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Contents © 2002
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

NEWS
MAY 2002

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IN THE CAPITOL... State assemblyman Jay LaSuer (R-La Mesa) intends to introduce an amended form of assembly bill 2537, which currently requires a woman who wants to abort her child to receive and view an ultrasound of the baby within 24 hours prior to the abortion procedure. The revised measure will require abortionists or their staffs to provide information showing mothers the link between abortion and breast cancer. According to LaSuer's staff, there was no empirical evidence that would demonstrate to the assembly health committee that showing a mother an ultra-sound of her growing baby encourages women to carry their pregnancies to term. There is a large body of evidence, however, that links having an abortion to suffering from breast cancer later in life. The health committee will hear the legislation sometime after the amendments are ready.

Catholics on the committee are: Robert Pacheco (R-Assembly District 60), pro-life; Edward Chavez (D-AD 57), pro-choice; Patricia Bates (R-AD 73), pro-life; Gloria Negrete McLeod (D-AD 61), pro-choice; Simon Salinas (D-AD 28), pro-choice; Zettel (R-AD 75), pro-choice, but sometimes votes pro-life. Rebecca Cohn (D-AD 24) may or may not be Catholic but is definitely not pro-life. Every Catholic and every Republican on the committee would have to vote for the bill for it to pass committee. Concerned California Catholics who live in these members' districts and would like to invite them to follow the Church's teaching on life issues should write them at: State Capitol, Assembly Health Committee, Room 6005, Sacramento, CA 95814. The numbers to call all these people are: 916-319-20+district number. Thus, Robert Pacheco would be 319-2060.

In the area of abortions, one thing prolifers can be glad about is a declining number of abortions being performed. To "solve this problem," Hannah-Beth Jackson, (D-Santa Barbara) has introduced a bill that would make it mandatory for all doctors in obstetrics and gynecology residency programs to learn to perform abortions.


DAVIS RUNNING TO THE LEFT. Uncertain of the center, Governor Davis has been working overtime to beef up his ties with the Democrat Party base. On March 27, Governor Davis announced that California's health maintenance organizations must cover "morning-after'' contraceptives for women. An Associated Press story quoted Davis, "A woman's right to choose must never be held up by red tape.'' HMOs will be required to cover the costs for emergency contraception through participating pharmacists within the HMO's network or, in emergency situations, from pharmacists who do not have a contract with the HMO. Some California HMOs already reimburse patients for emergency contraceptives. In 1999, Davis signed a bill requiring HMOs to cover federally approved contraceptives and last year signed another bill that allows pharmacists to provide emergency contraception. The media reported that the morning-after pill "can prevent ovulation or fertilization when taken within 72 hours after unprotected sex." The articles did not mention that RU-486 can work as an abortifacient. Earlier in the month, Campaign for California Families discovered that Davis told the editorial board of the homosexual newspaper, Bay Area Reporter that, "I am establishing a task force to review what Vermont has done to find out if any of those measures are applicable to California." Davis continued, "This is a relatively new concept. Vermont is the only place which has adopted it."


DEAR BISHOP, IS THIS A CATHOLIC CHURCH? Elizabeth Cord of South San Jose wrote the following account of an Ash Wednesday "service" she and her six children attended at St. Julie's parish in San Jose:

"Sometimes we don't fully appreciate how blessed we are. I thought some might be interested in our Ash Wednesday experience. Two of our kids were up the night before with earaches, so we decided to let them sleep late on Ash Wednesday and missed the morning Mass we had planned to attend. Instead, we attended the 4:30 service at our local parish, St. Julie's in San Jose. Expecting a Mass, we were surprised to see there was no priest at the service, which we learned would be a 'distribution of ashes.' The service began with a lady who wore a stylish, short black dress and upswept hairdo, walking up the center aisle with a book, later revealed to hold her notes. Wearing a clip-on microphone, she casually sauntered between the aisles as she explained to us that Lent was not about guilt or sacrifice, but about feeling good about ourselves and letting go of habits that make us unhappy. She then introduced another woman, who instructed us that the proper way to observe Lent was to show solidarity for the poor people in the third world by saving money to send to them.

"The black-dress lady then called up eight children from the 'community.' With their hands extended over a bowl of ashes and repeating after her prompting, the children 'blessed' the ashes for us. The 'community' was then instructed which 'station' we should go to for ashes, and the children placed the ashes on our foreheads as we filed by. The black-dress woman closed with a prayer. Like all of her prayers during this service, she never made or spoke a sign of the cross; she referred to Our Lord exclusively in gender-neutral terms as 'God' and the 'One who created us.' The names 'Father,' and 'Jesus' were never used. The service ended with this same lady exiting alone down the center aisle.

"Although we had attended this parish briefly after moving to the area years ago, we stopped going there about 10 years ago because we felt the parish was getting more Protestant than Catholic. The black-dress lady once told my cousin who was visiting us that we were setting a bad example by sitting in the front row with our small children and that we should have been sending them to 'Sunday School' during Mass with the other kids, where they could work on craft projects, instead.

"Sitting through yesterday's service (there are no kneelers), I was surprised to observe that the large wooden crucifix that used to be on the wall behind the altar has been replaced with a dead tree branch. The carved wooden Stations of the Cross have been replaced with what appear to be framed children's water color drawings. The Our Lady of Guadalupe shrine, which was always decorated by parishioners with fresh flowers, prayer cards and rosaries, has been removed. There was no crucifix visible anywhere in the church."

Anthony Gonzalez of San Jose, a Rome-educated lay theologian and the president of St. Joseph Men's Society, had this to say about the dead tree branch hanging in St. Julie's sanctuary: "If you look at the dead branch on the back wall of the sanctuary, it's an example of what the bishop of San Jose (Patrick McGrath) wants to do to all the parishes, including Our Lady of Peace. We get little hints of this agenda when we have only females who are doing all of the functions in a parish, who lead the 'communion services,' and that kind of thing.

"Once the women get in, they introduce paganism," Gonzalez said. "To me, this branch in St. Julie's is very Wiccan. It's taking part of a dead tree to represent the Tree of Life. If you look at that picture, you'll notice they have a cloth draped through it that looks like a snake. If they are going to try to make this a Christian symbol, there is no such symbol in Christian iconography. To me it looked like the tree of good and evil with the serpent woven through it. And this is what we have in the main sanctuary as the main symbol of the Catholic faith?" Gonzales continued: "The whole concept of Lent is to go by the three things that are traditionally Roman Catholic: fasting, prayer, and almsgiving. So you don't just do something good, you don't just pray, and you don't fast; you do all three. But the feminists don't want you to do any of that; they just want almsgiving to third-world countries so they don't have to get personally involved or work on weeding out sin in their own lives." Gonzalez invites interested Catholic men to join St. Joseph's Men Society. For more information, call Anthony Gonzales at (408) 528-9056 or email him at BrFrancis@aol.com. Or go to his site: www.roman-catholic.com.


DEAR BISHOP, ARE THESE CATHOLIC SCHOOLS? A Faith reader sent in a copy of an editorial that appeared in Notre Dame de Namur University's student newspaper, Argonaut in February.

The title of the editorial is, "Practice Safe Sex this Valentine's Day." The second paragraph reads, "Not only is February 14 Valentine's Day, it is also the start of National Condom Week, ending on February 21st. May universities throughout the United States will provide free information on safe sex and distribute free condoms to students."

After praising condoms for their efficacy for those wanting to practice family planning, the student author, Teresa Fuentes, writes, "If you are sexually active, act responsibly and protect yourself during intercourse. You will be saving your life, others [sic] lives and preventing life-threatening diseases and situations."

The Faith reader wrote Archbishop Levada a letter in which he questioned the Catholicity of the Belmont college and described the editorial as an "up yours" to Catholic teaching. He wrote, "You aid and abet the scandal of false advertising that somehow a parent might be led to thing that Notre Dame de Namur provides a Catholic education."

Another reader sent in the Winter 2002 Bellarmine College Preparatory alumni magazine, Bell News. On page 6 is an article announcing formation of the "Bellarmine Gay/Straight Christian Life Community." The story reads, "Following a faculty/staff in-service day regarding the subject of homophobia in which a panel of school alumni talked about their experience of being gay and a contingency from St. Ignatius of San Francisco's Gay/Straight Christian Life Community talked about their experiences, the Bellarmine community welcomed the new Bellarmine Gay/Straight CLC. The CLC held it first meeting in mid-November and had more than 30 students show at the meeting. It was, in fact, standing room only.... The group will hold weekly meetings to address the issues of homophobia and its role at Bellarmine and the community at large."

On the next page is a picture of San Jose Bishop Patrick McGrath with Mark Pierotti, principal of Bellarmine at a reception in honor of Bellarmine and Notre Dame high schools describing the schools as "two of Santa Clara Valley's most noteworthy and influential Catholic high schools."

The Faith reader who sent in the article wrote, "If he were alive today, do you think St. Ignatius would have allowed a Gay/Straight Christian Life Community? Sounds like a bunch of self-centered people with not enough to do. What about a bestiality club, or a cross-dressers club? I was pretty disappointed to see this club being formed at Bellarmine, but I really was not too surprised."


HOMOSEXUALS DECRY THE SILENCE IN CATHOLIC SCHOOLS. On April 10, pro-homosexual student-activists will pass out cards professing silence in solidarity with allegedly oppressed homosexuals. As of March 22, about 900 middle schools, high schools, colleges and universities were slated to take part in the protest, according to the event's Web site. The students will pass out cards that read in part: "I am participating in the Day of Silence, a national youth movement protesting the silence faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their allies. My deliberate silence echoes that silence, which is caused by harassment, prejudice, and discrimination. I believe that ending the silence is the first step toward fighting these injustices...."

Stephen Bennett, a former homosexual and founder of Stephen Bennett Ministries, said in a release: "We'd love for the homosexual side to take this project 24/7/365," he said, referring to 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. "If anyone is being 'silenced' in our culture, it's Christians trying to tell the truth that homosexuality is not inborn and that 'gays' can change, like I did."

Bennett's testimony of being delivered from homosexuality was recently deleted from a taped appearance on CBS' Ananda Lewis Show partly because it was "too religious." According to a pro-homosexual web site, schools from all 50 states are participating in the "Day of Silence" protests. A listing provided by the site includes Jesuit High School in Sacramento and Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose.


SYPHILIS OUTBREAK ALERT. According to a March 27 Los Angeles Times story, in San Francisco, the number of new infectious cases of syphilis grew from a historic low of 26 in 1998 to 139 last year. San Francisco health officials say the total could easily top 250 this year, the highest in more than a decade. The Times asserts that syphilis outbreaks in California's and other urban areas is "threatening to reverse progress toward eliminating the disease in this country." The Times says gay or bisexual behavior accounts for 82% of the cases in San Francisco. The Times quotes Tom Burns of the Miami-Dade county health department, "We don't know what message to put out there to get their attention, to get them to change their behavior. We just see continuous unsafe practices, such as multiple partners and anonymous sex."


OUR GOVERNMENT IN ACTION. In a March 27 Matier & Ross San Francisco Chronicle story, Governor Gray Davis announced that he was dishing out an additional $11 million in grants to help get the hard-core mentally ill off the streets -- but you won't find San Francisco getting a cent of it. "Believe it or not, according to the state, San Francisco's Public Health Department couldn't come up with enough homeless people for treatment. Or at least, not in time to get the money." According to a city official, that means there won't be enough money to provide housing for about 40 of the mentally ill clients San Francisco had enrolled.


MORE CHOICE FOR CATHOLIC EDUCATION IN REGION? The effort to place a private university in the Sacramento region may give the Legionaries of Christ its first post-secondary institution in the United States. On Monday, March 18, the Legion presented a proposal to place a university in Placer County to the Regional University Committee. During the presentation, Father Thomas Berg, talked about the Legion's vision for a local private university. He said it would be a Catholic school that takes seriously its responsibility to form the minds and characters of its students. According to the proposal he handed to the committee, "All undergraduates will participate in the liberal arts core curriculum, which will truly be a series of courses, and not merely a number of credits specified by subject area. Students would also have the option of majoring in disciplines that provide more immediate career preparation." Eight other groups have proposals before the committee, and it will likely be months if not years before a final decision is made. However, when solicitations went out from the committee for proposals, the Legion already had one ready. This was due, according to sources inside the Legion, to the order's strong desire to found a university in the United States, with the Sacramento area being one of the preferred locations. The Legionaries already run one parish in the area, Our Lady of Guadalupe on T Street in downtown Sacramento.

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