet, they determined that there are about 1,000 places in the United States that do abortions. So they, along with a friend, Dr. Cathy Dowling, ordered 1,000 2_-foot-by-4-foot cloth banners with reproductions of the Guadalupe image.
They are offering the banners free to anyone who will take them to abortion clinics and pray, especially on Dec. 12, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. By early December they had received responses from about 40 Catholic dioceses.
“We're just the most unlikely people who would ever be doing this, so it has real potential,” Anderberg said.
The Image
Another boost for the Guadalupe image came in June 1991, when the U.S. bishops received from Mexico's bishops a life-size photograph of the 4-foot-by-6-foot image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. That's when Dan Lynch casually offered to handle scheduling for the photo's trips.
Lynch, 57, now a retired lawyer and part-time probate judge in northern Vermont, thought he could use his law office and some free time to help out.
Since then, the Missionary Image of Our Lady of Guadalupe has been on the go almost nonstop. “It just took over my life, he said.
Though headquartered in East Fairfield, the image is rarely there. It has gone throughout the United States and Europe, including Russia, and also to Australia, the Philippines, Japan, Canada and Mexico.
And wherever it goes, it's a hit. “The priests are always amazed,” Lynch said. “They say, ‘Oh, you'll be lucky to get 50 people there.’ [Yet] the churches are always packed. The confession lines are unbelievable.”
Though Lynch does not usually accompany the photo on its journeys, he collects stories about it.
In Wichita, Kan., in the early 1990s, witnesses claimed they saw rose petals flake off the image. In Louisville, Ky., in 1992 a little girl was cured of a rare lung disease after the image was taken into her hospital room, Lynch said.
The photographic image has been taken to abortion clinics in more than 20 cities, Lynch said, and several of those clinics subsequently closed.
Lynch contended that he has seen the image cry tears of oil. He said that he accompanied the photo to Moscow in 1992, where he and several companions entered a gate into Red Square without permission and proclaimed Mary the queen of Russia.
When Lynch landed in China with the photograph in 1994, he recalled, a female Chinese customs agent pointed at the Our Lady of Guadalupe T-shirt he was wearing and said, “Oh Maria, Maria!” She then produced a Miraculous Medal.
The Doctor of Tepeyac
Back in the United States, Dr. John Bruchalski calls himself an example of Our Lady of Guadalupe's influence.
In 1987, the year he would graduate from medical school at the University of South Alabama, Bruchalski visited the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe near Tepeyac hill in Mexico City with a friend.
Bruchalski was then in a medical residency program and about to enter an obstetrics-gynecology practice where he would use what have become the tools of the trade: contraceptives, sterilization, and abortion.
During one of the Masses in the basilica, he recalled, “I heard a voice inside my head saying, ‘Why are you hurting me?’”
The prick of conscience, as he called it, didn't take immediately, and for a while he continued prescribing oral contraceptives and performing abortions.
Eventually, he stopped doing abortions, but continued sterilizing and prescribing oral contraceptives. He then volunteered at a crisis pregnancy center. “And it was there that I saw the connection between the contraceptive mentality and the abortion mentality,” he acknowledged.
After a visit to Medjugorje in Bosnia in January 1990, he gave up helping women contracept.
In 1994, he opened the Tepeyac Family Center in Fairfax, Va., which specializes in problem pregnancies. The clinic does not provide or refer patients to others for abortion or artificial contraception, and turns no women away for lack of money.
“Tepeyac is in the name because we have to remind ourselves why we do this,” Bruchalski said.
Business is booming. The clinic, which has on display images of Our Lady of Guadalupe, delivers 40 babies a month, Bruchalski said. In 1997, another doctor joined the practice, and Bruchalski is looking to add two more.
Bruchalski rattled off a close paraphrase of the words of Mary at Guadalupe that are recited at the center every day:
Listen to me my son:
Do not worry about any illness, vexation, anxiety, or pain.
Am I not here who am your Mother?
Am I not your fountain of life?
Are you not in the fold of my arms or under my mantle?
Are you not my responsibility? Is there anything else you need?
Bruchalski mused, “She's the one [who] said it — ‘Is there anything else you need?’ I didn't. So I'm taking her up on her offer.”
Matt McDonald writes from Mashpee, Massachusetts.
***
Our Lady of Guadalupe Mission in Ann Arbor, Mich., can be reached at (734) 930-7481.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Matt McDonald ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: It's Cable Porn vs. Parents In Supreme Court Battle DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—Parents who subscribe to cable TV for its learning opportunities may end up teaching their children about a subject they'd rather avoid: pornography.
Estimates show that as many as 39 million homes could be receiving uninvited pornographic programming because some cable providers do not fully scramble the signal of “premium” sex channels.
One man from Poway, Calif., made 550 copies of a videotape showing the Spice Channel as it appeared on his television set at 9 a.m. in the spring of 1994. He sent a copy of the tape to every member of Congress.
A Florida woman complained to her congressman in 1995 that she found her kids at 4 p.m. “transfixed” in front of the television by scenes of “a naked man sodomizing a woman” and the “groans and epithets that go along.”
The Supreme Court began hearing arguments Nov. 30 on the constitutionality of a 1996 federal law prevents cable systems from offering sexually explicit networks during the daytime if they fail to fully scramble the signal for nonsubscribers. Playboy, which owns Spice, sued and won in a lower court in 1997.
Justice Department attorneys warned that if the Supreme Court justices allow the law to be overturned they “would leave children exposed to graphic, sexually explicit audio and visual programming that our society has long viewed as entirely inappropriate for them.” A court decision could arrive as early as next spring.
In an interview with the Register, Playboy attorney Bob Corn-Revere said, “We agree that there's a regulatory interest for the government, but you don't use a sledgehammer to kill a gnat.”
The problem is not really as bad as the government would have Americans believe, said Corn-Revere, claiming that there were likely fewer than 39 million cable subscribers receiving uninvited pornography.
And it isn't the channel's fault when some do, he added.
“Playboy sends a completely scrambled signal to the cable operator,” he said. “It's something that varies from provider to provider.”
Concerned parents, he said, can program their remote or VCR to pass over the channel or they can request a free lockbox from their cable company that will completely scramble the image.
Why the Bleed?
Bruce Taylor, of the National Law Center, said he thinks the broadcasting of semiscrambled images is not done by accident.
Taylor told the Register, “It's to tease the guys into ordering. They see the ‘Picasso Porn’ and they think, ‘For $20 a month, I can put it all together.”
The phenomenon of semiscrambling, or “bleeding,” is limited almost exclusively to pornographic channels, he said. “Other premium channels seem to block all of it,” said Taylor, who filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Justice Department.
Corn-Revere called Taylor's accusations “completely wrong.” He said that he was able to catch the Disney Channel a few years ago even though he hadn't ordered it. “It was bleeding,” said Corn-Revere.
Taylor remained unconvinced. “I'm subscribing ill intentions on Playboy, which is my freedom of speech,” he asserted. “But if you don't invite them, then your home shouldn't be invaded.”
Corn-Revere called the federal law “regulatory overkill” because it limited adult programming to the 10 p.m.-to-6 a.m. period.
Taylor said that the law is hardly draconian: “[The law] says nothing about what Playboy can put on their channel. They only have to block the signal [from bleeding] before 10 p.m.”
Taylor, a former prosecutor from Ohio, said Playboy also tried to deny that the law should affect its programming.
“They're trying to argue, ‘We're not pornographic or indecent,’” he warned. “They're looking for unfettered access on cable. And if it's not indecent, they could put it on broadcast. That's a pretty scary thought.”
Karen Gounaud is founder of Family Friendly Libraries, Springfield, Va., which encourages libraries to implement software to block Internet porn. She thinks that the cable law is good but won't suffice.
“This is about greed and power and a total loss of our moral senses,” she said. “Laws will not settle this. It will keep the finger in the dike but the dike will burst unless we go back to moral-centered living.”
She said the pornography industry doesn't stop the semiscrambling for the same reason it opposes filtering software in libraries.
“They want to create more customers,” she said. “With a little exposure, they want to come back. Then they get addicted and [the pornographers] get the money.”
Gounaud added, “The real problem isn't the bleed. The question we need to ask is, Why do we have people that think pornography is necessary for a healthy life?”
***
Family Friendly Libraries can be reached at www.fflibraries.org.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Josh Mercer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: With the Littles, God Does a Lot DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:Jonathan and Terry Little of Plattsmouth, Neb., form the Catholic music and evangelization ministry team With the Spirit. The father and son released their first joint album, “Journey of Faith,” this year. In addition to playing what they call “Catholic contemporary music” to audiences across the country, they give inspirational talks and witness about their faith. The Littles recently spoke with Register features correspondent Tim Drake.
Drake: Both of you are self-taught musicians. How did each of you get your start in music?
Terry: I grew up in a musical family. My grandfather played a penny whistle in a vaudeville band in England, and my mother always had music playing in our house. As a result I absorbed a lot of good taste in music. During the 1960s I was influenced by the Beatles, folk rock and Bob Dylan. After my conversion to Catholicism in 1971, I took an interest in sharing my talents with congregations. I began to learn and play the songs of Joe Wise, Sebastian Temple, the St. Louis Jesuits and other Catholic musicians. After a powerful Cursillo experience in 1979, I decided to put these talents to use even further by writing songs.
Jonathan: I took piano lessons for three months when I was 8 years old, but didn't have the tolerance for it. The next time I picked up an instrument was as a senior in high school in 1994. It would have been logical for me to take guitar lessons from my father. He challenged me to learn it the same way he had, by sitting with a guitar and listening to the strings. My yearlong experience with the youth outreach group RADIX shaped my stage appearance.
Terry: Jonathan's first live performance was at his high school graduation commencement exercises. He played “Teach Your Children.” That song is a good witness between a parent and a child and it has become one of our staple songs.
What do you enjoy most about your music?
Terry: God has given us the talent to entertain and minister through our music. The best feedback I ever received was after singing at a coffeehouse in Germany. I had been playing plain folk music and in between songs a woman came up to me, pointed at me, and said, “You're a Christian, aren't you?” My songs were not Christian; I had been a witness simply in the way I conducted myself and played my music.
Jonathan: Our music is a tool that helps people open up to us. Recently, at a concert in South Dakota, there were a lot of kids who at first were really closed to us. For the first 20 minutes we hit them with some fun music and got them involved. After that, we shared with them.
Terry: When Jonathan was little he used to come into my music class, sit on my lap, and ask me to sing the old Peter, Paul and Mary song “The Marvelous Toy.” The kids today still love the music of the ‘50s and ‘60s. For example, at the South Dakota concert we used “Help” by the Beatles as a means to tell kids that there is always someone out there that they can speak to.
What is your message?
Jonathan: We let the kids know that just as there is good secular music there is also a lot of music that is dangerous to the soul. We try to impress upon them to pay attention to what they watch and listen to. If it would be offensive to Jesus, we tell them, or if you couldn't listen to it with the Blessed Mother, then it isn't something worth listening to.
Terry: Christ affects every moment of our lives. It is through our music that we witness to this. Most of our songs are about Christ's love in our lives and the lives of other people. We also use our music to teach about the sacraments, confession and the Eucharist. We'll go into a parish on a weekend, sing for three Masses, and do a presentation for a high school youth group or family audience. At a recent all-day retreat in an Iowa parish a mother told us how her daughter had gone to confession for the first time in five years after one of our talks.
Terry, how did you come into the Church?
Terry: I was christened a Methodist, attended the Church of England, at age 10 I attended a Baptist Church, and our Boy Scout troops were sponsored by Presbyterians and Mormons.
I entered the Air Force with no religious preference. After meeting Mary, my wife-to-be, she invited me to attend a Catholic church with her on the first Sunday we were together.
What captured me, as we sat in the back, were the people going forward to receive Communion. I thought that the host signified Jesus, but it wasn't until I asked Mary the question, “What are people doing when they go forward?” that I discovered that the Eucharist was the true body and blood of Jesus.
This sparked my interest in learning more about the faith.
I took instruction from a Catholic chaplain and in February of 1971, I made my profession of faith. Mary once asked if I converted because of her. I told her, “No, I converted because I needed it.” After nine years of being Catholic, I took part in a Cursillo weekend. On this weekend I felt that the Spirit was calling me to do something deeper with my life. Since then I have used my gift of music to minister to myself and others. It sets me sky-high!
What motivated you to form With the Spirit?
Jonathan: My time with RADIX inspired me with the same fire that Cursillo had done for my dad. Realizing how many broken families there are in the U.S. sparked the fire for us to do this together. We realized there was a void and we took a leap to fill it. When we go out, it is a father and his son going out together.
Terry: I had been a solo act for many years and had been a part of a trio or quartet, but my music was not a ministry. Mary, my wife, encouraged me, saying, “You have the potential to do something.” And so, our first performance together was a 90-minute concert for our local parish youth summer camp in 1997. We've always had a good chemistry together. There is a lot of father-son humor and patter that goes back and forth. We have been called the “liturgical Smothers Brothers.”
Who writes the songs?
Terry: It's definitely a LennonMcCartney kind of thing. One of us will write a song and the other might say, “Let's see if this counter melody will work,” or “Let's add some harmony,” or “Let's change this word.”
Jonathan: We definitely write them together. One of us has an idea and the other one finishes it off. On “Savior of Souls,” for example, I had the song and the words. Dad added the tambourine and the harmony. It's a lot like my relationship with my wife. She completes me. It is part of our relationship that says we need each other.
What has singing together done for your relationship with one another?
Jonathan: Like any relationship it is something we have to work on. I look forward to jumping in the Jeep and traveling together. Everyone is called to use their gifts. Ours is music. All we need to evangelize is our guitars and our voices. It's a blast!
Terry: Every father-and-son relationship has a wide gap and a narrow gap. When a youngster is growing up as a teen-ager, sometimes they go their own radical ways. A parent becomes much wiser as a child grows out of his teen-age years. With the Spirit has brought us closer together as a father and son. There has been both laughter and tears.
Jonathan, you and your wife, Trish, miscarried your first child, Maximillian, in August. How has that loss affected your music?
Jonathan: The first month or two after the loss of Maximillian, I felt afraid to go out and minister. There are so many harms done against innocent children and my child never even saw the light of day. I felt that if I were to give a pro-life talk I would come off with anger instead of love. Through the loss I've come to realize that life is too short, and this has encouraged me all the more to go out. I know that eventually the loss will be expressed in my music, but it is still too recent.
Terry: When Jonathan and Trish lost their baby it was hard on the whole family. It was hard for us to stand behind our children and see them grieving the loss of a child. We had six children and had never lost a child. So their loss is something we couldn't experience. We are encouraged that we have a young angel in heaven we can look up to. He got there before we did. Hopefully, we can use our life experiences to save souls.
Lincoln, Neb., Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz is featured in one of the songs on your CD. How did that come about?
Terry: I was a parish delegate to the 1996 Lincoln, Neb., diocesan synod conducted by Bishop Bruskewitz. As I listened to the proceedings I started writing things down and realized that what was being said could be put into prose about our faith journey.
The day before the conclusion of the synod I shared my poem with one of the facilitators in charge of the proceedings. I was fortunate to be able to share the music with the group as part of the closing session.
I had listened to a recording of Bishop Bruskewitz's episcopal ordination and found this quote that was an exact fit into an instrumental inter-lude I had in the recorded version of the song.
Bishop Bruskewitz gave us his permission and blessing and told us he was honored to be on the recording. The song talks about our journey of faith leading up to and into the new millennium. It speaks about our faith as one body of Christ and how we are all in it together. As such, it is a fitting last song for our album.
What do you do when you're not singing?
Jonathan: A longtime friend and I are owners of Tri-Web Development, a computer Web design and consulting business in Lincoln, Neb. I am the director of marketing. In spite of this work, I've never turned down the opportunity to do a [music] presentation — and never will.
Terry: I've been retired from the Air Force for 10 years. I am currently a man with two parishes in two states. I serve as the director of liturgical music at the Church of the Holy Spirit in Plattsmouth, Neb., and as music coordinator for Our Lady of the Holy Rosary in Glenwood, Iowa. I also teach guitar out of my home studio.
What's next for With the Spirit?
Terry: The “Journey of Faith” album was all original music. By request, the next album may feature more of other people's music, such as “Teach Your Children” and “Holy Ground.”
Jonathan: We'll be guests on EWTN's “Life on the Rock” Jan. 20. We're excited about the opportunity and the exposure that will give us.
Tim Drake (tdrake@gw.stcdio.org) writes from St. Cloud, Minnesota.
For more information on With the Spirit, bookings, or to order their album, visit their Web site at www.withthespirit.com or call (402) 296-6099.
----- EXCERPT: Contemporary Music is Their Ministry ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jonathan & Terry Little ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: Notes & Quotes DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:Catholic Feminist Looks at Sex
AMERICA, Nov. 27—University of Pennsylvania doctoral candidate and self-described feminist Jennifer Popiel had this to say about the effects of artificial contraception and abortion on women's liberation:
“We must not make things that are convenient into the moral equivalent of things that are central to our bodily integrity or give us the ability to be secure in our own bodies. Contraception and abortion are both designed to avoid the consequences of sexual activity. Though modern advertising would likely lead us to a different conclusion, sexual activity is not a right, nor is it necessary in order to lead a rich and full life. To presume otherwise is to ignore the great capacity of humanity to produce, to nurture, to love in non-sexual ways. It is also to ignore the value of sacrifice and control.
“Though sex is enjoyable and greatly desired, it is not acceptable, even in our permissive society, to give in to all sexual urges. Why then is it assumed that one should be free to give in to sexual urges without regard to reproductive consequences? In all of the rhetoric about controlling one's destiny, controlling one's body, controlling one's life, we have lost sight of the fact that self-control is also a very powerful thing.”
House Nixes Catholic Chaplain
THE NEW YORK TIMES, Dec. 2—Following a secret ballot, Jesuit Father Timothy O‘Brien was the leading candidate to become the House of Representatives’ new chaplain, according to members of a committee responsible for filling the post, the Times reported.
The eventual selection of Presbyterian Rev. Charles Parker Wright resulted in bitterness among some Catholic House members.
Said the Times, “In the rancorous aftermath, several Democrats said they thought House leaders were trying to placate the religious right or were uncomfortable with naming a Catholic priest.”
As the Times article was being prepared, Republican Reps. Rick Lazio of New York and Chris Smith of New Jersey called a reporter to say that House leaders “had never shown any bias [against] Catholics.” The House has never had a Catholic chaplain.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Quebec Bishops Fight to Retain Religion in Schools DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:MONTREAL—Quebec's bishops denounced a government commission's recommendations that schools end the traditional Catholic or Protestant religious instruction and educate pupils about world religions as cultural phenomena.
The bishops called for a multidenominational approach to religious instruction that would respect the beliefs of the majority of Quebecers and accommodate trends in immigration.
“The education system will gain nothing by compromising a denominational approach that is open to pluralism and that is facing the new needs of Quebec's young people,” said Bishop Pierre Morissette of BaieComeau, president of the Quebec Assembly of Bishops.
His statement and the bishops’ report were delivered Nov. 18 to the Parliamentary Commission on Education and the Place of Religion in Schools.
In view of current immigration trends, the bishops said they favored a multidenominational approach that would respect the spirit of the Quebec Charter of Rights and Liberties.
“If new provisions can be enacted that will better guarantee the same opportunities for everyone, for those from all of the major, universally recognized religious traditions, as well as for those who adhere to no religion, we will all be much further ahead in this debate,” they said.
The bishops stressed the importance of religious education in the development of young people, saying it encourages self-evaluation, a social conscience and community spirit.
“We remain open to the idea of publicly supporting any new adjustment that could prove useful or necessary in ensuring that the freedoms of conscience and religion of all Quebecers are respected,” the bishops said.
Earlier this year, the government-mandated Proulx Commission recommended that in the name of equal status for all citizens, Quebec's schools should break with their historical denominational tradition.
In 1997, the government abolished the traditional denominational school boards, replacing them with linguistic boards. Schools were allowed to choose their denominational status, and parents were offered the choice of secular moral instruction or religious instruction for their children according to the school's denominational status.
The bishops argue that state schools should offer denominational religious education based on the religious practices of the majority. The Proulx Commission has argued that schools should offer only education about world religions as a cultural phenomenon. The bishops said this was simply an extension to the humanities component of the school curriculum.
Quebec's Catholic and Protestant education traditions have helped to shape Quebec society and culture, the bishops argue. According to the bishops, the Proulx Commission's approach suppresses the role of the community as an intermediary between the individual and the state. Thus, they said, the commission's proposals show no respect for the religious convictions of many Quebecers and fail to take into account parents’ wishes.
“Civil society and parents have an important role to play in how our schools are run,” said the bishops. “The government has a responsibility to consult them and take their opinions seriously.”
The Proulx Commission also argued that in the face of increasing multiculturalism brought by immigrants of dozens of different world religions, if the state cannot offer religious education for all the denominations, in the interests of equality, it should not offer religious education.
A section of the Quebec Charter of Rights and Liberties specifies that parents have the right to choose whether their child receives religious education and if so, they can opt for whichever denomination they please. The section has long ceased to be considered viable, at least within the state education system. The bishops argue that in recent years, religious education for immigrants coming from Catholic and
----- EXCERPT: North America ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Cuba Need Not Fear Church, Pope Tells Diplomat DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—Cuba has nothing to fear from the Catholic Church and, in fact, granting the Church greater freedom would improve Cuba's standing in the international community, Pope John Paul II said.
Full respect for human rights “is fundamental for being able to win credibility on the international scene,” the Pope said in a message Dec. 2 to Cuba's new ambassador to the Vatican.
Meeting Isidro Gomez Santos, the new ambassador, Pope John Paul said, “Cuba must not be deprived of the ties with other peoples which are indispensable for a healthy economic, social and cultural development.
Although there was no explicit reference to the U.S. embargo, the Pope said that Cuba “should not be deprived of links with other nations, as they are necessary for healthy economic, social and cultural development.
“This process will be easier if Cuba, for its part, promotes new areas of freedom and participation for its inhabitants, all of whom are called to collaborate in the building of society.”
The Catholic Church “wants to be, above all, a messenger of hope, love, justice, reconciliation and peace, offering everyone the message of Jesus, the Good News.”
The Church has no political system to propose and no political goals to follow, he said. It wants to work for the good of all Cubans and for the promotion of the values necessary for the proper development of society.
The Church in Cuba asks for respect, he said, and it “hopes for a more generous opening to that solidarity shown by the universal Church through an enriching exchange of personnel and means.”
With the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 only a few weeks away, Pope John Paul said he felt compelled to repeat what he told the world at the beginning of his pontificate: “‘Do not be afraid!’ Let Christ into your lives and let his saving power into every nation, culture, political and economic system.”
Gomez, the 62-year-old ambassador, came to the Vatican already familiar with Church-state relations in Cuba and with the state of Cuba-Vatican relations.
He served on the government and Church-state committees preparing for Pope John Paul's 1998 visit to Cuba. From 1975 to 1987 and again from 1991 until his appointment as ambassador, Gomez was an official of the religious affairs office of the central committee of the Cuban Communist Party.
Gomez told the Pope there is “full freedom of conscience and religious practice” in Cuba, and the ongoing dialogue between government and Church leaders is leading to greater mutual understanding.
The ambassador said Cuba already allows the universal Church to share its resources with the Church in Cuba; 100 foreign priests have entered the country in the past five years, he said. Gomez said Cuba and the Catholic Church must work together to support peace and justice throughout the world.
(From combined wire services)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Vatican Unveils the New Lighting For St. Peter's Basilica in Rome DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—The exterior lighting of St. Peter's Basilica will be totally revamped for the Jubilee Year using the latest technologies, said Vatican officials and lighting engineers.
The Vatican entrusted the $1.1 million project to an Italian utilities company, known by its Italian acronym ACEA, which has fitted most of Rome's archeological areas and monuments with sophisticated artistic lighting.
During a Vatican press conference Nov. 23, Fulvio Vento, ACEA chairman, said St. Peter's new lighting would be inaugurated during a ceremony Dec. 17.
If Pope John Paul II's schedule permits him to attend, he will be asked to throw the switch to activate the illumination, Vento said.
The basilica's facade, atrium and dome will be lit by 450 separate light fixtures with a combined output of nearly 50,000 watts.
Aldo de Luca, ACEA project manager, said the dome's revised lighting, compared to a system installed 10 years ago, reduces power consumption by 40% and light pollution by 60%.
The project presented ACEA engineers with a “severe technical challenge,” Vento said. Choices regarding the placement of individual fixtures, and the quantity and color temperature of the light they produced had to take into account the building's “incommensurable artistic and historical value,” he said.
Sandro Benedetti, technical manager of the Vatican office in charge of the basilica, said throughout the centuries special lighting systems had been devised for St. Peter's.
An 18th-century Vatican painting depicts illumination of the dome, facade and atrium, perhaps for jubilee celebrations in 1750, he said.
ZENIT, the Rome-based news agency, reported that, in earlier times, up to 25 acrobats where hired to slide down the façade, which is the size of a soccer field, to place some 3,000 torches into their holders.
“Its illumination entailed a considerable effort,” said Benedetti, who said that the goal was to light “almost simultaneously” all of the torches so that the public cold get a view of the entire faÇade. (From combined wire services)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Catholic and Jewish Scholars Will Study Vatican Archives DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—Six scholars (three Catholic and three Jewish) have been selected to conduct a joint review of Vatican documents from the World War II era to examine the Church's role during the Holocaust, the Vatican announced.
The team was expected to study 11 volumes of published Vatican archival material, with the possibility of drawing upon other sources and other specialists to clarify unresolved issues, said a Nov. 23 statement by the Vatican and the Jewish sponsors of the initiative.
Following the review, the team will issue a report on its findings, the statement said. No timetable was given for the project's completion.
The unprecedented review, announced in October, was an effort to shed scholarly light on one of the most contested issues in Catholic-Jewish relations: The activity of the Church, and in particular Pope Pius XII, during World War II and the Nazi effort to exterminate European Jews.
The members of the review team were announced by Cardinal Edward Cassidy, president of the Vatican's Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, and by Seymour Reich, chairman of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations.
The three Catholic scholars named to the team were:
l Eva Fleischner, professor emerita of Montclair State University in New Jersey, who has taught on the Holocaust and edited a classic work in the field, Auschwitz: Beginning of a New Era? Born in Austria, she has conducted work on French rescuers of Jews during World War II.
l Jesuit Father Gerald Fogarty of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. He is a Church historian who specializes in Vatican-American relations and the papacy in the 20th century.
l Father John Morley, a Holocaust scholar at Seton Hall University in New Jersey and a longtime participant in dialogue on the subject with the Jewish community. His doctoral dissertation became the basis of a book, Vatican Diplomacy and the Jews During the Holocaust, and he has extensively studied the Vatican's archival material on the period.
The Jewish scholars named were:
l Michael Marrus, professor of history and dean of the School of Graduate Studies at the University of Toronto. An acclaimed authority on the history of the Holocaust and its treatment by historians, he is coauthor of a book, Vichy France and the Jews.
l Bernard Suchecky, research director at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, who heads an oral history program on the Nazi occupation of Belgium. He is coauthor of The Hidden Encyclical of Pius XI, an award-winning book.
l Robert Wistrich, professor of history and holder of the Neuenberger Chair in Jewish Studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. A noted scholar of European history and an authority on anti-Semitism and interfaith relations, he recently served as a visiting scholar at Harvard University.
The team will focus on the 11 volumes of Vatican archival material published between 1965 and 1981.
The statement expressed the hope that “any questions and differences that may exist can be resolved through this joint review approach.
“The scholarly team is also expected to raise relevant issues that its members feel have not been satisfactorily resolved by the documentation already available. They may also draw on the knowledge and assistance of other specialists, including colleagues and associates,” the statement said.
It said that if questions still remain at the end of the review process, Cardinal Cassidy and Reich have said that “further clarification will be sought.”
The umbrella organization headed by Reich includes the American Jewish Committee, B‘nai B‘rith International, the Israel Jewish Council on interreligious Relations, World Jewish Congress and organizations representing the major branches of Judaism. These include: the Orthodox Union and Rabbinical Council of America; United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and Rabbinical Assembly, and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and Central Conference of American Rabbis, a Reform group. (From combined wire services).
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Notes & Quotes DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:Priest Hopeful for Orthodox Reunification
CATHOLIC NEAR EAST, Nov.—In an essay on the history of the division between Orthodox and Catholics, Maronite Chorbishop John Faris closed with this hopeful reflection on the future of ecumenism:
“Hopefully, just as the Orthodox and Catholic churches one day realized that they had gradually parted ways at the beginning of the second millennium, so too will they discover blessed unity has reappeared among them at the beginning of the third millennium.
“We must be patient. After all, Catholics entered the arena of ecumenism only 35 years ago in an attempt to heal 1,000 years of estrangement. It is a paradox that the successor of Peter, declared to be the greatest obstacle to ecumenism [by Pope Paul VI], is perhaps the key figure in the Church of Christ with the necessary authority and resources to effect such a radical change in the unity of Christians.”
Pope To Visit Kazakhstan in 2000?
ITAR-TASS, Nov. 29—Kazakhstan, President Nursultan Nazarbayev announced Nov. 28 that Pope John Paul II will visit his country in the year 2000, the Russian news service reported. No more details or specific dates were given in the report.
A possible trip to Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic, would mark a significant step for ecumenism following the Pope's previous trips this year to Rumania and Georgia, ITAR-Tass reported. The Vatican has neither confirmed nor denied the announcement.
Kazakhstan, has a total population of 16 million, including approximately 45% Russian Orthodox and 50% Muslims. Christians make up fewer than 5% of the population.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Pope to Orthodox: Catholics Are Committed to Unity DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—The Catholic Church is committed to doing everything possible to promote Christian unity, Pope John Paul II told the world's Orthodox Christians in two recent messages.
“The Catholic Church is prepared to do everything possible to remove the obstacles, to support the dialogue and to collaborate in every initiative aimed at making progress toward full communion in faith and in witness,” the Pope wrote to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople.
The papal message, released Nov. 30 at the Vatican, was delivered to the patriarch's headquarters in Istanbul, Turkey, by a Vatican delegation led by Cardinal Edward Cassidy, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. The delegation also participated in the patriarchate's celebration of the feast of St. Andrew.
The Byzantine tradition venerates St. Andrew as protocletos, the first disciple called by Jesus. As the Gospel narrative relates, Andrew and another disciple, traditionally identified as John, were disciples of John the Baptist until they were called by Jesus.
It was Andrew who went to his brother Simon and told him, “We have found the Messiah.”
In his message, the Pope said that as a new millennium begins, working for Christian unity has become a more urgent obligation requiring increased efforts to heal “the painful wounds” of division.
Christians cannot help but feel sadness when they think of what they ought to have done so that the world would see the true face of Christ and the true face of his Church, the Pope said.
While Pope John Paul praised “the numerous ecumenical initiatives undertaken with generosity and determination,” he also said the official Catholic-Orthodox dialogue must turn its attention back to theology and to finding agreement on doctrinal issues.
For several years the International Dialogue Commission focused on practical issues and tensions which arose in predominantly Orthodox countries of Eastern Europe when the Catholic Church was able to resume its full activity after the fall of communism.
The commission was scheduled to resume theological discussions in 1999, but the meeting was postponed until June 2000 because of the war in Yugoslavia.
John Paul also sent a message through Cardinal Cassidy last month to an international conference in Moscow that included Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant participants. The meeting was organized by the Christian Interconfessional Consultative Committee.
The Pope expressed the hope that the meeting would be decisive for Christians of different confessions to “inspire all involved to bear an ever more convincing and effective witness to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ ... who is the center of the Christian faith and of the truth which is his Church.”
He said the various churches, “through the incorporation of their members by baptism into Christ, already share a real, though yet imperfect, communion.”
The Pope underlined that the “rediscovery of this brotherhood in the Lord will make it possible for Christians to deepen their relations, intensify their cooperation, and strive towards that perfect unity in the faith.”
(From combined wire services)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: European Union President Defends Vatican Influence DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—The Church's contributions on the world stage are valuable and should be encouraged, the Protestant president of Finland said after a private audience Nov. 23 with Pope John Paul II.
Finland's Martti Ahtisaari, who is also currently serving as the president of the European Union, decried those who would exclude the Vatican's voice from being heard in important world bodies.
“The Holy See represents a special forum, as it has invaluable knowledge of events in the world, promotes peace, solidarity and tolerance — values to which we attach much importance,” said Ahtisaari, president of Finland since 1994.
“And these values are not just important for us, but also for the European Union and the international community.”
Ahtisaari served as a key mediator in bringing a halt earlier this year to the NATO bombings in Yugoslavia and the Kosovo crisis. His national, regional and international experience give him a privileged vantage point from which to judge the Vatican's effectiveness.
“To those who are displeased by the Holy See's growing influence, the only thing I can say is that I intensely desire that the issues that are part of the Holy See's agenda will spread even further, because we all need peace and solidarity,” the Finnish president said.
The Finnish population of 5 million is concentrated in the south of the country. With just over 5 million inhabitants, 85.8% of are Lutheran and 1.1% Orthodox. Catholics number about 7,000, and are served by
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Archdiocese Studies Miracle Ascribed to Mother Teresa DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:CALCUTTA, India—A Church inquiry has begun in the Archdiocese of Calcutta into an alleged miraculous cure that was achieved through Mother Teresa's intercession.
Missionaries of Charity Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, postulator of the canonization cause of Mother Teresa, said the alleged miracle involved a 30-year-old woman in Raiganj, some 250 miles north of Calcutta, who had a stomach tumor.
When doctors found her too weak to be operated on, three Missionaries of Charity nuns placed on the woman's stomach a medal that had earlier touched Mother Teresa's body, and they prayed over the woman.
The woman immediately felt lighter and all pain disappeared, witnesses said. The next morning, her stomach returned to its normal size, they said. One of the sisters gave testimony Nov. 26 about the events during the inquiry's second day.
“Proof of a miracle is not easy,” Father Kolodiejchuk said, “and medical experts are called to testify whether such a cure could be explained by medical science.”
Although there have been reports of several miracles in eastern India, only the Raiganj case was chosen for investigation initially, as it seemed to fit the required criteria best, the postulator said.
Nobel Peace laureate Mother Teresa based her life and work in Calcutta, where she died of cardiac arrest Sept. 5, 1997, at the age of 87.
In life, and perhaps even more since her death, Mother Teresa's spiritual power is also recognized by India's non-Christian religions, according to a report in Vidimus Dominum (We have seen the Lord), an information service for the world's Catholic religious orders.
The article highlighted a spiritual center of the local Jain religion in southern India where Mother Teresa is venerated and honored. Primarily a place of prayer, the center is also involved in educational and social work in the villages of the Karnataka region.
In similar Jain and Hindu centers in the region and elsewhere in India, Mother Teresa's picture is often visible, surrounded by flowers, candles and burning incense. (From combined wire services)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Notes & Quotes DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:Pilgrims to Walk Britain Top to Bottom
THE UNIVERSE, Nov. 28—Pilgrims have set off from the Scottish island of Iona to embark on a 600-mile millennium trek across Britain to Canterbury, Britain and Ireland's Catholic weekly reported.
Said the Universe, “Pilgrimage 2000 has been described as the biggest journey of its type in Britain for years. Participants aim to walk the length of the country in 41 days, assembling in Canterbury Cathedral on the first day of the century for a midnight service.
“Other groups from elsewhere in Britain will join the handful who set of on Sunday, swelling their ranks as they travel south towards their Kent destination.”
A dozen pilgrims from several different denominations began the trek, with numbers expected to swell as the new year approaches, said the newspaper.
Along the way, worship services will be held in a number of churches, shrines and cathedrals. All pilgrims will assemble under the ruins of St. Augustine's original abbey on Dec. 31 before the service in Canterbury Cathedral, which will be presided over by Anglican priests and an as-yet-unnamed Catholic bishop, the Universe said.
Placement of Exit Fuels Tensions at Jesus’ Tomb
THE NEW YORK TIMES, Dec. 1—Tension surrounding the proposed addition of an emergency exit to Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulcher in preparation for pilgrims during the Jubilee year 2000, have only heightened in recent weeks, the Times reported.
Because the church houses chapels for a number of Christian rites, administrators have difficulty making even minor decisions about its use and repair. According to the Times article, a broken sewer cover inside the church which has gone unrepaired for three years illustrates well the larger tensions among religious sects.
Said the Times: “The broken cover has been hidden beneath a rickety, splintering board for three years. No repair is ever hastily undertaken at the holy site where tradition says Jesus died and was buried. In a venerated house of worship that is elaborately divided, arch by arch, among three major Christian rites and several other denominations, no sewer cover is simply a sewer cover. It is turf.
“It took four years of talks to get the Christian parties to agree to such an exit on principle, given the safety concerns for a sprawling church with a single 3-yard-wide door. A decision to restore four arches took 27 years and deliberations over what color to paint the cupola lasted three decades. “There is another system of time inside the Holy Sepulcher,” the shrine's Christian/Muslim liaison said. “We are working on seconds and they on eternity.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Juan Diego: ASaint for 2000? DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:Devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe stems from her appearances in the 16th century outside Mexico City to Juan Diego (1478-1548), an Indian peasant in the Aztec Empire.
A convert to Catholicism about six years before, Juan Diego was a pious man. He rose well before dawn every Saturday and Sunday to walk barefoot three and a half hours for Mass and religious instruction.
In 1531, Juan Diego told the local bishop he had seen the Blessed Virgin on a hill near his home. The bishop didn't believe him, so Juan Diego asked Mary for a sign.
The Virgin directed him to a place on the hill where, amid the December snow, he found a rosebush in bloom. He collected some of the unseasonal roses in his tilma and returned to the bishop's residence.
When Juan opened his tilma, the roses fell — revealing to the stunned bishop an image of Mary impressed on the interior surface of the rough cloth.
The image — which scientists still can't explain how it was done — depicts Mary as a dark-skinned woman. The Virgin of Guadalupe was an immediate draw for the Indians, who clung to her as their special patroness.
Since then, her jurisdiction has expanded. In 1746, her patronage was extended to all of New Spain, which stretches from what is now El Salvador to Northern California. In 1757 she was declared patroness of the citizens of Ciudad Ponce in Puerto Rico.
In 1910 Pope Pius X declared the Virgin of Guadalupe patroness of Latin America. Pope Pius XI extended her patronage to the Philippines in 1935. In 1946, Pius XII made her patroness of all the Americas.
In 1988, the liturgical celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe was raised to the status of a feast in all U.S. dioceses.
Next May 21, Pope John Paul II is expected to canonize Juan Diego in Rome. The Pope is also expected to beatify 20 Mexican martyrs and a Mexican nun.
Peter Sonski, communications director at the National Shrine of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., noted that when Mary appeared to Juan Diego, none of the current national boundaries in the Americas had yet been drawn. He also observed that Tepeyac hill is roughly in the middle of the Americas, between north and south, east and west.
“Certainly she has had a longer identity with people from Mexico or of Hispanic origin,” Sonski said of the Virgin. “But she is really a mother and a patroness for everyone in the American continent.”
In the Virgin of Guadalupe, Pope John Paul sees God reaching out to man in his local conditions. In his January post-synodal apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in America (The Church in America), he stated:
“The appearance of Mary to the native Juan Diego on the hill of Tepeyac in 1531 had a decisive effect on evangelization. Its influence greatly overflows the boundaries of Mexico, spreading to the whole Continent. America, which historically has been, and still is, a melting-pot of peoples, has recognized in the mestiza face of the Virgin of Tepeyac, in Blessed Mary of Guadalupe, an impressive example of a perfectly inculturated evangelization. Consequently, not only in Central and South America, but in North America as well, the Virgin of Guadalupe is venerated as Queen of all America” (No. 11).
—Matt McDonald
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Matt McDonald ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Self-Government and Partial-Birth Abortion DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:On Nov. 30, one man's decision nullified, for the time being, the will of two states’ legislatures. Next, it's the voters’ duty to demand that the laws their representatives voted for be enforced.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens unilaterally blocked laws banning partial-birth abortions from taking effect in Wisconsin and Illinois, leaving voters there wondering how their decision could have been overruled.
Technically, this is how: Stevens acted to block an order issued Nov. 29 by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That court had upheld the constitutionality of both states’ laws. Its order would have allowed the two states to begin enforcing their bans on partial-birth abortion, if Stevens hadn't stepped in.
Certainly, there are cases when laws violate the Constitution: In these cases, it is the duty of the judges to correct the laws on behalf of the Constitution. But then there are also cases in which judges’ decisions violate the Constitution. In these cases, it is the duty of the people and their representatives to correct the judges.
Civil rights cases come to mind, from Dred Scott vs. Sandford (the 1857 case involving the rights of a slave in a free territory), to Katzenbach vs. Morgan (involving English literacy tests for voters), to Goldman vs. Weinberger (involving wearing yarmulkes on Air Force duty). In each of these cases, lawmakers challenged erroneous Supreme Court decisions, and won.
So, who has the final say in a case like these partial-birth abortion bans?
In a democracy, there is always a temptation to make the “will of the people” the final arbiter of truth — but the will of the people can be wrong. As Pope John Paul II said in October 1995 remarks in Baltimore: “If an attitude of skepticism were to succeed in calling into question even the fundamental principles of the moral law, the democratic system itself would be shaken in its foundations.”
But we needn't fear this in America, he said. “The United States possesses a great bulwark against this happening. I speak of your founding documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. These documents are grounded in and embody unchanging principles of the natural law whose permanent truth and validity can be known by reason, for it is the law written by God in human hearts.”
Judges, for now, have been deciding the law of the land. But ultimately, it will be up to the people, through our votes and our representatives, to hold them accountable to the principles of our constitution.
***
New figures from the University of Chicago show some good news and some bad news.
The good news is that 3% more of the nation's children lived with both their parents last year than they did in 1996. The bad news is that the percentage of children living with their two parents is down from 74% in 1972 to 52% last year.
While some children would be worse off with their natural parents than with other guardians, the opposite is true, by and large. As the Urban Family Council points out in a recent news release, a mother and father who are emotionally involved and physically present are indispensable to the emotional health child in many ways, from basic self-esteem to gender identity.
Indeed, these figures bode very poorly for American families. But why are so many split apart? The Urban Family Council cites easy divorce, along with fatherlessness. But this only changes the question. Why are couples more willing to be divorced, and why are fathers more willing to stray?
One cause is the attitude of so many toward sexuality. Contraception has led many to dissociate sex from the notion of childbearing and the responsibility that accompanies it. An attitude toward sexuality prevails in which children are too often something to be avoided or (apparently) disregarded when they do come.
There is a growing awareness now that contraception isn't all that it's cracked up to be (see story on Mike McManus, Page 18). But it's still a minority who recognize the damage that contraception has done to American mores.Unless and until more people recognize this link, the shortage of two-parent families may remain with us for quite a while.
----- EXCERPT: EDITORIAL ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: A Daily Dose of Mother Teresa DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:Thirsting for God: A Yearbook of Prayers, Meditations, Anecdotes by Mother Teresa, compiled by Father Angelo D. Scolozzi (Servant Publications, 1999 196 pages, $19.99)
Pope John Paul II's challenge to the people of God has been loud, clear and consistent throughout his pontificate: Each one of us is called to holiness. For many, to hear this call is to long for a guide to help us give an adequate response.
One well-qualified guide is at hand in the form of this slender volume of prayers, meditations and anecdotes compiled by the co-founder (with Mother Teresa) of the Third Order of the Missionaries of Charity, who is its current superior. Much of Mother Teresa's writings have already been published, yet Father Scolozzi has included much new material here, drawing on the memories of his 21 years of friendship and collaboration with the late, beloved nun. He also gives the statutes of the order, offering to the laity the possibility of an active share in the work of the sisters and brothers.
The selections are arranged as a yearlong spiritual journal, with a half-page or so allotted to each day. They speak to any and all circumstances that may mark our day — inspiring or devastating, fun or frustrating, good or bad. We keep coming up against the plain common sense of Mother Teresa, mixed with her whimsical humor, unvarnished realism and kind compassion. Her words always fit.
Mother Teresa was once interviewed by an American psychiatrist who wanted to write a book on success. It was probably the shortest interview he ever conducted. He asked Mother what was the secret of her success. “Jesus’ thirst,” she responded. “Love others as God loves you.” To her own sisters, on the day she died, she wrote, “Let our gratitude be our strong resolution to quench the thirst of Jesus by lives of real charity. Love for Jesus in prayer, love for Jesus in your brothers and sisters, love for Jesus in the poorest of the poor. Nothing else.” That thirst is the theme of this book.
Mother Teresa's sayings have brought small, bright joys into the lives of countless people. They cut through drabness, loneliness, and pain with the warmth and sparkle of good wine. They also remind one of the tissue of fine wrinkles crisscrossing Mother's forehead, cheek bones, nose and mouth, and the leathery furrows in her hands and wrists, all of which are detailed on the back of the book jacket. There is an utterly human homeliness in them that goes straight to the heart.
Father Scolozzi shares his own unforgettable first impression of one of the most unlikely women to become a household name over the past 25 years: “Truly from my infancy, I had been longing to have an idea of the love that one would feel in the presence of Mary the Mother of Jesus. I felt this flow of loving goodness when I first glimpsed Mother Teresa in 1976 at Calcutta's mother house. I was waiting in a small courtyard and saw her approach between the gray buildings, bare feet and white sari with blue border. She passed through a beam of light and suddenly I understood, my longing was fulfilled.”
Consoling and comforting as the words of Mother Teresa are, they also have the knockdown strength of tough love and the relentless directness of a very young child. We read this book at our own risk. This is not to say that we face the firing squad from cover to cover, but rather that we are dealing with someone for whom heroism is an everyday duty. She challenges us to the same kind of heroism. She gave herself totally to God, who is Truth and Love, and it is God's truth and love that pour through her words, at times torrentially.
Poverty was the driving force of Mother Teresa's inspiration. She loved it and she hated it. She adored the poverty of Christ in his self-emptying for us, and she wanted that for herself and her whole congregation. She hated the poverty that leaves men, women and children dying in the streets of Calcutta and the world over. Perhaps even more, she hated the poverty of the rich, who starve for love. These poverties she fought with the kind of poverty Christ had chosen:
“When, at the very beginning after leaving my convent at Loreto Entally, I arrived in Creek Lane, Calcutta, alone, I had only a box and five rupees. A man from Air India wanted to give me a nice suitcase to carry the few things I had with me. I said to him, ‘There is no shame in carrying a cardboard box.’ ... Poverty is our dowry. The less we have, the more we can give. The more we have, the less we give.”
For that other poverty, that dreadful lovelessness that plays no favorites and plagues the wealthiest, Mother Teresa had the simplest remedy: love. “Find at least one good point in the other person and build from there. In the family, you should thank each other, mentioning the good you have seen others do. In short, an understanding love. ... You must open your eyes wide, so that you can see the opportunities to give ... right where you are, in your family. If you don't give such service in your family, you will not be able to give it to those outside your home. ... That little kindness, care, compassion, that is the hidden treasure, the growth in holiness. We know where it is, let us go for it!”
A Hindu couple asked Mother Teresa how to be a better husband and wife. She said, “Smile at each other!” The wife said, “Are you married?” Mother replied, “Yes, and sometimes I find it very difficult to smile at Jesus, my husband, because he can be very demanding.” A little further on she admits, “And remember, joy is not simply a matter of temperament, but of choice. It must be cultivated.”
Two great Teresas, one hidden behind her monastery wall in Lisieux and the other trotting around the globe, had much in common. Truly, they both “took God by the heart” and have given our age an impetus we sorely need. By all means, let us go for it!
Dominican Sister Mary Thomas Noble writes from Buffalo, New York.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Sister Marythomas Noble ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: LETTERS DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:The Natural Family Planning Debate
From time to time discussion arises, as it has in the Register, regarding the conditions under which NFP [natural family planning] can be used. Must the grounds be grave and serious or just and reasonable? I'd like to offer a few considerations not often presented.
In the English translation, Humanae Vitae No. 16 states that births may be spaced out for “serious motives” (iustae causae in Latin). However, further down in the same paragraph the expression “iustas rationes” is translated “just motives.” Additionally, when the first passage is quoted by John Paul II in one of his general audiences on the encyclical (Aug. 1, 1984), the English edition of L‘Osservatore Romano translates iustae causae as “reasonable grounds.”
Next consider No. 2368 in the English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “For just reasons, spouses may wish to space the births of their children.” The Latin typical edition of the catechism uses the expression iustis de causis here. This phrase is a more elegant way of saying iustae causae and is essentially the same expression.
We should bear in mind that the English translation of the Catechism was taken from the original committee and given to a committee supervised by Cardinal [Joseph] Ratzinger [of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith] himself. The translation was, for this reason, late in appearing. It is hard to imagine, when the translation of the Catechism is given to a group specially picked by Rome to make sure that the English-speaking world gets it right, that the correlating of iustis de causis and “just reasons” is not compelling.
Let's get to more evidence that “serious” or “grave” — “reason” or “cause” — does not adequately translate iustae causae. There is a perfectly good Latin word for “grave” or “serious.” It is (amazingly) gravis. Not only that, but it is used for exactly this purpose in the new Code of Canon Law. Furthermore, the expression iusta causa also occurs in the new code for less weighty requirements.
To get to some examples, Canon 290 says that a cleric “loses the clerical state ... only for serious reasons (graves causas) and ... presbyters only for the most serious reasons (gravissimas causas).” On the other hand, Canon 918 stipulates: “It is highly recommended the faithful receive Holy Communion during the celebration of the Eucharist itself, but it should be administered outside of Mass to those who request it for a just cause (iusta de causa), the liturgical rites being observed.” ... There are many other examples as well.
Last, the word “gravis” does not appear in Humanae Vitae No. 10 or 16.
The expression seriis causis in Humanae Vitae No. 10 cannot be equated with “grave causes.” Serius, in this context, generally means “serious” in the sense of “not frivolous.”
The above information leads to the conclusion that neither Humanae Vitae nor subsequent documents of the magisterium require more than a just cause for married couples to use NFP.
Father Jeffrey J. Lucas
Erie, Pennsylvania
Oh, dear. Just when I thought we were actually making progress toward the acceptance of natural methods of family planning, along come the letters from Dermott J. Mullan and Christina Watkins (“Only Serious Concerns Justify NFP,” Nov. 7-13), impugning the motives of NFP [natural family planning] users, implying that it's sinful not to want at least a dozen kids, and promoting the rigid, “one size fits all” view of the family that led so many to reject Humanae Vitae 30 years ago.
With all their citations of that landmark document, however, these writers seem to have forgotten one of its most positive aspects: Pope Paul VI's encouragement to scientists and doctors to find better natural methods of birth regulation. NFP is a superb gift that God has implanted in our bodies and allowed us to discover through modern science, a golden mean between “barefoot and pregnant” and its mirror image, the radical feminist dogma that men are irreformably selfish brutes, against whom women's only defenses are contraception and abortion (or lesbianism and cloning).
In her 1979 Nobel Prize speech, Mother Teresa described NFP as “very beautiful, very simple ... self-control out of love for each other.” By fostering communication and cooperation between husband and wife, and allowing them to welcome children in accordance with both God's plan and their particular situation, NFP reflects Pope John Paul II's teaching that the sanctity and dignity of every human being requires men to treat their wives as persons, not as sexual toys or broodmares.
According to Ms. Watkins and Mr. Mullan, Catholic couples should renounce all planning and let “nature” take over. But our human nature is fallen; lacking the instinct-driven mating cycles other animals have, we must use our reason to regulate our reproductive capacity. Ms. Watkins seems unaware that achieving a “natural” interval of three years between births requires knowledge of human fertility and conscious efforts to control it. NFP combines two to three years of breast feeding with periodic abstinence, because — contrary to popular belief — a nursing mother can become pregnant.
Because no modern woman is going to tolerate the annual childbearing that that so overburdened our foremothers, the “natural state” advocated by Mr. Mullan is no longer an option. It's time we all realized that the only real choice is between natural family planning and Planned Parenthood.
Anne G. Burns Cos Cob, Connecticut
Platforms and Pro-Life Principles
I really appreciated your Nov. 14-20 report on pro-life Democrats (“Pro-Life Democrats Are Finding a Home”). At last some are demonstrating a consistent expression of caring for the weak and vulnerable.
I do deplore the emphasis on the failure of these men to be advanced by the Democratic leadership. Oh, the failure is, of course, completely contrary to the Democrats’ strong advocacy of free speech and the equality of all opinions in all other issues. Nevertheless, the practice is precisely what pro-lifers demand of Republicans.
Like many other pro-lifers, I will refuse to vote for a Republican presidential candidate who selects a pro-abortion vice president. I will expect him, if elected, to refuse leadership positions or wide platform opportunities to pro-abortion Republicans. How, then, can I fault the Democratic leadership for doing the same? Unless party platform and principle mean something, there is no value in party designation except to identify opposing “sides” in a political battle for power, not principle.
Dorothy T. Samuel St. Cloud, Minnesota
Capital Debate and the Catechism
In your account of the debate between Father George Rutler and Alejandro Bermudez on capital punishment (“Can Catholics Support Death Penalty? Debate Asks,” Nov. 7-13), you quote the full text of No. 2267 from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. However, the paragraph you quote is from the “unofficial” edition of the catechism presented by Pope John Paul II on Oct. 11, 1992, and published in English in 1994; it is not the modified version in the definitive and normative edition (editio typica) formally promulgated by him on Aug. 15, 1997.
Although I had hoped that he would, Father Rutler does not refer to this discrepancy in his response to your article (Letters, Nov. 21-27). Therefore would you please help your readers to understand this issue better by printing the full text of the modified No. 2267, as well as modified Nos. 2265 and 2266, also on the subject of legitimate defense? You might also want to advise your readers where they can readily obtain the text of all the modifications from the editio typica. I unsuccessfully tried twice in writing to obtain them directly from the United States Catholic Conference before giving up and obtaining them in a USCC publication elsewhere.
Joseph R. Silva
Arroyo Grande, California
Editor's Reply: The modified and definitive Catechism of the Catholic Church (the Editio Typica) is expected to be available by spring 2000, according to the Ad Hoc Committee to Oversee the Use of the Catechism. The modifications are available in a 28-page booklet from the U.S. Catholic Conference. Call (800) 235-8722 and ask for Publication 5-166, Catechism of the Catholic Church: Modifications from the Editio Typica. The booklet costs $1.50.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: For the Post, An Old Rule Seems News DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:When the Archdiocese of Washington decided that a nonsectarian pregnancy-aid center formerly given support by the archdiocese could no longer be supported because the center had begun to dispense contraceptives, the Washington Post decided that the story rated front-page coverage (in its Oct. 20 issue). In the present cultural climate, presumably, the idea that anyone might remain opposed to contraception — as the Catholic Church has not ceased to oppose it in her moral teaching — no doubt seemed so outlandish to the paper's editors that they thought the big-splash coverage justified.
In a fashion typical of today's mass media, the paper did not fail to emphasize how many Catholics refuse to accept the Church's moral condemnation of the use of contraception. The pregnancy-aid center's director, it pointed out, like the chairman of the organization's board of directors, was a Catholic; both were quoted voicing strong opposition to the Church's position. The familiar statistic was trotted out that “at least 73% [of Catholics] disagree with the Church's ban on contraception.”
A religious sister described as a “nun and nurse” was also cited. She said she had referred pregnant women to the center and characterized as “hurtful” the archdiocese's decision not only to cut off its own support, but to publicize its decision so that other Catholics and Catholic organizations would no longer support the center.
“They have gone too far to send out a message to women's groups in parishes that they should not give this most necessary help to pregnant women and their children,” the nun-nurse was quoted as saying. She added that she would like to see the Church's teaching changed. “I pray about that,” she said. “And make comments when I can.”
The center's board chairman, described in the Post article as a “space scientist” by profession, was particularly indignant that the archdiocesan pro-life office had said that the Depo-Provera “contraceptive” injection now provided by the center could function as an abortifacient, preventing a fertilized egg from implanting itself in the uterine wall. There was “no medical evidence” for this, according to the Catholic scientist.
He must not have looked at the scientific literature, since the evidence has by now been well established: Not only Depo-Provera, but all forms of hormonal contraceptives (“the pill”) are at least potentially abortifacient. That is, they do not merely prevent conception, but can cause the early abortion of an embryo already conceived. If this Catholic space scientist had been looking at the scientific evidence that is there, he would also have found that Depo-Provera has been shown to increase the risk of cervical cancer — thus are women today being “helped” by the services of such clinics.
[T]he pro-abortion culture is especially strong precisely where the Church's teaching on contraception is rejected
Thus, too, in yet one more small skirmish in today's culture wars, has the Catholic Church and her moral teaching been held up to public scorn by a major metropolitan daily newspaper. The Church is depicted as irrational and retrograde — and opposed to helping women and children — while the common assumptions of today's contraceptive society and culture are simply taken for granted. It is also taken for granted that today's newspaper readers will immediately grasp and sympathize with the accusations lodged against the Church.
Nor is the point lost on anyone that, in today's culture wars, those who accuse the Church can nearly always count on some within the Church who are ready to fight against her and her teachings.
There is surely a huge irony in the fact that, as the evidence mounts that the Catholic Church has been right about contraception all along, the public opposition to the Church's position both intensifies and becomes more crude. And one of the saddest things about the whole phenomenon is the number of Catholics who choose to side with today's culture of death rather than heed the moral wisdom of the Catholic faith.
In his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae (Gospel of Life), Pope John Paul II pointed out how today's acceptance of contraception has contributed to the culture of death. Wrote the Holy Father, “the pro-abortion culture is especially strong precisely where the Church's teaching on contraception is rejected” (No. 13).
Given the pervasiveness of the mass media wherever one sets his or her eyes today, it is not surprising that so many Catholics view the Church through the eyes of the culture rather than viewing the culture through the eyes of the Church. Yet surely this is a tendency we must do all we can to turn around.
Kenneth D. Whitehead is the author of Political Orphan: The Prolife Cause
After 25 Years of Roe v. Wade.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Kenneth D. Whitehead ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Advent Reflections on The Bane of Bob Cratchit DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:Charles Dickens’ short novel
Week Three
Virtue and Vice
“Which of us is not convinced that moral goodness is soundly rooted in the individual's and society's openness to the transcendent world of the Divinity?”
Among the subjects he treats in his book Love and Responsibility, Karol Wojtyla (who became Pope John Paul II) writes about “Chastity and Resentment.” It occurs in the context of a discussion about the “rehabilitation” of virtue, and it provides some very interesting ideas applicable to Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
Wojtyla recognized that the word “virtue” had itself lost its meaning for modern man. Instead of being something positive, a characteristic worth striving for, “virtue” had acquired the connotation of being something cramped, stuffy and naive. “Chastity” has come to be seen not as innocence, but ignorance, a Puritanism that just says “no.” The purveyors of a new morality not only deny the true meaning of chastity (treating the person as a person and not just a sex object) but they disdain it: How can anybody really value that?
Wojtyla calls this disdain “resentment.” Living a truly virtuous life is hard. It demands a self-mastery that measures what feels good against what is truly good, and does not hesitate to insist that sometimes pleasures have to be deferred. It means there is a measure of morality outside me. The “resentful” man cannot abide that. Ebenezer Scrooge is a resentful man.
Greed has so permeated Scrooge's life that all values, right and wrong, are stood on their head. Persons are subordinated to money. Capital has primacy over labor (Cratchit's celebrating Christmas represents “a poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December”). Money measures love (Scrooge's nephew, Fred, is ridiculous for letting love lead him to marriage when Scrooge gave up his love for lucre). Debtors’ prison represents social concern.
Scrooge wishes “to be left alone” but it isn't quite that simple. It's not that Scrooge doesn't care what others do as long as he's left out. He simply cannot abide the season: “Every idiot who goes around with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips should be boiled in his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.” And when he demands “the right to choose” — “keep Christmas in your own way and let me keep it in mine” — Fred calls his bluff by pointing out, “You don't keep it.” And while Scrooge can rail that Christmas impoverishes holly-loving merrymakers, his own money does not even give him the pleasure of a hot fire or a good supper. His Christmas Eve dinner is a leftover cup of gruel.
Man is made for the good, and when he persists in evil, he often resolves the tension by calling evil good and good evil. If he can get away with convincing the opinion-makers of his day to call his upside-down moral world “progressive” or “mainstream,” so much the better. They might even call others “misguided” in “trying to resist the inevitable.”
When A Christmas Carol came out, it was generally received with warm praise. Except by the Westminster Review, the organ of the laissez-faire capitalists, whose June 1844 review of Carol shows they just didn't “get it.” In true credit/debit style, they asked: Who had to go without turkey for the lazy Cratchit to get his? Dickensian charity just didn't fit into the “liberal thinking” of the times. Which hungry mouth is stealing the “bread at the banquet of life”? That's resentment.
Scrooge's conversion cannot occur until he starts seeing things as they really ought to be.
Moral evil is bad enough, but resentment is worse. As long as a right order of values exists, there is always the chance that a guilty conscience might repent. But if the voice of conscience is drowned out by the din of a world calling good bad and bad good, a more malignant spiritual malaise has set in.
That malaise is, in many ways, the moral disease of our times. Scrooge is a good example of it in money matters, but the other capital sins — especially lust and sloth — readily provide fodder for resentment. Scrooge's conversion cannot occur until his topsy-turvy moral vision is set right, until he recognizes the writing on the wall (or the tombstone) and starts seeing things as they really ought to be. Only then could he be “as light as a feather ... as happy as an angel ... as merry as a schoolboy.” Or as human as the man he is supposed to be.
Week Four
The Gospel of Life
Our charity ... must be expressed in sharing and in human development understood as the integral growth of each person.”
A Christmas Carol is not a children's tale. Indeed, Dickens used it to gore many sacred bulls of his day. It is often forgotten today that, alongside his polemic with Adam Smith and the early laissez-faire capitalists, Dickens used the story to attack the theories of Thomas Malthus, the father of the fight against “overpopulation.”
Scrooge the Malthusian can be heard in his reply to the businessmen who come to his office taking up a Christmas collection. When he refuses to give, pleading overtaxation in support of jails and work-houses, they note that the poor “can't go there; and many would rather die.” Scrooge's answer: “If they would rather die ... they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
Scrooge's words come back to haunt him. When a drop of the milk of human kindness touches him, motivated by pity to ask whether the crippled Tiny Tim might survive, the Ghost of Christmas Present foresees “a vacant seat.” To Scrooge's plea that the boy be spared, the ghost insists that the lad's death is unavoidable if nothing else changes.
Unlike today's bioethicists, who secure prestigious university appointments while advocating infanticide, “Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words ... and was overcome with penitence and grief.”
The ghost, however, does not console him — he drives the point further home. “Man, if man you be in heart ... forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered what the Surplus is and where it is. Will you decide what men shall live and what men shall die? It may be that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. Oh God! To hear the insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust.” Don't be surprised if you don't hear that line quoted in full next time in a TV or local stage adaptation.
For Dickens, life is not the problem. Injustice, man's inhumanity to man, man's belief in his self-sufficiency bought at the cost of kicking the next man down — that is the problem. The problem is the human being who does not need other human beings.
Consider the scene when the Ghost of Christmas Past shows Scrooge his former fiancee in the midst of a loving and joyous holiday celebration. At the moment he beholds her lovely daughter, and considers that he might have fathered such a wonderful person himself, he hears the girl's father remark that he saw Scrooge sitting “quite alone” in his counting house as his one friend breathed his last. Only for the Scrooges, the Sartres, and all those who “pronounce on too much life” is hell other people.
In his 1960 classic Love and Responsibility, Karol Wojtyla insisted that responsibility for life is the sine qua non of mature humanity. This responsibility, he says, manifests itself in the physical paternity of parenthood or the “spiritual paternity” usually associated with priesthood. Scrooge's own redemption requires at least spiritual paternity: The story's conclusion tells us that “to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father.” In renewing contact with his nephew, Fred, he likewise assumes a kind of paternity.
Fred is son of Fan, the sister who took him home from school; after the reconciliation with him, the life of the Scrooge family once again is one. Mortal man, there is no changing the past: no Fan, no Belle, no daughter. But there is a future, and therein lies Scrooge's last chance to give life.
And if he does not? The Ghost of Christmas Present also reminds us of the alternate future. Hidden beneath his robes are two feral, monstrously deformed children: Ignorance and Doom. Scrooge tries to pass them off to the Spirit. “Are they yours?” The Spirit declines the paternity: “They are man's.” They are children deformed by humanity, on whose brow is written “Doom, unless the writing be erased.” Without the mercy of a pro-life ethic, these creatures will burst upon the world and build a culture of death. It is not coincidental that, right after their appearance, comes the grim reaper, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.
This Advent season, may God bless us every one with new appreciation for God's gift of life.
John M. Grondelski, a moral theologian, currently lives in London.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John M. Grondelski ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A Baby Boomer Follows the Magi's Star to Rome DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:This Advent is an especially poignant one for me: It is my first as a candidate for entrance into the Roman Catholic Church. As I participate in the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, I join the Magi on their journey, and the star of the Church points the way across the winter desert to Christ, whom I will receive next Easter.
Earlier this year, the dozen members of my RCIA class and I were asked by our priest to make a map of our spiritual journeys. I spent an evening cataloging my experiences and trying, on paper, to give them shape. Born the son of an evangelical Protestant pastor, I prayed the Sinner's Prayer at age 9 and was baptized by my father that same year in warm, summer waters off Newport, R.I., where we lived. The next year, my father left pastoral work; he died three years later.
Between the ages of 10 and 18, I had ties to six different Protestant churches: Presbyterian, Baptist, Assemblies of God, the Salvation Army, the Church of the Nazarene and the Friends. During high school, I dabbled in Zen Buddhism and in a West Coast gnostic cult. Afterward, I was accepted into the theology program at the Jesuit-run Boston College. Needless to say, I suffered from a kind of theological whiplash as I ricocheted from one religious milieu to another and, at 19, I said “so long” to them all. For the next dozen years, I faithfully avoided all churches and instead immersed myself in the ritual excitement of New York City living.
When I shared this vita with the RCIA class, I was reminded of a map in the back of my father's old Scofield Reference Bible documenting the 40 years of desert wandering by the children of Israel. Like the Magi, the Israelites followed a bright star (in the person of Moses) across the desert. When their faith gave out, their journey turned to mere wandering. The Scofield map shows their path: decades of futile curlicues in the sand. My own life's map charted a similar course of spiritual meandering. To call it a journey would be generous — and inaccurate. A journey, says Webster's, is “the act of traveling from one place to another.” It implies destination and route. I had no destination, no route.
The spiritual memoir has by now turned into a baby-boomer book genre all its own, and a predictable one at that. Turning 50, our author and guide — let's call him K. — packs the last of his 2.4 kids off to college, gawks at his skyrocketing stock portfolio and tumbles headlong into spiritual ennui. He tries various methods to shake his midlife funk. He trades his sport utility vehicle for a newer model with the latest amenities. He breaks off a stale relationship with a “partner” of one kind or another. Then, having exhausted all attempts to find ultimate sensory satisfaction, K. embarks on a “spiritual journey.” He seeks interior, salvific sensations in an exotic religion or in a rediscovery of his own religious heritage — on his terms, of course, since he reserves the right to exercise a line-item veto before signing on to orthodoxy. Then K. writes a self-congratulatory book about the experience. The journey is complete.
In one recent such memoir, Working on God by the science journalist Winifred Gallagher, the author describes herself as neo-agnostic and informs us that there are millions of other “well-educated skeptics who have inexplicable metaphysical feelings” like her. “Rather than being a complete worldview or infallible arbiter of right and wrong, each tradition has become a ‘tool-box,’” she writes. “A person roots through a chest labeled ‘Christianity’ or ‘Judaism,’ or even ‘Catholic’ or ‘Orthodox,’ ignores the elements that don't seem significant or ‘right’ — perhaps second-class status for outsiders — and uses the ones that do — sacraments, say, or keeping kosher.”
The author caroms from Zen monasteries to Catholic cloisters to African-American mosques to Conservative synagogues to the cathedrals of liberal Episcopal fellowships. She is comfortable in all of them. This, we are told, is a “thinking-person's” spirituality. One gets to decide for oneself what is truth; one eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and becomes as God. (The original Garden temptation is still the most seductive of all.) What kind of religion is this?
I have always disdained fashion, even shrunk from it — fully aware, of course, that in reacting against whatever was in vogue, my actions have been reflexive rather than original. Only now that suspenders are out do I feel comfortable buttoning my braces again. Only now that the cigar craze has subsided do I dare light a Partegas No. 2.
When I began to rediscover my own Christian heritage three years ago, after a quiet but precipitous tumble into despair, I worried that I had somehow become accidentally fashionable. Perhaps my “journey,” too, was best discussed over a cappuccino in Soho. Perhaps God was just another item in my neurotic “toolbox.”
No danger in that, I realized sometime during my RCIA experience, because the star which appeared brightest in the sky — the one pointing most clearly to the child in the distant créche, the one I had long ago left — was Roman Catholicism. And there is little danger that the Church will ever be fashionable. She is, after all, “an infallible arbiter of right and wrong,” with elements that may not “seem significant or ‘right.’” How gauche is that? Do “thinking” folks follow a star to find a child?
Yet that is the difference between wandering and journeying. The Christian journey leads, always, to a particular child: Christ. It has a route, a destination.
Like wanderings, journeys can be marked by doubt. As the narrator of T.S. Eliot's “Journey of the Magi” says, “At the end we preferred to travel all night,/ Sleeping in snatches,/ With the voices singing in our ears, saying/ That this was all folly.” As I follow the star of the Church this Advent, similar voices sing in my ears, the worried whispers of a “well-educated skeptic": Will the city be razed, the child slain by Herod when I arrive?
Yet I also hear, more loudly than the others, the voices of all those converts who have journeyed this way before. The Church's 2,000-year history — a history I only now, peaking behind the Reformation curtain, can experience firsthand — is a great star that promises: “I will lead you to him.”
And I believe.
David Gordon, a former Newsweek editor, writes from Cambridge, Massachusetts. This column is his first in an occasional series en route to Easter 2000.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: David Gordon ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Ignatius Celebrates 20 Years of Excellence DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:SAN FRANCISCO—What place do philosophers like Boethius, theologians like Aquinas and novelists like Flannery O‘Connor have in the world of the third millennium?
On its 20th anniversary, a great books program at the University of San Francisco is expecting much from its class of 2000.
John Galten, the director of the St. Ignatius Institute, said the program leaves students well equipped. “Among our alumni are two state congressmen, one Canadian parliamentarian, many physicians and lawyers, physicists, chemists, nurses, authors, editors for major national newspapers and magazines, priests and nuns, teachers, businessmen and computer wizards. What we are most proud of is the crowd of highly articulate, well-educated wives and mothers.”
Galten, a layman, a former college basketball player and Vietnam veteran, has been the director of the institute since 1994. He says the school's secrets are the Spiritual Exercises and the ratio studiorum, twin blueprints of Jesuit educational philosophy emphasized by St. Ignatius of Loyola. The ratio is the plan of studies that gave Jesuit educational institutions success throughout the world, and the Spiritual Exercises has for centuries trained men and women to see their lives through Christ's eyes.
The St. Ignatius Institute at the University of San Francisco is based on two principles, said Galten: “education of the mind and the will of the students.” The courses are based on the program of great books of Western Civilization which was designed by Mortimer Adler at the University of Chicago in the 1940s. Semester-long seminars of these classical works are dovetailed into ancillary seminars of philosophy, theology, history, science and contemporary culture.
Religious retreats, daily mass, monthly eucharistic adoration and individual spiritual direction are some of the ways the students receive religious and moral formation. Freshman and sophomore students live together in the university — residence halls and social and athletic events, Galten says, are instrumental in creating an esprit de corps that has characterized the institute's men and women since the time of the program's inception.
Dan Ambuul, an alumnus, said this keeps the students from becoming “bookish.”
“One thing we're particularly proud of is the SII intramural football team's record. We've been undefeated on campus for more than a decade,” said Ambuul, 35, the first of several brothers to attend the St. Ignatius Institute. His brother Steven is still attending the school — and, like his older brothers, playing intramural football.
A School Within a School
Ambuul said an added advantage of St. Ignatius Institute students is that they form an integral part of a wider postmodern campus in a major cultural center.
The St. Ignatius Institute's curriculum works in tandem with the university's requirements in areas like history, literature, philosophy and theology.
By pursuing classes in the institute and outside it, students “are able to speak in depth with peers who often hold opposing views. It helps you to see how the ‘great ideas’ are as relevant today as ever,” said Ambuul.
“Our students certainly do not live in an ivory tower,” added Galten. “They are encouraged to bring their learning and their faith to the marketplace.”
In 1976 four University of San Francisco Jesuits designed the St. Ignatius Institute and turned it over to Jesuit Father Joseph Fessio who put the plan into operation. Father Fessio, who is no longer associated with the institute, directed the program in its infancy. Jesuit Father Robert Maloney took it up to its adolescent years, and Galten has guided it into adulthood.
“I hope he is still director,” said Michelle Sullivan, a recent SII graduate, “when — sometime within the next 20 years — I send my first child to USF.”
R. Erick Pecha writes
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: R. Erick Pecha ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Education Notebook DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:Footballers’ Faith Boots Them Past 100
USA TODAY, Dec. 3—The Concord, Calif., De La Salle Catholic High School already has the longest winning streak in high school history. Two years ago, they passed the old mark of 72 games held by Hudson High in Michigan.
The Dec. 3 USA Today reported that they were looking to pass another threshold: the first football team to break the century barrier (as this story went to press, newspapers reported that the school did break the record on Dec. 4, with a 38-14 victory over San Leandro High School).
USA Today reported some secrets to the school's success: Players take only three weeks off a year from conditioning. They rededicate themselves during daily chapel sessions and before their large pre-game spaghetti dinners.
The numbers De La Salle has tallied are remarkable. They have lost only one game during the ‘90s, with a 124-1 win-loss record. Coach Bob Ladoucear has won an astounding 94% of his games with a 235-14-1 record. During their 99-game winning streak, De La Salle has outscored their opponents 2,071 to 464.
But “Coach Lad,” as the boys call him, won't take the credit. “What is so incredible about the streak is that I'm not that talented and I'm not that smart.”
Ever humble, he told the USA Today, “But it's a real testimony to what kids can accomplish because we hear so many bad things about what kids can do and how kids are turning bad and what's wrong with our youth today.”
Georgetown Prof. Joins ‘Assisted Dying’ Group
PRNEWSWIRE, Nov. 30—Georgetown professor Tom L. Beauchamp has joined the board of Compassion in Dying Federation.
Compassion in Dying's Web site details their mission. “[U]nlike every other mainstream organization, we insist meaningful reform must include legalization of assisted dying,” it says.
The group recently lambasted the U.S. bishops’ stance on assisted suicide, and Congressional attempts to curtail the practice in Oregon. “Dangerous legislation has reemerged from Rep. Henry Hyde and Sen. Don Nickles. Ghostwritten by National Right to Life and National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Hyde/Nickles 1999 seeks to overturn Oregon's twice voter-approved Death With Dignity Act and squash all patient choice debate in the rest of the United States.”
B. Kirk Robinson, chairman of the Compassion in Dying Federation board, said in a statement, “It speaks well of the importance and integrity of our mission that we have attracted a scholar of Professor Beauchamp's stature and accomplishment.”
Beauchamp is Professor of Philosophy and Senior Research Scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University, a Jesuit school in Washington.
Church-State Issue Returns to Court
THE NEW YORK TIMES, Dec. 2—The precise church-state question before the Supreme Court Dec. 1 was whether the Constitution permits the use of public money to put computers and other “instructional equipment” in parochial school classrooms, reported The New York Times.
“But throughout the argument, the justices were quite clearly feeling their way toward a more far-reaching debate over the relationship between government and religious schools, if not between government and religion generally,” wrote the Times.
Using federal money for anything other than the textbooks has long been considered acceptable by Supreme Court precedents. According to the Times, “The law's original focus was on projectors, filmstrips and other equipment that now sounds old-fashioned. More recently, with the federal government's encouragement, a major goal of the program has been making computers available to as many students as possible.”
The program is not well-known but the Times writes, “The case has received substantial attention as a harbinger of how justices might approach other church-state cases, including the question of publicly financed vouchers for parochial school tuition.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Acing Integrity: Good Grades the Hard Way DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:Why can't Johnny think critically and originally even after earning a degree? Maybe because he hardly earned it at all — at least, not in the traditional sense of the term.
In at least four studies done on college campuses over the last decade by the Center for Academic Integrity in Nashville, Tenn., nearly 80% of students admitted to cheating at least once.
Called the Fundamental Values Project, the series of studies has revealed a dramatic increase in cheating, said Donald L. McCabe, professor of organizational management at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. McCabe founded the Center for Academic Integrity and conducted the studies. “Students get their cues from society at large,” he observed. “They look to see what their parents, business people and politicians are doing. If students acquire habits of taking shortcuts in college, it is going to spill over outside of college.”
Evidence supporting the Center for Academic Integrity's conclusions is as easy to drum up as the national headlines. The University of Minnesota recently released an investigative report documenting grade-tampering and plagiarism by basketball players intent on maintaining eligibility to participate in school sports. Duke University reported a record-high number of honor-code infractions last year. And, in a study of 13,000 university students from around the country, Duke found that a majority admitted to a “high level” of academic dishonesty.
Jennifer Marshall, education policy director with the Family Research Council in Washington, identified a key factor which she feels could be feeding the cheating frenzy.
“Many of our current college students came through school while Outcome-Based Education was rearing its head,” she explained. Outcome-Based Education emphasizes group work, subjective grading, and a lack of deadlines. A student who graduates from that kind of system and goes on to a college that requires a great deal of independent work and objective answers, Marshall said, is going to experience a certain amount of desperation. Outcome-Based Education has “left students without the necessary tools to succeed in such an environment,” she added.
‘The wide availability of tests makes not cheating very difficult.’
— University of Texas student Laura Houlden
“Cheating has become almost a necessary evil,” contended University of Texas student Laura Houlden. “With all the easy access to past tests, it is a disadvantage not to look at one. The wide availability of tests makes not cheating very difficult.”
Shoring Up Defenses
In response to the problem, many colleges, such as Georgetown, Vanderbilt, the University of North Dakota and Stanford have introduced various kinds of honor codes. At the University of Virginia, the punishment for code violators is expulsion.
Some colleges are passing out brochures and covering cheating cases in the campus newspaper. Others are trying to educate the student body through the use of orientation sessions and classes on such things as how to cite sources. At the University of Southern California, for example, freshmen now receive detailed training in what constitutes plagiarism.
“The different levels of plagiarism are like the different levels of hell; they are all bad,” said Susan Gebhardt-Burns, English instructor at West Virginia Wesleyan College. Gebhardt served on Wesleyan's Judicial Board for two years and said that students cheat for a number of reasons. “Procrastination, a poor work ethic and desperation,” she observed, “ ... [students] are involved in too many activities and are grasping for a higher grade. There's also a great deal of unintentional plagiarism. Some students come to college without the necessary skills.”
Gebhardt has been teaching for 14 years and said the increase in cheating has forced her to alter the way she teaches. “I have had to develop three versions of a test for the same class. I don't want to put that temptation [to cheat] in front of them,” she explained. She also assigns one-of-a-kind writing assignments to discourage students from purchasing papers on the Internet, a practice that students have told her is thriving.
Because some types of assignments are easy to find, she hasn't assigned a traditional, “argument” essay for several years. “It's my job to teach students what plagiarism is,” she said. Next year, she plans to begin requiring students to sign a form stating that their work is their own.
Catholic Colleges
McCabe pointed out that, while it's difficult to draw generalizations about dishonesty in Catholic college classrooms, size seems to be somewhat of a factor. “It is easier to implement [anti-cheating] programs on a small, residential campus where students cannot remain anonymous,” he said. “If you cheat, your fellow students know it and cheating becomes socially unacceptable.
“Cheating is not a problem at Our Lady of Corpus Christi because we have small class sizes and high student motivation,” asserted the school's president, Father James Kelleher, a member of the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity. He said these factors aid faculty members in making students want to master the material.
Small classes also allow for customized lessons. “One professor allows students to test in different areas as they are ready,” Father Kelleher noted. “Another has personal meetings with students as they write their papers.”
Swinging Back?
Does the recent focus on academic integrity represent a coming reversion to traditional values in education? It's at least a swing in the right direction, said Jennifer Marshall.
“The ‘70s notion of a values-neutral education has been debunked,” the Family Research Council official added. “There is a growing consensus that you cannot teach without values. We are now seeing a flurry of movement in the education journals on the subject of character education. Character education, however, cannot be taught as a compartmentalized subject. It must permeate the curriculum.”
In 1989, the Templeton Foundation established an honor roll to recognize what it calls “character-building colleges.” To date, more than 350 colleges and universities have been named to the roll, including many Catholic colleges.
The Center for Academic Integrity, which works closely with the Templeton Foundation, has published its study findings in a document titled “The Fundamental Values of Academic Integrity,” which it mailed to every college president in the country in October. The document calls on America's institutions of higher learning to make values a higher priority on campus.
The reaction so far has been encouraging, said McCabe, the Rutgers professor. “Many schools are calling to request additional copies,” he added.
Phase two of the project will involve developing an assessment process to allow universities to examine their current state of academic integrity. Funded by the Templeton Foundation, this phase will help campuses make improvements where they are needed.
One of the best signs of the times, observed McCabe, is that much of the call for changes that will encourage honesty and hard work on campus are coming from students. “They are saying, ‘we know this is going on,’” he said, “‘so what are we going to do about it?’”
Tim Drake (tdrake@gw.stcdio.org) writes from St. Cloud, Minnesota.
***
To order The Templeton Guide: Colleges That Encourage Character Development, call 1-800-621-2736 or visit www.templeton.org.
----- EXCERPT: Cheating is not inevitable in the information age ----- EXTENDED BODY: Tim Drake ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: From Scholar to Saint DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:A recent article in the magazine First Things on Edith Stein, the Jewish scholar who became a Carmelite nun, was provocatively titled, “Apostate St.” Written by David Novak, a professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto, it was a careful and generous explanation of why Jews cannot regard Edith Stein, a woman who “apostatized” from the faith of her people, with the same veneration as Catholics. Since her canonization on Oct. 11, 1998, Catholics recognize her as a saint under her religious name, Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.
“She might be the most uniquely problematic Jew for us since Saul of Tarsus,” wrote Novak, fully intending the high praise implied by linking Edith Stein with St. Paul.
Paul was not ashamed to call himself a Jew (see Acts 22:3), just as Edith Stein always considered herself a Jew, especially as she was going to die with her fellow Jews at Auschwitz. And while Paul fiercely insisted that Christians were not bound by circumcision and the prescriptions of the Mosaic law, he taught that the “Jews are entrusted with the oracles of God” — they are the people to whom God first revealed himself, and whom he has irrevocably chosen (see Romans 3:1-4).
Edith Stein understood herself, as a Carmelite nun, to be Jewish. That she was killed for being Catholic and Jewish by the Nazis unites in her person what has usually been divided in history: Catholicism and Judaism. Recently declared a co-patroness of Europe, along with St. Brigid of Sweden and St. Catherine of Siena, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross may provide a model for a European future in which historic Catholic-Jewish tensions are overcome.
Her Childhood
Edith was born on Oct. 12, 1891, Yom Kippur, in what was then the German city of Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland). She was the 11th child of devout Jews, Siegfried and Auguste Stein, of whom seven survived to be raised by their mother after the death of Siegfried.
“The greatest Jewish holy day is the Feast of Atonement: It was the day when the high priest would enter the Holy of Holies and offer the sacrifice of atonement for himself and the whole nation,” wrote Edith, recalling her Jewish upbringing. “The Day of Atonement had a special significance for me, because I was born on it. My mother had felt that this was very important, and I believe that, more than anything else, this helped make the youngest child very precious to her.”
The Atheist Scholar
Edith's life would be lived as a journey toward the atonement that Christians identify with the cross. But the path would not be a straight one. A gifted student, as an adolescent she was precociously concerned with philosophical questions, already aflame with a desire for truth. During her adolescence she rejected her Jewish faith, and stopped praying as a result of a conscious choice of atheism. In 1913 she went to Göttingen University, where the renowned philosopher Edmund Husserl supervised her studies.
Edith got her doctorate in 1917 summa cum laude, and had it not been for the fact that she was a woman and Jewish in a time sympathetic to neither, she would have embarked on a distinguished academic career.
In the summer of 1921, Edith, who was now pursuing her research independently, went to visit a friend, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, who was also a pupil of Husserl's. Hedwig and her husband had already converted to Protestantism. One night Edith, browsing through their library for something to read, picked up a copy of St. Teresa of Avila's autobiography. She read the whole book that night.
“When I finished the book, I said to myself: This is the truth,” Edith wrote about her conversion. A systematic scholar through and through, Edith immediately went out and bought a missal and a catechism, studying them thoroughly. When she attended Mass for the first time, she already knew the meaning of everything. She followed the priest back to the presbytery afterward and asked to be baptized. After asking her many questions, the priest was astounded at her knowledge.
Edith was baptized on Jan. 1, 1922, which was then the feast of the Circumcision of the Lord (eight days after the Nativity). She would enter the Church — the new covenant through baptism — on the feast of Jesus’ entry into the old covenant by the mark of circumcision.
Her conversion devastated her pious Jewish mother, who cried when Edith told her. Later, Auguste Stein would say with poignant simplicity about Jesus: “I won't say anything against him. He may have been a very good man. But why did he make himself God?”
“I had given up practicing my Jewish religion when I was a 14-year-old girl, and I did not begin to feel Jewish again until I returned to God,” said Edith, who felt from the beginning that the Catholic faith was a return to the faith of her people. For Edith, Christianity meant that she was not only spiritually united to the God “who made himself man,” but that she was physically related to Christ the Jew.
Edith had desired to enter the Carmel soon after her conversion — to take more completely as her model St. Teresa of Avila — but she postponed entry for nearly 12 years, in part to avoid causing further pain to her mother. During that period she lectured and continued her research, including doing fresh translations of Thomas Aquinas and John Henry Newman.
Ascent to Carmel
Edith entered the Carmel at Cologne, Germany, in October 1933. She later took the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Already, the situation of Jews in Germany was precarious with Hitler's rise to power the year previous.
“I understood the cross as the destiny of God's people, which was beginning to be apparent at the time,” Teresa wrote about that period and her choice of name. “I felt that those who understood it as the Cross of Christ should take it upon themselves on every-body's behalf.”
Teresa's participation in the day of atonement would come. In the meantime, she devoted herself to the everyday domestic task in the Carmel until her superiors asked her to resume her scholarship. A student of the great 16th-century Carmelite St. John of the Cross, Teresa Benedicta of the Cross wrote a work entitled, fittingly enough, Science of the Cross.
“One can only gain a scientia crucis [knowledge of the cross] if one has thoroughly experienced the cross,” Teresa wrote. “I have been convinced of this from the first moment onwards and have said with all my heart: Ave, Crux, Spes unica! [Hail Cross, our only hope].”
Descent into Auschwitz
Teresa and her sister Rosa, who had also converted and joined the Carmel, were transferred from Cologne to Echt, Holland, to protect them from Nazi persecution. On July 26, 1942, the Dutch bishops issued a pastoral letter that condemned Nazi deportations of Dutch Jews to the death camps. The letter was read in all Catholic churches in Holland.
The Nazi retaliation was swift and harsh. All Jewish converts to Catholicism were arrested, and the Gestapo came to the Echt Carmel on Aug. 2.
Teresa and Rosa were taken and, after a brief imprisonment in various Dutch camps, were transported east by rail on Aug. 7. They arrived at Auschwitz on Aug. 9. Teresa and Rosa were selected for immediate execution and died in the gas chambers.
“Come,” Teresa said to Rosa when the Gestapo arrived. “Let us go for our people.”
When John Paul II beatified Teresa Benedicta of the Cross in Cologne on May 1, 1987, he called her a “daughter of Israel, who, as a Catholic during Nazi persecution, remained faithful to the crucified Lord Jesus Christ and, as a Jew, to her people in loving faithfulness.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond De Souza ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Materialistic Worldview Proves Costly in The Price DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:In a story as old as Cain and Abel, the new Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's 1967 play The Price, now running at the Royale Theatre, concerns the estrangement caused by the rivalry and repressed resentment between two brothers.
After 16 years of suffocating silence, circumstances force the men to face each other. They meet in a house soon to be demolished in order to dispense the family inheritance: an attic full of antique furniture stacked in ominous, towering piles — hoarded, wasted and left to rot. The oppressive effect of the impressive stage set symbolizes the heaped-up internal disorder that the brothers must, at long last, confront in this upper room.
The younger brother, Victor Franz, considered his widowed father, before his death, to be “a beaten dog,” a victim of the Great Crash of 1929. Victor sacrificed years of his own youth as well as crucial career opportunities to nurse his father through the Depression.
Meanwhile his older brother, Walter, looked upon his father as “a calculating liar, a miserable, cheap manipulator.” The play artfully leaves the audience wondering which perception — if either — is right. As Miller himself wrote in the author's production notes, “each [brother] has merely proved to the other what the other has known but dared not face. At the end, each is left touching the structure of his life.”
Shaky Structures
What, exactly, is the structure of their lives? Victor defines it when he declares, “There's just no respect for anything but money. ... Do anything, but just be sure you win. ... If you got [power] you got it all. You're even lovable!”
Walter echoes this when he asks, “Were we really brought up to believe in one another? We were brought up to succeed, weren't we?”
Victor's wife Esther, who accompanies them in the attic, sums it all up when she bellows, “I want money!”
This bankrupt but all-too-prevalent sentiment is the essence of the scourge we have come to call materialism. In his encyclical on the Holy Spirit, Pope John Paul II refers to materialism as the “clearest expression” of the resistance to the Holy Spirit experienced as struggle and rebellion within the human heart. The Holy Father points out in his 1986 encyclical Dominum et Vivificantem (Lord and Giver of Life) that “materialism radically excludes the presence and action of God, who is spirit, in the world and above all in man” (No. 56).
This is poignantly portrayed in the play, as when Gregory Solomon, the 90-year-old Jewish furniture dealer whom Victor summons to the attic to buy the estate, dares Victor's worldview: “Nothing in the world you believe, nothing you respect — how can you live?”
When Victor protests that he wants out of the rat race, Solomon counters, “I mean it's already in the Bible, the rat race. The minute she laid her hand on the apple, that's it.”
Victor's reply is devastating: “I never read the Bible.”
In other words, the word of God is not a part of Victor's life. He has radically excluded the presence and action of God from his soul. And the rebellious struggle within his heart continues to rage. As Walter observes to Esther about his brother: “He is sacrificing his life to vengeance.”
Standing with his wife, Victor tries to stifle his conciliating brother: “We don't need to be saved, Walter!” However, the pitiful emptiness of his life suggests the contrary. What paralyzed Victor's life with his despondent father was that “there was no mercy. Anywhere.”
Although Victor is unwilling to admit it, his remark betrays just how much his battered heart is crying out to the power of mercy in order to find the fulfillment and happiness so absent from his life.
‘Vic, we were both running from the same thing.’
Power of the Past
In commenting recently upon his motivation for writing the play, Miller stated: “The Price grew out of a need to reconfirm the power of the past, the seedbed of current reality, and the way to possibly reaffirm cause and effect in an insane world.”
The character of Walter in the play connects with the power of his own past and comes to revealing conclusions about cause and effect in his turbulent world. For years he and his brother wrestled with the same demons.
As Walter asserts: “Vic, we were both running from the same thing.”
However, in Walter's case, the suffering caused by a nervous breakdown has blessed him with redemptive self-knowledge. As Walter puts it, “There's one virtue in going nuts — you get to see the terror — not the screaming kind, but the slow, daily fear you call ambition, and cautiousness, and piling up the money.”
He continues in a confessional mode to his brother, “I'm not afraid to risk believing in someone. We invent ourselves to wipe out what we know.”
Victor lays it on the line when he laments, “There's a price people pay.”
Too often, the price is one that prolongs the struggle and rebellion within the human heart that counts God out.
In the end, this play about accounting challenges us to ask: What is the structure of our life? Is our life about delusional self-invention or authentic self-sacrifice? A Christian reflection on this fine production serves to renew the believer's gratitude for the ultimate price whose payment was foretold in the upper room at the Last Supper.
How tragic it would be for brothers like these to leave the attic without reconciliation and renewed hope. It is pointless and pathetic to resist the Holy Spirit. The brothers’ encounter in the upper room is meant to be a kind of Pentecost. After climbing the seemingly endless stairway to the attic for the transaction, the ancient Gregory Solomon utters a line that is as prophetic as it is comical: “Another couple steps, you'll be in heaven.” The Price beckons us to take those steps.
Dominican Father Peter John Cameron, a Register senior writer, is an award-winning playwright.
***
The current production of The Price opened Nov. 15 at the Royale Theatre, New York. For tickets, call (212) 239-6200.
----- EXCERPT: Broadway revival unveils a charged 'upper room' ----- EXTENDED BODY: Father Peter John Cameron ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Prizer's Picks DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:Avalon (1990)
Every American family has an immigration experience behind it, whether the journey occurred within the past decade or 300 years ago. At its core is usually a drama about the American dream as tempered by the reality of assimilation. Avalon is the best of writer-director Barry Levinson's four Baltimore films inspired by his own family's background (including the current R-rated release Liberty Heights). The story opens on July 4, 1914, with the arrival of Sam Krichinsky (Michael Krauss) from Eastern Europe and spans several generations, chronicling their evolution from ghetto immigrants to suburban Americans. Key to their emotional survival are certain homespun rituals like the annual Thanksgiving dinner.
The affluence of the family's later years is balanced by a sense of loss at the gradual erosion of their traditional values. The replacement of lively, dinner-table conversation with couch-potato tube-watching is symptomatic of the process. Those of the younger generation must figure out what to preserve from their heritage.
Empire of the Sun (1987)
Jim Graham (Christian Bale) is a soloist in a boys choir in Shanghai in 1941 where life was sweet if you were British and rich. The 9-year-old is obsessed with the beauty of airplanes. But the flying machines turn sinister when the Japanese bomb the city and, in the ensuing mayhem, the boy is separated from his parents and incarcerated for four years in a prison camp.
Empire of the Sun, based on J.G. Ballard's autobiographical novel, sets this vivid coming-of-age story against a background of World War II carnage and social disintegration. Protected in the camp by a seedy American wheeler-dealer (John Malkovich), Jim must develop survival skills not taught in the privileged enclave where he grew up. Director Steven Spielberg (Schindler's List) dramatizes the importance of human connections and an indomitable spirit. The boy holds on to his love of airplanes and dreams of God even as he begins to forget what his parents look like.
Bang the Drum Slowly (1973)
Professional baseball is about winning. Losers are quickly cast aside. Bruce Pearson (Robert De Niro) is a not-too-bright catcher for the New York Mammoths who lives only for the game. His roommate Henry Wiggen (Michael Moriarty) is everything he's not. A quick-witted, league-leading pitcher, he writes books and sells insurance on the side. When Bruce is diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease, he makes Henry promise to hide the truth from team manager Dutch Schnell (Vincent Gardenia) who'll do anything to win the pennant. The illness is incurable but not yet debilitating, and Bruce wants to play until he drops.
Bang the Drum Slowly, adapted from Mark Harris’ novel, treats its life-and-death story about the meaning of friendship with a deft comic touch. The clever, calculating Henry must take some risks to help Bruce keep his secret, and Dutch must learn that there's more to life than victory. This is a warmhearted tale that doesn't pull its punches.
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
Greed is a sin that consumes rich and poor alike. Even people of great integrity can fall apart when the temptation is too great. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart), Howard (Walter Huston) and Curtin (Tim Holt) are Americans down on their luck in Mexico. Each lives by his own rough-hewn set of moral values. When the three pool their meager resources to search for gold in the mountains, their mettle is put to the test.
The desolate environment and marauding banditos force them to fight for their survival. But ironically, it's the against-all-odds discovery of gold that becomes their undoing. The Oscar-winning The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, adapted by writer-director John Huston from B. Traven's novel, is above all a suspenseful adventure yarn. The drama springs from the contrasting ways its characters respond to good fortune. Dobbs becomes avaricious and paranoid, ready to kill to protect his stash. He meets his match in the old-timer Howard, who exudes a fatalistic wisdom.
Arts & Culture correspondent John Prizer writes from Los
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Fatima Added to Pope's Jubilee Pilgrimage Destinations DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—If Pope John Paul II gets his wish, his excursions to holy sites in the Jubilee year 2000 will include an “extra-biblical” stop in Fatima, Portugal, where the Virgin Mary appeared to three children in 1917. The pilgrimage was announced as tentative, but likely, by Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls on Nov. 28.
The visit to the basilica and shrine there will take place on the occasion of the beatification of two of the children, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, who died at 9 and 11 years of age respectively. The third visionary, Lucia dos Santos, is a Carmelite nun born in 1907 who lives in Portugal.
The beatification is to be held May 13, on the feast day of Our Lady of Fatima. That day will also mark the 18th anniversary of the assassination attempt on the Pope in St. Peter's Square. The Holy Father, who attributes his recovery from the shooting to the intercession of Mary, will have the bullet that nearly ended his life encrusted in the crown of the statue of the Virgin of Fatima.
In announcing the trip, NavarroValls acknowledged that there is not much time to make the necessary preparations. “The Virgin has achieved far more difficult miracles in the past,” he added.
Later in the year, on Oct. 8, the Marian statue will be taken to Rome and the Pope and his brother bishops will solemnly consecrate the Church and the world to Our Lady.
The Fatima trip will represent an exception to the Pope's travel schedule next year: All four of his other pilgrimages outside Rome will be to sites from the Bible.
The other sites are Iraq, where the Holy Father will visit Ur of the Chaldeans, Abraham's birthplace; Egypt, in which he will visit Sinai, scene of the key dialogue between God and Moses; the Holy Land, including Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem, at the end of March (as already confirmed officially); and Syria, to visit Damascus and follow in the footsteps of St. Paul on his great conversion trail.
Plans for each trip will be officially announced one or two months before each takes place, NavarroValls said.
Pope's Last Visit to Fatima
The last time Pope John Paul II visited Fatima was May 13, 1991, when he celebrated Mass for the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima. The event was especially significant because the date marked the 10th anniversary of the assassination attempt against his life.
“Behold your mother,” he said, citing the day's Gospel reading from John 16:27.
“The sanctuary of Fatima is a privileged place endowed with a special value: it contains in itself an important message for the era in which we are living. It is as if here, at the beginning of our century, the words pronounced on Golgotha reechoed anew,” he also said.
“Mary, who was near the cross of her son had to accept one more time the will of Christ, Son of God. But while on Golgotha, the Son pointed out one man only, John, the beloved disciple, she has had to receive everyone — all of us, the men and women of this century and of its difficult and dramatic history.
“In these men and women of the 20th century we have seen both the capacity to subjugate the earth and the freedom to escape the law of God and deny it as the inheritance of sin. The inheritance of sin shows itself as an insane aspiration to build the world — a world created by humanity — as if God did not exist. And also as if there were no cross on Golgotha where ‘death and life contended in that combat stupendous’ (Easter Sequence), in order to show that love is more powerful than death, and that the glory of God is man fully alive.
“Mother of the Redeemer, Mother of our century!
“For the second time I am before you in this shrine to kiss your hands because you stood so firmly near the cross of your son which is the cross of the whole history of humankind, and also of our century.
“Now, as ever, you rest your gaze on your sons and daughters who already belong to the third millennium. Always, and now, you watch with the greatest motherly care, defending with your powerful intercession the dawn of Christ's light in the midst of peoples and nations.
“Always, and forever, you remain, because the only Son of God, your son, entrusted all humanity to you when, dying on the cross, he brought us into the new beginning of everything which exists. Your universal motherhood, O Virgin Mary, is the sure anchor of salvation for the whole of humankind.
“Mother of the Redeemer! Full of Grace! I salute you, Mother, trust of all generations!”
In Oct. 26, 1997 remarks, he stressed the promotion of the rosary sparked by Fatima, and underlined its importance in relation to the new millennium.
“How many times in the course of history has the Church had recourse to this prayer, especially in particularly difficult moments. The holy rosary was a privileged means for averting the danger of war and obtaining the gift of peace from God. Did not the Blessed Virgin, when appearing to the three shepherd children in Fatima 80 years ago, ask that the rosary be recited for the conversion of sinners and for peace in the world?
“And how could we do without prayer for peace at the end of a century which has known terrible wars and unfortunately continues to experience violence and conflict? During these years when we are preparing for the third Christian millennium, may Mary's rosary help us to implore God for reconciliation and peace for all humanity.”
Observers expect the Holy Father to promote the rosary again in the Jubilee year 2000 to help bring about the converstion and recommitment to Christ he has called on all
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Prominent Protestants Rethink Contraception DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—It's not a statement one normally hears from evangelical Protestant leaders, even those in family ministries:
“Pope Paul VI was right about contraception.”
But this fall Mike McManus, president of Marriage Savers, a nationwide marriage preparation and renewal program, dedicated two of his “Ethics & Religion” syndicated newspaper columns to the evils of contraception and the effectiveness of natural family planning.
In doing so, he joins other Protestants who are more willing to consider the Catholic view of contraception.
McManus (no relation to this writer), a former Catholic, candidly admits his reasons for leaving the Church. “I became a Protestant at age 22 in 1963 in part because I did not believe in the Catholic Church's position on birth control,” he wrote in his columns of Oct. 23 and 30.
He continued: “Pope Paul VI predicted in 1968 that widespread contraception would lead to soaring rates of premarital sex, out-of-wedlock births, divorce, widespread abortion and even euthanasia. He was right.”
What precipitated McManus’ change?
“Talking to Christopher West, the director of the Office of Marriage and Family Life for the Archdiocese of Denver,” McManus said by telephone from his home in Potomac, Md., “he said, ‘Mike, I understand you used to be a Catholic and that one of the reasons you quit was birth control. I think you need to reconsider.’ He sent me a pile of stuff. The data is very compelling. Natural family planning is as effective as the pill.”
That data led McManus to write: “I'm not suggesting banning contraceptives, but I am supporting an alternative which is as effective as the pill or [other artificial methods]. ... This alternative is natural family planning.”
McManus isn't the only Protestant taking a second look at contraception.
James Dobson of Focus on the Family is questioning the abortifacient nature of some methods of birth control and is making natural family planning information available through his ministry while remaining tolerant of contraception.
According to Carrie Gordon Earll, bioethics analyst for Focus on the Family, “We are not opposed to married couples using contraception. Dr. Dobson's personal interpretation of Scripture does not lead him to believe that the prevention of pregnancy is morally wrong.”
Allan Carlson, a Lutheran historian, went a step further. “That a Roman pontiff would lead the opposition — often painfully alone — to contraception at the end of the 20th century is no small irony,” he wrote recently in a pamphlet.
“Perhaps the Catholic hierarchical model, reserving final decision on matters of faith and morals to a bishop whom Catholics believe is the successor of Peter, has proved more resilient in the face of modernity than the Protestant reliance on individual conscience and democratic church governance,” he said.
Carlson's report, called The Empty Promise of Contraception, was published by the Family Research Council, a think tank founded in Washington by evangelical Protestants.
Christopher West of the Denver Archdiocese hopes contraception's new doubters will come full circle.
“As soon as you see that contraception is wrong, you're on your way to the Catholic Church,” he said. “Inevitably, the honest man who looks at history and traces the problem, discovers contraception as a key contributor to what went wrong with marriage in our century. Then the light goes on. All Christian churches used to teach this. The Catholic Church is the only one still teaching it. Maybe the Church is on to something.”
Pope Paul VI predicted in 1968 that widespread contraception would lead to soaring rates of premarital sex, out-of-wedlock births, divorce, widespread abortion and even euthanasia. He was right.
John Kippley, founder of the Couple to Couple League, is disappointed that although McManus writes in his column that he agrees with the Church's opposition to birth control, in practice he isn't condemning contraception as inherently immoral.
“Sexual intercourse is intended by God to be at least implicitly a renewal of the marriage covenant,” Kippley said. “Contraception says, I take you for better — but not for worse, including the imagined ‘worse’ of pregnancy. It's intrinsically dishonest. Mike McManus is doing some good but not all the good that needs to be done. If you don't live according to truth, you can expect bad results, even if you're in good faith but ignorant. Nature bats last.”
While McManus is convinced that natural family planning is effective, he's not so sure it improves marriages on its own but only as part of a larger, religious view of marriage and life as a whole.
His columns praise the anecdotal and preliminary evidence of a low divorce rate (estimated at 2% to 5%) among those who plan their families naturally. But until McManus sees hard data, he said, it's unlikely he'll formally include natural family planning in his Marriage Savers program, which is active in 116 cities, 22 of which have seen dramatic declines in their divorce rate.
“I think it probably does [help marriages], but no one could send me a study,” he said. “The failure here is in the lay intellectual Catholic leadership which has been lazy. They need to work to make the case.”
McManus said he would “talk about” natural family planning in his ministry while sticking to his principal theme of mentoring for young couples by husbands and wives in well-established marriages.
“Christopher West told me that if I didn't include natural family planning, then my marriage-saving techniques aren't going to work that well,” McManus said. “That's the problem with people who are passionate advocates of this. They sort of see natural family planning as the only solution.”
While West welcomed McManus’ columns, he thinks McManus doesn't yet grasp the full significance of the issue. “That's understandable,” said West, “seeing how long it took me and many others to fully grasp it. This can be a long journey. I want to encourage Mike and support him along his path. Nevertheless, although communication skills are important, it's only by embracing the full truth of God's plan that marriages will truly be saved.”
West admitted that he is unaware of academic studies on natural family planning's link to low divorce rates, but he has no doubt that it improves marriages.
“It's common sense,” he said. “The very virtues that are necessary to practice natural methods are the virtues necessary for authentic conjugal love: self-control, honesty, willingness to sacrifice, open communication, trust, and an ability to say yes or no to a given behavior, which is freedom.”
Contraception, he said, distorts marriage at its core because it is a lie about who humans are and what marriage is.
“I'm relying on the insights of [Pope] John Paul,” said West, a graduate of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family Studies in Washington. “In a dramatic development of Catholic doctrine, the Holy Father posits that married couples image the Trinity: ... one who loves, one who is loved, and the fruit of that love. Marital sexuality reveals something of this mystery. Contraception, therefore, is a manifestation of our rejection of being created in God's image.
“Natural family planning is not just a natural form of contraception,” West continued. “In fact, [it] is not contraception at all. Contraception is the intentional sterilization of an act of intercourse. Natural family planning couples never do this. If pregnancy does not result from their union, it's not because of anything they did. It's because of God's design of a woman's infertile period.
The Holy Father said that the language of intercourse is the language of the marriage commitment: fidelity, indissolubility, and openness to children. When a couple contracepts, they contradict their vows.”
Una McManus writes from Columbia, Maryland.
***
For information on the marital teachings of John Paul II, call The Gift Foundation at (847) 844-1167 or visit www.giftfoundation.org.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Una McManus ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:In his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae Pope John Paul II discusses the new threats against human life posed by in vitro fertilization and research involving embryos.
The various techniques of artificial reproduction, which would seem to be at the service of life and which are frequently used with this intention, actually open the door to new threats against life.
Apart from the fact that they are morally unacceptable, since they separate procreation from the fully human context of the conjugal act, these techniques have a high rate of failure: not just failure in relation to fertilization, but with regard to the subsequent development of the embryo, which is exposed to the risk of death, generally within a very short space of time.
Furthermore the number of embryos produced is often greater than that needed for implantation in the woman's womb, and these so-called “spare embryos” are then destroyed or used for research which, under the pretext of scientific or medical progress, in fact reduces human life to the level of simple “biological material to be freely disposed of” (No. 14). See McGuire Story, page. 1
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Did You Know? DATE: 12/12/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 12-18, 1999 ----- BODY:The number of abortions performed in the United States since 1973 is staggering. Consider the following three facts, provided by the November/December bulletin of Priests for Life:
• 43% of women will have had at least one abortion by the age of 45, according to the Web site of the Alan Guttmacher Institute.
• The National Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., stretches 492 feet and lists the names of the 58,022 known Americans killed in that war. If such a wall listed the names of the children killed by abortion since 1973, the wall would be about 60 miles long.
• The casualties of all wars involving the U.S. put together are fewer than the casualties from abortion in a single year.
----- EXCERPT: Facts of Life ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Vatican Set to Raise Curtain on Great Jubilee DATE: 12/19/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 19-25, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—After years of spiritual and logistical preparation, the Vatican is about to raise the curtain on the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 and its packed, 380-day calendar of religious events.
Pope John Paul II, the main architect of the Holy Year activities, will open the bronze Holy Door at St. Peter's Basilica on Christmas Eve, signaling the start of celebrations for Jesus' 2,000th birthday.
When the clock reaches midnight on New Year's Eve, the Pope plans to deliver a special blessing to the world to mark the entrance into the third millennium of Christianity. Earlier that evening he will have celebrated an evening Mass and sung the Te Deum, the great hymn of thanksgiving.
But as the millennium parties around the globe are dying down, the Holy Year festivities will just be getting started.
The Pope is scheduled to preside at 70 public liturgical celebrations, and the Vatican will host more than 100 separate gatherings of professional and pastoral groups throughout the year 2000, turning the Jubilee spotlight on groups like politicians, migrants, journalists, artists, farmers, children, elderly and others. The Pope will formally close the Jubilee Jan. 6, 2001, the feast of the Epiphany.
The Holy Year is expected to bring more than 25 million visitors to Rome, crowding the city's streets and sidewalks and contributing to a local economic boom.
While the media has focused on new construction and crowd projections, the Vatican has been quietly leading a spiritual warm-up program for the Jubilee, emphasizing penitence, charity and a return to the sacraments. As the Pope said when he outlined Holy Year plans five years ago, one of the Jubilee's main goals is to strengthen people's faith in a time of spiritual uncertainty.
The Pope has encouraged individual acts of charity as well as global steps toward economic justice, including foreign debt relief. Likewise, he has touted the Jubilee Year as the perfect moment for individual examinations of conscience and a Church-wide reflection on Christians' shortcomings through the centuries.
Picking up on a trend, the Vatican has promoted renewed interest in pilgrimages for the Jubilee Year. It has also expanded the practice of special Holy Year indulgences, saying that remission of temporal punishment for sins can be gained by going to confession and Communion, and then performing such simple acts as visiting the sick or abstaining a day from smoking.
In Rome, the traditional pilgrimages to the major basilicas of St. Peter's, St. John Lateran, St. Mary Major and St. Paul's Outside the Walls will be made by millions, including the Pope, who plans to personally open the holy doors in each of the Churches by Jan. 18.
The start of the Jubilee Year coincides with a busy Christmas season in which the Holy Father will make 13 public appearances between Dec. 12 and Jan. 10.
The ceremonial highlights of the Holy Year illustrate the main Jubilee themes:
On Jan. 18, the Pope inaugurates the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in an ecumenical service at St. Paul's Outside the Walls, where he is expected to amplify his appeal for a new push toward unity during the Holy Year.
Ecumenical and interfaith cooperation are the focus of later events, too. On Aug. 5 the Pope leads a prayer vigil with Orthodox representatives, and Oct. 3 is a special day for Christian-Jewish dialogue.
A study conference on the Second Vatican Council Feb. 25-27 will draw dozens of experts to discuss Church renewal over the last 35 years. The Pope has said the best way to mark the new millennium is to apply the teachings of Vatican II, individually and Church-wide.
On March 12, the first Sunday of Lent, the Pope presides over a “Day of Forgiveness,” when Christians are called upon to confess personal and historical faults. Because of its implications for the institutional Church, this event has been the most controversial on the Jubilee calendar.
Vatican officials have said the Pope will issue a “mea culpa” statement with particular reference to Christian treatment of Jews and to the Crusades, which were the topics of two pre-Jubilee study conferences at the Vatican.
On May 7, the Pope leads another ecumenical celebration at Rome's Colosseum commemorating the “witnesses to the faith” in the 20th century, particularly those Christians martyred in wars or under political repression.
The June 18-25 International Eucharistic Congress in Rome will give the Pope a chance to develop his message on the importance of the Eucharist and to urge nonpracticing Catholics to return to the sacraments.
Like other Holy Year events, it will also feature a special Vatican charity initiative: a collection to fund a health clinic near Rome's train station for immigrants, Gypsies and the poor.
On July 9, in one of the more unusual Holy Year celebrations, the Pope is expected to visit a Rome prison and celebrate Mass to mark the “Jubilee for Inmates.”
World Youth Day celebrations Aug. 15-20 could bring a million young people to a Rome park area for a papal Mass, a prayer vigil and other activities.
Several canonizations and beatifications are foreseen during the Jubilee Year, including a possible Sept. 3 beatification of two Popes: John XXIII and Pius IX.
The “Jubilee for Families” Oct. 14-15 will bring representative families from all over the world to the Vatican. To underline his concern for the state of marriage in the world, the Pope will preside over the sacrament of matrimony for several young couples.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Cool Tunes and Catholic Truth Are Making Waves on the Air DATE: 12/19/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 19-25, 1999 ----- BODY:TAMPA, Fla.—Catholic radio is springing up all over the United States — but not always in the format you'd expect.
Celine Dion, Phil Collins and Kenny G are among the artists whom listeners hear on diocesan-owned KLUX 89.5 FM in Corpus Christi, Texas.
“We are an easy-listening station,” said station manager Marty Wind. “We are ranked sixth in listenership out of 37 stations rated in the Corpus Christi market. We make a connection with people who would never pick up a Bible or go to church. Our goal is to touch people with the spirituality of our Lord and of the Catholic Church.”
This goal is achieved through the use of 60- to 90-second messages sprinkled throughout the broadcast day. These snippets may contain a message from a priest or bishop, an answer to a frequently asked question about the Church, a description of a saint's life or details of a significant event in Church history.
“We must be very creative,” said Wind. “It's what advertisers are asked to do every day. Radio is a form of mass media, and we want to reach the biggest possible audience. It is a very effective form of evangelization.”
Another player in the field, Catholic Family Radio, a network of eight stations sprinkled across the United States, is engaged in “stealth evangelization,” said chief operating officer John Bitting.
“We are trying to reach the nominal Catholic, the person who may have fallen away from the Church, or who only goes to Mass on Christmas,” he said. “We offer quality talk programs that tackle issues from a Catholic perspective. We want people to regain an interest in their religion.”
Seven talk show hosts are featured on Catholic Family Radio, including Ray Flynn, a former Boston mayor and one-time ambassador to the Vatican.
“We are not necessarily preaching the Gospel,” said Bitting. “We are committed to the orthodox teachings of the Church, from Pope John Paul's perspective. Depending on the subject being discussed, we are the ‘devil’ to either the conservatives or the liberals. People are adamant about their viewpoints when it comes to matters of faith and morals, and will defend their positions vigorously.
“Talk radio is based on controversy. It is what keeps interest up.”
“Everybody has their own idea of what Catholic radio should be,” said John Morris, station manager of diocesan-owned Spirit FM (WBVM 90.5 FM) in Tampa, Fla., which reaches 55,000 regular listeners. “We are very progressive as far as the variety of music that we play,” he said, referring to the station's lineup of contemporary Christian music.
“The dynamic for success in radio is that you need to have a one-on-one connection between the announcer and the person who is listening as they drive around in their car,” Morris continued. “In that sense, we have become more personality oriented than in the past. At the same time, we are very community oriented.”
When a local organization, the Divine Providence Food Bank, was robbed of $2,000, Spirit FM parked its van in front of a local Home Depot the next day to raise money. “We collected nearly $3,000,” said Morris. “People came up to us and said, ‘It's really great that you care about what's going on.’”
In addition, the station has a prayer line where people can call in their prayer requests, which are aired daily. “People trust us enough to share their problems and secrets with us,” said Morris. “They know that people listening will pray for them.”
Eternal Word Television Network, based in Irondale, Ala., broadcasts a vast array of radio programs 24 hours a day on the EWTN radio network. These shows are picked up by 55 affiliate stations across the country, which broadcast them from one hour per week to 24 hours a day.
“We offer our service at no cost,” said director of programming Thom Price. “We don't do demographic polling. Our mission is to get the Gospel out to everybody, from children to the elderly. A soul is a soul.”
To achieve that goal, EWTN offers a smorgasbord of shows, from “Kids Sing-A-Long” and “Life on the Rock” to Register Radio News and “The Best of Mother Angelica Live.”
Because of the variety of approaches taken, it is hard to define what constitutes “Catholic radio.” Mike Dorner is a Catholic layman in Mandeville, La., who researches, writes and distributes the electronic weekly “Catholic Radio Update” newsletter for Catholic broadcasters in North and South America.
According to Dorner, there are currently 49 Catholic AM and FM stations in the United States, including a handful not yet on the air.
“If the station does not exist primarily for educational or cultural purposes — if the central part of its mission is the advancement of the Catholic faith and the revelation of Christ — I included it in my most recent tally,” Dorner said.
“You want your broadcasting to fall within the magisterium of the Church,” said Caron Fox, general manager of KBVM 88.3 FM in Portland, Ore., the first lay-owned Catholic FM station in the country. “Our goal is to help as many people as possible come to know Jesus Christ. You can't love him and serve him until you know him.”
To achieve that end, KBVM offers its 48,000 regular listeners a lineup similar to that of WBVM in Tampa. (The stations are not related, but are both dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary.) Contemporary Christian music, prayer, and Catholic talk shows fill the station's format.
“Through our baptism, we are called to be missionaries, and KBVM is answering that call in the most unchurched region of the country,” said Fox. “For example, Oregon is the only state where doctor-assisted suicide is legal. Why? Because the majority in this area don't know God.
“Catholic radio is on the front lines of the battlefield between good and evil. God is asking us to plant the seeds of faith, love, hope and truth — he does the rest. We see the fruit of what we do in phone calls and letters that we receive, when people let us know how something they heard has touched their heart.”
Fox has a dream for Catholic radio that is shared by many in her multi-faceted field: “I hope there will be a Catholic radio station in every radio market in this country, and that we'll all work together to bring people to Christ.”
Dana Mildebrath is based in Seminole, Florida.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Dana Mildebrath ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Warning Label OK'd For Evolution Theory DATE: 12/19/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 19-25, 1999 ----- BODY:OKLAHOMA CITY—Textbooks sold to public schools in Oklahoma must now carry a disclaimer regarding theories of how life started on Earth.
The disclaimer states that evolution is “the unproven belief that random, undirected forces produced a world of living things. No one was present when life first appeared on Earth. Therefore, any statement about life's origins should be considered theory, not fact.”
Any biology book sold to the state's 540 school districts must carry the disclaimer.
The Oklahoma State Textbook Committee decided on the disclaimers Nov. 5. It indicates another chapter in the ongoing debate nationwide over the teaching of creation and evolution in public schools.
Critics immediately pounced on the committee's move.
“It's very clear that the Constitution mandates the separation of church and state,” said Joseph Conn, spokesman for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. “The Constitution says that you can't teach religion in public school.”
Conn told the Register that his group is first trying to persuade the committee to rescind its decision, but he added that a lawsuit is a possibility. “We're still looking into a variety of legal options,” he said.
Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating said he believes that the group has no case because the committee did not mandate or prohibit anything from being taught.
“It said, ‘Have an open and critical mind,’” the governor told the Register. “As a Catholic, I think that's a fair statement.”
He added, “Louisiana requires that creationism be taught. Kansas debated whether or not evolution should be taught. We're not saying what can and can't be taught. Nothing is promoted. Nothing is advanced.”
Keating said the disclaimer was necessary because some textbooks tried to assert a specific kind of evolution that said humans were equivalent with other animals. “This is simply offensive to many people,” he observed.
The disclaimer, Keating said, would remind people that there are many different theories of how life started, and that some people, including Pope John Paul II, maintain that evolution and creation need not contradict each other.
The governor further noted that the committee was right to state “that evolution was a theory, not a scientific law like gravity.”
Conn again disagreed.
“If evolution were just a theory that might be the case, but it's a flat mis-statement that it's controversial in the scientific community,” Conn claimed.
That statement, however, is not without its own controversy. Richard Behe, a professor of biology at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., countered that most scientists accept evolution based on philosophy rather than actual evidence.
“Many scientists believe that nature and matter is all there is — that nothing else could explain our world,” said Behe. Starting with such a presupposition, he said, makes no room for any evidence of intellectual design behind the universe.
Under the scientific approach, on the other hand, “the evidence for evolution becomes less convincing,” Behe maintained. That's why he considers the disclaimer “completely reasonable.” “Many biology textbooks say they just teach science,” noted Behe. But they don't live up to that standard, he insisted. He noted that the National Biology Teachers Association adopted a position last year that evolution was an “unsupervised, impersonal and natural process.”
By defining evolution that way, Behe said, “They are clearly trying to exclude God from the process. What experiment did they do to prove that evolution is unpersonal?”
The Lehigh professor added that the disclaimer should not cause great concern for those who believe in evolution.
“They must think there's very good evidence,” he said. “Well, then students will be convinced by the evidence. Then there should be no difficulty with such an insert.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joshua Mercer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Low Birthrates Seen as Bad Economics DATE: 12/19/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 19-25, 1999 ----- BODY:CLAREMONT, Calif.—Management guru Peter Drucker is just the latest example of a growing group of allies in the Catholic Church's battle against depopulation programs — secular businessmen.
Drucker and others have started to speak out on what they are calling an unprecedented threat to the economies of developed and underdeveloped nations alike: a vanishing working class.
In a healthy society, economists say, the number of working citizens (“contributors” to the economy, ages 20-60) will far exceed the number children and the elderly. If their numbers dwindle, the cost of health care and education skyrocket. Government feels the strain of more requests for services and a smaller tax base to foot the bill. In developed countries, growth stagnates. In under-developed countries, growth is impossible.
How serious is the depopulation problem? According to U.N. estimates, between 1950 and 1995 the average number of children per woman worldwide fell from 5 to just over 3. In developing countries, the average number fell from 6.1 to 3.5.
Worldwide, more than 50 countries have birthrates below the replacement level.
Antonio Fazio, the governor of the Bank of Italy, drew sharp attention to the problem in a speech he delivered Aug. 1 at a European convention on immigration. Fazio said the only way to guarantee economic and social development was to reverse depopulation trends in Europe.
“In the coming decades,” Fazio said, “Italy and many other European countries will have to cope with major problems caused by the aging [and] decline of the population, and the need to handle [the] flow of immigrants that, in accordance with economic law, will be intense.”
Drucker said U.S. business leaders need to catch up with the concerns Fazio and others have shown.
“[It's] only in this country [that] nobody pays attention,” Drucker said in a statement to the Register. “In Japan and continental Europe there is growing outcry and alarm.”
Drucker, a professor of social science at Claremont Graduate School and the author of more than 30 books, brought his population message via satellite to 6,000 Europeans in November and was scheduled to speak to an audience of 5,000 Japanese businessmen in mid-December.
Though thinkers like Drucker are sounding the alarm, the consequences of depopulation have yet to sink in with America's wealthiest businessmen, said former Rockefeller Institute researcher Nicholas Eberstadt. For now, he said, they worry about overpopulation, not underpopulation.
In an article he wrote for the November-December 1998 issue of the journal Philanthropia, Eberstadt cited the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Ted Turner's United Nations Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation and billionaire investor Warren Buffett as major donors to population control programs abroad.
The Catholic Church has long criticized the techniques such programs use: contraception, abortion and sterilization.
In his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), Pope John Paul II warned, “Today an important part of policies which favor life is the issue of population growth. Certainly public authorities have a responsibility to ‘intervene to orient the demography of the population.’ But such interventions must always take into account and respect the primary and inalienable responsibility of married couples and families, and cannot employ methods which fail to respect the person and fundamental human rights, beginning with the right to life of every innocent human being. It is therefore morally unacceptable to encourage, let alone impose, the use of methods such as contraception, sterilization and abortion in order to regulate births” (No. 91).
Drucker attributed the “overpopulation scare” to “propaganda” which he called “very powerful.”
Jim Sedlak, a spokesman for the American Life League, agreed. He said that, to convince American businessmen that there is an over-population problem, activists “take these folks on a tour of a very poor area and show them malnourished kids. They tell them that the first thing that has to be done is to reduce the number of children.”
He said that depopulation looks like a “viable solution” to businessmen who haven't looked carefully at birthrate numbers, and added that accurate numbers showing the depopulation problem “have only been available for a few years.”
The United Nations Foundation, established by Ted Turner to distribute his $1 billion contribution, says on its Web site that “stabilizing global population growth …. likely is the single most significant contribution we can make to the 21st century — in terms of global peace, prosperity, justice and environmental protection.”
David Harwood, a spokesman at the foundation, told the Register that he'd rather not discuss the question of whether population is a problem. “We haven't gotten into that kind of debate,” he said.
Drucker has. In his latest book, Management Challenges for the 21st Century, he wrote that the single most important factor for the future economy is “the collapsing birthrate in the developed world.”
Roots of the ‘Crisis’
Eberstadt explained why he thinks businessmen have focused on the wrong problem. Prior to the 1950s, he said, few people in America actively crusaded against population growth. The widespread application of medical advances after World War II resulted in a plummeting death rate, however, and activists soon confronted phil-anthropists with what they were calling “the world population crisis.”
By 1952, Eberstadt noted, the Ford Foundation gave a $60,000 grant to the Population Reference Bureau.
In the 1950s and 1960s, he added, many believed population growth posed a serious threat to economic development. But the tide of research began to turn in the 1970s.
A particularly devastating blow to population fears came in 1986, Eberstadt said, when the National Academy of Sciences published a report on population.
Referring to Thomas Malthus (1766-1834), the English economist who speculated that population would outgrow resources, that report indicated that population change was “decidedly less important to development prospects than Malthusian thinkers had long been arguing — and that such things as ‘the quality of markets’ and ‘the nature of government policies’ were decidedly more important than Malthusians [had] presumed.”
Eberstadt identified several issues that should concern leaders and businessmen — the flood of humanitarian refugees, high immigration levels, below-replacement fertility levels in more than half the world's populace, and “a looming bride shortage” in East Asia.
Said Eberstadt, “to all of these [concerns], the population movement, and the American foundations that have supported it, seem to remain strangely indifferent. Although token grants to investigate such problems can doubtless be identified, the overwhelming thrust of their agenda still conforms with the original, tarnished [anti-population] project.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian Mcguire ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: With the Faith, He's All Business DATE: 12/19/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 19-25, 1999 ----- BODY:Daniel Daou resigned his position as vice chairman of his family's thriving computer-services company, Daou Systems Inc., so he could serve the Church full time. Now chairman and chief executive officer of the Missionaries of Faith Foundation — with an executive leadership team that includes Scott Hahn, Jeff Cavins, Patrick Madrid, Matt Pinto and Alan Napleton — he's leading the charge to marshal information technology for the cause of Christ. Daou recently spoke with Register features correspondent Tim Drake.
Drake: Tell me about your experiences growing up in Lebanon and France?
Daou: I was baptized and grew up in a Catholic family. We were Maronites (an Eastern Catholic rite); however, my family and I grew up in the Latin rite. Lebanon is the only country in the Middle East that used to have a majority of Christians and is governed by a Christian (Maronite) president.
In 1973, the first bomb that exploded in the 20-year Lebanese conflict came to our house. We were all wounded and came close to death. I still have facial paralysis and shrapnel in my heart. When the war broke out again in 1975, my parents did not want to take a chance. My mother, even though Lebanese by origin, was born in a French country and was a French citizen. We grew up speaking French at home, and so our family fled to France.
What brought you to the United States?
Coming to the U.S. had always been a dream for me. My brother had come here and, when I finished high school in Paris, I came to attend the University of California at San Diego. I loved computers and wanted to obtain a degree in computer engineering. Now my entire family lives here.
How did you fall away from the Church? And what led you back?
When I was a teen-ager, I stopped practicing the faith and fell into sin. In France, the Catholic faith was very weak and not too many people spoke about God or religion. When I came to the United States, I was approached by evangelicals. They ignited in me a love of Scripture. I actually grew up reading the Bible and have loved it since I was very young. They rekindled this fire in me. When I tried to get involved with my local Catholic parish, nobody called me back and I felt unwanted. Meanwhile, my evangelical friends were knocking on my door daily and praying for me.
It wasn't until five years later that I met a Maronite priest, Father Antoine Bakh. He took the time to answer my questions from a scriptural perspective. Two issues hit home immediately for me: Mary and the Eucharist. It was obvious for me that, by reading the Scriptures, you could understand both. I came back to the Church the night before my wedding. My wife had grown up as an evangelical. She became a Catholic a year or so after we were married.
What prompted you to leave your booming business?
I had devised a five-year vision in 1995 that was to make Daou Systems Inc. the leader in health-care information technology services. At the time, the vision seemed crazy. But after a tremendous amount of work, we accomplished our goal with two public offerings in just over three years. Daou did $14 million in 1995 and more than $100 million in 1998.
After that, I felt that my job was over there. I had been asked to run the company in 1994, at age 29. During that time we made 11 acquisitions in 18 months and grew the company to $120 million. I felt I had accomplished my vision. I am more of an entrepreneur and felt I was no longer the right man for the job. They needed someone more operationally oriented.
While running the company I also taught up to three Bible studies a week, and so I felt strongly called to serve God full time in the ministry. I had actually promised God that, if I ever found myself financially secure, I would serve him all my life, full time. The Missionaries of Faith was started in 1997; I got involved full time in 1999.
What is the mission of the Missionaries of Faith Foundation?
To be at the service of the Church by bringing Christ to the world through the use of sound business principles and state-of-the-art technologies.
In what ways are you achieving that mission?
First, we are attempting to build several different apostolates which are synergistic, such as Envoy magazine and Basilica Press. Second, we are using technology to deliver these services to the four corners of the globe through the launch of our Catholic Internet portal. We have also introduced @Home with the Word, the first-ever Internet-based Bible study online, and we have proven that the concept works. We have signed up more than 1,500 members in the first five months alone. In addition, we are planning on making all of our services and products available in many different languages to assist the Church in her evangelization efforts in a more effective way.
‘Our mission is to use state-of-the-art technologies and sound business principles to bring Christ to the world.’
What will e3mil.com do?
E3mil.com stands for evangelization in the third millennium. It will bring the best of the secular portals (such as Yahoo) and the best of the religious Web sites into one. Catholics will be able to access a filth-free Web site which will open up a safe door to the Internet. But they will not have to compromise professionalism or features when accessing e3mil.com. They will have many features that are only found on secular portals, such as electronic greeting cards, a super-store for purchasing goods, a safe search engine, an electronic auction page, yellow pages and a career page, as well as faith-related items.
All of the features we built were customized for what Catholics will want. For instance, the auction module will not only allow people to sell or buy items but barter as well — something that larger families could use often.
On the faith side, we have great talents on our team, and all of them are working hard to create content that helps Catholics live a fuller life in Christ.
Tim Drake writes from St. Cloud, Minnesota.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Daniel Daou ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: Notes & Quotes DATE: 12/19/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 19-25, 1999 ----- BODY:The Holidays Get Religion
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, Dec. 2—Millennial jitters are making churches a real hot spot for New Year's Eve, according to the Journal's Lisa Miller.
“The millennium may be shaping up to be a bust for hotels and restaurants, but churches are bracing for an onslaught. Spurred by a complex blend of anxiety, excitement and weariness with millennial hype, many normally secular Americans are planning religious observances not just of Christmas — but of New Year's Eve as well. Indeed, even though the Jewish calendar doesn't recognize Jan. 1 as the start of the year, many Jews intend to make New Year's Eve a holy night, with prayers in synagogue followed by music and dancing.
“Already, houses of worship nationwide say they're noticing a surge in attendance. It has more than doubled, for example, daily communion service at the St. Peter's Lutheran Church in Manhattan, where most worshippers are upscale professionals. In response to high demand, Lake Pointe Baptist Church, an 8,000-member congregation near Dallas, has added a second Christmas Eve service. And the Grotto, a Catholic monastery and shrine in Portland, Ore., says it is getting between 50 and 100 e-mail inquiries every day, up from zero six months ago.”
“Secular” Christmas Is Constitutional
CINCINNATI ENQUIRER, Dec. 7—A court ruling upholding the constitutionality of the Christmas holiday for federal employees shows the way many Americans currently view the holiday.
U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott of Cincinnati has ruled that celebrating Christmas as a federal legal holiday does not violate the United States Constitution on the grounds that it no longer has a strictly religious character, the Cincinnati daily reported.
“Judge Dlott said the government is ‘merely acknowledging the secular cultural aspects of Christmas by declaring Christmas to be a legal public holiday. …. A government practice need not be exclusively secular to survive.’
“She said Christmas has become so secular that it does not violate the opening clause of the First Amendment, which states, ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion …. ’
“Giving federal employees the day off is ‘no more than recognizing the cultural significance of the holiday,’ she continued. That it accommodates Christians who want to celebrate Jesus' birth “does not mean the holiday has an impermissible religious effect,” Judge Dlott said.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Eucharist Is Key to Mystical Life, Say Vatican Conference Speakers DATE: 12/19/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 19-25, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—Holy men and women throughout the ages have received Christ in the Eucharist and have allowed him to permeate their lives, said speakers at a Vatican conference.
“The attachment to and love for Jesus Christ present in the Eucharist” is common to many of the men and women proclaimed saints by the Catholic Church, said Archbishop José Saraiva Martins.
The archbishop, prefect of the Congregation for Sainthood Causes, presided over a Dec. 6-7 symposium on the role of the Eucharist in the lives of the saints.
The presentations included the development of eucharistic spirituality throughout the centuries and examples of how the Eucharist nourished the holiness of some of the Church's greatest saints.
Archbishop Saraiva and other speakers also highlighted how the Eucharist, the center of the Catholic Church's sacramental and communal life, has influenced contemporary men and women, including Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
Saints are men and women who have allowed Jesus to live in them and to transform them, the archbishop said.
For many of the Church's saints, he said, “the Eucharist was the fulcrum, the center of their lives as Christians, and the commandment to love God and love one's neighbor were interdependent and harmoniously fused.”
While some saints' devotion to the Eucharist was seen in the hours they spent in contemplation and adoration, “attachment to the Eucharist is not limited to a personal and intimate relationship with the Lord present under the appearance of bread,” Archbishop Saraiva said.
For many saints, he said, the reality of Jesus present in the Eucharist “led them to share his way of living and loving and, therefore, to truly be like the bread that was broken in order to be distributed to those in need.”
The archbishop pointed to Blessed Katharine Drexel, U.S. founder of a religious order serving Native Americans and blacks, as one of the holy men and women who experienced the Eucharist as a call to serve.
Blessed Drexel, he said, told members of her order that after receiving Communion they should go out to meet Jesus again in the poor.
Carmelite Father Jesús Castellano Cervera, president of Rome's Teresianum Pontifical Theological Faculty, described the connection between the Eucharist and mysticism in saints such as John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila and Ignatius of Loyola.
For Catholics, “the Eucharist is the summit of the experience of mystery,” he said. “The Eucharist renews and increases that communion with Christ begun at baptism so that Christ lives in us and we live in him.”
For some saints the experience is one of mysticism, a strong and profound spiritual experience of a tangible presence of Christ, he said.
But, Father Castellano said, it is more common for saints — and for Catholics in general — to demonstrate the “mysticism of the presence,” or the prayer that goes “from adoration to service, from contemplating the presence of the Lord in the Eucharist to recognizing Christ in their brothers and sisters.”
Because of this, the Carmelite said he did not hesitate to classify St. Charles de Foucauld and Mother Teresa of Calcutta as singular mystics of our time. (From combined wire services)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: JPII Says Panama Must Use Canal to Help Poor DATE: 12/19/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 19-25, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—Panama must use its recovered control over the Panama Canal and its income to benefit its poorest citizens, Pope John Paul II said.
The Dec. 31 return of the canal will have “great juridical, practical, economic and political consequences,” the Pope said Dec. 4 in a speech to Panama's new ambassador to the Vatican.
In 1978 the United States agreed to restore Panama's sovereignty over the canal, which the United States has run since 1914.
Pope John Paul said, “The recuperation of sovereignty over the territory must be carried out with special care in order to avoid having extraneous interests or pressures spoiling the benefits that this magnificent historic opportunity can bring all citizens.”
The canal must be seen as a resource to be used to promote the development of the country and the eradication of poverty, the Pope said.
Panama's peace and prosperity, he said, require a commitment to recognizing the equality of the country's various ethnic groups, improving education, reforming the judicial system and overhauling the nation's prisons so that they prepare people to return to society.
Pope John Paul told Edda Victoria Martinelli de Dutari, the new ambassador, that he hoped the overwhelmingly Catholic population of Panama would experience the year 2000 as a time of spiritual renewal and reconciliation.
He also said the Great Jubilee Year should be an “opportunity to meditate on the other challenges of the moment such as, for example, the difficulty of dialogue between different cultures, problems related to respect for the rights of women and the promotion of the family and marriage.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Notes & Quotes DATE: 12/19/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 19-25, 1999 ----- BODY:John XXIII's Beatification Looks Certain
FAMIGLIA CRISTIANA, Dec. 3—Pope John XXIII's beatification will take place next Sept. 3, said Italy's top-selling weekly magazine in a cover story on the “good pope.”
Pope John Paul's calendar for the Holy Year 2000 includes a beatification ceremony Sept. 3 in St. Peter's Square, although the person or people to be beatified have not been formally named.
Pope John's pontificate lasted from 1958 to 1963, during which he convoked the Second Vatican Council.
The magazine said it was almost certain that Pope John Paul II would formally recognize Pope John's heroic virtues during a Dec. 20 meeting with the Congregation for Sainthood Causes — a step that must precede beatification.
In an unusual move, the congregation's panel of physicians already has said the miracle submitted in Pope John's cause had no natural explanation. Review by a panel of theologians and official papal recognition of the miracle are still needed, but are considered almost certainties.
Canonization is Infallible, Theologians Think
VATICAN RADIO, Nov. 29—In an interview with Vatican Radio, Archbishop José Saraiva Martins, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints, explained the degree of authority that is in force when a pope canonizes a saint:
“Canonization is a definitive judgment, unchangeable, on the sanctity of a person and it is a pronouncement that involves the Pope's supreme authority, touching on the pontifical dogma of infallibility. It is an opinion that is virtually agreed to by all Catholic theologians.”
As for the cult that is rendered to the blessed and the saints, Archbishop Martins explained: “With beatification the Pope permits limited worship in particular places and communities, for example, in a diocese or among the members of a religious order. With canonization, the Holy Father prescribes that a blessed be venerated as a saint by the whole Church.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Papal Plea for Families With Disabled Children DATE: 12/19/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 19-25, 1999 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—The difficulties faced by families with disabled children must be shared by civil society and the Church, Pope John Paul II said.
Though family love for disabled children is indispensable, care for disabled children also requires wider community participation, he said.
“When children are most needy and exposed to the risk of being rejected by others, it is above all the family which best can teach them their equal dignity with respect to healthy children,” the Pope told participants of a Vatican family conference Dec. 4.
Faced with the complexities of raising a disabled child, families have the right to community support, he said.
“Parents must be encouraged to face the certainly not easy situation without closing in on themselves,” he said. “It is important that the problem be shared by competent people, friends, in addition to close family members.”
The Vatican conference Dec. 2-4, called “The Family and Integration of the Disabled Child in Infancy and Adolescence,” was organized by the Pontifical Council for the Family, the Spanish “Special Family Education” center, and the Venezuelan “Leopold Program.”
The Holy Father said that “the values of faith can come to the aid of human values” to ensure respect for the personal dignity of disabled children.
Authentic Christian solidarity shown by families for their disabled children is “the most convincing response to those who consider disabled children a burden, or worse, not worthy of fully living the gift of existence,” he said.
“The value of existence transcends that of efficiency,” he said. “Welcoming the weakest, aiding them in their journey, is a sign of civilization.”
The family was indispensable in providing love and attention to disabled children, “but with difficulty succeeds in attaining satisfactory results with only its own efforts.”
Specialized associations for disabled children and other forms of help were necessary, he said, to ensure “the presence of people with whom the disabled child can dialogue and establish relationships of education and friendship.”
Church pastors must help parents understand and accept that life is always a gift from God, even when marked by suffering and infirmity, he said.Catholics, as believers in Christ, have an additional source of support: prayer.
Through prayer, the family will “learn to accept, love and value the child marked by suffering,” the Pope concluded.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Notes & Quotes DATE: 12/19/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 19-25, 1999 ----- BODY:Rebuilding Lives in East Timor
RELIGION TODAY, Dec. 8—Church workers are rebuilding lives in East Timor, Religion Today's online news daily, ReligionToday.com reported.
Churches are assisting as refugees return to their homes after being forced to flee to the other side of the island by pro-Indonesian paramilitaries, the internet news service said.
Divine Word missionaries are helping 6,000 refugees in Atambua Diocese by providing food and health care, holding catechism classes and celebrating Mass. The Franciscans also are working among the refugees, Religion Today reported.
Church in Spain Ready to Meet ETA
SPANISH RADIO, Dec. 8—Bishop Juan José Asenjo, secretary general of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, said the Church is ready to mediate between the government and the Basque separatist group known by the Basque acronym ETA, which recently declared an end to a truce.
Bishop Asenjo told the radio network that no one has asked the Church to mediate between the government and the terrorist band. “I was asked if the Church would be ready to mediate following the rupture of the truce by ETA and I answered that any institution, if requested, would mediate.”
The bishop said that terrorism and unemployment are the “two worries” of Spaniards.
Elizabeth II Plans to Visit John Paul II
THE TIMES, Dec. 8—The Times of London reported that the Queen Elizabeth II will make a state visit to Italy next October, during which she will meet Pope John Paul II at the Vatican.
This will be the third visit by the Queen, who is also supreme governor of the Church of England, to the Holy See. She will be accompanied by her husband, Prince Philip.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Better Than Democratic DATE: 12/19/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 19-25, 1999 ----- BODY:In the year-end flurry of looking back at the past century, the pivotal event of the Catholic Church in the 20th century, the Second Vatican Council, has gotten a lot of attention in the secular media.
This is entirely appropriate. As the Jubilee approaches, the fruits of the council are showing themselves more clearly than ever before, in a Church that is being re-energized by a previously underused treasure: the laity.
The council's chief goal, however, is often wildly misstated by these reports as “making the Church more democratic.” This would surprise Dominican Father Austin Flannery, general editor of Vatican II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, who somehow found that this “chief goal” did not merit so much as a place in the index.
The documents themselves show the same neglect: None of the 16 constitutions, decrees and declarations claimed to be about democracy. It's not even mentioned in the 49 subheadings. But Vatican II documents do reiterate the great authority given to the Church's individual bishops. In the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium (The Light of Humanity), we find: “The individual bishops are the visible source and foundation of unity in their own particular Churches” (No. 23), and “[they] exercise their pastoral office over the portion of the People of God assigned to them” (No. 23).
And though together the bishops have “supreme and full authority over the universal Church,” the council tells us that nonetheless “the college or body of bishops has no authority unless united with the Roman Pontiff, Peter's successor, as its head” (No. 22). The document explains, “For the Roman Pontiff, by reason of his office as Vicar of Christ, and as pastor of the entire Church, has full, supreme and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can also exercise unhindered” (No. 22).
The Church, according to Vatican II, is a mystery of God. It is his initiative, the way he has chosen to see his truth dwell with men and women through time.
The problem with a “democratic church” is that it would put the Church in men's hands instead. And, as the last quarter of the 20th century suggests, when young people are told that they can decide what the Church is, they very logically conclude that they can decide that they don't need a church at all.
On the other hand, when young people encounter the richness of the faith in its fullness, they respond enthusiastically. This is what we saw at the National Catholic Youth Conference in St. Louis last month, where 23,000 young people rallied at a conference emphasizing the sacrament of reconciliation. It is also shown in a new study of the St. Louis-based Aquinas Institute of Theology. It found that Generation X Catholics are more open to vocations then the two generations that preceded them.
Young people are voting for the real Vatican II Church.
The use of the Catechism of the Catholic Church in religious education received a boost Nov. 15 at the U.S. bishops meeting when Archbishop Daniel Buechlein reported on behalf of the ad hoc committee overseeing the Catechism's use.
Archbishop Buechlein of Indianapolis gave four guidelines for religious education texts that draw on the Catechism. They are worth quoting in full.
The first one addresses materials that avoid calling God “he.” Reported Archbishop Buechlein: “[W]e notified publishers that we would not give a declaration of conformity to materials that reflected a systematic avoidance of personal pronouns in reference to God. The practice of avoiding personal pronouns for God often led to an artificial and awkward repetition of the word God in sentences or to circumlocutions that tended to depersonalize him. We informed the publishers that this requirement will help to assure that as much as possible a Trinitarian theology permeates all catechetical materials.
“Second, publishers were requested to avoid the use of the term Hebrew Scriptures when referring to the Old Testament. We reminded catechetical publishers that from a Christian perspective there are two testaments, which have been traditionally referred to as Old and New. As in the catechism, the use of the term ‘Old Testament’ is preserved as part of the common language of our faith.
“Third, when citing dates, publisher were asked to use B.C. [Before Christ] and A.D. [Anno Domine, Year of Our Lord] instead of the designations B.C.E. [Before the Common Era] and C.E. [Common Era]. Since the materials involved are catechetical in nature, they should reflect that — for followers of Jesus — even time has a Christological significance. The use of the designations B.C. and A.D. is part of the common language of faith.
“Finally, in accord with the Code of Canon Law as cited in the catechism, we notified the publishers that texts which deal with preparation for first reconciliation and first Eucharist should clearly teach that first reconciliation is to be received before first Eucharist.”
Archbishop Buechlein has another idea that he told Register Radio News: “My own opinion is that it ought to be in every home, right next to the Bible.”
For last-minute Christmas shoppers, the Catechism can be found in most bookstores.
----- EXCERPT: EDITORIAL ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Wake Up and Smell the Victory DATE: 12/19/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 19-25, 1999 ----- BODY:Christendom Awake: On Re-Energizing the Church in Culture by Aidan Nichols (Eerdmans, 1999 255 pages, $28)
Don't let the title mislead you — this book is anything but an evangelical tract. Instead, it is a bracing and critical tour de force offensive against the intellectual trends which Father Nichols, prior of the Cambridge Dominicans, argues are today debilitating the Church and deforming the world.
Three decades after the Second Vatican Council, on the threshold of the third Christian millennium, Father Nichols takes stock of the Church's efforts to engage the contemporary world — and if he isn't especially sanguine about what he sees around him, at least he is realistic.
“In my view, directions taken, emphases laid, trends fostered or at any rate allowed to develop, have, over the past 30 years, left something to be desired in terms of a Christian judgment,” he writes. “In a period of accommodation to civil society, its culture and mores, that crucial activity of ‘testing the spirits’ laid upon the churches by the apostle John has not always — by any means — been carried out. The force of secularism has been underestimated, and the latent power of a Christian imagination has been left untapped at a time when strategies for secularism's subversion should have been conceived.”
Father Nichols should know. His homeland, England, has become a country in which secularism is about all that's considered sacred. According to a November 1999 survey in a leading British paper, only 18% of the population describes itself as “Christian.” In neighboring France, the “eldest daughter of the Church” has just approved quasi-marriages for homosexuals.
Father Nichols writes: “The question which, for the Catholic Church in Britain (and other Western countries), is today the absolutely paramount make-or-break question must be: Does this community have the resources (of symbols in the liturgy, the material environment, devotion in the home), the language (in philosophy and literature), and the conviction (in doctrine and morals) to restore a broadly based public faith to the society in which it lives?”
Happily, his answer — which constitutes the balance of the book — is “yes,” provided the Church overcomes some of the forces currently sapping its vitality.
Among these, he notes, are the larger culture's deforming influences, particularly its indifference toward transcendence and its lack of a unifying metaphysics. These, in turn, can trivialize theology — reducing it to “a form of psycho spirituality …. tied to partisan agendas by politicization.”
Father Nichols calls for a comprehensive reform program. He insists that the liturgy must be “re-enchanted,” re-rooted in a “Christian aesthetic” (he acknowledges debts to Hans Urs von Balthasar and Joseph Ratzinger). “Doctrinal consciousness” is critical (something the young Karol Wojtyla said back in his 1972 work, Sources of Renewal) and not to be displaced by “the unofficial canonizing of an alternative infallibility — ‘experience.’”
“The force of secularism has been underestimated”
Certainly Christian philosophy is in need of renewal; it's high time to call to the carpet those theologians who, in their quest for pluralism, pretend, as Father Nichols puts it, that Catholic theology is compatible with just about any philosophical opinion floating around. Yet curing theology's intellectual foundations would also have practical consequences, and Father Nichols does not shy away from speaking about them. He calls for “reconstituting a society of households” while acknowledging that this would have certain drastic implications for economics. He also devastates the pretensions of radical feminism, referencing the thinking of Angela West, the feminist whose 1996 book Deadly Innocence: Feminism and the Mythology of Sin laid bare the tendency of some feminists to position themselves as both victimized and without sin of their own. And, while he's at it, he draws on the example of the Byzantine tradition to call for a renewal of art.
While all of Father Nichols' observations here are incisive, his unraveling of the “crumbling of religious life before an invasive modernity” is especially tren-chant. He makes creative use of the French poet Charles Peguy's 1912 “Mystere des Saints Innocents” to give new theological insight into the abortion holocaust; equally thought-provoking is his citing of the spiritual writings of the contemporary Englishwoman Patricia de Menezes to speak of the martyrdom of unborn children.
Father Nichols' thoughts on ecumenism are cogent, his perspective on contemporary spirituality sober. On the former, he makes a compelling argument for treating the Orthodox, rather than particular Protestant factions, as Catholicism's ecumenical partner of preference.
Nichols has already written a considerable corpus of theological works. Christendom Awake follows his earlier books as the call of a concerned theologian, priest and religious concerned that most of the world is set to celebrate the party of the ages with all reference to the author of history excised — and all allusions to the events which the anniversary commemorates dropped.
That the larger culture may be content with millennium parties and London Circus Wheels as icons of the age may be one thing, but that Christianity in general and the Catholic faith in particular do not seem to be offering very enticing alternatives is truly worrisome. Not that it lacks alternatives. The bracing news that God himself became man out of love for humanity is quite capable of eliciting frisson in every age.
Father Nichols seems to be asking: Are we ready to let that truth eloquently speak for itself — or, in trying to “fit in” with the times, will we become so indistinguishable from the surrounding culture that we are indiscernible from it? The Catholic Church's response to such a question may yet determine her success in making disciples of all nations for the next 1,000 years.
John M. Grondelski, a moral theologian, writes from London
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Grondelski ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: LETTERS DATE: 12/19/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 19-25, 1999 ----- BODY:Letter to the Elderly
Referring to “He's Teaching Us How to Grow Old,” Raymond de Souza's item about the Pope's recent letter to the elderly (Indepth, Nov. 21-27), how may I procure a copy of the Holy Father's letter?
Margaret Brick Hemet, California
Editor's reply: The letter will soon be available from Pauline Books and Media (of the Daughters of St. Paul). Call (800) 876-4463.
On the Internet, you can search for it at www.vatican.va (the Holy See's Web site), or go directly to it at: http://www.vatican.va/holy_ father/john_paul_ii/letters/documents/hf_jpii_let_01101999_letter-to-elderly_en.html
Bishops Embrace College Reforms
The report of the debates during the recent U.S. bishops' meeting (“Bishops Embrace College Reforms,” Nov. 28-Dec. 4) seems to miss the fundamental issue. Throughout the report, the issue raised is that of academic freedom, expressed in concern that the mandatum would cause theologians to be “inappropriately fettered.” But whether they are or should be fettered is not the real issue.
The real issue is truth and the responsibility Catholic bishops have to ensure that the truth is being taught, and to give assurances to Catholic parents that their children are learning the truth. It is the truth that leads us to Christ and sets us free. We live in an age where many within the Church echo the words of Pontius Pilate, “What is truth?” — rather than the words of Jesus, “The truth shall set you free.”
Since her birth, the Church has struggled with false teaching and been led, as Jesus promised, by the Holy Spirit to teach the truth. However, during the past 30-plus years there has probably been more widespread denial of truth within the Church than at any other time in her history. It is doubtful that there is a single doctrine historically taught by the authentic magisterium which has not been called into question by some who teach “within” the Church. Given this immediate historical context, framing the debate over Ex Corde Ecclesiae as an issue of “academic freedom” is akin to framing the debate over abortion as a matter of “choice.”
The Holy Father has sought to combat this situation throughout his pontificate. Publication of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, [the 1993 encyclical] Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of the Truth), and the appropriately titled [1990 apostolic constitution for higher education] Ex Corde Ecclesiae (From the Heart of the Church) are some of the means he has employed. It is indeed welcome news that the American Catholic bishops agree. We must pray that they (and we) will take the appropriate actions to guard the faith entrusted to them (and us).
James W. Sember New Holstein, Wisconsin
I was heartened to read that the U.S. bishops have drafted a document to implement Ex Corde Ecclesiae. Hopefully this will usher in some much-needed reforms of Catholic colleges and universities.
I am concerned that these reforms alone may not do enough to correct the regrettable state of Catholic education in the United States. Perhaps the colleges and universities have received this attention because their difficulties are the most obvious. However, as someone who has worked in religious education in both parish and school settings …. I pray that the bishops will take a long, careful look at what is being taught and by whom in our country's parishes and Catholic schools (private and parochial). After all, many Catholics never attend a Catholic college or university. The only education in the faith that most of these people will receive will come from their parish or Catholic school. In my experience, theological formation in these two arenas is at least as problematical as it is in secondary education. To be concerned about the quality and character of Catholic teaching at only the universities and colleges, then, misses a vital and vast part of the whole.
David Burroughs Religion Department Chairman, Mayfield Senior School Pasadena, California
The Contraception Culture
Regarding your recent editorials mentioning contraception: When a contraceptive pill was first developed, Pope Paul VI appointed a committee to decide whether its use should be permitted by the Church. The committee approved its use. But the committee was merely advisory. The decision was to be made by the Holy Father. After delaying for many months, and praying fervently, the Pope decided the pill should not be approved.
Years later, doctors realized the pill is sometimes abortive. Can you imagine the horrendous problem involved if the Church had unwittingly approved abortions! It is a clear-cut case of God protecting his Church from error, as Christ promised when he said: “Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.”
Dan Lyons Bloomsbury, New Jersey
In addition to the several comments by proponents of “population control” in your report, “Pro-Life Activists Cheer U.N. Payments Deal” (Nov. 28-Dec. 4), about the denial of foreign aid to organizations promoting abortions overseas, Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, also made an outlandish statement reported in the Washington Times of Nov. 27.
She said, “In the end this strategy will lead to more, not fewer, abortions because it will reduce access to family-planning services, the single most effective means of reducing abortion.”
Ms. Michelman is wrong because “family planning” (also known as contracepting) is not the most effective way of preventing pregnancy and because using contraceptives leads to more abortions. The “single most effective means” of reducing abortion is abstinence, which precludes pregnancy.
The national Best Friends program has proven over the last 12 years that even young, unmarried women in the inner city can refrain from sex in a milieu where it is ubiquitous. The last survey of Best Friends girls showed that 97% had not had sex in the 1998-1999 school year.
For married couples, natural family planning is up to 98% effective in avoiding pregnancy. On the other hand, the Alan Guttmacher Institute routinely provides statistics on the ineffectiveness of contraceptives. For example, their report in January 1998 revealed that 58% of the women who had an abortion were contracepting in the month they became pregnant. The point is that contraceptive use leads to increased use of abortion, which those who want to prevent birth see as the “ultimate contraceptive.”
Also, the former medical director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation said in 1970: “Abortion and contraception are inextricably intertwined in their use. As the idea of family planning spreads through a community there appears to be a rise in the incidence of induced abortion at the point where the community begins to initiate the use of contraceptives.” A 1995 IPPF publication observed that, after Romania abolished restrictions on the use of contraceptives and abortion, contraceptive rates there rose by 20%, but the abortion rate rose 100%.
Ms. Michelman should know that, while IPPF is the leading contraceptive dispenser, it openly advocates unrestricted abortion. The proof is found in the IPPF's Vision 2000 document which shows that they “advocate for changes in restrictive national laws, policies, practices and traditions …. continually improve access to these services; and condemn incidents of any political, administrative or social barriers curtailing this right” to abortion.
Ms. Michelman conveniently overlooks the fact that after four decades of skyrocketing contraceptive use, abortion rates have increased markedly, as have sexually transmitted diseases. Abortion causes many medical and psychological problems and experts estimate that 33% of all women now have the incurable HPV virus which is the primary cause of cervical cancer.
Rather than promoting contraception and abortion throughout the world, the United States could improve world health immensely by promoting abstinence before marriage and natural family planning as parents deem necessary during marriage. Let's hope that Ms. Michelman and others quoted in the Register will soon see the harm they are doing by promoting contraception and its inevitable consequences — epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases and abortion.
John Naughton Silver Spring, Maryland
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Can Pro-Life Heroes Change Cuba? DATE: 12/19/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 19-25, 1999 ----- BODY:When the invitation came to travel to Cuba and address the island nation's bishops and lay leadership, I could hardly believe my good fortune. Cuba — where Pope John Paul II had just recently traveled and raised the hope of a renewed Catholic faith. The invitation was just too good to turn down.
Until Friday, Dec. 3, it was impossible to fly directly from the United States to Havana. As luck would have it, I had to be there on Dec. 1. I therefore took the four-airport, 12-hour tour to José Martí airport. After a rather tense beginning in the immigration office there, I met the Cubans who had arranged my stay. They radiated the kind of cheer and good will I observed in everyone I met there. All laughter, smiles and hugs, they welcomed me to Cuba.
It was difficult at first not to be overwhelmed by the lack of material goods in my surroundings. By Western standards, the neighborhood in which we stayed, in western Havana, was rather shocking. Clearly, paint and repairs hadn't been affordable for decades. The houses looked more like cement-block shells, peeling and gutted. Perhaps even more stunning was the evening we ate dinner in a tourist-type restaurant. The next day was to be a celebration of “the medical profession in Latin America,” so all doctors were asked to stand for a round of applause. Many waiters stood. When I asked how this could be, it was explained that a waiter could earn in one night what a doctor earned in one month.
It was also immediately apparent that this is not a society where religion has been allowed to show its public face. Occasionally, I would pass a once-graceful building, now boarded up, only to be told it had been a Catholic school. I wondered aloud to one of the Cuban bishops how the Church was “getting away with” holding this conference. He explained to me that, in Cuba, no one is really certain at this time what is explicitly permitted and what explicitly forbidden. So one tries this and that — and stops when “the government puts a hand on your shoulder” and tells you to.
The conference itself, “Ecclesia in America: Anthropological, Economic and Social Implications for Cuba,” was a three-day reflection on the Pope's 1999 post-synodal apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in America (The Church in America). Speakers from the Holy See, Panama, Chile, Peru, Mexico and Italy addressed issues such as the lay state and the mission of the Church, how to build a new economy in service to humankind, human rights, and a Christian ethics of globalization. I was invited to speak on “A Culture of Life and Civilization of Love.”
From the perspective of a Christian of marriage and family, the situation in Cuba right now is quite dire. In fact, it's really a worst-case scenario. Birth control and abortion are free; childbirth is not. While no one, apparently, is keeping count of the number of abortions each year, several people at the conference indicated to me that they believe abortions outnumber live births.
Watching Cuban children playing in the streets and riding on bicycles with their parents, it seemed clear that Cuban parents see their children as a huge source of joy. Still, their numbers are relatively few. According to a historian who befriended me, the government of Fidel Castro wants only so many people on the island. Too many could pose a threat to government control. And so the government strictly controls the milk and other food a family needs for its children. One can receive only so much every other day. It might be enough for one child, and maybe it could even stretch for two. But three ….? You get the picture.
Is it really possible to build a civilization of love in a country where raising a family Catholic requires a high degree of heroism?
The Cubans have begun to answer that question with a resounding yes. This is apparent, first and foremost, in their very persons. They are already a “people of life” — remarkably generous, kind and lively. (Many exchanges brought back a flood of memories from Sunday afternoons spent with dozens of my own Cuban relatives during the 1960s and '70s.) Furthermore, to steal a phrase, they “just do it.” They move forward against incredible odds trying to spread the message of natural family planning and warning of the havoc abortion can wreak on your soul. I flew home with a very long list of requests for pro-life information of every kind. Which they will hand out …. until someone puts a hand on their shoulder. Then they will bide their time until it is safe to begin again.
Helen Alvaré is director of planning and information of the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities at the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Helen AlvarÈ ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Infant Jesus Points to Calvary DATE: 12/19/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 19-25, 1999 ----- BODY:This is the point at which contemplation through our love of an infant begins. ….
Christ's immemorial plan is that his life shall survive until the end of time, as it began in Bethlehem, not in the great and powerful but in the lowliest and least: “He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble” (Luke 1:52).
For two thousand years Christ has seized upon, inhabited, and survived in the littlest and frailest. The fostering of an infant's life is a thing of terror as well as of beauty. We are face-to-face with life at its most precious, housed in its frailest. That life depends for its survival upon us, upon the intelligence, the skill, the perseverance, the unceasing, untiring vigilance of our love. It requires of us a love that is as strong as the worn and hollowed rock, and as delicate as the dew that trembles within it.
We stand on one side of the cradle, death stands on the other. The new life is still a spark, a spark that we kneel to fan with the warm breath of our own life, a spark that death could blow out so easily.
So is it with the Christ-life in each of us and in the world. It is lodged in little ones, in the weakest and puniest, and love and death stand over it face-to-face. In the mysterious period of natural life between birth and babyhood, there is a parable of the Christ-life in the soul.
Infancy is something complete in itself. It is a mysterious growth from darkness to light. Once again, we are reminded of the seed, of the thrust of the frail sapling life through the darkness and through the hard crust of the earth into the light. In time, when the infant has become an established baby, the world will approach him from outside himself. Every new sound and sight and touch will be a new experience, not of himself alone, but of the world and himself.
But while he is an infant, the human creature works his own way from inside his own darkness and aloneness outward. He comes out of a world of darkness and silence and warmth into a world of painful light and noise and cold, of sensation and of pain.
He is alone for a long time even in his mother's hands; the communion between them is not yet realized. He cannot yet respond, and no skill of hers can reach his deepest being in its primal darkness. He is here, in the room, in his little cot, yet he is away and aloof, just as the dying, whose cold hands we chafe with ours, are with us and yet are eons and eons away.
Both for the infant and the mother this time has an element of sorrow; for he is fighting his way through to the consciousness which is the beginning equally of joy and grief, of pleasure and pain, of life and death, and the way is a journey alone through darkness.
In the infant's first struggle to lay hold of his life, we can see in embryo the passion of man, the passion that recurs all through his life. Later it will be disguised, hidden by the grown man's reserve, but now it is naked, defenseless. The beginning of every life is a lonely fight with death, a dim shadow and showing of the Man who is in all men coming back from the tomb.
Our life in Christ is the risen life. We live in the life of one who has overcome death, who has come back from the dead and laid hold of the world again with wounded hands, who has taken hold of its soil with wounded feet and loved it with the heart which it has already betrayed and broken and pierced. ….
The child's first smile is a reflection. It is his and yet not his; it is the reflection of the mother's joy in his life, given back to her. Birth and resurrection in their countless manifestations in the body of Christ on earth bear a striking resemblance to his historical birth and resurrection.
The life of the baby following the life of the infant has a quality of reassuring ordinariness. This quality of ordinariness in the risen life is an age-long reassurance: This risen Jesus is no ghost, no apparition of terror and judgment bringing the frozen air of the grave with him. This is a man of flesh and blood, and this is God, endowing all that he touches with life, but touching what is ordinary, the substance of our life; making life supernatural, but living our natural daily life; eating and drinking with us, bidding us touch his wounds, not to reproach us with them, but to convince us that he is still the same Christ, who overcame death by dying.
He is still the word made flesh, who has lived all our lives, who has been wounded with all our wounds, and who has died all our deaths, and who has risen from the dead, a living man of flesh and blood still, to live in us and to live our ordinary lives.
Now the baby, too, has become ordinary; the Christ-life that was almost visible in him has become hidden; his own personality is already a disguise. The elemental miracle is not seen any more.
The mystery of the night is over; the procession through the darkness is accomplished; the peculiar beauty of infancy has gone forever, and with it the minute face of sorrow, and the helplessness of the beautiful hands that were like sea anemones floating gently upward in shallow water. The spark of life that we fanned with our breath burns the single tiny flame that can enkindle the whole earth: the flame of resurrection, the Lumen Christi — the “Light of Christ.”
The service of the infant is a thing of love, therefore of joy. There is joy even in the saddest love, and the love of an infant, even when it has a quality of tragedy as in our days it too often has, is fundamentally joyful. It must be so, for it is the purest love of the purest life.
…. No one, having received a little child, could count the cost. They could not list what must be done and given and given up for an infant. Every 24 hours could not be a period of trial made up from ceaseless small tortures.
But if anyone in such circumstances did count the cost in that way, turning the focus on self, their life would become insufferable; there would be that in it of which they must either rid themselves or else they would be broken by it. But if the focus is on the infant, there is no hardship. The life of the mother, like the life of the saint, is not a life of repression but of the spontaneous, necessary expression of love.
If, in fostering the little seed of light which is Christ's life in us, the concentration is on self, on what we are giving and what we are suffering, then, indeed, we put ourselves into the place of the mother who is not a mother, the woman who counts the cost of loving her own child, and we force ourselves to face the choice of giving up the life in us, or of destroying ourselves in conflict between self and the life that has been given to us.
Christ came, and comes now, that we should have life and have it in its fullness, that we should be wholly human, wholly natural, wholly supernatural, that in all our loves he should be our life. If our mind and heart and eye are fixed not on self, but on the Christ-life in us, we shall realize the wonder of truth in his words “My yoke is sweet and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:30).
Yet we know that of ourselves we can do nothing; how then can we hope to save this life that is housed in our own weakness? …. We must put the infant Christ in our souls into the Father's arms. We must trust him to hold us in his hands, to put us wherever we should be, to arrange the environment that is best for us, to rock us to sleep when we should sleep, to wake us when we should wake, to ease our pain when our pain should be eased, to feed us when we should be fed, to lift us up and to put us down according to the wisdom of everlasting love.
Everything felt for an infant by everyone in whom human nature is not dead is a dim reflection of God's love for the world. All that grace and miracle of sustaining love in us is his shadow in our soul. We are made in his image and likeness, but we have almost obliterated, almost effaced, his image in us by the grotesque travesties with which we have overlaid it. In the presence of infancy, man is restored to the image of God.
Now, most wonderfully, we can learn God's care for us, by searching our own hearts. The father and mother within us is only the faint image of the Father and Mother in God.
He is the Father and Mother whose heart never sleeps, whose hands never lift from their works that they have made. He is the one who has numbered the hairs on our heads (Matthew 10:30, Luke 12:7). In his humanity we are clothed as in a warm woolen garment. In him we live as in our home.
He is our food and our drink, our shade in the heat, our comfort in sorrow, our healing when we are wounded, our light in darkness.
Caryl Houselander lived from 1901 to 1954.
This excerpt is reprinted, with permission, from
In his 1994 apostolic letter on the advent of the third millennium, Tertio Millennio Adveniente (As the Third Millennium Draws Near), Pope John Paul II proposed that the Jubilee of the Year 2000 is “an appropriate time to give thought, among other things, to reducing substantially, if not canceling outright, the international debt which seriously threatens the future of many nations.”
A number of social activists have taken up the Pope's call for debt relief, including some who might not be so supportive of the Holy Father on other issues. For example, Bono, lead singer of the rock band U2, along with Bob Geldof, who as singer of the Boomtown Rats organized 1985's Live Aid charity concerts, have joined with humanitarian organizations calling for debt relief for poor countries. And social activists ran a full-page ad in The New York Times calling for complete cancellation of $200 billion in debts owed by poor countries.
How is it that rock musicians and radical activists have rallied behind John Paul? And what has the Pope really taught about international debt relief?
First, it is worth separating out the secular justifications given for debt relief and the theological framework of the Pope. We are all used to seeing secular approaches to Jubilee 2000 that end up completely separating the millennium celebration from the birth of Christ. Part of this occurs with the Y2K uproar, as if the millennium is a computer event rather than an anniversary of the Incarnation. (The worst example I have seen is a fast-food chain's television commercial proclaiming that we should mark the millennium by buying four collector cups embla-zoned with pictures of our favorite Disney characters.)
In a similar way, some people have jumped on the bandwagon of the year 2000 to advance a political cause. By contrast, the Pope's call for debt relief comes from a deeper theological tradition along with a meditation on the significance of the year 2000.
The Holy Father pointed out in Tertio Millennio Adveniente that time has a fundamental importance for Christians. In the Incarnation, the eternal God becomes flesh so that time becomes a dimension of God. Because God is eternal and yet enters time, there arises for us a duty to sanctify time, for example, by dedicating particular times to God. When Jesus went to the synagogue in Nazareth, he read aloud from Isaiah: “The Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted …. to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor” (Luke 4:18-19). Jesus then added, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). We mark and celebrate time because of this “fullness of time” and the messianic mission of Christ.
In the old covenant, this was prefigured in the custom of jubilees, as described in the Book of Leviticus, Chapter 25. Every seventh year was to be a sabbatical year, when the earth was left fallow and slaves were set free. After seven sabbatical years, every 50th year was to be a special year of jubilee. The jubilee year included precise regulations that extended the celebrations of the sabbatical year. As the law in Leviticus prescribes, during the jubilee year, “each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his family” (Leviticus 25:10). If anyone had been sold into slavery or had sold their ancestral land during the intervening years, the old debts were abolished, captives were freed and the land was restored to its original owners.
The Pope notes that “the prescriptions for the jubilee year largely remained ideals — more a hope than an actual fact.” The jubilee year was meant as a reminder that the land ultimately belongs to God, that God has liberated his people, and that we are sojourners who use the land for a time. To the poor and enslaved, the jubilee year was meant to offer new possibilities; to the rich, the jubilee was a reminder of God's justice, where justice included protection of the weak and the needy. Those who possess land and property are really only stewards “charged with the proper care of creation, and the created goods of the earth should serve everyone in a just way.”
With the new covenant, the jubilee tradition is transformed. The Jubilee of the Year 2000 is a celebration not only of the birth of Christ, but of his life and of the paschal mystery. In the paschal mystery, his death and resurrection, both justice and mercy are served. Mercy is served in that our sins are forgiven, but justice is also served in that the paschal lamb, unstained and innocent, takes on the sins of the world. In other words, our injustices are not condoned by Christ, but freely forgiven out of love for us.
In the spirit of the Book of Leviticus and in celebration of the Incarnation and Resurrection, Pope John Paul II asks Christians to raise their voice on behalf of the poor to consider forgiving international debt.
In a secularized world like ours, it is easy to take the Holy Father's call for forgiving international debt out of its context. For example, for lenders to be coerced to abolish agreements that were legally entered into solely because of social pressure from activists seems a confusion of mercy and justice, or a kind of false mercy that ignores elements of justice.
As the Pope explains in his 1980 encyclical Dives in Misericordia (On the Mercy of God), there is a “fundamental link between mercy and justice” in the biblical tradition. “Forgiveness does not cancel out the objective requirements of justice” (No. 14). Hence, forgiving loans should not be encouraged against the will of those who are justly owed or as a way of condoning those who have trouble properly paying their bills. Rather, debt relief can be part of working toward peaceful development in a manner that links mercy and justice.
In that spirit, Catholics should join the Pope in encouraging international debt relief coupled with appropriate programs for genuine development as part of the biblical jubilee, a joyous celebration of mercy and justice that proclaims the year of the Lord's favor.
Gregory R. Beabout teaches philosophy at St. Louis University.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Gregory R. Beabout ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Born Amid Adversity DATE: 12/19/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 19-25, 1999 ----- BODY:Rare among Southern cities for its large Catholic population, Louisville, Ky., is blessed with two magnificent churches with extraordinary pasts. The churches offer beauty and serenity, two qualities in short supply last century when anti-Catholic mobs nearly destroyed them.
Cathedral of the Assumption
The city's historic Cathedral of the Assumption is one of the three oldest U.S. cathedrals still in use. (The other two are in St. Louis and New Orleans.) Built in 1850, the cathedral has exquisite, leaded, stained-glass windows and a soaring 287-foot spire that holds a 24-foot cross.
The church's interior is a Gothic-style delight, distinguished by its ornate columns, pointed arches and a ribbed vaulted ceiling. The 8,000 ceiling stars, placed on a sea of blue, are 24-karat gold leaf. Given its rich past and impressive architecture, the structure invites reflection and hints at the people who built it and preserved it amid many struggles and joys.
During the Civil War, Bishop Martin John Spalding hosted memorial services at the cathedral for both the blue and gray. In the late 19th century, a beloved and eccentric pastor, Father Michael Bouchet (who, incidentally, patented an early version of the adding machine), began a number of innovative programs to aid the city's downtrodden.
During World War II, patriotic priests donated the 100-year-old, wrought-iron fence fronting the church and rectory to a scrap-metal drive. In the 1960s, racial violence exploded near the church. Also during that time, as the Vietnam War raged, a fiery anti-war sermon resulted in a mass walkout from the Mass.
But the cathedral's most compelling historical drama took place in 1855. This was the era that gave rise to the American Party, which was hostile to immigrants and Catholics. Party members often met in secret. Asked about their activities, they replied that they “did not know anything.” For this reason, they came to be called the Know-Nothings.
In Louisville, hostility toward Catholics mounted as thousands of German and Irish immigrants flowed into the city. Protestants grew alarmed when a German newspaper in town urged its readers to retain their language and customs. Anti-Catholicism reached new heights when a papal official toured the United States, prompting fears of a papal plot to undermine U.S. democracy.
On election day, Aug. 6, 1855, the Louisville Journal urged Protestants to “rally to put down an organization of Jesuit bishops, priests and other papists, who aim by secret oaths and horrid perjuries, and midnight plottings, to sap the foundation of all our political edifices — state and national.” Mobs roamed the street assaulting Irish and Germans and burning homes on “Bloody Monday.” Twenty-two people died.
The cathedral was singled out as a target of the Know-Nothings. Convinced that munitions were being stored inside, the mob prepared to storm the church. Bishop Spalding wisely turned over the keys and responsibility for the building to the mayor, who kept the crowd at bay.
Two days after the riots, as tensions still simmered and revenge was being considered, Bishop Spalding counseled restraint. He wrote an open letter to the Daily Louisville Democrat: “I entreat all to cultivate that peace and love which are the characteristics of the religion of Christ. We are to remain on earth but a few years. Let us not add to the necessary ills of life those more awful ones of civil feud and bloody strife.”
The persecution invigorated the faithful. Catholics rallied around their parishes. Mass attendance shot up. Parochial schools were “as full as an egg — thanks to Know-Nothingism,” Bishop Spalding wrote.
St. Martin of Tours Church
The city's St. Martin of Tours Church also is historically and aesthetically remarkable. St. Martin's 400-foot steeple has risen above the Phoenix Hill neighborhood since 1853. With its German-speaking parishioners and priests, the church was an obvious target for the rampaging mobs of Bloody Monday. Rioters broke into the church but destruction was averted when Bishop Spalding pleaded with the mayor to inspect the church and assure the mob that there were no weapons inside.
St. Martin may be one of the most beautiful neighborhood churches in the country. Its richly detailed interior offers colorful, life-size statuary, stunning stained glass windows and a resplendent high altar. It's also striking from outside and, taken as a whole, the church is a superior example of the power of religious art to convey piety and transcendence.
The church's stained-glass windows were made in the 1890s by the Royal Bavarian Art Institute in Munich. Two small, adjacent chapels have stained-glass windows brought from a 16th-century monastery in Germany; the church dedicated one of them to perpetual eucharistic adoration in 1996.
The massive pipe organ dates from 1876. Made by the renowned Detroit firm of Farrand and Votey, the organ originally ran off electric lines that provided power to nearby trolley cars.
It's best-known holdings are the skeletons of St. Magnus and St. Bonosa, martyred by the Romans in the third century. The relics were donated to the parish in 1901 from an Italian monastery that had been seized by the Italian government. The final resting place of Magnus, a Roman centurion, and Bonosa, a Christian woman, is in the reliquaries in the two side altars.
The endearing statues of the Apostles, made of zinc, were sought by the U.S. government during World War I for use in munitions-making, but the pastor refused the government's offer to replace the statues with marble ones.
Scattered about on the church grounds are images of ducks, the symbol of St. Martin. Legend says he hid in a barn to avoid the office of bishop.
The church nearly closed in the late 1970s as the neighborhood decayed and parishioners moved away. But a dynamic pastor has revived the parish, chiefly through music. Sunday liturgies, enlivened with first-class classical and sacred music, have drawn ever-larger crowds. Today, the parish is a magnet for the entire city.
The church was skillfully restored in 1991. The lighting of the steeple was paid for by the former owners of the Courier-Journal, the successor of the notorious Louisville Journal. From the lineage of a newspaper that fanned the flame of hate sprang the light of faith and reconciliation.
Jay Copp is based in Chicago.
----- EXCERPT: Louisville surprises and satisfies with a rich Catholic heritage ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jay Copp ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: She Sings to Bring People to Christ DATE: 12/19/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 19-25, 1999 ----- BODY:DENVER—Rachael Lampa seems like a typical freshman at Monarch High School in suburban Denver. To friends she's no big deal — just a fun-loving, happy-go-lucky 14-year-old who loves basketball, softball and Jesus.
She has another life, however, that few in her school know about yet. Rachael is the Christian music industry's hope for a singing Catholic superstar who will generate millions in sales each year.
In November, Rachael signed the most lucrative first-record deal ever offered to a Christian music artist. Meanwhile, Sony executives in Los Angeles are working with her on a separate mainstream pop CD. She's had offers from most big league recording labels in America and turned down more money than most people will make in their lifetimes.
“I know about all of the negatives of the music industry,” says Rachael's mother, Maryanne Lampa “It can be very rough, and very destructive, especially if it becomes a game of ‘I'll do anything for stardom.” We refused some offers early on because they didn't seem like they were from God. It has to feel like God opening a door or we won't do it.”
Record executives say Rachael's voice and stage presence are so powerful that she could become a star on the magnitude of Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and Celine Dion. Her manager is Michael Blanton, whose only other clients are superstars Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith.
Shortly after Rachael signed a record contract with Word Records, the label that made Grant famous, the company moved six grand pianos into a mansion so top Christian songwriters could compose music and lyrics for her.
“The Christian music industry realizes the time is ripe, right now, for a major music icon who comes out of the Catholic faith,” says Bill Baumgart, director of artists and repertoire for EMI's Sparrow Records in Nashville, Tenn., the nation's largest Christian recording label. Baumgart, a Presbyterian, is among dozens of record executives reeling in rejection after Rachael signed with Word.
“The industry has become more interested recently in reaching the culture at large, and today the Catholic Church has tremendous credibility with the mainstream culture,” Baumgart says. “Some of the more radical fundamentalist Protestant artists do just fine with a certain audience, but they tend to get discredited by the culture at large more than Catholics do.” Traditionally, the Christian music industry and Christian radio stations have been dominated by evangelical Protestant artists.
A Greater Niche
Most Catholic teens, says Rachael, listen to secular pop music. She hopes to help change that. Her goal is to evangelize youth about Jesus with hits that will be played on Christian and secular radio stations.
She wants the songs being written for her to be inspired by the lyrics of traditional Catholic hymns.
“The recording industry's view of Catholics is changing for two reasons,” Baumgart says. “We see the charismatic movement in the Church as creating a greater niche for Catholic artists. Mostly, however, there seem to be some tremendously powerful things happening with Catholic youth. Catholic kids today want a real worship experience and a personal relationship with Christ. The music they buy will have to reflect that.”
Rachael's parents work as nurses while rearing four children and devoting enormous time to their parish, St. Louis Catholic Church in Louisville, Colo. The family participates weekly in a charismatic prayer group at a nearby parish in Boulder.
“Rachael does not view her voice as a talent she has developed,” her mother says. “She views it as a gift from God, so her ego is very much in check. She feels God wants her to use the talent he gave her to spread his word, and that's what's she's always wanted to do.”
Although her first CD won't be available until next spring, prospective fans can hear Rachael on the just-released CD A Lullaby for Columbine, produced in memory of the high school massacre that took place just across town from Rachael's school. The CD is available at most major record stores. Rachael sings lead on the first track, “We Will Always Remember,” with Winston Ford, of Earth Wind and Fire, and two other artists.
The recording industry learned about Rachael this summer, when she sang at a Christian music festival in Estes Park, Colo., that fea tured Amy Grant.
“I was pretty blown away by her performance,” Baumgart says. “Everyone there was blown away. And I've come to learn she's not just an incredibly talented singer, but someone who has a solid relationship with the Lord and a genuine desire to spread his word.
“That was important to me. Today's youth are hungering for substantive relationships with Christ like never before. They want Christ in their music, and we need artists who can sincerely evangelize.”
More Than a Voice
Not long after hearing Rachael at the music festival, Baumgart flew back to Denver to meet Rachael's family and friends. He wanted to determine whether she had the character and spiritual strength to make it in the music business.
“It's one thing to have a great voice,” Baumgart says. “But it requires a lot more than that to make it in the recording industry. It's a very demanding lifestyle. One has to be tremendously strong, and have a very good support structure.”
Rachael's sincere spiritual conviction, as well as her family's, convinced him she could hold up well. Other record executives also had no concerns about Rachael's character and strength.
During Baumgart's visit, Rachael sang for the St. Louis Parish summer picnic in a park. Baumgart was moved to tears during Rachael's performance. People walking by stopped to watch in sheer astonishment as a larger-than-life voice rang out from the mouth of a tiny young girl.
“Rachael's talent is an anointing from God,” Baumgart said that day. “That's all it can be.”
That gets no argument from Rachael's parents. The girl astounded them by singing, without lyrics, before she could talk. As a toddler she would sit at the top of an old staircase and sing. She made comments to her mother about the wonderful echo created by the high ceiling and hardwood floors. Rachael's devotion to music progressed as she grew.
Her mother recalls that at age 4, Rachael was writing her own scores on a glockenspiel. At age 7, she had taken to writing music so she could sing the words to books she was reading. At age 8, she entered a statewide talent contest and won. She accepted an invitation to sing to a crowd of some 40,000 people at Folsom Field Stadium in Boulder before an Independence Day fireworks display. She sang “God Bless the USA,” bringing the crowd to a long, standing ovation.
“Before the performance she was doing cartwheels on the football field,” Maryanne Lampa recalls. “She told me to come get her five minutes before she was to go on stage. To her, it was no big deal.”
Wowing 70,000 Listeners
Later, at the ripe old age of 10, Rachael sang the national anthem at the opening game of the Colorado Rockies' 1995 season, astounding a sold-out crowd of nearly 70,000 fans at Mile High Stadium. Fans elected Rachael as their favorite national-anthem performer that year, so she sang again for the final game of the season.
Since her Estes Park show, Rachael has turned down more money than most people will earn in a lifetime by rejecting an array of impressive offers from mainstream and Christian labels. Along with Sony, Baumgart says, Capitol Records executives courted Rachael with “very serious interest” in signing a major pop contract.
The family had a hard time deciding between the offers from Sparrow and Word. One factor that led to the decision involved Pope John Paul II. The Vatican recently contracted with Word Records to produce a CD for World Youth Day 2000, and Rachael has been asked by the president of Word to be a featured artist on the recording.
Rachael and her family say they're committed to maintaining a lifestyle close to what they've always known. But they know it might be hard. Before leaving for Nashville recently, Rachael had already missed about 20 days of school this fall.
She works out her absences with teachers in advance, and has done a good job of keeping up on homework and tests. Word executives have vowed to do whatever possible to keep Rachael's Louisville life as normal as possible.
Talking with Rachael, one gets a genuine feeling that her desire for success has nothing to do with a personal longing for riches and fame. She seems too selfless to be 14, exuding a relentless drive to evangelize Catholics, Protestants and the mainstream secular culture. Music, she says, is a powerful tool for doing that.
“To anybody looking to find the Lord, let me assure you he can be found in music,” Rachael says. “If you listen carefully, you'll discover that the Lord is in all kinds of music.”
Wayne Laugesen writes from Boulder, Colorado.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Wayne Laugesen ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Prizer's Picks DATE: 12/19/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 19-25, 1999 ----- BODY:White Fang (1991)
Dog stories (Rin Tin-Tin, Lassie and Benji) used to be a staple of family entertainment. With a few exceptions (the Shiloh series), contemporary Hollywood seems to have forgotten it.
White Fang is the third screen adaptation of Jack London's classic coming-of-age novel set in Alaska during the 1898 Gold Rush. Nineteen-year-old Jack Conroy (Ethan Hawke) travels to the Klondike to work his dead father's claim and hooks up with a grizzled old-timer (Klaus Maria Brandauer). The boy's life is saved from a savage bear by a wolf-dog named White Fang. The canine goes his own way and is captured by a mean youth (James Remar) who makes him compete in illegal dog fights.
Jack risks everything to save Fang and then struggles to win back the dog's confidence. The young hero must learn whom he can trust and that some commitments must be honored. The wintry scenery is eye-catching and the action well staged.
The Trip to Bountiful (1985)
“Home is where the heart is,” goes the lyric of an old popular song. All too often people find themselves living by circumstance in a place alien to their temperament and longing to return to the place of their birth. The elderly Carrie Watts (Geraldine Page, in an Oscar-winning performance) hates the cramped big-city apartment in which she resides with her son Ludie (John Heard) and daughter-in-law Jessie Mae (Carlin Glynn). It's 1947, and she dreams of going back to Bountiful, the small Texas farm town where she was raised. Her daughter-in-law can't stand her “pouting” and constant singing of hymns that are “out of style.”
One day it becomes too much, and Carrie runs away, heading back home on bus, not even sure her birthplace still exists. Based on a play by Horton Foote (Tender Mercies), The Trip to Bountiful dramatizes the difficulties of reconciling long-cherished fantasies with reality. The Watts family loyalties are preserved, but at a price.
The Ten Commandments (1956)
Cecil B. DeMille's biblical epics (Samson and Delilah and The Sign of the Cross) are filled with enough action and romance to satisfy viewers hungry for cinematic thrills. Some might call them overly calculated and corny. But the movies also convincingly communicate God's majesty and power as he intervenes in human history.
The Ten Commandments makes the story of the Hebrews' liberation from Egyptian bondage into a Cold War allegory about the spirit of freedom overthrowing tyranny. A romance between Moses (Charlton Heston) and pharaoh's beautiful daughter (Anne Baxter) is added to the biblical tale.
The special effects used to depict the miracles seem old-fashioned by contemporary standards, but the burning bush, the deadly plagues and the writing of the holy tablets still pack a punch. The parting of the Red Sea is especially awesome. When an old man comments that “God opens the sea with a blast of his nostrils,” you believe him.
The Shop on Main Street (1965)
Tono's (Josef Kroner) belief in himself to “do the right thing” is about to be put to the test. It's 1942, and the fascists have taken over the small Slovakian town in which Tono is a decent, working-class citizen trying to better himself. To please his nagging wife (Hana Slivkova), he takes a job as the “Aryan controller” for a button shop owned by an elderly, deaf Jewish woman, Rosalie (Ida Kaminska).
The first half of the Oscar-winning The Shop on Main Street is a gentle comedy as Tono and Rosalie gradually become friends. The mood turns somber when the Nazis order the deportation of all the Jews. Tono searches for a way to help Rosalie without jeopardizing his relations with the authorities. Director Jan Kadar shows how good intentions aren't always enough and that compromise can produce unintended consequences.
Arts & Culture correspondent John Prizer writes from Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Prizer ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Mexico Faithful Aren't Buying the Latest Dig at Juan Diego DATE: 12/19/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 19-25, 1999 ----- BODY:MEXICO CITY—“Are you crazy?” snapped Bishop Onésimo Cepeda Silva after a journalist's question.
“This is not a division within the Church,” the spokesman for the Mexican episcopate explained, “this is just Abbot Schulenburg against the whole Catholic Church in Mexico.”
What was the outburst about?
The press conference at the offices of the Mexican bishops' conference was not tense, but Bishop Cepeda of Ecatepec, well known for his friendly relationship with journalists, could not hide his irritation at the reason for the meeting: to explain the consequences of a recent letter sent to the Vatican by the former abbot of Mexico City's Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe denying the historic existence of Juan Diego.
The peasant who saw Our Lady of Guadalupe and reported her message of confidence in God, Juan Diego is widely expected to be canonized next year, possibly in May.
The controversy was sparked Dec. 2, when the daily Reforma newspaper reported that Abbot Emeritus Guillermo Schulenburg sent a letter to Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano repeating his claim, first made in 1990, that there was no records that prove the historical existence of Juan Diego, and that his eventual canonization would only embarrass Pope John Paul II and the entire Church.
The recent letter, which was also signed by Father Carlos Warnholtz, a dean of the basilica, and its librarian, Father Esteban Martínez, was copied to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints.
Predictably, no one within the Church or in the political establishment has come to the defense of Abbot Schulenburg and his colleagues. Hence, Bishop Cepeda contended that the abbot stood alone, presumably with his two former cohorts.
Mexico City's Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera took a similar tack.
“This is probably just a joke,” the primate of Mexico said. “Otherwise, how could we understand the denial of the apparition from a man who has not only lived it but made a good living out of the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe for more than 30 years?” The cardinal's statement was in reference to the well-known allegations of financial misconduct that led to the removal of Abbot Schulenburg from the basilica post earlier this year.
Calling on Mexicans to remain calm, the cardinal said, “I can assure them that this incident will have no effect whatsoever on the process of canonization.”
Strange Timing?
According to Msgr. Oscar Sánchez Barba, postulator of all Mexican causes for beatification and canonization in Rome, the objections of Abbot Schulenburg come at a strange time — a matter of months after the release of clear evidence of Juan Diego's historicity that no one has refuted on scientific grounds.
Abbot Schulenburg's objections, first raised in 1990, were sufficient to effectively freeze Juan Diego's cause by 1997. The Congregation for the Causes of the Saints requested at that time further proofs of his existence and character.
“Of course, questioning the authenticity of Juan Diego implied that the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe at the Tepeyac hill was a legend and therefore, that the tilma (the cloth in which the image of the Virgin is imprinted) is just a painting and not a miracle,” said Msgr. Sánchez.
So, upon the request of Cardinal Rivera, both Msgr. Sánchez and Father Fidel Fernández, a well-known historian who is also a consultant to the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints, started a quiet but full-time odyssey through historical records and ancient archives in Mexico, Spain and the Vatican to find the historical Juan Diego.
The investigation lasted 18 months, and ended on Oct. 28, 1998, with new, unquestionable historical findings that were unveiled at a press conference hosted by Cardinal Ri-vera.
Msgr. Sánchez announced the discovery of new documents that prove that Juan Diego existed and that the Indian's contemporaries considered the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe a real event.
The investigation brought to light three significant, previously forgotten documents: The Escalda Codex; the written recollection of the oral tradition of Totonaca Indians of Veracruz; and the written testimony of Sister Ana de Cristo, a Spanish nun who traveled to Mexico on her way to the Philippines in 1619.
The Escalda Codex, found in Spain, confirmed the existence of Juan Diego, who was regarded as a holy man who saw the Virgin “with his own eyes” and who died on May 30, 1548, at age 74, something exceptional for a time when life expectancy among Mexican natives was about 40 years.
Sister Ana de Cristo's letter, also discovered in Spain, describes how Mexico's Bishop Juan de Zumárraga, originally skeptical about the story of a Marian apparition, was totally convinced of it after receiving the tilma of a local Indian named Juan Diego.
Finally, the written accounts of the Totonaca oral tradition describe a profile of Juan Diego consistent with the other historic testimonies. Msgr.
Sánchez said that “several other indirect testimonies were also found which, put together, would be a sufficient historic proof.”
Cardinal Rivera announced the findings as “a victory for our Lady,” and called for a Thanksgiving Mass at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. As expected, devout Mexicans overflowed the basilica.
The cardinal also asked the investigators to publish their findings. A book by the two researchers, The Encounter of the Virgin of Guadalupe and Juan Diego, has become a religious best seller in Mexico.
“I think that the canonization of Juan Diego will be a Guadalupan feast, just as Juan Diego himself, being a humble man, would have wanted it to be,” Msgr. Sánchez told the Register.
And he believes that the feast will not only be celebrated in Mexico but throughout the Americas. “In fact,” he added, “several Latin American communities in Rome, as well as many embassies have been asking me how to join the celebration of Juan Diego's canonization.”
Msgr. Sánchez also revealed that the miracle for the canonization has cleared almost all the stages of the arduous canonization process.
The miracle credited to Juan Diego was the quick, total and scientifically impossible healing of a young man who, in 1994, fell from a second floor in Mexico City. The young man fell into a coma with severe skull and brain damage, and doctors told his relatives that death was a matter of hours away.
One of the doctors even told the young man's mother that “not even Juan Diego could heal him,” sparking in the woman the idea to go to the basilica and ask for the intercession of Juan Diego in heaven.
Msgr. Sánchez declined to offer details of the miracle until the Church has made a definitive ruling. But he told the Register earlier this year that “the [man's] accident took place on a Sunday; on Monday he was diagnosed as a terminal case; and on Tuesday he was totally recovered, with not a single injury or side effect.”
“From our point of view, it was an easy case,” the monsignor explained. “We just obtained all the medical records from Monday, then those from Tuesday and the written testimony of doctors, nurses and witnesses that it was the same person.”
On Dec. 20, the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints will announce the name of those who will be beatified or proclaimed saints during the year 2000.
Msgr. Sánchez said that the announcement of Juan Diego's cause would be a great joy, but he is not in a hurry. “The cause is going steady and well, so we don't mind if we have to wait for the year 2001,” he said.
Alejandro Bermudez is based in Lima, Peru.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Alejandro Bermudez ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: 'I Insist on It - Save the Baby' DATE: 12/19/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 19-25, 1999 ----- BODY:During the 1994 International Year of the Family, the Holy See clashed with the Clinton administration and the United Nations bureaucracy at the Cairo population conference. The core issue was the promotion of abortion as a means of family planning, but the intensity of the conflict indicated that the struggle was between two completely different views of the human person, and, in particular, of women.
On one hand, the Cairo conference proposed a view of women as autonomous agents, for whom sexual expression was but one aspect of the overarching goal of self-development, which required liberation from the burdens of child-bearing and child-rearing in order to achieve equality with men. On the other hand, the Church insisted that authentic human development comes not from liberating oneself from obligations toward others, but from using one's freedom to give oneself to others.
For women in particular, that personal development cannot be separated from what Pope John Paul II has called the “feminine genius,” namely, the woman's ability to care for the other, to be in society a truly humanizing influence. While this “feminine genius” is needed in all sectors of society, it is in the family that it is most needed, and most fulfilling for women to provide it.
A Truly Modern Woman
On April 24, 1994, just four months before the Cairo conference was to begin, John Paul beatified the woman who could be thought of as an incarnation of the feminine genius in the world and in the home. Dr. Gianna Beretta Molla had died almost exactly 32 years previous, on April 28,1962, of complications after the birth of her fourth child, Gianna Emmanuela. She had chosen to proceed with a difficult pregnancy, knowing that saving the life of her baby girl might mean her own death. A pediatrician herself, Gianna Molla knew full well the risks.
“If you must decide between me and the child, do not hesitate: Choose the child,” Gianna told her husband a few days before Gianna Emmanuela was to be delivered by Caesarean section. “I insist on it — save the baby.”
Three decades later that baby was present in St. Peter's Square to see her mother beatified. For her, and millions of other young women around the world trying to balance work and family, professional life and spiritual life, femininity and equality, Dr. Gianna Beretta Molla may just be the ideal model and patroness. If the Church needs a patron saint of the modern woman, Gianna Molla, the happy pediatrician, devout Catholic and doting mother, would be a good candidate, demonstrating with her passion for life that the Gospel is still good news for the women of our time.
Gianna was born in Magenta, near Milan, on Oct. 4, the feast of St. Francis, patron of Italy, in 1922. The 10th of 13 children born to Alberto and Maria Beretta (eight of whom survived childhood), Gianna was raised in an intensely Catholic home, both parents being Third Order Franciscans. She learned a deep spirit of prayer and care for the poor from her parents, and saw in her own mother a model of both strength and humility. After making her first Communion in 1928, Gianna attended daily Mass for the rest of her life, often attending with her mother.
The Molla family moved several times during Gianna's youth, but the closeness and happiness of the family more than compensated for any hardship that might have caused. An uninspired high school student, Gianna struggled to pass her courses and even failed her courses in Italian and Latin. Her final year of school, however, marked a turnaround, and she began to excel at her studies, going on to study medicine at the University of Milan in 1942 — the same year both her parents died.
In 1950 Gianna graduated with a diploma in medicine and surgery and opened a practice with her brother, Ferdinando, who was also a doctor. She was a competent and kind doctor, often serving the poor for free and traveling — sometimes by bicycle, sometime on her motorcycle — some distances to treat the sick at home.
Vocation Found
Originally feeling called to the missionary life — one of the Beretta boys had become a priest in Brazil — Gianna discerned after much prayer that her vocation was to marriage and family life. She married Pietro Molla on Sept. 24, 1955, in her hometown in a wedding witnessed by her priest brother, Don Giuseppe. She had first met Pietro when he came to her office to see Dr. Ferdinando as a patient. Having devoted herself to her professional work, Gianna was already 33 when she married, and Pietro was 10 years her senior.
“With the help and blessing of God, we shall do all in our power that our family may be a little cenacle where Jesus may reign over all affections, desires and actions,” Gianna wrote to Pietro. “We become cooperators with God in the work of creation. Thus we can give him children who love him and serve him. Pietro, will I be able to be the wife you always wished to have? I want to be!”
The Mollas were blessed with three children in four years: Pierluigi was born in 1956, Maria Zita in 1957 and Laura Enrica Maria in 1959. After several miscarriages, Gianna was pregnant with her fourth child when a tumor was discovered in her ovary. Faced with several options, Gianna chose the surgery that, while removing the tumor, would allow the baby to live. It was the riskier choice for her own health. She continued to give of herself both to her family and to her patients throughout the rest of the difficult pregnancy.
On April 21, 1962, she gave birth to a daughter. While the baby was healthy, the mother was not. Gianna suffered septic peritonitis and suffered for a week from agonizing pain. She was not able to speak in her final days, although she clearly maintained an intense colloquy with God during her death agony. She was returned to her home in the early morning of April 28, 1962, and she died that same day.
Christmas is the season of the image of the Madonna and Child, so natural to every culture. Christmas is the story of a woman who loved God enough to give birth to his only Son. The grace of God came by a woman presenting a Child to the world, and everything was made new again. Dr. Gianna Beretta Molla's sacrifice of love brought another child — another gift of God — into the world, and presents to the world a model of the grace of God still at work, making all things new in the late 20th century.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Raymond De Souza ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Glimmers of Hope in Washington, D.C. DATE: 12/19/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 19-25, 1999 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON—Most mornings, Sister Owen Patricia Bonner, principal of Holy Name School here, stands outside welcoming arriving students and chatting up parents and grandparents dropping off their children. The spontaneous interaction energizes her for the day. When she asks parents how they're doing, they invariably respond, “I'm blessed, Sister, just blessed,” she says.
That's saying something in the neighborhood in which Holy Name resides.
Many Holy Name students come from single-parent homes; a few have one or both parents in prison and are raised by grandparents or other relatives. For some, going to school means the only chance they'll get all day for a hot meal, a warm room and a little attention and supervision.
Sister Owen says that, for Holy Name parents and guardians, getting their children into a Catholic school means real hope for the future. The first thing students learn is that their parents and teachers will not allow them to become just another statistic. Teachers at Holy Name find the most common excuse boys give for not doing their math homework is not expecting to live long enough to balance a checkbook. That excuse, says Sister Owen, is only dispelled with great determination and optimism.
Close Call
How bad would the educational crisis be if not for the dedicated, under-funded, private religious and secular schools that take some of the pressure off public education? Washington almost found out in 1997, when several of its inner-city Catholic school were nearly closed.
In January of that year, the Archdiocese of Washington, through an initiative called the City Center Consortium, took direct financial responsibility for eight inner-city schools that had lost the financial support of their parishes when the neighborhood base fled to the suburbs with its parishioners.
Cardinal James Hickey believed that schools such as Holy Name, Assumption, St. Cyprian and Sacred Heart are lifelines to children in the District of Columbia. Today, 40% of the budget of the cardinal's capital appeal is dedicated to Catholic education and a large portion of that to keeping these schools open.
But the diocese isn't alone in sacrificing to see that children have educational choice. With 56% of parents living below the $15,000 poverty line, a private education is a great financial burden. Families who send their children to schools like Holy Name can expect to pay $2,600 a year per child.
While the District of Columbia can afford to spend more than $9,100 per public-school student, the Archdiocese of Washington spends just a third of that. New teachers in the public schools can expect to earn $30,000, plus a signing bonus; base pay for Holy Name's teachers by contrast is a mere $20,351 this year. Despite this disproportion in funding, Catholic school students there outperform their public school counterparts on national tests by 72%.
What accounts for the discrepancy? Religion.
There is no litmus test for hiring teachers. Nor are non-Catholics students barred. In fact, only 25% of Holy Name's students are Catholic. But the curriculum bristles with a Catholic mission: theology classes and art projects with religious themes are common features. Parents don't seem to mind. They chose religious schools in full knowledge of their methods and seem unconcerned that the Catholic faith might “rub off” on their kids. In fact, several children every year are baptized and others attend evening catechism classes.
Many more parents want to send their children to private schools, particularly religious ones, and would if not for the cost. Because religion is an indispensable component of Catholic schools, the prospect of a voucher system could be either a blessing or a curse. Even limited government funding would take much of the pressure off inner-city schools and allow more parents to act on their desire. But state funding offered with the caveat of a compromised religious mission would take away the primary agent of the schools' success, along with their essential identity.
Religious-school teachers and principals often work for low wages out of a personal sense of mission. Sister Owen says the greatest strain in her job is training new teachers only to see them become frustrated and overwhelmed and move on after just one year. When hiring, she has to look for the spark that separates those who see teaching as a job and those who are moved by a higher purpose.
Students here are motivated. They know something special is going on at Holy Name. Unruly students are scolded by their classmates. Back talk and shirking homework might be typical at public schools, but at Holy Name older students remind new students, “You can't do that here.” Recently, one problem child was about to be expelled for disruption and bad temper. Several of the girls in the fourth-grade class approached the principal and asked if they might arrange a group confrontation to set the problem straight.
In fact, only one punishment seems necessary at Holy Name: Order is maintained by threatening immediate suspension. Students come to feel that the worst punishment is being kept away from the classroom. At the end of each day, and at the end of the school year, many of Sister Owen's children don't want to go home. At Holy Name, and other inner-city religious schools, these children find peace, order and love. No wonder parents speak of being “blessed.”
Jason Boffetti is project coordinator for the Washington, D.C.-based Faith and Reason Institute.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Jason Boffetti ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Education Notebook DATE: 12/19/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 19-25, 1999 ----- BODY:Teachers Help Kids Cheat
ASSOCIATED PRESS, Dec. 7—Instead of catching cheaters, New York teachers were caught helping cheaters.
Teachers and administrators at 32 New York City schools helped students cheat on standardized tests by providing them with questions in advance and even marking test forms for them, a special investigator for city schools charged.
His report describes crude cheating schemes designed to improve elementary and middle schools' performance on city and state tests, the Associated Press reported.
“Certainly this is the largest case of its kind anywhere in the country,” Edward Stancik told the AP. Stancik's job is to investigate the city's 1,100 public schools.
In one case, third-graders reported an exam proctor told them to write their reading test answers on a piece of scrap paper before putting them on the official test, then the proctor — a school principal — allegedly came around to point out incorrect answers.
As a result, Stancik said, scores at one school improved from 29% of third-graders reading at the appropriate grade level to 51% reading at grade level.
Proctors at some schools gave answers outright or even wrote on a child's exam, the report says.
Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew said he was taking Stancik's report seriously and would perform his own review of the allegations. He said all 52 school employees named in the report have been removed from their jobs pending the results of the investigation.
Dayton Honors Elizabeth Dole
UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON, Dec. 2— Elizabeth Dole will receive the first Leadership with Virtue Award from the University of Dayton at a banquet there on Feb. 10.
The festivity is part of yearlong celebrations of the university's 150th anniversary, Brother Raymond L. Fitz, the school's president, announced in a statement.
Brother Fitz said the award would honor nationally and internationally recognized leaders who try to integrate a sense of moral commitment in their work and their lives.
“Her many contributions to the health and welfare of humanity,” he said, “confirms her dedication and, thus, the appropriateness as our first honoree.”
Attack on Menorah Denounced
ZENIT, Dec. 7—Catholic and Jewish leaders at Georgetown University have united to denounce the vandalism carried out against a menorah placed on the campus by the Jewish Students Association, ZENIT reported.
The candelabrum symbolizes the biblical liberation of the Jewish people. The vandalism, which is thought to have occurred in the early morning hours of Dec. 4, was first noticed by university security after 6 a.m. The broken glass of the electric light bulbs of the menorah was found shattered on the floor.
On Dec. 6, Cardinal Newman Society President Manuel A. Miranda joined with university chaplain Father Adam Bunnell and the president of Georgetown, Jesuit Father Leo J. O'donovan, in a meeting led by Georgetown's Jewish Students Association to react to the violence, the news service said.
“Violence done to the faith traditions of any people is a violence done to all people of faith, and to all who love American freedom,” said Miranda. “It displays the result of an increasingly secular culture hostile to public expressions of faith and ignorant of the deep meaning of such symbols as the menorah and the crucifix.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Government to Investigate Human Life International DATE: 12/19/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 19-25, 1999 ----- BODY:FRONT ROYAL, Va.—The National Labor Relations Board in Baltimore announced Dec. 10 that it will hear a complaint filed by fomer employees of Human Life International, according to the two sides in the dispute.
The National Labor Relations Board did not return calls by press time.
John Cavanaugh-O'Keefe and two other former employees of Human Life International, brought their situation to the attention of the National Labor Relations Board after they were fired in January by the pro-life educational organization based in Northern Va.
Cavanaugh-O'Keefe claims that he lost his job for trying to unionize workers. “In December (of 1998) a group of 10 people met to talk about labor conditions. A memo of that meeting was given to Father Welch. Of the six mentioned on that memo, three were fired,” said Cavanaugh-O'Keefe.
“It is illegal to fire someone because they're trying to start a union,” Cavanaugh-O'Keefe told the Register.
Anne DeLong, a spokeswoman for Human Life International, said O'Keefe's allegations are “patently false.”
While she refused to discuss why the other two individuals were fired, DeLong denied that Cavanaugh-O'Keefe was fired for trying to start a union.
“Mr. O'Keefe was fired for insubordination because he presented a dead baby at a staff luncheon after being directed not to do that,” DeLong said to the Register.
DeLong said that CavanaughO'Keefe was trying to change the mission of Human Life International “from an educational organization to an activist organization.”
The complaint will be heard by the National Labor Relations Board in Baltimore in February, said DeLong.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joshua Mercer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Thousands in U.S. Join Abortion Vigil DATE: 12/19/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 19-25, 1999 ----- BODY:MONSEY, N.Y.—The 25 people gathered in prayer outside the Gynecare abortion facility here Dec. 12 had lots of company — nationally.
While the pro-lifers sang hymns and prayed the rosary in this town 30 miles north of New York, thousands elsewhere in the country converged on abortion facilities armed with a replica of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
The image was taken to at least 606 of the 928 abortion facilities in the United States, according to Dr. Cathy Dowling of Ann Arbor, Mich., one of the three chief organizers of the event.
Dec. 12 was the day chosen because it was the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, whose image is preserved on a cloak of a 16th-century Mexican Indian peasant. She is the patroness of the unborn.
In 25 states there was a prayer vigil at every abortion site, said Dowling, who along with her friends Deanna Aikman and Lorrie Anderberg spearheaded the initiative.
The trio from Michigan had hoped pro-lifers would take a replica of the Guadalupe image to every U.S. abortion clinic as a means to end the killing of the unborn.
Dowling said the initiative intentionally avoided the mainstream media.
“We didn't want to draw attention to it from the secular press,” she told the Register. “We wanted to focus on prayer. We don't want the harassment that I think the secular press might bring.”
Peggy Beirne, who organized the vigil outside the Gynecare facility in Monsey, believes it will be God who ends abortion. “We can't end this as human beings,” she asserted. “We're gonna end this with prayer and fasting.”
Prayer was the reason why an abortion facility in nearby Nanuet, N.Y., was closed, she added.
“It was opened and closed in four months,” Beirne said. “They said, ‘It's because we didn't make any money.’ Yeah, we know why you didn't make any money. There were people praying out there every day.”
Planned Parenthood, the largest entity in the U.S. abortion industry, did not return calls by press time to comment on the group's initiative.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joshua Mercer ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: Following a Different Drummer DATE: 12/19/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 19-25, 1999 ----- BODY:The song “The Little Drummer Boy” has a special meaning to the owner of Vintage Drum Center, a Libertyville, Iowa-based mail-order percussion business. The 13,000 people who receive his quarterly catalog get his pro-life views along with it. For more than a year now, he has included a variety of opinion pieces, artwork and cartoons to advance the cause of life and exhort musicians to ply their trade morally. In a recent interview with Register staff writer Brian McGuire, the drummer said that not only have his efforts to evangelize the music community brought blessings to his life, they've also been good for business.
McGuire: When and why did you decide to communicate your pro-life views to your customers?
Ingberman: I've been a pro-lifer at heart for a very long time. But the impetus to do something about it didn't begin to grow until after I became a Catholic in 1993. Soon after, I picked up a pamphlet at church entitled “Sing a Little Louder.” It compared Hitler's Holocaust to the holocaust of abortion and how the grip of fear and silence allowed that kind of evil to go unchecked.
I was horrified.
I'm a Jewish convert and both my parents are survivors of the Holocaust. I have seen firsthand that damage it has done to them. I never got to know my grandparents or most of my aunts of uncles — they were all exterminated. After reading the pamphlet, I knew that I had to do something to defend those babies.
It was shortly after that that my wife, Carol, attended a pro-life presentation by Joe Scheidler of the Pro-Life Action League. [Scheidler] sparked something in us and got our creative juices flowing. After that, we prayed and prayed about what we could do to fight abortion and what kept coming to our minds was to start with what we had — our mail-order business. The challenge was how to present, in an appropriate and relevant way, the pro-life message in a retail catalog for musicians.
Then, one morning, about one and a half years ago, I was eating breakfast and noticed that Carol had left a “precious feet” lapel pin on the table. It's an exact replica of two baby's feet 10 weeks after conception. As I looked at those feet, I suddenly pictured them grown into full size and playing the bass and high-hat. I knew that some feet wouldn't make it because they would be aborted. This is how the concept for our first pro-life ad was born. At the time, we didn't know how our subscribers would react to a pro-life ad, but we felt God was calling us to do this.
How do you respond to people who say your ads are irrelevant to making music?
We had surprisingly few objections from subscribers, only three or four. The positive responses outnumber the negative ones 20 to 1.
I explained to one subscriber that the ads actually are relevant and referred to the text of one of our ads. It says that America's 26-and-under age group has one third fewer musicians and audience members because over the past 26 years, one third of our children have been aborted. Then I went on to say that where human life is at stake, whether we're musicians, educators, or businessmen, or whoever we are, it is relevant to us all.
Then I said that I have a moral obligation to defend life, and a businessman is not excused from that. I don't know if I was able to change the minds of those three or four people. I can only hope that a seed was planted and that the Lord will take care of the rest.
Has anyone in the music community applauded your efforts to defend life or have you changed anyone's mind on the issue?
Yes, many have. We've received phone calls, faxes, letters and e-mails and we still get them. Some customers even come right out and [tell] me that the reason they are buying from us was because we had taken a public pro-life stand. Some have also told us the same because of the editorials in our catalog concerning moral responsibility in the arts. As for our ads prompting anyone to change their mind about abortion, well, I hope they have. But so far, no one has told us so.
I remember one customer telling me that his friend who produced rap music read one of our editorials and stopped producing the music. His friend said that he never realized what kind of effect his music was having on his audience. We have had requests from churches, colleges, customers, and even an apartment complex for permission to reprint and distribute our editorials. One of them has appeared in a few music industry trade magazines.
Do you have any plans to network with others in the music community to spread the pro-life message more effectively?
I have thought about the power of a united effort of not just pro-life music businesses but of all pro-life businesses, and recently announced the formation of a nationwide coalition called the National Coalition of Businesses for Life. Its purpose will be to help end abortion and promote life. As I see it, becoming a member of the coalition would not require taking a pro-life stand, though I hope many who join will.
What effect have your ads had on business?
Over the past one and a half years that our company has been running the pro-life ads, we've seen our business improve instead of decline. I strongly suspect that the perceived risk-level for a business taking public pro-life stance is based more on myth than reality. We have even had customers come right out and tell us that the reason they were buying from us was because we had taken a public stance. I firmly believe that there exist many potential customers who would definitely patronize a business that they know is taking a public pro-life stance.
For information about the National Coalition of Businesses for Life, contact: Vintage Drum Center, Attn: NCBC, 2243 Ivory Drive Libertyville, IA 52567. Phone: (575) 693-8691
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: The Gospel Of Life DATE: 12/19/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 19-25, 1999 ----- BODY:In an ad limina address to German bishops last month, Pope John Paul II spoke out against the participation of the German Church in abortion counseling programs that result in the issuing of certificates that can be used to obtain an abortion. In his Nov. 18 address, the Holy Father alluded to the Nazi regime that came to power in Germany and, later, in his own native Poland as being a primary reason for his strong pro-life posture. (See ProLife ProFile, this page).
“Perhaps Providence has entrusted the Chair of Peter to me to be a passionate ‘advocate of life’ on the threshold of the third millennium. In fact, I had to experience from an early age, during a particularly dark chapter in the history of this tormented century, how human life was trampled upon and systematically destroyed not very far from my native town of Wadowice!”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life -------- TITLE: Did You Know? DATE: 12/19/1999 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 19-25, 1999 ----- BODY:Post Abortion Syndrome reveals itself in a variety of ways, including:
• Substance and Alcohol Abuse: “It is common for substance abuse to be seen posttrauma,” said Dr. Vincent Rue, author of Post-abortion Trauma: Controversy, Diagnosis & Treatment. He also found that “Individuals relying upon illegal or prescription drugs attempt to self-medicate to avoid disturbing symptoms, including intrusive thoughts, nightmares, flashbacks etc.”
• Admittance to Hospitals: There is a 50% higher incidence of women admitted to psychiatric hospital care after they had an abortion compared to women after they delivered a child, finds Henry David in a 1981 article for Family Planning Perspectives.
• Child Abuse: “Having an abortion may decrease an individual's instinctual restraint against the occasional rage felt toward those dependent on her care. When abortion increases guilt and self-hatred, the parent may displace it onto a child,” wrote Philip Ney in a 1979 article for the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. (Source: Culture of Life Foundation, Washington, D.C.)
----- EXCERPT: Facts Of Life ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture Of Life --------