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Contents © 2003
by Jim Holman.
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NEWS
FEBRUARY 2003

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A NATIVE OF BEIJING, CHINA, Monsignor Ignatius Wang, 68, was named as auxiliary bishop of San Francisco on December , making him the first Asian ordained a bishop in the United States. Monsignor Wang, formerly chancellor for the archdiocese, will serve with Auxiliary Bishop John Wester under Archbishop William Levada.

Though ordained in Hong Kong in 1959, Monsignor Wang left China because the Communist government there does not tolerate the Catholic Church. Wang came to San Francisco in 1974 after serving as a priest on the Caribbean island of Grenada. Wang became the first Chinese pastor in the archdiocese in 1982 when he was assigned to St. Francis of Assisi church in North Beach. He was honored with the title of monsignor in 1989.

As a bishop, Monsignor Wang said he will "help to correct" the "common belief among Asian people that the Catholic Church is a Western Church." Though, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, Asians make up about a quarter of the population in San Francisco, only four percent of these are Catholic. Still, this four percent make up about 25 percent of the archdiocese's 450,000 Catholics. "In recent decades," noted Monsignor Wang, "American society has changed its image from being a 'melting pot' to being a mosaic. This image is more suitable, as each ethnic group will retain its own color and shape as a part of the whole picture."

Monsignor Wang's consecration was slated for January 30 at St. Mary's cathedral in San Francisco.


"WHEN I RECEIVED THE NEWS of my appointment from our Archbishop, I was startled at first," said Monsignor Wang in his December 13 statement on his appointment as auxiliary bishop of San Francisco. "An ordinary person like myself, being named a bishop of the Church," Monsignor Wang said he wondered when he ever "demonstrated a sign of the leadership qualities necessary to fulfill so important a position in the Church? When I read what qualifications were needed for a bishop in the epistle to Timothy (I Tim 3, 2-3), I shuddered with fear. 'A bishop must be irreproachable, married only once, of even temper, self-controlled, modest, and hospitable. He should be a good teacher. He must not be addicted to drink. He ought not to be contentious but, rather, gentle, a man of peace.' the list goes on. Are these suggestions that bishops should aim at, or are these pre-requisites? If the latter, how many of these qualifications do I possess, I am not even married once."

Monsignor Wang related that his aunt, who as a nun in China had been persecuted during the Maoist revolution, had told him in 1980 that she was praying that he become a bishop. Wang scolded her: "'Auntie, stop that! Who wants to be a bishop? Pray for something else.' I visited her several times since, and each time we had a similar conversation. Now, in heaven, she is praying even harder for the nephew."

Monsignor Wang noted the "many troubling and challenging issues facing the Church and our world today -- the tragic scandal of sexual abuse, the fragile status of world peace, the economic situation, the threat of continued terrorism." He said he hoped "with the grace of God. to work in collaboration with my brother bishops, especially Archbishop Levada and Bishop Wester -- to bring the light of Christ into our world today."


PC JUDICIARY. The state's justices may have to quit the Boy Scouts of America if they want to keep their jobs, said a December 21 Oakland Tribune story. According to the state of California's Code of Judicial Ethics, the state's 1,600 judges are already forbidden membership in organizations that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, though "non-profit youth organizations" like the Scouts are exempt. At the request, however, of the Los Angeles and San Francisco bar associations, the state supreme court is considering removing this exemption from the code. Former San Francisco bar president, Angela Bradstreet, is leading the move to remove the exemption. "The Boy Scouts do a lot of terrific work," Bradstreet told the Tribune. "But it is inappropriate for any judge to be a member of any organization that practices invidious discrimination."

Forbidding judges membership in the Scouts "would be wrong, inappropriate and unconstitutional," said Boy Scouts spokesman Gregg Shields. "The proposed policy would be just as inappropriate as a policy forbidding judges from being Roman Catholic or Baptist or Orthodox Jewish or any of numerous faiths which share the Boy Scouts' views."

Last July, superior court judges in San Francisco announced they would sever all ties to the Boy Scouts of America, except for local scout groups which have disavowed the organization's national policy forbidding membership to homosexuals.


PAYBACK TIME. Former California Abortion Rights Action League (CARAL) executive director Susan Kennedy has been appointed by Governor Gray Davis to the Public Utilities Commission. Kennedy has been a strong supporter of abortion and homosexual rights in the Davis administration, according to Jan Carroll of the California ProLife Council. "She has had a huge influence, I'm sure she did drive the agenda to an extent," Carrol said in a recent interview. "It's is our suspicion that she worked hand in glove with Hannah Jackson and Kuehl on the agenda." When told that Kennedy had been appointed to the Public Utilities Commission, Carroll said that she was happy about this. "That's probably a good thing; I don't imagine that the PUC will have a big impact on abortion." When told that Davis also appointed Kennedy's partner, Vicki Marti, a Marin County psychotherapist, to the California Medical Assistance Commission, an agency which oversees Medi-Cal payments to hospitals, Carroll said that this would be problematic. "Oh brother, that might be more dangerous," Carroll noted.

Before serving in the Davis administration, Kennedy was communications director for Senator Dianne Feinstein. Kennedy also served as the Executive Director of the California Democratic Party before she headed up CARAL.

"It must be payback time for all [Davis'] abortion friends," Troy Newman of Operation Rescue said about the two appointments. "It seems to me that he is appointing a very old friend to cover his backside on all of his illegal and controversial problems surrounding public utilities. He negotiated a very bad contract that forces Californians to pay more for energy. It shows he's in bed with the abortion industry."


A SAN FRANCISCO woman and member of the Catholic Pace e Bene peace movement will face federal charges on January 27 in Columbus, Georgia, for illegally trespassing on the grounds of Fort Benning, a military base in Columbus, according to a December 30 Oakland Tribune story. Laura Slattery, 36, a West Point graduate, had traveled to Fort Benning in November to protest the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly the School of the Americas, which critics say trains foreign military officers and police in violent methods to suppress dissent in their home countries. The U.S. Army school, which has trained about 60,000 Latin American officers since its opening in 1946, has said it has changed in recent years -- a claim which critics, including Human Rights Watch and School of the Americas Watch, deny.

Slattery had not originally intended to join protesters who carried white crosses inscribed with victims' names in a mock funeral procession that passed through a gap made in the fence surrounding the school compound. In her GI army jacket, she had intended to remain with other protesters outside the school's confines. However, when she "witnessed the funeral parade memorializing the people who have died and reading of all their names," Slattery said, "I was deeply moved. I crossed over because I wanted to be part of what had happened. I had anxiety but once I was through the gap in the fence it was like a rite of passage. I knew I had done the right thing." Slattery left her army jacket hanging on the fence as she followed the procession. After soldiers arrested the protestors and "were cleaning up," said Slattery, "they dumped the crosses with victims' names on them like trash in a heap but fondled the jacket and treated it with more respect than the crosses. I thought it was arrogant."

About 200 Bay Area residents were among the 10,000 who protested at Fort Benning. Ten Bay Area residents were arrested and held on $5,000 bail for the charge of misdemeanor trespassing.


"ONLY FROM THE LORD can the world hope for salvation," said Pope John Paul II in his Angelus address on New Year's Day, the Solemnity of Mother of God. "Only Christ knows the depth of the heart of man: Each one can fully realize himself by receiving the strength of his grace," said the pontiff.

"Supported by this conviction, believers do not lose hope, even when obstacles and attacks against peace multiply," said the pope. Referring to Blessed Pope John XXIII's encyclical, Pacem in Terris, as the "significant event" in his message for the World Day of Peace (also held January 1) John Paul "requested each one to make his own contribution to promote and achieve peace, through generous choices of reciprocal understanding, reconciliation, forgiveness and concrete attention to anyone in need." Above all, he said, "we must never cease praying for peace."

Speaking to world leaders, the pope asked, "how can one not express once again the hope that among those who are responsible, everything possible will be done to find peaceful solutions to the many tensions present in the world, particularly in the Middle East, avoiding further sufferings to those peoples who have been so tried? May human solidarity and law prevail!"


SISTER OF SOCIAL SERVICE Simone Campell, executive director for the Sacramento-based Jericho, an interfaith social justice lobby, joined a delegation of U.S. religious leaders in Baghdad in December for what was dubbed the Iraq Peace Journey. At a December 18 prayer service held at St. Joseph's Chaldean Church in Baghdad, the group read aloud an "Open Letter to American Citizens," in which they declared, "war is not the answer. We must seek a path to peace."

"We implore you, our fellow citizens of the United States," said the letter, "to look into the eyes of the people in Iraq. See the Jesuit-trained doctor who can barely contain his despair and the Muslim mother who grieves for her dying son. Listen to the taxicab driver who fears for the safety of his family, the Catholic sister who cares for pregnant mothers, and the orphaned children who sleep fitfully at night waiting for the sound of bombs." The Iraqi people, continued the letter, "have suffered for the past twelve years under the most comprehensive sanctions in modern history. Water and sewage treatment facilities are not functioning due to the lack of spare parts, and children die of water-born illnesses. Hospitals are crippled by old and broken-down machinery. Depleted uranium from US munitions is linked to a 400 percent increase in the cancer rate in southern Iraq -- and this at a time when sanctions deny the people critical medicines needed for treatment of cancer and other diseases."

Since "we who live in the United States also know what it means to live in fear" of "the unpredictable violence of terrorism and of "the weapons of mass destruction that exist in many nations, including our own, and that threaten the future of our entire planet," said the letter, "we must realize that war is no answer to our fears. A war against the people of Iraq will slaughter thousands of innocent men, women and children in a land already devastated by sanctions. A war could also kill and injure countless young Americans. And a war will unleash violent repercussions and terrorist acts that could destroy our world."


RULING IN NARY CASE EXPECTED. A Motion to Vacate an "illegal sixteen to life sentence" in the Steven Nary case, which was filed in federal court on November 8, 2002, should have a ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal at the beginning of this year, according to Peter Paul Verzola, a San Francisco activist. Verzola said that a three-judge panel will decide whether or not sailor Steven Nary's civil rights were violated when then-San Francisco superior court judge Kevin Ryan allowed tainted testimony to stand while the 18-year-old sailor was tried for second-degree murder. In spite of being warned that Ryan had violated Nary's civil rights, the Bush administration appointed Ryan to lead the U.S. attorney's office for the northern district of California.

Nary killed Juan Pifarre who had attempted to rape him while Nary was passed out drunk. Waking up after Pifarre allegedly tried to molest him, Nary grabbed a steel rod and fended off Pifarre. Thinking that he had merely knocked out Pifarre, Nary then left and headed back to the USS Carl Vinson, moored at Alameda. Concerned about Pifarre's well being, Nary called the San Francisco Police Department and told them about the scuffle. Without following proper procedures, according to Verzola, the San Francisco police department came aboard Nary's ship and arrested him. After a trial that, according to Verzola, included tainted testimony, Judge Ryan sentenced Nary to sixteen years to life in prison.


THE VATICAN WILL RELEASE a document on family issues sometime in the first few months of 2003, said a December 18 Catholic World News report. The document, issued by the Pontifical Council for the Family, will provide a "critical glossary" of words that lead to confusion in thinking about sexual matters and family life as well as set forth the Church's teaching on artificial birth control, assisted pregnancy, sex education and homosexuality.


THE LOS ANGELES COUNTY sheriff's department and the district attorney's office are investigating allegations of sexual abuse leveled by ten men and women against Jesuit priest Father Jerold Lindner, according to a December 15 Associated Press report. The alleged abuse, which included Lindner's own family members, began in the 1950s, when Lindner was a child, and continued into the 1980s. (See "Jerry's Children," May 2002 Faith).

The 58-year-old Lindner denies the charges. "I have devoted my life to helping people, and I insist that the accusations against me are not true," he told the December 16 Los Angeles Times. Lindner, who now lives at the Sacred Heart Jesuit Center in the Bay Area, taught English at St. Ignatius High School in San Francisco from 1976 to 1982. He taught at Loyola High School in Los Angeles until 1997.

Accusations against Lindner first surfaced in 1992 and the Jesuits sent him for psychiatric evaluation which, it was claimed, showed that the accusations were not credible. In 1997, two brothers claimed Lindner had molested them in 1975. The Jesuits removed Lindner from teaching at Loyola and, without informing law enforcement authorities of the charges, negotiated a secret $650,000 settlement with the brothers. In November 2002, Loyola administrators sent a letter to students' parents informing them of the allegations against Lindner. So far, say Jesuit superiors, no one from Loyola has come forward charging Lindner of sexual abuse.


A SONOMA COUNTY judge ruled on December 13 that former priest Donald Kimball, convicted in April for molesting a girl in 1981, could be released on bail of $250,000, according to a December 14 San Francisco Chronicle story. A June 7, 2002 Chronicle story had reported that Kimball had been convicted of two counts of lewd conduct with a girl at a Healdsburg church rectory, each count carrying a sentence of seven years. In December, however, Superior court judge Gayle Guynup released Kimball on bail because, she said, the 1994 state law under which he was convicted, which extended the statute of limitations for filing molestation charges, was legally questionable. Currently, the United States Supreme Court is considering a challenge to the state law. Guynup also opined that Kimball posed no threat of flight or was dangerous to the community. Prosecutor Gary Medvigy, though, challeged Guynup's claim. In a pre-trial evaluation, said Medvigy, a psychologist had said that Kimball was without remorse for his crimes and "that he is a pedophile and is not amenable to treatment." Medvigy said, "from our point of view he is always a danger to society whether he is wearing black robes or not."

During Kimball's trial last spring, eight women testified that he had molested them in the 1970s and '80s at a Catholic church where Kimball had served as priest and while they worked on a radio youth ministry he ran. The diocese of Santa Rosa had settled an earlier lawsuit against Kimball for $1.6 million in April 2000. According to the June 7 Chronicle, the diocese has spent $7.4 million on abuse settlements, counseling for victims and attorneys' fees.


ST. MARY'S COLLEGE in Moraga was reeling in early December from allegations that the school has mishandled and underreported sexual abuse allegations, said a December 7 San Francisco Chronicle report. The controversy began in late November when a group of students demanded that the college change its sexual abuse policies, notifiy students when sexual assaults occur, increase training in sexual abuse issues, as well as provide lights and emergency phones to increase student safety. The college administration agreed to most of the demands, including the removal of the vice president for student affairs, Brother Jack Curran, who resigned on December 2. Curran had overturned the suspension of a student accused of sexual assault. A non-profit group, Security on Campus, also filed a complaint against the college with the U.S. Department of Education, saying St. Mary's had not reported all cases of forcible sexual assault and alcohol-law violations, in accord with federal law.

Brother Craig Franz, president of St. Mary's, denied the charges, though he approved the formation of a task force to study how the college handles sexual abuse allegations. The college newspaper also published a poll that noted that 89 percent of female students feel safe on campus, though 65 percent of all students don't think the administration "is doing enough about the rape issue. The school, with 2,572 graduates claims two sexual assaults on campus in 2001, four in 2000, and three in 1999; but, said Catherine Bath of Security on Campus, "to think there were two sexual assaults on a campus the size of St. Mary's is ludicrous." Bath, however, admitted that those numbers were "not unusual" compared with other schools of comparable size, though those schools, she said, also do not adequately report their numbers. Contra Costa deputy district attorney, Paul Sequeira, said that St. Mary's has sent only two sexual assault cases to his office in the past three years.


OPEN YOUR MOUTH, SAY "OHM." It may come as no surprise, but a recent survey has said that a higher percentage of people in affluent Marin County, than in the nation as a whole, embrace alternative religions, or no religion at all. According to the December 2 San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco-based Institute of Jewish and Community Research in April and May of 2000 conducted random telephone interviews of 604 people, asking them their religious convictions. The recently released study showed that the percentage of those who claim to hold to a religion "other" than Christianity or Judaism (23 percent) is greater than the percentage of either Catholics or Jews in the county. Only Protestants (at 27 percent) outstripped the "others," according to the survey. Eighty percent of those interviewed (as opposed to 62 percent nationwide) said they believe "other religions" provide equally true paths to God. And while 86 percent of people nationwide say they believe in God, only 57 percent of Marin County respondents claimed such a faith.

Among those Marin residents who claimed an "other" religion, 26 percent said they practiced Buddhism alone or mixed and matched it with another spirituality, such as Celtic or New Age. The rest of the "others" said they practiced Hinduism, Islam, Taoism, Baha'i or Rastafarianism. Others were members of some goddess religion or called themselves pagans or worshipped "love." According to Kevin Tripp, executive director of the Marin Interfaith Council, representing 42 religious groups, "people in Marin, even though they may not affiliate with a spiritual congregation, do have a spiritual consciousness. For a lot of people in Marin, spiritual practices are very important, even though they may not relate to traditional faiths. I think that's wonderful."


OLD CATHOLIC TRADITIONS have not died in San Francisco. At 4 a.m. on December 12, thousands of Catholics gathered at Mission Dolores in the city to celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, according to the December 13 San Francisco Chronicle. At about a quarter to five in the morning, a procession complete with mariachis, religious sisters and uniformed Knights of Columbus, made its way to the basilica, a half a block away. Gathered in the 85-year-old church for La Misa del Gallo (the Mass of the Rooster), worshippers listened to Bishop John Wester, who told them, "this year, with all the problems in the world -- it's particularly necessary to return to our Mother." Near the end of Mass, red, yellow, purple, pink and white rose petals floated down from the basilica's dome 150 feet above. The celebration was sponsored by the church's Guadalupe Society.


STANFORD UNIVERSITY medical professor, Dr. Irving Weissman, in early December announced that the school would begin experimenting with nuclear transfer technology, which, many say, is but another word for cloning, said a December 11 Associated Press report. The university has denied that nuclear transfer involves reproductive cloning of embyros. It entails, said Weissman, removing DNA from diseased adult stem cells to eggs, and then growing them in the lab for a few days. According to university statement, "the first step in the process of creating a stem cell line involves transferring the nucleus from a cell to an egg and allowing the egg to divide. This is the same first step as in reproductive cloning. However, in creating a stem cell line, cells are removed from the developing cluster. These cells can go on to form many types of tissue, but cannot on their own develop into a human."

Other experts, however, say that nuclear transfer is merely cloning under another name. When asked at a news conference whether nuclear transfer were simply cloning, Stanford professor Paul Berg said, "It is" -- and added, "we use the word cloning in science as a term to describe the production of many copies of a starting material."

The stem cell research will form a part of Stanford's new Institute for Cancer/Stem Cell Biology, which will be geared to treating cancer.

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