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ROAMIN' CATHOLIC
Contents © 2003
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
NEWS
October 2003
ASYLUM. The United States ninth circuit court of appeals in San Francisco has granted asylum to a Chinese woman who had had to undergo two forced abortions in China, said a September 2 LifeNews.com report. The court unanimously overturned a Board of Immigration decision denying asylum to Xuan Wang and her husband. Said Justice Betty Fletcher, Wang had "shown a genuine and well-founded fear of future persecution, should she return to China." Chinese officials had issued an order that Wang be forcibly sterilized should she return to China.
The decision of the federal court was in accord with a 1996 congressional law that allowed 1,000 people a year to declare political asylum if they could demonstrate that their countries would force abortion or sterilization on them pursuant to population control programs.
THUMBS UP FROM HOLLYWOOD. Cardinal Roger Mahony has declared his "full support" to the Holy Sees document against legal recognition of homosexual unions. In the August 8 Tidings, Cardinal Mahony wrote that the teaching in "Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons," "will be followed in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, especially when legislative proposals are being discussed and debated which might grant legal recognition to such homosexual unions."
"While the Church once again reaffirms its respect for homosexual persons," wrote Mahony, "it makes it clear that this respect 'cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions.'" Quoting from the Vatican document, the cardinal laid out the Church's teaching on marriage and why the common good demands that homosexual unions be denied the dignity of civil marriage. Mahony drew attention to the document's final section which, he said, "speaks directly to Catholic politicians and their responsibilities to oppose first-time legislation granting legal recognition to homosexual unions, and to work to diminish the effectiveness of any existing legislation: 'it is his/her duty to witness to the truth.'" Mahony then added: "I urge all Catholics serving in public office in and from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to reflect carefully upon this teaching."
REFLECT ON THIS. A reader forwarded the Mission this letter he sent to Cardinal Roger Mahony. "Dear Cardinal Mahony, Please know that Arnold Schwarzenegger received Holy Communion at St. Monica's on Sunday at the 9:30 am mass. I do not know what to say. Can you step in and say something? Please." The September 8 Los Angeles Times reported that Schwarzenegger and his wife, Maria Shriver, attend Mass weekly at St. Monica's.
Schwarzenegger, who is running for governor in the recall election, has voiced his support for legal abortion. He has also said that, while he opposes homosexual marriage, he does support some sort of domestic partnership arrangement for homosexuals.
IN HIS ELEMENT. Cardinal Roger Mahony shared the limelight with actors and high government officials at a memorial Mass for actor Bob Hope, held August 27 at St. Charles Borromeo church in North Hollywood. Among the guests at the Mass were Nancy Reagan, President Gerald Ford, Mickey Rooney, Raquel Welch, Governor Pete Wilson, Phyllis Diller, and Marie Osmond, said an August 27 Associated Press report. Pro-abortion U.S. Senator, Diane Feinstein, was one of the eulogists.
The Mass opened solemnly with an honor guard bearing the flags of the United States Army, Marines, Navy, and Coast Guard. It ended with a bugler playing "Taps" and a choir softly humming Hope's theme song, "Thanks for the Memories."
THE COURSE OF REVOLUTON. The Spring issue of Outright, a publication of the Gay-Straight Alliance, reported that students at La Cañada High School in La Cañada convinced the administration to add the categories of "gender" and "sexual orientation" to the school's anti-discrimination policy. The term "gender" can apply to cross-dressing and "transgender" individuals. Outright said that the addition of these categories brought the school into conformity with California non-discrimination law -- the California Student Safety and Violence Prevention Act, a 2000 law which prohibits discrimination or harassment based on "sexual orientation" or "gender identity" in California schools. The discrimination can be either actual or merely perceived.
TWO CATHOLIC CLERICS reflected, in the August 15 Los Angeles Times, on whether the appointment by Episcopalians of an openly homosexual bishop would effect Catholic-Anglican ecumenical relations. Father Wayne Maro, Catholic chaplain for the Claremont Colleges, said that since the "celebration of diversity on college campuses and among the young is in full bloom," the young "cannot comprehend the rationale behind any exclusionary version of Christianity, and they wonder how long it will take organized religion to catch up to Jesus' call for Christian loving." Maro mused that, given the recent scandals in the Chuch, "the current open dialogue in the Episcopal Church is refreshingly honest and forthright, helping to unfold God's way of mercy and justice for all people."
Father Thomas Welbers of Our Lady of the Assumption parish in Claremont, was not so optimistic. "The Roman Catholic position is clear and unequivocal. Homosexual orientation in itself is morally neutral, and the homosexual person must be embraced and fully accepted within the church," said Welbers. The phrase "objectively disordered" used by the Church to describe the homosexual inclination "simply means," said Welbers, "that human sexuality was designed for male-female relations, but it involves no moral judgment or culpability on the individual's inclination." Since homosexual intercourse could never be made the moral equivalent of heterosexual intercourse, said Welbers, chastity for a homosexual "means striving for sexual abstinence, even in a close and committed relationship." Insofar a bishop's being "openly gay" indicates condoning homosexual activity, ecumenical dialogue between Catholics and Anglicans will be challenged.
TWO STUDENTS FROM LOMA LINDA University, who were handing out food to the homeless, were arrested August 6 by San Bernardino police, according to the August 24 San Bernardino County Sun. Police searched the two volunteers with Adventist Community Services and cited them for holding a gathering of more than 25 people at Seccombe Lake Park without a permit. According to what the Sun called a "longstanding city ordinance," it is illegal to feed the hungry, or to hold other large gatherings at Seccombe without paying for a park-use permit and clean-up fees, which total $6,250. Police have been enforcing the ordinance of late because business owners around the park have complained of litter and human feces around the park and of people sleeping in the park. Business owners blamed homeless services for the presence of homeless in the park. City officials said the presence of the homeless drove city residents away from the park.
Other charitable groups have long complied with city ordinances, but Adventist Community Services has, for the past ten years, been feeding the homeless once a week at Seccombe without a city permit. Other groups, the Sun quoted San Bernardino city attorney James Penman as saying, have facilities at High Desert Center to help the homeless.
The number of homeless in San Bernardino, said the Sun, stands at 1,605.
POPULAR FAMILY VALUES RADIO GURU, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, contributes "hefty" sums to a group that pays drug addicts and alcoholics to be sterilized, said the September 2 BBC News. Schlessinger has also "frequently plugged the project," Project Prevention, which claims it has contributed $200 each to 1,050 addicts (98 percent of them women) over the past five years. Barbara Harris, the program's director, said the number of clients "served" has doubled in the past year. "Basically, despite the initial controversy over the program, people are starting to accept that it's a good idea," said Harris. "Probation officers, social workers and those who work on drug treatment programs are increasingly referring their clients to us."
The "initial controversy" to which Harris referred centers on the group's perceived likeness to eugenicist movements in the United States and Nazi Germany in the 1930s, which called for the neutering of "defectives." According to the BBC, over half of U.S. states allowed for coerced sterilizations in the 1930s. Harris dismisses such claims. "Our principal aim is to stop children winding up in foster care or with long-term health problems, whose care puts an enormous burden on the taxpayer," Harris said. "If they spend the $200 on drugs, they spend it on drugs. It's none of our business what they do with the money we give them." In an earlier interview, according to the BBC, Harris said "we don't allow dogs to breed. We spay them. We neuter them. We try to keep them from having unwanted puppies, and yet these women are literally having litters of children."
VIRTUAL MARRIAGE. By one vote, the California state assembly, on September 4, sent to the governor a bill that, if signed, would give California de facto gay marriage. The bill extends all the rights and duties of marriage under California law to domestic partnerships. It even requires that the dissolution of same sex "domestic partnerships" be effected through state superior courts. The bill's passage comes three years after California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 22, which defined marriage as the union between a woman and a man. That ballot initiative passed with 66 percent of the vote and carried 52 of the state's 58 counties.
"California law gives some 300 rights and obligations to marriage," said assembly Republican leader Dave Cox (R-Fair Oaks). "This bill gives homosexual couples 299 of those rights and obligations. How is that any different than marriage?"
Proponents argued that the bill was a matter of basic fairness and a turning away from discrimination.
Openly homosexual assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) denied that gay marriage "goes against the will of the people. How presumptuous it is for you to decide that the love [of two gay people] is in any way unequal to the love of anyone else," he said. "The sanctity of intimate consensual [same-sex] relationships is no different than that of other relationships. Love knows no bounds of orientation, and the sooner you understand that, the sooner you believe that, then the sooner we won't have these kinds of debates."
NONE OF YOUR RELIGION! During the debate on the domestic partnership bill, Assemblyman Tim Leslie (R-Tahoe City) quoted the recent Vatican document on same sex unions: "The respect we should have for 'homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions. The common good requires that laws recognize, promote and protect marriage as the basis of the family, the primary unit of society. Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behavior, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity.' We have to 'defend these values, for the good of men and women and for the good of society itself.'"
Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg (D-Hollywood), the bill's author, disagreed. "It's imposing your religion to impose your opposition to domestic partnerships," she said, "and that is unconstitutional. If you for religious reasons oppose domestic partnerships, then don't be in one, but don't use your religion to oppose my domestic partnership. This is a fundamental issue of civil rights. I'm asking you to stand up for fundamental rights."
CALIFORNIA'S MISSIONS NEED millions in dollars for preservation, said an August 16 Associated Press story. According to the California Missions Foundation, $39 million is needed to repair adobe walls, wood damaged by termites and other causes, and fire hazards. An additional $5.8 million is needed to preserve Spanish-era paintings, historical documents, and such items as historical vestments. Another $5.2 million is needed for parking ramps, facilities for disabled, and burglar alarms. Though the Missions Foundation hopes for $10 million each from state and federal governments, it will need to rely on private donors for the remaining sums of money. Nineteen of the 21 missions are owned by the Catholic Church.
Though some of the more popular missions, such as Mission Dolores in San Francisco, San Carlos de Borromeo in Carmel, and Santa Barbara, can rely on tourists and philanthropists for donations, other less frequently visited missions cannot attract the same money. For instance, San Miguel, near Paso Robles, could fall in the next "decent-sized earthquake," said Terry Ruscin of the California Missions Foundation.
For more information on the Foundation's campaign, please visit www.missionsofcalifornia.org/
A RETIRED JUDGE was hired to decide whether Los Angeles archdiocesan personnel files should be turned over to prosecutors, said an August 17 Los Angeles Times story. Over a year ago, the Los Angeles County Grand Jury subpoenaed personnel files of priests accused of molestation. The archdiocese, however, argued that the files contained privileged information, including communications between priests and penitents. In an agreement signed by the county prosecutor's office and the archdiocese of Los Angeles, earlier this year, retired superior court judge Thomas Nuss was appointed to read the disputed documents to decide whether they contain privileged information. The agreement also stipulated that the archdiocese pay the judge's fee of $350 an hour. By August, the archdiocese had paid Nuss $12,500.
According to the August 30 Times, Nuss had made his ruling on August 29 on whether the documents would be turned over to prosecutors; but citing grand jury secrecy, Nuss blocked public access to his decision.
THREE SISTERS have filed a lawsuit against the archdiocese of Los Angeles, claiming they were molested by the Rev. G. Neville Rucker in the early 1970s, said a September 5 Los Angeles Times article. Rucker was then at St. Agatha's church in the West Adams district of Los Angeles. The suit alleges that Rucker continued to molest the girls until one of them told her parents and the father confronted archdiocesan authorities, but, afterwards, the archdiocese continued to give Rucker parish assignments. Besides monetary damages, the sisters are asking the court to appoint an independent oversight board to review cases of sexual abuse by clergy and other church employees and a clergy abuse victims' awareness program.
Rucker, 82, last year faced criminal charges of 29 counts of molesting girls, some cases going as far back as 1947. When the United States Supreme Court declared a state could not change the statute of limitations in criminal cases, as California had done, prosecutors dropped the charges against Rucker. This latest case is civil. During the late 1960s, Rucker was accused of molesting two girls at St. Anthony's in El Segundo, but then-archbishop Timothy Manning convinced the mother of one of the girls not to press criminal charges. Rucker, who has denied the allegations, retired from active ministry in 1987. A year ago, Cardinal Mahony dismissed Rucker from the archdiocese, in accord with the archdiocese's "zero tolerance" policy.
WHEN FATHER IS YOUR FATHER. A court-ordered paternity test on now-inactive priest Valentine Tugade showed he was the father of twenty-year-old Jacqueline Milla, said an October 7 Oakland Tribune story. Tugade, formerly incardinated in the archdiocese of Los Angeles, was one of seven priests with whom Milla's mother, Rita, had had sexual relations. Tugade was discovered in Reno last year after Jacqueline Milla, in a news conference, asked Cardinal Roger Mahony to help her find her father. Rita Milla has a civil suit against the archdiocese.
Rita Milla was molested when she was 16 by Father Santiago Tamayo of St. Philomena Church in Carson. Tamayo, who died in 1999, had confessed in 1991 to having sex with Milla and apologized to her. Last year, Milla's lawyer, Gloria Allred, released documents showing that the archdiocese had urged Tamayo to stay in Philippines after Jacqueline's birth and had sent him checks there. In three letters, dated between 1984 and 1988, archdiocesan officials urged Tamayo not to reveal the source of the payments, "unless requested under oath," and said he was "liable for personal suits arising out of your past actions."
PRIEST ARRESTED. Father Michael Wempe, 63, was arrested September 10 after new accusations of molestation were leveled against him, said a September 11 Los Angeles Times story. In June, Wempe had been charged with molesting five boys between 1977 and 1986 in Westlake Village, Palmdale, and Ventura. Those charges were dropped when the Supreme Court this summer struck down a California law that allowed for the prosecution of molestation cases as old as Wempe's for which the statute of limitations had expired. The latest charges against Wempe come from a 24-year-old man who claims Wempe began molesting him in 1990. Wempe is being held in lieu of $2 million bail.
In the late '80s Cardinal Roger Mahony referred Wempe for treatment after learning of molestation charges against the priest. Then, in 1988, Mahony made Wempe chaplain at Cedars-Sinai hospital without informing the hospital of accusations against the priest. Mahony later admitted this had been a mistake and that he should have reported Wempe to police when the accusations against him surfaced. Cedars Sinai said they had learned of the accusations against Wempe only when he left the hospital last year. In his February 2002 pastoral letter, "I Will Appoint Over You Shepherds After My Own Heart," Mahony said that the archdiocese has had a policy of zero tolerance of molesting priests in place since 1988.
"There had been absolutely no allegations against Wempe following his therapy and during his longtime placement at Cedars-Sinai," archdiocesan spokesman, Tod Tamberg, told the Times. "We thought he was one of our success stories. If this allegation proves true, it will be a bitter disappointment."
THE GROWTH WITH JUSTICE COALITION, a group of clergy, community leaders, and labor organizations in Los Angeles, have proposed that developers of large-scale projects in the city be required to file a Community Impact Report before their developments are approved by the city council, said an August 29 Tidings story. "The [Community Impact Report] fits with the Catholic principle that even private goods are not to be used without attention to the impact on the whole community," Vincentian Father Mike Walsh, associate pastor of St. Vincent Church in Los Angeles, told the Tidings. "We must be careful that we don't invite business at the expense of poor people who have less of a voice in the process anyway." According to the coalition's proposal, developers of projects of over 50,000 square feet or of 100 or more units of housing would be required to file a report assessing the fiscal, housing, employment, and growth impact of any development on the surrounding community.
A NEW TRANSLATION of St. Teresa of Avila's Interior Castle is "earnestly contemporary," said Patricia Hampl in an August 24 Los Angeles Times book review. The translator, Mirabai Starr, professor of Spanish and philosophy at the University of New Mexico, "does not claim," said Hampl, to present a rigorously accurate translation that leaves intact St. Teresa's sometimes embarrassing (for feminists at least) habit of self-disparagement and her urgent claims of orthodoxy. Starr even acknowledges 'brazenly rewriting' the book 'in hopes of making it accessible to a contemporary circle of spiritual seekers.'" For instance, where an earlier translation says, "This sort of life will be a great mortification," Starr translates, "You might feel ashamed of this lifestyle." Where the earlier translation has Teresa advising, "relax as much as you can," Starr has her saying, "try to do something for fun."
After musing in several paragraphs on the tensions between the interior life and orthodox hierarchy, Hampl finally reflects on the value of St. Teresa's work: "In an age -- our own -- in which the treasures of Catholic spirituality often seem to be eclipsed in the popular mind by the brittle restrictions and prohibitions of the institutional church (no gays, no women in the clergy) and the shameful subterfuges of the sex abuse scandal, it is indeed like entering a 'vast, spacious, and plentiful' chamber to read St. Teresa's evergreen masterpiece of the searching heart'"
THE CATHOLIC BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS program faces a shortage of Big Brothers for youth, especially in South Los Angeles, said an August 17 Los Angeles Times story. Catholic Big Brothers Big Sisters, said the Times, has a waiting list of 150 children, 30 of whom live in South Los Angeles. The area, some say, has a reputation that keeps volunteers away; they wonder if communities such as Compton and Inglewood are safe. The average wait for Big Brothers is six to nine months.
SCOUT MASTERS IN DRAG? On August 2, Governor Gray Davis signed into a law a bill that levies $150,000 in fines against any one who refuses to hire or rent to transsexuals, said a Coalition for California Families report. According to the Coalition, the new law affects all citizens, as well as religious entities and the Boy Scouts of America. The law, said the Coalition, is based on the section of the California state penal code which defines "gender" as identity, appearance, or behavior, whether or not that "identity, appearance, or behavior is different from that traditionally associated with the victim's sex at birth."
According to the Coalition, the bill passed the state senate, 23-11, on July 24 "without a scintilla of debate" from Republicans. This was in contrast to the seven Republican assembly members who spoke out against the bill when it was in the Assembly in April. (The bill passed the Assembly on April 21 by only a small margin.) The senate Republicans' "silence," according to the Coalition, "sent Gray Davis a message that there wasn't going to be much fuss" about the bill.
Why didn't the senate Republicans debate the bill? "It was a majority bill, that requires only Democratic votes," said Nghia Nguyen, press secretary for Senator Jim Brulte (Rancho Cucamonga), head of the Senate Republican Caucus. "When bills require only majority votes, Republicans really don't have a lot of clout. The Republicans will speak till they are blue in the face, and it will still pass." That all the Republicans voted against the bill, said Nguyen, sent a "strong message" to Gray Davis that he should not sign the bill.
LATINOS FAVOR DEMOCRATS, but tend to be more pro-life than non-Latinos, said a recent New York Times-CBS News poll. The August 4 New York Times reported that Latinos support the Democrat Party by a margin of 49 to 21 percent, and a majority thought the Democrats were better able to make and sustain a strong economy than were Republicans. Latinos tended to support a bigger government that offers services, supports affirmative action, and questions the Iraq war. Yet, on other issues, a majority of Latinos were in favor of tax cuts, school vouchers, were "less likely" to favor homosexual marriage, and were evenly divided on whether homosexual relations between consenting adults should be legal ("among the general public, this position is supported by 54 percent to 39 percent," said the Times). As for abortion, 44 percent of Latinos said it should not be legal, compared to only 22 percent of non-Latinos.
The nationwide poll was conducted with 3,092 adults,1,074 of whom described themselves as Latino. The entire poll has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points and four percentage points for Latinos.
JUAN DIEGO PRESENTE! Though some historians have questioned the existence of St. Juan Diego, to whom our Lady of Guadalupe appeared on Tepeyac Hill outside Mexico City in 1521, new research has confirmed that he did, indeed, exist. According to Catholic News Service, on July 31, Mexico's National Library of Anthropology released a report that analyzed new evidence -- some letters and a document which, researchers say, is Juan Diego's will.