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Contents © 1998
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

NEWS
FEBRUARY 1998

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THE SAN FRANCISCO TRIBUNAL HAS GRANTED SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS star outfielder Barry Bonds an annulment, revealed San Francisco Chronicle investigative reporters "Matier & Ross" in early December: "It turns out that Bonds wants to get remarried--in the church. So a few months back, he petitioned the archbishop of San Francisco to have his seven-year marriage to Sun Bonds wiped off the church books.

"A month ago, a very private church tribunal granted the annulment. It was one of the roughly 150 to 250 allowed by the local archdiocese every year.

"Sun Bonds, calling the decision a repudiation of her seven-year marriage and damaging to the couple's two children, filed an appeal last week. She said she never got a chance to be heard.

"'This is not the type of case where one party was of unsound mind or where any fraud or misrepresentation occurred,' Sun Bonds' attorney, Lawrence Stotter, wrote the church."

In mid-December, Sunday to Sunday, the official publication for the San Francisco archdiocese, discussed annulments in an article called "Taking the Mystery Out of Annulments": "The public status of any individual is immaterial, and fame often means that the Church will be more meticulous in observing procedural law and jurisprudence...In the Archdiocese of San Francisco, which has a population of 420,000 Catholics, only 150-250 marriages are declared null each year. In 1997, approximately 29,000 nullity cases have been decided in the United States, both affirmative and negative, in 180 dioceses with a total Catholic population of more than 50 million people."


SACRAMENTO BISHOP WILLIAM WEIGAND HAS PERMITTED the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter to send a priest to serve Sacramento's Ecclesia Dei Community. Fr. John Rizzo "will be doing the Latin Mass at St. Rose's parish in Sacramento," says Father Murphy, communications director for the Sacramento diocese. "There is a very strong coherent Latin Mass community."

The Sacramento Traditonal Mass Society reports in its December newsletter that "Fr. Rizzo is planning adult education classes, children's catechism classes, altar server practices which he has already begun, and a retreat in early spring. Father also travels to Fresno once a month to say Mass there at the specific request of Fresno's ordinary....His Excellency, Bishop Weigand has steadfastly confirmed our right to a parish of our own and to the traditional liturgies."


STILL PURSUING HER AFTER ALL THESE YEARS: Catholic pro-life activist Joan Andrews Bell was arrested in 1985 for participating in a non-violent, half hour blockade of a Pittsburgh abortion clinic. She was incorrectly identified as one of its leaders, prosecuted and given probation.

Recently Judge Raymond Novak decided that Bell violated her probation, and has issued a warrant to recall and sentence her. Sources close to the case report that Novak intends to hold Bell in civil contempt, which means he could have her incarcerated indefinitely until she recants and renounces nonviolent action at abortion clinics. According to Juli Loesch Wiley, Bell's friend, "This is, of course, something she would never do, no matter what the cost." Since 1985 Bell has married and is now the mother of several small children, including a handicapped, high-need adoptee. Her sentencing was scheduled for December 30, 1997.

Letters on Bell's behalf are urgently requested, and should be sent to: Honorable Raymond Novak, 323 Court House, 436 Grant St., Pittsburgh, PA 15219-2499. E-mail regarding Bell's case can be sent to cxbell@aol.com. For further information, consult the web page set up at the following URL: http://homepages.enterprise.net/toolan/joanandrews.


A NOVEMBER 20 CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE REPORT INDICATED that Call to Action's nationwide drive to obtain one million signatures on its "We are Church" referendum petition achieved less than four percent of that target, and had garnered only 37,000 after a year and a half of concerted effort. The petition calls for ordination of women as priests and deacons, lay participation in the selection of bishops and pastors, making priestly celibacy optional, reinstating married priests to active ministry, promotion of gay rights, embracing remarried Catholics and "theologians...who exercise freedom of speech," and the "primacy of conscience" in deciding issues of sexual morality.

At CTA's November 14-16 national conference in Detroit, the referendum's coordinator, Sister of Loretto Maureen Fiedler, conceded, "...we tried everything we possibly could." She revealed that persons who supported much of the petition's demands often balked at signing when they realized it supported the radical gay rights agenda. She also attributed the petition drive's failure to apathy and, she continued, "As one coordinator put it, 'We overestimated Catholic theological maturity, and underestimated the pietism of the Catholic laity.'" Fiedler also lashed out at the Church hierarchy for the American referendum's apparent failure: "There's no way to describe the political structure of our Church except to say that it is monarchical; it is certainly authoritarian, increasingly repressive; and it shows even a few signs, unfortunately, of efficiency in that regard."


DON'T BE FOOLED BY "THE KINGDOM OF THE DIVINE WILL," warns the Wanderer newspaper. According to the national weekly, the group, which is holding a conference in San Francisco in late January, "appeals strongly to pious Catholics," but peddles "gnostic notions of perfectibility, earthly union with the divine, and ongoing revelation which lead followers to believe that they are on an exclusive higher plain of spiritual life which puts them above the Christian saints of the past."

The Wanderer reports that the "cult" is based on the writings of Luisa Picaretta: "She is described as a 'servant of God' who was given a mission to 'inaugurate a new era of humanity.' Born in Italty in 1865, she spent most of her 72 years on earth as an invalid, confined to bed without food or water, living entirely on the Holy Eucharist."

But Catholics United for Life has produced a "four-page 'fact sheet' on her and the 'Kingdom of the Divine Will,' showing how Picarreta's writings contradict Catholic doctrine....her works, placed on the Index of Forbidden Books, remain 'condemned' for their 'absurd inaccuracies and extravagances' and for containing a false and dangerous mysticism.'

"The CUF fact sheet continues: 'Piccarreta is basically teaching that, as a person advances in holiness, his essence is destroyed, he ceases to exist as an individual, and thus becomes an extension of God. This, again, contradicts Church teaching, because to destroy man's essence is necessarily to destroy his freedom as an individual person....

"'Given these doctrinal problems and other concerns, a Catholic should not associate himself with the 'Kingdom of the Divine Will' devotion. The devotion, clearly understood, is hazardous to one's personal spiritual formation.' (For the entire 'fact sheet' on Luisa Piccarreta, call CUF at 800-693-2484.)"

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