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Contents © 2004
by Jim Holman.
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NEWS
March 2004
CARDINAL ROGER MAHONY'S 1997 pastoral on the liturgy, Gather Faithfully Together, was commended in the first of a series of articles in the National Catholic Reporter on Vatican II's liturgical renewal. The January 16 article by Gabe Huck, for many years director of Liturgy Training Publications in Chicago, bemoaned the liturgical "mess we are in now," 40 years after the council. Huck, a leader in the liturgical avant-garde, admitted "we made a lot of mistakes as we began to implement the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy," largely through "impatience, a failure to respect the very things -- liturgy and the church -- we love." Huck wrote that "most people I know who worked for liturgical renewal these last 40 years are extremely sensitive to the same abuses that have been denounced by those who wish the Second Vatican Council had never happened."
Huck, though, had strong words for those who object to the basic lines of the last 40 years' liturgical renewal. Their number is to be found in Rome, where "liturgy has become the battleground for other agendas." What we have lost sight of, said Huck, is the Council's call that "in the reform and promotion of the liturgy," the "full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else. For it is the primary and indispensable source from which the faithful are to derive the true Christian spirit." All means all for Huck -- no room for a Tridentine indult, than which "nothing," he said, "has so eroded our all in these four decades. That took all the oomph out of all. It made liturgical renewal optional -- hardly what the council intended." The renewed Roman Rite, according to Huck, "is what baptized people do." If so, one wonders what he would say about maintaining the ancient Eastern Rites.
IT IS IN CONNECTION to the liturgical trinity, "full, conscious, and active participation," that Huck's article favorably quotes Mahony's 1997 pastoral letter -- quite at length. As far as content goes, those who have read Gather Faithfully Together and Huck's article will note how similar are their emphases. In reading the Mahony citation, and the rest of Huck's article, one detects little difference in style. The chief difference is that Huck's piece betrays a certain desperation that Mahony's letter does not. But besides this, one is led to give some credence to a rumor that went about after the publication of the Gather Faithfully Together that Gabe Huck ghost-wrote the thing for the cardinal.
CLERGY OF VARIOUS FAITHS led a pilgrimage from Los Angeles County to the home of Safeway CEO Steven Burd in Alamo in the Bay Area on the weekend of January 27-28, said the February 6 Tidings, the newspaper of the archdiocese of Los Angeles. The pilgrimage was held to encourage Burd to restart talks with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which stalled in December. Since September 2003, the union has led a strike against Safeway and other California stores to secure wages and medical benefits for workers. The union objects to management's proposals which would bring on new hires at $3 to $4 less in hourly wages, thus creating what the union calls a "two-tiered" system for workers, as well as insisting that workers contribute to their health benefits. The strike currently impacts about 70,000 workers.
The group, Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, led the "Grocery Workers Justice Pilgrimage." "At a moment when many workers and managers are deadlocked in heated animosity," said the Tidings, "religious leaders hope that an appeal to universal spiritual and human values might persuade Burd and workers to look at the negotiations from a different perspective." Father Mike Gutierrez, pastor St. Anne's parish in Santa Monica noted to the Tidings that, unlike other recent strikes, the grocery strike involves middle-class workers who are trying to remain in the middle class. "This is not a poor person's strike," said Father Gutierrez, who said he feared that the middle class "are a vanishing breed."
CARDINAL MAHONY did not join the pilgrimage to Alamo, but on January 29 he sent a message to Burd and Rick Icaza, the president of the grocery workers union, urging them to resume talks, said an Associated Press article. "In the name of thousands of Angelenos who continue to suffer greatly from this strike, I urge you to return to the bargaining table and to negotiate in good faith until a fair contract is attained," said the cardinal's letter. Icaza said he welcomed the cardinal's letter and added, "I hope that somehow Burd will see the light. We're not optimistic." Burd said his company shares "the cardinal's concern for our employees and [we] are eager for them to come back to work. We stand ready and willing to meet with the union to work toward a resolution." Safeway and other grocery companies involved maintain that only by cutting workers' wages and benefits can they compete with non-union companies such as Wal-Mart.
INITIATIVE UPDATE. Two important memos regarding the Parental Notification initiative -- one from the seasoned pro-life attorneys at Life Legal Defense Foundation. The other from the diocese of Sacramento.
Life Legal's February 6 memo: "Over the past few weeks, Life Legal Defense has received several inquiries concerning the Parental Notification Initiative (PNI) currently being circulated. The inquiries raised serious questions concerning the wording of the PNI.
"In the meantime, however, it has become apparent that, for reasons unrelated to the merits of the PNI, the effort to put it on the November 2004 ballot is no longer viable. Simply put, the PNI has been submerged under a tide of other petitions also currently being circulated in hopes of qualifying for the November ballot. These other initiatives, many backed by large financial interests, have sharply driven up the cost of getting signatures through paid signature gatherers, a necessary component of every initiative drive. The unusually large number of initiatives chasing the relatively fixed pool of professional signature gatherers has doubled, even tripled the per-signature cost. (See the Law of Supply and Demand). We understand that, to date, only a small fraction of the required number of signatures has been gathered, leaving it up to the volunteer effort to gather the bulk of the signatures by April 15, a practical impossibility.
"In light of these factors, Life Legal Defense believes that it is in the best interests of the pro-life movement at this time to focus on preparing for an initiative drive later this year, when the field is not as crowded. We hope that the proponents will use the intervening time to address and resolve the legitimate questions raised concerning the wording of the initiative."
From the diocese of Sacramento on February 18: "Many of you have been anxiously awaiting to hear word that the California Catholic Conference and the California Bishops have given their blessing for signature gatherings to take place for the Parental Notification Initiative. I am sorry to have to inform you that this initiative drive has been tabled for two years. "The primary factor for this decision was the knowledge that there were an abnormally high number of initiatives seeking to qualify for the November election. This makes the cost of paid signature-gathering prohibitive not to mention the anticipated high hurdle of an expensive public education campaign to pass the PNI into law. While the Bishops and the CCC have no difficulty with the initiative, the consensus was that the timing was just not right. "If you have any questions, you are welcome to email or call me at my office (916)733-0140. I sincerely regret that many of you will be disappointed. However, you must have faith that the right decision was made. Kathy M. Conner, Respect Life Coordinator, Diocese of Sacramento."
"WE MUST NOT BE RESIGNED to attacks on human life, above all, abortion!" Pope John Paul II told pilgrims gathered in St. Peter's Square for the Angelus on February 1, Pro-Life Day in Italy. According to a Zenit news report, the pope urged that all work "so that the right of life of yet unborn children is affirmed not against the mothers, but together with the mothers." The pope indicated that affirming the right to life requires not merely working for laws against abortion but in addressing "the cultural and social context" that "very often does not favor the family and the mission of parents." The pope acknowledged that "not a few parents would like to have more children, but are almost constrained not to do so because of financial difficulties. The assistance of public institutions, though appreciable, is often insufficient. There is a need for a more organic policy in favor of the family."
IT IS NOT OFTEN that a diocesan newspaper carries an article critical of the bishop of another diocese; but the February 6 Tidings did. Though the article was not by Tidings staff but by syndicated columnist, Father Richard McBrien, one may still wonder if the Tidings would have run the McBrien column had the object of his criticism been Roger Cardinal Mahony.
In his column, McBrien criticized Cardinal Francis George, archbishop of Chicago, for a false dichotomy he supposedly embraces. McBrien does not quote the cardinal himself, but a "well-balanced profile" of him by Peter Feuerherd, that appeared in the January 16 Commonweal. According to Feuerherd, one of Cardinal George's "favorite themes is that the church has spent enough time focusing on itself and now must spend more time on the work of conversion. He sees evangelization as the solution to perennial problems such as the looming priest shortage." Based on this citation, McBrien concludes that Cardinal George has embraced a "false dichotomy," which "has to be named such and then rejected."
WHAT DICHOTOMY? McBrien spends the lion's share of his article arguing that evangelization presupposes, and is intertwined with, internal Church reform. The reader of McBrien's column, however, may well feel puzzled; based on the Feuerherd quote (the sole evidence presented for McBrien's case), Cardinal George does not say that the Church must only focus on evangelization, but must spend "more time" on it. More is not only. Based on Feuerherd, the cardinal does not say, as McBrien claims he does, that "we have to choose between two pastoral priorities," internal reform and evangelization.
But regular readers of McBrien's column will perhaps recollect that, to McBrien, internal reform has not gone far enough. In his column, published in the March 22, 2002 Tidings, McBrien argues that the answer to the problem of molestation by priests is more systemic change in the Church. Part of the problem in the priesthood stems from priestly celibacy; "but," says McBrien, "celibacy is only one element in a larger network of church regulations and teachings regarding human sexuality and marriage. Many, in fact, view the church's approach as simply one of prohibition. Sexual expression is morally permissible only within the marriage of a man and a woman. But even in such marriages there are stringent limitations, for example, against birth control by artificial means. Others -- rightly or wrongly -- see the church's tenacious opposition to both abortion and the ordination of women as having more to do with the need to control women than with anything else." As is usual in his columns, McBrien does not attempt to address directly the "rightly or wrongly" in regards to these questions.
AMONG THOSE HONORED by Cardinal Roger Mahony at his February 7 Cardinal's Award Dinner at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills was Robert Ahmanson, president of the Ahmanson Foundation. According to the January 16 Tidings the Ahmanson Foundation "has been at work in the community for more than 50 years, touching an endless array of places, programs and people. The foundation supports libraries, open spaces, schools, museums, hospitals and countless community endeavors" -- not to mention, the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. But the cathedral is not the only Catholic cause Ahmanson has helped fund; according to the Tidings, the foundation has given money to "Catholic Charities, St. Anne's Maternity Home, the Good Shepherd Center for Homeless Women and many local Catholic high schools and colleges."
The Tidings, though, did not point out that the Ahmanson Foundation has also been a supporter of Planned Parenthood. Reported in November 2000, since 1996, the Ahmanson Foundation of Beverly Hills has donated a total of $800,000 to Planned Parenthood-Los Angeles, including $200,000 in 1999. Robert Ahmanson has headed up the foundation since 1974.
The Tidings noted that Ahmanson is "the second non-Catholic Cardinal's Award honoree (Lew Wasserman was the first, in 1998)." A movie mogul, Wasserman produced the film, The Last Temptation of Christ.
MORE CUTBACKS. The archdiocese of Los Angeles faces another budget shortfall this year, said the February 4 Los Angeles Times. Last fiscal year, the archdiocese had an operating deficit of $6.2 million; though not so drastic, the 2003 fiscal year's expected shortfall of $1.8 million has led archdiocesan officials to maintain the hiring freeze instituted last year and to consider more cutbacks. Already the archdiocese has given early retirement packages to ten workers, making 70 the number of job cuts since last year. This year's deficit represents two percent of the archdiocese's $90.3 billion operating budget. Among the 2003 costs was $5.4 million spent in legal fees on account of the sexual abuse crisis, though the archdiocese has not specified how much of this cost has been covered by insurance companies.
SULPICIAN FATHER GERALD COLEMAN will in June resign as president-rector of St. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park, said the January 26 Catholic Voice, the newspaper of the diocese of Oakland. Archbishop William Levada, to whose archdiocese of San Francisco St. Patrick's belongs, and Sulpician provincial Father Donald Witherup made the announcement of Father Coleman's resignation on January 12. Levada and Witherup said that Father Coleman's long-planned and delayed sabbatical provided "an opportune time to make this decision and to prepare for an administrative transition." The statement did not say whether Coleman's resignation was of his own initiative.
Levada and Witherup praised Coleman for his improvements to the physical plant of the seminary. They noted that "throughout his administrative career, Father Coleman, a distinguished professor of moral theology, has maintained an extensive teaching load, served as a consultant on hospital ethics, and published various articles and books in the field of moral theology."
St. Patrick's Seminary trains priests for the San Francisco archdiocese as well for other California and Pacific Coast dioceses.
AS A "DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR of moral theology," Father Coleman is well known for what he has written about homosexuality. In 2001, he wrote an "Open Letter" to the San Francisco Faith, the Los Angeles Mission, and San Diego News Notes, which appeared in the archdiocese of San Francisco's Catholic San Francisco. In this article Coleman pronounced his support for life-long homosexual relationships. "Jesus did not change the meaning of marriage," he wrote. "Jesus did not create a sacramental bond that evaluates a non-sacramental bond as unworthy or undignified." In another article, in the context of "non-sacramental bonds, Coleman spoke about "long-term, committed and loving relationships, named by certain segments of our society as domestic partnership." Though Coleman said these relationships should be "chaste," he equated this modifier with "committed;" he wrote of "committed (i.e., chaste) life-long homosexual partnerships," leaving it unclear whether he included refraining from genital activity in the term "chaste." Coleman, as well, voiced his support for civil recognition of "committed ... life-long homosexual partnerships, which, he said, should have "an important status, deserving our respect and protection."
Coleman seems to think homosexuality merely an orientation and has refrained from calling it objectively disordered, as does the Catechism of the Catholic Church. In a 1995 article published in the diocese of Sacramento's Catholic Voice, Coleman said "confusion of sexual orientation" is one of the warning signs of a pedophile. "It is important here to avoid the 'wish' syndrome, i.e., 'I wish I were heterosexual,'" he wrote. "It is crucial to be aware of and convinced of one's actual sexual orientation, normally identified as heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual." Coleman said that homosexual men should not be prohibited from entering the priesthood and called a Vatican ban on homosexual seminarians counterproductive. As reported in the July/August 2002 Faith, Coleman told the San Francisco Chronicle, "one effect of that kind of blanket statement would be that a guy who was gay could just lie. My fear is that he won't deal well with that area in his life." Coleman only asked that homosexual seminarians not announce their "orientation." "I don't like guys to announce they're gay," he said. "Then they're known as 'a gay priest.' A priest is a priest."
THE CATHOLIC WORKER in Orange continues to offer breakfast to homeless at Isaiah House in downtown Santa Ana -- despite the city's January injunction ordering the soup kitchen to cease and desist. The Catholic Worker has been operating a soup kitchen and homeless shelter in a residential area; and though no residents have objected, a local businessman has. In December the Santa Ana city council declared Isaiah House a public nuisance and ordered an end to its serving breakfast on Sunday mornings, though it has not immediately enforced the ruling. But, according to the January 28 Los Angeles Times, lawyers from 14 Orange County law firms filed suit on behalf of the Catholic Worker in federal court. The lawyers contend that the city's attempted enforcement of zoning laws violates the Catholic Worker's First Amendment constitutional right to religious freedom. Bishop Tod Brown of Orange also came out in support of the Catholic Worker. "The Catholic Worker for a long, long time has been an invaluable service for the poor of Santa Ana," the bishop said. "And I would pray for success in their attempt to find assistance through the court system."
Isaiah House shelters about 140 people, mostly women and children, and serves about 10,000 meals a month to the poor. Orange County has about 25,000 homeless people but only 2,200 shelter beds.
A FUNERAL MASS was held for Ann Miller, well-known movie actress and tap-dancer, at St.Mel Catholic Church in Woodland Hills. Miller died of lung cancer. According to a January 29 Associated Press story, after the funeral Mass, Hollywood stars of the 1930s and '40s rose for a standing ovation. Paramount producer A.C. Lyles gave the eulogy at St.Mel. "She dressed like a star. She lived like a star," Lyles said of Miller. But Miller, it seems, has achieved far more than star status. According to a piece by Ann Jillian and Andy Murcia on TheColumnists.com, the priest who was with Miller "when she passed on" said, "she must have danced through the pearly gates on her way to Heaven!" Sainthood for Ann Miller? Cause for applause, indeed.
TO SHOW HIS COMMITMENT to assuaging the pain caused by the clergy sexual molestation crisis, Bishop Tod Brown of Orange on January 18 nailed a "Covenant with the Faithful" to the door of his cathedral in Orange, said the January 19 Los Angeles Times. Brown said he believed this was the first time this ancient practice (reminiscent of Martin Luther's nailing of 95 theses on Wittenberg church door) had been done in the United States. Wearing penitential purple, Brown pledged that the diocese would spend Lent expressing sorrow for the sins of the Church and offering prayer for the victims and their families. In a letter sent to parishes with the Covenant, Brown promised that he would "work to regain your confidence and trust. I am saddened by the hurt that the abused people have suffered by the disreputable clergy offenders, beg for the forgiveness of those abused, and pray for their recovery." Brown wrote that he has "implemented reforms and set up procedures to ensure that this never happens again." Brown assured the faithful that "no one remains in ministry today -- clergy or layperson -- who has a credible allegation of the sexual abuse of a minor."
According to the Times, the Covenant and the bishop's message were put together with the assistance a public relations firm called the Softness Group. The diocese paid Softness $90,000 for its services.
NINETY-THOUSAND -- FOR WHAT? The seven "theses" of Bishop Brown's Covenant offered nothing surprising. It noted that the diocese will "continue to do everything possible to help the healing process of the victims of sexual abuse," as well as "endeavor to heal the hurt among the clergy, religious and laity, who have been humiliated, scorned and disgraced by the actions of those priests who sexually abused children and young people and the leaders who failed to appreciate the severity of these actions and failed to respond appropriately." It declared its continued adherence to the United States bishops' "National Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People." It pledged collaborative work "with all members of the Diocese to promote an atmosphere of openness and trust, and empower them as partners in parochial affairs and thereby create a new era for our Church in Orange County." Public statements will be open, honest, and forthright and diocesan communications "consistent and transparent." Along with restoring "confidence" in their role as bishops, Brown and his auxiliaries pledged to lead "the rededication of the Diocese of Orange as an Ambassador of God's Love that cares about the welfare of the entire county, especially the disenfranchised and the poor."
"VERY PROBLEMATIC" is what the California Catholic Conference called Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget proposals for 2004-05, said the January 26 Catholic Voice. Conference director Ned Dolejsi criticized the budget proposals for their proposed caps on such social programs as food stamps for documented immigrants, aid to the disabled, Medi-Cal, Healthy Families, and Child Health and Disability Prevention. Dolejsi said the budget proposals will also cut funding for homeless and battered women's shelters by 25 percent. The budget proposals might negatively affect services to the elderly, the blind, and disabled. Al Hernandez, associate director of the Conference's Hispanic affairs, objected to the governor's proposal to place monies for food stamps and cash assistance for documented immigrants in block grants to counties; "some counties," he said, "would not be prone to help these groups." The Conference, said Hernandez, will press for reinstatement of funding for naturalization, since Catholic Charities utilizes these funds to prepare immigrants for naturalization. Hernandez said, "I don't see anything in (the budget) that asks the rich to share the pain, only the middle and lower classes."
Hernandez, however, welcomed some of Schwarzenegger's proposals. "We like the signals coming out of the governor's office in regards to prisons, freezing construction of new prisons, releasing some non-violent offenders," said Hernandez. Some prisons, he said, might also be closed.