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Contents © 2000
by Jim Holman.
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LETTERS
DECEMBER 2000
WE NEED SPANISH-SPEAKING COUNSELORS
Thank you for helping make our sidewalk counseling seminar on October 7 a success!
We had over 75 people, which is fantastic for an event that asks people to go to abortion clinics. We are already training several groups of people to cover area abortion mills.
Your running our advertisement several times was great. In a few months, we will be holding another seminar. It will be held in a Catholic church in Los Angeles and will be a sidewalk counseling seminar in Spanish. We are in desperate need of Spanish-speaking counselors to reach the huge immigrant population that is being targeted by the abortion industry. We also hope to do another one in English soon.
We thank you again for your incredible love for the unborn. We hope to work together with you in the future to save more babies' lives.
Mrs. Kathy Lowers
Irvine
SidewalkCounseling.com
THEY ALL MISSED THE POINT
Your very good article ["Tremendous Injustice," November Mission] on amnesty for the "undocumented" workers (a.k.a. illegal aliens) presented three viewpoints which still missed the central issue. Bob Margett appears to be responding to Cardinal Mahony's ill-conceived amnesty support. Mark Zwick misses the point wholesale.
The so-called immigration problem is a problem with Mexico's inability to provide gainful employment for its own citizens. While I am a voracious reader, I constantly seem to miss the brilliant plans and constructive comments coming from the Los Angeles archdiocesan office to the Mexican government to suggest an approach for correcting this problem.
Providing relief to the people who break into the country may help treat the symptom, but even if every refugee (yes, I use that word on purpose) were provided with a stable and safe environment here in the United States, we're only treating a minor part of the real problem. The remaining oppressed people get no help or relief from such grandstanding.
Not addressing the failure of the socialist regime in Mexico keeps the remaining underclass in that country in poverty. Providing a partial relief for the social pressure allows the present system in Mexico to continue (a morally dubious action). Now, today, the United States Catholic Conference needs to put some real heat on Mexico, not on the United States.
The border is only open in one direction, and those who call for an open border only tell half of the story. There is no meaningful incursion of ideas or freedom into Mexico. Take a boat or ship tour along the coast of southern California. You can see the border from out at sea. Now play the game in your mind by asking "...what would it take to move the prosperity 100 yards farther south ... 500 yards south, etc.'" It's not the people, it's the government and the ruling class and a lack of freedom.
While Mr. Zwick is, I am sure, doing much good work with the Casa Juan Diego, why not ask why he doesn't cross the border and minister to the folks over there. He has a much greater field of opportunity! His answer will probably be that the Mexican government won't let him ... and that's the heart of the problem. After NAFTA, I personally have experienced much greater problems getting food and clothing down to Mexico. The corrupt S.O.B's (no, no, that stands for Servant of Baal) want to collect tariffs. They do not wish to change the status quo.
The bishops and the AFL-CIO ... ah yes. I probably missed the AFL-CIO organizing effort to get twelve dollar-an-hour jobs for the folks in Mexico. I do believe I have seen them organizing in the United States and most importantly, collecting dues. Hasn't it dawned on the bishops that the unions have sold their birthright to the politicians? Union dues buy politicians to distribute taxpayer goodies. That way the union doesn't have to do the hard work of collective insurance (the employer does that now), retirement (they're trying to pass that to government), workplace safety (OSHA), promotion policy (EEO, affirmative action enforced by the Justice department) ... need I go on? If the bishops are interested in health insurance, life insurance, credit unions, job training, etc., surely the parishes and the diocese could jump in; but don't hold your breath, we're into renovating churches right now.
Give these people freedom in their own land and trust them. They're intelligent, hardworking and God-fearing. Give them back their country (if they ever had it -- they truly have a history of poor leadership, including the input of the Church) and we won't have a "border problem."
John Mayr
Escondido
Editor's note: Casa Juan Diego, run by Mark and Louise Zwick, is affiliated with 15 Catholic Worker houses. Some of these houses are in Mexico and Guatemala, and are run in conjunction with an order of sisters, the Oblates of the Redeemer. For more information on the Zwicks' work, you may visit their web site, www.cjd.org. Or, send for a copy of their paper, the Houston Catholic Worker, to P.O. Box 70113, Houston, TX 77270.
CALL FOR A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT
I read the immigration debate, ably discussed in your November issue ("Tremendous Injustice?") by Mark Zwick and Assemblyman Bob Margett. There's a straightforward, legal solution to the problem. Though I'm not normally an advocate of law, and it'll probably get me in trouble with both sides, we need an intelligent response to Mexican president-elect Fox, so here it is.
By constitutional amendment if necessary, the federal government should declare that: 1) a natural born American citizen is a child born of an American mother, or to a married couple of which at least one is American, and place of birth does not matter. All others must be naturalized, even if born in the United States. 2) No federal agency, state, city, or other authority in the United States is obliged to provide any personal government services (including welfare or education) to any non-citizen, nor do laws (like compulsory education laws) requiring acceptance of such services apply to non-citizens if they would unduly burden the non-citizens.
After these policies come into effect, simply take down the border fences. Those who wish to take their chances are probably good courageous people and should be welcomed. In fact, the exclusion of non-citizens from government services will probably benefit the non-citizens on balance! Remember the patricians and plebeians of Rome?
Larry Dickson,
received via e-mail
INFORMATIVE AND SAD
I just read this "Death Gold" [see November Mission] which I obtained through spiritdaily.com. Thank you for the research it took to put this out. Very informative, very sad. As we resist supporting groups who give so freely to abort God's children in the womb, it seems we Catholics are going to have to withdraw more and more from the world, doesn't it?
Tina Lorge,
Laguna Beach
WHERE ARE YOU, ST. IGNATIUS?
Your story covering the announcement in the Loyola Marymount University health benefits newsletter, The Navigator, that they will provide "Enhanced Contraceptive Coverage" speaks volumes on the state of Jesuit education in America today (see "They Now Cover Contraceptives," November Mission). St. Ignatius of Loyola, where are you when we need you?
There is, however, a certain macabre consistency in all this, given that a Lutheran theologian on the faculty at Boston College (also run by the Jesuits) is publicly criticizing the appointment of an atheist Unitarian to an administrative post in the theology department at Boston College. The Lutheran theologian's position "is that it makes no sense to put the teaching of Catholic theology and the direction of undergraduate students pursuing a deeper appreciation of their faith into the hands of someone who does not believe in God" ("The Wisdom of Solomon," by Ralph McInerny, Crisis magazine, November 2000). How about appointing a Lutheran theologian to the theology faculty of the Catholic institution run by the Jesuits? Has any one in the Department of Theology at Boston College ever read Pope John Paul II's encyclical, Ex Corde Ecclesiae?
In your article you say you do not know if this is new coverage or an enhancement of existing coverage. Loyola Marymount president, Father Robert Lawton, S.J. would not comment nor would university officials. One wonders if the Jesuits are aware of the moral Magisterium of Pope John Paul II, or is it ignored only at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles?
One cannot help but further ask how a Jesuit university providing "enhanced contraception coverage" squares with the ancient and heralded motto of the Jesuits, Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam (For the Greater Glory of God)?
John St. Denis
Murrieta, CA
INTERESTING ARTICLES
I recently discovered your paper. I take a great interest in reading it for its interesting, invaluable articles. I send you a $10 money order for a one-year subscription.
Emmanuel Louis,
Los Angeles
NOT DEAD, BUT LIVING TRUTH
I'm glad the Mission did an article on Zen [see "A Zen Experience, October]. Having done a Christian meditation for many years, and having finally gotten through a bit, I have a few things to say.
At one point in the story, Mu-Ryang answered a question regarding whether in Zen one loses his personality. "How do you know?" said the monk. "The best way is to find out." The reason I meditate is to find out. The Catholic idea that it is virtue to declare, "I believe the creed," and to wait to know until after you are dead seems plain wrong to me. Jesus said, "ye shall see the truth and the truth shall set you free. If we only see the truth after we're dead, what good is it for setting free? If you're in heaven you don't need to be set free; and if you're in hell you can't be set free.
I know the truth can be seen here in this life, and I'm desperate for it. Seeing the truth is, or is akin to, realization. It is an experience; it is not a projection or an assertion. It is not a saying, "this is true." It is seeing truth. It is encountering what I think is accurately called "living truth."
When you see the truth, what your consciousness does is re-orient so that you become aware of yourself right here in the present reality. You're not off in the clouds somewhere, oblivious to the mundane world. You realize how, by being "in hour thoughts," you have been avoiding the regular real world right here. You see that you are real, and that things are exactly the way they are. There's no fudge factor. It's actually scary. We're so used to subtly avoiding this plain old reality. But when you see this plain old reality, it's wonderful, it's amazing, it's real. You see the reality of it.
We avoid seeing the truth by being in our thoughts. When you come out of your thoughts, the thoughts are still there, but you see them from a different vantage point You see the thoughts as thoughts.
Being "before thought, beyond thought," as Mu-Ryang put it, simply means being conscious of your thoughts as thoughts, not thinking of them as thoughts, but seeing them as thoughts.
Christianity teaches that man has a fallen nature. It seems true to me because, having had some experiences with objective awareness, it seems evident that our consciousness has fallen into our thinking. We're like a jet pilot who has gotten fixated on his instruments. They tell him everything he needs to know (or, so he thinks) -- the altitude, his position relative to other planes, etc. And the instruments can do him a lot of good. But he needs to look out the window. Our thinking mind is like that jet's instruments. We're stuck with our awareness inside the thoughts. We need to look out the window.
Meditation is doing what you can to reorient your consciousness. I think that, try as we might, we can't succeed on our own. I meditated for years without much success. My success now is marginal. But what (sweet) success I have had is because of "help from above." Jesus spoke of the Spirit as a wind, that comes and goes as it pleases. That registers with me. I'm a very dependent being. You can't hold truth, that is, living truth, in your hand. When you try to, it turns into dead truth (words of truth, thoughts).
All that I'm saying here (if it's true) is dead truth. It won't set you or me free. So I wait for the wind, but like a sailor in the doldrums, dependent on the wind, unable to generate it. Still, I need to be ready for it when it comes. That is meditation -- that, and living right (although I don't think we can ever live truly, through-and-through, right with our consciousness disoriented).
Dead truth is valuable, but it doesn't set us free, it doesn't bring about profound change. I meditate to encounter living truth.
Joe O'Brien
Panorama City
Editor's note: It is a false characterization to say that the Catholic faith equates knowledge of God with a merely intellectual assent. That intellectual assent is important, since it conforms the reasoning mind to truth. Still, there is a deeper, more mystical knowledge of God, which is the union with God given by grace through the sacraments. This union is prefigured in Genesis where Adam's union with Eve is called "knowing." Such knowing does not replace, but gives substance to and perfects, the knowledge attained by the intellect alone.
KEEP CHALLENGING US
Your paper is superb! I always enjoy it and bless you for it. Keep challenging -- we all need it. Keep blessing us with your insights. I am a very happy subscriber.
Mary Crosswhite
Laguna Hills
YOU COULD ALMOST HEAR THE "HARUMPH!"
I couldn't believe the comments on Cardinal Mahony that I read in your October News column.
I am no fan of Cardinal Mahony's. I find his theology in such documents as Gather Faithfully Together to be timid and squishy. But my heart sang with joy and I was filled with admiration as I heard the prayer he offered for the unborn. He was courageously preaching the truth to millions of Democrats who had tuned into watch their party's convention. The Democrat party is the biggest obstacle this country has to promoting the sanctity of life, and here was the cardinal essentially telling them, "Hey, you can't talk about defending the defenseless in this nation -- the laborers, the seniors, the poor -- if you don't talk about also defending the unborn."
Yet some shrill complains, "too little, too late," as if what the cardinal did was an end. It wasn't! It was a beginning. I can speak from personal experience that hearing the truth courageously preached can lead someone out of a life of sin and into a life of grace. And I predict that the Holy Spirit will use the cardinal's words to lead many others to the life of grace.
Another person you interviewed said the convention "was not where he should have been." You could almost hear the "harumph!" in the person's words. Look, if the cardinal -- who wears red for a reason -- is not willing to go into the lion's den to preach the gospel, what authority would he then have to preach the gospel anywhere? There was no better place for him to preach the gospel of life. This was a message Democrats need to hear and hear again and again. And to the cardinal's prayers, we need to add our own prayers that they will be converted from their love affair with abortion and turn towards truly protecting the defenseless instead of promoting vociferously the culture of death.
Praise God that there are people in the Los Angeles archdiocese with the good sense and understanding of Bob Kennedy, who rightly noted that Mahony, like Mother Teresa at the National Prayer Breakfast a few years back, told the truth where it needed to be told.
Brian O'Neel
Sacramento