NEWS
2001 NEWS STORIES
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ROAMIN' CATHOLIC
Contents © 2001
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
NEWS
APRIL 2001
MINISTRY TO THE RICH -- PARISH OFFERS FRONT ROW PEW ON EASTER -- FOR THE RIGHT PRICE. St. John Fisher parish in Rancho Palos Verde, one of the wealthiest parishes in the Los Angeles archdiocese, held its annual "Mardi Gras" spring fundraiser for the parish school on Friday, March 10 (oddly enough, a week and a half after Lent had begun). The event included a silent auction for several prizes. One prize, for a minimum bid of $2,000, is a VIP, hard hat tour of the construction site of Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral conducted by Roger Cardinal Mahony's aid, Monsignor Kevin Kostelnik, the cathedral's designated pastor; a posh dinner with Father Michael Rocha, chaplain to the cathedral, follows (no promise of the cardinal's attendance). For a minimum bid of $1,500, one might enjoy a 10-course gourmet dinner for ten at the St. John Fisher parish rectory. For $300, a bidder will be awarded 12 front row seats in the parish at the 9 a.m. Easter Sunday Mass; includes parking close to the church.
The March 4, 2001 parish bulletin notes that weekly collections are off significantly from a year ago. On February 27, 2000, contributions totaled $25,244; on February 25, 2001, contributions were a mere $19,360. Average weekly income required to meet general operating expenses is $23,947.
IT WAS A MERE LAPSE IN JUDGMENT on their parts to write letters in support of convicted cocaine dealer, Carlos Vignali, said Los Angeles mayoral candidate Antonio Villaraigosa and Roger Cardinal Mahony. On Monday, February 12, the Los Angeles Times reported that Mahony, Villaraigosa and other prominent Southern California politicians had written letters to President Bill Clinton asking him to review Vignali's case. On his last day in office, Clinton commuted Vignali's 15-year federal prison sentence.
In a written statement, reported in the Tuesday, February 13 Los Angeles Times, Cardinal Mahony stated, "I was approached about the possibility of writing a letter to former President Bill Clinton on behalf of Mr. Carlos Vignali Jr., the purpose of the letter was to seek a further review of the facts, the law and the processes used in his case. I made it clear that I was incapable of making a judgment about his guilt or innocence. Regardless of the merits of the case, I made a serious mistake in writing to the president and I broke my decades-long practice of never sending a letter on behalf of any person whom I did not know personally. I apologize for not following my own principles in this matter." The Times said Mahony's office would not return calls asking for clarification on who approached him asking him to write the letter in behalf of Vignali.
It is unclear what made Mahony break his "decades-long practice" in the case of Vignali. Villaraigosa, however, has received $2,795 in political contributions from Vignali's father, Horatio. Villaraigosa denies that his intervention in Carlos Vignali's case had nothing to do with the contribution. "I was convinced at the time ... that his son was not a major player in this drug ring," Villaraigosa told Associated Press. "I made a mistake in not investigating." The elder Vignali has donated over $160,000 to Villaraigosa and other Southern California political figures since his son's incarceration six years ago, said the Times report. Horatio Vignali has donated $11,000 to Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca's campaigns since July 1994; and $3,500 to United States Representative Xavier Becerra. Becerra, along with Representative Esteban Torres, wrote letters to Clinton asking for a reconsideration of Carlos Vignali's case. Sheriff Baca asked that Vignali be transferred to a California state prison.
PORNOGRAPHY WILL CONTINUE to reign supreme in Los Angeles County. On February 20, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted, three to two, to disband the Los Angeles County Commission on Obscenity. Council members Gloria Molina, Yvonne Burke, and Sev Yaroslavsky voted to disband the commission, while councilmen Don Knabe and Michael Antonovich, voted to maintain it.
The council voted to drop the commission despite the fact that Los Angeles police chief Bernard C. Parks, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, and District Attorney Steve Cooley urged its continuance. Even the Chicago Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Women wrote a letter in support of the obscenity commission. "It is public knowledge and an international disgrace to know that Los Angeles County is the source of most illegal, 'hard-core' porn," said the council's letter. "We know that there are Federal and State laws that should be protecting the public from the proliferation of this illegal matter, and yet, largely due to the ineffective Clinton/Reno Justice Department and lack of enforcement on the local level, these laws have been overlooked, ignored and unenforced. Most of these obscene depictions portray violence, degradation, humiliation, and hate towards women. Women are portrayed in vile and repulsive ways.... Anti-porn advocates have described hard-core porn as 'handbooks for rape' against women and children. Obscene pornography is not about love and sex -- it's about hate, violence and depravity. The First Amendment was never designed to protect obscenity -- no matter what the ACLU and other 'free speech' proponents would have us believe.
"Knowing this and the astoundingly high statistics of rape in this country," continued the letter, "our Women's Councils would have to ask why you would knowingly act to continue the proliferation of this type of criminal and illegal activity by disbanding the Obscenity Commission in Los Angeles -- the hub of the obscene porn industry?"
In recent years, the board of supervisors has neglected the commission, founded in 1964 to combat pornography. Each supervisor was to appoint three members to the commission board -- making a total of 15 commissioners -- but, in recent years, only nine members have served on the commission, three of whom had retired.
ALLRED BEATS A RETREAT. On February 17, Edward Allred's abortion clinic at Grindlay Street and Orange Avenue in Cypress closed its doors for good. The abortuary was located across the street from city hall, and on the same street as St. Irenaeus Catholic Church. According to Mechtilde Grothues, a member of the Our Lady of Guadalupe Chapter of the Shield of Roses (a pro-life group which does sidewalk counseling in front of abortion clinics), the owner of the Civic Center building in Cypress decided to sell his property because he couldn't keep renters. They left because of the daily prayer vigils led by Shield of Roses in front of the clinic.
For 26 years, the Shield of Roses has been holding vigils outside the Allred clinic, which was first in Santa Ana and then moved to Cypress. In early years the weekly and, then, in more recent years, the daily presence of folks on prayer vigil persuaded many renters who shared the building with Allred's clinic to seek office space elsewhere. The owner of the building, according to Grothues, "said, 'we are not able to rent any more room because of you.'"
In the early years, said Grothues, when the Shield of Roses group held prayer vigils only on Saturdays, they would see Allred weekly. "We never had any run-ins with him," she said, "only a few words were exchanged."
Grothues noted that, on average, her group would convince two women a week to keep their babies -- "and those are the ones we only know about, since they told us directly," she said. "Sometimes people walked out of a clinic, maybe after we left." Grothues said she has seen a decline over the years in the number of women coming for abortions. "Women who came out of the clinic actually would rip off their medical bands which had their names, ages, and which number they were was written on them," she said. "In the first years we were there, the number went up to seven thousand or eight thousand. Every two or three years it came down to four or five thousand."
With the Civic Center slated to be torn down (to make room for a housing development), Grothues does not think Allred will relocate his Cypress clinic, but simply consolidate it with his clinic in Orange. "It is my understanding," she said, "that some of his equipment is being sent into Orange. I know that because [clinic personnel] told one of the mothers who came out of the abortion clinic (and who did not have an abortion) that next week they would move the equipment to the Orange clinic."
THE LAWSUIT filed for the poor and homeless of Los Angeles against the city of Los Angeles' Business Improvement Districts has been settled -- in favor of the poor. In November 1999, Alice Callahan, director of Las Familias del Pueblo, a community service for garment workers and their children, joined by the ACLU and the Los Angeles Catholic Worker Community, spearheaded a lawsuit charging that the private security personnel hired by business improvement districts periodically harassed the poor and homeless on public thoroughfares, driving them from sections of the city. Security personnel, said Callahan, would illegally search and confiscate the belonging of the poor, arrest and detain them. (See "Not In My Neighborhood," March 2000 Mission).
Over a year later, on December 14, 2000, federal judge Lourdes Baird granted a temporary injunction protecting the homeless from increased police harassment on Skid Row, according to a report in the February 2001 Catholic Agitator, the publication of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker community. Judge Baird, said the Agitator, ruled that the United States Constitution protected all citizens, even the poor and homeless, from unreasonable searches and seizures. Police, said Baird, must no longer stop the homeless "without reasonable suspicion, demanding production of identification on threat of arrest, searching possessions of those homeless without reasonable suspicion, ordering the homeless to move along." Neither could police confiscate the property of the homeless.
According to the Agitator, the Los Angeles city attorney objected to this last ruling. "Your Honor," she said, "there is property and there is property. A pair of shoes or a tent is property, but a dirty shopping cart full of bottles and cans, surely that is not considered property."
Judge Baird replied that, since, according to her understanding, "the collection of bottles and cans is the way in which homeless individuals make their living. such property is even more deserving of constitutional protection."
THE WINTER 2000 issue of the Alumni Association Newsletter for the Los Angeles Archdiocesan Seminaries, contained these snippets: "We've had several reunions in recent years. They have been wonderful gatherings of alumni, their families and significant others. We've had priests, active and inactive, seminarians and former seminarians, single people, gay people, straight people, married people, young people, senior citizens, people who are in love with the Church, people who are disaffected Catholics, non-Catholics, agnostics, atheists, and insurance salesmen. We all share the common bond of having been 'a seminarian.'"
The following comes from a column titled, "Preparations begin for Alumni Reunion 2001." "L.A. Sems had a great evening in San Marino with Gerry/Mary and the rest of the guys and their wives," read the reference to a reunion held at the home of a former seminarian and his wife. "Most attendees were inactive priests and wives, two monsignors (no wives!), and three former seminarians and wives." A report by an alumnus of Our Lady Queen of Angels Seminary read, "I received my M. Div. from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley in 1998, the same year that I received my Doctorate of Psychology. I was licensed in 1999 as a forensic psychologist. I consult the L.A. Archdiocese on several areas of ministry, educate doctors and nurses to the importance of religious sensitivity when treating patients at Cedars Sinai Medical Center, where I work in the psychiatric trauma center with gay and lesbian teenagers in their recovery from substance abuse or physical/emotional abuse."
An alumnus of a Los Angeles archdiocesan seminary, who requested anonymity, made these comments on the newsletter's content: "It's subtle, but one can find in it the implicit premise that active homosexuality, adultery and abandoned priest vows are okay. Geez! Can you imagine the debilitating effect on seminarian morale to see all this spectacle and the diocesan attitude of acceptance? If this were done as an outreach (like Jesus eating with sinners), if the bishop met with the alumni when the seminarians were not there, or better, at a location away from the seminary -- well, okay. But having seminarians involved in planning it, etc., is bizarre. This must be a deliberate attempt to destroy the priesthood as we know it. I'm very cynical of official diocesan stuff at this time. The [priest] shortage can be remedied by healthy seminaries."
AFTER A PETITION CAMPAIGN where thousands of county citizens voiced their support for the Boy Scouts of America, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca has decided not to drop the Scouts from his department's Explorer program, according to a Pacific Justice Institute report. The Scouts' Alumni Association issued the petition which, said the association, garnered over 5,000 signatures. These signatures, plus the numerous phone calls Baca received, convinced the sheriff, said the association, that he should maintain his department's ties with scouting.
The Scouts' Alumni Association said they will continue their efforts this year to reverse the Los Angeles City Council's November 2000 decision to cease all city contracts with the Boy Scouts because the Scouts "discriminated" against avowed homosexuals. The Scouts' Association asks people to sign the petition which they will send to the Los Angeles City Council to let them know that "the country is watching them." One may find the petition on the internet at http://www.scoutsalumni.com/petition.htm.
LOOKING FOR A MILLION. The diocese of Orange will soon undertake a $1 million dollar capital campaign, according to February 27 Los Angeles Times report. The money will go for land purchase, construction of new churches, chancery office renovations, Catholic education, "clergy needs for the growing church," and, maybe, a new cathedral, said the Times.
As reported in the February 2001 Mission, Bishop Tod Brown mailed a questionnaire to 300 clergy and laity in the diocese to help him prioritize needs and indicate whether Orange County Catholics would support a major campaign to fund some or all of the proposed projects. According to the Times, of those interviewed, 76 percent of Catholics said land purchases for parish sites was a first priority; 69 percent said that church construction was a first priority. Respondents could choose more than one first priority. Seventy-four percent said they were either "supportive" or "strongly supportive of the capital campaign, and 77 percent of the laity and 56 percent of the clergy said they would support it financially.
It will be another month before the diocese decides whether it will use a 15-acre bean field it purchased in Santa Ana as the sight of a cathedral, or as just a parish church. "We needed the feasibility study simply because our future needs are clearly apparent to us," Bishop Brown told the Times. "What we haven't done yet is actually decide what specific causes will be funded."
"THE SPIRIT TAKES center stage," rejoiced the February 9 issue of The Tidings in anticipation of the Los Angeles archdiocesan Religious Education Congress, held February 15-18 at the Anaheim Convention Center. The archdiocesan weekly newspaper offered pictures from past congresses -- of Yolanda King, daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who gave the 1992 keynote address (she was "a popular last-minute replacement for Maya Angelou," who spoke the following year); of the Valyermo dancers in dramatic liturgical dance attitudes; of a "gathering event" at the baptismal font, complete with Roger Cardinal Mahony, a liturgical dancer, and women in white robes and white stoles. "For four days," said The Tidings, "the Arena is a spiritual haven, a house of worship where two, three, or 10,000 gather in Jesus' name to celebrate, reflect, learn, share and be sent forth to love and serve the Lord -- and one another."
Given the roster of heterodox speakers featured at the Religious Education Congress, some have not taken such a roseate view of it as has The Tidings. Alphonse J. Matt, Jr., editor of the Catholic weekly, The Wanderer, in the February 22 issue of his paper ran an open letter to Cardinal Mahony. In the past, "as you know well," Matt wrote Mahony, "The Wanderer has. expressed serious concern about the heterodox, dissident, erroneous, and scandalous ideas and views represented by many of the individuals featured at these congresses." This year's congress, wrote Matt, was no different. He asked Mahony to "carefully to listen to the tape recordings of the addresses given at this conference by those individuals mentioned in Mr. Likoudis' Wanderer report of February 15, 2001 and judge their content on the basis of certain principles and norms issued by a bishop in 1985." If the norms of this bishop had been followed, said Matt, many of this year's conference speakers would not have been allowed to speak.
Who was this bishop? It was Mahony himself. According to a Wanderer report from March 28, 1988, reproduced in Matt's letter, Mahony, then bishop of Stockton, issued a letter to all priests, laymen, and religious education teachers regarding books and speakers in religious education. According the Wanderer report, then Bishop Mahony wrote that the Church "from time to time" has had to reaffirm her authority "because of some direct dissent from that teaching or because of confusion regarding the teaching." Public discussions of Church teachings around the country, wrote Mahony, "offer us an opportunity to remind ourselves of the origin and the role of the teaching authority of the Church. That teaching responsibility is found in the Holy Father, successor to Peter and Vicar of Christ, and in the Bishops of the Local Churches, successors to the Apostolic College in union with the Holy Father."
Bishop Mahony wrote that he was establishing guidelines in accord with Canon Law (n. 827) for religious education in the diocese of Stockton. Mahony said no speaker would be allowed to speak within the diocese "without the express approval and permission of myself or of the competent Diocesan Department." A speaker's popularity, he insisted, "does not substitute for the need to verify their qualifications as teachers of the Catholic faith, nor for the need to obtain express permission in each and every case."
Diocesan personnel, wrote Mahony, may not attend courses or programs outside the diocese unless "it has been verified in advance" that the courses or programs are in accord with the "requirements for authentic Catholic teaching." "In a very special way," continued Mahony, "personnel are not to be sponsored to attend courses or programs outside the Diocese which deal clearly with speculative theories in theology or Scripture which are not consistent with the teachings of the Church, Such courses and programs tend to confuse our personnel about what is the clear teaching of the Church. In some cases, our personnel might then return to the Diocese and share with our children, young people, and Catholic adults information which is either speculative or in direct opposition to the teachings of the Church."
After citing the above, Alphonse Matt noted to Mahony that "there are many astute observers of Church affairs who believe that your clear and unequivocal assertion in 1985 of a bishop's authority and obligation to teach only in fidelity to the Magisterium was a factor in your being named archbishop of Los Angeles by Pope John Paul II. Now, 16 years later, you seem intransigently committed to promoting a religion shaped and inspired by an odd assortment of lotus-eaters whom you have set loose among your priests and religion teachers.. We beg Your Eminence to return to the observance and practice of those principles and norms which you so effectively proclaimed in 1985 as bishop of Stockton. Anything less would demonstrate your betrayal of the trust placed in you by Almighty God and Holy Mother Church."
OUR LADY QUEEN OF ANGELS church in Newport Beach offered an Adult Faith Formation day on March 3 called "In Christ There is No East or West." One might suppose that this was an introduction, perhaps, to Orthodox spiritual practices and theology; it was not; rather, it was really an introduction to Zen Buddhism. Along with Father Rafael Luevano, ecumenical and interrreligious affairs officer for the diocese of Orange, special guests included Zen master Robert Moore and Zen abbot Paul Lynch (who, notes the flyer for the event, has "co-authored a book entitled A Path to Christ Consciousness).
The event flyer notes that the afternoon would "include Taize chanting, meditation, a panel presentation by our guests, a talk on Thomas Merton, and a showing of the movie Merton. If you use a cushion or bench for meditation, please bring it." The flyer closed with a loose paraphrase of Galatians 3:28 -- "In Christ there is no east or west, in Him no south or north, but one great fellowship of love throughout the whole wide earth."
Monsignor William McLaughlin, pastor of Our Lady Queen of Angels, told the Mission that the Lenten formation day was part of a regular meditation group that meets every week "for centering prayer and other types of Catholic traditional prayer. This was to see if any of their [Buddhist] methodology would help and, apparently, some people said it did." He could not say for sure; he wasn't present.
Another representative of the parish (who asked to remain anonymous) noted that "all meditation can help Catholic practice, depending on the object of the meditation. What Zen teaches people to do, as it did Thomas Merton, is just to clear the mind of thought. It's a kind of mind training, so that you can empty the mind and then, once you have your mind cleared, you can meditate on whatever you want to meditate on. Most Christians will use the Jesus Prayer, the word Love, or the name of Jesus. The purpose is to increase your own Christian faith."
The parish representative said that danger of syncretism for Catholics who attended the event was minimized because "the Buddhists I'm associated with don't teach a creed; they would talk about a method of stilling the mind. If you're talking about syncretism, you're talking about mixing belief systems." The presence of Father Luevano also helped, she said. "If you have a priest there as well, as we did," said the parish representative, "he can say that's how we do it as Christians."
She concluded: "it is important to include, if you want to be truthful in your article, that the Orange diocese is the head of interreligious and interfaith affairs for all the bishops of the United States."
IF YOU ARE A LAY CATHOLIC in the United States, your bishops want to hear from you. On February 28, the Committee on the Laity of the National Council of Catholic Bishops initiated an internet survey to find out the opinions of the laity on various issues affecting parish life. "This survey," said the bishops' committee letter, "will be not be used to evaluate individual parishes; rather, the survey will help us to gain an understanding, at the national level, of how parishes can best help Catholic men and women live their lives as followers of Christ."
"We are especially interested in your suggestions for improving areas that are important to you," noted the survey, which offered questions in the following subject areas: "knowledge of the Faith," "liturgical life," "moral formation," "prayer," "communal life," and "missionary spirit." The survey allows space for suggestions on the various topics it raises.
Those interested in telling the bishops their mind, may access the survey at http://www.nccbuscc.org/laity/laysurvey/index.htm. The bishops' committee will conduct the survey until May 31, 2001.
THE ARCHDIOCESE of Los Angeles is also conducting a survey to help them develop a website "to serve the People of God in the Archdiocese." "Our intention," said the introduction to the survey, "is to replace the current site with an ... innovative online community that will provide an array of services and informational resources to help you in your faith life."
Survey questions ask what respondents favor in a website. They also ask what "faith-oriented sites" respondents most prefer. A space is provided for additional comments.
One may access the website questionnaire at http://survey.la-archdiocese.org/survey.asp