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Contents © 2005
by Jim Holman.
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NEWS
July/August 2005
ON ACCOUNT OF WHAT HE CALLED the state's "compelling interest in protecting children from abuse," superior court judge Peter Lichtman agreed to release the files of 14 Orange diocesan priests and one lay person accused of sexual abuse of minors, the Associated Press reported. The May 17 decision by Lichtman, however, withheld the files of eight other accused priests, who have contested the release in court. Bishop Tod Brown welcomed the decision; last December, as part of a $100 million settlement with alleged victims of sexual abuse by priests, he had agreed not to block the release of priests' files — even though the priests, because of the settlement, would not have their day in court to defend themselves and the diocese admitted no guilt on the part of the priests and the lay person.
DOCUMENTS ACCIDENTALLY GIVEN to the Orange County Register reveal that the diocese of Orange did not tell parents and parishioners that a lay teacher at Mater Dei High School and a Placentia pastor had committed sexual improprieties with minors. The sealed documents were accidentally given to the media by plaintiff's attorney Richard Boucher, who sought an emergency order on May 18 to block their publication. But the Register published information gleaned from the documents on May 19, editor Ken Brusic saying, "we obtained the documents legally, and found they contained new and important information." The released documents contained the files of two priests and the high school teacher, Thomas Hodgman.
According to the documents, Hodgman made a private admission that he had had sexual relations with two female students, one of whom got pregnant and later had an abortion. When Hodgman resigned from Mater Dei in 1989, Church officials gave school staff a prepared script that made no mention that Hodgman resigned on account of misconduct. Documents revealed that a teenage boy had accused the Rev. John Ruhl of wrapping the boy's genitals in athletic tape on ten occasions to prevent him from masturbating. Ruhl, however, denied that he had engaged in this rather curious mode of chastity education more than two times and that his intentions had been therapeutic. The priest later resigned after the diocese had placed him on administrative leave. In handwritten notes found in the documents, Bishop Norman McFarland said he would not discuss the situation and expected Ruhl to also keep mum. McFarland wrote that he would give Ruhl title to a 1989 Jeep and would consider paying him a temporary stipend — an arrangement that continued, it appears, until 2000, when Ruhl was receiving up to $10,000 a year and medical benefits from a priest relief fund. In January of this year, the diocese paid out $500,000 to settle a molestation claim against Ruhl.
ORANGE DIOCESE DOCUMENTS revealed that clinics that treated abusive priests in the 1980s and '90s gave them a clean bill of health after their treatment, the May 25 Orange County Register reported. The psychotherapists and clinics that said the priests could safely return to ministry were sometimes right, sometimes wrong — some of the priests who had been "cured" molested other youth. One such case of a recidivist priest was Father Eleuterio Ramos, of whom Dr. Klaus Hoppe of Los Angeles' Hacker Clinic in a 1982 letter to Bishop William Johnston said, "he was able and willing to work through his emotional difficulties of a sexual nature. During the last year, he was capable of controlling his impulses completely." According to lawsuits which the diocese settled this year, Ramos molested boys in 1983, 1984, and 1985.
The Rev. Siegfried Widera went for treatment at a Servants of the Paraclete treatment facility in Jemez Springs, New Mexico, in 1985. The Rev. Michael Foley wrote of Widera, "I believe Siegfried is truly a good minister and will continue to be a good minister within the Church. It would be a shame for him not to be able to find a bishop who would accept him." Widera did not return to ministry but went into hiding. He died in 2003 after falling from the balcony of a hotel in Mexico.
According to the Register, "advances in the study of pedophilia have shown that, like most addictions, this pathology can't be cured or corrected. But 30 years ago, therapists believed pedophilia could be cured, experts say."
MICHAEL DRISCOLL, formerly auxiliary bishop of Orange and, since 1998, bishop of Boise, Idaho, according to the diocesan documents, acted negligently in dealing with situations of clergy molestation of minors. According to the May 25 Los Angeles Times, Driscoll in sworn depositions in 1990 and 2002 admitted that he did not warn parishioners that a molester priest was in their parish, neglected to interview some alleged victims, and did not seek out additional victims nor report allegations to the police. He introduced Father Siegfried Widera, a convicted molester from Wisconsin, to a local parish. In one case, Driscoll sent a priest accused of molesting an eight-year-old boy to England to escape prosecution. In the 2002 deposition, Driscoll said he had learned that it was his duty to inform parishioners of priests accused of molestation.
Despite the revelations, Bishop Driscoll will not resign as bishop. He did, however, post an apology on the Boise diocese's website. "I once again want to apologize to the victims who were harmed by priests in the Diocese of Orange and for my role in these cases," wrote Driscoll. "I am ashamed that this happened. I am deeply sorry that the way we handled cases at that time allowed children to be victimized by permitting some priests to remain in ministry, for not disclosing their behavior to those who might be at risk, and for not monitoring their actions more closely.
"It is hard for me to understand today how we could not have seen what was happening to the children. People who know me well know how much I love children. They know that I would never hurt anyone intentionally, especially children. Yet, the focus at that time was to provide help to priests so they could continue in their vocations. I know now that our priorities were horribly misplaced. First and foremost we should have done everything to protect the children."
THE RELEASE OF PRIESTS' FILES by the Orange diocese elicited apologies from two other prelates, the May 19 Los Angeles Times reported. Bishop George Niederauer of Salt Lake City and Orange auxiliary bishop Jaime Soto both in 1986 wrote letters in behalf of Father Andrew Christian Andersen, who was on trial before an Orange County judge on sexual abuse charges. Both Soto and Niederauer questioned the allegations against Andersen and asked that he be spared prison time. In 1986, Andersen was convicted on 26 counts of felony child sexual abuse but served no prison time; rather, the judge allowed him to seek treatment at the facility run by the Servants of the Paraclete in Jemez, New Mexico. Four years later, he was arrested on charges of sodomy against a 14-year-old boy and, for violating his probation, was sentenced to six years in prison. On May 15, Bishop Niederauer said, "perhaps I should have been better informed of the content of the trial. He was someone I had known for several years. I wish now that it had gone otherwise." The same day, Bishop Soto confessed, "I do regret writing that letter. I wrote it as a friend. I didn't know the details of the case."
RELEASED RECORDS ON FATHER ANDERSEN show the priest was still "acting out" with children even while undergoing therapy, the May 25 Los Angeles Times reported. While with the Servants of the Paraclete, Anderson told his psychiatrist, "in the beginning of therapy, I was still acting out with the kids but after 22 months of therapy, I stopped!!!" This revelation was included in a 1986 report to then Orange auxiliary bishop John Steinbock, who is now bishop of Fresno. In a monthly report on Andersen's progress, the psychiatrist told the diocese, "to me, this is an absolute travesty. His therapy cost the diocese over $10,000 and while he was undergoing it, he was continuing to act out sexually with kids." By 1989, by his therapist's recommendation, Andersen was saying Mass at a hospital and for a religious order of men, though then-Orange bishop Norman McFarland objected to it. The Servants of the Paracelete treatment program has since closed.
In the case of Father Michael Pecharich, however, the diocese under McFarland continued to allow the priest to minister in a parish. In 1996, a therapist told McFarland that Pecharich, who had admitted to molesting a boy repeatedly, should only engage in adult ministry. Nevertheless, for six years, the cleric continued as pastor of San Francisco Solano church, a church affiliated with an elementary school and located across the street from Santa Margarita High School in south Orange County. Notes from a 1997 meeting between Bishop McFarland and Monsignor John Urell show that the bishop merely ordered Pecharich to police himself and never be alone with a minor. He was also told there was no reason to tell a parish staff member of the rules laid down for him. In 2002, Bishop Tod Brown removed Pecharich from ministry in accord with a court-approved "one strike" policy for priests guilty of molesting minors.
IT AIN'T OVER YET. Though the Orange diocese released the priests' records in accord with a settlement that, supposedly, was to end all claims against the diocese, advocates for victims of clergy sexual abuse on May 27 asked the Orange County district attorney to open an investigation into whether diocesan officials acted criminally in covering up molestation by priests and not reporting them to civil authorities, the May 28 Los Angeles Times reported. In a letter to District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests requested that he "protect kids by setting an example for those who would protect child molesters." A spokesman for the district attorney's office told the Times that the letter would be reviewed. In 2004, the district attorney's office refused to honor a similar request citing insufficient evidence "to prove criminal culpability" and noting that the statute of limitations on the allegations had expired.
NOT THE ONLY "INAPPROPRIATE" THING. Last summer, Fresno diocese's Bishop John Steinbock removed Father Jean Michael Lastiri from St.Patrick's parish in Merced after it was discovered that the priest had frequented homosexual websites on the internet, where he also solicited liaisons. At the time, Bishop Steinbock called Lastiri's behavior "inappropriate," though the bishop said Lastiri had "denied any inappropriate sexual activity on his part and declared that he only entertained fantasies through this activity on the Internet." Now, according to the May 25 Merced Sun Star, an audit of parish finances has shown that Father Lastiri had engaged in other inappropriate behavior. According to the audit, Lastiri misspent some $60,000 in parish money during his last 20 months as pastor of St. Patrick' s. On Sunday, May 21, a letter from Bishop Steinbock was distributed at St. Patrick's. Steinbock confirmed the results of the audit and said the parish had been reimbursed; the letter, however, did not say whether Lastiri or the diocese had paid back the money.
Over the past five months, a group of six St. Patrick's parishioners had met to go over the parish's financial records. The group discovered that Lastiri had drawn from the parish $19,881 in personal travelling expenses, $10,766 in purchases of personal goods and services, $10,200 in personal loans, $3,000 for a down payment on a car, and $16,311 in other expenses.
THAT OLD CLERGY SHUFFLE. It was only last July that Father Lastiri was forced to resign as pastor of St. Patrick's in Merced and only this May that news of his financial mismanagement became public. But this was not the last news on Father Lastiri. According to the June 5 bulletin of St. Philip the Apostle parish in Bakersfield, Father Lastiri would join the parish as associate pastor. In the announcement, St. Philip's pastor, Monsignor Ron Swett, describes Lastiri as a "wonderful priest who is very experienced in ministry." Swett says nothing of his new associate's past improprieties.
A week later, however, Monsignor Swett read a letter from Bishop Steinbock informing St. Philip's parishioners that Father Lastiri would not be coming to the parish because he did not want "to be the cause of division and condemnation in the parish." According to the June 12 Bakersfield Californian, the bishop's letter indicated that news of Lastiri's appointment caused something of an uproar among St. Philip's parishioners and others. "Unfortunately, a good deal of gossip and misinformation have distorted public perception and seeks to frame Fr. Lastiri's appointment within the context of the clergy sexual abuse scandal," wrote Steinbock. "This is simply not the case." Rather, "the issue with Fr. Lastiri has been one of addiction, not criminal sexual behavior. It has been addiction both to the fantasy world of the Internet and to the spending of money." For this, Lastiri has undergone therapy, the bishop noted.
Monsignor Swett himself said he had received in regard to Lastiri "a few comments filled with a vitriol and hatred unlike any I have ever received as a pastor and unlike I would expect from anyone who bears the name of Christian." So, instead of welcoming a "fallen priest" who is "good" and "caring," and "graced by God to deal with his compulsive and addictive behavior," the parish lost a golden opportunity. "Perhaps being a welcoming community is more easily accomplished when we feel comfortable with the Gospel rather than when we are challenged by that same Gospel," said Swett.
Some parishioners, it appears, felt pangs of guilt over the affair. One Bea Mahlmann said, "I think it's too bad that we condemned him before we heard anything about it. I think he could have helped people who were having struggles of their own." And, according to Diana Wilson, "I feel he was sort of driven out of Kern County. Once you're forgiven for your sins, your sins are reconciled. You shouldn't be ostracized for that."
To date, Father Lastiri has made no public statement of repentance for his "addictive" behavior.
NOT POLITICS AS USUAL. Pope Benedict XVI, addressing members of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, which trains future representatives of the Holy See, told them on May 20 that their task is to see that "the bonds of communion of the local churches with the Apostolic See will be ever more intense and effective," as well as "to make visible the solicitude the Successor of Peter has for all those who form part of the Lord's flock, especially the vulnerable, the weak, and the abandoned." The role of papal diplomats transcends the merely political, the pope implied. Rather, he said, it is "indispensable ... that you set holiness and the salvation of souls that you meet on your path as the fundamental objective of your life."
HANDS OFF PLANNED PARENTHOOD. Attorneys for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger countered a complaint filed by the Pro-Family Law Center in behalf of their client, former Planned Parenthood employee Andrew Jones, that said the governor and the state treasurer have the duty to investigate allegations of tax fraud against Planned Parenthood of Los Angeles. Planned Parenthood of Los Angeles fired Jones, he claims, after he questioned how the organization was handling certain state funds. The Pro-Family Law Center's complaint holds that the governor and state treasurer have "a ministerial duty to protect the tax payers of the State of California from fraud, non-qualification of applicants seeking state money, and waste." Further, says the complaint, the governor and treasurer must audit Planned Parenthood, and if fraud is discovered, defund the organization. But in papers filed in early May in the Los Angeles superior court, lawyers for the governor say that Jones' "writ of mandate should not issue to compel Defendants, two State Constitutional officers and the Director of an Executive department, to exercise their discretion in any particular manner."
But Rich Ackerman, an attorney with the Pro-Family firm, countered that in 2003, a state appellate court in Sacramento ruled in National Tax-Limitation Committee v. Schwarzenegger that tax payers do have the right to have a court compel the governor to take action in cases involving a violation of state law.
EXPECT MORE G.I. JOANS. The United States House of Representatives rejected an amendment to a defense bill on May 25 that would have put into law a Pentagon policy that bars women from combat positions, said a NewsMax.com report. The amendment, offered by California Representative Duncan Hunter (R-San Diego County) would have made legally binding the 1994 Pentagon policy that prohibits women from serving in artillery, armor, infantry, or special forces units, though it allows women to serve in combat zones upon approval by Congress. Another provision of the amendment would have replaced a provision that requires the Pentagon to get congressional approval before opening up positions in combat zones to women with a provision that allows the Pentagon to open or close positions for women 60 days after informing Congress. The latter provision, said Hunter, "puts Congress in a position where we would have enough time to evaluate a policy change and react to that policy change." Both House Republicans and Democrats, however, opposed this policy, saying it could confuse military commanders, hurt recruitment and retention of women in the military, and circumscribe the military's flexibility. Secretary Donald Rumsfeld opposed putting the 1994 Pentagon policy into law.
Representative Hunter proposed strengthening the woman in combat policy because, he said, the Army was violating the 1994 policy by placing women in support units in combat zones. The Army, however, has said it has been in compliance with Pentagon policy.
A DRAFT BILL introduced into Congress last year was reintroduced on May 26 by its sponsor, Representative Charles Rangel (D-NY), said a June 1 report from the Center on Conscience and the War. The bill, the Universal National Service Act of 2005, would require military or national civilian service for all 18 to 25-year-old men and women. The re-introduced bill features a more generous exemption for conscientious objectors than it did last year; anyone opposed to "participation in war in any form" would serve in a national alternative civilian service rather than the military. Though he opposes the Iraq war, Rangel said he fears "that the entire volunteer system is in danger of collapse under the weight of the burden being placed on those who are serving." Government officials, including the president, said Rangel, will be less likely to declare war if they know their children will have to serve. This time around, Rangel is the only sponsor of the bill, which has been referred to the armed services committee. To date, most congressmen have said they would not support reinstatement of the draft.
Rangel's reintroduction of his draft bill came eight days after Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas) introduced a bill that would repeal the Selective Service System to insure that any draft bill would be a dead letter.
MEAT SELLS MEAT. Carl's Jr. Enterprises recently aired a commercial called "Paris Hilton's Carl's, Jr." that has angered some viewers for its graphic sexual content. The thirty-second footage features the barely-dressed blonde Hilton Hotel heiress/porn star Paris Hilton washing a Bentley, moving suggestively while doing so, with ample coverage of her nearly naked posterior pars corporis. The woman, who seems to be enjoying the car washing too much (while a rather breathy singer croons "I love Paris in the Springtime"), finally shows equal delight in biting into a "Spicy BBQ Six Dollar Burger."
A Mission reader, after viewing the commercial, wrote a letter of complaint to executives at Carl's Jr. "We were mortified to be watching an Angel's baseball game, and see the disgusting new Carl's Jr. Paris Hilton ad," went the letter. "Carl's Jr. has stooped to an all time new low with their current ad. It was so embarrassing to be watching the game with my 13-year-old son and see your soft porn commercial come on the television. I hope there are enough 20-year-old males to keep Carl's Jr. in business, because our family will never dine at Carl's Jr. again." The reader is asking people to boycott Carl's Jr. until it removes such advertisements from television.
HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IN BAKERSFIELD, with the American Civil Liberties Union, are suing their high school over the principal's decision to forbid a student newspaper to run stories on homosexuality, said a May 19 Associated Press story. John Gibson, principal of East Bakersfield High School, said he blocked the stories set to run in the May 27 issue of the Kernal because he feared that they might incite violence on campus. The stories, with accompanying pictures, featured interviews with homosexual students discussing their sexual orientation. Joel Paramo, the Kernal's editor, complained that with Gibson's decision he and the homosexual students have "lost our voices." He also said he didn't fear violence. "No incident in the past led us to believe that those students, who are already open about their sexual orientation, had anything to worry about," said the 18-year-old Paramo.
WHAT DO BILLY GRAHAM, U.S. Senate chaplain Lloyd Ogilvie, Campus Crusade for Christ founder Bill Bright, and Presbyterian nightclub worship have in common? They owe something to Hollywood's First Presbyterian Church for their success. But it appears as if the first three have had longer staying power than the last is likely to have. About two years ago, Hollywood First' s senior pastor, the Rev. Alan Meenan, instituted what is called Contemporary Urban Experience, which is an alternative worship service offered by Hollywood First at a nearby nightclub. According to the May 13 Los Angeles Times, the worship service offers "live rock music and a casual atmosphere that doesn't frown on flip-flops and nose piercings." The service, held every Sunday, has also attracted about 350 people in their twenties and thirties, many of whom work in the entertainment field. J.C. Cornwell, a church member, praised the contemporary service, saying, "I could go into any coffee shop in Los Angeles and go up to any artsy, crazy guy and feel totally comfortable inviting him to this service. It's just a really cool service — but it's still the truth."
But though some "traditionalists" at Hollywood First accept Contemporary Urban Experience as a way of shoring up membership, which has been declining over the past two decades, others see it as undermining their church's traditions. The Presbytery of the Pacific, the regional ruling body for the denomination, came down on the side of the discontent, who accused Meenan of having a dictatorial style and of financial mismanagement. In early May, the Presbytery placed Meenan on an indefinite paid leave.
Presybterians, like other mainline Protestant denominations, have been bleeding members for the past four decades.
"BLAME THE CRUSADES," an editorial appearing in the May 14 Los Angeles Times, said the roots of current Middle East problems lies in Medieval attempts by Christians to retake the Holy Land. The editorial apparently drew its inspiration from the Kingdom of Heaven, a movie about the Crusades. Though the movie has "silly inaccuracies," it, says the editorial, "rams home the notion that events during the Crusades eerily parallel current world affairs." One similarity is that, in the movie, "there are the refined Western doves and the boorish Christian hawks trying to maneuver in a not-very-peaceful truce with the Islamic kingdom they've successfully invaded." The Crusaders, says the editorial, came to defend Byzantine Christian territory, but then went on "to add on something entirely unrelated: Jerusalem. The U.S. invasion of Iraq following the 9/11 attacks follows a similar illogic."
But more important than the similarities of the period of the Crusades to modern Mid East conflicts is that, according to the editorial, the Crusades are "a major part of the reason those conflicts exist." The Crusades "created a mind-set in which the Muslim presence would not be tolerated in Europe, which played out violently when Spain expelled its Muslims in 1492." This spirit exists today, the editorial claims, in Pope Benedict XVI, who "opposes allowing Turkey into the European Union, saying it runs counter to history; he also deplores European multiculturalism as 'fleeing from what is one's own.'" The Crusades also "gave rise to the first big waves of violent anti-Semitism in Europe, which would flare for centuries and eventually feed the Nazi Holocaust. This in turn gave birth to modern Zionism, seen by Muslims as another European imperialistic attack."
THOUGH MENTIONING the Turkish invasion of Byzantine Christian lands, the Times editorial failed to note that during the roughly 400 years since Mohammed called the first jihad against non-Muslims, Christendom had been fighting for its freedom and life against an aggressive Islam. Some letter writers in the May 21 Times clarified this matter for the editorial staff. Ruth Silveira of Los Angeles asked the editors to remember that "Jerusalem and the area around the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea ... were conquered — that is, by means of fighting and killing — by Arabs of the Islamic faith in the 600s. Not until the then-ruler began to interfere with Christian pilgrims did the church mount crusades." Another Angelene, David Schechter, noted that "the period of 300 years prior to the Crusades was an epoch when Arab Muslim warriors invaded, conquered, occupied and forcibly converted millions of people in the Middle East, North Africa and Europe." Islam was spread, wrote Schechter, "with the sword ... yet Islamic descendants now remember only the era after this when Muslims were pushed back from Europe and gradually lost territory, prestige and empire." Schechter ended with this warning: "selective recall of history can be dangerous for all concerned, especially in the West."
"FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, the last thing I wanted to do was to murder my own child. This was something we did out of love and respect for him." Four and a half years ago, Marie Becker (her middle and maiden name) learned that her unborn son had a rare skeletal disease that, according to doctors, would kill him within a few months after his birth. Becker said she had believed that abortion is a sin, but she and her husband decided to abort their son Daniel, who was at seven-months gestation. "I didn't want him to suffer any more," Becker said.
Becker's is one story related in a May 31 Los Angeles Times story on Wichita, Kansas abortionist, George Tiller, one of few abortionists in the country who specialize in late-term, third-trimester abortions. Becker and her husband traveled from Florida to Wichita. In Tiller's office, she said, the wall is covered from floor to ceiling with framed letters from women thanking the abortionist for his services. Becker said she and her husband "couldn't stop reading them. When you see how many people wrote letters, when you see how much they love this man, it almost feels like you're being hugged." She said she does not approve of Tiller aborting healthy children in the first and second trimesters, but, said the Times, "she cannot censure him too harshly." For Daniel and children like him, said Becker, "the man is a savior. He's there for women who have nowhere else to go."
"I DON'T KNOW WHAT I would have done had [Dr. Tiller] not been available to me," Katie Plazio, another women who had a late-term abortion, told the Times. "That's selfish, I know. I feel selfish. But ... doesn't everyone want the best for themselves and their family?" Plazio (her maiden name) discovered she was pregnant when she was six months along; she was 43 and had suffered from infertility for ten years. She and her husband welcomed the news; but then they discovered their unborn child had Down syndrome. She knew she had three choices: to keep the child, a boy; but she said she thought his life would be lonely, frustrating, and painful. She said she could not cope with raising a child to such a future. She could put her son up for adoption, but she could not face waking up each morning not knowing where he was and imagining him frightened and alone. "I could not live with that fear all my life," she said.
So she chose the third option. She flew to Tiller's clinic and aborted "Matthew," as she named her son.
"I don't want anyone to think that I did this all for Matthew," Plazio said. "I was not just sparing him problems. I was sparing my daughter, my husband, me and all those who depend on me ... I knew the limits of my family and my marriage. Maybe there are families who can handle it all. Maybe they are better people. But I knew I could not do it."
But things haven't been easy for Plazio since the abortion. She suffers panic attacks, depression; according to doctors she suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome. But, she says, raising Matthew would have been worse for her — and she said she "released my poor sick baby back to the angels. The only thing I wish I had done differently was realize I was pregnant months earlier."
Another woman, Susan Crocker, had her Down syndrome baby Isabella aborted in the second trimester. "I did the unthinkable," she said. "I ended my baby's life. Sometimes I think, oh God, what if I was wrong?" She keeps Isabella's ashes in her Texas home in an urn decorated with blue dolphins. Why blue dolphins? Tiller killed Isabella in a room that has a poster of a leaping dolphin on the ceiling, with the words "Set them free." This comforted Crocker. "I ended her suffering," she told the Times. "I owe Dr. Tiller greatly. I can never, ever thank him enough."
THE U.S. IMMIGRATION SYSTEM is "broken," wrote Cardinal Roger Mahony in an opinion piece that appeared in the June 1 Los Angeles Times. It is a system, Mahony wrote, that "easily can lead to the exploitation, abuse and even death of immigrants ... it is unacceptable that already this year immigrants have died by the dozens in the California desert or in other parts of the Southwest." This is "unacceptable" in "this land of opportunity." The cardinal addressed the "growing hysteria" around the issue of immigration, which leads to "scapegoating," to citizens' "attempting to enforce immigration laws," and to the "enactment of restrictive laws." Such reactions, he said, have arisen from the "legitimate concern" for national security, the "rising deficit," from "changes brought on by globalization" and even from "the price of oil" which has "thrown the nation's economic health into question." But, said Mahony, the nation must "resist punishing immigrants for problems that are not of their creation."
Though the Church "recognizes the right of our country to control its borders" and "does not condone undocumented migration, which serves neither the interest of the migrant nor the respective countries," still, wrote Mahony, "immigration should be enforced in a proportional and humane manner." Congress, he said, should reform our immigration system to "include an opportunity for long-term illegal residents to come out of the shadows — not to be handed amnesty but to work toward permanent residency." Congressional reform should also "feature a temporary-worker program with worker protections that would deal with the many undocumented workers who cross and recross the border." And, legislators "should reform the backlogged family reunification system."
Mahony wrote that America's "heritage as a nation of immigrants is at stake. We should not attack undocumented workers for our broader problems at the same time we accept their talent, toil and taxes. We should not blockade our border at the same time that we depend upon the labor of the immigrant nanny, janitor, busboy and agricultural worker."
THE ARCHDIOCESE OF LOS ANGELES was set to ordain five new priests on June 4, the May 6 Tidings, the archdiocesan newspaper, reported. The ordained are Father Robert Edward Joseph Garon, 46, a former actor, bartender, salesman, and commedian; Father Khoa Mai, 32, a native of Vietnam; Father Joseph Quan Nguyen, 28, also a native of Vietnam and a former professional tailor; Father John Quy Van Tran, 61, born in Vietnam, who worked in banking, real estate, and for the U.S. Postal Service; and Father Joseph Wah, born in England and married for 28 years before his wife died in 1999.
"IT REMINDS ME OF THE EARLY CHURCH," St. Joseph Carondelet Sister Carol Quinlivan said of the growing lay ministry in the archdiocese of Los Angeles. The archdiocese's pastoral associates program, which trains lay men and women to work in parishes alongside priests, "is the future of the church," Sister Carol told the May 6 Tidings. The archdiocese currently has 18 pastoral associates, most of them serving part time, who do a variety of tasks, including running bereavement and social justice programs, Bible studies, marriage preparation and dissolution, baptismal and confirmation classes, and giving communion to the sick.
At Ss. Felicita and Perpetua parish in San Marino, St. Joseph of Carondelet Sister Mary Ann Martin works as "part of a leadership team with administrator Father Paul Fitzpatrick," said the Tidings. On Father Fitzpatrick's day off, she or three lay leaders conduct a communion service. Ss. Felicitas and Perpetua, according to the Tidings, has gone through a "time of transition" "in the wake of a series of priest administrator transitions over the past two years." But, under Sister's care, the parish is making progress, though to what is unclear. "The parish has come a long way with their sense of openness and awareness of changes in liturgy and sacramental theology," Sister Martin told the Tidings. "They've been open to my ministry of pastoral care." Sister did not say to what changes in sacramental theology at Ss. Felicitas and Perpetua she referred.