NEWS
1999 NEWS STORIES
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ROAMIN' CATHOLIC
Contents © 1999
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
NOVEMBER 1999
GOVERNOR SIGNS CONTRACEPTION BILLS. On September 27, Governor Gray Davis signed into law two identical bills that will require health plans to cover contraception, even if employers funding those plans for their employees have religious objections to contraception. In the days leading up to the bill1s passage, critics of the proposals were asking for an extensive conscience clause that would protect religious organizations such as hospitals and schools from the provisions of the measures. However, the bills' authors, Assemblyman Robert Hertzberg (D-West Los Angeles) and state Senator Jackie Speier (Democrat-Daly City), inserted a less comprehensive conscience clause, which defines a religious employer as an entity that exists primarily for the inculcation of religious values and that serves primarily persons who share the religious tenets of the entity. The bills could force Catholic hospitals and schools to provide contraception, though it would leave Catholic parishes alone. The bill's primary sponsor was Planned Parenthood.
Governor Davis signed three homosexual rights bills on October 1, the same day he attended Clinton's Gay and Lesbian Presidential Dinner in Beverly Hills, which raised a reported $850,000 for Democrat congressional candidates. The three bills seek to tackle harassment in schools, authorize a new state domestic partners registry, and add sexual orientation to the list of illegal biases in housing and employment. In his prepared remarks before the dinner, Davis said, "These three bills will send a message across the country and around the world that we are determined to unleash the full potential of the human spirit here in California."
Governor Davis chose to show his centrism by an October 6 veto of a bill providing new funding for school-based medical clinics. The bill caused controversy because some said it would give schools the authority to provide contraceptives and other medical services to children without parental consent. Over two thousand parents converged on the state capitol on September 27 to protest the bill authored by Assemblywoman Susan Davis (D-San Diego). The opposition included groups such as the Parents National Network, Soccer Moms with a Brain, Common Sense Activism, and the Capitol Resource Institute. The rally drew state and national attention when radio stations in California and popular radio talk show host, Dr. Laura Schlesinger, promoted the rally in broadcasts. In his veto message Davis wrote, "While I believe that school-based health clinics have a legitimate role in providing health care to children, it is unclear how the placement of voluntary guidelines into statute will assist the formation or continuation of such programs."
BONO FLIPS, according to Republican National Committee for Life. Congresswoman Mary Bono (R-Palm Springs) voted against the Unborn Victims of Violence Act when it reached the House floor in early October. The bill, which passed the House, would make it a separate federal crime if a fetus is killed during the commission of a crime against a pregnant woman. The Washington Post (10-11-99) reported that "Oddly enough, Bono had voted in favor of the bill just two weeks before when it came up in the Judiciary Committee. 'I'm in trouble with both sides, no question,' Bono said. She said that 'at first blush' the bill made sense, but she decided that it had 'implications down the road for a woman's right to choose.'"
MORE THAN 1300 local citizens formed human prayer chains at major intersections throughout the Southland on Sunday, October 3, from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. to draw public awareness to the issue of abortion and the need for prayer and forgiveness. Called "Life Chain," the eight chains formed in Orange County and three in Los Angeles were part of more than 863 Life Chains formed across the United States and Canada at the same time.
Life Chain Sunday is held on the first Sunday in October each year. Each intersection site was chosen because of its close proximity to a place that either performs live abortions, or provides active abortion referrals to young girls. In Los Angeles and Orange County, most of these abortion or abortion referral sites are run by Planned Parenthood.
"I think Life Chain is significant for the community in that it pricks the conscience and the hearts of the people," said Pastor DeNicola of Calvary Community Church in Mission Viejo. "We need to provide a voice that says there are many people opposed to abortion."
"The purpose of Life Chain isn't so much to convince people who are pro-choice to switch sides," adds Lawndale Life Chain coordinator Gale Lee of Torrance. "It is for the body of Christ to humble themselves and pray, seeking God's intercession in this situation [of abortion].... The weapons are not of this world; they are spiritual to destroy the world's strongholds. We get lots of people who drive by honking their horns because they think what we're doing is great." San Juan Capistrano participant Joe Lupo agrees: "An overwhelming majority of people who drove by gave us thumbs-up enthusiastic support, so I think there's an overwhelming public support for this effort."
Pastor DeNicola noted that the abortion issue tears open the veneer of hearts and allows him to see the pain of regret, heartache and other emotions that one wouldn't normally notice if they saw the same person in a store or other place. He sees it even in the passersby at a Life Chain. "For me, [Life Chain] is a very prayerful experience. I pray for all the individuals who drive by, because for some of these people abortion brings up some very painful memories and experiences; you can see it in their faces. Abortion is an issue that hits at the core of our being."
For more information about Life Chain, call Dale or JoAnn Dieleman at (714) 771-1644, or Gale Lee, at (310) 715-2468.
LAST DECEMBER, CATHOLIC HEALTHCARE WEST said the eight non-Catholic hospitals they purchased in Southern California would be allowed to continue providing sterilizations. The Vatican, however, in September ordered an Arkansas Catholic hospital to cease allowing outside doctors to sterilize women, according to a September 29 Catholic World News report.
Several years ago, when St. Vincent Infirmary Medical Center in Little Rock purchased Columbia Doctors Hospital it ordered the cessation of all sterilizations and abortions there. However, last summer, sterilizations were resumed at Columbia in order to qualify for health insurance plans. Doctors at Columbia asked Bishop McDonald of Little Rock to allow doctors from the Arkansas Women's Health Center to perform sterilizations at Doctor's Hospital. McDonald allowed the sterilizations, though he called sterilization "an evil in itself" and asked the Vatican to review his approval. The Vatican rejected it. On Tuesday, September 28, St. Vincent's announced that it would no longer allow sterilizations at Doctor's Hospital. "We went into this thing knowing there was a possibility that we would be asked to discontinue the agreement," said Scott Mosley, spokesman for St. Vincent's. "That's what's happened."
A MEETING WITH ORANGE DIOCESAN officials, including Bishop Tod Brown, failed to assuage parishioners upset over the closing of St. Isidore Mission in Los Alamitos. The meeting, according to a Saturday, October 9 Los Angeles Times article, only angered parishioners more. According to Rebecca Cagle, one of the seven parishioners who attended the Thursday night meeting, Bishop Brown said that psychological counseling would be offered to those St. Isidore parishioners who would not accept the closing of the mission.
Monsignor Lawrence Baird, spokesman for the diocese, however, told the Times that Bishop Brown did not offer psychological counseling, but said a psychologist would be available to act as a "professional facilitator to help [parishioners] with the transition."
Bishop Brown, who released a statement Friday, October 8, expressing his "ardent hope" that the "Hispanic community will continue to grow with the available larger facilities at St. Hedwig's parish," is presumably not unused to anger arising from church closings and parish consolidations. As reported in the September 1998 Mission, as bishop of Boise, Idaho, Brown presided over the forming of "mega-churches" (entailing the closing of parishes and merging them with others), as well as the "twinning" and "clustering" of parishes (one priest serving two or more parishes).These actions were controversial among Idaho Catholics.
DOLORES MISSION in downtown Los Angeles is in trouble, according to the October issues of the Catholic Agitator, the publication of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker community. According to the Agitator, Dolores Mission has lost an annual federal grant of $90,000 which the mission used to keep its ministry to homeless laborers, Proyecto Guadalupana, alive. This year, according to a September 23 Los Angeles Times report, when the shelter applied for federal funding, it was beat out by three other local programs. The federal grant would have provided money for staff and services for the program that housed over 60 men in the church, along with providing medical care, English education, job training and other support services to immigrants.
Dolores Mission, which in 1986 opened as a sanctuary for illegal immigrants fleeing from war in Central America, today helps homeless men looking for work. According to a September 23 Los Angeles Times report, men are allowed to stay at the shelter for no more than a three month stretch. A savings account run by the project allows men to save money, which they will later use to rent an apartment. The men, too, help in the surrounding community by packaging food to distribute locally to needy families. These neighbors, in turn, help the homeless workers by cooking meals for them.
For more information on the mission and its current needs, one may contact Dolores Mission at 171 S. Gless Street, Los Angeles, CA 90033.
EMERGING FROM A "PERIOD of discernment," Sister Jeannine Gramick SSND announced, September 23, that she will obey the Vatican's order to cease her ministry with homosexuals. As reported in the September 1999 Mission (see "News September 1999"), the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith judged that Sister Gramick and her colleague, Father Robert Nugent, deviated from Church teaching on homosexuality and ordered their withdrawal from homosexual ministry. While Father Nugent, in July, acquiesced to the Vatican's demands, Sister Gramick said she had first to enter a discernment process to determine her course of action.
In a statement dated September 23, and addressed to Gramick's "religious sisters, colleagues, friends, and the entire Catholic community," the Sister of Notre Dame stated that while she gives "special attention to the Directives of our Church leadership as a source of God's call for me," obedience to God "is not reducible to blind acceptance of Church injunctions." Other avenues of God's call, wrote Gramick, include "Scripture, events and people in our lives, the signs of the times, the needs that wait to be answered in the world, our own experiences and values, our gifts and our vulnerabilities." God's call, she said, is "manifested by a deep conviction about the direction of one's life, a knowledge that something is right to follow because one believes that God is asking it."
In reflecting on the decision of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, Gramick wrote that she was "so overwhelmed by the authoritarian methods" that she "could not see the justice of God in the outcome." These authoritarian methods included what she deemed the Vatican's "disregard for the practice of subsidiarity" when, according to Gramick, the congregation refused to acknowledge two positive evaluations of her ministry made by her congregation in 1982 and 1985, and when the congregation dismissed objections "raised by the Superiors General and Provincial Leaders of the School Sisters of Notre Dame [SSND] and the Society of the Divine Savior [SDS] regarding the composition of the Vatican Commission which resulted in imbalance and bias." Finally, Gramick accused the Vatican of shifting from an investigation of her "public presentations on homosexuality to an intrusion" into her "private beliefs."
Claiming that the "Spirit of Jesus impels [her] to try to show lesbian and gay persons the loving compassionate face of God and our Church," and acknowledging that she saw "no benefits for lesbian and gay Catholics and their parents" if she passively acquiesced to the Vatican's decision, Gramick, nevertheless, said she thought it "more beneficial to minister on their behalf with the blessing of Church leadership than without it." Thus, Gramick wrote, she would work "within Church structures" to have the decision of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith "reconsidered and, hopefully, ultimately reversed." To this end, Gramick called on "all the People of God" to aid her in finding "creative, collaborative ways to lift the burden of this directive from my shoulders."
Finally, wrote Gramick, "for myself, I have asked God for humility, the stamina to stand alone if necessary, freedom from fear and from a desire for the esteem of others, and the wisdom to know when to bend and when to stand firm. For Church leadership, I have prayed for freedom and the courage to take risks. For lesbian and gay Catholics and their families, I have prayed for the healing of anger and hurt and for their full inclusion in the Church. For the People of God, I have prayed for an infusion of the Spirit of Vatican II."