ARTICLES
January 2000 ARTICLES
Contents © 2000
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
Some Will, Mahony Won't
Parental Notification Initiative Gets No Help From L.A.
BY CHRISTOPHER ZEHNDER
Catholics are coming to life in a big way," said an internal memo, an update on the signature gathering campaign for the Family Communication and Parental Responsibility Initiative. Catholics were coming to life -- except in the archdiocese of Los Angeles.
The October 14 memorandum touches on ways California dioceses have responded to assure parents the right to be notified if their child seeks abortion -- training and distribution for volunteers, public service announcements and newspaper interviews, and the contacting of parishes to "set up collection dates and recruit volunteer leaders." Dioceses, says the memorandum, have set up signature goals, except for Oakland, Sacramento, and Los Angeles, whose "goals are expected within days." The Los Angeles goal, said the memorandum, "should be substantial." The initiative needed to gather one million signatures by January 6 in order to qualify for the March 2000 ballot. The deadline for church gathered signatures set by the campaign was December 15.
Los Angeles archdiocese, indeed, according to another internal campaign memorandum, lagged behind other dioceses in acting on the initiative. While the archdiocese of San Francisco had a "well-organized campaign," and Fresno was showing "a strong commitment," Los Angeles archdiocesan staff informed the campaign that they were "currently working to set goals and work through procedures." Training, according to the memorandum, was "not yet scheduled;" the California Catholic Conference was "working with L.A, but [was] having difficulty getting commitments."
An October 28 memorandum sent by Monsignor Terrance I. Fleming, moderator of the curia and vicar general for the archdiocese of Los Angeles, to priests in the archdiocese, perhaps, did not help the signature gathering campaign in Los Angeles. The memorandum, entitled "Guidelines on Lobbying and Electioneering," was a reminder of the policies "that must guide parish activities" in the areas of political activity. According to Monsignor Fleming, "parish property should not be used to gather signatures for the purpose of qualifying initiatives for the ballot. While parish groups and individual parishioners can and should be encouraged to engage in such activity on issues that are consistent with the Church's social teaching, the actual collecting of signatures should not take place on parish or school property." Signature gathering, wrote Fleming can be done using public sidewalks, though "parish groups and individual parishioners are strongly encouraged to contact their pastors prior to organizing such activity."
According to Fleming parishes may participate in voter registration and voter mobilization efforts, even to the extent of allowing registration of voters on parish property, as long as such efforts do not appear "in any way to support or oppose a particular political party or candidate." Voter education providing parishioners "with a moral and ethical context to discuss and understand issues" is also allowed, though, again, such education "must focus only on issues and must avoid any direct or indirect support for or opposition to candidates and parties."
Roger Cardinal Mahony, in a letter to Jim Holman, publisher of the Mission, explained why the archdiocese has a policy forbidding the collecting of signatures for initiatives on parish property. "We have had several rulings from attorneys as well as the Internal Revenue Service," wrote the cardinal, "which advise us that it is not permissible for the Church to use Church grounds to qualify initiatives for local or state ballots.
"We have found," continued Mahony, "that it is permissible for us to recommend for and against propositions which have actually qualified for the ballot, especially those which have a very special moral or ethical dimension. But even then, we are not permitted to tell people how to vote. Rather, we must point out the pros and cons of a given ballot measure, point out its moral and ethical dimensions, and then state that we as the Bishops of California are either in favor or opposed. But we are not permitted to then urge and encourage our people to vote one way or the other. With a proposition dealing directly with life or death, such as abortion or euthanasia, we are able to point out much more forcefully the moral evil in the proposition."
The archdiocese's policy, said Holman, "has a chilling effect on pastors who think they cannot gather any signatures on church property, which is not true. It also makes it very hard to collect signatures. People are running to their cars, usually, and so if you are only allowed to stand on the sidewalk, you are not likely to gather many signatures. People won't stand in line and wait; they're in a hurry to get home."
Too, other dioceses have allowed signature gathering on parish property along with actively promoting the initiative. San Francisco archdiocese, which has set a goal of 75,000 signatures, has distributed literature and "speaking points" for homilies to parish pastors and contact people. The diocese of Fresno, with a goal of gathering 100,000 signatures, offered training sessions, open not only to Catholics, but to members of other denominations and initiative supporters, and sent mail and flyer packets to parishes. Signature gathering, too, occurred at parishes there. In Orange diocese, according to an initiative campaign memorandum, the campaign distributed petitions directly to each of the parishes, and parishes conducted telephone follow-ups. Bishop Tod Brown, too, wrote a letter to all parishes encouraging parishioners to join in the effort to promote the initiative.
In December, it was rumored that the Los Angeles archdiocese was to take some action. The Tidings, the archdiocesan newspaper, was to include the petition for the initiative as an issue insert. However, in a December 8 telephone conversation, a representative of the Tidings said of the insert, "as of now they [the editorial staff] have not done any of that -- maybe at the beginning of the year."
When a reporter called Father Gregory Coiro, media relations representative for the archdiocese of Los Angeles, for comment on this story, he was told that, according to a memorandum issued by Coiro's office, it is "the policy of the archdiocese not to speak to the Lay Catholic Mission."