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Contents © 2004
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

NEWS
September 2004

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EVER HEARD OF THE TENTH AMENDMENT? Well, it seems Senator Diane Feinstein has. In her statement before the United States Senate on the federal marriage amendment, Senator Feinstein based her opposition to the bill on the words of the Tenth Amendment that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Marriage law, said Feinstein, has always been the concern of the states, and it should remain with the states. “Marriage is not once mentioned in the Constitution,” Feinstein said. “Most authorities believe it to be a power reserved to the States.” And she cited an 1890 United States Supreme Court case, In Re Burrus, which stated, “the whole subject of the domestic relations of husband and wife, parent and child, belongs to the laws of the states, and not to the laws of the United States.” A 1979 Supreme Court decision Hisquierdo v. Hisquierdo, Feinstein noted, said “insofar as marriage is within temporal control, the States lay on the guiding hand.”

Feinstein also argued that, even without the marriage amendment, states would not be forced to recognize marriages (homosexual unions) recognized by other states. Courts, she said, “have long held that no State can be forced to recognize a marriage that offends a deeply held public policy of that State. States, as a result, have frequently and constitutionally refused to recognize marriages from other States that differ from their public policy. Polygamous marriages, for example, even if sanctioned by another State, have consistently been rejected.” Further, “thirty-three States have passed their own Defense of Marriage Acts, banning same-sex marriages,” said Feinstein, “and five have passed ballot initiatives banning same-sex marriages.” So what’s the worry?

Feinstein asked, since the marriage amendment bill had no chance of passing, what was its purpose? The senator more than suggested that it was only to drive another wedge issue into the public at election time and thus was no serious attempt to protect marriage between a man and a woman.

WITH THE FAILURE of the proposed constitutional marriage amendment in the United States Senate, on July 22 the House of Representatives approved, 233-194, a law to remove from federal courts jurisdiction over same-sex marriage cases, said the July 22 Washington Post. Basically, the bill would say the federal courts do not have the jurisdiction to decide on the constitutionality of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which says no state can be compelled to recognize same-sex unions sanctioned by other states.

The Post said the bill would face strong opposition in the Senate. Opponents of the bill say it is not only unconstitutional but may lead to preventing federal judges from ruling on other issues, such as abortion.

“THIS LAWSUIT has very little to do with health insurance and everything to do with our fundamental rights as Americans,” said Sacramento’s Bishop William Weigand in a June 1 press statement in which he announced his intention to challenge a California law which requires employers to provide contraception coverage for their workers. Weigand said he would appeal a March decision of the California supreme court which ruled that the California law made no exception for Catholic Charities because neither its employess nor its clients were primarily Catholic. The bishop of Sacramento will ask the United States Supreme Court to decide whether, “under the Constitution, does the state of California have the right to tell its citizens how to practice their religion?” The state law affects not only Catholic Charities, but also Catholic hospitals, social service agencies, colleges, and universities.

Catholic Charities attorneys filed a petition with the Supreme Court on May 28. They may hear whether or not the court will accept the case as early as October.

ARCHBISHOP WILLIAM LEVADA “is one of a long line of bishops that has given sanctuary to Grammond — a known predator.” This, according to Jeffrey Anderson, a victims’ lawyer that has been suing the archdiocese of Portland, Oregon. Anderson is one of two lawyers who is questioning Levada’s role in the sexual abuse scandal that has wracked the Portland archdiocese. Levada was archbishop of Portland from 1986 to 1995.

Archbishop Levada, according to a July 10 San Francisco Chronicle story, is in part responsible for Portland archdiocese’s financial crisis; on July 6, the archdiocese became the first in the United States to claim bankruptcy on account of settlements arising from sexual abuse cases. While in Portland, Levada was involved with two priests accused of molesting youth. One, the now-deceased Rev. Maurice Grammond, has been accused of molesting more than 50 boys from the early ’50s to the late ’80s. In a deposition given in San Francisco on April 7, Levada said his predecessor in Portland, Archbishop Cornelius Power, did not inform him of Grammond’s sexual problems. In 1988, Levada retired Grammond for medical reasons; but in 1991, he learned that a former altar boy had accused Grammond of molesting him. Levada then ordered Grammond no longer to “engage in public ministry.” In his deposition, Levada said, “first, I think I asked him to go for an evaluation, (but) it seemed that he was a difficult person to get a full psychological profile on.”

In 1992, Archbishop Levada sent another Portland priest, the Rev. Joseph Bacallieri, to a treatment program for child molesters, reinstating him in parish ministry in 1994. Portland’s current archbishop, John Vlazny, removed Bacallieri from ministry in 2002. In his deposition, Levada said of Bacallieri, “I believe there was some allegation that occurred while I was there.” But when Levada’s lawyers objected to the line of questioning, the archbishop said no more.

RESPONDING TO THE CHRONICLE story in the July 16 Catholic San Francisco, Archbishop Levada said the article “gave public voice to a patently contrived chain of irresponsible and untrue allegations” against him. If the Chronicle writer, Don Lattin, said Levada, had “asked for my response to these ‘accusations,’ I would gladly have provided it. However, he did not ask. Instead, he wrote a tendentious article, which had the result (whether it was the intended purpose or not) of undermining my reputation.” (According to the Chronicle story, however, Lattin did contact the archdiocese. “Maurice Healy, the spokesman for the Archdiocese of San Francisco,” wrote Lattin, “said Levada had no comment on the Portland bankruptcy.”)

Levada faulted Lattin for interviewing only attorneys for alleged victims. Based on comments from attorney Jeffrey Anderson about the Grammond case, Lattin, said Levada, presented a “distorted case.” The priest, said Levada, “was already retired when I went to the Portland Archdiocese in 1986. When I received an allegation from a man claming the priest had abused him years before, I removed Father Grammond’s faculties for public priestly ministry. My handling of this case was correct by any reasonable objective standard.”

As for Father Baccellieri, “I removed him from ministry in 1992 when I received an allegation of sexual abuse dating back to the 1970s,” Levada said. “After thorough investigation by the Portland Archdiocese and extensive therapeutic treatment for the priest, in 1994 I judged that he had been truly repentant and could be trusted to engage in limited ministry with proper supervision. The Portland Archdiocese received no reports of inappropriate behavior by the priest after his return to limited ministry. Until 2002, when the US Bishops adopted a policy of ‘zero tolerance’ for any priest offender, such careful reassignment was a legitimate option.”

BANKRUPTCY NOT MY FAULT. Archbishop Levada said that when he left Portland, the archdiocese “was in excellent financial condition.” Even today, the archdiocese suffers no “financial collapse;” rather, Portland’s problems have “arisen because of new allegations made in the past few years about abuse that was unknown until recently brought forward by victims.” The “greed of plaintiffs’ attorneys,” said Levada, has exacerbated the situation. Attorneys like Anderson, he said, “see the sex-abuse crisis as a way to push for excessive judgments for victims from which these lawyers will benefit handsomely.”

Attorneys for alleged victims, said Levada, have used the claims “of terrible sexual abuse by priests, many of whom are dead,” to get “victims to step forward decades after the fact to push claims for huge monetary damages from bishops today who had no responsibility or oversight for those priests — claims that can be satisfied only by the threat of divesting today’s parishioners of their churches, today’s children of their schools, today’ s poor of the Church’s charitable outreach.”

“This is not justice,” said the archbishop.

MOLESTATION VICTIMS’ ADVOCATE Laurence Drivon said that 150 lawsuits filed against northern California dioceses will “shake the Catholic Church to its roots.” According to the July 15 San Francisco Chronicle, the lawsuits have been bundled together into a single “litigious mega-case” on behalf of those who say they were sexually abused by priests. To date, the dioceses of San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Santa Rosa, and Stockton have said that the sexual abuse crisis has cost them $35 million, according to the Chronicle. What additional costs may arise from the current lawsuits is unknown, since, in California, lawsuits do not ask for specific damages when they are filed.

BUT DRIVON THINKS THE CHURCH will be shaken “to its roots” not simply because of the lawsuits, but because of what he thinks is the root of the culture of secrecy in the American Church — a secret 1962 Vatican document, Crimen Sollicitationis. According to the Chronicle, the document defines the “crime of solicitation” as one where a priest tries to draw “the object of temptation ... toward impure and obscene matters, whether by words or signs or nods of the head, whether by touch or by writing.” The document prescribes penalties for such solicitation, such as removal from ministry, transferal to another ministry, or a Vatican trial. The document says such proceedings must “be pursued in a most secretive way” and be “restrained by a perpetual silence.” To Drivon, this is evidence that “the Vatican is involved in an international conspiracy to obstruct justice.”

This most secret document was brought to light when it was referenced in a May 18 letter from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to the world’s bishops. But, according to an August 15, 2003 National Catholic Reporter article by John Allen, Jr., canon law experts have said that the document only applies to cases in canon law; it would not prevent a bishop from turning over an abusing priest to the civil authorities. Further, Allen wrote, canon lawyers say the document enjoins secrecy because it “is designed to allow witnesses and other parties to speak freely, knowing that their responses will be confidential ... it allows the accused party to protect his good name until guilt is established,” and “it allows victims to come forward without exposing themselves to publicity. The high degree of secrecy in Crimen Sollicitationis was also related to the fact that it dealt with the confessional.” Further, that the intent was not to cover up sexual abuse crimes is evident, say experts, in the document’s paragraph 15, which stipulates that those knowing of a priest abusing the confessional for purposes of solicitation must come forward under pain of excommunication. And this, “lest [the offense] remain occult and unpunished and always with inestimable detriment to souls.”

The crime of solicitation does not apply only to abuse of minors but to seduction of women and to the crimen pessimum, the worst abuse of the confessional — homosexual solicitation.

ARCHBISHOP LEVADA, in his April 7 deposition, said he had never seen Crimen Solicitationis, said the July 15 Chronicle. Nor could he recall seeing a 1985 confidential report by the Rev. Thomas Doyle to the United States bishops which warned the prelates of the potential costs of sexual abuse litigation — “many millions of dollars” — along with the “devastating injury” to the Church’s image arising therefrom. Levada was then an auxiliary bishop in Los Angeles. But, according to the deposition, when asked by lawyers whether or not he had spoken to Doyle about the report in 1985, Levada, on his lawyers’ advice, declined to answer. But Doyle, a molestation victims’ advocate, said that he had met Levada at the Marriott Hotel near O’Hare International Airport in Chicago in 1985 to discuss the report.

ABUSE SETTLEMENTS MAY SHAKE the diocese of Santa Rosa to its financial roots. According to the July 20 Santa Rosa Press Democrat, the diocese, has been unable to settle ten sexual abuse lawsuits; if they should go to court, juries may award victims enormous settlements. To date, Santa Rosa has paid out $8.6 million in settlements to victims; but if hit with claims which, according to attorney Dan Galvin, range from $2 million to $4 million a case statewide, the diocese will probably have to declare bankruptcy. The suits against Santa Rosa are part of 115 consolidated cases against six northern California dioceses. Many of the cases were filed last year after the California legislature suspended the statute of limitations on civil sex abuse cases. (A similar law which did the same for criminal cases was declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court.)

OPPOSE CAFTA. Writing in the June Observer, the newspaper of the diocese of Monterey, Father Walter Espinoza described his effort, and that of the social justice ministry of the Old Mission Parish in San Luis Obispo, to organize opposition to a free trade agreement between the United States and the small Central American country of Costa Rica. Costa Rica, wrote Father Espinoza, is a democracy having universal health care and strict environmental standards, but no weapons industry and no army. It is a country that has “a 96% literacy rate, and many more Universities than other countries in Latin America.” Costa Rica has “fared well” up to now, wrote Espinoza. But if the free trade agreement is signed, Costa Rica’s telecommunications company, which is owned by the people and funds social projects, as well as the country’s insurance company, ecological laws, justice system, and its small farmers may be in jeopardy. “Our major concern associated with CAFTA,” Espinoza wrote, “focuses on the abuses that exist in other Central American countries, which if passed, will swallow up and exploit Costa Rica in very similar ways. We are very concerned about the job drain from American workers, the creation of jobs at lower wages, and the resulting poverty that will follow.”

Espinoza urged readers to send letters urging the United States Congress and President George Bush, as well as Costa Rica’s president, Dr. Abel Pacheco, to listen to the arguments of those opposing CAFTA. Letters may also be sent to Father Espinoza himself, at 751 Palm Street, San Luis Obispo, California 93401.

A TEN-YEAR PLAN to end chronic homelessness was unveiled by San Francisco city officials on June 30, said the July 1 San Francisco Chronicle. The plan calls for the creation in six years of 3,000 new units of housing for the homeless with on-site support services; a program which, it is claimed, will save the city $30 million a year in housing and medical costs; and a centralized information system to coordinate services to the homeless. If the plan succeeds, by 2014, emergency shelters will have been replaced by supportive housing, and 24-hour crisis centers will connect the homeless with city services. The plan focuses on the chronically homeless who, according to researchers, use 63 percent of the city’s homeless resources. Currently, many homeless end up in jail, which costs the city from $22,000 a year up to $61,000 per person, if the homeless person uses hospital emergency room services. Backers of the plan say that housing with counseling services will cost the city only $12,000 to $16,000 a year per person. The money saved could be spent on more housing, thus impacting those persons whose homelessness is not chronic.

The plan will require the passage of a $200 million bond (including $90 million for homeless supportive housing) by city voters in November. Proposed cuts by the Bush administration of over $1 billion to federal Section 8 rental subsidies to the poor could adversely affect the plan.

THE NUMBER OF THOSE on homeless roles in San Francisco has dropped since city voters passed the Care Not Cash intitiative in November 2002, according to a June 16 San Francisco Chronicle column. Before the new law went into effect in 2003, homeless were receiving up to $410 a month in city payments; with Care Not Cash, homeless have the choice of receiving $59 a month, with housing in city shelters, or the same amount without housing. Since the beginning of 2003, the number of homeless receiving cash payments has dropped by 995 — about one third. A similar law in Alameda County, which replaced $336 a month payments to homeless with services, to $19 a month with shelter, services, and food stamps, or $28 a month without shelter, dwindled the number of recipients from 2,000 to 200.

While some assume that the reason for the drop in numbers is the dropping out of those not really homeless, Paul Boden of the Coalition on Homelessness and a critic of Care Not Cash, has a different take on it. “Think about it,” he said. “You get a shelter bed with all the rules that go with it, and have to clean the streets for four hours a week — all for $59. I’d say that’s a pretty strong disincentive for taking welfare.”

THE CLOSING OF THREE Oakland diocesan schools that inspired protest from families and faculty at the schools may have a happy ending — at least, according to the June 21 Catholic Voice, the organ of the Oakland diocese. In April, Bishop Allen Vigneron informed parents and staff at St. Augustine and Saint Paschal Baylon schools and Sts. Cyril-Louis Bertrand Academy that the schools would not open the following academic year. Parents protested the closing, saying the diocese had reneged on earlier promises to keep the schools open if they met fundraising goals by either the end of this academic year or 2005. The diocese, however, said it could already project that the goals could not be met and promised displaced students would receive tuition help and vouchers for uniforms. According to the June 21 Voice, the diocese’s superintendent of schools said that almost all displaced teachers had been hired at other sites and that, as of May 31, 122 of the affected students had been accepted at other schools, while 58 applications were pending. The Voice did not say how many students have been affected by the school closings.

“THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS AGAINST Contraception,” says an article by Kathleen Nino Gastello in the July Observer, the newspaper of the diocese of Monterey. However, Gastello notes that she knows only “one other couple that practices NFP [Natural Family Planning]. It is amazing to me,” she writes, “that even though most people I know are Catholic, NFP isn’t ever mentioned in conversation as a viable option of birth control.” The problem, Gastello notes, is “most of us are so steeped in our secular culture which wholeheartedly embraces artificial contraception that it is hard to step back and take a more critical look at the topic.”

Gastello opines that “maybe NFP gets a bad rap” because people confuse it with the rhythm method “which was based not on each individual woman’s fertility signs but on the theory that every woman would ovulate on day 14 every cycle. This did not work for a lot of women,” Gastello says. Natural Family Planning, however “teaches a woman about her cycles so that she can work to either achieve or avoid a pregnancy.”

Gastello say she has decided that Natural Family Planning is the “only way to go” — first, because “I don’t have to feel guilty about not obeying the Church’s laws.” Further, Gastello says, with Natural Family Planning, “I don’t have to worry about chemicals or drugs. It is not permanent and I can reverse my decision whenever I want. It has good results. Both my husband and I have to be involved in and work together in the Method. It is not just one of our responsibilities. It has made our relationship stronger. I feel like my husband and I are living out God’s plan for husband and wife....”

“I urge other Catholics or anyone really to try to at least educate themselves about it.”

AUBURN’S OUR LADY OF MERCY Convent, built in 1939, will undergo renovation, said an upbeat article in the July 3 Catholic Herald, the newspaper of the diocese of Sacramento. Though the renovation will add a new wing to the convent to accommodate retiring sisters, Mercy Sister Sheila Browne said it will also address “the niche we’ve carved out with the Mercy Center, the Sisters of Mercy’s retreat center.

What is this niche? According to its website, “Mercy Center Auburn is a retreat and conference Center for individuals and non-profit organizations whose purpose and philosophy are consistent with the mission of the Center.” Among these, presumably, is Edwina Gately, who was slated to give a retreat at the center during the week of August 8-15. “During this retreat we will explore the feminine divine and how women have a significant role to play in bringing balance and healing to our world of war and suffering,” said a blurb on the Mercy Center website. “We will take a look at the history of God as Mother and explore how women in scripture as well as contemporary women can be models of hope and new life for our globe. This time with God, our souls, and our sisters, will leave us forever changed!”

Gately, who founded the Volunteer Missionary Movement and the Chicago-based Genesis House, a ministry that works with prostitutes, is also known for having concelebrated a Mass at the 1993 Call to Action conference in Chicago. She has also spoken for at conferences held by Dignity/USA, a group that calls on the Catholic Church to change its teaching on homosexuality.

SEEKING WHOM THEY MAY DEVOUR? “More than 100 Californians” descended on eight states that will be battlegrounds in the November presidential election, said Marjie Lundstrom in her July 17 Sacramento Bee column. The July 24 assault was part of a program organized by Planned Parenthood to get out the vote for the Kerry-Edwards ticket.

The Planned Parenthood program, wrote Lundstrom, was not to be “your garden-variety leafleting and canvassing.” Planned Parenthood wanted to “target” unmarried women; volunteers would be sent to them to listen to their concerns and try to encourage them to vote while “making a case for Planned Parenthood and all it means to American women.” The volunteers will then return to the same potential voters weeks later “with the Kerry-Edwards pitch.”

“CALIFORNIA WAS PERFECTLY POISED to help with Oregon,” said Lundstrom, since it has the largest Planned Parenthood affiliate nationwide — Planned Parenthood Mar Monte — and “California’s nine affiliates see more clients than any other state — and get the most in federal Title X money for family planning and reproductive health services for low-income women.” This Title X funding, said Lundstrom, is at risk because the new federal budget wants to freeze Title X funding while the Bush administration is looking to double the amount of money spent on abstinence-only programs. “The outlook is grim,” Lundstrom wrote.

“I think this (swing-states) effort is the most important thing we can do in an election year when everyone is saying that unmarried women voters are going to turn the election,” Lundstrom quoted Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, as saying.

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