DENVER—The case of a mother ordered by a judge to shield her daughter from “homophobic” religious doctrine could have a chilling effect on religious freedom, legal experts close to the case say.
And, with the Nov. 18 Massachusetts court ruling ordering the state to allow homosexual marriage, the case presents a signal of what might become unacceptable if homosexual marriage is accepted nationwide.
“The implications on religious freedom are extreme,” said Amy Desai, an attorney for Dr. Cheryl Clark.
Clark, a Denver physician who left the homosexual lifestyle, was ordered in a custody decision to protect her daughter from religious teachings against homosexuality. The judge issued the order because Clark's ex-girlfriend, who is a practicing lesbian, expressed concerns that anti-homosexual teachings might turn the girl against her.
“In some ways this case is a reminder that we need to be careful about our living arrangements,” Desai said. “There are more than just biblical reasons to consider marriage over cohabitation.”
The case goes back to 1995, when Clark adopted an infant daughter. At the time, Clark was in a lesbian relationship with Elsey McLeod, a Denver psychologist.
“Dr. McLeod was not an applicant for the adoption,” Desai argued. “She agreed that Dr. Clark would be the only legal parent. Dr. McLeod told Dr. Clark that she did not want to have children. Dr. McLeod did not participate in the adoption application process nor the expenses.”
Years after the adoption, Clark returned to her Christian roots and decided to end her relationship with McLeod. But McLeod was not ready to end her relationship with Clark's adopted child. Though McLeod took no interest in the adoption, actively dissociating herself from it, she developed a relationship with the child and argued that she had court for joint custody and was awarded what Desai describes as “almost equal” custody of the girl April 28.
Although McLeod was granted joint custody, Denver District Judge John Coughlin assigned Clark full responsibility for the child's religious upbringing. McLeod, however, had expressed concerns to the court because Clark's mainline Protestant church contains brochures from Focus on the Family and Promise Keepers—two Colorado-based Christian ministries McLeod considers homophobic.
Responding to McLeod's concerns about the brochures, Coughlin inserted a caveat into the orders pertaining to religious education. He wrote that Clark must shield her daughter from any religious training that “could be considered homophobic.”
“This is so broad that we have no idea how Dr. Clark is to obey this order,” Desai said. “This could mean that the child can't even attend church. McLeod could argue that this order has been violated if Dr. Clark takes the child to a heterosexual wedding. What can Dr. Clark teach the child about marriage and dating without violating this order?”
Clark's legal team filed a 31-page appeal in November, and the Colorado Court of Appeals is expected to hear the case next spring. Her lawyers hope the appeals court will reduce or eliminate McLeod's custodial rights, and at the very least they want removal of parenting restrictions pertaining to homosexual education.
McLeod returned a call from the Register but said her lawyer has forbidden her from talking to the media because her answer to Clark's appeal has not been filed yet.
Ability to Teach
It's likely the custody orders will be overturned, Denver attorney and radio talk-show host Dan Caplis said.
But if it isn't, Coughlin's “homophobic” order might set a precedent that could ultimately cripple the ability of parents to instill values of any kind in their children without court interference, said Caplis, who is Catholic.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that parents have the “first responsibility for the education of their children” (Nos. 2223-2231).
“The home is well suited for education in the virtues,” it says, adding, “Parents have a grave responsibility to give good example to their children.”
The Catechism goes on to say that parents have the right to choose a school for their children that “corresponds to their own convictions.” Public authorities, it says, “have the duty of guaranteeing this parental right and of ensuring the concrete conditions for its exercise.”
Nevertheless, homosexual activists are applauding Coughlin's ruling as a breakthrough. Though the circumstances facing Clark and McLeod are unusual, homosexual parents say Coughlin's order will help in another, more common situation.
“The home is well suited for education in the virtues,” it says, adding, “Parents have a grave responsibility to give good example to their children.”
“It's very common for one party in a heterosexual marriage to discover his or her homosexuality,” said Angeline Acain, publisher of Gay Parent magazine in Forest Hills, N.Y. “After the breakup, it's common for the heterosexual parent to make disparaging remarks about homosexuality to a child caught in the middle. So this is a wonderful ruling for gay parents caught up in those situations. It could be very helpful to them and their children.”
Lee Inkmann says it goes even further than that, establishing legal intolerance for “homophobia.” Inkmann said she's a practicing Catholic who's a member of St. Mary's Parish in Eugene, Ore., but was “married” to a woman in a Unitarian Church before returning to her Catholic roots.
Inkmann is in a legal dispute with the parish elementary school, saying the principal and pastor denied her adopted preschool-aged daughter's enrollment because the girl has two mothers. Mediation begins this month.
“It's obvious that my daughter is going to hear all about how terrible her two mothers are because they're lesbians, and she'll hear that constantly in the course of her everyday life,” Inkmann said. “So it's wonderful that a judge has forbidden a parent to instill anti-homosexual sentiments in a child. This is in the child's best interest.”
Inkmann thinks children will get along better in society if they are not taught homosexuality is wrong. Although the Church and Scripture say homosexual acts are sinful, Inkmann refers to anti-homosexual sentiment as “hateful bigotry.”
That is wrong, said Allan Carlson, editor and publisher of The Family in America magazine and president of the Howard Center for Family Religion and Society in Rockford, Ill.
While he says nobody should be hateful of or bigoted toward homosexuals, Carlson argues it's perfectly normal and responsible for a parent to teach a child that homosexuality is abnormal and wrong.
He disputes that Judge Coughlin's order will help children at all, and if upheld he says it will only hinder the ability of parents to instill truth and values in children.
“This concept of the courts doing whatever is in the ‘best interest of the child’ sounds good on the surface, but really it's just something that's said in order to let judges do whatever they want,” Carlson said. “What's in the best interest of the child is that the parents teach the child right from wrong.”
It's difficult, Carlson said, for members of the modern judiciary to allow parents to teach their children morality because it's a concept the courts don't understand.
“This thing in Denver is an astounding decision, but it's one that shows the total collapse of morality in our judicial system,” Carlson said. “Our judiciary is incapable of understanding the difference between moral and immoral, normal and abnormal, right and wrong. Our legal system rests on the concept of moral order, and this judge openly embraces and flaunts a lack of moral order.”
Wayne Laugesen writes from Boulder, Colorado.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Wayne Laugesen ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Too Much Sex on TV, Say Kids - And Ratings DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:PORTLAND, Ore.—Sophomore Janelle (not her real name) and a few friends at De La Salle North Catholic High School in Portland were chatting about one of Britney Spears' latest videos tied to the release of her new album. In the video, the pop icon does pelvic gyrations against a wall, and aging pop queen Madonna is on the other side matching her moves.
The video ends almost with an open-mouth kiss between the singers, but Madonna vanishes. Another track on the album—“Touch of My Hand”—is an ode to masturbation. And in another video for the song “Breathe on Me,” Spears performs a shockingly suggestive dance sequence with two female dancers.
One of Janelle's friends liked what she saw. The others thought it was “okay, but a little out there.” Fifteen-year-old Janelle said she doesn't like Spears, whose fan base is really much younger. It's her 7-year-old sister who adores the pop icon and knows all of her lyrics by heart. But what about the sex? Isn't that too much?
“Well, yeah,” she replied flatly. “I guess. But everything has sex in it.”
Sex, it seems, has become so ubiquitous in entertainment that it is as unremarkable as fast food. A British study released in November found that two-thirds of 9- to 17-year-olds thought there was “too much” sexual content in programs they had seen, though 64% kept watching anyway. The young subjects were described by researchers as “media savvy,” “cynical” and “not the naïve or incompetent consumers they are frequently assumed to be.”
One 12-year-old boy interviewed by the researchers remarked after watching Spears' “I'm a Slave 4U” video: “She's selling us her looks, basically. I think she's not got anything between her ears—and her voice isn't really that good, either.”
“There is a sense here that sex is used to compensate for other deficiencies,” one British researcher remarked to the newspaper The Independent.
It might be the same sense that drove American viewers to change the channel when NBC's new show “Coupling” (dubbed by the network as “‘Friends’ but raunchier“) and Fox's ”Skin“ (set in the pornography industry) aired this fall. Both shows, heavily touted, were dropped for low ratings.
But it's hard to conclude that the sexual content alone was what viewers rejected, since prime time is so saturated with sex and some shows still survive. A Kaiser Family Foundation report released earlier this year revealed that 71% of prime-time shows contain sexual content. Of the top 20 shows geared to teen-agers, 83% contained sexual content, 20% of them dealing with sexual intercourse. On average, teen shows had six or seven scenes per hour with sexual content.
It is not just the quantity of sex that has increased. In the cable wars, programmers are breaking boundaries while competing for viewers. ”They keep pushing the envelope," said Melissa Caldwell, director of research and publications for the Parent Television Council.
The result is a creeping coarseness. Homosexual themes, once taboo, are commonplace, and there is a growing focus on fetishes. The most popular prime-time show, with about 26 million viewers, is CSI (Crime Scene Investigation). Besides lingering over grotesquely maimed corpses, several episodes have featured murders tied to bizarre sexual practices—at a fur fetishists convention, for example, where investigators lifted evidence from a bunny costume.
In a section on the Ninth Commandment, the Catechism of the Catholic Church subsection titled “The Battle for Purity” criticizes “voyeuristic explorations of the human body in certain advertisements” and “the solicitations of certain media that go too far in the exhibition of intimate things” (No. 2523).
Caldwell cites Nielsen-ratings data that CSI is commonly watched by more than a million 2- to 11 year-old children while another million 12- to 17-year-olds tune in.
Another Nielsen-ranked Top 10 show watched by thousands of children—CBS' “Without a Trace”—recently broadcast group teen sex during prime time. The Parent Television Council has urged viewers to flood the Federal Communications Commission with complaints about the show, but Caldwell said the FCC has a “history of complete inaction enforcing indecency laws. They're just terrified of being accused of infringing freedom of speech.”
Not Just TV
The sex messages children consume viewing an average 28 hours of TV weekly are reinforced by other entertainment. The FCC released findings in October that 81% of “undercover” 13- to 16-year-olds were able to buy R-rated movies on DVD, 83% purchased explicit-labeled recordings and 36% could purchase tickets to an R-rated film at a theater.
That data fits with a study for the Canadian Teachers' Federation released in mid-November that found half of sixth-grade students have seen R-rated material. By the time they reached grades seven and eight, the number climbed to three-quarters.
Even the Christmas catalog for Abercrombie&Fitch clothiers, geared at 10- to 13-year-olds, portrays overt group sex, teen nudity, men kissing and has a “sexpertise” column advising on “sex for three” and recommending readers “go down” on a date at the movies.
Nothing is safe from sex—entertainment marketed to children as young as preschool is laced with raunchy content. The loveable old Dr. Seuss reader The Cat in the Hat was scripted into a new movie by former “Seinfeld” writers and stars Mike Myers (of Austin Powers). Jokes include the cat lusting over a picture of the children's mother.
But is all-sex, all-the-time entertainment for kids impacting their behavior?
A 2003 Common Sense Media poll found that 88% of parents of young children think the amount of sexual content in media contributes to children becoming sexually active at younger ages. Something has to account for the fact that now half of teens in grades nine through 12 have had sex. And teens account for up to 25% of cases of sexually transmitted diseases, though they are only 10% of the population.
Robert Thompson, professor of television and pop culture at Syracuse University, thinks the impact of what kids watch is overstated.
“Television doesn't make children want to have sex, biology does,” he said. Thompson thinks the lack of regulation has allowed “television to mature as an entertainment” and become more “sophisticated.”
“Different people will disagree about what is appropriate for their kids to watch, which is why you would never want to codify it in legislation,” he said.
The Parents Television Council argues that the entire commercial advertising world is based on the opposite assumption—that viewers will imitate what they see.
But Thompson does share a view with the Parent Television Council, which wants pressure brought to bear on Hollywood through government regulation—both think ultimate power is with the consumer.
You can wait for the FCC to regulate or Hollywood to change its mores, Thompson said, “but your children will be grown” by then.
More than half of American kids have a television in their bedroom. “You don't tell kids they can't drink and then put a mini-fridge stocked with booze in their bedroom,” Thompson said. “Parents should treat the television set like the liquor cabinet.”
Again, the Catechism has something to say about the situation. Emphasizing that parents have a right and duty to educate their children, it goes on to say: “The home is well suited for education in the virtues. This requires an apprenticeship in self-denial, sound judgment and self-mastery—the preconditions of true freedom. … Parents have a grave responsibility to give good example to their children” (No. 2223).
As Thompson said, parents should stop being hypocritical. “If 95% of Americans really think television is that bad, then they should stop watching,” he said. “Like a lot of other parenting, nobody ever said it would be easy.”
Celeste McGovern writes from Victoria, British Columbia.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Celeste McGovern ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The 'New' Liturgy at Age 40 DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:BURKE, Va.—Janice McKibben was a young adult at the time of the Second Vatican Council. She recalls the controversy at the time when the Mass was beginning to be celebrated in English, and even today she hears a certain nostalgia for the Latin.
There was much confusion, much pain, and great suffering over the new liturgy.
But she adapted readily to the changes.
Half a lifetime ago, the Mass looked and sounded very different. The priest faced the same direction as the people. There were two Scripture readings and the same cycle of readings was repeated each year. And it was not unusual for members of the congregation to pray devotions, such as the rosary, during Mass.
Today the priest is turned to face the people. More of the Scriptures are read, because of the three-year cycle of readings, the additional reading on Sundays and the introduction of the Responsorial Psalm. And the congregation almost universally participates through vocal prayer and more singing throughout the Mass.
What put these changes in motion was Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, the first major document issued by the Second Vatican Council. The document's 40th anniversary was Dec. 4.
“My feeling is the Mass is the Mass, and they made it more wonderful, and more community and more beautiful so that people can follow it,” McKibben said. “It's more important to people than it was before. [The Tridentine rite] was still you and the Lord, but it was more isolating than this. People would say their prayers and walk out and that was it.”
Sacrosanctum Concilium was issued along with Inter Mirifica, a document on the media and both were followed by 14 other documents during the next two years.
But it was the 130-paragraph Sacrosanctum that took the first spotlight and that has deeply affected the life of the Church through its revival of the Mass and the other sacraments, liturgical experts say. Liturgical reform had been under way for at least a century, but until Sacrosanctum the Mass had undergone no official, universal change since 1570, after the Council of Trent.
“The fathers of Vatican II published the constitution on the liturgy before they published the constitution on the Church. It was a shot heard ‘round the world,” said Capuchin Father Edward Foley, professor of liturgy and music and chairman of the department of word and worship at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. “They built the most unexpected, inventive, prophetic liturgical document the Roman Church has ever seen.”
Mother Tongue
Most noticeable was the change called for in Article 36. Although the council said the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites, the “use of the mother tongue, whether in the Mass, the administration of the sacraments or other parts of the liturgy, frequently may be of great advantage to the people.” It therefore allowed its wider use.
Overall the change from Latin to the vernacular has been “marvelous,” said Deacon Owen Cummings, professor of scriptural and liturgical theology at Mount Angel Seminary near Portland, Ore.
“I don't want to get into the debate about translations and so on. I think something has been lost in translation; many people would admit to that. But the overwhelming success of the English-language Mass is simply a statement of fact,” he said.
“While I was catechized prior to the council and had a great love for the Mass—even though I was an altar boy in a sense one didn't appreciate what was going on because it was in Latin,” he said. “I think of my parents, who were uneducated [and] didn't know Latin but were very devout. I recall with great pleasure how much my mother got out of Mass [in English] simply because it was immediately intelligible and accessible to her.”
The use of the vernacular has facilitated another key theme in the document, that of “full and active participation,” a concept first articulated long before the council by St. Pius X, pope from 1903 to 1914.
“I think in a general kind of way, externally, people are participating more,” said Dominican Father Giles Dimock, professor of sacramental and liturgical theology at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. “The liturgy is in their own language, which I think most people are happy with, and I think the main lines of other sacraments in terms of the reform have been successful.”
Father Foley said one of the greatest changes with the new rite is the incorporation of more Scripture. Paragraph 51 of Sacrosanctum states: “The treasures of the Bible are to be opened up more lavishly, so that richer fare may be provided for the faithful at the table of God's word.”
“We're not biblically literate, but we're biblically conversant in a way we never were,” Father Foley said. “Think about the preaching 40 years ago. By and large preaching in the Catholic Church today is scripturally based. Back then they gave sermons, so it could be on somebody's moral agenda, it could have been on a current dogma, it could have been catechetical; it didn't have to have any connection with the liturgy. That's radically different.”
Another theme from Sacrosanctum is that of “noble simplicity” in the rite itself, with fewer repetitions and ritual gestures, and also with regard to sacred art, as noted in paragraphs 124 and 125:
“Ordinaries, by the encouragement and favor they show to art that is truly sacred, should strive after noble beauty rather than mere sumptuous display … The practice of placing sacred images in churches so that they may be venerated by the faithful is to be maintained. Nevertheless their number should be moderate and their relative positions should reflect right order. For otherwise they may create confusion among the Christian people and foster devotion of doubtful orthodoxy.”
But the whole area of Church art has been problematic since the council and the interpretation too one-sided, Father Dimock said.
“Why are our churches so barren? Why are there no images, no mosaics, no freschi, no statues? It's nowhere clear in any of the Vatican documents that all artwork was to disappear,” he said.
Father Foley suggested two possible causes.
“If you take the phrase by Pius XII that the liturgy is done by Christ, head and members, then you have to make Christ and the assembly strategically central. Many folks interpreted that as a kind of whitewashing of the churches,” he said. “Also, in the United States there was a great document on environment and art in Catholic worship; unfortunately all of the illustrations in the original publication were from one person who has a monastic heart.”
Continuing Reform
Music is another problem, Father Dimock said. Although Gregorian chant is to be given pride of place (Sacrosanctum, paragraph 116), it has in fact almost completely disappeared, he said.
He sees the key to completing the reforms as enriching Church music and architecture, and to give more prominence to where the Blessed Sacrament is reserved.
“That has a great deal to do with the atmosphere and the attitude with which we approach the holy liturgy,” he said. “The Holy Father heavily emphasizes the sacred, transcendent, eschatological dimension, and those dimensions need to complement the horizontal, which are true.”
Deacon Cummings, too, sees the need for developing the “vertical dimension”—the people-to-God dimension alongside the person-to-person relationship—in fulfilling the vision of Sacrosanctum.
“If we were to bring to the revised rite as it is just now all the warmth of devotion and attention, all the care to the solemnity of the celebration that's already in place in terms of the rite,” he said, “that's the one thing that would bring to completion what the liturgical reform lacks.”
Ellen Rossini writes from Richardson, Texas.
----- EXCERPT: What Happened to the Vatican II Mass? ----- EXTENDED BODY: Ellen Rossini ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Umbert's New Conception: Cartoon Book DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:SCRANTON, Pa.—Illustrator Gary Cangemi is not a cartoon, but he felt like one when he conceived his pro-life comic character Umbert the Unborn.
“The proverbial cartoon light bulb went off above my head,” Cangemi said.
Little did he expect the cartoon would draw the nationwide attention it has. Cangemi hopes the comic strip's success will translate into success for the pro-life movement.
Cangemi created the comic strip in spring 2001. He had been working as a freelance graphic artist for 20 years, but he was dissatisfied with his work.
“I hadn't really produced anything that I could look back and be proud of,” he said.
Cangemi's mother had recently died from cancer, and he was seeking a new direction for his career.
“I felt my mother urging me to pray for God's guidance,” he recalled. “So I prayed, ‘God, please give me a direction to go with my career.’”
While thumbing through an old scrapbook, Cangemi stumbled across a four-panel political editorial cartoon he had created 10 years earlier for his “Off the Board” feature in Scranton's newspaper, The Metro. In the cartoon, the baby overhears the voice of an abortionist describing the child as an “unviable, unwanted piece of protoplasm.” At the end of the cartoon the baby cries out, “Speak for yourself!”
“As soon as I saw the baby's face, the light bulb went off,” Cangemi said.
Cangemi proceeded to draw a dozen sample comic strips and soon realized his character needed a name.
“I wanted a name that sounded heroic,” he explained, “like Richard the Lionhearted, but I wanted it to be alliterative so I came up with ‘_____the Unborn.’”
At first, he was unable to come up with a “U” name until he remembered the name of an author he had recently read—Umberto Eco.
“Umberto sounded too ethnic,” Cangemi said. “So I knocked off the ‘o,’ and Umbert was conceived.”
Before sending the cartoon off to newspapers, Cangemi wanted the input of a colleague. He approached Father James Paisley, pastor of St. Maria Goretti Catholic Parish in Laflin, Pa.
“Gary expected that I would think it was a cute idea and move on from there,” Father Paisley said, “but I was overwhelmed with the potential the project had. The cartoon gives a name, face and personality to the unborn baby within. I started laughing because I was thrilled by it.”
Within a week, with Father Paisley's assistance, Cangemi obtained then Scranton Bishop James Timlin's blessing. With that, Cangemi sent the cartoon off to about 150 Catholic newspapers.
“The very first telephone call I received was from executive editor Tom Hoopes at the National Catholic Register,” Cangemi said. “He told me he loved it and he wanted to use it on [the paper's] Culture of Life page.”
The cartoon made its debut in the Register in June 2001 and has been gaining exposure ever since.
Breathing Life
Cangemi possesses a vivid imagination. He has illustrated Umbert as an astronaut and a deep-sea diver. He's got him using a computer connected to the “Interwomb” to send “pre-mail,” playing sports and even hosting his own game show—“Unborn Babies in Jeopardy.” He's also drawn an embryonic version of Umbert.
“I want to show that Umbert is a person at all phases,” Cangemi said. “There is no trimester in which Umbert becomes a person. He's a person from the moment of conception.”
The cartoon has resonated well with a variety of audiences—pro-life advocates, expectant mothers and fathers, and children. One 7-year-old boy from Kentucky wrote to ask when Umbert was going to be born.
“He's been in there long enough,” Kevin wrote. “Don't you think it's time for him to be born?”
Cangemi wrote back saying that, like Charlie Brown, Umbert is a cartoon character who is frozen in time. He told him that if Umbert is born, the cartoon will end, and he made Kevin a promise.
“I promised him that the day all unborn children have the legal right to be born, that will be Umbert's birthday,” Cangemi said. “It's a promise that I hope I will live long enough to keep.”
The cartoon is currently read by more than 400,000 readers nationwide. It has been picked up by approximately 20 publications as well as many parish bulletins.
In December, Circle Media (the Register's parent company) will publish Umbert the Unborn: A Womb with a View. The book features a collection of 120 full-color cartoons as well as a series of page-by-page illustrations of Umbert developing from a single cell to a full-term baby and an array of Umbert's educational facts of life.
“There is no trimester in which Umbert becomes a person. He's a person from the moment of conception.”
Cangemi, who has three children of his own, hopes the book can help educate children and change hearts and minds on the issue of abortion in a non-threatening way.
“If we can raise a whole generation of children respecting life—for whom it would be inconceivable to want to kill Umbert, the tide will turn,” he said.
Cangemi has other plans for spreading Umbert's message. He is unveiling an Umbert Web site, complete with an animated version of Umbert. In addition, he is launching a daily version of the cartoon for Catholic.net, and he also plans to offer the comic strip for syndication in the mainstream press.
He stresses the importance of using humor.
“Charles Schulz was the first cartoonist to introduce Christian themes into a mainstream art form,” Cangemi said. “I see Umbert as a kind of prenatal Bob Hope, entertaining the front-line troops of the pro-life cause and giving them a much-needed morale boost.”
Tim Drake writes from St. Cloud, Minnesota.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Tim Drake ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Man Who Wrote on the Angel's Blackboard DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:Father Andrew Apostoli, a Franciscan Friar of the Renewal, was ordained by Archbishop Fulton Sheen.
Now he hopes to have him declared a saint.
Father Apostoli is the vice postulator for the canonization cause for Archbishop Sheen, who wowed millions of television viewers with his preaching in the 1950s.
The Diocese of Peoria, Ill., Sept. 29 officially opened the tribunal that will research Archbishop Sheen's life and virtues. Father Apostoli, himself well known to television audiences through EWTN, spoke with Register staff writer Tim Drake as the 24th anniversary of the archbishop's death approached Dec. 9.
You have a personal connection with Archbishop Sheen, don't you?
Yes. He had been appointed to the Diocese of Rochester, N.Y., in October 1966 and arrived in December. At the time, the Capuchins had a seminary in Geneva, N.Y. I had met Archbishop Sheen when he had made a visit to Geneva just before Christmas.
I had asked my superiors if Archbishop Sheen could ordain me. Archbishop Sheen's secretary had told my director that everyone wanted to be ordained by Archbishop Sheen. He said since I was to be ordained alone and desired an ordination earlier in the year it was unlikely Archbishop Sheen would ordain me. For two days I was in a deep depression.
My director came to me with a letter con-taining eight stamps and told me, “Go and mail this letter.” It was addressed to the archbishop and was marked “personal and confidential.” I ended up being ordained by Archbishop Sheen on March 16, 1967.
Archbishop Sheen had a great love of the priesthood. He said in my ordination homily that if there is any key to the reform of the Church and the salvation of the world it lies in the renewal of the priesthood. He was a spiritual father to me. “There is a great joy when bishops have sons in Christ,” he said. At the end of his homily he said, “The emotional thrill of your first Mass will fade, but the joy of being a priest grows.” That's been very true.
I later met him on a priest retreat in upstate New York. More than 250 priests from seven states came to attend a day of recollection. I also saw him give a talk to more than 2,000 cadets at Eisenhower Hall at West Point.
When was his cause officially opened?
It was opened Sept. 14, 2002. The Archbishop Fulton John Sheen Foundation in Peoria is the promoter of the cause, and Diocese of Peoria Bishop Daniel Jenky is the sponsor.
How did you get involved in his cause?
Gregory Ladd of Indiana and Lawrence Hickey of New York started the Archbishop Fulton John Sheen Foundation in 1998. Their intent was to keep alive the archbishop's ideas and promote knowledge of his teachings. The foundation is now promoting the canonization process with the cooperation of Bishop Jenky.
I was asked by a few members of the board to consider becoming the postulator [Father Apostoli has since become vice postulator, and Andrea Ambrosi of Rome has been appointed postulator, the Church official who pleads for a person's beatification or canonization].
Although my schedule is very busy already, I believe very strongly in the canonization. With proper help from secretaries, I see my job as one to inspire and keep the process moving. It is my responsibility to help the cause move along, to make the person better known, raise the necessary funds and contact the potential witnesses.
What took place on Sept. 29?
We held the opening of the diocesan tribunal of inquiry and a prayer service at the Church of St. Peter in Peoria. Members of the tribunal took an oath vowing to faithfully report on the life and works of Fulton Sheen.
Do you have a sense of what the cause will cost?
We are appealing to people in general and looking for donors. The more we are able to raise, [the more] it will expedite our work. We have to hire people to type the testimonies and notarize them. There are also costs for the transportation of witnesses, and you have to pay people to translate the testimonies into Italian.
The theological commission will need to review all of Fulton Sheen's writings. Do they also need to listen to his tapes and watch all of his television programs?
I do not know, but I know Archbishop Sheen was a teacher. It's been said that if you want to be a saint, don't write too much. We're going to have our hands full. Archbishop Sheen appeared on television and radio and wrote in some 62 periodicals. He wrote 66 books and had columns in two newspapers, one that ran for 15 years.
One thing I can say for sure is that the Holy Father is quite aware of Archbishop Sheen's cause being opened. At the time his cause opened, the Pope gave a copy of the decree to a priest who knew Archbishop Sheen well. For the Pope to have that in his hands means the cause is something on his mind and something he is well aware of.
Do you foresee any weaknesses?
Archbishop Sheen was a great teacher but not a great administrator. In his zeal, I think he may have tried to do too much. He found himself the bishop of a diocese at the age of 72 and had had no experience running a diocese.
How long could the process take?
Someone on our foundation was inquiring about another canonization. This was for someone who wasn't yet venerable [the title given to one who has been judged to have lived the cardinal and theological virtues to a heroic degree]. The testimonies for that person were gathered during the Vietnam War. A lot of it depends upon the message of the person and their popularity.
There is nothing as powerful as the saint whose time has come. We can look at the Church here in America and see that Archbishop Sheen was a moral leader, a great example for our priests and bishops— a voice for our times. We need a voice that's right when everyone else is wrong.
One has to keep in mind the extensive effect of Archbishop Sheen's life. He was known worldwide and known by many people in this nation—Catholic, Jewish and Protestant. His canonization is something for our time.… We need someone like him. He is a wealth of information and insight and would be such a great example. Priests and lay people are listening to his tapes all over the world.
What is the next step?
One hundred twenty-six names have been submitted as potential witnesses. We will begin and continue to gather testimonies, and will make the life of Archbishop Sheen better known by disseminating his writings. Members of the tribunal will research Fulton Sheen's life and virtues and formulate apositio, which contains the testimony of virtues.
Tim Drake is the editor of the book Saints of the Jubilee
(1stBooks, 2002).
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Father Andrew Apostoli ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: Vocations Effort Encourages Praying to the Harvest Master - in His Presence DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:NORWICH, Conn.—Jesus instructed his followers to pray to the “master of the harvest to send out laborers” to gather in the “abundant” harvest.
David and Bridie Craig believe in praying for that intention—for more priests to bring souls to Christ—and doing so in the presence of the Lord.
For eight years, the East Lyme, Conn., couple has been active in Eucharistic adoration for vocations in the Diocese of Norwich, Conn. It seemed only natural for them to launch a diocesan perpetual adoration for vocations program this fall.
David Craig believes Norwich now “has become the first diocese in the country to have perpetual adoration for vocations.”
The catalyst came in Rome in November 1996, when the Craigs attended a convention for the Promoters of Adoration for Vocations, sponsored by Regnum Christi, the international apostolic movement founded by Legionary of Christ Father Marcial Maciel. Since the event coincided with the celebration of Pope John Paul II's 50th anniversary to the priesthood, the attendees gave the Pope 120 monstrances to be used for adoration for vocations in 20 countries.
“This is the greatest gift I've been given for my 50th anniversary to the priesthood,” the Pope said as he blessed the monstrances. “May Jesus bless you and your prayers with many vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life.”
As guardians of one of these special monstrances, the Craigs, members of the Norwich diocesan vocation committee, brought it to various churches for adoration, but the practice was random because 60 of the 86 parishes in the diocese had some kind of adoration on different days and hours.
“When we brought the monstrance back,” David Craig said, “we had no perpetual adoration chapel.” It took only two weeks for that to change, when an existing side chapel in Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Gales Ferry was turned into a perpetual adoration chapel.
Within 18 months, the Marian Friary of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Griswold opened an adoration chapel, and St. John's in Cromwell built a chapel onto the church.
“When we got the third chapel going, Bridie came up with the idea they could rotate doing a week praying for vocations,” David Craig explained.
That occasioned the need for a fourth chapel. When St. Mary's in Putnam converted an existing building into the fourth perpetual adoration chapel recently and agreed to set aside one week for this single intention, he said, “we closed the gap.”
Official Beginning
Bishop Michael Cote formally initiated perpetual adoration for vocations in the diocese Sept. 27 when he used the monstrance blessed by the Holy Father in a solemn benediction in St. Mary's in Putnam. The church draws adorers from 13 parishes.
“When they see the different monstrance,” Bridie Craig said, “the adorers know they're praying that whole week for vocations.”
Roger Beliveau, coordinator at St. John's Church in Cromwell, finds that adorers “always comment on the beauty of the monstrance. It reminds me of the importance to pray for vocations to the priesthood and religious life.”
Even rotating the monstrance from one chapel to the next has taken on a special significance. “The Knights of Columbus as an honor guard move it,” David Craig said.
Along with the gold and onyx monstrance as the foremost visual sign, the chapels display large pictures of the Pope blessing the monstrances and elevating one of them, and make available special prayer books, Pray to the Lord of the Harvest by Father Maciel.
David Craig points out that it really boils down to each adorer praying only one hour a month specifically for vocations.
Results started to appear from the earliest days. “In 75 years we've never had a vocation in our parish of St. Matthias,” Bridie Craig said. Yet two weeks after the monstrance arrived, two men from the East Lyme parish came forward to explore a vocation.
That was seven years ago. Father Kevin Reilly, the first of those two men, was ordained May 31 and is a parochial vicar at St. John in Old Saybrook. The other is studying for the priesthood in a monastic community.
“Prayer in front of the Blessed Sacrament had a significant part to play in my vocation and in my ministry,” Father Reilly said. “I think the prayers for vocations, especially perpetual adoration, is the greatest thing we can do.”
‘I think the prayers for vocations, especially perpetual adoration, is the greatest thing we can do.’
David Craig notes that in the last 15 months, four new priests were ordained, nine from Poland transferred into the diocese, one seminarian transferred from another diocese and two priests decided not to retire.
The Craigs said they were inspired by Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, who said vocations increased after her sisters spent an hour a day praying before the Blessed Sacrament.
Using the special monstrance to pray for vocations is part of a larger picture. According to Father Edward Burns, executive director of the secretariat for vocations and priestly formation at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, “Eucharistic adoration for vocations is an active part of vocation efforts in the country.… Ultimately we're finding it is indeed creating a vocation culture.”
That's an environment whereby young Catholics “will feel encouraged, nurtured and supported as they respond to God's call to ordained ministry or consecrated life,” he explained.
Not far from Norwich, the St. John Fisher Seminary Residence for young men discerning a vocation to the priesthood is in the Diocese of Bridgeport, Conn. Father Christopher Walsh, vocation director, said it is the only seminary in the country with perpetual Eucharistic adoration.
“And the centrality of the theme of it is praying for vocations to the priesthood and religious life,” he said.
With a fifth chapel on the horizon in Norwich, the Craigs want to get another monstrance blessed by the Pope. In fact, “we're recommending to everybody to have a special monstrance” blessed by him, said David Craig, who suggested he could help others attain one.
Because “our main thrust is to encourage other dioceses to do the same,” he added, “if anyone wants to start perpetual adoration for vocations in their diocese, we will tell them how we did it and if needed will come out to help them start it.”
Joseph Pronechen writes from Trumbull, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Pronechen ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Media Watch DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:Jewish Film Producer Called Anti-Semitic
Drabinsky is the director of a series of scripturally based films for the Toronto-based Visual Bible Inc.
Perhaps the most stinging attack on the film came from Paul Shaviv, principal of a Toronto Jewish school attended by several members of Drabinsky's family: “I cannot imagine how any responsible Jew can be associated with this film. Jewish initiative in this production is, in my view, a disgrace, and doubly dangerous and irresponsible at a time when anti-Semitism in its crudest and darkest form is resurgent around the globe.”
The filmmaker called the critique “a ridiculous diatribe.” He admitted the Gospel of John is “an uncomfortable story, but that doesn't mean you should walk away from what is probably the most quoted of all the books of the Bible.”
The Moral Minority?
The new group, calling itself the Clergy Leadership Network, announced that it hopes to bring about “sweeping changes—changes in our nation's political leadership and changes in failing public policies.”
Its chief executive officer, the Rev. Albert Pennybacker of Lexington, Ky., said: “The Christian Right has been very articulate, but they have been exclusive and veryjudgmental of anyone who doesn't agree with them. People may want to label us the Christian Left. But what we really are about is mainstream issues and truth, and if that makes us left then that shines even more light on the need for a shift in our society.”
Pennybacker, a Disciples of Christ minister and former official with the National Council of Churches, said the group's key issues are “people without jobs, people who are hungry [and] people burying children killed in Iraq.”
Bad Santa Blackens Disney's Snow White Image
CATHOLIC LEAGUE, Nov. 20—An upcoming Disney movie, Bad Santa, has Christian observers up in arms.
The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, after watching the movie in a preview, has denounced it for ridiculing Christian holy days and traditions.
League president William Donohue noted that in the film, the “Santa” played by Billy Bob Thornton “is a chain-smoking, drunken, foul-mouthed, suicidal, sexual predator. He is shown soiling himself in Santa's chair, vomiting in alleys, having sex with a woman bartender in a car. … And his commentary in front of kids is replete with the ‘F-word.’”
Donohue noted that the offending Disney subsidiary, Miramax, "has produced a slew of movies that thrash Christianity and have blackened Disney's Snow White image. … While this film is not blasphemous per se, it is nonetheless offensive. It says something about our society that some movie reviewers welcome attacks on Christmas."
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Tilma of Tepeyac Tour Ends With Return to Archdiocese of Los Angeles DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:LOS ANGELES—For Catholics in Los Angeles, the feast of St. Juan Diego on Dec. 9 will be a double homecoming.
The return of the Tilma of Tepeyac, the fragment of the saint's cloak that bears the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, is scheduled to coincide with the saint's feast and will likely be one of the most memorable events in the history of the archdiocese.
After making stops in 21 U.S. cities, including the Register's offices, the relic will find a permanent place in a new chapel to be dedicated to St. Juan Diego in Our Lady of Angels Cathedral.
Prior to the Tilma of Tepeyac Tour this year, the small relic was housed in the archdiocese's archives.
The small swatch of the tilma is a link to the biggest event in Catholic history in the Americas. Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared to Juan Diego at Tepeyac Hill in 1531, sending him to tell the bishop of Mexico City that she wanted a church built there. Twice the bishop doubted Juan Diego, requesting a sign that would serve as proof.
The humble Nahua Indian, whom Pope John Paul II canonized in 2002, urged Mary to find a more worthy messenger. But she instructed him to carry her message to the bishop again, this time with his cloak filled with roses in full bloom despite the December frost. When he opened his tilma in the bishop's presence her image appeared in full color. The tilma bearing this image, which is not a painting, is displayed in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.
The half-inch piece of the tilma that has been on tour is itself a well-preserved part of the history of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. In 1941, Bishop Luis Maria Martinez of Mexico City sent the relic as a gift to thank then Los Angeles Archbishop John Cantwell for leading a delegation of American clergy to Mexico City.
For Mexican-Americans, the return of the relic to Los Angeles bears special significance. Devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe is part of Mexican cultural and spiritual identity.
According to Deacon Manuel Martinez, director of deacons for the archdiocese, many Mexicans in the area are working poor who feel a strong sense of connectedness to Juan Diego and the Blessed Mother, whom they affectionately call “Madrecita.” Having a piece of the tilma is having a piece of home, he said.
Festive Days
Cardinal Roger Mahony's decision to dedicate a chapel to St. Juan Diego, Deacon Martinez said, “makes sense.” Outside of Mexico City, Los Angeles has the second-largest Mexican population in the world.
“For me in particular it is definitely significant. Juan Diego was Mary's favorite son, and he is one of us. It was on his garment that she chose to leave her image. This is of great importance,” said local artist Lalo Garcia. “Now our saint is within reach. We can actually touch that piece of garment. It is so important for every Catholic, but especially for Mexicans.”
The dedication of the chapel will be part of three days of festivities in honor of St. Juan Diego and Our Lady of Guadalupe. Deacon Martinez said the traditional Mexican festivities are a “family celebration.”
The celebration will begin the evening of Dec. 9, the feast of St. Juan Diego, with a solemn processsion of the tilma relic through the outdoor plaza. Cardinal Mahony will then celebrate Mass inside.
Hundreds of pilgrims are likely to come throughout the three days, bringing roses to honor the Blessed Mother. Dance troupes will perform traditional dances representing various states in Mexico.
A traditional re-enactment of the Guadalupe apparitions promises to draw a crowd large enough to fill the outdoor plaza, which holds 7,000, the evening of Dec. 10.
The feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Dec. 12, will begin early in the morning with serenades to the Blessed Mother, known as mañanitas. In keeping with Mexican custom, native Aztec dancers will perform a pre-Hispanic dance in honor of the Blessed Mother during the Mass that will follow.
The day ends as it began, with serenatas to the Blessed Mother to bid her “good night.”
“It is amazing how many people are devoted to Our Lady,” Deacon Martinez said. “It is incredibly moving to see the love and reverence people have for the Blessed Mother, to see people come together as a community of faith, to gather and pray.”
Successful Tour
Since the Tilma of Tepeyac Tour began in Denver in May, more than 100,000 people have turned out to venerate the tiny piece of fabric shorn from Juan Diego's cloak along with a 17th-century pilgrim statue of the Blessed Mother.
The tour was organized by the Los Angeles-based Apostolate for Holy Relics, a nonprofit group dedicated to the preservation and veneration of relics. The Knights of Columbus Supreme Council in New Haven, Conn., co-sponsored the tour.
Andrew Walther, vice president of the Apostolate for Holy Relics (and a Register correspondent), said the pilgrimage has been an occasion for conversion for many people, some for the first time and others after years of being away from the Church.
“It has been remarkable to see the number of people who wait in line peacefully for hours, mostly praying the rosary, and the long lines for confession,” Walther said. “And it's humbling to see the number of people who are moved to tears when they venerate the relic.”
According to Tom Serafin, executive director of the apostolate, the tilma is unique partly because it is a double-class relic. As St. Juan Diego's cloak, it is a second-class relic. At the same time, the tilma bears the image of Our Lady.
“It's the only thing she left behind,” Serafin said.
Msgr. Francis Weber, archivist for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, and Serafin saw the tour as an opportunity for spreading devotion to the saints and as a fitting way to celebrate the Year of the Rosary. When Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony agreed to the pilgrimage last February, Walther said they “hit the ground running.”
Serafin said the tour, a first for both the relic and the apostolate, gave him a view of a Church that is “alive.”
“People need a vehicle to express their devotion, and the tour allowed that. People came to see their Mother, to get close to her,” Serafin said. “In every place, there have been beautiful liturgies and beautiful participation on everyone's part, from the cardinals and archbishops to the laity.”
Irene M. Lagan writes from Alexandria, Virginia.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Irene M. Lagan ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Conference Addresses Need for Pastoral Care Toward Migrants and Refugees DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY—Few concerns are today quite so topical or emotive as those of migrants and refugees.
The United Nations estimates there are approximately 175 million people living in countries outside their birth, 16 million of whom are refugees.
And with the growing complexities of globalization, the numbers are set to increase and, with them, the challenges they present—ranging from the plight of asylum-seekers to the sheer evilness of human trafficking.
Which is why the Holy See staged a large interdenominational conference Nov. 17-21 to examine pastoral initiatives that must be adapted to each community affected, taking as its theme “Starting Afresh from Christ—Toward a Renewed Pastoral Care for Migrants and Refugees.”
In his address to the Fifth World Congress on the migration and trafficking issue, Pope John Paul II said this work “represents a vast new field for the New Evangelization to which the whole Church is called” and reminded the participants that in responding to the challenges, it is not “a formula that we seek but a Person.”
Cardinal Stephen Hamao, president of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Refugees, said the Church “cannot remain indifferent in the wake of the present plight of migrants, refugees and internally displaced persons.
”She wants to share in their joys and the grief… and be with them in their search for a better and safer life, worthy of being children of God,“ Cardinal Hamao said.
A major role of the Church in tackling issues of migration is that of advocacy work.
”Refugees have contributions to offer, but their voices are often not heard,“ said Sister Anne Elizabeth of the Jesuit Refugee Services in Malawi. ”Therefore they need others to speak on their behalf or to help them get their message to the right institutions.“
Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, a member of the council, called on the Church to advocate at both the national and international level.
”We must never be accused of being silent when refugees seek a place of haven,“ he said.
The need for greater funding and sharing of resources was also emphasized to avoid the ”creation of explosive situations“ and, although international laws are set up to protect the human rights of migrants, the U.N. Rapporteur for the Human Rights of Migrants and Refugees, Gabriela Rodriguez-Pizarro, reminded the Vatican gathering that these ”rights are often not implemented."
U.S. Immigrants
The conference also heard there are approximately 8 million “undocumented” immigrants in the United States, many from Mexico and Central America, thousands of whom have died in attempts to cross borders.
“That we haven't provided remedies [for undocumented migrants] is a real scandal,” said Miami Bishop Thomas Wenski, chair of the Migration Committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
“[By not] legalizing them, we are in effect creating a new underclass, one that is legally sanctioned,” he told the Register. “The last time we did that it was called ‘Jim Crow,’ and our nation still is yet to recover from that.”
Father Anthony McGuire, director of Pastoral Care of Migrants and Refugees for the U.S. bishops' conference, noted that since 1996 and particularly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the United States has been stricken by a growing “fortress mentality.” In 1993, the United States received 120,000 refugees compared with 30,332 in 2002.
“Sometimes Sept. 11 becomes an excuse for prejudice, for restric-tionism, and that's what we're trying to combat,” said Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn, N.Y., a member of the pontifical council. “We cannot, in a globalized world, stop the movement of people either as immigrants, not as refugees and certainly not as visitors.”
At the conference, Archbishop Augustino Marchetto, secretary of the council, said migration “involves suffering, trauma and humiliation, but it also includes Divine Providence with which, through the cross, Christians contemplate the Resurrection.”
He spoke of migration as a hope for the Church by obliging “us to rediscover the sign of catholicity … impelling local churches to open themselves up to the missionary cause.”
Sister Elizabeth underscored the importance of solidarity to the missionary cause.
“It is when they sense that kind of accompanying spirit and presence that they fully share the whole depth of their feelings, their pain,” she said. “We accompany them by embracing their stories of loss and even the guilt they feel at being alive when so many of their family have died.”
Many delegates were particularly encouraged by a day given to the importance of the Eucharist in adapting to diversity.
“We are one in the Eucharist,” Bishop DiMarzio said. “Even if it is celebrated in a parish with different languages, there is still a unity with one another.”
Church's Mission
Among the appeals at the end of the conference was for the Church “to take more seriously its vocation to walk with migrants and refugees” and “to provide a holistic pastoral approach.”
The conference also called on governments and civil societies to, among other appeals, “respect and protect” the human dignity and human rights of migrants and refugees and “to admit that repressive and restrictive policies are unable to control migratory flows.” Finally, refugees, migrants and internally displaced persons were urged to “learn the local language” of the receiving country, be “interested in their culture” and “contribute to building a society that grows in mutual respect and in the recognition of the inalienable dignity of each human being.”
Key to the debates was the treatment of migrants and refugees not as economic units or possible threats to security or cultural identity but as human beings born in the image of God.
“The human person cannot be reduced to a problem,” Bishop Wenski explained. “When we define a human person as a problem, then we begin to look for solutions. If we define a Jew as a problem, we look for a ‘Final Solution’; if we define an unborn baby as a problem, we look to abortion. … If we define immigrants as a problem, we look to build bigger defenses and detention camps.
”The human person, as Blessed Mother Teresa reminded us,“ Bishop Wenski added, ”is a person to be loved, a reflection of Jesus Christ, even though sometimes that person may appear to us to be in a very disagreeable disguise."
Edward Pentin writes from Rome.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Edward Pentin ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Media Watch DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:Vatican Has Moral Message on AIDS Day
REUTERS, Dec. 1—As a group claiming to be Catholic voiced support for condom use as a way of fighting AIDS, the Vatican reasserted its opposition to such use, calling instead for a greater commitment to fidelity, chastity and abstinence.
The president of the Pontifical Council for Health Pastoral Care, Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, Dec. 1 called for new ways to help people change their dangerous lifestyles.
Cardinal Lozano's message spoke of the “importance of respecting the religious and moral values of sexuality and matrimony, namely fidelity, chastity and abstinence.”
“We have to present this as the main way for the effective prevention of infection and spread of HIV/AIDS, since the phenomenon of AIDS is a pathology of the spirit,” Cardinal Lozano said in a five-page statement to commemorate World AIDS Day.
Reuters explained that the Church opposes contraception, including condoms, “which it says promote promiscuity.” The British news service did not explain the basis for the Church teaching—that contraceptives cause a divide between the unitive and procreative purposes of marriage.
Cardinal Lozano's message stood in stark contrast to a new ad campaign by Catholics for a Free Choice, announced the same day in Washington, D.C., supporting condom use as a means to fighting AIDS. “We believe in God, we believe that sex is sacred; we believe in caring for each other; we believe in using condoms,” the ad's slogan runs.
Cardinal Lozano said AIDS campaigns should be based on “sure and authentic human and spiritual values, capable of establishing relevant education in favor of the culture of life and responsible love.”
Vatican Lauds Iran for Protecting Christian Heritage
MEHR NEWS AGENCY/
According to the Iranian media outlets, the art association noted after its recent trip to Iran that Teheran was making major efforts to save historic Christian churches threatened with decay, such as St. Mary's Church in Isfahan.
The same delegation also said Christians in Iran live in relative freedom, unhindered by the Islamic republic's theocratic government.
Patriarch Rules Out Meeting With Pope
INDEPENDENT CATHOLIC NEWS, Nov. 20—Pope John Paul II's hopes for an ecumenical meeting with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II appear to have been dashed, according to Independent Catholic News.
“A meeting in front of the TV cameras will not yield the desired results,” the Russian cleric said Nov. 20. “What is essential is to sign specific documents on new relations.”
The relations sought by the Russian Orthodox Church include an end to any evangelization in Russia by Catholics and severe restrictions imposed on millions of Eastern-rite Catholics in Ukraine —the victims of Soviet-sponsored persecution over decades, often with the cooperation of Orthodox clergy, who seized their churches and have refused to return them.
Patriarch Alexei also objected to the appointment of bishops by the Holy See to serve the needs of hundreds of thousands of Latin-rite Catholics throughout the former Soviet Union.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Jesus Christ Is Our King and High Priest DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:Register Summary
Pope John Paul II held his general audience Nov. 26 with several thousand pilgrims who gathered in Paul VI Hall. He continued his series of meditations on the psalms and canticles from the Liturgy of the Hours' evening prayer. The focus of his talk was Psalm 110, which the Holy Father characterized as “one of the most famous psalms in Christianity.” He pointed out that the psalm “has been the subject of many splendid musical compositions throughout the history of Western culture.”
Even though the psalm was originally composed for the enthronement of an earthly king born of the line of David, the Holy Father noted that Psalm 110 also prefigures the enthronement of Jesus Christ, who is our King and High Priest, at the right hand of the Father. It celebrates the final victory of Christ, the Messiah, over all his enemies through his resurrection.
“The text refers to a confrontation of a general nature between the plan of God, who works through his chosen one, and the plans of those who would like to assert their power in a hostile and deceitful way,” the Pope said. “Thus, we see the eternal clash between good and evil, which unfolds in events throughout history and through which God manifests himself to us and speaks to us.”
From his heavenly throne, the Risen Lord invites us to contemplate the glory to which we are called as members of his Mystical Body. The Holy Father concluded his talk by quoting St. Maximus of Turin, who depicts Christ as the conqueror of all evil and a truly unique mediator for the whole of humanity through his passion, death and resurrection.
We have heard one of the most famous psalms in the history of Christianity. Psalm 110, which is recited every Sunday during evening prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours, is, in fact, repeatedly quoted in the New Testament. In particular, the first and fourth verses are applied to Christ, following the example of an ancient Jewish tradition, which transformed this hymn from a royal song of David into a messianic psalm.
This prayer also owes its popularity to its constant use during Sunday vespers. For this reason, the Latin Vulgate version of Psalm 110 has been the subject of many splendid musical compositions throughout the history of Western culture.
According to a practice upon which the Second Vatican Council decided, the liturgy leaves out the rather violent-sounding verse 6 of the original Hebrew text of the psalm, which, in fact, has only 63 words. This verse imitates the tone of the so-called “psalms of imprecation” and describes the Israelite king as he advances in a sort of military campaign where he crushes his adversaries and judges the nations.
Since we will have the opportunity to return to this psalm on other occasions, given its frequent use in the liturgy, we will content ourselves for now with an overview.
The Lord Is King
We can clearly distinguish two parts in this psalm. The first part (verses 1-3) contains a prophecy that God directs to the one whom the psalmist calls “my lord,” the ruler over Jerusalem. This prophecy proclaims that David's descendant will be enthroned “at the right hand” of God. The Lord, in fact, addresses him by saying: “Take your throne at my right hand” (verse 1). Most likely, this verse is referring to a ritual according to which the chosen one would be seated at the right hand of the Ark of the Covenant, thereby receiving his power as ruler from the supreme King of Israel—the Lord.
In the background, we perceive some hostile forces, which, however, have been neutralized in a victorious conquest: These enemies are depicted at the feet of the ruler, who advances solemnly in their midst holding the scepter of his authority (see verses 1-2). Undoubtedly, this is a reflection of a concrete political situation, which occurred when power was handed over from one king to another following a rebellion by some of his subjects or some plot to overthrow him. Here, however, the text refers to a confrontation of a general nature between the plan of God, who works through his chosen one, and the plans of those who would like to assert their power in a hostile and deceitful way. Thus, we see the eternal clash between good and evil, which unfolds in events throughout history and through which God manifests himself to us and speaks to us.
Christ Is the High Priest
The second part of the psalm contains, on the other hand, a priestly prophecy, whose protagonist is once again a king from the line of David (see verse 4-7). His royal dignity, which is guaranteed by a solemn oath from God, is also combined with a priestly dignity. The reference to Melchizedek, king and priest of Salem, the ancient Jerusalem (see Genesis 14), is per-haps a way to justify the special priesthood of the king in relationship to the official Levitical priesthood of the Temple of Zion. It is noteworthy, therefore, that the Letter to the Hebrews uses this very prophecy, “Like Melchizedek, you are a priest forever” (Psalm 110:4) in order to illustrate the special and perfect priesthood of Jesus Christ.
Later on we will examine Psalm 110 in greater depth and analyze its individual verses more closely.
Christ Triumphed Over Evil
In conclusion, however, we would like to read again the beginning verse of this psalm with its divine prophecy: “Take your throne at my right hand, while I make your enemies your footstool.” We will do so with St. Maximus of Turin (who lived at the end of the fourth century and the beginning of the fifth century), who, in his Sermon on Pentecost, made the following comments: “According to our custom, sharing the throne is offered to someone who, having victoriously accomplished some undertaking, deserves to be seated there as a sign of honor. In the same way, Jesus Christ the man, by vanquishing the devil through his passion, by opening up the kingdoms below through his resurrection and by arriving victorious in heaven after having completed his mission, hears this invitation from God the Father: ‘Take your throne at my right hand.’ We should not be surprised if the Father offers to share his throne with the Son, who by nature is of one substance with the Father. … The Son sits at his right hand because, according to the Gospel, the sheep will be on the right while the goats will be on the left. It is necessary, therefore, that the first Lamb occupy the side of the sheep and that the unblemished Head take possession beforehand of the place destined for the unblemished flock that will follow him” (40,2: Scriptores circa Ambrosium, IV, Milan-Rome, 1991, p. 195).
(Register translation)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Lebanon's Christians and Muslims: Living in Peace Despite Conflict DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:Lebanon has endured many struggles, including 15 years of war and occupation by Syria since 1990. The country is now experiencing a severe economic crisis, where jobs are hard to find and poverty is on the rise. About 30% of Lebanon's approximately 3 million residents are Christian.
Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Peter Sfeir was appointed patriarch in 1986. Previously he served as bishop since 1961 and was appointed vicar patriarch the same year. He was ordained a Maronite priest in 1950.
He spoke with Register correspondent Doreen Abi Raad about the state of Christians in his country.
What would you tell Americans, who might not know much about Lebanon except for its civil war, about your country?
Lebanon has a very great mission. It is a very small country, but it has its role to play, because its people are Christian and Muslim, and they are living together peaceably. And this is very important, not only for Lebanon but also for all the world.
Lebanon is special because our government respects all kinds of religions. It is not so in our neighboring countries [in the Middle East] where Islam is the religion of the state or at least the religion of the head of the state. In Lebanon we have religious liberty.
What role do Christians play in the government in Lebanon?
The Christians are playing a role as are the other communities in Lebanon because, under our constitution, the functions of government are distributed: a Maronite [Christian] is president, the prime minister is Sunni and the speaker of the House is Shiite. So the Parliament is [split] 50-50 between Christian and Muslim.
So is Lebanon free?
Lebanon needs to be free as it was before and to be able practice democracy. Now it is not so, because Syria is controlling the political and economic life. I think Lebanon deserves to be free of any control, so it will again be master of its own decisions and be independent and sovereign in the true meaning of the term. Right now, Syria is dominating our president, our ministers and our deputies.
What other issues have affected Lebanon because of the Syrian occupation?
We are in debt, about $40 billion. Some say the reconstruction of our capital Beirut [after the war] has cost about $6 billion to $7 billion. And the rest, where did it go?
Is there a danger of collapse in this country?
Yes. How will we pay this great sum [the debt]?
You are known to be quite outspoken about the Syrian occupation in Lebanon. How does this affect your role in the Church?
I consider it my duty to speak out. “There is no peace without truth, liberty, justice and charity,” [Blessed] Pope John XXIII said.
You have just finished a tour of Europe, including Great Britain, Sweden, Germany and France. What message were you trying to bring to Europe regarding Lebanon?
I visited the countries where there are Maronites and Lebanese in general, because these people have left Lebanon to find work, because there is no work in Lebanon. My message was that if you are in an outside country, you cannot forget that Lebanon is your country of origin. When the time is opportune, you have to go back to Lebanon. You have to be attached to your faith and your Christian values.
What can be done to keep the youth from leaving Lebanon to seek opportunities abroad?
First of all, Lebanon has to assume full responsibility toward itself again. We have to start by having a good electorate law so the Lebanese people can elect parliamentarians in their [the people's] name. And it is not up to the others [neighboring Syrians] to nominate the parliamentarians.
The Lebanese have always valued faith and the family. What effect is modern society having upon these values?
The values of the Lebanese are well known. In general, the Lebanese love the family and the family life. And they are attached to their values in general—their faith, their traditions, their families. But actually, many of them are leaving Lebanon to go abroad. With these contacts with other cultures, they are adopting the values of others.
What are the numbers? How many have left Lebanon?
Some say about 1 million have left Lebanon to go abroad since 1975—to the United States, Brazil, Australia, Canada and Europe.
How would you describe the faith of the Lebanese Christians?
Before the war, faith was weaker, but actually now it is very strong. Because our people—and especially young people—have realized that they can't rely on anything but God. They have lost their money, their parents, their prestige. God for them is the only recourse. Because only God is capable of deriving good things from wrong things.
Now we have many vocations, for example. We have about 100 every year in our seminary [the Maronite Seminary in Ghazir, Lebanon]. Before the war, it was about half that amount.
How would you explain the great devotion the Lebanese Christians have to the Blessed Mother?
Our Lady is venerated by the Lebanese. There is no village without some kind of church, shrine or image in honor of Our Lady. Our Lady is watching over Lebanon. Because in every instance, Christians are in the habit of going to Our Lady to ask her to heal an ill, or to ask for her grace or intercession.
What is the secret of Lebanon in which Christianity has been able to survive?
The Christians were able to persevere. We were under the Turkish empire for 400 years. But the Christians were here and it was impossible for them to go abroad, because there was no means of transportation. Even in times of occupation, the Christians were content in their faith and were attached to their religion.
Are you hopeful about the future for Christians in Lebanon?
Yes. We cannot say we are in despair. Because Lebanon has behind it some 6,000 years—we were here from the beginning of Christianity. And so are Muslims—they are here since the dawn of Islam. We have to live together.
Doreen Abi Raad writes from Lebanon.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Doreen Abi Raad ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Media Watch DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:France to Cancel Pentecost Holiday
TOTALCATHOLIC.COM, Nov. 20—The government of France plans to scrap the legal holiday that currently marks the Church holiday of Pentecost, long celebrated on the Monday after that feast, according to the news site TotalCatholic.com.
While the Church still marks the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles with a major feast, secular celebrations of it have dwindled almost to nothing in France—only being celebrated by some 4% of Frenchmen, the Web site reported. It quotes Bishop Michel Dubost of Evry, who said Pentecost Monday is “no longer a Christian festival” and suggested it be eliminated along with the May 8 “Victory Day” marking France's liberation from German occupation in 1944.
The French calendar is cluttered with some 11 national holidays—each of which “costs” the government approximately $2.5 billion per year in tax and other revenues. However, larger and more popular holidays such as Easter Monday and Bastille Day will survive any revisions in the calendar. The subtraction of Pentecost from the calendar is mainly opposed by French labor unions.
Pentecost or “Whitsunday” is still the occasion for popular celebrations in England, where customs such as cheese-rolling and bread-tossing mark the holiday in certain regions.
Bishops Fear for the Embryos of Europe
EUROPEAN BISHOPS' CONFERENCE, Nov. 19—Responding to a Nov. 19 decision by the European Parliament to back research that destroys human embryos and uses them for parts in stem cell research, the European Bishops' Conferences Commission expressed its dismay.
The bishops stated, “[S]uch research raises fundamental moral problems. … In our view, every human life begins at conception and must not be violated, whatever the hoped-for benefits. We therefore remain opposed in principle to the destruction of any human embryo in order to obtain embryonic stem cells. … We also restate our support for scientific research in general and for research using adult stem cells in particular.”
The bishops supported a position similar to that laid down by the Bush administration in the United States, employing existing stem cells from embryos that had already been destroyed but not funding the destruction of any more embryos for the sake of research.
The European Union Council of Ministers is expected to decide on the issue before the end of the year.
Muslim Rioters Burn 13 Nigerian Churches
REUTERS, Nov. 20—When a Christian student in mostly Islamic northern Nigeria made critical comments about the prophet Mohammed, local Islamist militants attacked the school. Repelled by police, they began a rampage against local Christians, Reuters reported.
Reuters quoted local police commissioner Abubakar Sale, who said: “The hoodlums then mobilized and went into town where they started looting and burning people's property.” Keirian Dudari, another police official, said “13 churches were burnt, several houses and shops were torched, but there were no deaths.”
Reuters noted that “more than 5,000 people have been killed in religious violence in northern Nigeria in the past four years since the introduction of Islamic Shariah law in 12 states.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The Renewal Is Under Way DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:Catholics have suffered through years of bad news in America. According to Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, there is more bad news to come—the results of a clergy sex abuse survey going back more than 50 years will be “startling” to many Catholics this February, he said.
In the face of so much evidence of things gone wrong in the Catholic Church, we may be tempted to lose hope. But to do so, we would have to ignore the very real signs of renewal in the Church.
Families raising children in the Church today have a number of means available to them the last generation didn't have. There are CCC videos, Regina Martyrum tapes, Catholic Kids Net, Heritage kids clubs, boys clubs and girls clubs run by a number of movements and apostolates, new independent schools and a wider acceptance of the home-schooling movement, with all its advantages.
Families sending children to college today now have several universities to choose from that are committed to spreading the faith in its fullness. Looked at one way, that's tragic news—only a handful of America's many Catholic universities are in compliance with canon-law rules about the mandatum. But compared with 10 or 20 years ago, it's a great advantage to today's Catholic families and a great sign of hope.
The culture at large is also filled with things Catholic. Two of the most anticipated movies are a film adaptation of a Catholic novel written by a man devoted to Eucharistic adoration (The Lord of the Rings) and the Gospel story of Christ's death as told by a mystic of the Church (The Passion of Christ). The most celebrated heroes of our day are the mostly Catholic New York firemen who gave their lives on Sept. 11 and the mostly Hispanic Catholic U.S. servicemen risking their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Day in and day out, the poor are fed, clothed and housed in our cities by Catholics. Thanks to Catholic service agencies such as Catholic Charities, it can be said that Catholics are doing more for the poor than any other denomination. And thanks to the Knights of Columbus and its many charitable apostolates, it can even be said that more Catholics loyal to the magisterium volunteer to help the poor than anyone else in the Church.
And, as far as evangelization, today's adult Catholics have more means at their disposal than any in generations. There is the apologetics movement, Theology on Tap, the Catholic publishing boom, new videos, CDs and Web sites devoted to spreading the faith in ever more effective ways. We are committed to promoting the New Evangelization at the Register, and we can barely keep up with a weekly publishing schedule.
As for the future, it is only the seminaries that are most in line with Church pastoral and doctrinal teaching that are attracting vocations. Who knows what these men will do with the generation that has had the benefit of the dynamic new Catholic media?
The largest crowds in the history of the planet have been for Catholics to hear Pope John Paul II speak about Christ at his World Youth Days.
Indeed, there are reasons to hope. Too often, lay people have acted as if they were sent to earth to save the Church. In fact, the Church is on earth in order to save us. It's easy to forget that fact when the Church looks beaten and bruised. But this is God's usual method of operation—he always uses weakness to defeat strength, and he always precedes a resurrection with a crucifixion.
There are indeed many reasons to hope, and hope can give us great peace of mind about the Church today. But hope isn't meant to be merely a psychological balm. It's a virtue. Hope is meant to be acted upon.
Each Advent, the Register provides readers with special guides on our back page. We have reformatted them this year to be easier to photocopy. They respond to the Holy Father's call to promote Sunday Mass, confession, prayer and acts of service. We encourage you to use them to invite friends and family back to the sacraments.
The Church's brightest days are in its future, not in its past. This is our hope, a hope that proves itself with action.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Letters DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:Photo Negative
Regarding Dwight Longenecker's article, “Why They're in This Mess” in the November 16-22 issue: It is with interest that I read all articles on the acceptance of the practicing homosexual bishop by the Episcopal Church and how it impacts the Christian world. Certainly, this activity is newsworthy and has created a crisis in the Episcopal/Anglican Church as well as a roadblock to ecumenical dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church. My objection to the article was not the text but the undignified photo of V. Gene Robinson. As Catholics, we are called to treat each individual with dignity and love—this silly photo did not meet that standard.
JOANN MASTERS
Granite Falls, Minn.
Regarding “Why They're in This Mess” (Commentary&Opinion, Nov. 16-22), about Rev. Gene Robinson's elevation as an Episcopal bishop:
I must confess that I found your choice of photograph (pages 1 and 9) highly offensive and insulting, not only to Episcopalians but also to your own image as an objective, responsible publication.
In an age of disturbing polarization between Christians of different denominations, why did you choose to run a photo that does nothing but feed people's already ingrained and unjustified contempt for “the other side”? Or, more to the point, in an age when the Catholic Church in America has become so polarized, why did you run a photo that does nothing but feed your critics' view of your publication as one-sided, anti-ecumenical and shallow?
Normally, I would let little slips like this go by because I myself work in the publishing world and know how even one poorly chosen word can give the wrong impression. But this offense seemed too deliberate. Surely there was a vast array of photographs from which you could have chosen. Why choose this one?
Say what you like about his religious convictions or his moral choices, but Bishop Robinson remains a human being deeply loved by God. You may disapprove of his election and mourn the state of the Episcopal Church, but this man still deserves to be treated with dignity and respect—if for no other reason than because he is a human being.
I believe you owe Bishop Robinson, and your readers, an apology.
JIM MAGLER
Fruit Cove, Florida
Girls on the Altar
Regarding “Altar Boys and Girls” (Letters, Nov. 23-29):
Christopher Pasquale writes, “Most disturbing was the theory … that girls serving along with boys will dilute the significance of the boys' role and the chances of priestly ordination. Does this even sound a little ridiculous to anyone?”
No, Mr. Pasquale, it doesn't sound ridiculous to me. My son has a good friend who served as an altar boy both before and after his church allowed girls to become altar servers. The young man told us that, when it was just boys, the altar servers focused on the Mass. Once girls became altar servers, the boys focused on the girls instead.
From the time the oldest of my four sons was very young, I sensed that he may have a priestly vocation. Therefore when he came of age to serve on the altar, I switched parishes in order to belong to one that didn't allow altar girls. I wasn't going to take any chances with his possible vocation.
I must say that I was surprised to see that the reply was written by a man. I myself am a woman, and I can attest that, in all of my 44 years, I never once felt cheated by not being able to serve with the boys on the altar. As a matter of fact, I have never even known of another female who has felt that way, be it my daughter, nieces, friends or anyone else. I think that, unfortunately, the feminists have thrown Mr. Pasquale a line, and he has believed it.
JUNE RABALAIS
Covington, Louisiana
Carl's Jr. Crash
Thank you for producing the extremely valuable Register, which I read front to back every week. Relative to “Thomas Aquinas vs. Hugh Hefner” (Inbrief, Nov. 30-Dec. 6), I thought you'd like to see the letter that I sent to the parent company of the Carl's Jr. Restaurants to protest its using Hugh Hefner as a corporate spokesman. The letter was signed by 20 detention-ministry volunteers. This letter may be of some use to your readers in view of Thomas Aquinas College asking the chief executive officer of CKE Restaurants (which operates Carl's Jr.) to resign from the school's board of directors:
“Our purpose in writing this letter is to express shock and dismay that Carl's Jr. would use an individual with the character and reputation of Hugh Hefner as a corporate spokesman in its advertising campaign.
”We are members of St. Maximilian Kolbe Catholic Church in Westlake Village. We serve as volunteers in the Los Angeles Archdiocese Detention Ministry and minister to the young men at Camp Vernon Kilpatrick, a Los Angeles County probation facility located in Malibu, Calif., in the Santa Monica Mountains. For the past 15 years, we, a group of detention ministry volunteers numbering from five to 20 individuals, have been patronizing the Carl's Jr. restaurant located on Kanan Road in Agoura Hills, Calif., for lunch on Saturday after we complete our detention ministry duties at Camp Kilpatrick.
“Since Carl's Jr. has decided to use Hugh Hefner as a corporate spokesperson, we will no longer patronize any Carl's Jr. restaurant and will encourage our friends, relatives and associates to do likewise.”
JAMES P. GRAHAM
Agoura Hills, California
Factor This: Prayers for Bill
I must admit that whenever Bill O'Reilly starts talking about “things Catholic” on his show, I cringe. He is clearly misinformed (at best) about the full meaning of the Catholic faith. In this, unfortunately, he is not unlike the majority of American Catholics today. In fact, his views on the faith are about where mine were some years ago.
But he does do some good with his show, and he has a huge audience. He also needs our prayers as much as anybody, more than he needs our criticism. Imagine the possibilities if this outspoken journalist had a real conversion.
Let's all commit to praying for him, and for other Catholics in the public eye, who are not in full communion with the Church. Our God is an awesome God!
YVETTE SCHUE
Andover, Minnesota
Ethical Erosion in Health Care
As a Catholic obstetrician, I am concerned with the ever-increasing erosion of morality and ethics occurring within Catholic hospitals worldwide (“Induction Procedures Raise Moral Dilemma,” Oct. 19-25).
There is not a moral dilemma with early induction of labor for fetuses with anomalies incompatible with life. The desired intent is to terminate the pregnancy. To do so prior to 24 weeks' gestation (the clinical “time of viability”) is clearly abortion. To do so immediately afterward has the same evil intent and is merely a thinly veiled attempt to sidestep the “Ethical and Religious Directives” of the Providence Health System.
The morally correct procedure in these tragic instances would be to allow labor to occur on its own or induce once the child is overdue (as one would with any other pregnancy), unless other intervening conditions occur (i.e. pre-eclampsia or premature rupture of membranes).
MICHAEL SHANNON, MD
Kitchener, Ontario
Outraged
“Bishops' Plan: Engage Public Pro-Abortion Catholics” (Nov. 23-29) was very disturbing and prompted this commentary. The Nov. 10-13 meeting of the U.S. Catholic bishops was cut short by one day (one out of four!) but could not decide on guidelines to confront pro-abortion “Catholic” politicians. The guidelines are not expected to be in final form until after the 2004 elections. This is outrageous. Moral leadership is needed now.
The legalization of murder of the innocent has been going on since 1973. Thirty years and 40 million murders: How many more babies will be murdered by waiting another year? Answer: 1.3 million. This is equivalent to the Sept. 11 attacks every day for the next 365 days. The time for moral leadership is long overdue.
The protection of the innocent souls must take top priority on the bishops' schedule. A special meeting of the U.S. Catholic bishops should be scheduled now.
ROLAND H. FREDETTE
Atlanta
Bishops: More on War
Regarding “Bishops Hear Debate on Just-War Letter,” (Inbrief, Nov. 16-22):
May I suggest that we Catholics, the laity, hear more about it than that? Don't we deserve to understand the nuances of this topic in light of terrorism, guerilla warfare, weapons of mass destruction, etc.? Why is this kept from the rest of our Church? What are the proposed guidelines in light of the 21st century warfare?
FRED HOLT
Englewood, Florida
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: The Mess in Massachusetts DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:Court fiats legally approving same-sex couplings serve as a pretext for teaching Catholic students, enrolled in public schools, that such joinings are legal, legitimate and okay (“Massachusetts Court Redefines Marriage,” Nov. 30-Dec. 6).
In so doing, they bypass parents and clergy who teach otherwise. Worse, they imply that practicing Catholic parents and the Church are biased and bigoted plus contrary to the legally defined rights of children.
This is outrageous. Teaching Catholic public-school children to be amoral, non-judgmental and morally neutral confuses and paralyzes their inexperienced capacities to discriminate between right and wrong. It literally represents a massive assault on the minds and hearts of millions of Catholic students enrolled in public schools nationally.
Neither parents nor the Church in America can allow this to continue.
ROBERT J. BONSIGNORE
Brooklyn, New York
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: American Idol? The Jessica Lynch Mob DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:Acts 14 records an incident that sounds almost impossible to believe.
While preaching in Lystra, Paul noticed a man who had been unable to walk since birth. So he miraculously healed him in front of the crowd. Luke tells us, “When the crowds saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in Lycaonian, ‘The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!’ Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul, because he was the chief speaker, they called Hermes. And the priest of Zeus, whose temple was in front of the city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates and wanted to offer sacrifice with the people.”
Paul was, of course, horrified and tried to get the audience to realize that it was Jesus, not he, who had healed the man. Yet, even with these words, “they scarcely restrained the people from offering sacrifice to them.”
Then, in the very next line, Acts suddenly tells us: “But Jews came there from Antioch and Iconium; and having persuaded the people, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead.”
Can a crowd really be that mercurial? It's the same question some skeptics of the Gospel accounts have in reading the Passion narrative. How do you get from “Hos-anna!” on Palm Sunday to “Crucify!” in five short days?
I think Pfc. Jessica Lynch might know.
Lynch was, as we recall, the soldier taken prisoner during Gulf War II and rescued by a courageous group of heroes. Once rescued, morale-boosting stories of her heroism under fire were spread all over the media. She was what every good war effort needs: a plucky hero. And so we were flooded with a tale of a gutsy West Virginia girl who went down with guns blazing.
She was beloved … until she got a chance to tell her story and set the record straight.
She told ABC News there was no reason for her rescue from an Iraqi hospital to be filmed. She stated, “They used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff,” adding, “Yeah, it's wrong. I don't know why they filmed it, or why they say the things” they said.
Lynch made clear her complaint was not about her rescuers: “They're the ones that came in to rescue me,” she said. “I'm so thankful that they did what they did; they risked their lives. … They are my heroes.” But she did make clear, apparently out of desire to simply be honest, that the stories of her capture by Iraqis, which suggested she had heroically gone down blasting away at the enemy, were untrue.
“My weapon did jam and I did not shoot, not a round, nothing,” she said simply.
One would think there could only be something to admire in this sort of self-effacing honesty from a young girl who courageously set out to serve her country and who endured injury, rape and the risk of death on our behalf. But the reaction among some war supporters was breathtaking.
The next day, on Lucianne.com, a popular conservative news site, there were dozens of comments such as:
— “Jessi, shut up. You're going to end up with a bunch of money for all this, and if the needs of your country are met by concocting a story, and it doesn't hurt you, what are you squawking about?”
— “What an ungrateful person she is. Maybe they should have just left her in the hospital with her Iraqi boyfriends.”
— “I cried when they rescued her; now she makes me sick!”
— “I think she's an ungrateful little guttersnipe. We should have let her rot there with her camel-loving friends.”
— “Let's face it. She's not the brightest bulb on the string.”
And there are about a hundred more such cruelties where those came from (though, to be fair, a small handful of courteous people did try to oppose the mob howling for her head by pointing out, “She should not have been in a combat zone but she was. We sent her there. She tried to fight. She was brutalized. She called her rescuers ‘her heroes.’ The army or the press did propagandize the story,” and so forth.)
But the overwhelming majority of the reaction at Lucianne.com was appallingly nasty toward her.
Why? Because, like Jesus (who was supposed to be an earthly Davidic King and refused the role in order to be who he actually was) and Paul (who likewise insisted on being human and not a god), Jessica Lynch was never seen as a human person by her ex-adorers.
She was made into a symbol of something, a means to an end, a sort of talisman or icon. She was pressed into an image and an agenda that demanded she be not human but an idol meeting a particular need for a national myth. Unforgivably, she chose instead to just be herself and speak the truth.
There's still a very short distance from Palm Sunday to Good Friday for anybody who tells inconvenient truths about idols and false gods.
Seattle's Mark Shea writes from www.markshea.blogspot.com.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mark P. Shea ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: 'A Pastoral Letter From Your Priests' DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:In November, the three priests at St. Francis Xavier Parish in Fall River, Mass., published a letter to clarify the nature of Voice of the Faithful to parishioners. The text of the letter follows.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, In recent days, several parishioners have asked us for clarification about the group called Voice of the Faithful, which is trying to make inroads on Cape Cod and within our Diocese of Fall River. Because we think many parishioners beyond those who have approached us might have similar questions, we thought it would be appropriate to respond by means of a parish letter.
Voice of the Faithful was founded in the basement of a Wellesley, Mass., church in January 2002 by those who wanted to express their concerns about the clergy sex-abuse scandals. Over the course of subsequent months, many good Catholic lay people, who were horrified (as were we!) by the scandals, joined the group as a means of expressing their justifiable outrage and firm commitment that this dark page in our Church's history must never be repeated.
When Voice of the Faithful had its first major convention in Boston on July 20, 2002, many of us followed it closely to try discern its spirit. We were saddened to see the direction it took. The star speakers that day were well-known and oft-quoted critics of the Holy Father who publicly dissent from the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.
There's a truism that you can often learn a lot about someone from the people with whom he chooses to associate. The same goes for Voice of the Faithful, the leaders of which, of course, invited and paid for these speakers to come to address those at the convention.
When faithful Catholic clergy and lay people criticized what was coming out of the convention, spokesmen from Voice of the Faithful publicly stated that the group does not take any formal positions on the controversial issues being advanced by several of the convention speakers and Voice of the Faithful members.
But this is not sufficient.
It is impossible for a group that wants to be authentically Catholic not to take a position on issues such as the ordination of women, sexual morality, abortion and the divine foundation of the papacy, all of which the Church has taken a position on. Not to take a position on such issues is to take a position; one cannot be both “agnostic” and “Catholic.”
In short, because Voice of the Faithful has given no indication that it fully supports all the defined teachings of the Church, we have grave misgivings about it and cannot recommend it to you.
As your priests, our foremost duty is to teach and defend the faith that has been handed down to us by Christ through the apostles and their successors. This is the Church's treasure and is the source of our unity as disciples of the Lord. The Church is not a society of independent thinkers with equally valuable opinions but the community of believers founded by Christ that remains faithful to his voice and follows his teaching as it has been handed on to us faithfully by the Church he founded.
To be truly Catholic, you can't pick and choose some truths to follow and others to ignore. Embracing the Catholic faith means embracing all of it.
To be truly Catholic, you can't pick and choose some truths to follow and others to ignore. Embracing the Catholic faith means embracing all of it. We have particular concern for those Catholics who want to remain faithful to the Church who now belong to an organization that calls itself Catholic but refuses publicly to embrace authentic Catholic teaching. Voice of the Faithful says its motto is “Keep the Faith; Change the Church.” But if the leaders of Voice of the Faithful are unwilling to assent fully to Catholic teaching, what faith—Catholics could legitimately ask—are they trying to keep?
And if an organization is not really keeping the Catholic faith, then its proposals to “change the Church” should be viewed by faithful Catholics with justifiable suspicion. We encourage faithful Catholics who belong to Voice of the Faithful to demand that the leadership of the organization explicitly avow Church teachings. If the leaders are not willing to do that, then we urge faithful Catholics to leave the organization.
The burden of proof is, of course, on Voice of the Faithful to demonstrate its complete fidelity to Church teaching by dissociating itself completely from groups and individuals that are obviously in dissent from Church teaching and by gladly and willingly affirming their Catholic faith in all the defined teachings of the magisterium. No organization could ever honestly claim to be the voice of faithful Catholic lay people without doing so—as several parishioners, angry that the group claims to speak for them, have pointed out to us.
Until such time that Voice of the Faithful demonstrates a transparent faithfulness to the teachings of the Church, no priest who takes his responsibility before God seriously to promote, preserve and defend the faith would countenance allowing the group to use Church property for its meetings. The people of ancient Troy learned a valuable lesson once and pastors would be derelict in their duty to do otherwise. We love you and love Christ too much to do otherwise.
If you find some of the statements of Voice of the Faithful to be attractive, we want you to know that we do, too. For instance, we agree with several of the organization's stated objectives:
1. We all support those who have been abused and want to prevent any recurrence of abuse.
2. We all support “priests of integrity” (although you might find it interesting that no priest from any of the parishes on Cape Cod present at our last meeting stated that he has received any sign of support from Voice of the Faithful, which makes one wonder whether for Voice of the Faithful this is just a paper objective).
3. We agree that there is a need for “cultural change” in the Church, if we define cultural change to mean a transparently greater cult (worship) of Christ among all of us in our daily decisions. The scandals resulted from the failure of priests to be faithful to Christ and to their promise of celibacy and of bishops to protect the flock from wolves in shepherd's clothing. But this grew within a general culture that was taking its moral obligations before God less seriously. Truly positive change will be directed toward a culture of greater fidelity to Christ in all the persons and activities of the Church.
4. We agree that there is a need for greater education of the laity in the teaching and ways of the faith, which is why, over the course of this year, we will be doing an extensive adult education series and why we have already started discussion sessions for parents of those in our CCD program and school.
5. We also welcome and strongly encourage a greater lay involvement in the mission of the Church, bringing Christ's teaching and love as leaven into our world.
In all of these areas priests and laity are already working together and, with God's help, bearing much fruit. If these were the only objectives of Voice of the Faithful, the organization would not be objectionable.
The reason why Voice of the Faithful is controversial, however, and why we cannot support it or recommend it to you is because Voice of the Faithful has given indications by its deeds that its objectives transcend these publicly stated ones. By its failure to subscribe openly to the whole deposit of faith while at the same time publicly associating with groups that oppose the faith, Voice of the Faithful has done nothing but strengthen suspicions that, while appearing to promote dialogue and cooperation, it actually promotes an agenda in conflict with the teachings of the Catholic faith.
There is a better alternative than Voice of the Faithful for lay Catholics who want truly to “keep the faith and change the Church” in ways that are manifestly consistent with our Catholic faith. We invite them to become more involved in the mission of the Church here at St. Francis Xavier. We encourage them to join their priests and fellow lay people as together we strive to fulfill the mission that the Second Vatican Council and Pope John Paul II have entrusted to us: to live the faith and thereby, with God's help, strengthen the Church so as to change the world.
Yours in Christ,
Father Thomas Frechette
Father Paul Lamb
Father Roger Landry
----- EXCERPT: A Massachusetts Parish Confronts Voice of the Faithful ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: Armenia, Turkey and the Massacre America Forgets DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:He was history's worst mass murderer but maybe its best psychologist.
Stalin had it right when he said, “One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” The mind can only grasp so much suffering. The bigger the crime against humanity, the quicker it becomes a number—and the more unreal the personal grief behind it seems. After all, what does “70,000 dead at Hiroshima” really mean? What does “6 million dead Jews” really mean?
Seventy years after the Great Terror, 60 years after Auschwitz and with dozens of “little” tragedies such as Rwanda in the decades since, we've just about lost our ability to be outraged at anything. We're used to inhumanity on a grand scale. But it wasn't always so. The modern taste for mass murder had a beginning. It began in Turkey just over a century ago. It remains one of the great-unre-pented crimes of history.
By the late 19th century, the Otto- J man Empire had reached a state of advanced decay. Politically, it was a junior player in the struggle for regional dominance among the French, British, Germans and Russians. A corrupt sultanate blocked reform and ruined imperial finances. In the Balkans, once-conquered Christian peoples were winning their independence. Even among imperial loyalists, the need for change became clear.
In this ferment, the place of Christians within the empire became more and more unsafe. Muslim law officially tolerated Christians and gave them limited autonomy. But the price was a culture of permanent inferiority. Discrimination took the form of special taxes, arbitrary violence, humiliating dress and behavior codes, and exclusion from political power. Christians also endured the devshirme, or “boy collection,” in which Ottoman officials would routinely take male children from their families, convert them to Islam and force them into military or civil service.
Armenians made up one of the empire's largest Christian communities. In the 1890s, their towns spread across the Anatolian plain, the heartland of modern Turkey. They had lived there for centuries. Ancient Armenia became the first nation to formally adopt Christianity in A.D. 301. The Armenian King Levon II was a friend of Richard the Lionhearted and, like Richard, a Crusader.
Medieval Armenia had strong ties to Christian Europe until its Muslim conquest in 1375. With the arrival of American Protestant missionaries and the rise of Russian regional power in the 19th century, those links to the outside Christian world became dangerous.
By the 1890s, angered by pressure for political reform among his Armenian subjects, the mentally unstable Sultan Abdul Hamid II decided to deal with the “Armenian question” directly. In 1894-95 he encouraged the massacre of 100,000 Armenians and allowed another 100,000 to starve. Anti-Armenian violence continued for years, even after the founding of a constitutional government. It ended in the brutal Adana massacre of 1909, in which an entire city was torched, including churches and schools filled with Christian children.
But even this was just a prelude to the massive, state-planned and -sponsored extermination program that killed more than 1 million Armenians beginning in 1915. Additional massacres in 1920 and 1922 murdered tens of thousands more. Many thousands of others converted to Islam to save their families. Turkish authorities deliberately set out to annihilate the Armenian people and wipe away any memory of their presence. Destroying the cultural record of Armenians—their churches, monasteries and monuments—continues in the Turkish countryside even today.
Peter Balakian, a professor of humanities at Colgate University, former Guggenheim fellow and winner of the PEN/Martha Albrand Prize, tells this story with moving clarity and relentless attention to detail in The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response (HarperCollins, 2003). The photographs of starving Armenian orphans, mass graves, and lines of women and children being marched off to their deaths will look familiar. They should. We've seen the same faces before in the Warsaw Ghetto and Treblinka. In his view, the organized horror of the Armenian genocide became “the template for most of the genocide that followed in the 20th century.” Nazi mass murder merely perfected the techniques used by the Turks.
While political and ethnic resentments fed the genocide, anti-Christian hatred played a central role. Muslim leaders whipped up the violence, calling for jihad “against infidels and enemies of the faith.” Western witnesses to one massacre recount Turks taunting their victims with shouts of “Where is your Christ now? Where is your Jesus? Why does he not save you?”
Balakian notes that "Muslim clerics played a perpetual role in the massacring of Armenians; imams and sof-tas [Islamic theological students] would often rally the mob by chanting prayers; and mosques were often used as places to mobilize crowds, especially during Friday prayers. Christians were murdered in the name of Allah … [and] massacring Armenians [was] seen as a commonplace occurrence sanctioned by Islam as well as the government.“
Balakian leaves us with two lessons for today.
First, Turkey has never admitted its guilt for the Armenian genocide. Even today, in the face of overwhelming evidence, it denies that the mass murder ever happened. Turkey is the textbook case of a nation determined to get away with murder by ignoring and rewriting history. Moreover, despite Turkey's officially ”secular“ nature, harassment of the country's small remaining Christian minority continues. The recent bombing of an Istanbul synagogue is just the latest example of a long tradition of religious bigotry.
Second, for 40 years in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the United States championed the Armenian cause with financial support for refugees. It led the international public outrage at the murders. But as American interests in the Middle East grew, U.S. policymakers dumped the Armenians and courted the Turks. That alliance continues to this day. As a result, notes Balakian, we now have the bizarre spectacle of a client state—Turkey—bullying a superpower into ignoring its own human-rights policies and downplaying a crime against humanity.
This is the kind of ”ally" we don't need. The Jewish people have never allowed the world to forget the Holocaust, and in defending our memory, they have served the humanity of us all. Forgetting the Armenian genocide, turning it into just another statistic, is a luxury none of us can afford—because the cost is our souls. Balakian's book helps us remember.
Francis X. Maier writes from Denver.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Francis X. Maier ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: How to Spend Advent DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:The fast pace of our lives often leaves us feeling as though we are being dispatched through life in one of those pneumatic tubes at the drive-through banking window.
So it is with the Christmas season. For Christmas decorations are displayed in stores before the dishes have been cleared from the Thanksgiving dinner table. The Christmas rush has invaded the leisurely, contemplative anticipation of the feast that the season of Advent is meant to provide. We have to make a decision between joining the stampede or walking quietly with the Church during Advent to arrive with proper dispositions at the manger in Bethlehem.
For the Church, our loving mother, who knows best what her children need, urges us to spend the four weeks of Advent in prayerful anticipation of the feast of Christmas, preparing not only our homes but also especially our hearts to receive the Infant Savior.
In Advent we hear the prophet Isaiah say to us, “A voice cries, ‘Prepare in the wilderness a way for the Lord’” (Isaiah 40:3). Matthew's Gospel tells us that the “voice” was John the Baptist's. The Church wants us to “prepare the way of the Lord” in the wilderness and chaos of our own lives by leveling the mountains of our pride by humility and filling the valleys of our depression with the hope that the birth of the Savior brings.
That is why it is good for us to walk with the Church through the weeks of Advent—listening to the prophets, reflecting on the longing of the Jews for the coming of the Messiah, recalling how empty and meaningless our lives would be if we did not know God as “Our Father” who “so loved the world that he gave us his only Son” (John 3:16).
As we draw closer to Christmas, we can join Mary and Joseph as they make preparations and set out for Bethlehem. We can recall the difficulty and hardship of their journey and their relief at arriving in Bethlehem. Recognizing their need for privacy and quiet, we can understand why the crowded inn or caravansary was “no place for them” and why they chose the manger cave for the birth of the Son of God. Keeping our thoughts on the purpose of Advent we can gather as a family every evening around the Advent wreath, read the Scriptures and pray for hearts to open to receive God's grace.
As we prepare our hearts we must also prepare our homes. But everything should be done in proper order without rushing the season. And the more the whole family joins in the preparations—selecting and wrapping presents, cleaning and decorating the house, preparing the food and decorating the Christmas tree—the more the eager anticipation of the feast will grow and the greater will be the joy of Christmas Day, when Christ's Mass is celebrated followed by the family feast and the sharing of gifts.
For just as faith gives meaning to our lives and sustains us on our journey, so it gives special meaning and joy and excitement to the feasts we celebrate as Christian communities, especially to the feast of Christmas.
It has been said that “getting there is half the fun.” Yes. But only half. We arrive at Christmas by passing through Advent. The measured, prayerful preparations we make during Advent should be fun. If we go about them in a measured, thoughtful, prayerful way—as the Church intends—they will lead us to the great joy and excitement of Christmas. If we “make straight the way of the Lord” during Advent, on Christmas we will truly be prepared to give “glory to God in the highest” and know peace as God's people on earth.
Holy Cross Father
Thomas Feeley writes from
North Easton, Massachusetts.
For information on Holy Cross
Family Ministries, visit
www.hcfm.org.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Father Thomas Feeley ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: The Maine Lady DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:People approaching Portland, Maine, from the Back Cove area in the late 1800s had to be dazzled by the sight, high on the hill, of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.
Soaring 204 feet into the sky, the structure's two asymmetrical spires were the tallest man-made features in the state's largest city. The great cathedral still draws drivers' glances as they jet along the Maine Turnpike.
Now on the National Register of Historic Places, the cathedral was built by Bishop David Bacon, first bishop of the new diocese. Judging by an 1870 photo I located after my visit, the brick French Gothic edifice hasn't changed much since its dedication in 1869. If anything, the quiet grandeur here seems only to have increased with age.
I was not surprised to learn that renowned church architect Patrick Charles Keely designed this cathedral. Some locals say Keely went to extra lengths in Portland because he knew Bishop Bacon well. That may well be: Years earlier, in Brooklyn, the priest had been the architect's pastor. In fact, he presided at Keely's wedding Mass.
In the interior, Keely's perfectly balanced lines have remained the architectural anchors for the series of renovations the cathedral has seen. For example, each side of the nave is graced by seven ribbed columns—adorned with simple gold dentil-capitals—and seven arches extending toward the sanctuary. Double- and triple-lancet windows echo the visual theme.
It wasn't until 1910 that most of the glorious stained-glass windows were installed in the lancets and in the clerestory. These masterpieces from Munich, designed by Franz Mayer, were well worth the wait. Each scene is a museum-like “mural” of New Testament and early-Church scenes come to life.
Mary's life is here composed in medieval settings resplendent in details and regal in hues of reds, blues and royal golds. Enclosed by jewel-like, stained-glass frames, they make Tiffany's look like child's play.
It was the Wedding at Cana and the Marriage of Mary and Joseph that earned my immediate attention. The elaborate Annunciation wasn't far behind. The scene brings to light the Holy Trinity—God the Father appears with arms out stretched and the Holy Spirit appears in the form of a dove before rays of light that travel directly to Mary's halo. The Virgin Mary is dressed in white and blue. Before her, the angel Gabriel arrives in bright green, red and gold apparel. Two more angels watch the event, their eyes reflecting joyful contemplation.
These wondrous stained-glass scenes seem so alive the way they combine human emotions with the heavenly mysteries. In the Crucifixion, for example, angels watch and weep while Mary Magdalene embraces the foot of the cross.
The cathedral's predominant cream paintwork from the 1999 restoration helps accentuate the windows. While the various multicolors and scrollwork that usually accompanied such architecture have long been replaced, the creams give an overall pristine, rather than sterile, look.
Another spiritual treasure of artistic significance are the Stations of the Cross. They're crafted of Venetian glass mosaics. Gold leaf increases their brilliance. These stations were installed in 1930 during the cathedral's 60th anniversary.
Less than a decade before, in the early 1920s, Immaculate Conception's baptismal font was installed. This alone is an exquisite work of art, a masterpiece of Renaissance proportions (13 feet high by 5 feet in diameter, to be precise). And rightly so, since the sacrament it supports is the portal to the faith.
‘I won't be able to be there Dec. 8, feast of the Immaculate Conception, but my memories surely will take me there—and, from there, upward.’
Throughout, in details too numerous to recount adequately here, the sanctuary is a beautiful blend of the old and the new. Carrara marble flooring arrived in the sanctuary during an extensive 1999 restoration to join the original marble-chip ambulatory flooring. Before that, renovations removed the high Gothic altar. The new altar has been crafted from the side altars at St. Dominic's Church, Portland's first Catholic church. It dates to 1830. The bishop's chair was once used by Bishop Bacon.
Magnificently Marian
The Carrara marble bas relief of the life of Christ that once graced the front of the high Gothic altar is now displayed at the back of the cathedral as a massive triptych about 10 feet long. The two Gothic and canopied side altars honoring Mary as the Immaculate Conception and St. Joseph are both flanked by two marble angels, again from the original high altar.
The artistry continues to venerate Mary in the wondrous Immaculate Conception window. The angels who accompany Our Lady are dressed richly for the occasion and seem to have arrived that minute from the heavenly court. Cherubs form a halo for her, too. In the Rose Window, Jesus is surrounded by the apostles.
Over the decades, the original organ played at the dedication has been rebuilt three times. The second-largest organ in Maine, this great instrument was one of the Henry Erben Company's world-famous works of art. It's similar to the organ in Old St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. Because Bishop Bacon was from Brooklyn and surely knew that instrument, I'm guessing that's what prompted him to put Erben in charge of this pipe organ.
Bishop Healy's Home
In the vestibule there's a most handsome statue of Our Lord as a boy and a display on Bishop James Healy, who led the diocese as its second shepherd from 1875 to 1900. Appointed by Pope Pius IX, Bishop Healy became the first black Catholic bishop in the United States. He was born in Macon, Ga., the son of an Irish immigrant and a mulatto slave. Educated in Massachusetts and ordained in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, he arrived when the Portland Diocese encompassed all of Maine and New Hampshire. This groundbreaking history comes alive looking over a few of his personal effects, such as his simple silver-and-gold chalice and the breviary he signed in 1898.
The cathedral's chapel, a small version of a Gothic cathedral used for daily Mass, also dates from 1869. Creams, dusty roses, white-marble Gothic altars and stained-glass windows in light greens give the chapel an airy, celestial aura. One canopied side altar enshrines a marble statue of Mary's heavenly lady-in-waiting, St. Thérèse. The other side altar reveres our Blessed Mother with a grotto shrine.
Downtown Portland and its harbor area are in the midst of a renaissance. But we found the most exciting revitalization at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. I won't be able to be there Dec. 8, feast of the Immaculate Conception, but my memories surely will take me there—and, from there, upward.
Joseph Pronechen Writes From Trumbull, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Portland, Maine ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Pronechen ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: The Pros and Cons of Instant Messaging DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:The real-time, text-based conversation experience known as “instant messaging” seems brand-new.
But, believe it or not, I first experienced “IM” way back in 1985.
At the time I was working for the Educational Computer Corp. Having purchased a new mainframe computer, the company connected employees to it—and, thus, to one another—with basic key boards and monitors. Soon everyone learned about the new communications capability. You could type text to someone and send it to his monitor. He would hear a bell and up would pop the message you just sent. He would answer and the conversation would be on. Nobody I knew used the technology to increase work productivity. Instead, it became a fun distraction.
The next time I came across IM was on CompuServe in 1996.I was uploading our magazine in a forum bulletin board when a window popped up. Someone had decided to just say, “Hello.” I was a bit surprised by this uninvited guest but answered anyway. At that time online access was limited. So I told the person I had work to do and couldn't afford to just chat.
Around this time, an Israeli company developed a free DVI program. With its software, called ICQ, instant messaging exploded on the Internet. The innovation allowed people to know whether or not their friends were online and to set up times to chat live.
The Israeli company was bought by America Online in 1998; Brother Mark here used AOL's Instant Messenger extensively before joining our community. So I asked him about the difficulties he experienced with it.
In most IM programs, there is a shut-off feature that allows you to block all IMs—or just IMs from certain people, Brother Mark explains. “I had an online Ebay business,” he continued. “Trying to run a business online while others are trying to talk to you can be a little nerve-wracking. But if you block your friends, and they find out you are online at the same time but that you've shut off your IM feature, sometimes there can be hurt feelings all around when one of them feels slighted that you won't give them your instant attention.”
Brother Mark also says it's important to remember that you can block some IMs some of the time, but you can't block all IMs all of the time. For example, a person can surf profiles and find out whether or not you are online. Even if your instant messaging is turned off, this person can find out if you are in a chat room and then come in that room to send you a message. He can also decide to e-mail you things you'd rather not be exposed to.
“When you are talking to someone by DVI and they are in an AOL chat room,” Brother Mark adds, “your e-mail address can be harvested for advertising because you are connected to them by IM.”
Brother Mark's experience was with AOL's Instant Messenger, which is even available to non-AOL users (at aol.com/aim/ home.html). However, there are other IM programs out there, including Microsoft's MSN Messenger (messenger.msn.com) and Yahoo! Messenger (messen-ger.yahoo.com). Given the competition between MSN and AOL, if you already have AIM and then install MSN Messenger, it will automatically make itself your system's default IM. And with Windows XP, MSN Messenger automatically opens every time Outlook Express is opened. It seems Microsoft may be flexing its muscles to dominate IM.
Then, too, IM technology has moved beyond simple text chat. MSN Messenger advertises the ability to have audio and video conversations, hold online meetings, play online collaborative games and share programs installed on your computer. Of course, some of these features do not work so well on low-bandwidth connections such as a dial-up modem.
With the rise of e-mail viruses, some people are turning to DVI for a safer communications medium. IM viruses are relatively few. However, according to Christopher Saunders, managing editor of InstantMes sagePlanet.com, the consumer-grade variety of IM is widely known to have a myriad of security holes—and people are taking advantage of it.
The first half of this year saw a 400% rise from the previous year of IM virus threats, according to Symantec Corporation. IM software also can open the door to remote control of your computer by hackers, in connection with chat rooms. Fortunately, anti-virus programs are being expanded to look at IM as another method of virus delivery.
Tired of spam? How about turning to IM? Spam is slowly making its way into this medium. However, users can keep it off their IM, for now, by only accepting messages from people on their contact lists.
If you are a current IM user and want to safeguard against viruses, hackers and spam, try Zone Labs' IMsecure software (go to zonelabs.com for info). There is a free version and a full-function version. The latter comes with a year of updates and support for $19.95.
I have resisted getting involved with IM. E-mail is still fast enough for me. I would never get any work done, like this article, with IMs popping up continually. There are people who multitask very well. I'll leave the IM to them.
Brother John Raymond,
co-founder of the Monks of
Adoration, writes from Venice, Florida.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brother John Raymond ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Monthly Web Picks DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:The Catholic Medical Association at cathmed.org is a resource for Catholic physicians who want to grow in Christ, invite the Holy Spirit into their science and art, and support the Pope and bishops. Some parts of the site are still under construction. Hopefully the “Physician Directory” will be up soon so we patients can find good Catholic physicians.
The American Catholic Lawyers Association at americancatholiclawyers.org was founded in 1990 and is a nonprofit religious organization dedicated to the defense of the faith and the rights of Catholics in America. Attorneys can join their volunteer network and people can contact them for legal representation.
The Catholic Association of Musicians at cammu-sic.com was founded in 1996. Member musicians are interested in a wide variety of Catholic music, from classic liturgical to contemporary entertainment.
Signis at www.signis.net was formed in 2001and comprises a vast network of communication professionals. The Vatican officially recognizes it as a Catholic organization for communication.
The National Catholic Education Association at ncea.org began in 1904 and is based in Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brother John Raymond ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Weekly Video/DVD Picks DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:Winged Migration (2003)
In the tradition of the also nearly wordless Atlantis (1991) and Mic-rocosmos (1996), Winged Migration is another invaluable nature documentary that “documents” with such extraordinary wonder and power that educational voiceover narration is superfluous: It's enough to see what the camera saw.
Director Jacques Perrin and his crew of pilots and cinematogra-phers spent four years traversing the globe, capturing unprecedented images of migratory birds in flight and on land. Shooting from hot-air balloons and ultralight aircraft, the filmmakers insinuate the camera's eye so intimately into the midst of airborne flights of birds that one can almost count the hair-like barbs on the feathers.
Some of the images are hard to watch: a tern with a broken wing struggling to evade an aggressive crab; a red-breasted duck mired in sludge near an industrial plant. Others are simultaneously comical and amazing: rock-hopper penguins energetically bouncing out of the surf, springing like miniature kangaroos over the rocky shore; swimming Clark's grebes abruptly running on tiptoe across the water's surface in synchronized pairs. It's a film that never goes very long without showing something you've never seen before.
Content advisory: A few images of birds in distress; a fleeting image of a dead bird. All ages.
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Recently released in enhanced Superbit DVD, Lawrence of Arabia looks better than ever at home, though its 70mm glory is still best appreciated in the theater.
One of the cinema's grandest spectacles, Lawrence of Arabia is at turns exhilarating, devastating and puzzling as it ponders the mystery of a man who was a mystery to himself.
Based on the autobiography of eccentric, flamboyant World War I-era British officer T.E. Lawrence, who aided the Arab Bedouin against the German-allied Turks, David Lean's nearly four-hour epic is most often praised, justly so, for its magnificent desert cinematography, sweeping score and career-defining performance from Peter O'Toole. But attention should also be given to the screenplay, adapted by first-time screenwriter Robert Bolt, who later wrote A Man for All Seasons and The Mission.
Bolt's Lawrence, like his later Thomas More, seems to have what Bolt called "an adamantine sense of his own self”—so much so that Lawrence even pits himself against, if not God, at least pious religious resignation.
Yet unlike More, Lawrence finally lacks a place to stand. His mythic self-image is built on sand—and of course the floods ultimately come, with shattering consequences.
Content advisory: Recurring battlefield violence; implied sexual violence. Mature viewing.
Top Hat (1935)
The quintessential Fred-and-Ginger vehicle, Top Hat features some of the most glorious, memorable dance sequences ever filmed. The Irving Berlin score includes perhaps the duo's best-known number, “Cheek to Cheek,” as well as Astaire's signature solo number, “Top Hat, White Tie and Tails.”
Like many of their pictures, Top Hat opens with Fred making a bad first impression on Ginger, then spending much of the film trying to get on her good side. This device seems to fit Astaire's insouciant, sometimes annoying screen persona, though he's more sympathetic and likeable here than in some pictures.
The plot takes a turn for farce with a contrived case of mistaken identity, as Ginger confuses Fred with her best friend's husband. Suitably outraged, Ginger turns to her friend, who affects cynical unconcern to Ginger—though showing a different face to her bewildered, not entirely innocent husband.
With its glamorous, elegant trappings, Top Hat is typically escapist Depression-era fare with a hint of satire. Whenever Fred and Ginger are in motion, though, the magic is timeless.
Content advisory: Romantic and marital complications, including suspicions of infidelity and references to divorce. Teens and up.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Steven D. Greydanus ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Weekly TV Picks DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:All times Eastern
SUNDAY, DEC. 7
Save Our History: USS Arizona
History Channel, 4 p.m.
Relates the history of the battleship Arizona from its construction in 1914 to its sinking, with the loss of 1,177 men, in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Efforts are under way to preserve the vessel, which lies beneath the USS Arizona Memorial.
MONDAY, DEC. 8
Holiday Cookie Extravaganza
Food Network, 10 a.m.
In this special, Sara Moulton travels around our country to take part in Yuletide “cookie swaps” and discover fun Christmas cookie recipes.
TUESDAY, DEC. 9
The Wright Challenge
History Channel, 9 p.m.
To commemorate the centennial of the Wright brothers' historic first flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C., in December 1903, several enthusiasts have built replica Wright aircraft. In this special, the builders test the flight capabilities of their creations.
WEDNESDAY, DEC. 10
The Washington Opera Celebration
PBS, 8 p.m.
Placido Domingo sings from Pagliacci, Massenet and Tosti, and other singers perform, accompanied by the Washington Opera Orchestra with Heinz Fricke and Valery Gergiev conducting. This 90-minute program was taped April 13 at the Daughters of the American Revolution's Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.
WEDNESDAY, DEC. 10
Great Performances
PBS, 10 p.m.
In this 90-minute program, the Berlin Philharmonic, with Pierre Boulez conducting, holds its Europakonzert 2003 at the 16th-century Mosteiro (Monastery) dos Jeronimos in Lisbon. Pianist Maria Joao Pires performs pieces by Mozart, Debussy and Ravel.
THURSDAY, DEC. 11
Holidays at the White House
A&E, 9 p.m.
Careful design and skilled, painstaking labor go into preparing the executive mansion for Christmas and the holiday season.
FRIDAY, DEC. 12
Today With Father Rutler
EWTN, 10:30 p.m.
Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared to St. Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin (He Who Talks Like an Eagle) in Mexico City, Dec. 9-12, 1531. She fondly called him “My littlest one” and reminded him, along with all Mexico and each one of us today, “Am I not your Mother?” In this show, Father George Rutler tells all about Our Lady's message.
SATURDAY, DEC. 13
It's a Wonderful Life
NBC, 9 p.m.
Hollywood legend Frank Capra, a Catholic, directed and co-wrote this powerful 1946 story of a problem-laden man who contemplates suicide until his guardian angel helps him realize how much he means to his family and friends. James Stewart, Donna Reed, Henry Travers, Thomas Mitchell and Lionel Barrymore star. A two-hour telecast.
Dan Engler writes from Santa Barbara, California.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Dan Engler ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Expanded Pontifical Athenaeum Rises to Modern Challenges DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:ROME—In the last few years alone, the world has witnessed terrorism and bioterrorism. Then there were the business scandals at top global companies. Then, of course, there were the Church scandals.
But the expanded and rebuilt Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University, run by the Legionaries of Christ, has answers to all of that.
The school recently introduced three master's degree programs in applied ethics. The programs, initiated in 2001, were set up to reflect the increasing need to address an escalating moral crisis in corporate culture, religious life and the social-physical sciences.
The new environmental science, faith and science, and psychological consultation programs all follow the educational objectives instituted by the school's bioethics faculty.
“The main goal of these [specialized] degrees,” according to the university's president, Legionary Father Paolo Scarafoni, “is to allow both lay professionals and religious to deepen their knowledge of the principles of ethically responsible care and management… in light of the Church's social doctrine. They attest to a new abundance of moral dilemmas brought on by technical-scientific applications of reason.”
While most of the school's theology and philosophy students are seminarians and young priests, Father Scarafoni said, the majority of master's degree students are laymen and laywomen. They come from all walks of life, he said: Scientists, medical doctors, businessmen and journalists “seeking to be better activists and moral leaders in their specific fields.”
Father Scarafoni said the university is launching a degree for advanced studies in political science this year, and there are tentative plans to add a master's degree program in business ethics, a program already at the school's sister universities in Spain and Mexico.
The athenaeum's board, he said, is particularly concerned about contemporary society's abandonment of the ancient Christian principles of natural law and the sacredness of the person.
“We are especially interested in ethics applied to social responsibility … for our God-given resources,” he said. Globalization of immoral practices and concepts, Father Scarafoni said, “now takes center stage in the science of human conduct.”
Father Scarafoni said there is a difficult balance to be struck in applying ethical studies to a critique of contemporary business and scientific aims.
“We follow closely the neutral ideologies of a very courageous Pope John Paul II, who seeks the true solidarity among all men and women found in truth … while at the same time affirming the belief in Genesis that man was put on earth to dominate his environment,” he said.
The university's master's degree in faith and science, on the other hand, specifically reflects an educational philosophy that “defends reason's ability to grasp moral and speculative truth deeply and with certitude,” said Father Thomas Williams, dean of theology at the university.
Man's skepticism regarding reason is related to his skepticism regarding revelation and thus, Father Williams said, “the contemporary crisis of the human person and his inviolable dignity is symptomatic of man's loss of faith in and reverence for God.”
He said the faith and science degree “is grounded in a theological and philosophical anthropology that sees the human person as imaging the Creator, both in his intelligence and in his vocation to communion. … Theology, then, must have more than a speculative dimension. It must also offer a spiritual, ethical and evangelizing dimension to those who pursue it.”
Expansion
The new degree programs are possible thanks to the university's much-enlarged state-of-the-art campus inaugurated in December 2000. The original campus, located two miles from its current hilltop address, did not provide adequate facilities for offering new degrees that, in turn, require additional classrooms, research facilities, offices and auditoriums.
“The old structure was simply lacking in space,” Father Scarafoni said.
At the new location, however, he said, “we have a genuine campus, with ample classrooms and library space for more than 1 million volumes.”
In addition, the school now has computer labs and auditoriums with multiple teleconferencing hookups.
“Our plans for [academic] expansion are now realistic,” Father Scarafoni said. Each year the school's facilities receive more than 2,600 students and professors hailing from more than 30 different countries.
Regina Apostolorum's students seem pleased with the new programs and facilities as well.
“The university's unique position consists in offering hi-tech facilities, world-class professors and progressive programs … all strategically perched just above the hustle and bustle of the Aurelian Way yet tranquilly immersed in natural bucolic pastures of roaming sheep, vines and olive groves,” said Dr. Juan Manuel Estrella, a doctoral student in bioethics and a cardiologist from Argentina. “Its gardens and open space … invite moral reflection of society's problems found at just a brief distance.”
Father Scarafoni said the university's new advanced degrees and modern facilities are keeping in line with John Paul's repeated emphasis for a New Evangelization within education.
The Pope's call involves much more than a body of enthusiastic students and professors faithful to the principles of Revelation, natural law, Tradition and the magisteri-um, he said.
“But more so,” he said, “it signifies a new and fervent application of modern means in working out contemporary social issues in and outside the classroom.”
High-Tech
Lectures and conferences are transmitted via satellite hookups to distance-learning centers in the form of “virtual” course offerings. Conventions and conferences offer simultaneous transmission to conferees in a 450-seat auditorium.
The university's modern facilities and technological means have hosted international conferences on pressing issues such as stem cell research, genetically modified biotech foods and Internet-use regulations. In October, Regina Apostolorum Pontifical Athenaeum hosted a three-day roundtable discussion on global business practices, with major industrial leaders as participants. The university has also recently allied itself with three other pontifical universities to discuss these issues as part of the Vatican's Pontifical Council of Culture.
George Weigel, senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., and one of several ethics scholars to have co-organized conferences at the university's Rome campus, said the use of modern media equipment implied in the Pope's millennium message to Catholic educators means “Regina Apostolorum takes very seriously the Pope's call to evangelize high culture. It is an evangelization of intellectual engagement that will only grow more influential in the years and decades ahead.”
When asked what influence the athenaeum presently has in international moral dialogue, Weigel said, “Regina Apostolorum has certainly been at the forefront of efforts to take [ethical] issues seriously … Being a newer institution, it is a little more flexible and a little more adventurous than some of the more established centers, and that is all to its advantage.”
Michael A. Severance writes from Rome.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Michael A. Severance ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: God Has a Dream: Man Fully Alive DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:MAN'S DESIRE FOR GOD
by Brian Mullady, O.P.
1st Books, 2003
143 pages, $10.50
To order: (800) 839-8640
www.1stbooks.com
Dominican Father Brian Mullady starts out Man's Desire for God with a glance back at the 1960s, when it was fashionable to use a quotation of St. Irenaeus on banners in church: “The glory of God is man fully alive.” He concludes his book 127 pages later, regretting that many Catholics today do not believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
There's a connection between the two. Father Mullady, who's been a priest for some 30 years, points out that the St. Irenaeus quotation was taken out of context, making it seem like religion is man-centered. He proceeds to show in a variety of ways the necessity of including the forgotten second part of the saying: “But man's life is the vision of God.”
One finds in this book a number of examples of the consequences of forgetting the second half. The book, indeed, is an examination of the unraveling of integrity—in theology, in man, in society, in the family and in our attitudes, as Catholics, to the Eucharist and our ultimate destiny.
“Man needs an experience of the knowledge of God,” Father Mullady writes, “which goes beyond his natural powers and requires the grace of revelation to be complete.”
Liturgical abuses—such as priests failing to purify the sacred vessels after Communion, lest any particles be lost, or assistants pouring unconsumed Precious Blood down a sink—arise, he points out, “from a bad metaphysics, in which all is reduced to appearances, and from a subjective celebration of humanity, in which all is horizontal.”
The author goes through various aspects of what it means for man to be “fully alive.” He begins with what he admits might be the most difficult question in the ology—and yet the most important—the basis for the ordering of man to God. “Just why is man fully alive fl when he sees God?” he asks.
This discussion requires the author to review a difficulty in Thomistic philosophy that many thinkers took up in the early 20th century—the problem of the “natural desire to see God.”
Here is one drawback to the book. Chapter 1 will, I'm afraid, leave many readers scratching their heads—at least the many readers who missed out on Thomism because the Catholic colleges they attended had by the mid-1960s stopped teaching it, serving up instead some of the modern theologians Father Mullady criticizes. The author might have done well to give us a more basic primer.
But it is worth struggling through the discussion, for ultimately Father Mullady shows us where more modern theologians, notably Karl Rahner, took a wrong turn in their thinking.
And beyond Chapter 1 there is excellent commentary on many of the social ills we are suffering from today—the culture of death or the loss of the father in the family and the simultaneous clamoring for egalitarian models to replace the hierarchical one Our Lord gave the Church.
Father Mullady's final chapter I is a meditation of I the Eucharist, with the help of a hymn I St. Thomas wrote for / the feast of Corpus 5 Christi, “Lauda Sion.” I His meditation takes 7 us deeply into the mys-I tery of the Real I Presence, through a r philosophical/theological examination of tran-substantiation. If one has stayed with the book this far, he will benefit much from the discussion. But it helps to brush up on your Thomism first.
John Burger is the Register's news editor.
----- EXCERPT: Weekly Book Pick ----- EXTENDED BODY: John Burger ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Campus Watch DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:Staying Put
Costly renovations and the high cost of running the center led the archdiocese to consider closing it and relocating its services off campus, to nearby St. Joseph's Church in Greenwich Village, the Times reported.
The archdiocese said no final decision had been made, but Auxiliary Bishop Timothy McDonnell told Father John McGuire, the director of campus ministry, the center could stay at its prime location next door to the university's student center and close to the library.
New Leader
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, Nov. 17—Mary Lyons has become the new president of the University of San Diego, its third president since the college combined its men's and women's programs in 1972.
Lyons, 56, came to the 7,130-student university from the College of St. Benedict in Minnesota, where she was also president, the Associated Press reported.
In an address to students, faculty and staff at the start of her term, Lyons called for a greater emphasis on public service.
“This university can be a mediating influence,” she said, “on behalf of many of its own neighbors who are poor, sick or culturally or linguistically isolated.”
Pontifical Observer
CHRISTENDOM COLLEGE, Nov. 19—Pope John Paul II invited Franciscan Sister of the Eucharist M. Timothy Prokes, a professor of theology at the Front Royal, Va., college's Notre Dame Graduate School, to be an observer at the Nov. 7-11 meeting of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
The meeting, held at the newly restored Casina Pius IV in the Vatican Gardens, marked the 400th anniversary of the academy. Galileo was one of its first members.
The Holy Father received in audience members and observers. They had the opportunity to greet the Pope personally.
More Study Abroad
UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME, Nov. 19—Two Catholic universities were among the top three schools with the highest percentage of students studying abroad during the 2001-2002 school year.
According to a report released Nov. 17 by the Institute for International Education, Georgetown University ranked second with 52% of students studying abroad and the University of Notre Dame ranked third with 51%. Yeshiva University in New York City ranked first with 75%.
The report, which ranked programs at American research universities, showed an overall 4% increase from last year in student participation in international study programs.
Worth the Wait
Planning for the new school began in 1996, when Bishop Michael Saltarelli was installed as the head of the Wilmington, Del., Diocese.
The kindergarten-through-seventh-grade school plans to open an eighth grade next year, but after students graduate there is not yet a Catholic high school in the area for them to attend.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Family Matters DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:Resolve Now, Relax Later
Q
My husband and I have been struggling with our finances for years now and we want to turn things around. We would like to get a handle on our debt and become financially stable. In a few weeks, this will be our New Year's resolution. Do you have any concrete advice to get us started?
A
Your resolution is a good one and you are wise to be thinking about it ahead of time, well before Jan. 1 rolls around. I would encourage you to set the following goals. Put God first when it comes to your money (as well as other areas of your life). If you have not already done so, I encourage you to implement a daily spiritual plan of reading, meditation and prayer, and to focus on achieving a healthy attitude toward material things. In addition, by looking at your spending habits in light of the Gospels, you'll more effectively separate “needs” from “wants,” helping to overcome that habitual overspending.
Begin tithing and almsgiving. By giving back to God from your first fruits, you'll foster a closer relationship with God and experience the joy of assisting in the building of Christ's Kingdom here on earth.
Manage your checkbook. Keep it current and reconcile to your bank statement each month. Watch those cash advances from ATMs. Work to minimize these, but when necessary, at least make sure they get properly recorded.
Set a budget and track your expenses. If you need help with this, obtain a copy of our workbook, Catholic Answers' Guide to Family Finances (go to www.catholic.com). Create a debt-repayment strategy that works with your budget.
Debt can be a major obstacle in stabilizing one's finances. The emotional bondage that debt causes is a burden for millions of families (see Proverbs 22:7). By eliminating your consumer debt, you'll go a long way toward achieving “financial peace.”
Here are some keys to becoming debt-free.
• Commit to no further debt. If you can't pay off current purchases on your credit card, cut them up.
• Use a software program such as Excel or Quicken to help calculate a debt-repayment schedule.
• Review your budget for spending habits that can be changed to allow for a more rapid debt repayment.
• Be accountable to someone. Preferably, this can be your spouse, but if you don't have the discipline to stick with the plan on your own, bring in a friend, family member or pastor to help you stay on track.
• Set up a visual system to show your progress, such as a chart on the refrigerator that shows your declining debt balances. Depending on the circumstances, it's not uncommon for a debt-repayment plan to take from one to five years, so a visual aid, which tracks your progress, can help you persevere.
By implementing a solid financial plan right now—before you overspend for Christmas—and by sticking with your plan throughout the upcoming year, you'll find yourself well on your way to financial peace. God love you!
Phil Lenahan is director of finance at
Catholic Answers in El Cajon, California.
Reach Family Matters at familymatters@ncregister.com
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Phil Lenahan ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: THE BETTER TO HEAR? DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:Facts of Life
In at least 12 scientific studies, scientists have found that people's ears get larger throughout life. And that means women's ears as well as men's. Dr. James Heathcote, a British physician, might have pioneered modern research on the topic with a 1995 study that involved several other physicians. They measured ear length in hundreds of patients, aged 30 to 93, and concluded that ears grow an average of 0.01 inches a year.
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Nov. 4
Register Illustration by Tim Rauch
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: The Register's Clip-Out, Photocopy and Pass-On Guides for Advent DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:Reason 1 The presence of sin can easily lead to depression and anxiety.
Reason 2 You shower to show respect for those around you. Cleansing your soul makes you better to be around, too!
Step 1 Examine your conscience … using the Ten Commandments or an available guide.
Reason 3 Mortal sin, uncon-fessed, “causes exclusion from Christ's Kingdom and the eternal death of hell, for our freedom has the power to make choices forever, with no turning back” (Catechism, No. 1861).
Reason 4 As they leave the confessional, people smile a smile of freedom.
Step 2 You have the choice of facing the priest (if he offers the option) or speaking through a screen.
Confession Definition
“For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must together be met: ‘Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent’” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 1857).
Reason 5 Because love means having to say you are sorry to the one you love.
Step 4 Be concise, clear, complete and contrite. You have to confess mortal sins and give a sense of how often. Don't be embarrassed. You're not going to tell the priest anything he hasn't already heard.
Reason 6 You will grow in humility, sincerity and self-knowledge.
Reason 7 Blessed Mother Teresa thought she had to go. I Frequently.
Reason 8 Hoping to convert on your deathbed? That's not very likely. Most likely, you will die as you lived.
Reason 9 It is itself a serious sin to go to Communion if you have serious sin on your soul and have not asked for forgiveness in confession.
Step 3 There are no special words you need to say. Greet the priest, and tell him how long it has been since your last confession. If it's been a while, he'll help you.
Step 5 The priest won't scold you. In fact, if you've had a tough confession, he'll show you extra care.
Your penance won't be harsh.
Reason 10 Don't be scared to death of confession. Be scared of death without confession.
Grave Matter What constitutes “grave matter”? Some common sins: Missing Sunday Mass, any sex outside marriage (including pornography and masturbation), serious theft, abortion and contraception, defamation of character, purposely getting drunk.
Step 6 Then you'll make an act of contrition. Look in a prayer book for a longer one, or simply say: “Jesus, I am truly sorry for my sins and, with your grace, I will try to sin no more.”
Step 7 Do your penance right away, before leaving the church if possible.
Reason 11 Be strong. Face your sins, deal with them and move on.
Step 8 Christ has forgiven and forgotten your sins and the angels are having a party to celebrate.
Reason 12 Make sure there are no unpleasant surprises at your particular judgment or at the Final Judgment.
Reason 13 The priest will listen to your sins and will never tell a , soul on pain of losing his soul. Priests even learn to forget what they hear.
Concerns&Answers
Can't I talk to God directly, not a priest, to get forgiveness?
Not according to the Bible. Read John 20:21-23; 2 Corinthians 2:10; and 2 Corinthians 5:18.
If God knows everything we do, then how come we have to go to confession?
You may know your younger brother broke your CD player, but wouldn't it be aggravating if he knew you knew, but still didn't say “I'm sorry?”
Doesn't God forgive no matter what?
If we think of sin as merely breaking rules, it is hard to understand why God can't just “look the other way.” But sin is real; it hurts us and makes us distant from him—and unable to enter heaven. We can only be restored if we confess.
Confession just gives people the idea that it's all right to sin as long as you're sorry later.
If a man is confessing drunkenness while he has plans with his buddies to go barhopping and get drunk again the coming weekend, he can't be forgiven. He has to have decided to stop. Confession stops sins; it doesn't start them.
Content: Martha Fernandez-Sardina (adw.org/evangel/office.html), Father Richard Gill, LC (legionofchrist.org), Father C. John McCloskey (cicdc.org), Matthew Pinto (ascensionpress.org); Edward Sri and Curtis Martin (focuson-line.org). Art: Tim Rauch. Photos: AFP. Extra copies: ncregister.com
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Our Advent Guides DATE: 12/07/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 7-13, 2003 ----- BODY:Pope John Paul II outlined a clear program for the future of the Church in his 2001 apostolic letter Novo Millennio Ineunte (At the Beginning of the New Millennium).
His plan is brilliant in its simplicity: promote Sunday Mass, confession, prayer and community service. These four things are easy to promote and life-changing.
To help Register readers take up the Holy Father's challenge we have produced four guides.
Clip, photocopy and pass out as many as you like!
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Supreme Court Hears Religious Scholarship Case DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON — He might not be a lawyer yet, but Joshua Davey is getting his legal education firsthand at the U.S. Supreme Court.
The first-year Harvard law student's fight to keep a scholarship he won in 1999 took him to the highest court in the land Dec. 2.
The court is considering whether the state of Washington was right to strip Davey of more than $2,500 in scholarship funds after the student declared a double major in pastoral ministries and business management at Northwest College in Kirkland, Wash. Davey grad-uated from the college last spring with high honors.
“This is a case of express anti-religious discrimination by the state,” said Walter Weber, senior litigation counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, the firm representing Davey.
“Our position is that the state has no business penalizing or burdening private religious choices,” Weber said. “If they say, ‘Here is the program. You qualify. You're going to a school that qualifies. You're studying a subject we allow people to study, but if you study it from a religious viewpoint, you're disqualified,’ our position is not only is that discriminating against religion, but it's [also] discriminating against a par-ticular viewpoint.”
While studying at Northwest College in 1999, Davey received a Washington State Promise Scholarship. To qualify, students had to graduate in the top 10% of their high school class, attend an accredited school and demonstrate financial hardship.
“When he initially signed up for the program and got the scholarship, there was no hint about a restriction on theology majors,” Weber said. “And Davey said that as a matter of conscience, he wasn't going to [switch majors] just to get the money.”
But lawyers for the state contend that Washington's Constitution prohibits funding any kind of religious instruction and a statute says scholarships cannot be provided to students pursuing a theology degree. Washington Solicitor General Narda Pierce argued the case before the Supreme Court.
“Washington's Constitution provides freedom of conscience in religious matters for all its citizens by limiting government's regulation of religious activities and also limiting government's funding of religious instruction,” Pierce said. “Although under the federal establishment clause states are allowed to provide some funding for religious instruction, we contend they're not required to provide that funding.”
Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the state of Washington's position. Executive director Barry Lynn says Davey did not have a free-exercise-of-religion right to the scholarship.
“We do not see it as discrimination or anti-religious bigotry on the part of the state of Washington,” he said. “We see it as an important constitutional distinction between religious studies and the study of other disciplines.”
Affect on Vouchers
The Davey case could clarify last year's landmark case of Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, where the Supreme Court upheld the use of state-funded vouchers for children attending private, parochial schools.
In their decision, the justices decided states could offer “neutral” voucher programs that present a “genuine choice among options, public and private, secular and religious.” However, a legal hurdle remains over those states that ban voucher and scholarship programs.
During the Dec. 2 oral arguments in Locke v. Davey, several justices appeared uncertain whether their 2002 decision would automatically apply to a person's freedom to choose theology for study and still be eligible for public scholarship funds.
Washington is one of 37 states with broader laws prohibiting spending tax dollars on religious training.
Lynn contends that if the high court rules in Davey's favor — saying that states must allow theology majors equal access to public scholarship programs — then states such as Washington could be forced to fund both private and public schools.
“All these state constitutions that bar aid to religious education are simply nullified,” he said. This, he said, is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution's establishment clause.
But Patrick Gillen, an attorney with the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., says that with both state vouchers and scholarship funds, the final destination for the money is determined by the personal choice of an individual citizen, not the state. The flow of money has absolutely no consequences for the establishment clause, he said.
“Where state money flows to an institution that admittedly has a religious inspiration, affiliation and mission, so long as that money reaches the institution as the result of a citizen's free choice, the program does not offend the establishment clause,” he said.
Gillen, who filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Davey, is the attorney for Teresa Becker, an Ave Maria College senior who was also stripped of scholarship funds for choosing a theology major.
Michigan denied Becker $2,750 in 2002. But in July, Federal District Judge George Caram Steeh issued a preliminary ruling in her favor. The decision placed the scholarship funds into an interest-bearing account until further order from the court. Then he stayed the case pending the decision in Davey.
“Both cases hinge on whether the state can penalize someone for pursuing their own chosen course of study and vocation in life,” Gillen said. “In both cases, the student is being stripped of state funding because their free choice is to pursue a major the states have decided to disfavor. There's no reason for that. It's unjust.”
The Supreme Court is expected to issue its decision in Locke v. Davey by June.
“We've known from the beginning that the Supreme Court only takes cases that are difficult,” Pierce said. “There are different perspectives, so we'll just have to wait and see.”
Patrick Novecosky writes from Ann Arbor, Michigan.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Patrick Novecosky ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Filmmakers Contemplated the Faith of The Rings DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:On Dec. 17 the journey that first began in theaters three years ago — to save Middle Earth — comes to an end. Readers of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy already know how The Return of the King ends, but what they don't know is how the story will play out on the big screen.
Last year, Register correspondent Stan Williams interviewed the cast of the Lord of the Rings: Two Towers in New York. This year, Register movie reviewer Steven Greydanus traveled to Los Angeles to interview cast members and screenwriters.
Tolkien was a devotee of Eucharistic adoration who stuck to his faith through difficult times. Tolkien said the fact that he was “a Christian (which can be deduced from my stories) and in fact a Roman Catholic” was the most important and “really significant” element in his work. He called The Lord of the Rings “fundamentally religious and Catholic.”
Greydanus wanted to see just how aware the cast was of the story's Catholic roots. He also put questions to the screenwriters about how they handled the material.
He learned that the writers and actors were well aware of Tolkien's religious worldview and saw it as an integral part of the story.
Find Greydanus' full report on pages 16 and 17. Next week, Tim Drake speaks to Catholic fans and scholars about how they assess the movie.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Filmmakers Say They Contemplated the Faith of Lord of the Rings DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:LOS ANGELES — Search for evidence on the DVD commentaries and other materials that accompany Peter Jackson's epic film production of The Lord of the Rings. You will be hard pressed to find an acknowledgment that the work comes from a Catholic writer.
Yet Tolkien said the fact that he was “a Christian (which can be deduced from my stories) and in fact a Roman Catholic” was the most important and “really significant” element in his work. He called The Lord of the Rings “fundamentally religious and Catholic.”
Jackson and his collaborators recently took some time at a press event to contemplate the project that has occupied the last five years of their lives — as well as the cultural, moral and spiritual significance of the books that inspired it.
For some of the filmmakers, engaging the moral universe of Tolkien's world over an extended period of time seems to have been a challenging experience.
“I think that stories [like Tolkien's] do offer us comfort that we live in a moral universe, whether or not that is” true, said Francis Walsh, one of the team's three screenwriters. “Who can say? The world seems to be a very amoral place, governed by something arbitrary, and not founded on a great sort of sense of decency.”
While not sharing Tolkien's beliefs, Walsh acknowledged the appeal of the moral vision embodied in stories such as his.
“Certainly, Tolkien's faith informs the third book most of all,” Walsh said. “The values in them — they give you a sense of hope, that it isn't chaos, that it isn't arbitrary, that it isn't without a point. I love storytelling for those reasons. So many things fall away as we kind of charge forward into this new century. There's so much cynicism and such a lack of ritual and a belief system to govern anything. I like stories for that because they still offer it.”
Some of the actors also come from a very different worldview from Tolkien's. How did that affect their portrayal of his characters?
“Tolkien was a Catholic, and I am not,” reflected actor Ian McKellen, who plays the wizard Gandalf. “But Tolkien and I both lived through the second World War, and he was writing this during the war, and I was sleeping under a metal shelter in the north of England waiting for the bombs to fall. So there was a Sauron around. And although he doesn't think of it as an allegory for the second World War, how could he not be affected? Because his boy, his Frodo, was fighting in the north of France.”
“Whenever I had to think, ‘What is Sauron?’” McKellen added, “I would think of Hitler. He's the great evil force of our time and certainly of Tolkien's. So I always think of Frodo as the representative of all those kids who have given their lives. They're still doing it; they're doing it now. … Those are the connections I've got with Tolkien.”
Walsh noted the importance of Tolkien's belief in immortality.
“Even those who leave us too soon or who are lost in war or who die young — and Frodo certainly represents all of those — they go to another place, they don't just fall into nothingness,” Walsh said. “[Tolkien] took that from his own war experience and from his own profound Christian beliefs. Those ideas are in the book, and we attempted to put them in the film.”
Hope and Pain
If Walsh saw Tolkien's Christian hope as central to his story, co-screenwriter Phillippa Boyens emphasized the Christian idea of the fallibility of human nature.
“One of the things Tolkien understood, because he was a [Christian] humanist,” Boyens noted, “is that we all fail, and we have the ability within us to fail. Faith requires us to believe in a higher power. Gandalf very early on in the book says, ‘The ring came to Bilbo and in that moment something else was at work.’ Not the [ring's] designer, the maker, this evil power, but some other power was at work. So it's whether you believe in that or not, whether you choose to believe in that or not.”
In order to underscore her point, she referred to a key plot point. (Warning: If you don't know how the story ends, you might want to skip the last paragraph.)
“Frodo dragged himself to that point and failed. And another power intervened,” Boyens said. Then, referring to the end of Frodo's life in Middle Earth, Boyen added, “He ultimately surrenders to that power at the end of this movie, which is one of the most beautiful moments in the movie.”
Steve Greydanus reported this story from Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Steven D. Greydanus ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Not Goblins and Orcs This Time: 'Gimli' Defends Western Civilization DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:LOS ANGELES — At a recent get-together with the cast of the Lord of the Rings, perhaps the most passionate observations came from John Rhys-Davies.
He's the actor who plays the dwarf Gimli, the proud defender of the ancient ways of the dwarfs, who know or thing or two about the collapse of civilizations: The dwarf civilization was left in ruins, as The Fellowship of the Ring, the first Lord of the Rings movie, made clear as the company of the ring struggled through the Mines of Moria.
He's also the actor who gave his voice to Treebeard the Ent in The Two Towers, the second Lord of the Rings movie. The Ents are also a dying civilization that is being attacked by the Orc forces of the wizard Saruman.
Now, as The Return of the King is poised for its Dec. 17 release, Davies warns that his own civilization is under attack. Only now, it's the Western civilization he's defending, and he sees radical Islam as the attacker.
Rhys-Davies took the media to task for failing to appreciate the preciousness of Western civilization. He warned of the potential consequences of rising Muslim extremism and the increasingly Islamic face of Europe.
“I think that Tolkien says that some generations will be challenged,” Rhys-Davies said, “and if they do not rise to meet that challenge, they will lose their civilization. That does have a real resonance with me.”
“What is unconscionable is that too many of your fellow journalists do not understand how precarious Western civilization is, and what a jewel it is. … The abolition of slavery comes from Western democracy,” Rhys-Davies added. “True democracy comes from our Greco-Judeo-Christian Western experience. If we lose these things, then this is a catastrophe for the world.”
Rhys-Davies said as far back as 1955 his father predicted “the next world war will be between Islam and the West.”
The actor recalled his response: “I said to him, ‘Dad, you're nuts! The Crusades have been over for hundreds of years!’ And he said, ‘Well, I know, but militant Islam is on the rise again. And you will see it in your lifetime.’ He's been dead some years now. But there's not a day that goes by that I don't think of him and think, ‘God, I wish you were here, just so I could tell you that you were right.’”
Looking at the lone female journalist at the table, Rhys-Davies said pointedly, “You should not be in this room [according to Muslim custom]. Because your husband or your father or your husband is not here to guide you. You could only be here in this room with these strange men for immoral purposes.”
Rhys-Davies went on to contemplate the significance of demographic shifts among Western Europeans and Muslims in Europe.
“There is a demographic catastrophe happening in Europe that nobody wants to talk about, that we daren't bring up because we are so cagey about not offending people racially,” he said. “And rightly we should be. But there is a cultural thing as well. … By 2020, 50% of the children in Holland under the age of 18 will be of Muslim descent.”
He even drew attention to the birth dearth in the West.
“And don't forget, coupled with this there is this collapse of numbers,” he said. “Western Europeans are not having any babies. The population of Germany at the end of the century is going to be 56% of what it is now. The population of France, 52% of what it is now. The population of Italy is going to be down 7 million people.”
He ended with a defense of “dead white males.”
“There is a change happening in the very complexion of Western civilization in Europe that we should think about at least and argue about,” he said. “If it just means the replacement of one genetic stock with another genetic stock, that doesn't matter too much. But if it involves the replacement of Western civilization with a different civilization with different cultural values, then it is something we really ought to discuss — because, hang it all, I am for dead-white-male culture!”
Steve Greydanus reported this story from Los Angeles.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Steve Greydanus ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Making Films and Friends: Frodo and Sam Get to the End of the Line DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:LOS ANGELES — While the third and final installment of The Lord of the Rings trilogy is titled Return of the King, it might just as easily been called “The Continued Journey of Frodo and Sam.”
After abandoning the fellowship at the end of the first film, and hooking up with Gollum in The Two Towers, fans will finally get to see if the two Hobbits will complete their mission of destroying the Ring of Power.
Yet for actors Elijah Wood and Sean Astin, the end of the journey is a little more bittersweet.
“It's funny because when we talk about the end and the leaving process and all that, there are kind of a lot of ends — it has ended many, many times over the past four years,” Elijah Wood tells Zap2it.com. “The sort of iconic end is when we left New Zealand after principal photography, which was three years ago, and that was a very difficult thing.”
Yet as hard as leaving New Zealand was, re-adjusting to life back in the United States was even tougher.
“Because we were so used to that world in New Zealand, suddenly I didn't quite know what my own life meant anymore,” Wood smiles. “So it was really about trying to reinstate myself into reality and what that meant. It took me about five or six months to come out of hibernation really, to being whole and complete and back in the world again. That sounds pretty dramatic, but it was pretty profound.”
Since coming home, both Wood and Astin have found themselves returning year-after-year to film pick-ups and additional scenes for The Two Towers and Return of the King.
“Shooting the film, it was more of a marathon than wind sprints. The hard part was keeping your mental acuity and your focus over such a long time — over five years, essentially,” says Astin. “There was over a year-and-a-half of principal photography, but then we went back in it for the first pickups, then back into for the second pickups and then back into it for the third pickups.”
For Astin, who had gained weight to play the role of Sam “Samwise” Gamgee, going back to shoot additional scenes also meant having to put some of his Hobbit weight back on again.
“I got really skinny for [the Showtime series] ‘Jeremiah’ and then I got hired for the Adam Sandler movie [‘50 First Dates’]. [Sandler] wanted me lifting weights all the time, so I was pumping iron and I got injured a little bit doing that — I sort of stopped and I had that transition from lifting weights to not. That actually worked for the pickups for the Lord of the Rings because right after the Adam Sandler movie I started to get a little bit heavier again,” laughs Astin. “But I'm ready for the Tilt-a-Whirl to stop and to try to rediscover my balance.”
The two actors have already moved on to other projects. Astin recently completing filming of the science fiction film Slipsteam, while Wood will star next in Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in which he plays a memory technician who manipulates himself into the memories of Kate Winslet.
In the meantime, there's still a lot of work left to be done on Middle Earth.
“At the moment I think we're too in the midst of this particular part of the journey to feel sorrow yet — it doesn't feel over because we still have so far to go in terms of releasing the film and the promotion of it,” says Wood. “I think the real realization that it's over will come at the end once the movie's finished and come out and all the press is finished and we'll then be left to reflect — it will really hit us then.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Vanessa Sibbald ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Bah, Humbug? U.K. Red Cross Bans Christmas Symbols DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:EDINBURGH, Scotland — Catholic bishops, Muslims and politicians have attacked the banning of references to Christmas by both a leading charity and the Scottish Parliament.
Staffs at the 430 Red Cross shops in Britain have been told not to set up Nativity scenes, Christmas trees or decorations with Christian symbols because they might offend Muslims and other non-Christians.
Meanwhile, civil servants at the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood (a place name that, refers specifically to the holy cross of Jesus) have banned the phrase “merry Christmas” from their official cards for the same reason.
Red Cross chief executive Sir Nicholas Young defended the decision.
“It has always been a policy at the British Red Cross not to display materials of an overtly religious nature in shop windows or elsewhere,” he said. “Doing so runs the risk of identifying us with one particular faith.”
Young said the organization had never been associated with any religion in accordance with its principles of impartiality and neutrality.
“The British Red Cross has not ‘banned Christmas,’” he said. “Our volunteers and staff are welcome and actively encouraged to celebrate their own particular religions and festivals whenever and however they please.”
He added that the international organization had a “unique role” in ensuring the safe passage of civilians, medical staff, messages and relief supplies during conflicts.
“To do so successfully, to be trusted by all sides, it is essential that we are not seen to be linked with any political groups, religious organizations or particular communities,” Young said.
Labor peer Lord Ahmed, one of the country's most prominent Muslim politicians, said it was “stupid” to think Muslims would be offended by references to Christmas.
“The teachings from Islam are that you should respect other faiths,” he said. “The Muslim community has been talking to Christians for the past 1,400 years.”
‘Marginalizing’
John Deighan, parliamentary spokesman for the Scottish Catholic bishops, called on Christians to register their disapproval of the Scottish Parliament's ban on Christmas cards by sending courteous cards to George Reid, the presiding officer whose role is similar to that of the Speaker of the House of Commons.
“It's another attempt to jump on the bandwagon that is out to marginalize Christianity,” Deighan said. “There's no sense to it and no one supports it except some unnamed officials who thought the phrase ‘merry Christmas’ would offend. What is offensive is this ban — we should not accept these sorts of decisions or the one made by the Red Cross.”
Peter Luff, Conservative member of Parliament for Mid Worcestershire, argued the bans might in fact cause offense to people of other faiths.
“British Muslims, Hindus and Jews have no objection to the celebration of Christmas festivals,” Luff said. “Indeed, many people of other faiths choose to send their children to Christian church schools because they value the spiritual and moral basis on which those schools operate.”
Luff added that the values of faith were shared across religions.
“People of other faiths also want Britain to remain a country in which Christian values, which are largely shared with the other major faiths, are upheld,” he said. “They don't want us to sink into a morass of amoral secularism. They should do what many schools in Worcestershire now do and celebrate Christmas, Diwali, Hanukkah and Eid.”
Commenting on the Red Cross ban, Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Birmingham said, “Many Christians will feel distressed by the decision of the Red Cross to ban the symbols of the Christmas feast. People of genuine faith are not offended by signs of sincere faith.”
“I doubt whether the Red Cross will achieve its stated aim on neutrality by this course of action,” the archbishop added. “I think the Red Cross would do better to show respect to each faith. In that way it would win and not lose support from people of faith.”
However, Lou Henderson, a spokesman for the Church of England, refused to condemn the Red Cross decision.
“It's difficult to see how a reasonable person could object to Christian symbolism at the time of a Christian festival,” Henderson said. “However, a lot of the work the Red Cross does is in parts of the world where people are not reasonable. It's a matter for them as to what they display in the shops.”
The ban on Christmas decorations in Red Cross shops could be seen as indicative of how Christianity in a multi-faith and increasingly secular Britain is losing its influence.
And it is not the first time attempts have been made to eradicate the Christian meaning of Christmas. In 1998, the Birmingham City Council renamed its Christmas festivities Winterval, a decision that was attacked by Church leaders in the city.
Cardinal O'Brien
Partly in response to this year's anti-Christmas initiatives by the Red Cross and the Scottish Parliament, Cardinal Keith O'Brien called Nov. 29 for a national effort to re-Christianize Scotland and urged resistance to the tide of secularization, especially concerning the celebration of Christmas.
At a national Mass to mark his recent appointment to the College of Cardinals, the archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh used his homily to defend Scotland's Christian values and to urge Christians in other denominations and all people of good will to do likewise.
“Even in recent days we have seen examples of attempts to de-Christianize our country,” Cardinal O'Brien said. “A major charity refused to allow its shops to sell products that have a Christian theme in the run-up to Christmas. Further, the great majority of Christmas cards have no mention of the word ‘Christmas.’ Mention is simply made of ‘seasons greetings,’ as if we were singling out this ‘winter season’ as a time of special celebration.”
At the Mass in St. Mary's Cathedral, he concluded with a call to “all our peoples to reconsider the basic Christian message that has been handed on and lived in our country for almost 2,000 years now.”
He also urged every local authority in Scotland to erect a Nativity scene in their area at Christmas.
“I think it only appropriate that there be a Nativity scene at the center of the celebrations of each of our communities,” Cardinal O'Brien said. “Without this there is left a gaping hole at the heart of the season of good will.”
Greg Watts writes from London.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Greg Watts ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Christmas Means 'Skin' at Abercrombie & Fitch DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:NEW ALBANY, Ohio — Abercrombie & Fitch executives pulled their latest catalog from their stores in late November — as the Christmas shopping season was just kicking off — after a Cincinnati-based organization called the National Coalition for the Protection of Children & Families organized a boycott of the retailer.
But boycotts and protests about the quarterly porn catalog are nothing new to Abercrombie & Fitch, whose executives insist their decision to remove the catalog had nothing to do with the latest boycott. Rather, they insist, the publication was taken from stores to make room on the counters and shelves for a new line of perfume they wanted to introduce in time for Christmas.
“We put this holiday issue out earlier than usual, but it was still in our stores for six weeks,” Abercrombie spokesman Hampton Carney told CNN.
If sex sells, perhaps no mainstream business exploits it better than clothier Abercrombie & Fitch — an Ohio-based company with 311 stores throughout the United States, mostly in shopping malls near colleges.
Every year the company puts out a Christmas edition of its quarterly catalog many consider soft-core porn. In past years, the catalog has featured drag queens, porn queens and a variety of youthful homoerotic images.
One doesn't have to visit Abercrombie & Fitch or page through its magazine to get a full sense of the naked truth.
“I was walking through Cherry Creek Mall [in Denver] with my two boys,” said Richard Fleming of Denver, a Catholic parent of two boys ages 9 and 11. “We walked by Abercrombie & Fitch, and I was disturbed to see these giant, billboard-sized photos of young models — basically a lot of entangled, naked limbs. If there was any clothing on them at all it was a barely visible piece of a torn pair of jeans.”
This season's catalog, titled “Christmas Field Guide,” featured 45 pictures of sexual imagery in its first 120 pages, including overt portrayals of group sex, teen and young adult nudity, men kissing men and teens engaged in sexual activity while frolicking in water.
“This is a store that markets clothing primarily to teens and young adults,” said Steve Beirne, president-elect of the National Association of Catholic Family Life Ministers based in Dayton, Ohio, and publisher of Foundations, a newsletter for newly married couples.
“Abercrombie & Fitch understands that in a society as oversexed as ours, images of sexuality give young people a false sense of maturity and sophistication. In our society, unfortunately, children are told all the time that to be mature they must be sexually active.”
Company spokesman Tom Lennox responded that its quarterly is targeted at college-aged students. “You must be 18 and show proper identification in order to purchase it, period,” he said. “It is available only in Abercrombie and Fitch stores and not in our kids' stores, which are geared for children ages 7-14. Although it's intended to be edgy, and we take chances with the content, it has never been our intention to offend anyone.”
Promises More Skin
In case anyone doesn't believe Beirne, Carney said just wait until next spring. That's when the company's next quarterly issue will hit, and he promises at least as much skin as the company dished out this quarter.
“We will still have [rear nudity] and partial nudity,” Carney said.
Beirne said Carney's “ casual attitude — in the midst of public outrage — doesn't surprise him. He sees it as arrogance.
“This is typical of these type of self-appointed cultural leaders,” Beirne said. “They W think they're bold and on the edge. They believe that the more they titillate, scandalize and outrage, the bolder and bigger they will become. They are functioning in an age in which there is no bad publicity — ‘just spell my name right.’ Furthermore, comments like his are a way to marginalize and ridicule people who ascribe to values, moderation and modesty.”
The company regularly lands headlines for its catalog. Web logs are devoted to the topic, and any simple Internet search turns up hundreds of messages of outrage about Abercrombie & Fitch.
In 1999, the Abercrombie & Fitch Christmas catalog so outraged Illinois Lt. Gov. Corinne Wood that she called for a consumer boycott of the store.
Abercrombie & Fitch executives probably loved it, if one accepts the arguments of University of California-Berkeley student Kevin Lee.
Lee, a writer for Hardboiled — the UC-Berkeley Asian Pacific American newsmagazine — expressed outrage in 2002 when Abercrombie & Fitch marketed T-shirts that offended Asian-Americans and caused large groups of them to protest and organize boycotts. One shirt made fun of Asian laundries, with a mock ad that featured goofy-looking Asian men and the words “two Wongs can make it white.”
In an article titled “Pimped by Abercrombie & Fitch,” Lee argued that store executives were reacting to the Asian a protests with “jubilee and celebration” and a “massive back-patting session, knowing they just scored another publicity coup.”
He continued: “In an age where there is no such thing as bad publicity, Abercrombie hit a gold mine.”
Back in 1998, Abercrombie was the center of attention for titling one of its catalogs “Drinking 101.” The catalog featured drink recipes and a cutout reference guide to cocktails.
“The problem with that piece is that Abercrombie's target demographic were kids 16-22, a bit below the legal drinking age,” Lee told the Register.
The upside for Abercrombie & Fitch? “The story garnered massive media attention,” Lee said.
Lee accused the clothier of boldly celebrating a “white pride” ideology that appeals to a growing number of youth.
“They have promoted, as the meaning of their brand, the lifestyle of the rich and affluent offspring of the WASP [white Anglo-Saxon Protestant],” he said. “To be the sons and daughters of the rich and powerful meant freedom, access to an active lifestyle and the ability to skirt rules and get away scot-free. This image can be seen in Abercrombie's catalogs and ads.”
Another False God
Beirne said the catalogs promote a false sense of freedom and a mis-perception that sexual mayhem is somehow freeing to the individual.
“When sex is removed from the context of procreation and marriage, it gets distorted and becomes a form of idolatry,” Beirne said. “Sex becomes another false god. These ads promote sex as a form of freedom, but the kind of sexual behavior being promoted is really just a form of slavery.”
Although Beirne agreed Abercrombie & Fitch thrives on the publicity of irresponsible advertising campaigns, he argued that Christian parents must continue to express outrage and take action to economically punish the company.
“Parents need to organize well in order to protest and boycott and make sure this kind of [garbage] doesn't come into our homes,” Beirne said. “There are simply too many forces out there right now — forces outside of the family — promoting values that are not our values.”
Wayne Laugesen writes from Boulder, Colorado.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Wayne Laugesen ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Bringing the Rosary to Capitol Hill DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:U.S. Rep. Mark Kennedy, R-Minn., is a fourth-generation Minnesotan and represents six eastern counties making nn the state's 6th District
A lifelong Catholic and father of four, Kennedy was a co-sponsor of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. He is also the co-founder of a rosary group and the St. Thomas More study group that meets on Capitol Hill.
Kennedy spoke with Register staff writer Tim Drake from his cell phone while traveling in Minnesota.
Tell me about your family.
I'm the third of seven children, a fourth-generation Minnesotan. My family first arrived in Minnesota in 1863.I was baptized in the Diocese of New Ulm. Up until I was elected, there were two family days of obligation — Christmas Eve and the Fourth of July. My father was always active in the Fourth of July parade.
All seven members of my family had to marry someone within a morning's drive away so they could be home for Christmas. All seven of us live in Minnesota. When we all gather, between 35-40 of us fill up one-third of the front part of church. One Christmas Sunday, the priest said, “I guess the Kennedys are here. We can start Mass.”
After the seven kids left the house, my mother put a 2,400-square-foot addition onto the house to accommodate all of us. It looks like a church hall. Christmas and family are very important.
So you grew up Catholic?
We've been Catholic since St. Patrick converted the Irish. I can count the number of weekly Masses or lunches I've missed on two hands. I eat three square meals a day and go to church every Sunday. From time to time I enjoy daily Mass as well.
While I was in graduate school, my wife and I spent a semester abroad in the Netherlands. Of all the Masses we attended there, only one was in English. You learn the Mass better when you don't understand the language. You have to try to figure out where they are in the Mass.
You spent 20 years in business. What led you into politics?
I'm the fourth-generation Kennedy to be in public service. My great-grandfather was a county commissioner. My grandfather was mayor, and my father served on the school board.
In Murdock, where I was born, everyone's Irish. Father Walsh used to come to our porch every Sunday after Mass. When John F. Kennedy was elected president it was a big deal. I was 6 when he died and 12 when Bobby Kennedy died. The first trip I took outside of Minnesota was to visit an uncle in Virginia. He took us all around Washington, D.C. So, in that mix of family and heritage, that sparked my interest in public service.
I waited until 2000 because I wanted to have the business experience and wanted to wait until my children were older so they could be involved in the process. My oldest son was my driver during my first campaign.
You've started both a rosary group and a pro-life study group on Capitol Hill. What led to their creation?
I attend a weekly Thursday morning bipartisan prayer breakfast that has occurred since the time of Eisenhower. Rep. Chris Smith [R-N.J.] and I wanted the opportunity to have Catholics gather. The rosary has always been an important force in my life and you can never have enough prayer with the issues that face us as a Congress and a country.
So, we invited members and staff to join us every Wednesday at 4 p.m. We typically get two members and seven or eight staff members. When the chaplain, Father Daniel Coughlin, a Catholic priest from Chicago, is around, he joins us. We gather in a small chapel that most people don't know about that is located off the rotunda.
The St. Thomas More study group was founded by Sen. Rick Santorum [R-Pa.] and myself. It's a gathering of bicameral, bipartisan members to meet with some of the leading Catholic thinkers. A dozen members came to share ideas with our first speaker, George Weigel. Every month or two we'll bring in someone like Father Richard John Neuhaus, Michael Novak or Cardinal [Theodore] McCarrick [of Washington].
How do you reconcile being a person of faith in politics?
The world has gotten so secular that you find throughout your life there are those who don't think twice before making a comment that is demeaning to people of faith. I always respond in a quiet, respectful way that lets them know faith is very important to me.
You visited Iraq in August. What did you see while you were there?
I saw a lot of progress going on throughout the country. The thing most people don't realize is that only about 15% of the country is Sunni Arab. Within that region there is a lot more tension than in the rest of the country.
What made the greatest impression on me was visiting a mass grave where they recovered more than 3,000 bodies. Between 500 and 700 Iraqis came to that grave to help dig up and identify bodies.
Every soldier you talk to has a good feeling about the value of the work they are doing. Once we work our way through the terrorist challenges, there will be an opportunity for Iraq to have a diversified economy.
You were a co-sponsor on the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban. Why is the life issue an important one for you?
One of the things George Weigel spoke of was the Vatican statement regarding appropriate conduct of Catholic politicians. There are a whole lot of issues out there that need to be decided on. Some have more, and some have less, moral perspective. The Vatican has been clear that the issue of life is not an issue one could really have any other kind of view on. It's fundamental to our existence as a human race. It's fundamental to the Church to defend life.
I was not only a co-sponsor but also, the night before we voted on the ban, I organized a special order to talk about the issue. [A special order is an uninterrupted hour of time on the House floor after legislative business has been completed where members can organize to discuss any issue they want.] Fourteen members joined together for an hour to talk about why it was important to pass this legislation.
We painstakingly went through testimony for the bill. That testimony should be sufficient to defend this bill in court. If it is not, we will pass it again in a form that will.
Tim Drake writes from St. Cloud, Minnesota.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Tim Drake ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: Catholic Relief Services 'Coffee Project' Strives for Global Justice in Every Cup DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:BALTIMORE — Catholic Relief Services has long been known as the U.S. bishops' agency that provides relief in places around the world affected by famine, natural disasters and war.
It stepped into a new area Nov. 25 when it launched the Catholic Relief Services Coffee Project, an ambitious plan to work for fair global trade by appealing to Americans' appetite for coffee.
The Coffee Project has two simple but ambitious goals, according to Joan Neal, Catholic Relief Services deputy executive director for U.S. operations. It seeks to support struggling coffee farmers around the world who are receiving a dramatically low price for their crops and to give U.S. Catholics the opportunity to put their faith into action by encouraging them to buy high-quality coffee at living-wage prices.
“Starting your day with a cup of fair-trade coffee is a simple way to have a direct, substantial impact on the lives of small-scale coffee farmers,” Neal said.
In recent years, overproduction of low-grade coffee caused prices on the world market to plummet. Coffee fell from a high of $1.40 per pound in 1999 to a low of 45 cents per pound in 2001. Many farmers have reported receiving as little as 15 to 20 cents per pound.
One of those farmers is Encarnación Suárez, a 60-year-old mother of 10 who lives in Matagalpa, Nicaragua.
Speaking in Spanish during the launch of the Coffee Project at Catholic Relief Services headquarters in Baltimore, she explained how her family can barely make a living with the 2,000 pounds of coffee her land produces annually.
“Coffee prices are too low now. We can barely buy rice, sugar — once in a while some clothing for the kids or medicine when we become sick,” she said. “Our hope is that people in other countries will buy our coffee at a better price so we can improve our homes and better feed our children — and even bring them to school.”
Seventy percent of the coffee reaching the United States — the world's largest coffee consumer — is produced by small producers such as Suárez.
Catholic Relief Services has a natural market to begin selling its product — the 65 million Catholics in 19,000 parishes in the United States. “They can make a big change by taking one simple step: choosing fair-trade coffee,” Neal said.
Catholic Relief Services coffee will be supplied through the Interfaith Coffee Program of Equal Exchange Inc., a Canton, Mass.-based fair-trade company. The coffee, in turn, will be sold primarily through parishes that participate in the program.
Equal Exchange purchases directly from farmers, cutting out several middlemen and paying a guaranteed minimum of $1.26 per pound of conventionally grown coffee and $1.41 for organic.
Starting Small
According to Equal Exchange's Erbin Crowell, 7,600 congregations last year accepted paying higher prices for coffee, purchasing some 118 tons.
“It doesn't make a big difference for now, but it is the beginning of a tendency that is growing and is helping improve lives in coffee-producing countries,” Crowell said.
According to Catholic Relief Services, the program also educates consumers about how current trade policies create an uneven playing field for smaller, poorer countries.
Another advantage is that a percentage of the profit from every package will go back to the farmers through the Catholic Relief Services Small Farmer Fund, a resource that supports agriculture and long-term development.
Catholic Relief Services has already programmed workshops in dioceses such as Seattle, Cincinnati and Wilmington, Del., where parish leaders will be trained in how to bring the Coffee Project to their parishes.
“The goal is to create a large network of grass-roots organizations, and we would like to have a formal launch in every diocese in the United States,” Neal said.
Catholic Relief Services is already contributing: All of its offices in the United States are consuming fair-trade coffee, and retreat houses, Catholic universities and other Catholic institutions are being invited to join the program.
During the official launch of the Coffee Project, with journalists participating by telephone, some reporters expressed concern about how competitive the fair-trade coffee can be in a market striving for higher quality and lower prices. Equal Exchange's Crowell believes fair-trade coffee is going to be competitive in the arena of organic and gourmet coffee.
Javier Pinto, a Peruvian economist who advises cocoa and coffee producers in Peru, agrees.
“Traditional coffee producers such as Colombia, Brazil and Central America, as well as newer producers like Peru, are improving the quality of their crops, thus appealing to high-quality consumers,” he said.
Nevertheless, Pinto believes better products also require greater investment.
“Therefore, by bringing better prices,” he said, “initiatives like the Coffee Project could start a positive spiral of better products aimed at markets capable of paying more.”
In fact, even if fair-trade coffee can become more competitive in quality, Neal said, “justice isn't cheap, so the product will cost more.” That is why increasing awareness is a key element in the process.
According to Crowell, fair trade is shifting from seeing coffee and other products as faceless commodities to products related to actual people.
“This is a more rational approach to globalization and global commerce,” he explained.
So far, some large retailers such as Safeway and Albertson's, among others, have made fair-trade coffee, tea and cocoa available, Neal said, “because Catholics have started asking for such products when they don't see it on the shelf.”
New Ventures
The Coffee Project is the first of a series of projects aimed at combining relief with global justice and solidarity.
Another similar project is Work of Human Hands, which encourages people in U.S. parishes to purchase crafts from people in poor countries.
“We are also looking at other global-solidarity projects connecting dioceses in the United States and others around the world not only in terms of financial support but also of mutual education about ways of life, connecting people with a sense of solidarity,” Neal said.
“This is not a new trend at CRS, since for at least the past 10 years, after the Rwanda genocide, we realized that in order to affect long term sustainability, we really have to address the issues of injustice, empowering people to have the ability to live good and decent lives.”
But what is new, Neal said, “is our approach to get the large U.S. Catholic community involved more directly in our mission by participating in active solidarity in a very concrete way, such as the way we pick our coffee.”
This is a way to live and apply the social doctrine of the Church, she said, “because the entire body of these teachings is focused on issues of justice, solidarity and the dignity of every life.”
Alejandro Bermudez is based in Lima, Peru.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Alejandro Bermudez ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Media Watch DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:Democratic National Committee Boosts Abortion
The story cited memos from groups such as NARAL Pro-Choice America, the People for the American Way and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People opposing socially conservative nominees such as Miguel Estrada, who was recently driven to withdraw his name from consideration for a federal judgeship.
These groups objected to Estrada, for example, “because he has a minimal paper trail, he is Latino and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment,” a Nov. 7, 2001, memo to Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., noted.
Another memo noted, “Most of Bush's nominees are Nazis.”
Producers Benefit From Releasing Family Films
Movies that did not fare as well included the anti-Christmas comedy Bad Santa.
Kansas City War Hero to be Canonized?
The newspaper noted the Diocese of Wichita, Kan., had endorsed his cause for canonization and that devotees of the priest had formed a committee to promote it, collecting information on reports of miraculous intercession on the priest's part.
A local priest, Father John Hotze of Newton, Kan., leads the committee.
“The canonization process is quite extensive and will not happen overnight,” he told the paper. “We are just beginning the initial stages.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Group Urges Pre-Christmas Control Over Sales of Violent Video Games DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — When Aaron Hamel moved to Knoxville, Tenn., last spring, he figured he'd never leave.
A 45-year-old nurse originally from Ontario, Hamel had lived in seven U.S. states before deciding to lay stakes in this urbane but slow-paced outpost of the south.
Knoxville offered just the right mix of city life and country charm, friends told reporters after Hamel's untimely death this summer. It was the ideal place, they said, for Hamel to fulfill his dream of living life in a log cabin surrounded by the attractions of city life.
The dream remained just that. In June, two teen-age boys shot Hamel while he drove through Knoxville. The boys, aged 16 and 14, later told investigators they had decided to shoot randomly at cars in imitation of a video game called “Grand Theft Auto.” The two boys were sentenced in August after pleading guilty to reckless homicide, endan-germent and assault.
For years, video games have been one of the most popular Christmas gifts for children and teen-agers. Yet many of today's parents would likely be shocked by the very games they're buying, particularly those parents who haven't looked at content since the advent of “Super Mario Brothers.” Games such as “Grand Theft Auto” and “Manhunt” are not only more realistic than yesterday's games but also increasingly violent.
In “Grand Theft Auto,” players direct an ex-convict through the streets of Miami in search of stolen drug money. As the character encounters police officers and gangsters, the game urges players to “kill the Cubans” and “kill the Haitians.”
Aaron Hamel's family has brought a $246 million lawsuit against the game's manufacturer, Rockstar Games Inc.. And later this month, the Haitian Centers Council in New York plans a public protest in front of Rockstar's Manhattan headquarters.
Rockstar did not return Register calls for comment but said in an earlier statement designed to quell the concerns of Haitian Americans: “There was no intention to offend any ethnic group.”
Such reassurances are not enough for the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, a New York-based coalition of 275 faith-based institutional investors.
The center recently issued a letter to 10 game retailers and manufacturers asking them to step up efforts at keeping children away from particularly violent games.
Coalition members, who hold investment assets exceeding $110 billion, are threatening to use their power as shareholders to pressure negligent companies into changing their policies.
Raising Awareness
The campaign is designed to raise awareness among parents, who can't keep up with game content, said project director Gary Brouse. He said manufacturers should do more to inform adults about what a game involves and that retailers should train employees to enforce the video industry's rating system.
An industry-run rating organization known as the Entertainment Software Rating Board assigns content descriptions to video games according to a five-tier system that ranges from EC (Early Childhood) to AO (Adults Only). An AO marking is an indication that a game's content is not appropriate for children under 17.
Ratings are printed on video game packages and in ads. Ratings may also be obtained from www.esrb.org.
But ratings are only as effective as the people who enforce them, Brouse said. And companies that manufacture and sell graphic games, he said, should label products more clearly and make their sale to minors more difficult.
“We're not satisfied with the way the industry is monitoring itself,” Brouse said. “There is not enough to protect children or parents. It's just hard for them to keep up. We think the industry that's producing these games should make it as simple as possible for people to tell what they're buying.”
Some industry representatives argue that the responsibility lies with parents.
Cathy Hess, a spokeswoman for Circuit City, the Richmond, Va.-based retailer, noted that the ratings system is voluntary. Still, she said Circuit City trains employees to ask children who are under 17 and unaccompanied by a parent to produce picture identification before purchasing games rated M for mature.
Hess said Circuit City adopted its enforcement policy in an effort to “support,” not “take the place of,” parents and that the company relies on the “best judgment” of salespeople. She said the company posts its policy in each of its stores and issues monthly reminders to employees about their duties under the policy.
“Circuit City strongly supports the voluntary rating system for entertainment products,” Hess said.
“But parents have the authority and primary responsibility to decide what games are appropriate for their children.”
Cathy Rowan, a corporate responsibility consultant for coalition member Trinity Health, the Michigan-based Catholic hospital network, said such disclosures about policy are a first step in an effort to change what she described as “the culture of violence” that is part cause, part result of video games such as “Grand Theft Auto.” Rowan said Trinity Health has put a priority on the issues not only as a matter of cultural concern but also of public health.
“It's a problem for Trinity Health,” Rowan said, “because out active shareholders, pediatricians and other doctors, see the effects of violence in their emergency rooms every day. Violence done by children and violence done against children. It's a public-health issue.”
Brian McGuire writes from Albany, New York.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Brian McGuire ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Media Watch DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:Pope Prays for AIDS Victims
VATICAN INFORMATION SERVICE, Dec. 1 — Pope John Paul II marked World AIDS Day by offering prayers for the disease's victims, for caregivers and for those who work to cure the disease, the Vatican Information Service reported.
Speaking in his Angelus greeting Nov. 30, the Holy Father said, “While I pray for those who are hit by this scourge, I encourage those in the Church who carry out an invaluable service of acceptance, care and spiritual accompaniment to our brothers and sisters.”
Vatican Information Service noted John Paul's comments accompany widespread attacks on the Holy See for opposing the promotion of condoms as a means to contain the HIV virus — especially comments by head of the Pontifical Council for the Family Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, who has said condoms do not sufficiently protect against AIDS.
New Book Gives Detailed History of Papal Elections
TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE, Nov. 29 — A new book goes into detail about the history of papal conclaves and reveals new information about the election of Pope John Paul II, according to an excerpt from the book, Behind Locked Doors: A History of the Papal Elections, by Professor Frederic Baumgartner.
In the excerpt, Baumgartner describes the ceremonial transition that marks the end of one pontificate and the quest to begin another: “In the evening of the 15th day after the pope's death, the papal master of ceremonies shouts: ‘Extra Omnes!’ Everybody out! The doors of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican palace are locked cum clave, with a key, from within and without, and only the cardinals are left to begin the process of electing the next pope.”
Baumgartner explores some of the concerns that drove the cardinal-electors in 1978, when they convened for a second time that year after the sudden death of Pope John Paul I.
A primary one was health — the cardinals did not wish to elect another pope whose constitution was shaky. This made them look to younger cardinals, including Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Krakow, Poland.
The book suggests another important factor in the election of John Paul II was the support of Cardinal John Krol of Philadelphia — a Polish-American who won over the votes of other American cardinals.
Cardinal Ratzinger's Latin Mass Fan Club
UNA VOCE INTERNATIONAL, Nov. 15 — The International Una Voce Federation, a group that seeks to promote Church-approved celebrations of the traditional Roman liturgy throughout the world, held its annual meeting in Rome on Oct. 11-12.
It reported on the meeting late in November on its Web site, announcing it had held a fruitful meeting with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The cardinal granted a private audience to the leaders of the organization, which works within the Church for the celebration of the pre-Vatican II Latin rites. At the audience, Cardinal Ratzinger accepted a T-shirt from the American-based “Cardinal Ratzinger Fan Club,” which bore a quote from his own writings: “Truth is not decided by a majority vote.” The cardinal smiled and said, “Very true.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Father Di Noia: Don't Blame Sacrosanctum Concilium DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY — As a young Dominican priest, Father Augustine Di Noia “participated gleefully” in the implementation of Sacrosanctum Concilium (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy), the landmark Second Vatican Council document that radically changed the sacred liturgy.
“I can't believe it's been 40 years,” said Father Di Noia, a former executive director of the U.S. bishops' Secretariat for Doctrine and Pastoral Practices who now serves in Rome as undersecretary at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. On Dec. 4, 1963, Sacrosanctum Concilium was one of the first two Second Vatican Council documents to be released.
But much has changed since Sacrosanctum Concilium was promulgated as the “first fruit” of the council. It “shaped the reception of the rest of the documents that came out of the Second Vatican Council,” Father Di Noia recalled. “It's a beautiful document. … In itself it is innocent, but it signified a break from tradition.”
A major departure was to offer the possibility of celebrating the Mass in a country's mother tongue as opposed to Latin, a reform widely anticipated and welcomed.
Father Di Noia remembers that even his mother, who was in her 90s when the changes came into effect, had no nostalgia for the Latin Mass.
“It was too difficult to understand, too distant for her,” he recalled. “The principal value of Sacrosanctum Concilium was that it engaged the congregation more.”
However, he believes its even-greater contribution to the Church was that it “placed the Eucharistic Celebration as central to the Church's life.”
Father Di Noia disagrees that this has led directly to the loss of traditional devotions, although he admits placing the Eucharistic Celebration at the center of Church life initially triggered a reduction in Eucharistic devotion.
“There was a feeling that people practiced devotions because they couldn't get anything out of the [Latin] Mass,” he said. But, he added, for the last 30 years a revival in Eucharistic devotion has occurred due to the Holy Spirit and the powerful influence of Pope John Paul II.
“[Its growth] is a good example of the Holy Spirit going against the trend,” Father Di Noia said.
Bad Music
One area that has yet to experience a correction is the music at many contemporary Masses, Father Di Noia said. He laments that there has been a widespread loss in the singing of Gregorian chant, and he's not a fan of much of the liturgical music performed today.
“Music has become oriented to the congregation,” Father Di Noia said. “Often it has nothing to do with God but more oriented to enjoying oneself — it's more sensuous or even erotic.”
Indeed, an oft-made criticism is that Mass today has become less “vertical” in its orientation, with too little emphasis on the sacred, transcendent, eschatological dimension. Does Father Di Noia agree with this assessment and that Sacrosanctum Concilium is to blame?
He does not specifically single out the document for blame, but he wholeheartedly agrees with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that having the celebrant facing the people — one of the most notable changes that came from the document — is a “radical alteration in the interpretation of the Mass.”
For Father Di Noia, it has fostered a view of the Mass as “an action between the celebrant and the congregation” rather than as the “celebrant meeting and leading the congregation in prayer toward God.”
“I think it has been made worse by personalities who forget they are leading prayer to God, in which the celebrant becomes like a talk-show host where it's all about him,” Father Di Noia said.
“Cardinal Ratzinger has touched upon something of incredible significance here,” he continued, “not just because of the need to emphasize the transcendent, the sacred, but because the congregation should simply be oriented toward God.”
Despite this observation, Father Di Noia speaks in very positive terms about Sacrosanctum Concilium. “On its own, [it] is a beautiful document and cannot explain the changes that have occurred,” he insisted. “It has to be read in the cultural setting in which we live.”
Modernism
If blame has to be assigned to anyone or anything for post-Vatican II problems, Father Di Noia singles out modernism — the emphasis on individual and communal experience that, he said, “lost in terms of theology [during the council] but won on the street.”
He explained that when the council committed the Church to embracing culture, it was largely uncritical of the culture of modernism. It has turned out, he said, “that culture has not been as harmless or as friendly as hoped but tended to deconstruct Christian tradition from within.”
And, Father Di Noia concluded, if Sacrosanctum Concilium has been misread or misinterpreted, it has been distorted “within the cultural setting of the times.”
Edward Pentin writes from Rome.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Edward Pentin ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: God's Presence Sustains Mankind DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:Register Summary
Pope John Paul II met with 6,000 pilgrims during his general audience Dec. 3 as he continued his catechesis on the psalms and canticles of the Liturgy of the Hours' evening prayer. The Holy Father offered his reflections on Psalm 114, which portrays the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt.
Psalm 114, the Pope noted, is a vivid reminder to Christians today that the same Lord who led Israel through the Red Sea to the Promised Land leads us by baptism to freedom from sin. He pointed out that the psalmist notes several unexpected events during Israel's flight from Egypt to illustrate God's love for his people, such as the water that poured forth from the rock at Meribah.
“God transforms the rock into a spring of water that becomes a lake: The basis for this mighty deed is his fatherly concern for his people,” John Paul said. “This gesture takes on, therefore, a symbolic meaning: It is a sign of the saving love of the Lord, who sustains and regenerates mankind as it journeys through the desert of unfolding history.”
The Pope ended his meditation by encouraging Christians to join together in listening to God in the silence of their hearts in order to recognize his law and the power of his voice.
The joyful and triumphant song we have just heard recalls Israel's flight from oppression at the hands of the Egyptians. Psalm 114 belongs to a collection of psalms that Jewish tradition calls the “Egyptian Hallel.” They include Psalms 113-118 and are a kind of booklet of songs that were used mainly in the Jewish Passover liturgy.
Christianity has adopted Psalm 114 with its Passover connotation, but it has also opened the way to a new interpretation derived from Christ's resurrection. Thus, the exodus this psalm celebrates becomes the image of a more radical and universal liberation. In Dante's Divine Comedy, the souls in purgatory intone this psalm in its Latin Vulgate version: “In exitu Israel de Aegypto/they all sang with one voice …” (Purgatory II, 46-47). He saw, then, in this psalm a song of hope and expectation of all those who are on the road toward that ultimate goal of communion with God in paradise after being purified of all their sin.
God's Special People
Let us now examine the thematic and spiritual development of this short prayer. At the beginning (see verses 1-2), it speaks about Israel's flight from oppression in Egypt until its entrance into the Promised Land, which is God's “holy place,” the place where he is present in the midst of his people. Indeed, the land and the people are fused together: Judah and Israel, expressions that were used to denote either the Holy Land or the Chosen People, are considered the seat of the Lord's presence, his special possession and inheritance (see Exodus 19:5-6).
After this theological description of one of the fundamental elements of faith in the Old Testament — God's people proclaiming his mighty deeds — the psalmist describes in greater spiritual and symbolical depth its main events.
The Red Sea of the flight from Egypt and the Jordan River of the entrance into the Holy Land are personified and transformed into witnesses and instruments that share in the deliverance the Lord had brought about (see Psalm 114:3, 5).
At the beginning of the psalm, during the exodus, it was the sea that parted in order to let Israel through, and, at the end of the journey through the desert, it was the Jordan that turned back from its course, thereby leaving its bed dry so the procession of the children of Israel might pass through (see Genesis 3-4). In the middle of the psalm, the experience in Sinai is recalled: The mountains now play a role in God's great revelation, which took place on their summits. Like living creatures such as the ram and the lamb, they tremble and skip. With a lively personification, the psalmist then asks the mountains and the hills why they are in such disarray: “Why is it, you mountains, that you skipped like rams? You hills, like lambs of the flock?” (Psalm 114:6). No mention is made of their response: It is given indirectly through a command that is later given to the earth to also tremble “before the Lord” (see verse 7). The disarray of the mountains and the hills was, therefore, a sudden, unexpected movement of adoration before the Lord, the God of Israel, an act of glorious exaltation before a transcendent and saving God.
The Lord's Saving Love
This is the theme of the final part of Psalm 114 (see verses 7-8), which introduces another significant event in Israel's journey through the desert — the water that gushes forth from the rock of Meribah (see Exodus 17:1-7; Numbers 20:1-13). God transforms the rock into a spring of water that becomes a lake: The basis for this mighty deed is his fatherly concern for his people. This gesture takes on, therefore, a symbolic meaning: It is a sign of the saving love of the Lord, who sustains and regenerates mankind as it journeys through the desert of unfolding history.
As we already know, St. Paul took this image, and, based on a Jewish tradition in which the rock accompanied Israel during its journey in the desert, reinterpreted this event in a Christ-centered light: “All drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank from a spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was the Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:4).
Listen to the Lord
Along these lines, the great Christian teacher Origen, in his commentary on the flight of the people of Israel from Egypt, thought of the flight that Christians carry out. He expressed it in the following words: “Do not think, therefore, that only Moses led the people out of Egypt: Now too, the Moses that we have with us … that is to say, God's law, will lead you out of Egypt; if you listen to it, it will carry you away from Pharaoh. … He does not want you to remain in the gloomy works of the flesh; he wants you to escape to the desert and find the place that is free from the anxiety and the troubles of this age; he wants you to attain peace and silence. … Therefore, when you come to this place of peace and silence, there you will be able to offer sacrifice to the Lord, there you will recognize God's law and the power of God's voice” (Omelie sull'Esodo, Rome, 1981, p. 71-72).
Drawing upon St. Paul's image which recalls the crossing of the sea, Origen goes on to say: “The apostle called this a baptism, which was fulfilled in Moses in the cloud and in the sea, so that you, too, who have been baptized into Christ in water and in the Holy Spirit, might know that the Egyptians are pursuing you and want to call you back into their service, namely in service to the rulers of this world and to the evil spirits of which you were first a slave. They will surely try to pursue you, but you descend into the water and escape unharmed, and, having washed away the stains of sin, you ascend like a new man ready to sing the new song” (Ibid, p. 107).
(Register translation)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: The Pope's Ambitious Christmas Schedule DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:The schedule of Pope John Paul II's Christmas engagements might have been slightly cut back this year, but for any octogenarian it would still be more than a little exhausting.
Vatican View
As well as issuing an unexpected apostolic letter on the sacred liturgy Dec. 4, John Paul will have already presided over two key events this month even before embarking on his Christmas schedule: the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary and a homage to Mary Immaculate on Dec. 8 in Rome; and a Mass at St. Peter's Basilica for students of the Roman athenaeums, or RSG (Rome's pontifical universities), Dec. 11.
But the Holy Father will have little respite before the Christmas season gets into full swing. As well as meeting a number of state leaders and bishops from various regions on their once-every-five-year ad limina visits, he will also meet in private audience with many of the performers at this year's Vatican Christmas concert Dec. 13.
This year, an Algerian Muslim singer will be featured alongside artists from many other countries who will perform in the Paul VI Auditorium. Each year the Christmas concert helps generate income for new churches on the outskirts of Rome and has been attended by popes in the past. But as with last year, the Holy Father's message will be read to the audience and a dozen or so cardinals will represent the Holy See.
The Christmas season is a particularly magical time in Rome, with every church — and many a shop and hotel — displaying an ornate presepio (Nativity scene). And the solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord, a time full of celebration of the birth of Jesus, is given rich symbolic significance by the traditional unveiling of the life-sized Nativity scene in St. Peter's Square just before midnight Mass begins.
The crib, which is the Holy Father's own idea, is truly enormous. The painstaking construction begins around the feast of Christ the King and remains the focal point of the square until February.
But it is midnight Mass that most will remember. The Pope will preside but is not expected to be the principal celebrant this year at a filled-to-capacity St. Peter's Basilica. The Holy Father's homily may well center on continuing conflicts around the world and a heartfelt call for peace — the war in Iraq was a great concern last Christmas to him and the world at large and is likely to be so again this year.
Then on the morning of the solemnity of the Birth of the Lord, the Pope, wearing gold-colored robes, will be driven in a white, open-topped vehicle through a crowded St. Peter's Square to deliver his Urbi et Orbi address. The term means “to the city and to the world” and signifies that he is speaking not only to the city of Rome but also to the entire Catholic Church.
The Holy Father's diary is then light until New Year's Eve, when he will preside over vespers and the Te Deum of thanksgiving at 6 p.m. The Te Deum is the ancient hymn in which Catholics express to God their deep thanks for all the good he has bestowed upon them for the past 12 months, and John Paul will deliver words of reflection on the Church.
Jan. 1 is the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, and also the 37th World Day of Peace, during which the Holy Father will preside over Mass and speak on a theme chosen in advance. This year the theme is “International Law, a Path for Peace.” The Holy Father will underline the importance of law as a guarantee of international relations aimed at promoting peace among nations and allude to recent conflicts, including the war in Iraq. John Paul is likely to call on mechanisms and structures to assure justice and to remove the causes of potential conflicts.
In his present state of health, the Holy Father often can read only about a page of text, and it is likely he will have most of his homilies read for him.
But these days he is showing much vitality, and there is every reason to believe he will traditionally use this Christmas to speak as forcefully as ever about the state of the world and complete his engagements with as much gusto and zeal as he can muster. At 83 and suffering greatly from Parkinson's disease, he remains a forceful witness to a humanity thirsting for meaning and hope.
Edward Pentin writes from Rome.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Edward Pentin ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Bishop Encouraged by Church's Efforts Despite Congo Turmoil DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:Bishop Nicolas Djomo of Tshumbe in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been seeking help to rebuild his diocese after five years of armed conflict in Central Africa.
With a delegation of African bishops, Bishop Djomo, who is president of the Association of Episcopal Conferences of Central Africa, appealed to the U.S. bishops to pay more attention to Africa.
A former seminary rector, Bishop Djomo holds a doctorate in psychology from the Sorbonne. Register correspondent Connie Pilsner interviewed him in November before the meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, D.C.
How has the present conflict in Central Africa affected you and the people of your diocese?
The three countries of the Association of Episcopal Conferences of Central Africa, located in the Great Lakes Sub-Region of Africa — namely Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda — have been deeply involved in conflict. Burundi has endured nearly 10 years of civil war since 1993.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the present war, begun in 1998, has resulted in more than 3.5 million people killed, many more displaced, children and young boys pressed into armies and combat situations, and socioeconomic infrastructures — such as schools, hospitals, health care centers — destroyed. Churches, rectories and convents have been razed or pillaged, and members of the clergy, including several bishops, have been killed.
In Rwanda, site of the inauguration of the Marian Shrine of Kibeho, in the Diocese of Gikongoro, where the Virgin Mary appeared several times throughout the year in 1981, the situation seems calmer.
This conflict you speak of left your diocese with no outside contact for four years. Two years ago your own initiative resulted in obtaining humanitarian aid from Catholic Relief Services. What role did you take?
I negotiated with the military leaders to allow humanitarian aid in. They trusted me as a Catholic bishop. Up until February 2002, the only contact with the outside world was two air shipments by Catholic Relief Services. They sponsored a riverboat convoy, delivering soap, iodized salt and educational materials. This year a refugee convoy united 800 families that were living in the capital as internally displaced people.
As president of the Association of Episcopal Conferences of Central Africa, what is your main goal?
My goal is the same as that of the founding fathers of the association, which is to promote “dialogue and cooperation in view of a deep evangelization of each and every African who is called to Christ's Body.” Unfortunately, many people who have long considered each other brothers have met in opposition. One of the main goals of the association is to promote the continuance of appeals for peace and reconciliation.
How has the Catholic Church helped to provide stability and structure in your country?
Everyone depends on the support provided by the diocese. Our goal is to restore their dignity as human beings made in the image of God.
I have emphasized that we must work for a common goal, in which the rights of all people are considered. This is basic for a country. We are working in our diocese with the Commission for Justice and Peace to educate the people about how to work together. This is very important for the future of the country.
Catholic Relief Services supplied your diocese with medical relief. What are some of the medical problems prevalent in your community?
My people need medicine for malaria, tuberculosis, river blindness, sleeping sickness and diseases coming from unclean water — parasites. Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda have AIDS, which the military conflict has helped spread to the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Since my diocese is in such a remote area of the Congo, with no paved roads, AIDS had not entered our community until now.
How will you confront the problem of AIDS in your diocese?
We are preparing for AIDS through education by abstinence, by teaching the people to change behavior and to be faithful in marriage. We are just beginning this endeavor now that the war is over.
How would you deal with humanitarian efforts to distribute condoms to your people as a solution to AIDS?
We don't have that problem, since we are in such a remote area. However, I would refuse this as a solution.
What was it like to grow up in your village of Lushimapenge?
It was different, as there was no war. I saw the priests helping the young and old. They built schools and even encouraged girls to attend. The Catholic schools were indiscriminately for all people.
Would you say the life of the Catholic Church in your diocese is thriving?
We have 86 diocesan priests and 137 nuns. There is a local congregation of the Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi of Tshumbe, whose apostolate is education and health care.
Although one-third of the people in the diocese are baptized, I don't have statistics on how many are practicing. However, the Masses are full, beautiful and joyous. Each parish has at least one daily Mass, and some parishes have Mass more than once a day.
Connie Pilsner writes from New York.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Connie Pilsner ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Media Watch DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:Catholic Youth Congress Meets in Troubled Sudan
FIDES, Nov. 29 — Khartoum, Sudan, is not a city known for meetings of Catholic organizations, given that the Islamic government of the country has spent the better part of two decades trying to wipe out Christianity in a genocidal civil war that has claimed an estimated 2 million lives.
But that city's archbishop, Cardinal Gabriel Zubeir, managed despite all obstacles to hold a Diocesan Youth Congress in Khartoum from Nov. 22-27, the Vatican missionary news agency Fides reported.
The conference attracted 407 delegates from the diocese's 29 parishes. The attendees discussed the plight of Christian youth in Sudan, reflected on the teachings of Pope John Paul II, discussed the challenges of Church teaching on marriage and sexuality, addressed the problem of substance abuse and decried government attempts to Islamicize Sudanese society.
The meeting was timed to coincide with a key Church feast: “This year the Lord wanted us to begin and hold our Diocesan Youth Congress under the banner of Christ the King,” Cardinal Zubeir said. “He is the Leader and King who is guiding his people in the third millennium.”
Thailand Honors Missionary Priest
INDEPENDENT CATHOLIC NEWS, Dec. 1 — A beloved Catholic missionary in Thailand was commemorated last month, according to Independent Catholic News.
Father Ray Brennan, who died Aug. 16 at age 70, was remembered for founding an orphanage, vocational centers for the disabled, deaf and blind, and homes for street children and the elderly.
It's a Thai tradition to mourn the dead for 100 days, and a festival marked the end of this period.
A memorial Mass for Father Ray, as he was affectionately known, attracted more than 1,000 congregants. A life-sized statue of Father Ray was unveiled, and at the Vocational School for the Disabled — founded by Father Ray — his successor, Father Philip Banchong, joined the Thai Minister of Tourism in opening a new library named in the priest's honor.
Amendment for Unborn Stokes Abortion Acrimony
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, Nov. 28 — French feminists and leftists are up in arms over a proposal by the French government to punish people who cause the death of unborn children in the course of crimes or road accidents, the Associated Press reported.
The French Lower House of Parliament approved a bill that imposed such penalties for the “involuntary termination of a pregnancy.” Abortion was legalized in France in 1975.
The Associated Press cited a feminist lawyer, Gisele Halimi, who complained, “This is a very serious move against women and their right to choose to give life. Hypocritically, surreptitiously, they are introducing into our law a new concept that gives fetuses a legal personality.”
Jacques Barrot, parliamentary leader of the ruling center-right coalition, insisted critics were misreading the bill.
“We didn't intend to use this debate to address the problem of abortion,” Barrot said. “It's regrettable that this amendment, which sets out to improve the remedy of an injustice, should have provoked such a senseless quarrel.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Silence! DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:We asked the Register's former Rome correspondent, Father Raymond J. de Souza, to sum up the Pope's new apostolic letter on the liturgy.
Pope John Paul II, from the first day of his pontificate, has always understood his principal task to be the authentic implementation of the Second Vatican Council. And since the council, no area of Catholic life has changed more than that of the liturgy, which is the primary forum in which most Catholics ordinarily live and experience their faith.
So it was noteworthy that on Dec. 4, the 40th anniversary of Sacrosanctum Concilium — Vatican II's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy — John Paul offered some reflections on the liturgical reforms of the past four decades. And given that he does not write about the liturgy often — even this apostolic letter was a rather low-key affair, not even having a title — it bears careful reading. There are three key points, which the Holy Father underscores.
First, John Paul notes the major achievements of the liturgical reform. In particular, he highlights the more abundant use of Scripture for the readings at Mass (younger Catholics likely do not know that the coverage of Scripture in the pre-conciliar lectionary was rather impoverished compared with the current one).
The Pope also mentions the rediscovery of the importance of the Sunday Mass as the weekly center of liturgical life and the clarification of the distinction between the liturgy and devotional life. Those points are a useful rejoinder to those who bemoan that nothing good has come out of the liturgical reform.
Second, the Holy Father says the liturgy has to develop in Catholics a “taste for prayer.” He recommends the Liturgy of the Hours (or breviary) be introduced to lay Catholics (clergy and religious are already obliged to pray it).
The increasing number of parishes that are now praying together the Liturgy of the Hours before daily Mass will be heartened by the Pope's words. Indeed, given that John Paul has devoted his weekly audiences to commentaries on the Liturgy of the Hours for the past three years, it is clearly a papal priority.
Third, John Paul encourages Catholics to learn the value of silence as a privileged place for an encounter with God.
“An aspect that must be cultivated with greater commitment in our communities is the experience of silence,” he writes. “In a society that lives in an increasingly frenetic manner, often dazed by noise and scattered by the transient, rediscovering the value of silence is vital. … The liturgy, among its various moments and signs, cannot ignore that of silence.”
Amid all the controversies in the liturgy, perhaps this last matter is an area where common agreement might be possible. In principle, it's easy to agree silence is something our culture — and our souls — lack.
But we all know the fidgeting and impatience that marks even modest pauses during the Mass, as hundreds of eyes are fixed on Father, demanding he get on with it.
In his letter, John Paul notes he has several times suggested an “examination of conscience” on how we are living the fruits of Vatican II.
An examination of conscience on how we greet silence at Mass would be a good start.
The Holy Father's short letter does not address some of the topical issues that are featured in our news coverage — translations, Eucharistic abuses or liturgical postures.
Perhaps he is suggesting a practical step could be taken, without much difficulty or controversy, to introduce greater periods of silence into our liturgies. As Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta was fond of saying: “Prayer is the fruit of silence.”
Silence in the liturgy is not just intended to produce more prayerful churches. Rather the Holy Father writes of the “cosmic and universal” dimension of the liturgy, in which all the multifarious activities of modern man find an echo in our common prayer.
Learning the art of fruitful silence in the liturgy would also help Catholics teach our too-noisy culture that silence can be golden and indeed, be more than golden.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Letters DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:Want Priests? Have Kids
Several recent letters have dealt with the subject of large families. Perhaps one of the major reasons for a shortage of vocations to the priesthood and the religious life is a shortage of young Catholic men and women. It is a fact that most young couples today are limiting themselves to one or two children. This will not even replace the population. Perhaps there is an element of selfishness in this trend, even greed.
The United States' population is growing mainly due to immigration.
God, who is never outdone in generosity, will certainly bless young couples who trust him to provide all they will need.
FATHER LEO SLATTERIE
Beaverton, Oregon
Islam and Its Infidels
Regarding “Catholic Expert: Islam Is a Religion of Violence, Not One of Peace” (Nov. 30-Dec. 6):
Robert Spencer describes Islam as “unique among the world's religions in having a broad and highly developed theology, law and tradition mandating violence against nonbelievers.” This frank description surely terrifies some and is written off as prejudiced falsity by others. However, given the author's credentials and the serious nature of the issue, further consideration and analysis of the issue and its validity are certainly prudent.
What does history have to say about Islam? By what means has Islam grown since its inception? What are the common characteristics of societies and nations that are mainly Islam? The greatest testimony to the Catholic faith is a saint, because a saint lives the Church's teachings. Who are the “saints” of Islam and what are they like? In general, what kind of fruit has Islam produced?
If the answers to these questions testify to Spencer's claim, then we must take it seriously and begin to prepare for the possibility of Islam spreading or attempting to spread throughout Europe. In doing this, I think it is important to remember that one of the few nonbelievers Muslims have respected and perhaps the only nonbeliever they have admired is St. Francis of Assisi.
I applaud the Register for printing this article on Islam and hope it continues such research in the future.
QUINTIN YALLALY
Champaign, Illinois
Emboldened Bishops?
It was nice to read that the bishops have resolved to establish guidelines on how to respond to Catholic politicians who mock the teachings of the Church on great moral issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage (“Bishops' Plan: Engage Public Pro-Abortion Catholics,” Nov. 23-29).
Nice, until we're told their resolution will not be ready by the 2004 election. Why will it take a year for the bishops to make a moral decision?
In their 1998 declaration “Living the Gospel of Life,” the bishops made a brave statement: The gospel of life cannot be lived simply as a private belief but must be lived “vigorously and publicly.” They singled out as “seriously mistaken” Catholic public officials who claim they are personally opposed to evils such as abortion but cannot impose their beliefs on others. But when it comes to acting upon that statement five years later, [the bishops] seem timid and uncertain.
ERNEST J. AMENT
Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan
Anglican Angles
I read with interest Cardinal Walter Kasper's comments in which he stated, “There can be an Anglican rite, but this would presuppose that a whole province or diocese comes to the Catholic Church” (“Anglican and Episcopalian Unrest Follows Bishop's Consecration,” Nov. 16-22).
According to the Web site of the Catholic Information Network, Pope John Paul II granted a pastoral provision in 1980 for the establishment of parishes composed of former Episcopalians permitting them to use a modified liturgy from the Book of Common Prayer.
There are a number of Anglican-use parishes in the United States, and several have Web sites. Our Lady of the Atonement has a particularly good site at www.atonementonline.com. These parishes apparently use a book of divine worship that has received an imprimatur and is based upon the Book of Common Prayer.
I wish there was an active parish in my area, but they are apparently clustered in the south-central United States.
WILLIAM BARTO
Fairfax, Virginia
Woe to Curay-Cramer
Michele Curay-Cramer, the teacher at Ursuline Academy in Delaware who signed a pro-abortion ad in a newspaper, should be ashamed of herself (“Free Speech for Teachers vs. School's Freedom of Religion,” Nov. 30-Dec. 6).
High-school girls are very impressionable and are influenced by the opinions and beliefs of their teachers. She has quite possibly, by her example, led girls away from the Catholic Church's teaching on this issue. She has potentially put not only her own soul but also the souls of the girls she teaches in jeopardy.
Our Lord addresses the danger of scandalizing children quite clearly: “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of things that cause sin! Such things must come, but woe to the one through whom they come” (Matthew 18:6-7).
I pray for Michele Curay-Cramer's soul and those of her students. As for her claims of sexual discrimination, I think she needs to look up the meaning of the word in the dictionary. She should accept her termination and not put the school and diocese through a court battle. She was wrong, needs to accept responsibility for her actions and should print a retraction to her original support in the newspaper.
It is a sad statement of our society when a schoolteacher so flagrantly shirks her responsibility as a moral example to her students.
BETH A. MARTIN, M.D.
Coeur D'Alene, Idaho
Victorious Lackawanna
Finally you had an article on one of the most beautiful churches in our nation and in the world: Our Lady of Victory Basilica in Lackawanna, N.Y. (“A Basilica to Give Thanks For,” Nov. 23-29).
I'm so glad you finally featured the basilica and just had to thank you. I was born and raised in the parish, made my first confession and Communion, and received the sacrament of confirmation there. I still visit the church at least two or three times a year when I return to visit my family. I never tire of its beauty.
Your paper is one of my favorite publications. Keep up the good work.
FATHER EDWARD SZYMANSKI
Sacred Heart of Mary Church
Baltimore
From Altar to Priesthood
I was pleased to see an article regarding altar servers (“Boys Only? Vatican Rumors and American Doubts Surround Altar Servers,” Nov. 9-15). I do believe that having all-male altar servers will foster more vocations.
I belong to Sts. Cyril and Methodius in Sterling Heights, Mich. In this parish of about 650 families, we have 111 altar boys. Within the last two years, six young men have entered the seminary and one man was ordained to the priesthood this past June.
I believe this vocational success comes from prayer and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament as well as a pastor who is completely faithful to the magisterium and all that our Holy Mother Church teaches. But I also believe that promoting the priesthood through the altar-boy program has had a great influence in fostering vocations.
There is nothing discriminatory about doing everything possible to promote the priesthood. And with the success we have been blessed with in our parish, I would hate to see anything changed. As a matter of fact, I would like to see more parishes following suit.
PAMELA GESUND
West Bloomfield, Michigan
Take Back the University
The series of articles in the Register concerning the 1990 apostolic constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae (From the Heart of the Church) is very informative; however, it is difficult to understand the issues until you actually attend a resisting university.
In my case, my son, my wife and I all attend the same university, which makes a concerted effort to mitigate the Catholic faith. Homosexuality is supported openly through the distribution of homosexual newspapers found in the library foyers and student gathering points to “gay pride” flags and stickers adorning professor's offices to “coming out” parties in the dorms. We found out the hard way that low morals follow weak academic standards. Relativism is the religion of this university.
The question is what can be done if an archbishop refuses to do anything. One could stand outside the grounds and carry a sign in protest, but without a sizable crowd, nothing will come of it.
Nevertheless, an area that concerns universities more than anything else is their coffers. If the Catholic laity started to withhold money and actively worked to discourage donations and admissions, universities might start concerning themselves with the will of the faithful.
We all can do something no matter how close to a university we might live. E-mail alumni groups. All universities post the e-mail addresses of alumni and chapters in various locations. For example, look in alumni magazines and on university Web pages. Let the alumni know about the issue and ask them to write the university.
Recommend withholding contributions until compliance transpires and tell them the faith is more important than football or basketball. Also, find out who the big donors are and write to them.
Write the Knights of Columbus and tell the grand knight that you want the Knights to give scholarships only to universities that have signed the mandatum. Every year the Knights of Columbus gives thousands of dollars to universities that are actively subverting our faith. Why should the Knights of Columbus support universities that are in opposition to the Holy Father and the faith? This should stop.
Hopefully, this will curb the number of Catholic children applying and will help those universities that are faithful. Once a month gather the Knights from the local council and anyone else willing to help and protest in front of the university. Find out when parents weekend and high school spring vacation are and target those dates. This is normally the time when the university gets the most external exposure.
Lastly, talk to the kids outside the university and evangelize. It is amazing how little these kids understand the faith.
The weird thing about these tactics is that it sounds like the same tactics used in protest of abortion clinics. Maybe there is a connection.
BRIAN DUFFY
Dayton, Ohio
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Good News: Shout it From the Rooftops DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:What a stiff breeze of reality is Peter Wolfgang's commentary about what is really going on with the grassroots and rock-solid, everyday Catholic folk (“Attention, Peter Steinfels: You Got It Wrong,” Nov. 23-29).
The disciples of despair naturally drift to their position because of either total ignorance or complete avoidance of those in the trenches who are daily doing the works of the Catholic faith — quietly but with efficiency, effect and evangelization.
Wolfgang's article is so exhilarating that the Register should make it available in reprint form by the thousands.
Steinfels has easy access to the media because of his place of employment and his message that so resonates with their [strong] tendency to feast on things that bash Catholicism.
Wolfgang's reprints could and should be available to hundreds of Catholic organizations for distribution to hundreds of thousands of Catholics eagerly awaiting the real message of the good news. He may be focusing on the Connecticut area because of his familiarity there, but those stories must be taking place in all states. Let's do some shouting!
JOHN MATERAZZO
Roxbury, Massachusetts
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: The Passion of Mel Gibson, The Feminist DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:You might have heard that Mel Gibson's upcoming Passion of Christ is Marian.
It sure is. But it's also something else: It's a feminist movie.
That's right. I just called former Mad Max/Lethal Weapon star Mel Gibson a feminist.
Of course I don't exactly mean a feminist in the Gloria Steinem sense of the word. The movie, to be released Ash Wednesday, is a telling of the story of Christ's life, betrayal, suffering and death largely through the eyes of his mother — making it, frankly, all the more painful to watch. And all the more prayerful.
But Gibson's emphasis on the feminine does not stop there. In his depictions of the Virgin Mother, Mary Magdalene, Veronica and Pontius Pilate's wife, Claudia, we see what Pope John Paul II calls the “genius of women,” all in unique ways.
Americans tend to downplay the differences between men and women in a fog of shoulder pads and power plays. Not The Passion of Christ. Only one of the many glorious aspects of the movie, it shows the world what Christians really think of women.
There's probably no greater proof of the central role of women in creation — and in salvation history — than the fact that God chose to make a woman — essential to the story of the life, death and resurrection of Christ. But you don't have to be a Catholic or a Christian to get that in Gibson's Passion.
This is what the Pope, my favorite feminist, wrote in his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life): “In transforming culture so that it supports life, women occupy a place, in thought and action, that is unique and decisive. It depends on them to promote a ‘new feminism,’ which rejects the temptation of imitating models of ‘male domination,’ in order to acknowledge and affirm the true genius of women in every aspect of the life of society and overcome all discrimination, violence and exploitation.”
I don't think popular culture has seen such a perfect personification of this “new feminism” before The Passion of Christ. That it happens to be the Passion has the potential to make the point clearer than ever.
Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput saw it, too. After seeing the movie earlier this year, he noted in a speech, “The Passion of Christ does something unusual to men.” He continued, “Every man knows in his heart that the best of what he is comes through his parents, and especially from his mother. And what Maya Morgenstern shows us so movingly as Mary in The Passion of Christ is how the love of a mother touched the life of Jesus Christ. Jesus shared exactly the same moments of maternal tenderness and humor that every son thrives on.”
Mary, of course, is an integral part of the salvation story. But her character in this movie has multiple ways to reach out to viewers. She is the Mother of God. She is a mother. She is a strong woman. She is dangerous.
I don't think popular culture has seen such a perfect personification of the ‘new feminism’ before The Passion of Christ.
Dangerous? Yes — because she is not Hillary Clinton strong. She is not taking on Pilate. She does not end the movie with a grand oration. Archbishop Chaput put it this way: “The reason the secular world hates films like The Passion is because they persuade the heart with the logic of love. The reason the secular world seeks to reinvent or reinterpret Mary is because she's dangerous. She's the model of mature human character — a human being who co-creates a new world not through power but through unselfish love, faith in God and the rejection of power.”
People who are calling Gibson an anti-Semite are not only missing the point of the Gospel, which imputes guilt to us all, as we Catholics who read “Crucify him! Crucify him!” on Passion Sunday know all too well. The sum total of Gibson's acting role in the movie is his hand, which drives the first nail into Christ's palm in the movie. This is not a guy looking for a scapegoat for Christ's crucifixion.
No, they are missing what Gibson actually is, as evidenced from this remarkable movie: a feminist, and an evangelist.
The Second Vatican Council fathers in their “Closing Message” said, “The hour is coming, in fact has already 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.”
Now that I have seen The Passion of Christ in a preview screening, I can tell you: It is not an easy watch. It's not a popcorn-and-soda movie. It might be a date movie — if you want to fast-forward to the heart of matters. It's bloody and brutal, but then so was Christ's betrayal and death.
But the Gibson Passion is a clear statement that the cruel soldier is not the ultimate symbol of power on earth. For Gibson, the ultimate human power is the most influential mere human who ever lived: Mary, the Virgin Mother of God.
Kathryn Jean Lopez is editor of National Review Online.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Kathryn Jean Lopez ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: A Battle, Not the War DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:It is a well-known fact of military history that, as wars are made up of a series of battles, certain battles prove decisive, marking the great turning points of the war. The same is true of the culture war.
So it was that Roe v. Wade marked a great turning point. In one well-orchestrated court decision the right to abortion successfully grafted upon the Constitution, so that in each battle thereafter the rule of law could be invoked to spread ever more broadly the court-justified slaughter of the unborn.
As with all wars, there is little time for rumination and conjecture because new battles press upon us. We face one right now — in the case of Terri Schiavo, a decisive battle in the war between the culture of life and the culture of death, this time in regard to euthanasia. If Michael Schiavo, Terri's husband, is successful in his ongoing quest to starve his wife to death, then those who fight against euthanasia will be cast back, losing immeasurably precious ground and teetering ever closer to defeat and surrender.
In short, the fight for and against euthanasia hinges on the outcome of the Schiavo case. Pro-lifers received a prayed-for victory when, eight days after Terri Schiavo's feeding tube was removed, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush stepped in and pushed an emergency law through the state legislature to reinsert the tube. But since Michael Schiavo is immediately challenging the constitutionality of the law — and more and more right-to-die advocates gather like birds of prey to support his cause — the case will drag on and up through the courts, most likely ending at the Supreme Court.
Sadly, the reinsertion of the feeding tube represents only a momentary victory for the pro-life cause, one that could easily be lost.
Nation Watching
What makes the battle for Terri Schiavo's life so crucial, so decisive? After all, whether we like to admit it or not, euthanasia has been gaining steady ground in the everyday push and pull of the culture wars. In fact, euthanasia is already quite widespread, regardless of its legality. It simply occurs below the radar, so to speak, in just the same way abortion occurred below the legal radar prior to Roe. So why focus our attention and efforts on the Schiavo case? What makes it a landmark?
First of all, it has risen above the radar. The majority of the media have tried to ignore it, simply refusing to cover it as newsworthy, or they have grossly misrepresented the facts (e.g., calling Terri brain-dead or vegetative, when she is only brain-damaged). Yet, even against these obstacles, it has received national recognition. National recognition, despite its attendant distortions and simplifications, enables the nation to argue openly about fundamental moral principles rather than leaving oral principles to be distorted or dissolved by activist lawyers and judges.
There is another benefit from national attention. It allows light to be shed upon deeds of darkness. The greatest victories for the pro-life movement in regard to abortion will be won by the ever-greater advance of our technical ability to see the unborn in the womb. Pro-abortion folk fear high-resolution 4-D ultrasound pictures — showing babies moving, thumb sucking, crying, blinking and even smiling — like vampires fear the cross.
In regard to the Schiavo case, the public outcry that finally brought Jeb Bush to intervene was, in great part, the result of the clandestine videos of Terri Schiavo made by her father, showing very clearly that Terri is not brain-dead or in a persistent vegetative state — videos made illegally because Michael had successfully pushed for a court order to disallow her actual condition to be brought to light.
In short, the fight for and against euthanasia hinges on the outcome of the Schiavo case.
Near the end of Michael Schiavo's appearance on “Larry King Live” on Oct. 27, King asked him, “Could CNN send in cameras and video her for a while?” After fumbling for an answer, Michael's lawyer, a noted pro-death advocate, stepped in and deflected the question: “Terri has a right to privacy.” Michael, picking up the thread, added, “Can you imagine? In this condition, everybody sitting looking at her?”
Indeed. Just such viewing saved her life once, bringing to light her actual condition. I suspect Terri would be as little worried about her right to privacy as would an unborn baby at the sight of a 4-D ultrasound that would save him from the abortionist.
Speaking of the right to privacy — a right used to undergird the killing of the unborn — another landmark aspect of the Terri Schiavo case is the insidious way her wishes are being inferred. It is dark enough that people are demanding euthanasia on their own behalf; it is far, far darker that the Florida courts have accepted Michael's testimony that it was Terri's wish not to live with the aid of a feeding tube — a testimony based on uncorroborated private, casual conversations (which two of Michael's family members, as of late, have suddenly surfaced to affirm).
If Michael wins and Terri's feeding tube is again (and for the last time) removed, the euthanasia movement will then be able to project its own desires on those who, through some disability, can no longer express them. Even if she had said such things, imagine the use the pro-death forces could make if casual remarks take the place of living wills.
It is all the more amazing that Terri's fate hangs on such thin evidence, because her husband's character and motives, even by the standards of the culture of death, are more than a little suspect. Almost 14 years ago, in February 1990, Terri Schiavo “collapsed” under mysterious conditions. As a 1991 bone scan uncovered — a scan that itself has only very recently been uncovered — Terri had suffered a history of trauma, not only injuries to the ribs, thoracic vertebrae, both sacroiliac joints, both ankles and both knees but also a head injury severe enough to have led to her disabled condition.
In short, Terri was long the victim of serious physical abuse, and her husband is the prime suspect. That makes the “collapse” itself a rightful object of investigation as a continued pattern of abuse. Not too surprisingly, Michael has done everything possible to keep Terri's medical records from public view and has even ordered that her body be cremated upon death. A cremated body is a notoriously difficult object for an autopsy.
Yet another twist in regard to Michael Schiavo's character: Terri did undergo therapy in that first year, and the therapy did result in improvement of her condition. What spelled the end of her therapy and hence the end of her improvement? In late 1992, her husband won a lawsuit that awarded him more than a million dollars, $750,000 of which was supposed to be used for her therapy.
But quite suddenly, beginning in 1993, Michael denied all therapy. That's all therapy — not only rehabilitative but also basic medical care. He demanded not only a Do Not Resuscitate order on her medical chart but also issued an order that she be denied even routine antibiotics. Why? Well it so happens that if Terri would die, then he would receive the money.
By a Thread
Finally, the same husband who vows that he seeks his wife's death only because he loves her so much is now living with a woman with whom he has two children, and strong evidence exists that he was dating during or soon after the original lawsuit that gained him such a grand award. Further, nurses have sworn under penalty of perjury that Michael uttered such loving remarks about his wife as “When is she going to die?” “Has she died yet?” and “When is that b-------going to die?”
So, when we add in his character, it makes for a wonderful context to make the Schiavo case a legal landmark. Much like the pro-abortion forces that had to defend Bill Clinton's womanizing to further their cause, pro-euthanasia forces will find themselves in the unenviable position of defending Michael Schiavo's character in order to advance euthanasia.
Pro-life forces, then, should not rest after the momentary reprieve given by Jeb Bush. Terri Schiavo's life still hangs by the very thread that even now is winding its way through judicial channels. As Michael Schiavo's attorney, George Felos, has made clear, it will be a landmark case. The question is, will it be one that marks a great victory or a great defeat for the culture of life?
Benjamin Wiker writes from Steubenville, Ohio.
----- EXCERPT: Don't Forget Terri ----- EXTENDED BODY: Benjamin Wiker ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: Homosexual Marriage: England Needs Another Thomas More DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:The state opening of Parliament is one of those bits of pageantry in which Britain excels:clinking horse-brasses and jingling reins, the clip-clop of cavalry on wet London streets and the Queen, resplendent in robes and crown, entering in state through the gothic archway and walking through the red-carpeted corridors of the House of Lords.
By tradition, members of the House of Commons are summoned to hear the Queen's speech, read from the throne in the Lords — but as members of the lower house they cannot enter the chamber, so they stand crowding around the door. It's all the more absurd because of course the speech — outlining government policy for the next parliamentary session — has been drafted entirely by the cabinet team headed by the prime minister.
This year the absurdity was seen at its height as Her Majesty, nominal head of the Church of England and defender of the faith, sitting amid all the glorious panoply of stained glass, chandeliers and coats of arms that speak of heritage and history, quietly announced the end of one of the basic institutions on which our society and community is based: marriage.
The Queen's speech contained the announcement that a new concept of civil unions — formalized, state-recognized, homosexual marriage between two partners of the same sex — will be introduced. The benefits, status and social recognition hitherto given to a man and woman who marry and raise a amily together will, following legislation in this Parliament, be extended to two lesbians or two homosexuals who choose to set up a partnership.
The details of course still have to be worked through — and debated in Parliament — but it is understood that as part of the package deal, public-policy documents will, whenever possible, no longer refer to marriage. The understanding that marriage is a lifelong, unique and socially recognized union between a man and a woman will be abolished.
The stage was set for this earlier in the week when the Conservative Party — the official opposition in Parliament — announced it would not oppose this new law as a matter of policy but allow its members a free vote on the issue. Given that Labor members of Parliament support the measure — as it is government policy this means it will have an easy ride. Even if the Conservatives had opposed it, Labor has such a large majority that it would have become law, but at least the legislation would have had a rough ride and some concessions in favor of traditional marriage might have been obtained.
Now, we can expect nothing of that kind.
The Catholic bishops of England and Wales have already announced their general opposition to the notion of “same-sex marriage,” and it is to be hoped — and assumed — that this opposition will be maintained throughout the passage of the legislation and the media discussion that ensue. Already, the general line on talk shows and the like is to assume that anyone who opposes some form of legalized homosexual unions is a bigot, a religious prude or (at best) so hopelessly old-fashioned as to be irrelevant.
The main opposition to the proposals to date has been the evangelical movement — including some in the Anglican Church, together with numbers of people in Baptist and Free Churches. The Christian Institute, an evangelical-based group that has also fought nobly on the pro-life front, has been astute and hardworking in getting people to write to members of Parliament and members of the House of Lords. It launched a courageous and well-argued campaign to protect children from homosexual adoption — to no avail — and has repeatedly drawn attention to the gross and offensive material put out by homosexual lobby groups via health authorities to schools and youth groups.
Do I sound gloomy? Of course. Wouldn't you if you belonged to a nation that was the first outside the communist bloc to introduce legalized abortion and you now had to watch as this new and latest nasty piece of social engineering gets under way?
Naturally, we will be doing what we can. There are various lobby groups presenting the case for the traditional family. The Catholic Herald newspaper has been producing good material. And we have our never-failing British sense of humor, which we must hope will not leave us. But all in all, things don't look good. Did I mention that the Conservative Party has just announced its new head of publicity — a self-proclaimed homosexual whose “long-term partner” was, until recent tempests, working in public relations for the royal family? (I am not making this up.)
What will we do? Work to point out the anomalies in the proposed law, of course — some mentioned already in the press and elsewhere. It took an American, Dwight Longenecker — yes, the very same person whose name occasionally graces these columns — to point out, tongue-in-cheek, that if we are going to say it is wrong to limit marriage to members of opposite sexes, surely it is equally wrong to limit it to just two people. What about Bill and Jane, who have a great partnership, but Bill is bisexual, and Jane is comfortable with that and happy to accommodate Jim, who is Bill's long-term lover?
St. Thomas More went to the scaffold rather than allow that a king could disobey the law of God and marry a new wife while the first was yet living. As lord chancellor, More was tried and found guilty of treason in the Great Hall at Westminster. Yes, you've got it — the same building that is part of the Palace of Westminster today. The lessons for today's Catholics who seek to give public witness to the laws of God are rather worrying.
The whole point of martyrdom is that it gives witness to those who follow. We cannot say we have not been taught what is right.
Joanna Bogle writes from London.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joanna Bogle ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: Advent Tension DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:Earlier this year, as I prepared to give a talk on the Eucharist as the “eschato-logical sacrament,” I was struck by a passage from Ecclesia de Eucharistia, Pope John Paul II's 2003 encyclical on the Eucharist in its relationship to the Church.
Describing the relationship between the Eucharist and the blessed hope of the Parousia of Jesus Christ, the Holy Father writes: “The Eucharist is a straining toward the goal, a foretaste of the fullness of joy promised by Christ (see John 15:11); it is in some way the anticipation of heaven, the ‘pledge of future glory.’” He then states, “The eschatological tension kindled by the Eucharist expresses and reinforces our communion with the Church in heaven.”
Chances are you haven't heard the phrase “eschatological tension” used too often, whether at the water cooler or even at Mass. But when we consider what it means to be a follower of Christ and a member of the pilgrim Church, we recognize that we do live with and in tension. That tension exists because we live in temporal history between the “already accomplished” (the Incarnation) and the “yet to be completed” (the Parousia and fullness of the Kingdom). While yet on earth, we live with the knowledge that we are meant for heaven. We understand that we are spiritual and material. We know that we are sinful and being saved. We recognize that we are dying and graced with eternal life.
Advent is a wonderful time to contemplate this fact and to ask ourselves if there should be more of this tension in our lives. I have to admit I am often a bit too comfortable with being earthly, material and sinful. I know I sometimes shy away from looking to heaven, of becoming more spirit-filled and of working out my salvation with fear and trembling (see Philippians 2:12).
Despite my personal interest in the “end times,” I prefer to ponder the quiet mysteries of the Nativity and shy away from the future, earth-shattering wonder of the Parousia, when the quiet Babe of Bethlehem will be revealed as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. But the two cannot be separated. Without the first coming, there is no Second Coming; without the Second Coming, the first remains incomplete. The swaddling clothes must give way to brilliant robes. The donkey will step aside for the thundering white horse.
Many Christians who contemplate the end of time become obsessed with bloody scenarios and violent visions. The stunning commercial success of end-of-the-world fiction indicates that some readers are looking to escape the eschatological tension, hoping to flee from the clutches of earth and the mortal life. But, for Catholics, escape is not a consideration; the cross is not optional.
Yet the tension of living in the present is not a reason for despair but for hope. The Holy Father writes: “A significant consequence of the eschatological tension inherent in the Eucharist is also the fact that it spurs us on our journey through history and plants a seed of living hope in our daily commitment to the work before us. Certainly the Christian vision leads to the expectation of ‘new heavens’ and ‘a new earth’ (Revelation 21:1), but this increases, rather than lessens, our sense of responsibility for the world today.”
The good news is that the King didn't just come 2,000 years ago — he comes to us each time we receive holy Communion. And he comes during Advent, preparing our hearts for Christmas. “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!”
Carl E. Olson is editor of Envoy magazine and author of Will Catholics Be “Left Behind”?
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Carl E. Olson ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: New York in an Advent State of Mind DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:A Christmas memory of long ago has remained vivid in my mind's eye: I'm standing in a wig-gly line of other preschoolers on Christmas Day, waiting to hold the Christ Child, delivered from the life-size Nativity scene by the priest.
I even remember how large the baby seemed and how heavy. I was thrilled to be able to hold him. Although I'm not certain who I thought the Child really was, I knew he was very holy and very important.
Since that time, I rarely pass a crèche without pausing to thank God for sending his Son — and/or sometimes for childhood itself. Most Catholic churches in America set up crèches at Christmas, usually waiting till just after midnight Mass to place the Child in the manger as the choir sings “O, Little Town of Bethlehem.”
In Italy, from Christmas until Epiphany, families travel from church to church to admire the crèche (presepio in Italian) in each. Adults, too, are delighted by the features each one has, although their special effects are indeed modest — and perhaps more charming — these days. Sometimes lights play on a silver-paper river or sunrise brightens and fades to sunset, followed by the moon and stars on a dark sky, as the town lights turn on and off. Entire villages are usually shown, never mind the leap of centuries from the Holy Family, shepherds and Three Kings to a host of 18th-century villagers going about daily life.
Should you worry that celebrating the secular world along with the Nativity is not appropriate, read G.K. Chesterton's Spirit of Christmas, in which he “turns calmly from holly to the Hypostatic Union, from turkey and plum pudding to the Persons of the Trinity, and then back again. … Such surprising juxtapositions are very Catholic, evidence of a sacramental mind.” I'm quoting this from another exceptional Nativity book, Cradle of Redeeming Love, by John Saward (Ignatius Press).
Although I'm easily won over by even the most lopsided papier mâché reproductions, I'm especially thrilled by the most beautiful Nativity scene I have ever laid my eyes upon: the annual display of the Neapolitan Baroque Crèche and Christmas Tree at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. It's here thanks to a generous donor, Loretta Hines Howard, who indeed deserves mention.
Maybe it holds a special place in my heart because it's from one of my favorite places in the world — Naples, the Italian city most enchanted with Christmas.
Mystical Attraction
The figures in this crèche, like those in any fine work of art, are defined beautifully to the last detail. Each angel, each cherub, floats in glorious descent from the tree to the Holy Family, reflecting individual joy and wonder. Even oxen, donkeys and camels look on with knowing eyes. Taken together, the display has a mystical appeal; it brings the observer in and then leads him beyond. “Come and see what the Lord has made known unto us,” the work seems to say.
Even holiday crowds at the museum won't interfere with a quiet prayer in front of the Holy Family. In fact, the exquisite Medieval Gallery, where the tree radiates its own brand of yuletide splendor, is often hushed, as visitors listen to the soft music of Christmas oratorios.
For its part the crèche, a masterpiece of 18th-century Naples, comes from the tradition of noble families' commissioning leading artists to create a miniature world for them at Christmas. This was still the age of Baroque, so swirling robes and mighty wings swoop down the angel tree in the excitement of Christmas itself.
The Bourbon King Ferdinand IV of Naples and his Queen Maria Carolina, rulers of the largest kingdom in Italy, were known to enjoy dressing up their presepio figures. Jewels and precious stones were added, and some of the fabric was part of the royal-wardrobe material.
During the 18th century, some 400 churches in Naples annually set up a presepio, and many private homes devoted a full room to it. In fact, sometimes an entire house was decorated with different village scenes; concerts of Nativity music serenaded the guests who strolled from room to room. Less-affluent citizens devised ways of making their own delightful, imaginative figures with papier mâché and scraps of cloth.
At the top of the tree, a starburst radiates light. Around it, angelic hosts “from the realms of glory wing their flight o'er all the earth.” As John Saward describes it: “Through the Christ-Mass mystery, the Christmas mystery is ever in our midst.” Every Mass, in fact, celebrates the gift of the Christ Child to all mankind.
But it is here, somehow, in the heart of the city that never sleeps, that the words of the favorite crèche-side carol come to mind and move me in a special way:
O morning stars, together, proclaim the holy birth.
And praises sing to God the King, and peace to men on earth.
Barbara Coeyman Hults writes from New York City.
----- EXCERPT: The Annual Christmas Tree and Neapolitan Baroque Crèche at 'The Met' ----- EXTENDED BODY: Barbara Coeyman Hults ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: A Grand and Glorious Return DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:It's hard to overstate the soaring achievement of Peter Jackson and company in The Return of the King, the third and final chapter of their historic adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings.
To call it the grandest spectacle ever filmed is no exaggeration. It might also be the most satisfying third act of any film trilogy, completing what can now be regarded as possibly the best-realized cinematic trilogy of all time.
In a genre that has never before had a single really good film, Jackson and his collaborators have produced three outstanding films telling a single epic story. In a way, their achievement parallels that of Tolkien himself, whose monumental trilogy was also the first in its class.
The Return of the King now replaces The Fellowship of the Ring as my favorite in the series. Certainly it's the most ambitious; it might also be the most emotionally affecting and perhaps the most flawless.
Its faults, such as they are, are basically of omission, not commission. Compared with the first two theatrical releases, no characterization or locale in The Return of the King is as troubling to me as, for example, Galadriel and Lothlórien in Fellowship, or Faramir and Théoden in The Two Towers. Granted that the extended editions of the earlier films go a long way toward redeeming their problems, with The Return of the King there are only missing moments and events I hope to see restored, not disconcerting characterizations I hope to see redeemed.
The Return of the King also displays some of Tolkien's most overtly Catholic themes and motifs. Frodo, walking his via dolorosa bearing a great burden on behalf of the world, has here his moments of greatest resemblance to Christ, while also decisively embodying human fallibility and dependence upon divine providence and grace.
Aragorn, the hidden king who is finally revealed in glory, is another messianic figure; his journey down the Paths of the Dead echoes the harrowing of hell. And the residents of that place, oath-breaking spirits who must expiate their treason before they can rest in peace, suggest a kind of purgatorial state.
In this film, and in the trilogy as a whole, Tolkien's saga is honored beyond all reasonable hope. That's not to say it isn't Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings as much as it is Tolkien's. The director's fingerprints are everywhere, particularly in his flair for the hyper-dramatic. Jackson's fundamental instinct is always to ramp up the drama and conflict to the nth degree — never to use 10 orcs if 1,000 will fit, nor to let a character die a sudden death if it can instead be a big action set piece.
Sometimes this results in a brilliantly heightened re-imagining of Tolkien's work, as when in The Two Towers Gandalf's rousing of Théoden becomes something much more like an exorcism. Something similar happens in Return of the King with the Paths of the Dead: It's not the way Tolkien wrote it, but it ingeniously represents the essence of the episode in the movie's own cinematic idiom.
Other times, Jackson's contribution is simply to transform what Tolkien wrote into spectacularly exciting cinema. For example, in Two Towers the siege of Helm's Deep only a year ago seemed the most spectacular siege sequence of all time — but now, astonishingly, seems a mere skirmish measured against this film's siege of Minas Tirith and battle of the Pelennor Fields.
One might say that, in translating Tolkien's work to the screen, Jackson has transposed it into another register — that of the Hollywood action-adventure. Yet the spirit of Tolkien's work is honored in the transposition — imperfectly, yes, but brilliantly and transcendently in what it accomplishes, from the Shire with its bucolic charm to Gollum's emaciated frame and spidery gait, from the Nazgûl, the very embodiments of terror, to the wonderful strangeness of Treebeard and the Ents.
To these wonders must now be added one of the most awesome and evocative imaginative architectural achievements in any film: Minas Tirith, the White City, with its seven tiers and tower pointing to the sky. Nothing in Jackson's Middle Earth rivals it, not even the splendor of Rivendell or the dark might of Isengard and Orthanc. Only the Shire itself, and Edoras, the hilltop capital of Rohan, are as compellingly and unforgettably realized, but for grandeur neither matches Minas Tirith.
For all this, the filmmakers don't allow the story and characters to be overwhelmed by the action or the effects. In this third film, all the plot threads come satisfyingly together, including long-deferred events from earlier chapters — the re-forging of Isildur's sword, the confrontation with Shelob — that are so neatly incorporated into the third film that Jackson's decision to defer them is thoroughly vindicated. (Only the final confrontation of Gandalf and Saruman, omitted from The Two Towers, has been still further delayed and won't be seen until next year's extended edition.)
The hobbits, especially, are better utilized here than in the last film. Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) are much closer to the center of the story. They get some of the trilogy's most affecting moments, including a heartbreaking scene halfway up the slope of Cirith Ungol. Merry and Pippin, freed from Treebeard's swaying upper branches, come most fully into their own in this film.
One bit of creative license at a climactic moment is bound to be controversial among purists. Essentially, the twist reflects Jackson's preference for the hyperdramatic; fortunately, what matters about the scene as Tolkien wrote it holds true in Jackson's version.
Certainly the films will never replace the books. (On the contrary, they're sending readers to the books in droves. Sales of Lord of the Rings books have sharply spiked in the last two years and, last year, according to figures from Publisher's Weekly, they narrowly outsold the Harry Potter books.)
But the films also are irreplaceable. More than merely honoring their source material, their glorious imagery and fine performances have for me forever enriched the experience of reading the books. For all that the films don't do, I still have Tolkien. For all that they do, the books themselves can be enjoyed on a new level.
For Tolkien fans, the film trilogy is a gift to be treasured. Its legacy is assured with the triumph of The Return of the King.
Steven D. Greydanus, editor and chief critic of DecentFilms.com, writes from Bloomfield, New Jersey.
----- EXCERPT: Peter Jackson wraps up an unforgettable sojourn in Middle Earth ----- EXTENDED BODY: Steven D. Greydanus ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Weekly Video/DVD Picks DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:The Hobbit (1977)
Holiday-special animation veterans Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass (Rudolph the Red- Nosed Reindeer, etc.) bring their typically serviceable animation, strong voice work and corny folk ballads to The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien's charming prologue to The Lord of the Rings. The resulting film is worthwhile for kids and not too bad for parents.
Character design is a mixed bag: Gandalf looks very much himself, but Bilbo is rather cherubic and the dwarves are uninspired. Worse is Gollum, disappointingly bloated and stiff rather than agile and emaciated, and the dreadfully goblinlike Wood-Elf King. (On the other hand, the Elf-lord Elrond, with his distinguished features and strange crown-halo, is far preferable to animator Ralph Bakshi's dismally graceless version of the same character.)
The best-designed character is the dragon Smaug, whose obscene bulk and wolf-like face are rendered with flair and imagination. The giant spiders, too, are genuinely menacing.
Despite the fearful monsters, violence is suggested rather than explicitly depicted. The folk-tune soundtrack, though corny, at least tries to incorporate some of Tolkien's poetry.
Avoid the DVD release, notorious for omitting sound effects and other audio elements, and stick with VHS.
Content advisory: Much cartoon menace, stylized monsters, etc. Might be too scary for some kids.
The Lord of the Rings (1978)
Animator Ralph Bakshi's ambitious, uneven, incomplete stab at The Lord of the Rings suffers from a number of limitations — most notably that it's only half the story. Originally intended as Part 1 of a two-film adaptation, the cartoon was released and marketed as the whole deal and, despite financial success, Bakshi never got funding for the sequel.
Notwithstanding this and other weaknesses, this Lord of the Rings is in some respects quite impressive and remains worth a look, especially for Tolkien fans — and perhaps younger viewers not quite old enough for Peter Jackson's more intense adaptation.
At its best, Bakshi's visualization of Tolkien's world can be startlingly effective: the genuinely creepy Black Riders; the emaciated, spidery Gollum; Frodo's wraithworld vision at Weathertop. Just as often, though, Bakshi is disappointingly wide of the mark, from unbeautiful elves to an unimpressive Balrog to a risible Treebeard. Then there are things that are just inexplicable, like the fact that the name “Saruman,” presumably to avoid confusion with “Sauron,” was changed to “Aruman” — but only about half the time.
Bakshi's heavy reliance on an animation technique called rotoscoping is at times impressively lifelike but palls with overuse in the disjointed final act. Even so, Tolkien fans will appreciate what Bakshi managed to get right, and Jackson fans especially will note with interest notable parallels between the two interpretations — most obviously in Bakshi's best scene, with the four hobbits on the road hiding in their first encounter with a Black Rider.
Content advisory: Frequent menace and grotesque, scary imagery; realistic animated battlefield violence. Not for younger kids.
The Return of the King (1980)
The Rankin- Bass team, following their own 1977 The Hobbit and Ralph Bakshi's incomplete 1978 Lord of the Rings, returns to finish the job — sort of. The approach here is about the same as The Hobbit, with similarly uninspired Saturday-morning style animation and an even more intrusive, overbearing folk-ballad soundtrack that doesn't even gesture lyrically, as the Hobbit songs did, to Tolkien's poetry. The film hits the most critical plot points but is clearly aimed at the younger set, with little to interest even the most avid adult Tolkien and/or animation buff.
Unfortunately, this style works even less well here than in The Hobbit, which really is a children's story. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is a much more adult work, but Rankin-Bass essentially makes a kid movie out of it. Even so, for kids too young for the Jackson or even Bakshi versions, the Rankin- Bass cartoons might be just the ticket.
At least the voice work remains mostly solid, with Orson Bean as Frodo, John Huston as Gandalf and Roddy McDowell as Samwise. The landscapes, too, are quite evocatively painted.
Content advisory: Much cartoon menace, stylized monsters, etc. Might be too scary for some kids.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Steven D. Greydanus ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Weekly TV Picks DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:All times Eastern
SUNDAY, DEC. 14
Live from Lincoln Center
PBS, 5 p.m.
The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center performs all six of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos. Beverly Sills hosts this two-hour program.
SUNDAY, DEC. 14
Christmas Specials
Various networks, 8-10 p.m.
On TBS at 8 p.m., Christmas in Washington airs the 22nd annual Christmas concert from the National Building Museum in our nation's capital. On Home & Garden TV at 9 p.m., The White House Christmas 2003 gives us a special tour. On the Food Network at 10 p.m., Christmas in America celebrates Christmas food traditions around the nation.
MONDAY, DEC. 15
Everyday Italian
Food Network, 8 p.m.
In this episode, chef Giada De Laurentiis uses basic ingredients and simple, stress-free steps to create an elegant Christmas dinner for her friends.
TUESDAY, DEC. 16
Mother Angelica Live (Classics)
EWTN, 8 p.m.
To give us a good lesson about our need to forgive, Mother Angelica says Jesus “called Judas ‘friend’; you and I would have said, ‘You rat! What are you doing here?’”
WEDNESDAY, DEC. 17
The Technology of Kitty Hawk
History Channel, 10 p.m.
Experts use full-scale replicas of Orville and Wilbur Wright's aircraft to explain how the brothers solved the mystery of heavierthan- air flight. Historians add commentary.
THURSDAY, DEC. 18
Ultimate Small-Town Christmas
A&E, 9 p.m.
Twenty small towns compete for a first prize in Christmas decorations and spirit.
FRIDAY, DEC. 19
The Berlin Wall
History Channel, 10 p.m.
The Soviet puppet East German regime began it in August 1961 and built it in tentative stages to see if the West would object. The Berlin Wall and its adjacent noman's- land became a 103-mile barrier that kept people from fleeing divided Berlin's communist zone. Many brave souls sought to cross anyway; 261 died, but some succeeded. The West was silent for nearly three decades, until President Ronald Reagan's bold challenge, “Mr.Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” ignited a storm of liberty that overwhelmed the communists and brought down the hated wall in late 1989.
SATURDAY, DEC. 20
The Littlest Reindeer
Animal Planet, 9 p.m.
In this story, Aurora, the smallest reindeer in his herd, wishes he were bigger. So his mom encourages him by revealing that his great-grandfather Halfdan was such a fine reindeer that Santa picked him to join his Christmas team. Aurora gains confidence — and, when danger looms, he believes in himself enough to lead his herd to safety.
Dan Engler writes from Santa Barbara, California.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Dan Engler ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Rapturists Have No Cross to Bear DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:RAPTURE: THE END-TIMES ERROR THAT LEAVES THE BIBLE BEHIND
by David B. Currie
Sophia Press, 2003
512 pages, $19.95
To order: (800) 888-9344 www.sophiainstitute.com
Former Protestant pastor David Currie is well qualified to critique “the rapture” and take a hard look at fundamentalist beliefs about the end of the world. Currie's parents both taught at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, one of the oldest and most influential fundamentalist schools in North America and a bastion of the most popular form of rapture theology: premillennial dispensationalism.
Since entering the Catholic Church with his family in 1995, Currie has spoken and written regularly about the dangers of the “left behind” movement, including a chapter on the topic in his bestselling Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic (Ignatius, 1996).
More than a critique of faulty end-times beliefs, Rapture is a detailed excursion through the difficult and controversial passages of the Bible used by certain Protestants to produce belief systems that are not only quite modern but also incompatible with Catholic teaching. Those beliefs are also, Currie emphasizes, quite unbiblical.
To that end, his book dives into the deep waters of Daniel, Revelation, the Olivet Discourse and passages from the writings of St. Paul.
“I want primarily to examine the Bible's teachings regarding the last things,” Currie writes.
“I have written specifically for the lay reader acquainted with the Bible and its overall message, whether Catholic or Protestant. My goal is to help the average interested Christian understand the issues [regarding the end times] as presented in Scripture and make a reasonable, informed decision.”
Rapture opens with several anecdotes, some drawn from Currie's experiences as a child, and then provides a history of rapture theories and the arguments made by their proponents. Then a number of “biblical ground rules” are provided, all of them acceptable to “Bible alone” Christians.
Currie also points out that, while he will always stay within the doctrinal parameters of the Catholic Church, readers should be “mindful that there can be a multitude of valid Catholic opinions about most passages.”
The heart of the book, nearly half of its total length, is spent examining the scriptural evidence — or lack of it — for belief in a rapture event and other distinctive fundamentalist beliefs as well as providing compelling interpretations compatible with Church teaching.
One of the best chapters, “Why the Rapture is Appealing,” offers a number of valuable insights. Currie notes that “the belief system of rapturists allows them to take a certain comfort in the face of evil.
For when things really deteriorate into chaos, they expect to be safely tucked away in Heaven.
There is a problem with this approach to life, however.
It may comfort the person witnessing suffering, but it does absolutely nothing positive for the person experiencing the suffering. This theology is appealing only as long as the pain is someone else's.”
He summarizes this criticism with the strong but warranted assertion: “Quite simply, the rapturist system contains no cross.”
He also points out that rapturists largely (if not completely) ignore the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., an event so significant that to ignore it is to guarantee incorrect interpretations of vital Scripture passages:
“These rapturists refuse to even consider the events of 70 A.D. as a key to understanding any prophecies of the Bible because the events themselves are not enumerated in Scripture. It is almost as though these events did not even occur. Therefore, they are left grasping for a still-future fulfillment.”
This exhaustive work does have some minor flaws. The section on the history of rapture theories is uneven; more information about Joachim of Fiore, Edward Irving and Cyrus I.
‘This theology is appealing. The pain is someone else's.’
Scofield would have helped readers. Hal Lindsey's mega-selling The Late Great Planet Earth is described as a novel; it is not.
But these minor gaffes are made up for in the breadth and depth of Currie's analysis of Sacred Scripture, along with his keen insight into the rapturist worldview and — importantly — his consistently charitable tone, the mark of a scholar and of a Christian.
Carl Olson is editor of Envoy magazine and author of Will Catholics Be “Left Behind”?
----- EXCERPT: Weekly Book Pick ----- EXTENDED BODY: Carl E. Olson ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Campus Watch DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:Censored?
CHRONICLE.COM, Nov. 26 — Officials at Boston College are seeking to revise an office-lease agreement with one of the school's three student-run newspapers, effectively giving the administration more power over the paper's business and editorial operations.
The college proposed banning cigarette and alcohol ads as well as creating an advisory board for the paper that would have at least one administrator on it, the Web site of The Chronicle of Higher Education reported.
Editors of The Heights rejected most of the proposals, citing free-speech violations they say would compromise the paper's independence.
One lease-agreement restriction in place since 1978 will remain in place: the ban on ads advocating abortion.
Record Numbers
More than 15,000 applicants sought to be part of this year's freshman class at the university's Queens, Manhattan and Staten Island campuses, according to school spokesman Jody Fisher. The number represents a 25% increase from last year.
While the number of applications has increased, the size of freshman classes has not, Fisher said, meaning increased competitiveness in the application process.
Sidelined
The college cited the team's 1-11 record this season as reason for Allen's firing, but some speculated it was the 47-year-old coach's rare multiple chemical sensitivity disorder that caused the decision. The disorder has confined Allen to a wheelchair, from which he coached most of this season.
Dick Regan, Holy Cross' athletic director, said he received 10 to 15 calls and e-mails complimenting him on the decision and none opposed to it.
Parliamentarian
Clement Chiwaya came to America in 1998 with $500 in his pocket and a desire for a college education. The Grand Rapids Diocese helped him enroll at Aquinas College and set up a diocesan fund to help him pay for improvements in his home country.
The 32-year-old, whose wife recently gave birth to a daughter, does all his work from a wheelchair, the result of suffering from polio as a child.
New Leader
Father E. William Beauchamp, who had been at the university since August 2002, will be the school's 19th president. Before coming to Portland, he held administrative posts for the past 20 years at the University of Notre Dame, the newspaper reported.
Father Beauchamp succeeds Father David Tyson, who left in August to become provincial superior of the Indiana province of the Holy Cross congregation.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Family Matters DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:Glad Tidings at Home
Q
With stores and advertisements pushing Christmas as early as October — and with so much to do to get ready — it's hard not to feel tired of the big day before it even gets here. How can our family stay focused on the religious aspects of Advent in the midst of a maelstrom in which we are, in many ways, caught up ourselves?
A
Caroline: My appreciation for Advent deepened after a conversation with a Protestant friend who was bothered that her church set up an elaborate, completed Nativity scene on the day after Halloween. It didn't seem right to her. I sensed an opportunity for evangelization:
“In our church, we set aside the four weeks before Christmas as a time of special preparation for the coming of Jesus,” I explained. “We wait to put the baby Jesus in the manger until Christmas Eve.” (I didn't mention it, but some years we also put the Three Kings across the room and let them travel a bit closer to the manger each day until Epiphany, when they finally arrive.)
She seemed genuinely excited by my explanation of the symbols of the season — the Advent wreath, Jesse tree and so on. Emboldened by her receptivity, I even took a shot at explaining the Immaculate Conception. Then came the hesitation. She was wary of anything that might distract attention from Jesus. I told her these things lead us to Jesus, but she wasn't convinced. An analogy came to me: “All the symbols and colors are like the symbolism and imagery in a great novel. A good plot can exist without them, but what a richness they add to our understanding.”
“As for celebrating the Immaculate Conception,” I added, “it just makes sense. As the birth of a new baby draws near, we always focus on the mother. It's the same in our Church family.”
I'm certain the conversation left her with a deeper understanding of our Church. She might even have felt a little admiration.
Tom: We have a treasure in our Advent traditions. One of the gems of the season is that it naturally develops the virtue of “waiting in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior,” as we pray at Mass. Children (and big people, too!) need to learn how to patiently wait. Here are some suggestions to let that lesson sink in.
Put up an Advent wreath. It doesn't have to be elaborate. Greenery on a plate with four candles works well. Let the kids take turns lighting the candles each day, and summon up a little courage to belt out a verse of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” or ‘“The King of Glory.”
Hold off on Christmas decorations. Nativity sets and Advent calendars are wonderful, especially for children. We put up greenery and wreaths early, but they're adorned with purple, not red, bows. We'll switch to red on Christmas Eve.
If you haven't been able to get family prayer going regularly, now is the time. Focus on how you can prepare your hearts for the baby Jesus. Tell your children Advent marks the beginning of the new Church year, so they don't have to wait until Jan. 1 to turn over a new leaf.
Finally, ask God to let a true love for Jesus be born in the heart of every child in your home.
Tom and Caroline McDonald are family-life directors for the Archdiocese of Mobile, Alabama.
Reach Family Matters at familymatters@ncregister.com
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Tom and Caroline Mcdonald ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: HEAVEN IN OUR HEARTS DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:Facts of Life
Barna Research, a California-based marketing research company, recently conducted a nationwide poll about belief in life after death, heaven and hell, and who might end up where. All told, 81% of Americans firmly believe in some type of life after death, with 9% considering it a possibility and only 10% believing that death brings utter finality.
(Register illustration by Tim Rauch)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: The Register's Clip-Out, Photocopy and Pass-On Guides for Advent DATE: 12/14/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 14-20, 2003 ----- BODY:Quick Tip God likes to converse with you the way you like to converse with others: He doesn't want you to rattle on and hardly notice him.
Quick Tip Prayer is made of ACTS.
A-Adoration,
C-Contrition (sorrow for sins),
T-Thanksgiving,
S-Supplication (your requests of God).
Reason 1 If you had the chance to talk to Blessed Mother Teresa, wouldn't you? Christ is infinitely greater, and you have the chance every day.
Reason 2 Don't you talk frequently and for significant amounts of time to those you love?
Quick Tip Kneel when you pray, or sit respectfully. Your body and soul are one. The way you carry your body is important.
Reason 3 As a baptized person, you are the representative of Christ's love at home, at work and in social situations. You will only represent him well if you've prayed.
Reason 4 Prayer will transform your day and make it fruitful and fulfilling.
Reason 5 Only God can make you truly happy. Not your spouse, not your body, not your intellect. Know him.
Reason 6 Do you want to go to heaven? Then get ready with habitual prayer.
Quick Tip Start by remembering God is present and telling him in your own words why you believe in him, hope in him and love him.
Quick Tip If you get “stuck,” you can slowly repeat the words of a simple prayer like: “My God, I adore your divine greatness from the depths of my littleness.”
Reason 7 Read Luke 10:38-42: Jesus says there is “only one thing necessary.”
Reason 8 Mental prayer is the only thing that will soften your heart besides suffering.
Quick Tip Read a brief passage from the Gospels, and picture it happening. You can even imagine Christ sitting with you.
Reason 9 Christ doesn't want you to pray because you have to. He wants you to pray because he loves you and likes talking to you.
Reason 10 Faithful prayer can give you in a moment what otherwise takes years of experience to gain.
Content: Father Lorenzo Gomez, LC (legionofchrist.org), April Hoopes (regnumchristi.org), Father C. John McCloskey (cicdc.org). Art: Tim Rauch. Photos: AFP.
The Rosary
Pope John Paul II has asked Catholics to say daily rosaries.
The Basic Rosary
1. Holding the crucifix, make the sign of the cross.
2. Holding the fifth bead up from the crucifix, announce the first mystery, then say the Our Father. Say 10 Hail Marys, one on each bead, while meditating on the mystery. End with: Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning, is now and will be forever. Amen.
3. Continue with the second, third, fourth and fifth mysteries in the same way.
4. Say the Hail Holy Queen.
5. End with the sign of the cross.
Joyful Mysteries (Monday, Saturday)
1. The Annunciation (see Luke 1:26-38)
2. The Visitation (Luke 1:39-56)
3. The Nativity (Luke 2:1-20)
4. The Presentation in the Temple (Luke 2:22-38)
5. The Finding of Jesus in the Temple (Luke 3:41-52)
Luminous Mysteries (Thursday)
1. Baptism of Christ in the Jordan (see Matthew 3:13-17)
2. Wedding Feast at Cana (John 2:1-12)
3. Proclamation of the Kingdom (Mark :15, 2:3-13)
4. The Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-8)
5. Institution of the Eucharist (Matthew 26:26-32)
Sorrowful Mysteries (Tuesday, Friday)
1. Agony in the Garden (see Luke 22:39-46)
2. Scourging at the Pillar (Mark 15:6-15)
3. Crowning with Thorns (John 19:1-8)
4. Carrying of the Cross (John 19:16-22)
5. The Crucifixion (John 19: 25-30)
Glorious Mysteries (Wednesday, Sunday)
1. The Resurrection (see Matthew 28:1-10)
2. The Ascension (Acts 1:6-11)
3. Descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles and Mary (Acts 2:1-13)
4. Assumption of Mary into Heaven (Revelation 12:1-3, 13-18)
5. Coronation of Mary (Revelation 12:1-5)
Order our full-color Guide to the Rosary: (800)356-9916 x 3809
----- EXCERPT: How (and Why) To Pray ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Prelude to St. Louis: Archbishop Burke and Catholic Politicians DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:LA CROSSE, Wis. — St. Louis is learning what they can expect from Archbishop-designate Raymond Burke.
Last November, the U.S. bishops decided to address the thorny issue of Catholic politicians who oppose Church teaching on key issues such as abortion — after the elections.
But Archbishop-designate Burke isn't waiting.
He has recently come under fire because of letters he wrote to Catholic politicians in his home state of Wisconsin. The politicians involved have been voting for what Bishop Burke calls “anti-life” legislation.
One letter admonished state Sen. Julie Lassa, D-Stevens Point, one of the most Catholic areas of the Diocese of La Crosse, which Bishop Burke has headed for nine years.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on the existence of the letters in early December, only a couple of days after the Vatican announced the bishop's appointment to St. Louis. Bishop Burke made it clear in a press conference in La Crosse on Dec. 5 that he wrote to Lassa in confidence and had no intention of making the letters public.
The correspondence was written in August and early November, well before he knew he was being transferred to St. Louis. The newspaper obtained the Lassa letter under the state's open-records law.
Two other politicians received letters, according to the Journal Sentinel, a fact diocesan officials have confirmed, though the identities of the other recipients have not been revealed. It is strongly believed Democratic U.S. Rep. David Obey, a Catholic, is one of them. Obey's office did not return calls from the Register.
But the bishop's purpose wasn't only to admonish. He also appealed for a private dialogue based on documents from the Vatican and the U.S. bishops about politicians. It was an appeal the recipients seem to have ignored.
Lassa told the Journal Sentinel she never responded to Bishop Burke's invitation to set up a meeting to discuss “Living the Gospel of Life,” the 1998 letter of the U.S. bishops, which he included in his mailing to her.
“Living the Gospel of Life” recommends that bishops exhort political leaders to respect and protect innocent human life. It also points out that lawmakers who support abortion share in the responsibility of taking human life.
Bishop Burke finally told Lassa, and perhaps the other two politicians, “Therefore, by my authority as the bishop of the Diocese of La Crosse, I must call upon you in the public forum to cease calling yourself a faithful Catholic, and further, to appeal to your conscience to abstain from receiving the sacrament of the Eucharist until you have reconciled your political activity to the magisterial teaching of the Church with regard to the legal protection of innocent life.”
He also cautioned her about the possibility of giving scandal, leading others into sin by her example.
‘Very Serious’
Lassa's response?
“I'm concerned that the bishop would pressure legislators to vote according to the dictates of the Church instead of the wishes of their constituents because that is not consistent with our democratic ideals,” she told the Journal Sentinel.
But Mark Gundrum, a Republican member of the Wisconsin Assembly, did not view the bishop's actions as lobbying.
“These were private letters sent to human persons,” he told the Register. “This is a shepherd who is concerned for the spiritual well-being of a lost sheep.”
When asked if he would have taken further steps, Bishop Burke replied, “I would have instructed them not to receive Communion and then I would have instructed their pastors to tell them that these people are not to be given holy Communion. I consider it very serious.”
Archbishop-elect Burke could be facing a similar situation in St. Louis, the archdiocese headed by Cardinal Justin Rigali until he was appointed to Philadelphia earlier this year. Archbishop-elect Burke, a 55-year-old Wisconsin native and a canon lawyer, will be installed in St. Louis on Jan. 26.
“There are some high-profile Catholic politicians who are ‘liberal,’” said Helen Hull Hitchcock, a prominent St. Louis Catholic who founded the organization Women for Faith and Family. “But it's clear that [Archbishop-elect Burke] will not flinch from his duties as a teacher of the Catholic faith.”
There will be other issues Archbishop-elect Burke as the ordinary of a rural diocese has never faced, ones he will have to take on in a major metropolitan see. Racism, urban poverty, homeless-ness, Catholic health care networks, a major seminary and Catholic universities are all issues that dominate the scene in St. Louis. The archbishop-elect admitted in a press conference in La Crosse, “I have a steep learning curve.”
Archbishop-elect Burke began his education on the day his appointment was announced. He spent an hour and a half at St. Patrick Center in St. Louis, a place that deals with homelessness and poverty on a large scale.
“I certainly want to be very supportive of that. What they’re doing, from what I saw, is very extensive,” the archbishop-elect said. “But underlying those needs is the gravity of the homeless problem.”
That will be good news for Dan Buck, Gwen Crimm and Leoda Gooch. Buck, who directs the St. Patrick Center, was unable to be present for the archbishop-elect's visit. But, he said, “I can't tell you what his visit did for our staff. They were rejuvenated.
“He is taking over at an opportune time,” Buck said. With the homeless population going up and parish consolidations taking place all around the city, Buck is hoping the new leader will look at using the empty parish space to serve the needs of the poor.
Crimm, the archdiocesan program director for race relations and ethnic concerns, and Gooch, the director of the archdiocesan Human Rights Office, are both hoping their new leader will take on racism in a city that has had its share of racial trouble.
One of the archbishop-elect's predecessors, Cardinal Joseph Ritter, set an example they hope the new archbishop will follow. When Cardinal Ritter was made archbishop, “he didn't wait,” Gooch said. “He immediately said there was to be no segregation in Catholic schools.”
Indeed, Archbishop-elect Burke said there “continues to be a racial tension” that he is “going to have to certainly address.”
Active Tenure
The press is just starting to pick up on the impact Archbishop-elect Burke had in La Crosse, where his accomplishments were many: revitalizing Catholic Charities, beginning the building of a major shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe, getting Catholic schools on a better financial footing and increasing teacher pay through school consolidations, leading annual pilgrimages, promoting devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and having Mass for diverse ethnic and immigrant groups.
He also withdrew diocesan participation from CROP Walk, the ecumenical fund drive for Third World poor, since the event's sponsor sends contraceptives to developing countries; and from an AIDS Walk, since some of the recipients of the money actively promote a homosexual lifestyle.
When the archbishop-elect was asked at a press conference to react to the fact that people think he's a conservative bishop because of all these things he's done, he retorted, “I'm a Catholic bishop.”
Of the urban issues, the archbishop-elect understands the difficulties he faces.
“There is no question about it — I have a lot to learn,” he said. “It's radically different from the Diocese of La Crosse in those respects.”
But, he said, he believes a lot of urban difficulties are not necessarily that different from rural issues, since they stem from problems in the most basic unit of society: the family.
Thomas A. Szyszkiewicz writes from Altura, Minnesota.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Thomas A. Szyszkiewicz ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Peace in Bethlehem? DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:BETHLEHEM, West Bank — “Peace on earth” is far from the reality this Christmas in the town of Christ's birth.
The violence and mistrust between Israelis and Palestinians that has marked the recent history of the Holy Land have formed daily life in Bethlehem, placing strains on the simplest activities such as trade, travel and education.
Yet for the past 30 years a university sponsored by the Vatican and run by the De La Salle Christian Brothers in Bethlehem has been a witness to hope and the possibility of interfaith cooperation.
Located a half-mile from the traditional site of Christ's birth at the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem University enrolls more than 2,000 Palestinian students, both Christians and Muslims, and serves as one of the few vehicles for advancement in an area of few opportunities.
About 67% of the students are Muslim, a fact that reflects the dwindling number of Christians in the Holy Land. Most of the other university students are either Orthodox Christians or Eastern Catholics. The school confers degrees that are recognized throughout the Arab nations and in the United States.
A dozen brothers staff the university, with Brother Vincent Malham as president. The Catholic identity of the school also is evidenced by the daily Mass celebrated on campus and by the courses in religion and theology.
For the people of Bethlehem, Christmas is a time of contrasts, as even the popular carol about the town suggests. Outsiders think of the still and silent streets of the song, while residents tend to focus on the “hopes and fears of all the years” that compose their daily lives.
“Nowadays, if you ask people in Bethlehem how they feel during the Christmas season, they will tell you that the message of peace is not reverberating in the hills over here anymore and that they are excluded from the good will among nations,” said George Sahhar, a spokesman for the university. “They wonder when it will all end so that they will feel the freedom, joy and promise of Christmas.”
“The most important thing that lets us be patient in this bad situation that we live in is that this is the place where Jesus was born,” said Jane Abu Mohor, a Christian 19-year-old accounting student. “For sure, he will implement justice and peace that we all dream of in this city and this country.”
Security Concerns
Bethlehem is officially a Palestinian town, with a Catholic Palestinian mayor who serves on the board of the university, but Israeli soldiers man checkpoints around the town, effectively controlling who enters and leaves.
“It is difficult for the people, because their movements are controlled so closely and it can take very long to get in and out of Bethlehem,” said De La Salle Brother Jerome Sullivan, who recently returned to the United States after serving for six years as vice president for development at the university. “We have to close the school sporadically because of curfews or travel restrictions.”
Bethlehem University has never finished a school year on schedule, he said, and it was forced to close its doors for three years in the 1980s during intense hostilities. Late last month, the town's mayor, Hanna Nasser, issued “An Appeal from Bethlehem,” in which he condemned the Israeli government's plan to seize 44 parcels of land in the town and build a wall “under the pretext of military purposes.”
“As tourism constitutes 65% of our citizens’ revenue, the construction of this wall will … choke our town and deliver a fatal blow to its economy,” he wrote.
In a recent statement, Pope John Paul II urged the Israelis not to construct a proposed security barrier along hundreds of miles in the area, stating that the Holy Land needs to build bridges between the peoples instead.
The Israeli government says a barrier needed to defend its citizens from terrorist plots and suicide bombers.
In April 2002 Bethlehem was the epicenter of Holy Land hostilities when armed Palestinians took refuge from Israeli soldiers in the sanctuary of the Church of the Nativity. The standoff lasted more than a month, with Franciscans who staff the church marking the place of Christ's birth involved in the negotiations by which the Palestinians left the sanctuary.
Israeli soldiers scaled the walls and occupied the university for the first few days of the siege, Brother Sullivan said.
“The brothers were under house arrest, and of course the university was closed down,” he recalled. “The university is on the highest hill in Bethlehem, so they used the campus as a base of operation, and soldiers would come off duty and sleep in the hallways. The whole town was under curfew imposed by the soldiers. No one could leave their homes. Every few days they would declare that people could go out and shop and do whatever they had to do for a few hours.”
Recalling the “nightmare” of the incident, Liviana Al Teet said she was in high school at the time, studying for exams to get into the university.
“We did not go to school for 40 days,” said Al Teet, a 19-year-old Christian marketing student. “It was really hard to study at that time and to see the holy place where Jesus Christ was born under fire.”
Respite
The university's 30th anniversary celebrations in October provided a respite for faculty, staff and students. Anniversary events included an academic convocation in which Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah of Jerusalem, who was the university's first president, was awarded an honorary degree. A campuswide celebration also was held with music, sporting events, games and a picnic for staff, students and alumni.
“It was a wonderful day, full of joy and happiness,” Abu Mohor said.
“It was a really great break, and we had a lot of fun, because you know we are besieged from everywhere and we cannot go to Jerusalem without permission,” Al Teet said.
“We have good relations between Muslims and Christians because all of us are brothers and sisters from the same country and in the same university,” Abu Mohor said. “It is a relationship of respect no matter what the religion of the person.”
Both students plan to work in the area after graduation, though Al Teet hopes to pursue advanced studies in the United States first.
The university officially does not take sides in the area's conflicts, but the sentiment among the brothers and faculty members strongly favors the Palestinians, Brother Sullivan said.
Pope Paul VI requested the formation of a university at the site of a former Christian Brothers high school specifically to address the needs of young Palestinians of any faith, he noted.
Patriarch Sabbah, who was born in Nazareth, also expresses solidarity with Palestinians in his public addresses while calling for peaceful means to resolve differences. In a communication last Christmas, he asked “that the message of the angels given to humankind from our land will be also a message to us and transform us into peacemakers.”
Brother Neil Kieffe, who teaches information technology at the university, called the survival of the university during the past 30 years “a miracle.”
“The same God that has brought the university through its first 30 years and tremendous difficulties and hardships will not abandon it now,” he said. “The need to develop Palestinian leadership is greater than ever with the possibility of there being a Palestinian state in a few years’ time.”
Stephen Vincent is based in Wallingford, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: Vatican-Sponsored University Home to Christians and Muslims ----- EXTENDED BODY: Stephen Vincent ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Rome and Canterbury: Unity's New Pitfall DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:SEATTLE — A historic joint statement by leading Roman Catholic and Anglican theologians on the doctrine of the Virgin Mary is scheduled for announcement in February in Seattle. It is the latest agreement in a little-noticed but promising ecumenical process, the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission.
Until recent days, it was thought that once the theologians completed their work under the commission, the ecumenical process would go to a higher plane by means of an International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity and Mission. Through that commission, the Vatican and Anglican officials would meet to formalize the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission agreements as joint official doctrine.
But then today's culture war got in the way.
Movement toward theological union quietly picked up speed in recent years as new accords displayed common purpose between the Vatican and the 77 million-member Anglican Communion, of which the 2.2 million strong Episcopal Church in America is a part. Agreements largely resolved such previously divisive issues as salvation by faith, the meaning of the Eucharist and the lead teaching authority of the Pope.
The theologians’ progress potentially would affect not only the Anglican Communion — sometimes called a “bridge church” — and the billion-member Catholic Church but also some Protestant denominations. But the ordination in November of the Rev. V. Gene Robinson, an Episcopal priest openly living in a homosexual relationship, as Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire and preparation of a liturgy for same-sex unions convinced the Vatican to suspend the long-term theology dialogue.
The Russian Orthodox Church already has replied to the Robinson ordination by severing ecumenical ties to the U.S. branch of Anglicanism.
According to Catholic and Episcopal sources who spoke confidentially, Vatican officials debated for weeks how they should respond to what they regard as a violation of a Christian moral position on sexuality that is grounded in Scripture, Church Tradition and natural law and that, furthermore, was the subject of aposition the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission adopted 10 years ago.
Called “Life in Christ,” that agreement holds that the physical expression of sexuality finds its only proper fulfillment “in the covenanted relationship between a husband and wife.”
In 1998 the Lambeth Conference, a global conclave of Anglican bishops held in London's Lambeth Palace every 10 years, voted overwhelmingly to reaffirm traditional Christian doctrine on sexuality. That stance was emphasized yet again in October at an emergency gathering of international Anglican leaders called specifically to address the crisis regarding the Robinson ordination and a related issue in British Columbia.
Catholics believed these declarations and the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission endorsement of the teaching authority of the pope in matters of faith and morals meant the Anglicans could be relied upon to adhere to a consistent policy.
But, as an English cleric close to Canterbury said privately, the Catholics might not have realized how disorganized the Anglican Communion has become on theological matters. Some of its leaders pay little attention to the church's body of precedent even when they lend their names to its affirmation. And there is no authority to exert discipline.
Thus, no sooner had the October statement been issued than one of its signers, Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold III, who also happened to be co-chairman of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, returned to the United States to ordain Robinson.
At last, the Vatican advised the Anglicans that long-term ecumenical plans must be suspended and that unless Griswold stepped down from his ecumenical post, the Catholics would cancel even their participation in the upcoming International Commission announcement in Seattle. After a painful meeting at the end of November in Rome, Griswold stepped down.
The sexuality issue is only the most prominent instance of theological heterodoxy now afflicting the United States and certain other Western provinces of the Anglican Communion. For years there has been reluctance to discipline bishops who dispute such fundamental Christian tenets as the incarnation of Christ and his resurrection.
Anglican author Os Guinness commented, “The revisionist leaders of the Episcopal Church [exhibit] … infidelity to their own beliefs and teaching.”
Anglican bishops from the “global south” (Africa, Asia and Latin America), where most Anglicans now are found, are of similar opinion. They urged the archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, the titular head of Anglicanism, to find an orthodox replacement to co-chair the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission's February meeting alongside Roman Catholic Archbishop Alexander Brunett of Seattle.
They might not be entirely pleased with that replacement, Archbishop Peter Carnley, primate of the Anglican Church of Australia, who was announced Dec. 9.
Archbishop Carnley has taken a liberal stand on many issues. In 2002, for example, he voiced support for allowing embryonic stem cell research in Australia, saying that since he saw no ethical problem in using “unwanted” in-vitro-generated embryos in frozen storage for research purposes, he saw no problem in creating new ones for research.
On other points Archbishop Williams seems to be letting matters take their own course.
According to a London source familiar with attitudes at Lambeth, Williams realizes Anglican ecumenical relations have been “incinerated.” Yet his main response to the Robinson crisis has been to appoint a commission to study the matter for a year. Unwilling to wait for yet another study, many national provinces of the communion have broken relations with the Episcopal Church in the United States.
Oddly enough, orthodox U.S. Episcopalians have found more sympathy in Rome than in Canterbury. When the orthodox American Anglican Council held a 2,700-person national conference in Plano, Texas, on the church's future this fall, Anglican Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh brought the crowd to its feet when he read a letter of greeting on behalf of Pope John Paul II from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Long ago, such a letter might have been seen as outside interference. At the American Anglican Council conference, it was received as an enormous consolation and encouragement.
In recent weeks, at least one Episcopal diocese (thus far unnamed) has contemplated coming into full communion with Rome.
That's according to a newspaper interview with Archbishop Brunett. A spokesman later called the report exaggerated.
There already are several Anglican-rite parishes operating under Catholic administration in Texas and Massachusetts. Such churches retain the flavor of the Anglican liturgy and the Book of Common Prayer. Certainly the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission process, which began in 1966, has made the theological basis for such reunions more visible, if not inevitable.
There also is a rising sense of urgency to move beyond old theological differences and hasten the day of unity.
Bruce Chapman, president of Discovery Institute, writes from Seattle.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Bruce Chapman ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Catholic Fans Assess Return of The Rings DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:LOS ANGELES — The Return of the King, like its predecessor The Two Towers, opens with a flashback.
The halflings Deagol and Smeagol are fishing when Deagol's line hooks a fish, pulling him into the water. There, upon the river bottom, he finds the evil ring of power. In a fit of jealous rage, Smeagol strangles Deagol, thus beginning his ownership of the ring that eventually drives him mad and transforms him into the pitiable Gollum.
In The Return of the King, hobbits Frodo and Sam continue their quest to destroy the ring, unknowingly being led by Gollum to Mount Doom through the lair of Shelob the spider.
A precious few have already seen the film. Nick Thomm, executive producer of the radio show “Kresta in the Afternoon,” is among them. Thomm joined a press junket for the film in Los Angeles in early December. He described it as the best film in the series.
“Return of the King is the exclamation point on the trilogy,” Thomm said. “While the films work set apart from the books, [director] Peter Jackson got across the themes in the books.”
Not everyone has been pleased with the film, however.
Act One's Barbara Nicolosi described the film as “the pick of the dripping, over-produced, dark and confusing lot” and as a “spectacle [that] only serves itself.
“This film is the most self-indulgent of the three,” Nicolosi said. “The film ends at least seven times, each one bringing tear-filled eyes and the loving gripping of shoulders.”
Nicolosi did, however, credit the film with being the most suspense-ful and for having “some semblance of story.”
The $300 million epic has already made $650 million on the first two films alone. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops listed the second part of the trilogy among one of its best films of 2002. Critics believe the third film will be a serious Oscar contender.
The third film, like the others, does deviate from J.R.R. Tolkien's books at times.
Newsweek noted that the film leaves out crucial footage, such as the relationship between Eowyn and Faramir, Gandalf's final confrontation with Saruman and the scouring of the shire.
“When the ring is destroyed there is a departure from the book,” Thomm said, “but it sticks to Tolkien's intention.”
Tolkien purists had similar reactions to the first two films in the series.
“I was greatly relieved and pleased with the first film,” said Joseph Pearce, Tolkien biographer and writer-in-residence at Ave Maria College in Ypsilanti, Mich. “The second film disappointed me a bit because it drifted from Tolkien's plot for no good reason.”
Fans of the films have found the extended-version DVDs more faithful to the books than the original theatrical versions.
The extra footage, said Victoria Newman, a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at St. Louis University, provides the “fun but inessential bits of narrative that inveterate Tolkien fans noticed were missing in the original cut, like when Sam can unexpectedly free his elvin rope with only a gentle tug after he and Frodo use it to climb down a cliff face in The Two Towers.” Other times, she said, the footage adds a line that fills in a gap.
Additional scenes she found true to the spirit of Tolkien. As an example, she pointed out the scene in The Two Towers where Hobbits Merry and Pippin grow taller from drinking water in the Fangorn Forest.
“We’re told in the novel that they do gain inches,” she said, “but the particular vignette in which it happens comes from the imagination of the [script] writers.”
Vehicle for Conversion
The director, Jackson, has admitted he was simply interested in making a movie and had no interest in Tolkien's Catholicism. Still, the film's fans have said Catholic elements did make it into the film.
Thomm said he could see Tolkien's Catholic worldview expressed particularly in the film's climax and the destruction of the ring.
“Frodo's interior struggle and selfishness spoke of our own human frailty and how we are all unworthy,” Thomm said. “Frodo is tempted and succumbs to it, whereas in Sam we see the reliance of the grace of God.”
Thomm also saw Tolkien's worldview expressed in the father-son relationships in the film.
“Gandalf is plainly the father-figure to the fellowship, and then there's Denethor's heartbreaking relationship to his sons Boromir and Faramir,” he said. “When Denethor sends off Faramir to almost certain death, the son follows the will of his father.”
The story still continues to draw people to the Church. Although neither the books nor the films mention God, many fans have spoken of their power for conversion.
“Even if the films were worse than they are, the bottom line is that anything that gets people to read the books is beneficial,” Joseph Pearce said. “Thousands of people that had never read them before are reading them. In that respect, thanks be to God for Peter Jackson.”
Among those who are grateful for the films is Emily Kinsman of Zionsville, N.C.
Kinsman's mother read The Hobbit to her when she was a young girl, but Kinsman had never read the trilogy until after she had seen The Fellowship of the Ring on the big screen.
“I never knew what I was missing all those years,” Kinsman said.
Since first seeing The Fellowship of the Ring in December 2001, Kinsman has read the trilogy twice.
She said the influence of the books and Tolkien's Catholic faith impacted her decision to become Catholic.
When she first saw The Fellowship of the Ring, Kinsman was attending an evangelical Protestant church.
“Within that church, whenever someone found out I enjoyed Tolkien, they would shoot disapproving glances at me and ask me if I was sure those books and films were appropriate for a Christian to watch,” Kinsman said.
When Kinsman told them she wrote in the fantasy genre, she said their disapproval only grew.
“This response angered me,” she said. “I felt that God had called me to write fantasy novels, but my church was condemning me for doing so. When I realized that Tolkien was largely an accepted and celebrated Catholic, the transition happened quickly.”
Kinsman is currently attending the Church's Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults classes and plans to join the Church in the spring.
Others say the books and films have renewed their faith.
“The books rekindled my Catholic faith at that time in my life when I had drifted the farthest,” said John Hoerig of Green Bay, Wis.
“From Tolkien's Galadriel and the reaction of other characters to her, I came to understand how love and devotion to the Blessed Mother manifests itself in a soul,” Hoerig added. “From Sam's humble and faithful service to his master Frodo, I discovered the dignity of obedience and submission to hierarchy.”
“When all is said and done, the films are remarkably well executed in both their original and extended versions. When you consider how many bedtimes it takes to read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy to your children, it's unbelievable that the film writers are trying to tell the whole story in just nine theater-released hours,” Newman said. “It's even more impressive how faithful to Tolkien's novels the first two films have been.”
Fans wonder if this is the last they’ll see of the hobbits on the big screen. Director Jackson said that if complex rights issues can be resolved, he might bring back the characters of Bilbo, Gollum, Gandalf and perhaps even Arwen for a film version of The Hobbit, Tolkien's prequel to the trilogy.
“I’d be interested in doing it,” Jackson said, “because I think it would give continuity to the overall chapter.”
Tim Drake writes from St. Cloud, Minnesota.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Tim Drake ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: How The Passion Changed Him DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:Jim Caviezel was already a devout Catholic when he got the role of Christ in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.
But after acting out Christ's harrowing death in the movie (related story, page 5), scheduled to be released Ash Wednesday, he says his faith is stronger still. The actor's career includes a breakout performance in The Thin Red Line, a role opposite Jennifer Lopez in Angel Eyes and the starring part in The Count of Monte Cristo. Register staff writer Tim Drake interviewed him on the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
How did you get the part of Christ?
It all started when I got a phone call from my agent saying that Steve McEveety, Mel Gibson's partner, wanted to meet with me on a film called Mavericks. What I later found from Steve and Mel was that was just a front to see what I was really like. So we met at some picnic table up in Malibu, and we started talking.
It went on for about three and a half hours, and Mel finally brings up this story about what he's been thinking about for many years.
He asked, “You know how Jesus really died?” And it hit me and I just said, “You want me to play Jesus, don't you?”
He stopped and looked at me and said, “Yeah.”
The next day he called me and said, “Do you still want to do this movie? If I were you, I wouldn't want to play this role.” It was like he was trying to talk me out of it, because it could be a career killer. And my response was that each one of us has our own cross to carry — we either pick it up and carry it or we get crushed under the weight of it.
Was there anything in particular Gibson had you do to prepare for the part?
Mel and I are just administrators of God's work, and that's all that we continually ask for. And that's why we centered every day on the Mass and receiving the Eucharist. There was not one day that I was on film that I didn't receive Communion. I just try to be the best Catholic. I go back to the truth — what does the Lord want? It always comes down to that — what does the Lord want?
What did you have to go through to make the part work?
This movie was torture right from the beginning in all forms. I was spit on, beaten, and I carried my cross for days, over and over the same road; it was brutal. I had a 2 a.m. call time to get skin and makeup put on for the flagellation and crucifixion scenes, so I was there long before the rest of the cast and crew.
I considered all of it worth it to play this role; it's important to me.
I’ve always made acting follow truth, and Mary has always pointed me toward that truth. I really believe that she was setting me up, getting me ready to play her Son. She architected this whole thing.
People have asked me, “Were you scared about getting this film?” And I say, “Yes, apart of me.” But the other part of me says that I'm absolutely honored that he, through Mary, would pick me to play this role.
How has playing the part of Christ impacted how you pray the rosary?
Before going to the set every day I prepared myself in meditation or through the rosary, always through Mary. I also went to confession, and the Holy Spirit would convict me of my sins. Once I’d done that, the rest was very fundamental; it really was.
The scourging at the pillar, I understand, was a painful scene for you. Literally.
Every day when I came to play, when I started to complain of the pain, that pain gave in to understanding as to what this was like. During the scourging scene, Mel had set it up so there was a board behind my back so the Roman soldiers wouldn't hit me. They were to strike and I could see through a mirror “off-camera” when it was coming.
I had an idea how bad that would hurt, but one of them missed and it hit me, flush, right on the back. It ripped the skin right off my back, but I couldn't scream because the pain knocked the wind out of me. It was so horrendous that my voice got away from me, quicker than I could scream. I fell over and Mel said, “Jim, get back up.” He didn't realize I got hit.
But that mark on my back was the mark that we based all the other scourging marks off of and how it really looked. I wasn't struck again after that, but that incident let me begin to understand what it was like.
What was the experience of the crucifixion scene like?
When I was on the cross, I was in a loincloth in incredibly cold conditions. They stick heaters on both sides of you, but it's useless when the wind just blows past you. I would look out and see a good hundreds of crew members, shaking from the cold, with mittens and scarves and jackets on. And there's nothing you can do because your arms are tied up. So they move the heaters closer, and you start to feel the heat, but when the wind slows down just a little bit it fries your skin off. I remember just calling out to God at one point, “So you don't want this movie to be made?”
One time I was up there for an hour, and because of the wind chill, I had difficulty keeping my core temperature up. It was extremely hard, and I was getting nauseous all the time.
Also, because the makeup was so severe I couldn't see out of my right eye, which caused me to hyper-focus out of the left eye. Because of all the makeup I was wearing, my skin was just ripped to shreds. It was like the healing stages after a sunburn, when you want to itch every single part of your body and you can’t.
As a result of playing this part, I have become even more passionate about the way of the cross. It is about Our Lord's sacrifice for mankind, for our sins, bringing us back to God, and it's love that did this.
Tim Drake writes from St. Cloud, Minnesota.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Tim Drake ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: Marriage in the Balance: Is a Constitutional Amendment the Way to Go? DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:WASHINGTON — The decision last month by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to approve homosexual marriage has spurred rapid Senate action to introduce a constitutional amendment.
It also brought forth many opinions, some of them conflicting, on how best to protect the traditional makeup of marriage.
A week after the Massachusetts court ruled Nov. 18 in Goodridge vs. Dept. of Health that barring same-sex couples from marrying violates the state's constitution, five U.S. senators introduced a bill to amend the federal Constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman.
A similar bill in the House of Representatives, introduced last May, has more than 100 supporters. The fate of both bills will not be determined until Congress reconvenes in the new year.
After the court's decision, which gave Massachusetts lawmakers 180 days to respond, President Bush vowed to “do what is legally necessary to defend the sanctity of marriage,” though he did not specify what steps he would take.
Many advocates of the traditional definition of marriage agree the federal Defense of Marriage Act, passed in 1996, and the marriage-protection bills enacted so far in 37 states are not adequate protections against activist courts that could rule them unconstitutional.
“We need a federal marriage amendment,” said Robert George, a Princeton University professor who serves on President Bush's bioethics board. “Otherwise state and federal courts will likely cooperate to impose same-sex ‘marriage’ on the nation by fiat.”
The definition of marriage could become the hot political issue of the year in local, state and national races. Yet there is some disagreement among conservative opinion-makers as to how the issue should be addressed.
A host of conservative groups and religious leaders, including a committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, have voiced support for a constitutional amendment.
Yet other conservative thinkers, notably syndicated columnist and television commentator George Will, oppose an amendment, stating that the definition and regulation of marriage should be left to the states. For this, Will has drawn the censure of conservatives who are usually on his side.
“This time we disagree,” Princeton's George said. “In my view, a federal constitutional amendment is critically necessary to protect marriage.”
Alliance Building
Other conservatives, such as syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher, who runs a Web site on marriage, think a constitutional amendment defending marriage is so vital that they are building alliances on the issue with liberals who seek approval for same-sex unions that confer the benefits of marriage.
“I cannot back a coalition threatening to hold politicians hostage unless they support a constitutional amendment that would permanently ban [homosexual] civil unions,” Gallagher wrote in The Weekly Standard. “To win any constitutional amendment at all will require far more than mobilizing the conservative base.”
To become part of the Constitution, a proposed amendment must gain a two-thirds majority in Congress and then be approved by three-quarters of the states.
Groups such as the Family Research Council, a nationwide conservative group based in Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops state that marriage in its entirety, not just in name, must be defended from homosexual encroachments.
“The legal recognition of marriage, including the benefits associated with it, is not only about personal commitment but also about the social commitment that husband and wife make to the well-being of society,” the bishops wrote in the Nov. 12 document “Between Man and Woman: Questions and Answers About Marriage and Same-Sex Unions.”
“It would be wrong to redefine marriage for the sake of providing benefits to those who cannot rightfully enter into marriage,” the bishops stated.
The bishops have taken a strong stand throughout, backed by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which recently explained the Church's stand against homosexual unions from a biblical and natural-law perspective.
At a September meeting in Washington, the U.S. bishops’ administrative committee offered “general support for a federal marriage amendment… as we continue to work to protect marriage in state legislatures, the courts, the Congress and other appropriate forums.”
The Massachusetts bishops, in a statement they ordered to be read at Masses on the last weekend in November, called the Goodridge decision “a national tragedy” and endorsed a federal amendment to protect marriage.
“Marriage is a gift of God which in the natural order allows for the growth of the human family and society,” they added. “It is not just one lifestyle choice among others.”
No Compromise
The Family Research Council argues that granting same-sex unions should not be used as a compromise to gain liberal support.
“The legal and financial benefits of marriage are not an entitlement to be distributed equally to all,” the group states on its Web site. “Society grants benefits to marriage because marriage has benefits for society — including, but not limited to, the reproduction of the species in households with the optimal household structure (i.e., the presence of both a mother and a father).”
Winnie Stachelberg, political director of the Human Rights Campaign, which pushes for homosexual marriage nationwide, condemned the move for a constitutional amendment, stating, “Congress should be looking at problems facing our nation, but loving and committed couples who want to marry and raise a family together are not one of them.”
The congressional bills for a constitutional amendment are based on language drafted by the Washington-based Alliance for Marriage, headed by attorney Matt Daniels. Alliance for Marriage is a diverse group that includes the Rev. Walter Fauntroy, a civil-rights leader who organized Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington.
The Alliance for Marriage model is simply worded: “Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.”
Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colo., who introduced the bill in the House, said, “Instead of turning to the legislatures, gay activists are turning to the courts to create new law. My bill will keep unelected judges in check and prevent them from redefining marriage.”
The Senate bill was introduced Nov. 25 by Republican Sen. Wayne Allard, also of Colorado, with Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, a Catholic, among the four co-sponsors.
“This union is sacred,” Allard said, “and must remain so.”
Stephen Vincent is based in Wallingford, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Stephen Vincent ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Media Watch DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:Christ Not Welcome in Connecticut Library
Public Library Director Marcia Trotta admits she had invited local artist Mary Morley to exhibit paintings in the library and said she had no problem with many of Morley's works — even images of Blessed Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II.
“Those are historical figures,” Trotta said. She also would accept the image of Moses receiving the Ten Commandments.
But she rejected the images of the Nativity, of Christ carrying the cross and of the Crucifixion, saying, “Those were the ones that portrayed a particular message.”
Trotta suggested she was protecting library patrons from hurt feelings.
“This is just nonsense,” said Louis Giovino of the Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights. “You’re specifically censoring Christianity here.”
Targeting Abortion Clinics ‘In Utero’
Jim Sedlak, executive director of STOPP International — a group devoted to exposing the racist origins of Planned Parenthood — promised it would.
“I want to learn exactly what [the boycott organizer] did … and try to export that around the country,” he said.
Chris Danze, a Catholic construction contractor who discovered a Planned Parenthood abortion site was going up in his town of Austin, Texas, responded by asking his fellow contractors to boycott the project. He said he would inform local churches — a major source of contracting work — as to which of them had signed on to the boycott.
“They said it was like the equivalent of the stone masons and plumbers in Germany building the gas chambers,” one contractor said.
Within a few weeks, the contractor set to build the clinic backed out.
Federal Judge Supports Freedom for Christians
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, Dec. 8 — Ann Arbor Pioneer High School in Michigan holds an annual “Diversity Week” whose stated purpose is promoting “tolerance,” primarily toward ethnic minorities — but also toward homosexuals.
During the 2002 festivities, the school's Gay-Straight Alliance sponsored a forum with six religious leaders who accept homosexuality and specifically excluded any cleric who espoused the biblical position.
A Catholic student, Elizabeth Hansen, asked the school to allow her to represent Catholic teaching, but her request was refused. She sued and was allowed to give a speech at a separate assembly. She claims the speech was censored.
The school district's attorney argued that the school wanted to promote “student tolerance and acceptance of minority points of view.”
But that wasn’t good enough for U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen. He ruled Dec. 5 that Ann Arbor Public Schools violated Hansen's constitutional rights to free speech and equal protection and ordered the district to pay damages, attorney fees and costs to the Thomas More Law Center, the firm representing Hansen.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: When Does Precaution Become Intrusion? Safety Programs in Dioceses DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:IJAMSVILLE, Md. — For the past six years, Paul Turner has been a lector at the two different parishes he's belonged to in Maryland. But his reading at Mass might stop soon — all because of one sentence on a volunteer form he refuses to sign.
The form, called an “Application for Volunteer Services,” is mandatory for all volunteers within the Archdiocese of Baltimore.
“I waive any right that I may have to inspect any information provided about me in connection with this application,” is the sentence Turner objects to.
“The archdiocese, out of complete and total fear, I believe, is making people say, ‘No, you can’t review what others have said about you,’” Turner said. “It's guilty until proven innocent. All it takes is someone to accuse you, and that's as good as being guilty.”
In contrast, he added, when he was applying for a top security job as an intelligence analyst with the Department of Defense, he had the right to inspect what others had said about him.
“They’re trying to intimidate people who might have the slightest problem not to serve so that in a way it's trying to wash their hands of the problem without really having to look into it,” said Turner, currently a lector at St. Ignatius of Loyola Church in Ijamsville, Md. “Meanwhile, it's going to have the effect of deterring perfectly innocent people while those who are guilty will find a way around it.”
In dioceses across the country, the implementation of guidelines to protect children from sexual abuse as required by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has affected thousands of volunteers, staff and clergy. And some parishioners such as Turner are wondering if some steps being taken are an overreaction.
Ryan O’Doherty, a spokesman for the archdiocese, said he hasn’t heard of many people grumbling about the various requirements that are in place, such as employees having to get a fingerprint check with the Maryland State Police and the Criminal Justice Information Services central repository at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Other requirements that are part of the archdiocese's program to protect children, called Stand, include volunteers having to submit an application for service, agree to a code of conduct, review “A Statement of Policy for the Protection of Children and Youth” and watch a Stand video.
“Obviously, there's grumbling whenever there's a change in policy that makes things more difficult for people to do things,” O’Doherty said. “There's going to be some resistance. I haven’t heard of any widespread discontent.”
Turner said he will continue being a lector until someone tells him not to.
In the Diocese of Paterson, N.J., for those clergy, employees and volunteers who have regular, recurring contact with minors — they number more than 10,000 people — criminal background checks will be required, said Marianna Thompson, the diocesan communications director.
The diocese also requires that all clergy, employees and volunteers with regular, consistent contact with children attend “Protecting God's Children” training sponsored by VIRTUS, a training program created by the National Catholic Risk Retention Group that “makes every adult a preventor/protector,” Thompson said.
“Most people see it as a legacy of prevention and protection for children,” she said. “Parents are happy about it. Those who teach and volunteer — while they may have some misgivings about the process — are still willing to do it to protect the children.”
Although everyone agrees protecting children from sexual abuse is a top priority, some disagree on how to accomplish it. In the Diocese of Arlington, Va., some parents are upset about a program for children that is being considered there.
Bad Program?
Designed for preschool through sixth grade, the “Good Touch, Bad Touch” program is a comprehensive child abuse prevention curriculum that teaches children skills they need to prevent or interrupt child abuse/sexual abuse, according to the “Good Touch, Bad Touch” Web site.
“Children are taught what abuse is, are given prevention skills including personal body safety rules (’tools’ they can put into their tool bags to draw on if needed) and are motivated into action if threatened,” the Web site says.
The Web site notes that the program is not sex education, although, beginning in the second grade, it does mention physical abuse and bullying, while in the fifth and sixth grades it addresses sexual harassment, physical and emotional abuse and neglect.
One parent, Maureen Brody, a mother of five who has reviewed the curriculum for preschool, kindergarten and the fifth and sixth grades, said she had several concerns about the program.
She said it was too sexually explicit and it shifted the burden to the children to protect themselves — instead of the burden being on the clergy or parents.
Her “gravest” concern, however, was that it is inconsistent with subsidiarity, a principle according to the Catechism that says “larger communities should take care not to usurp the family's prerogatives or interfere in its life.”
Pope John Paul II, in his 1981 apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio (The Family in the Modern World), declared “sex education, which is a basic right and duty of parents, must always be carried out under their attentive guidance, whether at home or in educational centers chosen and controlled by them.”
Brody — who attended an informational meeting for parents, which was held on Nov. 30 — said the curriculum for kindergarten students discusses sexual abuse, which she thinks is an inappropriate topic for 5-year-olds.
“It's way beyond them,” said Brody, who attends St. Raymond of Penafort Church in Fairfax Station, Va. “They don’t talk about sex itself, but they talk about situations that give you an ‘uh-oh feeling’ about when people are touching you in your private areas. It's very graphic. They tell exactly where people shouldn’t be touching you.”
Talking About Touching, another sex abuse prevention program used in the Archdiocese of Boston and other dioceses, also has been criticized for being too graphic for youngsters.
Soren Johnson, the Arlington diocesan communications director, declined to be interviewed and declined a request to interview Catherine Nolan, the diocesan director of Child Protection and Safety. He referred a reporter to her comments in a question-and-answer interview in the Dec. 11 issue of the Catholic Herald, the diocesan newspaper.
“What is clear is that whatever program our diocese ultimately settles on,” she said during the interview, “it will involve the parents of our diocese, be evaluated as effective, age-appropriate and faithful to Catholic teaching, and will not place the burden of protection on children.”
Carlos Briceno writes from Seminole, Florida.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Carlos Briceno ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Pope Gives Blessing to Sant'Egidio's Anti-Death Penalty Campaign DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY — Throughout his papacy, Pope John Paul II has persistently spoken out against the death penalty.
And on Nov. 30, the Holy Father did so again, lending his voice in support of a Catholic movement's campaign against capital punishment while addressing pilgrims in St. Peter's Square after his Sunday Angelus prayers.
The World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, initiated by the Rome-based lay Catholic Community of Sant’Egidio and joined by other nongovernmental organizations, aims to achieve a universal moratorium on executions and raise public awareness that capital punishment “devalues life.”
“We believe that, like torture and slavery, capital punishment will disappear,” said Mario Marazziti, coordinator of the campaign. “In the last five years we have seen an acceleration in support for its abolition.”
Indeed, Sant’Egidio, which has been committed to human rights and service to the poor since its founding in the 1960s, has garnered 5 million signatures that will be presented to the U.N. secretary-general as part of a proposal for a worldwide moratorium. So far, 112 countries are without capital punishment; 82 retain some form of it.
The Sant’Egidio campaign began five years ago when a community member wrote to Dominic Green, a prisoner on death row in Texas since August 1993. An exchange of letters followed and sympathy grew for Green, an black man who was convicted of murder at age 18 — with no eyewitnesses — in a case that was surrounded by racial issues and allegations that Green was deprived of a proper legal defense.
Humanizing Prisoners
Today, the Sant’Egidio Community corresponds with 700 death-row prisoners.
“We’re trying to humanize the situation,” Marazziti said. “We’re trying to make sure the prisoners have legal rights — to break their isolation.”
Marazziti said Green “was a symbol of a society that sometimes oversimplifies such cases and brings violent answers to social problems.”
This opinion of society is shared by Mark Cambiano, a former defense attorney in Arkansas with extensive experience of representing people on death row. He believes people who are for the death penalty “usually are [in favor] until you explain individual cases.”
Cambiano said the “vast majority of those on death row are guilty of the crimes they are accused of,” but, he added, they often received “shoddy representation.”
Cambiano, who intervened on behalf of a Catholic priest who unsuccessfully sought to stay the 1990 execution of Arkansas murderer Ronald Gene Simmons, explained that most convicted killers “have been abused and had terrible backgrounds.”
“I remember a case where the defendant's mother had him thrown off a 20-foot-high embankment and whose father had beaten him so badly he had a serious concussion,” Cambiano recalled. “These are the kinds of people who end up on death row.”
Jeff Rosenzweig, another Arkansas defense lawyer with extensive experience in such cases, agreed.
“In most cases, they’ve had a background in mental illness, retardation, abuse and poverty,” Rosenzweig said.
Which is one reason why Marazziti likes to emphasize the importance of rehabilitation when dealing as a Catholic with the issue of capital punishment.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that while capital punishment is not intrinsically immoral when there is no other way to protect society, “as a consequence of the possibilities that the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm — without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself — the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity ‘are very rare, if not practically nonexistent’” (No. 2267).
“We now have a deeper understanding of what justice is — that there is no justice without rehabilitation,” Marazziti said. “The death penalty is not justice because there is no rehabilitation.”
And for Catholic anti-death penalty campaigners such as Marazitti, the removal of the circumstances for forgiveness and reconciliation is fundamentally inconsistent with the Gospel.
“Families are denied any passage toward healing,” he said. “It freezes them in hatred — for years.”
Marazziti also rejected the argument that capital punishment guarantees greater security. He said in jurisdictions where it is allowed, homicide rates are “much, much higher,” citing the southern United States as an example.
Death-Penalty Catholics
Not all Catholics share Sant’Egidio's position, however.
Michael Dunnigan, a specialist in canon law and religious liberty at St. Joseph's Foundation in San Antonio, believes by framing the question primarily as a right-to-life issue the community “implicitly places the rights of convicted terrorists and mafiosi on the same level as those of innocent citizens and unborn children.”
Citing the teaching of John Paul in his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), Dunnigan noted, “Only innocent persons possess a right to life that is absolute.”
Dunnigan is also opposed to the Sant’Egidio Community's position that the death penalty puts “vengeance and reprisal first.”
Citing the Catechism's teachings on the issue, he noted that traditional Catholic teaching has never excluded recourse to capital punishment. And, Dunnigan said, a distinction must be made between vengeance and retribution, the latter of which he said “is defined in the Catechism as a legitimate reparation of the disorder caused by a crime.”
He would like the Sant’Egidio Community to confront the issue of Catholic teaching and tradition more directly.
“[The community] is a group of serious Catholics,” he said. “It should give considerable attention to what it means for a Catholic movement to take such an absolute position against the death penalty.”
But Sant’Egidio spokesman Marazziti says the teachings of John Paul and of the Catechism make it clear Sant’Egidio's international campaign against capital punishment accurately reflects the modern development of Church doctrine regarding the immorality of capital punishment.
“There is an evolution going on,” Marazziti said. “We are moving toward a New-Testament respect for human life.”
Edward Pentin writes from Rome.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Edward Pentin ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Media Watch DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:Pope Recalls Stalin's Holocaust in Ukraine
VATICAN INFORMATION SERVICE, Dec. 5 — Commemorating the 70th anniversary of the terror famine inflicted upon the people of Ukraine by Joseph Stalin, Pope John Paul II wrote to Ukrainian Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, Byzantine archbishop of Lvov, and Latin-rite Archbishop Marian Jaworsky of Lvov, the Vatican Information Service reported.
The famine was intended to destroy the independent farmers of the region and reduce all agricultural production to state-controlled collective farms. Soviet authorities seized all grain, cattle and food from millions of Ukrainians, leaving millions to starve in an atrocity that was widely denied in the West until recently.
The New York Times has refused to return the Pulitzer Prize won by Walter Duranty, a communist-sympathizing reporter whose false dispatches from Ukraine in the 1930s helped cover up the crime; the board that awards the Pulitzer Prize recently refused to revoke Duranty's award.
The Pope wrote that he wished “to spiritually join everyone in the Ukraine in recalling the victims of this tragedy and inviting young people to remember past events so that similar suffering is never repeated again.”
Lost Poetry Discovered in Vatican Library
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, Dec. 6 — The Church has for centuries guarded the texts of antiquity, preserving cultural treasures that would otherwise have been lost. Now it appears that one such treasure did get lost amid the Vatican's cavernous, massive libraries.
The Associated Press reported that a scholar working in the Vatican Library uncovered 200 previously unknown verses by the Greek playwright Menander in a manuscript recopied by monks in Syria in the ninth century. The verses were included in a document containing part of Menander's comedy The Grouch, but they might form part of another work.
The fourth-century B.C. Athenian playwright is known to have completed more than 100 plays, but many of them are considered lost.
Do Changes Herald Shifting Vatican Stance on War?
CHIESA.COM, Nov. 28 — The Italian Web site Chiesa.com recently speculated that changes within the Vatican reflected a shifting in its stance toward the U.S. war in Iraq and relations with the Islamic world.
The Web site noted that former Vatican foreign minister Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, who had called the U.S. war a “crime against humanity,” had been removed from that post this fall and named as chief Church archivist last month, after being made a cardinal Oct. 21. He was replaced by Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, a trained diplomat.
Another critic of the war, Archbishop Renato Martino, was shifted late last year from his post as the Holy See's permanent observer to the United Nations and named president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and elevated to the rank of cardinal this fall. He was replaced by Archbishop Celestino Migliore, whom Chiesa.com considers more of a pragmatist.
Chiesa.com suggested the changes could signal a rapprochement between the Holy See and the Bush administration, which provides key support to Church initiatives on abortion and population issues at the United Nations and which recently pushed through a ban on partial-birth abortion.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: John Paul Calls University Students to 'Search Unceasingly for God' DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:VATICAN CITY — Whether one is a conventional university student or a student at the university of life's “hard knocks,” Pope John Paul II had profound words of encouragement and hope at his traditional annual papal Mass for students Dec. 11.
Opening with the words of the Prophet Isaiah, “Do not be afraid, I am coming to your aid,” the Holy Father reminded thousands of student pilgrims in St. Peter's Basilica that this promise of God came to its fullness in the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem.
“In him, God became one of us,” the Pope proclaimed. “This is why we must not be afraid. The time of Advent that we are living exhorts us to hope.”
Reading his entire homily, John Paul encouraged students during their time at university to “search unceasingly for God” and not to “keep a distance through doubts and difficulties.
He again recalled Isaiah, quoting the verse, “I shall turn the dry ground into springs of water.” This is the “great promise of God to the poor,” the Pope said, because “they have a strong thirst for truth, justice and peace, present in all mankind.”
The Pope added: “God, as the Prophet Isaiah assures us, holds you with his right hand — he is beside you. Through his comforting accompaniment, he will give you all you need to fulfill your mission through university.”
John Paul then turned his attention to Europe.
The Holy Father has been resolutely campaigning for Europe to return to its Christian roots, and the Mass was celebrated on the eve of a pivotal intergovernmental conference in which European politicians were to discuss the inclusion of references to God in the new European Constitution.
The Pope emphasized the contribution the “university world” could play in the process of European integration.
He said although social, political and economic structures were important in maintaining the unity of Europe, he stressed that the “humanistic and spiritual aspects must absolutely not be neglected.”
It is “indispensable that Europe today safeguards its patrimony of values,” he continued, and that it recognizes “above all that Christianity is able to promote, conciliate and consolidate them.”
He said Christmas underlines these Christian values because with the birth of Jesus in the “simplicity and poverty of Bethlehem, God has given the dignity of existence to each human being — he has offered all the possibility of participating in the divine life. This immeasurable gift can always find hearts that are ready to receive it.”
The Holy Father ended his homily by invoking the maternal intercession of Mary.
“It is her who protects every one of you, your families and academic community to which you belong,” he said. He closed by wishing all a happy Advent and Christmas.
Speaking after the Mass, graduate student Bill English from Washington, D.C., said the Pope is drawing “much needed” attention to learning and the “goodness of the intellect” at a time when universities are undergoing an “intellectual crisis” and when the “intellectual base of universities is empty.”
English, who is currently studying Christian ethics at Oxford University, was particularly heartened by the Pope's words of encouragement.
“I think it's fantastic that he encouraged us not to be afraid,” he said. “It is difficult to be a Catholic on campus these days, but by the Pope saying it's nothing to be ashamed of is a great source of strength.”
Politics student Joseph Nawrocki, also studying at Oxford, agreed.
“There is a lot of hostility to the Catholic faith in universities these days,” he said. “But I’ve realized that coming from a Catholic university to Oxford how much of an integral part my chaplain played in the part of formation, which gives me the courage to speak out.”
On the subject of Europe, English noted, “The truth of Christ is the same truth that universities were founded to seek.” The unity of Europe, he added, should depend on “the universities that were the most unifying institutions in Europe.”
Both students had been attending a four-day conference on the mobility of European students, which examined how universities through Catholic chaplains and students could tackle the New Evangelization in the new Europe.
The Holy Father managed to reach out to non-practicing Catholics, too.
“I don’t actually believe in God,” said Catholic-raised Rome student Nicole Goodie from New Hampshire. “But after going to Mass this evening, I'm going to start rethinking my whole religion.”
Father John Keenan, chaplain at the University of Glasgow, was particularly encouraged.
“The Pope could have said so many things, but to say ‘don’t be afraid’ and to recount Christ becoming man, so rooted in the truth, gave it a double consolation,” he said.
“It was lovely to have said it at Advent,” Father Keenan added. “It was inspiring, uplifting and gave me a lot of hope.”
Edward Pentin writes from Rome.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Edward Pentin ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: The Wedding Feast of the Lamb DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:Register Summary
Pope John Paul II met with 6,000 pilgrims in the Paul VI Hall during his general audience Dec. 10. He offered his reflections on a canticle from Chapter 19 of the Book of Revelation that extols the wedding feast of the Lamb and that is part of the Church's evening prayer during the Liturgy of the Hours.
According to John Paul, this canticle, in which the words “amen” and “alleluia” are repeated several times, expresses the joy of the angels and saints in their heavenly liturgy of thanksgiving. “At the heart of this joyful cry is the image of God's decisive intervention throughout history as it unfolds,” he said. “Unlike some impassive and isolated ruler, the Lord is not indifferent to what happens to man.”
The Holy Father pointed out that God intervenes throughout history to establish justice, particularly for the oppressed. “Above all other things, therefore, our prayer should recall and praise God's mighty deeds, the Lord's effective justice and the glory he has attained by triumphing over evil,” the Pope said.
The Holy Father concluded his talk with a reflection on the second part of the canticle, which celebrates the marriage of Christ, the Lamb, and the Church, his Bride, “in a profound communion of love.” He noted that some Fathers of the Church, such as St. Ephrem, applied this nuptial imagery of Christ's union with his Church to our individual souls.
Continuing with the series of psalms and canticles that form the Church's evening prayer, we have come to a hymn that is taken from Chapter 19 of the Book of Revelation and that is composed of a sequence of alleluias and acclamations.
These joyful cries are preceded by the dramatic lament found in the previous chapter, which kings, merchants and captains of ships intoned as imperial Babylon collapsed — a city of evil and oppression and a symbol of the persecution that was unleashed against the Church.
Joyful Chorus
In contrast to this cry that rises from the earth, a joyful chorus of a liturgical nature resounds in the heavens, in which the word amen is repeated along with the word alleluia. The Liturgy of the Hours’ evening prayer now joins together in a single canticle these various acclamations, which are similar to antiphons and which are actually attributed to various people in the Book of Revelation. First of all, we encounter a “great multitude,” which is made up of the assembly of saints and angels (see verses 1-3). Then we hear the voices of “twenty-four elders” and “four living creatures,” symbolic figures that seem to play the role of the priests in this heavenly liturgy of praise and thanksgiving (see verse 4). Finally, a lone voice emerges (see verse 5) that, in turn, involves in this singing the “great multitude” from which it arose.
We will have an opportunity in future stages of our journey of prayer to explain the individual antiphons of this grandiose and festive hymn of praise by so many voices. For the moment, we will limit ourselves to two observations. The first concerns the opening acclamation: “Salvation, glory and might belong to our God, for true and just are his judgments” (verses 1-2).
Not Indifferent
At the heart of this joyful cry is the image of God's decisive intervention throughout history as it unfolds. Unlike some impassive and isolated ruler, the Lord is not indifferent to what happens to man. As the psalmist says, “The Lord's throne is in heaven. God's eyes keep careful watch; they test all people” (Psalm 11:4).
Indeed, his eyes are a source of action, because he intervenes and destroys domineering and oppressive empires, he humbles the proud who defy him, and he judges those who perpetrate evil. Once again, it is the psalmist who describes God's intervention in history as it unfolds with picturesque images (see Psalm 11:7), just as the author of the Book of Revelation recalls God's great intervention in Babylon in the preceding chapter (see Revelation 18:1-24), uprooting it from its foundation and flinging it into the sea. This hymn alludes to his intervention in a passage that is not included in the celebration of evening prayer (see Revelation 19:2-3).
Above all other things, therefore, our prayer should recall and praise God's mighty deeds, the Lord's effective justice and the glory he has attained by triumphing over evil. God makes himself present in history by siding with the just and the oppressed, as the brief yet essential acclamation of the Book of Revelation declares and as the songs of the Book of Psalms repeat on many occasions (see Psalm 146:6-9).
Wedding Feast
We would now like to highlight another theme of this canticle. It is developed in the final acclamation and it is one of the dominant themes in the Book of Revelation itself: “For the wedding day of the Lamb has come, his bride has made herself ready” (Revelation 19:7). Christ and the Church, the Lamb and the Bride, are in a profound communion of love.
We will try to let this mystical marriage shine forth through the poetic testimony of one of the great Fathers of the Syrian Church, St. Ephrem, who lived in the fourth century. Using the wedding at Cana in a symbolic way (see John 2:1-11), he introduces the personified town itself in order to praise Christ for the great gift we have received:
“Together with my guests, I give thanks because he has judged me worthy of inviting him — he who is the heavenly Bridegroom, who has descended and invited all; I, too, was invited to enter his wedding feast most pure. Before the people I recognize him as the Bridegroom; there is no other like him. His wedding chamber has been ready for centuries and is furnished with riches and lacks nothing: not like the feast at Cana, whose want he satisfied” (Inni sulla verginità, 33, 3: L’arpa dello Spirito, Rome 1999, p. 73-74).
In another hymn that also celebrates the wedding at Cana, St. Ephrem emphasizes how Christ, who was invited to the wedding of other people (namely the bride and the bridegroom at Cana), wanted to celebrate his wedding feast — the wedding with his bride, which is every faithful soul. “Jesus, you were invited to the wedding feast of others, the bride and the bride-groom at Cana. Here, on the other hand, is your feast, pure and beautiful. It gives joy to our days, because even your guests, Lord, need your songs. Let your lyre fill everything! The soul is your bride, the body is your wedding chamber, and your guests are the senses and thoughts. If one single body is a wedding feast for you, the whole Church is your wedding banquet!” (Inni sulla fede, 14, 4-5: op. cit., p. 27).
(Register translation)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Ros Hubbard: Bringing a Catholic Cast of Mind to Lord of the Rings DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:LONDON — “The Lord of the Rings is a great sense of pride to us because it's a film with a Christian message and it makes no apologies. I wish there were more films like that,” says Catholic casting director Ros Hubbard.
Hubbard and her husband, John, run Hubbard Casting, one of the U.K.'s top casting agencies. Their movie credits include Evita, Angela's Ashes, The Commitments, Patriot Games and Loch Ness. And on British TV, they have casted for top programs such as “Bravo Two Zero,” “Oliver Twist” and “Father Ted.”
Hubbard was delighted when Peter Jackson, the director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, asked Hubbard Casting to find a suitable cast for the films.
“We casted Kate Winslet for him in Heavenly Creatures, her first film. Peter's very loyal,” Hubbard said.
Hubbard spoke with the Register in her mews house in the heart of London's West End, around the corner from her office. A candid and down-to-earth woman who takes her Catholic faith seriously, she is thrilled the first two films, The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, have been such massive box-office hits, and she hopes the just-released final part of the trilogy, The Return of the King, will be equally successful.
J.R.R. Tolkien took more than a decade to write The Lord of the Rings. Written as six books but published as a trilogy, it runs more than 500,000 words. The hero, a hobbit named Frodo Baggins, takes a perilous journey to the heart of darkness to save a world called Middle Earth.
Given Tolkien's Catholic faith, the story is about the battle of good and evil and is full of Christian allegory.
But the books are not the easiest of reads, Hubbard concedes.
“I tried to read The Lord of the Rings several times and I read bits to my children, but it's heavy going,” she said. “You have addicts for it; people who know every character and every line. Very often you read a book and then find that the script is not so good. With Lord of the Rings the script was so good.”
This might be a more cynical time than the 1940s, when Tolkien authored his epic fantasy, but Jackson said the trio's themes are as relevant to contemporary society today as they were half a century ago.
“What that proves is that Tolkien's themes are timeless,” Jackson told the Register. “He wrote Lord of the Rings pretty much during the years of World War II, having himself had horrific experiences in World War I as a lieutenant in the British army. He went into World War I with a huge amount of school friends and at the end of the war only two of his friends were alive. He saw everybody die. And you know, that would affect somebody, and his themes of courage and friendship without strings attached and self-sacrifice I think resonate probably from his life experiences.”
“It's interesting that America adopted Lord of the Rings as did the hippie generation of the '60s, who were reading all sorts of messages with the Vietnam War and the atomic bomb,” Jackson added. “I mean, the young American reading the book today isn’t certainly thinking about Vietnam, yet it still has a message, so I just think his themes are universal and timeless, so you can obviously take from the book or the movie whatever you choose to take.”
Movies and Religion
Hubbard admits being a Christian in the film industry is not easy.
“People in my business often hide their religion,” she said. “And they will usually use the word spiritual rather than Christian. There was a time when it was easy to be a Christian because most people were.
“When I say I'm a recovering or suffering Catholic people laugh and ask me about guilt,” she continued. “There's no more guilt in religion than in any other moral code — even Catholicism.”
Did she have any misgivings about casting for “Father Ted,” the popular TV comedy series about three priests in Ireland?
“John turned down Father Ted initially because he thought I wouldn’t want to do it,” Hubbard said. “But when I read a script I laughed out loud. I said we have to do it because no one else will understand its Catholicism. It was disrespectful at times. But I never felt the characters were bad. The thing that came through was their innocence.”
She added with a chuckle that they gave away the first fees from the “Father Ted” series to an Irish third-world charity — just in case God might have been upset.
The culture needs more films with a Christian message, Hubbard believes.
“When the millennium approached there were several scripts about Christ, but none of them got made,” she said. “If you think about those big pictures that were made about Christ years ago, such as Ben Hur and The Silver Chalice, they were made by Jews in America. They said, ‘Great story. Let's make it.’ I thought Jesus of Nazareth was wonderful and it wasn't made that long ago.
“We do so many nonspiritual films,” she added. “The Americans are much more at ease with films that contain a spiritual message. In Ireland they are specializing in films with violence and sex. They no longer want to be seen as a religious country.
“I've turned down scripts because I thought they were immoral,” Hubbard said. “I did Nothing Personal, which was set in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. It was violent, but I liked it because it showed a balanced view of both sides.”
Greg Watts writes from London.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Greg Watts ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Media Watch DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:Resignation Not Tied to Scandals, Bishop Insists
ABS-CBN INTERACTIVE, Dec. 8 — Embattled Auxiliary Bishop Teodoro Buhain of Manila told the Philippines-based news service ABS-CBN his resignation, and the Holy See's acquiescence in it, were unconnected to previous charges of graft and fathering a child out of wedlock.
Bishop Buhain pointed out that the charges against him had never been officially investigated by the Church and that his superior, Cardinal Jaime Sin, former archbishop of Manila, had cleared him of all charges. The bishop said he had asked to resign before the scandals but had agreed to serve until Cardinal Sin's retirement in August 2003.
Bishop Buhain pointed to an Aug. 31 letter from Cardinal Sin certifying he believed Bishop Buhain “is innocent of the charge that he has fathered a child.”
The Filipino bishop noted that the pregnant woman in question had sworn an affidavit in June stating that her child was the result of artificial insemination and said he had also satisfied Cardinal Sin on the financial transactions some had deemed questionable.
Baghdad Archbishop: Troops Must Stay for Now
MISSIONARY NEWS SERVICE, Dec. 5 — Latin-rite archbishop of Baghdad Jean Benjamin Sleiman wants U.S. and coalition troops to remain in Iraq, at least for the time being, until order is restored, the archbishop told Missionary News Service.
In the wake of such a destructive war, which had destroyed the political infrastructure of the once-repressive country, immediate withdrawal “would be a serious demonstration of irresponsibility. Neither the Americans nor the allies should leave the nation: It would mean passing from anarchy to chaos,” he said.
While Archbishop Sleiman also called for U.N. involvement, he warned that the United Nations “alone would be inefficient: The peace contingents must stay.”
Bonfires of the Papacy
CATHNEWS.COM, Dec. 9 — An annual anti-Catholic ritual in Lewes, England, that includes the burning of an effigy of the Pope has ignited protest, the Australian Web site CathNews.com reported.
The ceremonies recall events from the 16th century when Mary I tried to restore the Catholic faith to England at a time when the majority of the population still clung to their ancestral religion. As part of her campaign, she also persecuted Protestants who evangelized, including 17 people burned at the stake in the city of Lewes.
This harsh measure was never forgotten, even amid the much more widespread persecution of Catholics that followed under Elizabeth I. Annual bonfires were lit by Protestants to commemorate the slain — bonfires that took a decidedly nasty twist in 1850, when Blessed Pope Pius IX again began to appoint Catholic bishops in England. In protest, Lewes residents began to burn the Pope in effigy at their annual bonfires.
Now, one Lewes Catholic is asking the government to forbid the papal burning, CathNews.com reported.
“Do I not have the right,” asked Joe O'Keefe, the activist seeking to stop the bonfires, “to walk down an English street without feeling intimidated because of my religion?”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: What the Register Does DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:This is the last issue of the year (we skip the last Sunday of the year) and it finds us in an introspective mood. The letter featured to the right, along with other letters we've received, sparked quite a discussion among Register editors and writers on the question: In our trying times, how should a Catholic newspaper balance coverage of the Church's progress with news about the regress of the world and Church-affiliated institutions?
The answer is: That's a tough question.
It's a very fine line we walk between two duties of Catholic journalism.
Chicago Cardinal Francis George emphasized one of those duties when he spoke to the Catholic Press Association in 1999. In his words, the Catholic press should “record the workings of grace in the world.” This is one of the key factors in our decisions on what to report. We want to show that the Church is changing the world and not the other way around.
But our other duty is to shine the light of truth on situations in the world where the Church's wisdom is needed. The Holy Father is giving the direst-possible warnings about the future of the family and the advance of the anti-human attitudes he calls “the culture of death.” The Register needs to let readers know the urgency of situations that often involve unsavory issues.
We firmly believe that, 100 years from now, historians will record how the Church triumphed despite difficult times in the early part of the 21st century. We hope Catholics then will be able to look at the Register and find that we both saw the signs of the new springtime and urged Catholics to address the threats of our day.
Your letters have helped remind us to balance our coverage. It can be hard: Just look at two other letters in this week's issue. One takes umbrage with us for being too ready to accept good news, and the other praises us for tracking an important battle in the culture of death.
We will continue to try our best to bring you a newspaper that is both hope-filled and useful.
We mentioned two letters to the right. There's also a third, and it points to another part of our mission: to promote the New Evangelization. This Christmas, we are giving thanks for recent successes our readers have had in that regard.
The rosary booklet. In March, Register readers’ donations sent 32,000 rosary booklets to the U.S. military. We have heard several reports of how our soldiers in Iraq have benefited from the booklets we sent overseas. The rosary booklets were such a hit with our troops that the apostolate Catholicmil.org raised money to print more.
Meanwhile, the civilian version continues to sell, and we have heard many stories about how these booklets have restarted the prayer lives of readers. Don't forget U.S. Military Archbishop Edwin O'Brien's suggestion: “Might I recommend that our Catholics make these meditations available to the many young non-Catholics?”
Umbert the Unborn. As we take orders for our new “Umbert the Unborn” book, we hear many stories about how Gary Cangemi's pro-life comic strip has touched the lives of our readers. One woman who, as an unborn child, survived an abortion attempt told us how “safe” reading the cartoon makes her feel. Another woman told us she shares Umbert with women entering an abortion facility. It allowed her to start a discussion with a mother who decided to keep her baby. Readers are buying multiple copies of the book as evangelization aids.
“How to Be Catholic” guides. We've also been gratified by readers' uses of our Advent guides (you can find the fourth and final one on page 18). One CCD teacher told us he printed them out from www.ncregister.com using card-stock paper and laminated them for his class. A pastor told us he intends to print out hundreds of copies of the “How (and Why) to Return to Mass” guides and hand them out at Christmas Masses. He hopes some who come only on that day will decide to come every Sunday.
Thank you, Register readers, for these gifts to the Church! The staff of the newspaper wishes everyone a happy and holy Christmas season.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: LETTERS DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:Abortion/Breast-Cancer Link
We write about the coverage of the abortion/breast cancer, which you published on page one of your Nov. 23-29 edition (“A First: Abortion Pay-out over Breast Cancer”). Andrew Walther did an excellent job and we also applaud the placement on page one.
The Register continues its excellent work year after year. It is a blessing for our nation and the Church.
Mr. Walther did not mention the name of the lawyer who carried on for four long years: his name is Joseph Stanton, and he was assisted in the last days by a new graduate from Ave Maria Law School, Adam Frey. Stanton is a single practitioner and a member of the Pro-Life Union and a longtime “lawyer for life.” In this matter, he was opposed by two large law firms. He deserves our thanks and recognition!
Kathleen Sobocinski
Oreland, Pennsylvania
The writer is President of the Pro-Life Union of Southeast Pennsylvania.
Missionary Territory?
Just a note in response to Peter Wolfgang's commentary “Attention, Peter Stein-fels: You Got It Wrong” (Nov. 23-29).
I petition: How much more subjective could Mr. Wolfgang be while appraising the general pulse and health of the Church within a given region (Connecticut)? As he speaks of various charismatic renewal projects and other renewal venues such as Regnum Christi, noting that a large proportion of such participation is that of young adult Catholics, I still question, out of all baptized and confirmed young adults within the Catholic population, just how many partake in such movements? I will submit to you that, of all Catholics under age 30, it is probably well under 10% and is hardly representative of a new trend.
And how does Mr. Wolfgang explain this phenomenon? In a 2000 survey of all 173 American dioceses, on the basis of their ratio of recent ordinandi and seminarians to total Catholic population within the respective diocese, Connecticut's Metropolitan See, the Archdiocese of Hartford, achieved a ratio of 1:371,479 — a rank of 173, that is, dead last of all of the nation's dioceses. By contrast, the Diocese of Lincoln, Neb., with a ratio of 1 new priest or seminarian for every 2,173 Catholics, ranks second among all U.S. dioceses, while the Diocese of Fargo, N.D., with 1 new priest or seminarian for every 2,025 Catholics, ranks first.
For certain, the vibrancy of Catholic culture is very aptly measured by young-adult participation in religious vocations, and the overall receptivity to and promotion of the priestly calling by a local hierarchy. Furthermore, none of the Catholic colleges of the state has accepted the mandatum. If Connecticut is anything, it is once again missionary territory, where Sunday-morning participation at the state's popular Native American gaming casinos by far outdoes that at Mass. While I credit Mr. Wolfgang for his own personal conversion to Catholic orthodoxy, as well as his willingness to publicly take on a legend of dissent such as Peter Steinfels — with his latest exercise in triteness in this new book of his — such an endeavor is hardly achieved with success with a chronicle of rose-colored embellishments.
Keep in mind that Steinfels' conduit, Father Richard McBrien at the University of Notre Dame, is and always was a “native son” and remains a priest in “good standing” of the Archdiocese of Hartford. His imprint upon the local Church, as well as this nation, continues to be unmistakable. For him to witness dissent, all Mr. Wolfgang need do is look again into his backyard — though hopefully next time, he will address it head on.
JEFFREY R. JACKSON
via e-mail
Yes, Father Richard McBrien is, alas, a priest in good standing with the Archdiocese of Hartford. But our archdiocesan newspaper ceased syndication of his column about a decade ago and left him scrambling to find another distributor. This decision was applauded by Catholics my age and lamented by my parents' generation.
Yes, a recent survey showed that Hartford would eventually be dead last in the nation's priest-to-layman ratio — if present trends continue. Many of us who grew up with those “doctrine-free CCD classes” returned to the Church after we were married but with a lot of children in tow. Stay tuned.
Yes, the Catholic colleges of Connecticut have yet to accept the mandatum. But that fact does not take into account the young former students (and current teachers) I've spoken to at those schools who are scandalized by this. The editorial, again: Dissent “has no future because hypocrisy and dishonesty are the sins the new generation of Catholics most disdain. The younger generation will either leave the faith definitively or embrace it robustly — they won't attempt to do both.”
In his recent interview with Raymond Arroyo, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger reminded us that the Holy Spirit usually shapes history through minorities, not mass movements. The current minority status of young, faithful Catholics is no impediment to the pivotal role we could play in helping to bring about a new springtime for the Church.
New Evangelization in the Mall
You had two articles in recent months reporting on the success people have been having with shopping-mall evangelization. Groups would get permission from the mall owners and then set up tables with local parish bulletins, Mass schedules, contact information for priests and so on. Both articles commented on the number of people who approached their tables looking for information. Their success seems to come from going out in the community and providing the truth in a non-threatening manner.
We have all read about Mel Gibson's forthcoming film The Passion of Christ, which will be released on Ash Wednesday. With all the pre-publicity the film has generated, large numbers of people will be seeing it. Whether they love it or hate it, many will exit the film with questions, comments, doubts and reactions. What a great time for those moviegoers to encounter a table full of Catholic information!
BOB MALONEY
New Market, Maryland
Editor's note: Some materials that might be good to pass out: The guides we have printed on our back page throughout Advent. Print out multiple copies by downloading them at: www.ncregister.com. Click on “How to Be a Catholic: Guides for Catholic Living.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: The Good, the Bad and the Register DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:I am a new convert desperately hungry for good news about the Catholic Church. I subscribe to the Register and gave it as a gift this Christmas, but I don't subscribe to any other newspapers. Why? Consider the differences between the Register and any paper from The New York Times to the Seattle Times.
Briefly put, the Register is about good news and the other papers about bad news. “Good news is no news” is a slogan for the other papers. Other papers are sold single-copy, hawked at newsstands. The front page is a billboard for bad news and sensationalistic, often misleading headlines designed to push hot buttons, appeal to the 11% of readers abnormally interested in bad news and create a sense of anxiety that requires reading the paper.
The Register could not be more different. It is the good news that is the other side to the other papers' bad news — especially about the Catholic Church. It is where great writers like Mark Shea, Tim Drake and Carl Olson comment in a lively way, as did G.K. Chesterton in the weekly paper of his day. It's not a throwaway paper to line a bird cage the next day. It's really a thoughtful magazine in a newspaper format.
But in recent issues, I find the good news is buried somewhere inside and the bad news splayed (like some wannabe Watergate reporter) on the top of the front page. You are screaming that the Register is just like every other paper. The Culture of Life is on the back page, but the culture of death screams from the front. Buried inside are the good words of Pope John Paul II and all the good things about priests and nuns.
Turn the paper inside out, lay it on the coffee table and see how much better it looks. Yes, speak the truth in love, but on the outside do the much more difficult task you alone can do: Urge us to follow St. Paul and think on whatever is good and pure and honest and uplifting. If you do that, you will be the only one doing it. Right now urge my still-Protestant friends to read the Register because they also would find good news in it. Right now also, I cover it up on the coffee table because, while it's fine to write about “sex on TV” and “homophobia,” words are powerful and I don't want those words lying around in front of kids. If I did, I could lay a Playboy on the coffee table.
I realize this seems like an odd argument, but I'd much rather “The New Liturgy at Age 40” took up the top front of the Register or the piece about the Umbert cartoon book. I realize these are “fluff” pieces in news-editor jargon. But that's the point.
These are good news and that's ^ what the front page of an alternative paper like the Register should be for, not to create more anxiety as any tenth-rate paper could do but to follow St. Paul in “having no anxiety about anything.”
As a new convert and a weaker brother, I beg you to consider this argument and use the billboard of your front page for the good news you alone can bring. Thanks for your consideration.
GORD WILSON
Bellingham, Washington
Editor's reply: See this week's editorial.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Five Gifts of Light The World Needs This Christmas DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:If prayer and pen are efficacious and can be converted into gifts, I would like to utilize this possibility and be an instrument, this Christmas, for indulging in such an unusual form of gift giving.
My “gifts” would be of an intellectual nature, “lights,” as it were, in accordance with the Holy Father's mysteries of light. Christmas itself is about light that dispels darkness and illumines the mind and heart so the message of Jesus can be more clearly discerned.
My “gifts,” therefore, are intended to illuminate five areas of darkness that have clouded certain truths of the Catholic faith. It is hoped, naturally, that my “gifts,” which are merely restatements of axiomatic truths, will be well received and not exchanged for something more trendy.
Or to put it another way, there are a few lights on the Christmas tree that are flickering and need a little tightening so they can shine again with their original unwavering brightness.
1) Religion cultivates spirituality.
The secular world is in love with spirituality. It is religion it objects to. Thus the prevalent false dichotomy between spirituality and religion.
A certain book is in circulation that tells the story of God's plan for global peace. The plan, entrusted to a monk, is completely sabotaged by members of organized religion. The problem with unorganized spirituality, however, is that it soon becomes disorganized spirituality. No one cries, “I love baseball, but I don't like organized baseball. Umpires are spoiling the game.”
The purpose of the Catholic faith as a religion is to test and clarify spirituality, to ensure it is directed to God and in harmony with the needs of one's neighbor. Religion is to spirituality what music is to dancing, engineering is to mathematics and what a directed life is to an amorphous impulse.
2) The Catholic faith teaches truth.
Do Catholic churches need to make available material that promotes abortion, same-sex marriage, human cloning and so forth so churchgoers can become acquainted with the “other side”?
The “other side” is represented adequately enough by an almost incessant bombardment through the media and other highly visible avenues of secular culture. Churches have a duty to represent the truth of Church teachings. They have no need of either sleeping with the enemy or having the enemy sleep with them.
When a math teacher explains that two plus two equal four, he incurs no responsibility to represent contradictory viewpoints. Adam and Eve might have been better off had they not considered the viewpoint of the Serpent.
3) Catholics are fundamentally humanists.
Secular journalists never tire of complaining that Catholics are forever trying to “impose” their faith values on the public. But Catholics do not try to impose Sunday Mass, Ash Wednesday abstinence and holy days of obligation — which are faith-based — on non-Catholics. In fact, they could not “impose” any values on anyone, even if their lives depended on it.
Values are intrinsically non-imposable. Moral issues, such as abortion and euthanasia, however, are quite different. Catholic morality is not a matter of faith but of reason's response to the natural law. It is through the universal faculty of reason that Catholics embrace all other human beings. We all begin at ground zero.
Issues involving human rights are not narrowly Catholic but represent a convergence that unites all human beings. Catholic morality is simply anthropology put into practice.
4) The dogma is the drama.
Dogma, which simply refers to teaching, is neither stifling nor a barrier to creativity. Without dogma the Church would be devoid of content and, as a result, unintelligible. She would have no story to tell. According to Church dogma, man is able to know something about God and yet this knowledge is infinitely less than what God is in himself. Consequently, there is endless opportunity for creativity, as man navigates between the finite and the infinite.
Thanks to her navigational instruments, a ship can explore no end of hitherto unknown regions. But take away these instruments, and the ship is lost. “I would not have sought Thee had I not already found Thee,” Pascal wrote. The dogma, which gives us the confidence that our voyage has meaning and direction, is the drama.
5) Christ must come first.
Everyone wants peace. But how many are willing to pay the price?
Peace is not simply an object of choice. It is the fortuitous consequence of choosing to live life well. If I put myself first, I inevitably find myself in conflict with all others who put themselves first. My ego is no more spacious than itself and can hardly be a peace formula for as small a multitude as two, let alone all the people in the world.
Christ's way of love and truth embraces all mankind. Without him, as St. John the Evangelist tells us, we can do nothing. The formula for JOY is (J)esus first, (O)thers second and (Y)ourself third. “Thy will be done,” is a simple, prayerful acknowledgement of the primacy of Christ, who is, par excellence, the Prince of Peace.
Don DeMarco is an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Cromwell, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Don DeMarco ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: John Paul's Christmas Present to the World DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:There is a subtle breeze blowing through the lives of our young faithful these days. It is a quiet reverence for the great mysteries of our faith, a willingness to act on the truth of the ages. It's our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II. We who are so fortunate to have children growing up under his tutelage watch in awe as “his” generation comes of age.
My 16-year-old daughter came to me recently, eyes moist, looking like a storm-tossed waif with a dark history.
“I have to tell you something, Mom,” she said. “I've been trying all week to figure out a way to say it. I feel so bad about what I've done. Get ready, Mom, this is a big one.”
I gripped my seat and drew a deep breath. My mind checked the “dread list” of mistakes kids confessed to their parents in my day: drugs, sex, pregnancy. Not my little girl, I thought, but then right away: Oh, every parent says that — “Not MY kid…”
“Here it comes,” I said to myself. “This is it, the ‘big one.’ Please God, let me take it well.”
“Tell me, Sweetie,” I said. “You know there's nothing you can do to make me stop loving you. What is it?”
Tearfully, she told me: A school peer had encouraged her to buy a popular horror novel. She knew I wouldn't approve, she said, but she was trying to show off. She bought it, read portions of it and was horrified at its contents.
“I feel so ashamed, Mom,” she said. “They said it would be just … like the Dracula novel. And since it was near Halloween, I thought… Oh, it was stupid! I'm sorry, Mom, I knew you and Dad wouldn't like it.”
A book. That was “the big thing.” I swallowed my heart again and nearly laughed with relief. Quietly, I asked her why she did it.
“So you did that — to prove your independence?”
“I know,” she said. “It was sooo stupid.”
“Honey, did your friends tell you that the author of that book also writes some pretty hideous porn novels under a pseudonym?”
“No,” she said. “Ew.”
“I guess the money you spent kind of feels like you just flushed it down the toilet.”
“I wish I had!” she said, her eyes wide.
I hugged her, and she cried a bit, vowing to go to confession as soon as possible. She asked me if I'd just take the book and get rid of it. As much as I hated the idea of book burning, I agreed, dumping it in the recycle bin.
But I was curious: What was the deciding factor that had brought this child to me? What was the final straw? What had she read on those pages that so horrified her — was it graphic sex? Atheistic dogma? I asked her, and she recoiled in humiliation.
“I can't say it out loud,” she whispered.
“Come on, what was it?” I said, moving closer.
“There's a part where one of the characters has a dream about … about harming the Host … Oh, Mom, the Body of Christ!”
Now I understood. I was angry and as horrified as she. My beautiful daughter, her beautiful faith — singed by an evil culture under the guise of “art.”
I reminded her of my husband's devout Lutheran grandfather in the foxholes of World War I: The young man spent a long evening with his fingers in his ears — singing hymns to himself to block out the stories other soldiers told of their escapades with prostitutes. He knew, he said later, that if “Satan got that garbage in my head, I'd never get it out.”
“That's how I feel, Mom. Contaminated!”
“But of course there's God's grace, Honey. That can repair anything.”
“Mom! You know what the Holy Father says about the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist!”
So that was the difference — John Paul's careful attention to our youth. When I was 16, I had excellent teachers, but there was no serious effort to recognize youth as the future of the Church or, indeed, of humanity. As a result… yeah, I knew Jesus was really, really, like — you know, present in the Eucharist. Just like I new Brian Bumiller was a really really cute guy and that bell bottoms were really really cute clothes and that I like, really really didn't want zits.
But this child — and I must say, her friends at her Antioch Youth Group — are a new creation, with seeds planted and lovingly cultivated by the Pope himself. These kids have integrated a teaching into their very souls, a teaching that comes directly from that beautiful soul in Rome.
As our Holy Father in Rome seems to weaken, I am tempted to despair. The world has never seen such a profoundly pious generation of young people. Our Pope has, to a great degree, turned back the hands on the clock of destruction by taking our children to his heart and giving them back to us more alive, more sensitive, more devout than we might have dreamed they could be. As my daughter tells me, “John Paul II says my generation will produce more saints than any before it.”
A 16-year-old girl, living in an ever-darkening world, thinking about sainthood, seeking her Messiah. She has seen his star in the sky; she follows it over the rough, dry desert she travels each day. That star, her Christmas star, is John Paul, and where he points is her epiphany. The Christ he brings will be with us always, even until the end of the age.
Susan Baxter writes from Mishawaka, Indiana.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Susan Baxter ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: 'Tis the Season for Wishful Thinking? DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:This Christmas marks the 39th anniversary of one of the most controversial documents decreed by the Second Vatican Council: Gaudium et Spes (Joy and Hope).
It dealt with the Church's role in the modern world. At first glance, many admire its positive tone toward secular culture. It recognizes modern man's search for truth and wisdom and his need for the Gospel. It shows the Church's desire to engage secular culture in seeking true and just solutions to the world's problems.
Gaudium et Spes possesses an optimistic message of hope for the modern world. Good will overcome evil. The Church's mission involves guiding secular culture toward renewal in Christ. Sounds good.
So where's the controversy?
Some Catholic thinkers believe Gaudium et Spes pushed the Church into a kind of dream-like optimism. They say it's an optimism that fosters complacency in the face of serious problems plaguing the Church and the world. Its message: “Be optimistic even if experience tells you otherwise, and hope in the Lord.” They say it encourages wishful thinking rather than reform.
Critics of Gaudium et Spes charge the document appears unrealistic because it doesn't emphasize enough the power of evil in the world. It pre-sumes too much good will on behalf of man and secular culture. Human experience proves hatred of truth and goodness does exist.
What is the most serious consequence charged against Gaudium et Spes' unrealistic optimism? Detractors would say it's the bishops' optimistic style of governance void of discipline. They note that Pope John Paul II, as a young bishop, was a key member of the commission that drafted Gaudium et Spes. When he become Pope, his first message to the world was, “Be not afraid.”
Yet many people are afraid that, given the current state of the Church, things are not rosy. When the Pope is questioned about the declining number of Christians worldwide in the book Crossing the Threshold of Hope, he makes the distinction between “qualitative” and “quantitative” reform. Many critics find this nuance disturbing since it downplays the reality of Christians falling away from the faith.
A problem cannot be solved without knowing its cause.
Some Catholic scholars argue the primary problem with the good will coming out of Gaudium et Spes stems from confusing hope with optimism. They hold that the theological virtue of hope refers to the final victory of good over evil. This will occur with God's final intervention in history. On the other hand, optimism refers to a positive vision of life based on empirical data. Optimism is not faith. Optimism comes from constructive tangible events.
A friend of mine who serves as a priest in Bridgeport, Conn., asked me what I thought of this critique of Gaudium et Spes. He seemed convinced by it.
I'm not.
The reason is simple. This critique employs a very narrow and misleading understanding of Christian hope and optimism to Gaudium et Spes.
On one level, Christian hope does look forward to the definitive victory of good over evil when Christ will come again at the end of time. On an another level, hope, as a theological virtue, not only refers to setting our desires on our reward in the next life. Christian hope deals with the here and now as well. Far from encouraging a mere passive waiting for Christ's definitive coming, authentic hope obliges Christians to make God's goodness a reality in the Church and the world.
Christian hope understood in this sense imbues a Christian with genuine optimism. Some might be tempted to dismiss this understanding of hope as sheer theological speculation.
However, sacred Scripture describes and supports the notion of Christian hope as an active expectation of future blessings based on faith and love. For instance, St. Paul exhorts the first Christians with these words to this type of hope: “Never give in then, my dear brothers, never admit defeat; keep on working at the Lord's work always, knowing that, in the Lord, you cannot be laboring in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58).
Note that Paul tells them to keep working while remaining focused on the Lord's promises. The Old Testament bears witness to an active and optimistic hope in God's promises. A classic example is the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. God promised them a land flowing with milk and honey. Yet they had to wander and work in the desert 40 years before they got it.
Gaudium et Spes adopts this insightful biblical understanding of hope in its thinking. Here's just one text of many that demonstrates this point well: The Church “further teaches that hope in a life to come does not take away from the importance of the duties of this life on earth but rather adds to it by giving new motives for fulfilling those duties” (No. 21). In other words, Christian hope should move us to work to hasten God's goodness in the Church and the world. For this reason, I don't think it's fair to accuse Gaudium et Spes of naïve optimism.
It wouldn't be a bad idea for us to read Gaudium et Spes during the Christmas holidays. It would remind us that Christ is our joy and hope.
Legionary Father Andrew McNair teaches at Mater Ecclesiae International Center of Studies in Greenville, Rhode Island.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Andrew McNair, LC ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: Now Playing DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN (20th Century Fox) Director: Shawn Levy. Steve Martin, Bonnie Hunt, Piper Perabo, Tom Welling. (PG)
Take One: Neither a remake of the quirky 1950 family favorite nor an affront to it, this Cheaper is a warmhearted slice of ordinary if extra-large family life. Martin and Hunt play a likeable, committed couple presiding over a chaotic but wholesome household of 14.
Take Two: Beyond a fleeting line about Martin's (failed) vasecto-my after the first 10 children — followed by the arrival of twins, who are readily welcomed into the family — Cheaper provides a refreshingly positive depiction of an affectionate couple open to life on a large scale, even satirizing a judgmental mother of one who scorns the prolific parents. Very brief mild sensuality, mild crude language and slapstick violence.
Final Take: The moral that family is what really matters often feels insincere in family films, but here's a wholesome, feel-good family comedy that means it.
BIG FISH (Columbia) Director: Tim Burton. Albert Finney, Billy Crudup, Jessica Lange. (PG-13)
Take One: Billed as a celebration of imagination and stories, Burton's trippiest film to date incorporates whimsical, poetic imagery into its account of the strained relationship between a garrulous storyteller (Albert Finney) and his estranged son (Billy Crudup), who wants to know what's real.
Take Two: Finney's bigger-than-life imagination is meant to charm, but he seems to live so much in his own inner world that he's unable to engage people who are unwilling or unable to join him there — even his son. He's a faithful and even doting husband, yet his quirky obsessions make him a rather absent one. Imagery includes some shadowy nudity.
Final Take: I don't buy this Fish story, which picks up where Secondhand Lions left off by saying not only “Who cares what's real? ‘Believe’ whatever you like!” but even “Stories are more interesting than reality, so hang reality and enjoy the stories.”
THE LAST SAMURAI (Warner Bros) Director: Edward Zwick. Tom Cruise, Ken Watanabe, Tony Goldwyn. (R)
Take One: Think Dances With Wolves in post-feudal Japan, with samurai as the new American Indians, a Westernophile emperor recapitulating the crimes of the white man in North America and Cruise in the Costner role as an American soldier who goes native.
Take Two: Unlike Costner's Indians, Cruise's samurai friends feel obliged to make a suicidal last stand against foes with automatic weapons that their code won't allow them to use. Is this an ideal to celebrate? (For that matter, shouldn't there be some acknowledgement of how the Japanese peasantry fared under the samurai?) At least the inevitable romance between Cruise and the widow of a samurai he slew goes no further onscreen than a stolen kiss.
Final Take: Though a well-mounted tribute to Kurosawa-style epic mayhem, the film's uncritical celebration of the samurai code is unconvincing, as is the depiction of an American screen icon as the ultimate hero and embodiment of Japanese principles.
ELF (New Line) Director: Jon Favreau. Will Ferrell, James Caan, Bob Newhart. (PG)
Take One: Though raised at the North Pole as an elf, Buddy (Ferrell) learns he's actually human and heads back to the human world to try to connect with his dad (Caan), a Scrooge-like businessman on Santa's “naughty” list.
Take Two: Of course Elf doesn't touch on the real meaning of Christmas, but do we really want Santa and his elves trying to teach us religion? Fleeting mild bad language and slapstick violence.
Final Take: Most Christmas family comedies, like most films starring Saturday Night Live alumni, are lame if not objectionable. Improbably, Elf is a modestly clever, decent comedy that breaks both rules.
THE CAT IN THE HAT (Universal) Director: Bo Welsh. Mike Myers, Spencer Breslin, Dakota Fanning. (PG)
Take One: Another big-budget Seuss adaptation with a comic wearing lots of latex and hair, The Cat in the Hat at least looks charming and colorful where Ron Howard's Grinch was dark and gaudy.
Take Two: Dr. Seuss' prankster now does lame standup, Mom (Kelly Preston) is a single career woman and Alec Baldwin is an oily neighbor who wants to marry Mom and send her son packing. This is Dr. Seuss? Some rude language, mildly suggestive content, gross-out humor, mild black humor and cartoon violence.
Final Take: Other than production design, this Cat has little going for it, and dubious content leaves a bad taste.
Steven D. Greydanus, editor and chief critic of DecentFilms.com, writes from Bloomfield, New Jersey.
----- EXCERPT: A Register's-eye view of five current box-office leaders ----- EXTENDED BODY: Steven D. Greydanus ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Spotlight: The Gospel of John DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:The method of Philip Saville's The Gospel of John defies ordinary film criticism and indeed ordinary movie viewing. Dialogue and narration have been taken, verbatim and without omission or interpolation, from the American Bible Society's Good News translation of the fourth Gospel. Dramatically, this approach necessarily comes with certain trade-offs and limitations — but, as an artistic meditation on sacred Scripture, it represents a unique and worthwhile opportunity to experience the word of God in a new way.
The third production of a Toronto-based outfit called Visual Bible International, the three-hour Gospel of John has a number of strengths, including solid production values, strong acting, professional directing by Saville and engaging narration by Christopher Plummer.
Working with an advisory committee of scholars representing Catholic, Protestant and Jewish faiths and bringing expertise in Scripture studies, theology and archaeology, the filmmakers strove for accuracy in every aspect of the production. Though modestly budgeted, The Gospel of John looks remarkably authentic, from the meticulously researched costumes and artifacts to the exterior locations in southern Spain. Even the effective score incorporates instruments and musical textures from Jesus' day.
The challenge of portraying God incarnate has daunted screen actors since the dawn of cinema. Henry Ian Cusick's compelling performance is both warmly human and also authoritative, surprising, even polemical. Cusick's Jesus has the presence and confidence of a popular teacher unafraid to preach the same message to friend and foe, Jew and Roman, and easily transitions from addressing a large crowd to focusing entirely on a single individual.
The film's most pervasive weakness is, alas, the translation that provides the basis for the screenplay: The Good News Bible is neither literal nor literary, precise nor graceful. Still, the gist of John's narrative and presentation of Jesus' teaching remains intact, and the performances and visualizations help bring the sacred text to life. Well mounted and honorably executed, The Gospel of John is the most religiously significant film in years.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Steven D. Greydanus ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Weekly Video/DVD Picks DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:A Christmas Story (1983)
Recently released in a special-edition DVD, A Christmas Story can now be seen at home in wide-screen format. Special features include radio recordings by radio humorist Jean Shepherd, on whose stories the film is based.
Based on Shepherd's childhood memoirs about growing up in the Midwest in the 1940s, A Christmas Story is as heartwarming and nostalgic as its title suggests. Like many Christmas-themed movies, it offers no insight into the true meaning of Christmas, but it brims with insight into the human condition — particularly the condition of boys at Christmas time.
The tale shows us Christmas through the eyes of Ralphie Parker (Peter Billingsley), whose consuming desire is for “an official Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range-model air rifle.”
To this end he brings to bear all the intellectual prowess of a 9-year-old with one scheme after another to ensure that he will find one under the Christmas tree. Yet at every turn he meets the classic adult dismissal: “You'll shoot your eye out.”
With much affectionate humor, A Christmas Story recalls vividly what it was like to be a kid at Christmas in a more innocent era, when boys were liable to get their mouths washed out with soap for cussing.
A minor holiday classic.
Content advisory: Some crude language and mild profanity.
It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
A Vatican film list honoree in the category “Values,” Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life is perhaps the quintessential Christ-mas classic, notwithstanding its popular religious confusion about human beings becoming angels when they die.
Often remembered as sentimental holiday-themed “Capra-corn” celebrating such platitudes as “count your blessings” and “everyone can make a difference,” Wonderful Life is in fact leavened by darker themes and a more rigorous moral about self-sacrifice.
It's a Wonderful Life is in part about an oppressive relationship between a cruel rich man and a sympathetic, less well-to-do family man that results in supernatural intervention. But where A Christmas Carol was about the redemption of Scrooge, Wonderful Life is about its Bob Cratchitt, George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart), and his heroic virtue and consistently selfless choices, his dark night of the soul and his ultimate vindication.
Significantly, the dark alternate reality George Bailey experiences in the third act is not the result of something going fundamentally wrong with the world but the way things would have been had someone not prevented them. (“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”) Rich and satisfying, the film earns its feelgood ending.
Content advisory: Some tense family scenes; contemplation of suicide; brief inebriation.
Holiday Inn (1942)
Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire sing and dance their way through this slight but pleasant holiday-themed romantic comedy-musical, which casts the two entertainers as romantic rivals vying for the same woman — twice. Numerous Irving Berlin songs include the classic “White Christmas,” sung twice by Crosby (12 years before the less-satisfying film of that name). Astaire's fancy footwork, meanwhile, includes a literally explosive Independence Day tap-dance with a pocketful of firecrackers that go off when thrown to the ground.
True to type, Crosby plays nice and Astaire shallow: Jim (Crosby) loves his dance partner and wants to marry her and settle down, but Ted (Astaire) wants to dance with her and steals her away from Jim. Heartbroken, Jim retires to the Connecticut farm where he had hoped to settle down. He soon finds that show business is in his blood and hits on the novel idea of turning his farmhouse into a dinner theater that operates only on holidays.
Soon Jim has a new dance partner — and romantic interest — in Marjorie Reynolds. Naturally, that's when Ted shows up, having lost the last woman to a Texas millionaire. From there the story goes by the numbers, careful never to get in the way of big productions for every holiday on the calendar, especially Christmas.
Content advisory: Romantic complications; comic inebriation; a musical number involving blackface.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Steven D. Greydanus ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Weekly TV Picks DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:All times Eastern
SUNDAY, DEC. 21
Music for Christmas
EWTN, 10 a.m. & 1:30 p.m.
You'll find many Christmas carols and concerts on EWTN all this week. A top show today is Music for Advent and Christmas at 10 a.m., with the choir of St. Mary of Mount Carmel Church in Dunmore, Pa. Another is The Catholic University of America Christmas Concert 2003 at 1:30 p.m. (with a re-air Dec. 27 at 3 a.m.).
SUNDAY, DEC. 21
Ancient Discoveries
History Channel, 5 p.m.
This three-hour show explores sophisticated discoveries made by ancient Greek and Roman inventors, mathematicians and physicians.
MONDAY, DEC. 22
Great Performances: Sacred Arias
PBS, 9 p.m., 10 p.m.
The Basilica Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome is the setting for this concert by Andrea Bocelli. His selections include “Panis Angelicus,” the Gounod and Schubert versions of the “Ave Maria” and, with a children's chorus, “Silent Night.” Myung-whun Chung conducts the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecelia. First shown in 1999.
TUESDAY, DEC. 23
2003 Scrabble All-Star Challenge
ESPN2, 5 p.m.
Want to win those holiday Scrabble games with your family and friends? Get great words, tips and strategies from the experts in this contest. Re-airs Dec. 24 at 11 a.m.
WEDNESDAY, DEC. 24
Midnight Mass
Various networks, check local listings
Pope John Paul II celebrates midnight Mass at St. Peter's live on EWTN at 6 p.m. (with a re-air Christmas Day at 8 a.m.) and tape-delayed on NBC at 11:30 p.m. Then, right at midnight, tune in to Familyland TV for midnight Mass at beautiful St. Anne's Basilica in Scranton, Pa. (with a re-air at 5:30 a.m.).
THURSDAY, DEC. 25
Papal Christmas Message Urbi et Orbi
EWTN, 6 a.m. live
Pope John Paul II delivers his annual Christmas Day message Urbi et Orbi (to the city and the world) before a throng in St. Peter's Square. Re-airs tonight at 10 p.m. and on Dec. 26 at 3 a.m. and 10 a.m.
FRIDAY, DEC. 26
Christmas at Belmont
PBS, 10 p.m.
Christmas carols and classical and “modern” holiday tunes are on the program as singer Brenda Lee hosts a concert at the historic Belmont Mansion in Nashville.
SATURDAY, DEC. 27
All-American Festivals
Food Network, 7:30 p.m.
Its main link to the holidays is as an indispensable munchie for parties. But the peanut has countless more uses besides, as we learn at the National Peanut Festival, held Oct. 31-Nov. 8 in Dothan, Ala., the heart of American peanut-growing country.
Dan Engler writes from Santa Barbara, California.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Dan Engler ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Students Preview 'Passion of Christ' at Conference DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:BOSTON — Students attending the fourth annual Taking the Pulse conference in Boston got an added bonus — a chance to view a preview of director Mel Gibson's upcoming film The Passion of the Christ.
Steve McEveety, the film's producer, brought to the event his insight into religion in Hollywood along with an early version of the film, set to be released Ash Wednesday, Feb. 25. The film chronicles Christ's last hours on earth, from his agony in the garden to his crucifixion and resurrection.
After previewing the film for the audience, McEveety fielded questions from participants.
With the barrage of media attention surrounding the film, much of it controversial, the preview allowed students to make their own judgments about the movie and its potential impact.
“There are many Christians who are on the fence,” said Tim Leslie, a senior at Boston College, “and I think this movie will push them over because it says, ‘You know what? Jesus was not just some guy who lived a long time ago and did such and such things. This is really what happened, and maybe we should realize it and refocus.’”
Refocusing was what the Taking the Pulse weekend conference was all about.
Approximately 100 students representing 23 schools from across the United States and Canada journeyed to Boston for the event. The weekend gave students a chance to recharge their spiritual lives before heading back to the mission field — their campuses.
Prayer and Reflection
The conference included a half-day spiritual retreat and daily Mass, giving students time to evaluate and focus on their relationships with the Lord as well as giving them the chance to strengthen existing friendships and build new ones.
For many of those who attended Taking the Pulse, finding time to set aside for prayer and reflection in the midst of packed student schedules was challenging but needed.
“College is very stressful,” said Raffaelina Gamen, a junior at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. “Giving these two days to the Lord, letting go of every concern and spending that time working on my relationship with God helped to restore an inner peace in my life.”
The event was organized through Compass, a network of Catholic college students devoted to transforming college culture, integrating religion and faith into student life, and energizing young Catholics in their faith. Students evangelize students and are supported in their efforts through Compass resources and the network of other like-minded students across the United States and Canada.
The group stayed at St. John's Seminary in Brighton, Mass., near the Boston College campus. The celebration of Mass and a half-day silent retreat, led by members of Regnum Christi for the women and Legionaries of Christ for the men, set the tone for the weekend.
“It was awesome to be able to get away and think and pray,” said Miguel Melendez, a sophomore at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. “That time helped me come to terms with a lot of things in my life and in my relationship with God.” Melendez was among seven students from the academy to make the trek to Boston for the conference.
“Being able to share the joys and struggles of life with students who are experiencing many of the same things is incredible,” said Loyola-New Orleans junior Jenica Tramontana. “The friendships that are made through Compass and events like Taking the Pulse are based on truth. They're not superficial relationships. We're all united in Christ. It truly blows my mind.”
Taking the Pulse is one of the organization's national events. Other Compass-sponsored events include a month-long fellowship program held in Europe during the summer and regional retreats. Individual Compass chapters also sponsor events on their respective campuses.
Each Compass event is centered on prayer and study of the Catholic faith. By developing a base of knowledge and love for the faith, students are then better equipped to go to their campuses and share that knowledge and love for Christ through the Church.
“Compass events are always amazing and they always seem to come right when you need them the most,” Tramontana said. “You can't encounter Taking the Pulse and Compass and not be changed completely.”
Cecilia A. Oleck is a senior majoring in communications at St. Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Cecilia A. Oleck ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Last-Minute Faith, Hope and Laughs DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:AMAZING GRACE FOR THE CATHOLIC HEART
Edited by Jeff Cavins, Matthew Pinto and Patti Armstrong
Ascension Press, 2003
300 pages, $12.99
To order: (800) 376-0520 www.ascensionpress.com
Looking for a last-minute stocking stuffer? Here's one that will delight the reluctant reader on your shopping list as it joyfully witnesses the Catholic faith to anyone who picks it up.
The second in a planned Amazing Grace series, Amazing Grace for the Catholic Heart presents 101 short, uplifting anecdotes and testimonies that showcase the Catholic life in a light, Reader's Digest style. A simple theme binds the brief items together: Through grace, God keeps his promises.
“Grace cannot be seen, touched or otherwise perceived by our senses,” the authors write in the introduction. “Yet we Catholics believe it is as real as the words on this page. Grace gives supernatural life to our souls, empowers us to live virtuous lives and transforms our hearts. Grace is truly amazing.
“The proof of grace is found not only in Scripture and the Catechism but in the lives of everyone who has ever lived, including your own life! The dozens of people whose stories appear in this book have experienced miraculous events, divine interventions and sublime joys that could only have come from the source of all grace, God Himself.”
The items are grouped into seven sections: “With God All Things Are Possible,” “Family Matters,” “He Picked Me Up When I Was Down,” “The Lighter Side of Grace,” “His Healing Touch,” “Life Is Precious” and “Expect the Unexpected.” Each one rolls out its entries in a way that will inspire readers to more fully live their faith — and to share it with greater enthusiasm.
I was hooked on the book from its very first entry. In “The Badge of Grace,” a woman tells the stirring story of her brother, Bill, a U.S. Marine who served in Vietnam and had a devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Bill died in the war, but God kept his promise to make sure he received the sacraments before breathing his last. Sound mundane? Far from it. The family found out that the priest who administered last rites had himself died 17 days before Bill.
In another especially gripping entry, Jeff Cavins writes about a 13-year-old named Tabitha who was charged in the murder of another teen. The other girl had been bullying Tabitha, who got this advice from her brother: “The next time she tries it, run into the house and get a steak knife. Then, pretend you're going stab her, but only tap her on the shoulder with it. That will scare her and she'll leave you alone.”
Tragedy ensued and, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, Cavins was there to be Christ for Tabitha. He describes how she saw the reality of God's love in the “holy hug” of a simple man of faith.
“Realizing the Lord had saved me to touch this young girl's life was very emotional,” Cavins writes. “Although everyone in Dayton knew about Tabitha, no one had come to visit. It made me think: What good is it to be the body of Christ unless we are going to act like the body of Christ? If we would simply act like the body of Christ — be His arms, His legs, His voice — lives would change. Christ is looking to us to do His work if we will simply yield to His will and take the risk of loving others. Once we do that, at any hour on any day … Jesus can use us.”
As I plowed through this book at breakneck pace, I realized I was not merely reading well-told stories cooked up to engage my mind and stir my heart. I was meeting my brothers and sisters: real people overcoming real problems as they discover, love and serve the Lord. With words as well as actions, these people “exhort one another daily while it is still ‘today’” (Hebrews 3:13). If you let them, they'll encourage you, too. Not a bad day's work for a stocking stuffer.
Bill Zalot writes from Levittown, Pennsylvania.
----- EXCERPT: Weekly Book Pick ----- EXTENDED BODY: Bill Zalot ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Campus Watch DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:Powerful Lineup
FOCUS, Dec. 3 — Among the speakers at the upcoming Fellowship of Catholic University Students' National Student Leadership Conference is Jim Caviezel, who plays Jesus in the upcoming Mel Gibson film The Passion of Christ.
Other scheduled speakers for the conference, Jan. 16-18 in Denver, are theologian Scott Hahn and Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver.
The Fellowship of Catholic University Students is a program designed to help college students incorporate the faith into their everyday lives.
For more information visit www.focusonline.org.
Random Testing
Parents must pay $60 for the test, which will use hair samples collected by school counselors and test for illegal drugs, the paper reported.
While many students objected to such testing, at least one parent thought it was a good idea.
“As a parent, it's a great thing,” said Rose Mayerbock, mother of a St. Patrick junior. “There are parents that don't necessarily realize that their child could be on something. … I am very lucky because I trust that my kids are not.”
Highest Bidder?
The decision by the Archdiocese of Boston to sell some of its property to pay off sexual-abuse scandal settlements has set Boston College officials in motion to bid for the property.
The college has long eyed the property, the newspaper reported, and all indications point to the college getting its wish.
College and Church officials, politicians and real estate executives said the location of the property — across from archdiocesan headquarters — as well as its religious affiliation and resources were all reasons the college would most likely wind up owning the property.
On Air
NAPLES (Fla.)
Dec. 5 — Ave Maria University in Naples, Fla., has agreed to buy a local radio station for $4.9 million. The school will use the station to promote its news and activities.
The station will have Catholic content and reach several communities in the area, the newspaper reported.
For now Ave Maria plans to run the station under a licensing management agreement, which means it will have another organization run it until the university decides to fully take it over.
Catholic President
“I've been a Catholic my whole life, so [taking over at Mount St. Mary's] has been a joy,” Powell told the Baltimore daily. “The only difference here is that I get the chance to walk to Mass rather than drive to Mass.”
Powell took over as leader this year after serving as dean and professor at such schools as the University of Connecticut and Vanderbilt University.
He has little say on what goes on at the seminary, however, whose curriculum is set by the Church and day-to-day operations administered by its rector.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Theologians in Holy Land See Reconciliation as a Catholic Vocation DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:JERUSALEM — A document of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem says that the vocation of Catholics in the Holy Land is reconciliation.
The text, prepared by the diocesan theological commission, addresses three issues: “violence and terrorism, our relations with the Jewish people in the Holy Land and our relations with the Muslims in the Holy Land.”
Analyzing the topic of violence, the commission of Catholic theologians, presided over by Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah of Jerusalem, states: “We have always condemned and we continue to condemn all acts of violence against individuals and society.
“We have condemned and we continue to condemn especially terrorism, acts of extreme violence, often organized, which are intended to injure and kill the innocent in order that such terrorism yield reluctant support for one's cause,” it says.
“In the case of terrorism,” it adds, “there are two guilty parties: first, those who carry out such action, those who plan and support them; and second, those who create situations of injustice that provoke terrorism.
“God is always calling the disciples of Jesus Christ to be a community of reconciliation,” the Catholic theologians clarify. “We are called to be the prophetic bearers of the good news of peace to those far away and those close at hand. We accomplish this not through acts of violence but through concrete gestures of peacemaking, which oppose a culture of death and contribute to a culture of life.”
In the second place, the document analyzes relations with Jews in the state of Israel. It recalls that the Church shares with the Jewish people the roots of faith of the Old Testament. “With the entire Church, we regret the attitudes of contempt, the conflicts and the hostility that have marked the history of Jewish-Christian relations,” the theologians state.
The great challenge Christians face in the Holy Land, which in the vast majority is Arab in origin, is of coexistence with their elder Jewish brothers, as the state of Israel and the Arab world have been in conflict since 1948.
“As a Church, we witness the continued Israeli military occupation of Palestinian lands and the bloody violence between the two peoples,” the Catholic theologians affirm. “Together with all men and women of peace and good will, including many Israeli and Palestinian Muslims, Christians and Jews, we are called to be both a voice of truth and a healing presence.
“The worldwide Catholic Church teaches that dialogue with the Jewish people is distinct from the political options adopted by the state of Israel,” they clarify. “The existence of the state of Israel and its political options should be envisaged not in a perspective which is itself religious but in their reference to the common principles of international law.
“We are already engaged in searching out our Jewish brothers and sisters in an exciting dialogue from our proper common context— that of a land sadly torn by war and violence,” they say.
The text also analyzes relations between Christians and Muslims, a coexistence governed by two principles: “First, all of us who are Arabs, whether Christian or Muslim, belong to one people, sharing a long history, a language, a culture and a society.
“Second, as Christian Arabs, we are called to be witnesses to Jesus Christ in Arab and Muslim society. We are called likewise to be witnesses in Jewish Israeli society, too,” the Catholic theologians add.
Although they recognize that in daily life relations between Christians and Muslims “are generally good,” they point out the difficulties such as “mutual ignorance” and a trend toward “Islamization among certain political movements, which endangers not only Christians but also many Muslims who desire an open society.
“When Islamization constitutes an infringement on the liberty of Christians, we must insist that our identity and our religious liberty be respected,” the theologians state.
“In this situation, we seek to help our Arab faithful, who are the majority of our flock, in integrating and living the complexity of their identity as Christians, as Arabs and as citizens, in Jordan, Palestine and Israel,” the document continues.
“The fact that Christians are statistically a small community does not in any way condemn them to irrelevance or to despair,” the document adds. “We encourage all our faithful to take their rightful place in public life and to help build up society in all its domains.”
----- EXCERPT: Document of Commission in Jerusalem ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A Picture-Perfect Christmas DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:Perhaps it was my pregnancy. Whatever the reason, at the start of the Advent season last year, as I lay on the couch in a nauseated haze of morning sickness, I hatched a wild plan. This was the year, I told myself, that I would get the children's Christmas picture done early.
Usually, I wait until the last possible moment to have their picture taken. It's tradition. Throughout December, as I collect photographs of other people's charming families, my anxiety builds. Other people's children seem perfectly poised. They model reindeer sweaters and sport flawless haircuts. They sit in neat rows, smiling radiantly. My children, it seems, are never all clean and dressed and smiling at the same time. (I'd settle for just not crying.)
Last year, however, I decided I would manage to get all my children to strike a perfect pose at precisely the same moment in front of a professional photographer. Not only that, but I determined to do it weeks before Christmas. I made an appointment for my five little angels and triumphantly marked the date on the calendar.
I should have known better.
On the afternoon before the day of our appointment, as I was tidying up the bathroom, I made an alarming discovery. A pair of kitchen scissors lay on the counter surrounded by dark clumps of hair. Based on the color of the hair and my children's ages, I made a quick guess. “Ambrose Augustine!”
Dutifully, 4-year-old Ambrose appeared in the doorway. His large green eyes blinked at me innocently. Random patches of baldness mottled his handsome head.
Even with a close crew cut, it took a couple of weeks before Ambrose's home-style haircut was smoothed out enough for a Christmas picture.
The night before our new appointment, I was awakened by 3-year-old Juliette at my bedside. “I don't feel good,” she whimpered. I raced her to the bathroom. Even as I stood holding my vomiting daughter over the toilet, I thought, “This cannot be a stomach virus.” My hopes of a passing case of indigestion were dashed before morning when two of my other children got up and made it to the bathroom just in time.
On the phone the next day, I begged and bargained my way into an all-too-familiar, last-minute appointment less than a week before Christmas. When the day arrived, I bathed, dressed and groomed the children. I duped my husband into accompanying us and together we drove to the studio. We lined up the children in front of a female photographer who looked altogether too young and inexperienced to pull off the miracle I had in mind.
To encourage smiles, my heroic husband stood behind the camera waving his arms wildly and pretending to fall down. His audience hooted with laughter. Instead of “cheese,” he instructed the kids to shout pint-sized obscenities such as “poopy diaper.” They screeched with pleasure.
“Take the picture!” I urged the hesitant photographer as baby Stephen tired of his father's foolishness and reached for me. “It's not going to get any better!”
Afterward, using a process of elimination, we chose a sort of halfway-decent, off-center, not-as-bad-as-the-others picture and ordered an overpriced package of wallet-sized copies. We received the prints just in time to stuff them into Christmas cards and rush them into the mail. So much for perfection.
On Christmas Eve, we put the kids to bed early and stayed up sipping eggnog and wrapping last-minute gifts until 11 o'clock, when we woke them.
We coaxed the kids into red-velvet dresses, buckle shoes and dress pants. We brushed their hair, bundled them into winter coats and carried them, yawning, through the cold black night to their car seats. “Jesus is born!” we whispered as we entered the church.
And he was. Our Lord was present in the manger, on the altar and in our hearts.
Slumped in fuzzy pajamas, Stephen dozed on my shoulder. Pungent incense filled our nostrils and the smoke climbed slowly toward heaven. Joyous carols announced our Savior's birth as I watched candlelight flicker in my children's eyes. I closed my eyes to fix the moment in my memory.
Here at last was my perfect Christmas picture.
Danielle Bean writes from Center Harbor, New Hampshire.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Danielle Bean ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: I'll Be in Quebec for Christmas DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:If Quebec City is, as many claim, “the jewel of North America,” then its most sparkling facets are its historic Catholic sites.
And it's the Christmas season that brings out the best in those.
Right now most of the old city is animated and magically decorated. There are concerts, Christmas markets, choirs and outdoor-theater presentations.
Everyone's first stop should be Notre Dame de Quebec Basilica-Cathedral near the historic Chateau Frontenac Hotel. The church has been destroyed by fire three times since it was first built in the 17th century. Each time it has arisen from the ashes, being rebuilt according to the original design.
Here a spectacular one-hour sound-and-light show titled “Act of Faith” is presented in the church for groups by reservation in December plus several times a day from Dec. 26 until New Year's Eve (and daily from May through October). The audience is supplied with earphones providing information in French or English. As the drama unfolds, an ingenious arrangement of laser images, multi-source projections, majestic scenery and music draws us into the story of the church's arrival in New France and, in particular, the parts played by Bishop Francois de Laval (Quebec's first bishop), Mother Marie of the Incarnation and other religious pioneers. Bishop Laval's diocese was enormous: It included all of North America.
The sound-and-light spectacular ends with the Hosanna — announcing the triumph of the faith, the church having been presented as a living symbol of the durability of that faith.
Christmas Eve Masses will be celebrated at Notre Dame at 8 (with the choir from la Petite Maitrise), 10 p.m. and midnight. On Christmas Day, Mass is at 9.30 a.m.
Also at the cathedral are Bishop Laval's funeral chapel, with a beautiful steel coffin bearing a life-size sculpture of this saintly priest who died in 1709 at age 86. Several priceless artifacts such as the mitre and chalice given to him by King Louis XIV of France are on display. You'll find also a small chapel to the Jesuit martyrs containing relics and an unusual crucifix designed by Paul La Croix. An animation center explores the extraordinary life and work of Bishop Laval. Next door is the seminary he established, still standing after 350 years, the principal location for priestly formation for many generations of young men.
Across the street, an impressive statue of Bishop Laval is the focal point of the park whose roadway is surrounded by horse-drawn carriages waiting to take visitors through the streets of Old Quebec City (Lower Town).
Across the street is the Musee de l'Amerique-Francaise, in which is housed the chapel of the original 1663 Laval seminary. A rich display of liturgical vestments is here, as are free afternoon concerts. Call the museum at (418) 692-2843 for a schedule.
And, speaking of museums, if you want to know more about the place of the Catholic faith in French-Canadian life both now and in the past, view the permanent exhibits at the Museum of Civilization. On display till March of next year is a highly praised exhibit called “Gratia Dei: A Journey Through the Middle Ages.” It really brings alive the lives of peasants, rulers and clergy in a time of crusade and pilgrimage. Call (418) 643-2158 for hours and information.
Blessing of the Bread
From there, you should visit Notre-Dame-des-Victoires in Lower Town, built on the grounds of the house of Samuel de Champlain. Bishop Laval had this church built because it was impossible for women and children to climb the cliff in the winter to the larger basilica. Its name commemorates the victories obtained from the Blessed Virgin on two occasions during French-English conflicts. The altar, in the shape of a turret, contains a relic of St. Lawrence, on whose feast day Jacques Cartier named the great river.
On Jan. 3, feast of St. Genevieve, patron saint of Paris, there is a blessing of 1,000 loaves of bread, commemorating her aid in halting deaths by scurvy in the 1600s. Pieces of the bread are distributed to people who come from far and wide. It is not eaten but kept. The saying is, “If you keep a piece in your purse, you won't lack food or money.” On Christmas Eve, Mass is at 7:30, 9 and 10:30 p.m., and at midnight. On Christmas Day, Mass is at 10.30 a.m. Concerts are held every Sunday in December at 2 p.m. A special Christmas concert with Les Rhapsodes will be held at the Eglise des St.-Martyrs Canadiens on Dec. 13 at 8 p.m.
Don't overlook the Christmas decorations at Quebec City's convent/museums. The Ursuline Motherhouse has a museum documenting the life of Mother Marie de L'Incarnation. That remarkable woman, a widow, left a young son in France in order to come to New France and found the first school for girls in North America. The chapel here is decorated with sculpted 18th-century wooden ornamentation. When Marie was beatified in 1980, Pope John Paul II called her “the mother of the Canadian Church.”
Montcalm, the French general killed in the decisive 1759 battle of the Plains of Abraham, which was finally won by the British, is buried in the Ursuline Chapel. Mother Marie's son sent relics of his mother from Paris to this convent, and they are also kept here on the altar of the Sacred Heart.
The Hotel Dieu Museum, operated by the Augustine Sisters, traces the founding of North America's first hospital and the history of medicine in Quebec, and the life of foundress Catherine de Saint-Augustin. The convent's old wooden staircase is considered one of the most imposing existing examples of 17th-century North American architecture.
What would a French-Canadian Christmas be without a traditional display of the Nativity? This year around Dec. 27, the Corporation of Religious Heritage will exhibit several great ones. In Charlesbourg, just outside Quebec City, from Dec. 1 till Jan. 5, there will be an outdoor display of more than 50 crèches, “Noel au Trait-Carre,” at the Moulin Des Jesuites with Christmas concerts as well. Also, at the Bibliotheque Gabrielle-Roy in Quebec City, Crèches d'ici et d'ailleurs (Nativity scenes from here and abroad), features 150 cribs from all over the world, fashioned from wood, leather, glass, shells, stones and even banana peels. Visitors can also participate in workshops here. This runs from Nov. 28 through Jan. 4.
That's just a taste of all that's going on in Quebec City's celebration of the newborn King. For more, go to www.quebecregion .com on the Internet.
My memories of Quebec City at Christmas time have lasted a lifetime. Yours would, too.
Joyeux Noël!
Lorraine Williams writes from Markham, Ontario.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Lorraine Williams ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: Family Matters DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:Perseverance Power
Q
Most experts emphasize the importance of consistency in good discipline. I've also heard you talk about perseverance. Is it just as important?
A
The value of perseverance depends solely upon one question: Perseverance in what? Perseverance in nagging, reminding, cajoling, pleading, over-reasoning, threatening and/or emotional assaults is more than worthless. It is counterproductive. It simply prolongs bad discipline habits that will teach Constance to persevere in ignoring or defying us. Excess words are the illusion of real discipline, so perseverance in talk leads mostly to frustration for both parents and kids. In short, when it comes to discipline, perseverance in words is bad.
Perseverance is good — indeed; it's of the highest value — when its partner is consistency. If we define consistency as reliably putting consequences upon misconduct, then perseverance is consistency over time, sometimes a very long time. Perseverance is the willingness to do what it takes for as long as it takes to teach the desired lesson.
Let's say that talking on the phone is a challenge for you. Not because you're socially awkward, but because your kids are like Pavlov's dogs. The bell rings and they get rude, rowdy and interrupt so much that you salivate in anger. Enough! You decide.
“Alexander and Belle, we have a new house rule,” you tell them. “When I'm on the phone, you will be respectful. If not, I will calmly excuse myself from the call, escort you to your rooms for the rest of the call and maybe then some. Please don't resist, get louder or come out. You'll be grounded for the day if you do.”
How long will you have to persevere in enforcing your rule before you get peace on the phone? 25 calls? 55 calls? 255 calls? I really can't predict. And at one level the number is not relevant. Your goal is to do what you said. In time (2023?) your kids will learn to cooperate.
Routinely I tell my clients: A simple approach used consistently with stick-to-itive-ness almost always works better than the most brilliant approach tried erratically or briefly.
Let's get back to the phone for a minute. Good, durable discipline will keep the following from happening: Riiiiinnnnggg. “Oh, hello, Father … Well, of course we would be flattered to be the role-model family for the church-children love-in … Father, could you please excuse me for one minute? I'm going to have a little love-chat with the children ..”
The mouthpiece is covered, the teeth are gritted. And then: “Get away from one another, you little brats. When I get off the phone, you're both going to be sorry you got out of bed this morning. I mean it — you are both toast!”
Uncover mouthpiece. Un-grit teeth. “Oh, what's that, Father? No, that was just our neighbor. She always talks to her children that way. Yes, we will pray for her; she needs a lot of prayer.”
Perseverance in real discipline — calm, resolute action — leads to less discipline. Perseverance in fake discipline — lots of words powered by emotion — leads to more discipline. Perseverance is only valuable in pursuit of real discipline.
Dr. Ray Guarendi is the father of 10, a psychologist and an author.
He can be reached at drray.com.
Reach Family Matters at familymatters@ncregister.com
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Dr. Ray Guarendi ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Head-Start Mothering DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:Facts of Life
Children whose moms stay home during the preschool years develop faster emotionally and score better in reading and math tests. That's according to a major study by Britain's Institute for Social and Economic Research. The study also found that the disadvantage for kids of working mothers starts in grade school and persists into early adulthood, with lower educational attainment, higher unemployment and greater likelihood of childbearing early in life.
Source: The Guardian, Nov. 14 Register illustration by Tim Rauch
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: The Register's Clip-Out, Photocopy and Pass-On Guides for Advent DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:Quick Tip
Own these books: The Bible (get a Catholic edition) and the Catechism of the Catholic Church (available through several publishers, first released in the 1990s).
Quick Tip Authors to try: Fulton Sheen, G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, St. Thérèse of Lisieux. Newer: Mother Teresa (books of her sayings), Pope John Paul II (especially Crossing the Threshold of Hope). Scott Hahn, Karl Keating, Peter Kreeft.
An Act of Faith
O my God, I believe in you, and all that your Church teaches, because you have said it, and your word is true.
An Act of Hope
O my God, I hope in you for grace and for glory because of your mercy, your promises and your power.
An Act of Love
O my God, I love you above all things, and for your sake I love my neighbor as myself.
Precepts of the Church
• Attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation.
• Confess your sins at least once a year.
• Humbly receive your Creator in holy Communion at least during the Easter season.
• Provide for the material needs of the Church, according to your abilities.
• Observe the prescribed days of fasting and abstinence (Ash Wednesday, Good Friday and Fridays in Lent). (See the Catechism, Nos. 2041-2043.)
Season 1
Advent, starting four Sundays before Christmas, is a time to prepare for Christmas. Use it as a time to invite people to return to church.
Season 2
Christmas season lasts until Epiphany Sunday in January. Make a New Year's resolution to better follow the precepts of the Church.
Season 3
Lent lasts from Ash Wednesday to Palm Sunday. Make a daily sacrifice. Try going to Mass every day.
Season 4
Easter season is longer than Lent because Christ's resurrection is the basis of our faith. Every Sunday recalls Easter. Reserve Sundays only for your family.
Quick Tip
Family planning using moral (and effective) new methods (not rhythm) means a woman won't feel used or suffer side effects, and a man will be less inclined think of her as a sex object and take more responsibility for the consequences of sex. To learn more:
One More Soul
www.onemoresoul.com (800) 307-7685
Season 5
Ordinary time includes May, the month dedicated to Mary; October, the month of the rosary; and November, the month of the dead. Get a Catholic calendar and follow special feast days.
Quick Tip
The poor are very close to Christ — and he will judge us on how we serve them.
Volunteer: Contact your parish or local Knights of Columbus.
Donate: Body and soul are one. Choose service organizations based on effectiveness and fidelity to the Church.
The Ten Commandments
1. I am the LORD your God: you shall not have strange gods before me.
2. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.
3. Remember to keep holy the LORD'S Day.
4. Honor your father and your mother.
5. You shall not kill.
6. You shall not commit adultery.
7. You shall not steal.
8. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
9. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife.
10. You shall not covet your neighbor's goods.
----- EXCERPT: Basics of Catholic Living ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: The Christmas Life DATE: 12/21/2003 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: Dec. 21, 2003-Jan. 3, 2004 ----- BODY:Want Christmas to last all year? It can.
Getting Presents
A life of Mass, confession and prayer will bring you frequent gifts — and happy surprises about yourself, your loved ones and the world we live in Guaranteed.
Giving Gifts
There are many loving sacrifices in the Christian life: in our time, money, sexuality and good deeds. Experience the incomparable joy of self-giving — year-round.
Family Happiness at Christmas comes because Christ is the reason for our gathering. Prayer and faith will transform family life in every season.
The Life of Jesus
The story of the humble Savior inspires us each year. His life has many stories to inspire us; enough to fill every day of the year.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life --------