NEWS
2001 NEWS STORIES
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March
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January
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ROAMIN' CATHOLIC
Contents © 2001
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
NEWS
FEBRUARY 2001
"CLOTHED IN LOVE, SUMMONED BEYOND" is the theme of the 2001 Los Angeles archdiocese's Religious Education Congress, to be held February 15-18 at the Anaheim Convention Center. The theme, wrote Roger Cardinal Mahony in his welcome letter in the conference registration guidebook, "calls us to celebrate God's abundant love for each and all. In gratitude, we celebrate God's delight in us and give ourselves to God's desire for us. Transformed by and into love itself, we become creative, self-giving and deeply concerned about others as 'we clothe ourselves with heartfelt mercy, kindness, meekness and patience' (Col. 3:12)."
The congress, this year, offers, says the guidebook, "several eucharistic liturgies of different character," including: "Byzantine, Jazz, Hispanic, Nigerian/African-American, Asian and Young Adult." The keynote speaker is Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee, who in 1994 expressed his "inner turmoil" over the pope's declaration that women could not be priests. "I know that in the long run my obedience will result in a deepening of my faith," wrote Weakland, "but I state sincerely that it will not be done without much sacrifice and inner searching. Yet, as a bishop," continued the archbishop, "I would not be loyal to the Holy Father if I did not again point out the pastoral problems I now will face in my archdiocese. These have to be the object of my concern because many will be confused and troubled, discouraged and disillusioned, especially younger women and vowed religious, who still see this question as one of justice and equality, all protestations to the contrary notwithstanding? What effects will this declaration have on those men and women for whom the issue of the way in which the church exercises its authority is already a problem? Many are still wrestling with Humanæ Vitæ, and thus have difficulty accepting that a single person alone can decide what they must in faith accept. Are they now to be put against the wall, as it were, over this issue?"
Weakland has been friendly to Call to Action, a dissident group that calls for women's ordination, Church permission for remarriage of divorced Catholics, and recognition of homosexuality as a valid orientation, among others issues. Call to Action held its national conference in Milwaukee in early November, 2000, that featured Father Michael Crosby and Sister Helen Prejean -- both of whom are addressing the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress this year. Other congress speakers who follow the Call to Action circuit are Megan McKenna, Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia, and the sexologist team of Sister Fran Ferder and Father John Heagle. Father Richard Rohr will speak again at the congress this year. Rohr, a promoter of the Enneagram, is the founder and former director of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which promotes "wild man" initiation rituals for men and Zen Buddhist contemplation.
Of, perhaps, more conventional interest will be a talk given by Dr. Paul Ford of St. John's Seminary in Camarillo which will discuss the subject of "God's Delight in Us, God's Desire For Us" as found in the Scriptures, and in the writings of St. Augustine, Julian of Norwich, St. Therese of Lisieux, C.S. Lewis, and others. Father Alexei Smith, pastor of St. Andrew's Russian Catholic Church in El Segundo will dedicate his workshop to the spirituality of the Byzantine holy week.
For those interested in liturgical dance, Betsey Beckman, a "freelance liturgical dancer, choreographer, movement thereapist, author and storyteller," will address "dancing our liturgies to life." Participants of Beckman's workshop will "explore gesture, sign language, dance and drama as ways of involving our assemblies in moving prayer and dancing though death to new life."
According to the guidebook, the Religious Education Congress will feature 150 speakers who will offer "over 250 workshops in English, Spanish, Vietnamese and Mandarin." Dioceses across the country send their religious educators to the congress whose attendance every year reaches about 20,000.
OPT OUT. Campaign For California Families, the Pro-Family Law Center, Life Legal Defense Foundation, United States Justice Foundation, and the Pacific Justice Institute have drafted an exemption form to protect students against anti-family indoctrination in public schools. The form answers the state law, AB 1785, which introduces "sexual orientation diversity" education into California's public schools. Governor Gray Davis signed the bill last fall.
In a January 15 press release, the Campaign for California Families asserted, "based on parental rights provisions in state and federal law, the Student Exemption Form is the best opt-out form to date."
The form can be obtained from the above-mentioned organizations, most of which have the form posted on their web sites. Campaign for California Families, P.O. Box 782, Sacramento, CA 95812, (916) 443-1410, www.savecalifornia.com; The Pro-Family Law Center, 6060 Sunrise Vista Dr., #3050, Citrus Heights, CA 95611, (916) 676-1057, www.abidingtruth.com; Life Legal Defense Foundation, P.O. Box 2105, Napa, CA 94558, (916) 727-4396, www.LLDF.org; United States Justice Foundation, 2091 E. Valley Pkwy., #1-C, Escondido, CA 92027, (760) 741-8086, www.USJF.net; and Pacific Justice Institute, P.O. Box 4366, Citrus Heights, CA 95611, (916) 857-6900, www.pacificjustice.org.
DURING THIS YEAR'S legislative session state senator Ray Haynes (Riverside/San Bernardino) will be proposing specialty license plates with the message "Choose Life." Proceeds from the sales of these specialty plates are to go to organizations that promote adoption, not abortion. The "Choose Life" license plates were released last August in Florida and have soared to 13th place, passing 38 other specialty tags sold by the state. Sales have topped 10,000 (Florida statutes require specialty plates to sell 8,000 tags in any five-year period. For information about the Florida plates, contact www.choose-life.org; for information about the California plates --
BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE A CAMPAIGN PLEDGE? On December 18, Bishop Tod Brown of Orange mailed to 300 clergy and laity in the diocese a planning and feasibility study questionnaire that he prepared in conjunction with the Community Counselling Service Co., Inc. Its purpose, he explained, is to "help me prioritize our needs and indicate whether [Orange County Catholics] would support a major campaign to fund some or all of the proposed projects."
According to Brown, the proposed projects include purchasing land for parishes, building churches, renovating the chancery office (Marywood Center), funding Catholic education and supporting clergy. His preliminary estimate for the projects is $106-152 million.
The first part of the questionnaire asks the respondent how supportive he is of the bishop's agenda, while the second part gets down to dollars and cents: "Do you believe a $100 million [diocesan capital campaign] goal is attainable, in three- to five-year pledges, from all sources throughout the Diocese of Orange/Orange County?" asks the questionnaire. "Is it reasonable to assume that three out of ten (30%) of the [registered Catholic] households would be willing to give a gift? Is it reasonable to assume that parishioners would pledge an average gift of $35 per month for 36 months?"
The questionnaire follows reports in the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register that the diocese of Orange is preparing to purchase land in Santa Ana to build a new cathedral, which will replace Holy Family Cathedral in Orange, the "mother church" of the diocese.
THE TALLEST CHRIST IN THE WORLD. A non-profit group has been organized in Mexicali to raise money for the construction of a 130-foot-high statue of Christ the King that sponsors say will be the largest of its kind in the world. Plans call for erecting the monument on top of a 5,900-foot mountain peak along a winding road between Mexicali and Tecate called La Rumorosa.
"This Christ is a call to peace, a symbol of unity for the inhabitants of the three Californias, a recognition of the work of missionaries and a symbol of hope for the immigrants who come here from all parts of Latin America in search of a better future," said Ricardo Sánchez Lugo, president of the Patronato Pro-Construcción del Cristo Rey de las Californias, which has been chartered as a charity under Mexican law.
The statue will be fiberglass over a steel frame, with a 200-seat chapel below. Sánchez said the project will cost a little over a million dollars, and, when finished, will become the property of the diocese of Mexicali. Construction is scheduled to begin in March, and the project should be completed within a year, Sánchez said. Contributions can be sent to:
Cristo Rey de Las Californias, P.O. Box 5206, Calexico, CA 92232. For more information, the committee can be contacted by telephone in Mexicali at 566-4351 or 566-3914, or by email at cristoreycalifornia@hotmail.com.
CATHOLICS WHO "DEVIATE from traditional marriage norms" of the Church, said a January 5, 2001 National Catholic Reporter story, often leave the Church for "more liberal churches," but others find ways "to accommodate and belong" in the church of their upbringing.
A Los Angeles area lesbian couple featured by the Reporter have not only accommodated themselves to the Catholic Church, but have found welcome. Friends since high school, and later "lovers," Marta and Magal Alquijay-Perez had been a couple for twenty years before they adopted a young girl, Samantha. The adoption spurred them to return to the Catholic Church, but their childhood parish was unsatisfactory: it focused, they said, on "traditional, heterosexual families."
But then they found St. Dominic's in Eagle Rock, which offered an outreach to homosexuals. They saw a listing for a gay and lesbian outreach group in the church bulletin, and it "blew" them "away." When they presented the child, Samantha, for baptism, there was some problem, said Marta, "with the fact that Samantha has two moms." The pastor, however, "cleared that up," and Samantha was baptized and Magaly confirmed.
Another couple, John Falzone and David Spotts of Simi Valley, have been together since April 1990, according to the Reporter, and have adopted three children. Falzone, who works as a hairdresser, is Catholic, while Spotts, who fills the mother role, was born Mormon. "I felt some rejection" from the church, Falzone said, but he seems convinced that "now they seem to be coming around a little. They're not condoning my lifestyle but they're not shutting me out."
BEWARE OF THE DOCTOR. Father Charles Willingham, O.Praem., was the homilist for the annual Pro-Life Candlelight Procession and Mass on the feast of the Holy Innocents, December 28, at St. John the Baptist parish in Costa Mesa. Several hundred Catholics from throughout the diocese attended the event, including a half-dozen Norbertines from St. Michael's Abbey, El Toro, Father Charles' religious community.
In his presentation, Father Charles warned of the increasing incidence of euthanasia occurring in United States' health facilities, often without consent of patients. Motivating the death providers, declared the priest, is the desire to cut costs and increase profitability. Father Charles read testimonials from families with members who were victims or near-victims of euthanasia, and offered suggestions to the congregation to ensure that loved ones in hospitals don't become victims themselves.
ONE FRUIT OF THE JUBILEE YEAR has been a surprising debt-reduction move on the part of first world nations. The organization called Jubilee 2000, which has been calling for the first world to wipe out much or all of the onerous debt owed by developing countries, scored a victory in November when the United States agreed to forgive $535 million owed by 30 of the neediest countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa. Jubilee 2000 had not been alone in this effort; Pope John Paul II in his 1994 Apostolic Letter Tertio Millenio Adveniente, had called on rich nations to think about "reducing substantially, if not canceling outright, the international debt which seriously threatens the future of many nations."
European nations meeting in Cologne, Germany in 1999, had already moved to cut up to 70 percent of the debt owed by 33 needy nations, and the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund had developed plans to ease the debt burden of these countries. According to the Los Angeles Times, the Cologne agreement stipulated that "applicant countries would get relief only as they moved forward with economic and other reforms to fight poverty. Then, as loans were forgiven, the countries would be required to steer the savings into anti-poverty efforts." In the past, "economic reforms" for these countries has signified an opening of their borders to foreign investment. The Cologne agreement, Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Harvard Institute for International Development told the Times, "was a breakthrough when governments said, 'We have to do more'" -- but the red tape associated with the deal made it less than a "bold political agreement."
During the Jubilee, Pope John Paul hosted debt relief activists at his residence at Castle Gondolfo. There, the pope presented one of the activists, the performer Bono of the rock band U2, with white rosary beads, while Bono reciprocated by presenting his sunglasses to the pope. "To everyone's shock -- and the courtiers' dismay -- he put them on," said Bono. "He put them on and gave a wicked grin -- straight off the cover of Rolling Stone -- which I'm pretty sure is the most surreal moment of my waking life."
President Clinton joined in the movement, calling for $100 million in debt relief. Bono lobbied members of Congress, winning the support of such a prominent conservative as Senator Jesse Helms of South Carolina. In November 2000 Congress voted to approve $545 million in debt relief.
The repayment amount on the loans, noted the Times, far exceeds their actual value because of interest and inflation. Jubilee 2000, meanwhile, is continuing its efforts to get the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to further reduce the debt owed by poor nations, and to include more poor nations in their considerations for debt reduction.
A BAKERSFIELD WOMAN, who had been told by a doctor that she might give birth to a Down syndrome baby, had decided to abort the child until she spoke to a counslor at LifeSavers ministries, a Christian pro-life counseling center in Bakersfield.
A Bakersfield doctor had told the expectant mother, "Kimber," that the genetic screening for her 18 month child had revealed high levels of alpha feto-protein, which could indicate Down syndrome. Kimber, whose greatest fear was having a Down syndrome child, contacted an organization that helps the parents of such children. Because of several surgeries that the child might need, the organization informed her, the baby might be a severe financial drain on the family.
Although a Christian, Kimber spoke to her husband who said he would not stand in her way if she wanted to have an abortion. She contacted Planned Parenthood Associates who told her that, because hers would be a late term abortion, she would need to go to their hospital in Los Angeles. In explaining the abortion procedure, the Planned Parenthood staff member told her, "we give the baby a shot in the heart to kill it."
One of Kimber's friends encouraged her to contact LifeSavers. Speaking with Kimber on January 4, the counselor discovered that alpha-feto protein testing can be inaccurate and that if an ultrasound shows that a baby who tested high for the protein has normal measurements, the chances that it will have Down syndrome, or other common birth defects, are less than 0.1 percent. The counselor also found a woman who had adopted several children with birth defects, and who said she would be willing to adopt Kimber's child, as well.
After talking to her husband, who told her he preferred that she not have the abortion, Kimber decided not to abort her child. On January 5, an ultrasound revealed that Kimber's baby was developing normally. She still awaits the amniocentesis that will confirm whether or not the child has Down syndrome; but, regardless of the results, she has no intention of having an abortion.
One may contact LifeSavers Ministries at P.O. Box 40972, Bakersfield CA 93384; http://LifeSavers.glorifyJesus.com