NEWS
2002 NEWS STORIES
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Contents © 2002
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
NEWS
DECEMBER 2002
IN THE RED. The diocese of Orange announced on Sunday, November 3, that for the second straight year it has lost over $14 million, according to a November 4 Los Angeles Times report. This is the second year of such a loss for a diocese that, three years ago, reported a surplus of $21.5 million. To offset the losses, Bishop Tod Brown, in July, ordered a five percent reduction in expenses; during the last week of October he ordered another five percent reduction. The diocese has frozen or gotten rid of about a dozen jobs and has laid off two employees.
In a Q and A on the diocesan web site, the fact that the diocese's investments "had a negative return of 2% for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2002," was given as one reason for the deficit. "The absence of investment income to fund expenses, increased operational expenses, and a decline in income generated from contributions, grants and bequests all contributed to the loss experienced," said the website. "The operational loss in the previous fiscal year, when investments returned a meager 1%, was due to the granting of over $15 million for direct assistance to parishes and schools and for scholarships to students at our schools."
A downturn in investment income doesn't exonerate the diocese, according to Dwight Smith of the Orange County Catholic Worker. Smith told the Times that he thinks that the diocese is too involved in investments. "Once the buildings are built, and everyone has a seat, then we have to turn our attention to the plight of the poor," Smith said. "I don't understand why we're investing money at all. I would like to see an investment into filling the bellies of the poor, or in schools."
And what effect have the molestation scandals had on diocesan finances? The diocese, according to its website, "has been a party to settlements and expenses of $7 million related to sexual abuse by priests and the alleged lack of proper supervision by others." The diocese has paid $3.6 million of this amount, while the remainder has been paid "by insurance and other parties. It is difficult to attribute either decreases or less than expected growth in offertory contributions to this cause specifically, but it certainly has been a factor."
A DIFFERENT "STYLE" is what distinguishes Orange diocese from the Los Angeles archdiocese in financial reporting, noted the November 3 Times article. While, each year, Orange issues a financial report -- complete with "articles, color graphs, financial tables, charts and a note on where to find the complete audited statement" -- to the faithful, Los Angeles, said the Times, has not "publicly released figures for even the previous fiscal year, which are now eight months overdue."
In a prepared statement to the Times, archdiocesan officials said they have not released the 2000-01 report (due for publication in last March's Tidings) because "rapidly changing financial conditions and subsequent events related to the sexual-abuse crisis in the spring of 2002 made the publication of financial results from June 30, 2001, not relevant to current conditions." The officials said that a financial report would be released in the Tidings well before the March deadline in 2003 and would include information from the 2000-01 report.
NO NEW CATHEDRAL -- FOR THE PRESENT. The fiscal losses this year, combined with the clerical molestation crisis, means that the diocese of Orange's capital campaign will be put on hold. According to the diocesan website, Bishop Brown has cancelled plans to "move ahead" on a new cathedral in Santa Ana, housing for retired priests, and other concerns. "In light of the recent crisis within the Church, this time is better used to address the serious issues at hand and allow for healing to take place," said the website. "The sluggish economy is yet another reason for delaying the campaign" for "at least one year. The capital campaign schedule will be evaluated again in the spring of 2003."
YOUNGER PRIESTS MORE "CONSERVATIVE." A Los Angeles Times poll of 1,854 secular and regular priests in 80 U.S. dioceses showed that priests ordained in the past twenty years are more "conservative" (orthodox?) than older priests, said an October 21 Times report. While, overall, 30 percent of priests described themselves as "liberal" on religious and moral issues, and 28 percent as conservative, among younger priests the percentage of those who called themselves conservative on religious and moral issues jumped to 40 percent. According to the Times, priests under age 41 "expressed more allegiance to the clerical hierarchy, less dissent against traditional church teachings, and more certainty about the sinfulness of homosexuality, abortion, artificial birth control and other moral issues than did their elders."
What has caused this generational shift? According to the Times, it was the influence of Pope John Paul II and the fact that Catholicism's center of gravity has moved away from liberal Europe and North America to more conservative Asia, Africa and Latin America. The influx of Catholic immigrants from these lands may presage deep disagreements in the Church in the United States. "The church has developed a fissure whose size most people do not fully appreciate," Philip Jenkins, a Pennsylvania State University professor and the author of The Next Christendom, told the Times.
WHAT'S YOUR SEXUAL ORIENTATION? The Times poll also asked the priests surveyed to identify whether they were homosexual, heterosexual, or somewhere in between. According to the October 20 Times, "a combined 15 percent" of priest respondents "identified themselves as homosexual (9%) or 'somewhere in between, but more on the homosexual side' (6%)." Among priests who were ordained less than 20 years ago (the more "conservative" group), however, the number of those who identified as somehow homosexual was 23 percent. Among priests placing themselves in the homosexual category, five percent said they were "completely in the middle" along the homo-heterosexual spectrum, eight percent said they were "mostly" heterosexual, and 67 percent said they were wholly homosexual. Five percent refused to answer the question.
When asked whether a "homosexual subculture" (defined as "a definite group of persons that has its own friendships, social gatherings and vocabulary") existed in their dioceses or religious orders, 17 percent said "definitely," 27 percent said "probably," while 52 percent said no. Asked if such a subculture existed at the seminaries they attended, 12 percent said "definitely," 14 percent said "probably," while 71 percent said no. Among priests who were ordained in the last 20 years, however, 53 percent of priests said such a subculture existed in the seminaries they had attended.
As for celibacy, one-third of the priests surveyed said they "do not waver" from their vow of celibacy. Forty-seven percent said for them celibacy was "an ongoing journey" and 14 percent said they "do not always succeed in following" it. Only two percent said they are not celibate, while five percent declined to answer the question.
THE GIVE AND TAKE OF POLITICS. Pro-lifers rejoiced last July when President George W. Bush announced that he would redirect the $34 million Congress had slated for United Nations family planning programs because of their ties with forced abortion in China. Bush redirected the money to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which, according to an October 24 Catholic World News report, has announced that it will endow the Population Council with a $65 million grant. According to its website, the Population Council "works in countries where abortion is legal to make abortion services safer and to improve access to them. The organization also works in these and other countries to reduce the burden of morbidity and mortality from unsafe abortion. Council work in abortion includes both medical abortion and post-abortion care." The Council also, says the website, "holds the United States rights to mifepristone [RU-486] for early pregnancy termination. In 1996, the Council filed a New Drug Application for U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of the drug; approval was granted in September 2000. The Council conducted a clinical trial in the United States involving 2,100 women at 17 sites."
DUBYA'S COMMITMENT. "President Bush has made the fight against AIDS a priority of his administration," said Dr. Anne Peterson, U.S. Agency for International Development's assistant administrator for global health, according to a USAID press release. She referred to USAID's $65 million grant to the Population Council. The grant will go to the Horizons program, which calls itself "a team of US-based and international organizations working to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and mitigate its impact on individuals and communities." One Horizon program pays for condom use among "sex workers" (prostitutes) in third world countries. According to the May 2002 Horizons Report, a Santo Domingo "100 percent" program (sponsored by Horizons) "promotes solidarity among sex workers, sex establishment owners, managers and staff, and others in the sex work industry to build a collective commitment to condom use for every commercial sex act." In addition, it sponsors "workshop discussions on such sensitive issues as trust and intimacy between sex workers and regular clients and boyfriends, with whom condom use is often irregular." Catholic World News reported that, in a letter to pro-life groups, Congressional Pro-Life Caucus leader John Cusey pointed out that Horizons gives condoms to sex workers instead of helping them escape their condition. Some members of Congress, said Cusey, are working on a letter requesting USAID not to direct the money to the Population Council.
In September, Bush also pledged to rejoin UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, which advocates reproductive health services for children, including abortion.
DOCTORS AT CEDARS-SINAI Medical Center in Los Angeles have used adult stem cells to treat brain cancer in mice, according to an October 20 online BBC News report. Extracting neural stem cells from bone marrow of the mice, and modifying them with gene therapy, researchers at Cedars-Sinai re-injected them into the mice. After treatment, the average survival time for the mice was 50 percent longer than for untreated mice. Researchers hope that in 18 months they will be able to test the therapy on adults.
LORI CAMPOBIANCO HAIGH, who last spring accused Monsignor Lawrence Baird, media relations director for the Orange diocese, of sexual molestation, is now asking a judge to throw out a slander suit the priest has brought against her, according to a November 7 Los Angeles Times report. Haigh claimed that Monsignor Baird hugged, kissed, and rubbed himself against her when she confessed to having a relationship with another priest. Baird denies the allegations, and at a press conference last spring, said that he had never met with Haigh. Further, said Baird, "I have 100 percent memory that I have never made any inappropriate contact with any person during my 33 years as a priest."
On November 6, the 38-year-old Haigh, filed a motion in San Francisco Superior Court saying that Monsignor Baird's defamation suit was a mere "scare tactic" by which he hoped to silence and punish her for having spoken out. Haigh also declared that Baird's lawsuit violated a California law against "SLAPP" suits -- groundless lawsuits brought by large organizations simply to silence critics and whistleblowers. In her court papers, Haigh said "Msgr. Baird's public humiliation of me and his lawsuit has reopened my old wounds and in many ways inflicted deeper ones. I feel like I've been tarnished and shunned by God."
Though Haigh took a lie detector test, and scored a "plus-15," which means, said Dr. Edward I. Gelb, who administered the test, that "she is telling the truth" about Baird, Baird's attorney says such tests are easily manipulated and, thus, are not admissible in court as evidence. Baird, for this reason, has refused to take a lie detector test. According to Haigh's attorney, for Baird to win his case, he must, as a public figure, prove Haigh knowingly made false allegations or showed reckless disregard as to the truth of her allegations.
THE DIOCESE OF FRESNO has announced that it will cut its $150,000 support for Catholic Charities because of stock market losses, said a November 6 Fresno Bee report. Catholic Charities serves about 75,000 needy persons in the diocese of Fresno, helping them with food, medical expenses, and rental and utility bills. It also runs programs for immigrants, refugees, seniors and youth. Bishop John Steinbock said that the diocese has cut funds not only for Catholic Charities, but for the cathedral restoration project, Catholic KNXT-TV, and capital improvements in parishes.
THE VATICAN MAY BAR the admittance of homosexuals to the seminary, according to an October 8 Catholic News Service report. For years, the Vatican has "quietly considered" excluding homosexuals from the priesthood, but has reached no consensus, said the report; but the clergy sex abuse crisis in the U.S Church has made the question an urgent one.
The Congregation for Catholic Education, along with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith as well as other Vatican agencies, has drafted a draft document addressing the question of homosexuals in the seminary, according to unnamed Vatican sources. During the month of October, the draft document was to be circulated for comment among theologians and other experts.
The Congregation for Catholic Education has finished another document addressing the role of psychology in helping seminaries discern fit candidates. While this document will offer merely a set a guidelines for bishops, the document on the admission of homosexuals to seminaries mandates directives or norms binding on the universal Church, Vatican sources told Catholic News Service. "The document's position (on admission of homosexuals to the priesthood) is negative, based in part on what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says in its revised edition, that the homosexual orientation is 'objectively disordered,'" Catholic News Service quoted one source as saying. "Therefore, independent of any judgment on the homosexual person, a person of this orientation should not be admitted to the seminary and, if it is discovered later, should not be ordained," said the source.
Though the document on the use of psychological sciences was slated for publication by the end of 2002, Vatican officials offered Catholic News Service no definite timetable for the publication of the document on homosexuals in the seminary.
DESPITE THE REPORTS that the International Theological Commission had declared the possibility of the ordination of women to the diaconate, the commission's secretary, Father Georges Cottier, has said the commission tends to think women cannot be ordained as deacons, according to an October 17 Catholic World News report. Though he acknowledged that the commission came to no definitive conclusion on the subject, it also "had not concluded that any opening is possible regarding the ordination of female deacons." The magisterium, said Cottier, "must give the authoritative judgment" on the issue.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith will use the commission's conclusions as a basis for a new document on the diaconate.
NOT SINCE ADAM AND EVE. California's teen birth rate has dipped below the national average for the first time since 1980, said an October 21 Associated Press report. Only 45 teen females, ages 15-19, out of every 1,000, gave birth this year, compared with 1991, when it was reported that 73 out every 1,000 teen girls gave birth. The national average is currently 46 girls out of every 1,000.
State officials attribute the decline in birth rates to a state media campaign which tells teenagers their reproductive options. The programs stress male involvement in preventing "unplanned" pregnancies. They also publish information on family health services and communication between teenagers and their parents. The program's web site gives links showing where to obtain family planning services.
While the average birthrate has decreased in the state, on a local level it has decreased for only 32 of California's 58 counties. Fresno, Yuba and Kings counties retain the highest rates, while Marin County has the lowest rate -- 12.9 per every 1,000 girls. Among ethnic groups, the highest rates are found among Hispanic girls (86.2 births for every 1,000) and blacks (53.3 births for every thousand.) Asian and Pacific Islander girls have the lowest birthrate -- 15.6 per every thousand.
Kathy Kneer, president of Planned Parenthood Associates of California, said the decreased number of births does not reflect an increased number of abortions. She noted that there has been a 60 percent decrease in state-funded abortions since 1990. Kneer said that the state's approach of "responsible" sex among teens is more realistic than President George W. Bush's push for abstinence. "That probably hasn't happened since Adam and Eve," said Kneer.