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Contents © 2001
by Jim Holman.
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NEWS
JUNE 2001

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BAY AREA NEAR BOTTOM IN VOCATIONS. The April New Oxford Review published a ranking of all dioceses in the United States based on the number of vocations per number of Catholics registered in each diocese. The highest-ranking diocese in the Bay Area region was better-than-average Sacramento, with one vocation per 11,365 Catholics, or 82nd out of 173 dioceses in the United States. Santa Rosa ranked 93rd, or one vocation per 13,049 Catholics. The remaining local dioceses all finished in the bottom half. Oakland was 128th,with one vocation per 19,049 Catholics. Monterey was close at 131st, with one vocation per 19,711 Catholics. San Francisco and San Jose were both near the bottom. At 144th, San Francisco produced one vocation to the priesthood per 24,739 Catholics, and San Jose was in a dismal 162nd place with only one vocation per 42,248 Catholics.

While it has been known for some time that many dioceses are not producing enough vocations to meet demand, an analysis of the statistics from The Official Catholic Directory 2000, showed that the priest shortage is not uniform throughout the land. From the raw data it appears there are two causes for priest shortages. Size of diocese looks to be one of them. The top 23 dioceses in 1999 for vocations were all in dioceses with fewer than 250,000 Catholics.

Doug Tattershall, the author of the New Oxford Review story, worked with New Oxford Review publisher Dale Vree to distinguish the reputation for orthodoxy each diocese has. Vree admits that this is a subjective analysis but says some qualities that distinguish an orthodox from an unorthodox diocese is fidelity to the traditional faith and its teachings on the male celibate priesthood, reverent devotion to the Eucharist, and a devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The hypothesis of Tattershall is the more orthodox a diocese is, they higher position it would occupy in a statistical analysis of vocations. He cites Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland who spoke out publicly against Pope John Paul II's Ordinatio Sacerdotalis -- the encyclical that closed the door on a female priesthood. The archbishop ordained one priest in 1999. Despite a campaign to boost the number of vocations, Weakland has only 24 seminarians in his diocese. In contrast, Tattershall cites Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput, who defended the pope's position on the male priesthood. Chaput has since established St. John Vianney Theological Seminary, with 63 seminarians enrolled in a diocese half the size of Milwaukee's. Cardinal Roger Mahony's Los Angles diocese also had 63 seminarians in 1999, but more than 11 times as many Catholics as Denver.


CATHOLIC CONFERENCE LOBBY DAY LEAVES LEFT-WING AFTERTASTE. The Catholic Conference had their annual lobby day at the capitol on April 8th. Catholics volunteers were brought to Sacramento to lobby their local legislators on behalf of the conference. Out of the four "tier one" issues that were presented in members' offices, three were of the "social justice" category and one was in support of a pro-life cause -- parental notification for abortion. The conference backed the assembly bill by Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles) on earned income tax credit welfare, which creates a monetary rebate from the state for those who do not pay any income tax. Another bill by Marco Firebaugh (D-Los Angleles), proposes to loosen residency status for undocumented high school students to attend college in California and pay in-state tuition. At a boisterous rally on the capitol steps, Catholic Conference executive director Ned Dolesji praised pro-abortion assemblymembers Cedillo and Firebaugh for their legislation. Dolesji also praised Assemblymen Bill Campbell (R-Orange) and Phil Wyman (R-Tehachapi) for their parental notification constitutional amendment -- this was greeted with a tepid response from the mostly Democrat crowd. Pro-abortion Assemblywoman Wilma Chan (D-Oakland)spoke at the noon rally about her assembly bill to continue food stamps and cash assistance to immigrants. She was introduced by California Catholic Conference director Ned Dolejsi to loud applause. One week later, on May 1, she voted against the Campbell and Wyman parental notification bill.

Among the "2nd tier" bills the Catholic Conference opposed is senate bill 780 by Debra Ortiz (D-Sacramento), which targets pro-life protests and creates an "abortion rights crime." In April, Ortiz named the bill after an abortionist who was gunned down in Buffalo, New York last year. The abortionist, Dr. Slapien, allegedly attacked and beat a pro-life protester with a baseball bat in 1988.

Assembly staffers attended mandatory sexual harassment training on May 3rd at which the assembly laid out stringent rules meant to be much tougher than typical corporate policy and essentially prohibits sexual conversation or sexually explicit materials from the capitol. On the 6th floor in the capitol the same day as the required class, the assembly allowed a news rack to display free copies of the homosexual, Guess What! Mom Newspaper, which had two naked men imitating a sexual act in a prominent position on the cover. The rack is in view of tour groups from elementary schools and other members of the public.


FIRST AMENDMENT PROTECTS YOUTH SPEECH. In March, an unidentified Danville Charlotte Wood Middle School 8th-grader complained in strong language about alleged homosexual indoctrination by a teacher on a personal web site. According to the Contra Costa Times, the 14-year-old said that the teacher, Gary Leveque, should stop giving students "these damn gay lectures." The student also used a homosexual slur in suggesting the teacher jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. The youth later apologized to the teacher, who denied giving pro-homosexual lectures. After hearing about the internet message on March 6, according to news accounts, Leveque contacted the Gay Straight Lesbian Education Network and East Bay Catholic Charities for help. The school said they could not punish the student because the First Amendment protected his speech outside of school.

Other instances where the homosexual network and Catholic Charities worked together in recent months. In January, Queer Youth News advertised homosexual classroom workshops for Contra Costa public schools. Catholic Charities of the East Bay was listed as a contact. In February, the Bay Area Gay-Straight Alliance Network newsletter announced a "GSA Leadership Training" class in Concord with Catholic Charities of the East Bay, again, listed as a sponsor. The president of the gay and lesbian association at Saint Mary's College in Moraga, wrote in an April 2001 newsletter, "I've been involved with the peer education program with GLSEN and Catholic Charities for the past few months." One reason Catholic Charities may be closely tied to the homosexual network is because Julie Lienert, according to the network's advisory board web-site, is on the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network board of directors and also a member of Catholic Charities.


SUPERVISOR HALL CAVES ON SEX CHANGE BENEFIT. On April 30th, San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Tony Hall cast the deciding vote for San Francisco's sex-change employee benefits. Hall had surprised proponents when he had announced in early April that he would vote against the proposal. Then, Hall argued that the benefits unfairly grant a special benefit to a select group of city workers. He had been quoted as late as April 24 saying to the Chronicle, "It is my duty to vote in accordance with the will of the people, and I can tell you in these past few months no other issue has created so many calls or e-mails or letters to my office. Almost exclusively, these communications have urged me to vote against this ordinance." In the week before the vote, Hall raised eyebrows by uttering a series of Jewish slurs in public -- the outrage from which is credited with his flip-flop on the sex-change benefit vote.


KRONZER SUIT PASSES FIRST HURDLE California-based technology firm Autodisc Inc. advanced their lawsuit in the California superior court in Santa Clara against the Medjugorje MIR center, a California non-profit that promotes the alleged visionaries of Medjugorje. The suit alleges that associates from the Medjugorje MIR center fraudulently induced an employee of Autodisc to resign her job in retaliation for Autodisc's president, Phillip Kronzer's opposition to the group. The defendants had sought to have the lawsuit dismissed on grounds that it violated their First Amendment rights and that the lawsuit infringed on their rights of free speech and religion. Superior court Judge Kevin McKenney did not agree with defendants and found on April 9th that the defendant's alleged actions were intended to terminate Autodisc's employee and were not religious in nature.


WARNING. The St. Athanasius Apostolate in the Fresno diocese sells "Responsible Catholics' Tithing Kits that have bright yellow, red, and green coupons for the collection basket (warning, stopping, and reinstating). Athanasius Apostolate phone (209) 323-5003.


GOOD GENES. From the Independent in London, April 16: "James Watson, the 'father' of DNA science, has called for the law to be changed so that scientists can alter the genes of sperm, eggs and embryos and so rid genetic defects from future generations. Dr. Watson, who with Francis Crick shared a Nobel prize for the discovery of the DNA double helix in 1953, says that fears over the creation of "designer babies" are misplaced and that the potential benefits of controlling the ultimate engine of human evolution far outweigh the risks.

"Altering the genes of sperm, eggs and embryos -- so-called germ-line gene therapy -- is specifically outlawed in Britain, America and many other countries, ostensibly because of the risks of meddling with genetic material and introducing possible side-effects that will be passed on to subsequent generations. There are also ethical and moral concerns about tinkering with human DNA to improve a family's genetic stock either by eliminating 'bad' genes or introducing 'good' ones. Critics say it raises the spectre of eugenics, as practiced by the Nazis.

"Dr. Watson, who played a formative role in the human genome project and is president of the prestigious Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, argues passionately in The Independent today for society to review its opposition to germ-line gene therapy.

"'I strongly favour controlling our children's genetic destinies. Working intelligently and wisely to see that good genes dominate as many lives as possible is the truly moral way for us to proceed,' Dr Watson writes."


THE SAME DAY (April 16) in the Washington Post, the mainstream press caught onto the Bush-Vatican cabal: "Since taking over the White House, President Bush and top advisers have been assiduously cultivating Catholic voters in an attempt to realign a once-Democratic constituency in much the same way that the Republican Party in the 1970s and 1980s won over southern evangelical Protestants.

"A number of Republican operatives view the Catholic vote as the linchpin of a larger Republican strategy to gain solid majorities among all white religious voters -- critical to Bush's reelection prospects.

"'Religiously active voters have been gradually migrating to the Republican Party, leaving the Democrats as the party of the religiously indifferent as well as the politically liberal,' pollster Steve Wagner, who is a member of an informal Catholic advisory group to the White House, recently wrote in the conservative Catholic magazine Crisis. 'The migration began in the 1970s among morally conservative evangelical Protestants, especially in the South. Now, with Election 2000, it seems clear that religiously active Catholics are joining in, moving inexorably away from the solidly Democratic voting patterns that used to be a hallmark of American Catholics....'

"In the 2000 election, Bush made large gains among Catholic voters. According to Voter News Service (VNS) exit polls, Bush lost the Catholic vote to Al Gore by three percentage points, 50 to 47. In contrast, Bill Clinton's margin among Catholics was 16 percentage points in 1996 and nine points in 1992. "Wagner said those gains were largely the result of Bush's success among the 42 percent of Catholics who regularly attend Mass.

"'Among religiously active Catholics, who have a discernible political identity in contrast to the nonreligiously active, Bush won by 55 percent to Gore's 24 percent,' Wagner wrote, citing private polling by his firm, QEV Analytics, and Penn Schoen & Berland Associates Inc. "This was the best Catholic showing for a Republican presidential candidate since 1972, equal to Ronald Reagan's 1984 showing and better than his 1980 showing...."

"Bush, bidding to improve on those margins in 2004, has met with Archbishop Justin Rigali of St. Louis, Bishop Donald Wuerl of Pittsburgh and Washington's Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. His staff has created an informal advisory group that includes Crisis publisher Deal Hudson and Princeton University political scientist Robert George.

"Perhaps most important, Bush has incorporated language familiar to Catholics -- what strategists call Catholic 'buzzwords' -- into speeches. In a March 22 address for a new Catholic University center honoring Pope John Paul II, Bush told a gathering that included Detroit Archbishop Adam Cardinal Maida and McCarrick: "'The culture of life is a welcoming culture, never excluding, never dividing, never despairing, and always affirming the goodness of life in all its seasons. In the culture of life we must make room for the stranger. We must comfort the sick. We must care for the aged. We must welcome the immigrant. We must teach our children to be gentle with one another. We must defend in love the innocent child waiting to be born.'

"...Republican appeals to Catholics are in many ways more complex than appeals to Protestant evangelical voters because Catholics are less hostile to government and many believe in the obligation of the state to relieve poverty, [Princeton's Robert] George maintains.

"What George describes as a Catholic 'third way' dates to the Encyclical letter 'on the condition of the working classes' issued by Pope Leo XIII in 1891, and has been evident throughout the 20th century. George cites John Paul II's 1991 Encyclical as an example: "'The obligation to earn one's bread by the sweat of one's brow also presumes the right to do so. A society in which this right is systematically denied, in which economic policies do not allow workers to reach satisfactory levels of employment, cannot be justified from an ethical point of view, nor can that society attain social peace.... Love for others, and in the first place love for the poor, in whom the church sees Christ himself, is made concrete in the promotion of justice.'"

"Opposition to abortion is crucial in appeals to religiously active Catholics but inadequate on its own, Hudson and George agree."


ROSARY BUS MINISTRY. Pope John Paul II's call for a new evangelization is being carried out by the most unsuspecting of characters. Trolling since 1984 with dark shades and a dropped cap with ponytail, James Wallace has used the Rosary to fashion a ministry to make contact with down-and-outers he meets riding around the Santa Clara valley. "J', who is retired from the Coast Guard, said, "The ministry is waiting for the God-given moment when I realize I have to talk to this person. Starting a conversation about anything for about half an hour -- then bringing in God. Finally, giving them a rosary with explanation and instructions." My heart goes out to the women on buses with children and their hopeless looks." James said, "When I politely approach -- they are scared to death -- but once I take off the glasses, they look in my eyes and see hope." According to "J", working on Santa Clara County transit is the most rewarding part of his work.

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