NEWS

ARTICLES

LETTERS

FOLLOW ME

ROAMIN' CATHOLIC







Contents © 2004
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

NEWS
December 2004

---

THE SACRAMENTO DIOCESE'S SYNOD came off without a hitch, according to the October 16 Catholic Herald, the diocesan newspaper. This, for Sacramento, the "first diocesan synod in 75 years," took place from October 11-13 in Yuba City. Its theme: "Journeying Together in Christ: The Universal Call to Holiness."

The clergy, religious, and laity "from the 99 parishes in the 20 counties of the diocese" who convened for the synod initiated a three-year planning process. At the end of this process, said the Herald, "a set of goals and objectives will be developed to chart a course for the diocese through 2010." At the opening Mass at St. Isidore's church, Bishop William Weigand said, "our own history as a diocese will be forever marked by this synod." Synod members, he said, should take up the challenge of Pope John Paul II to "rekindle Eucharistic amazement" and to strive for "a more complete union of mind and heart" with the divine action of the Eucharist. The Eucharist, said the bishop, is "the very source from which our whole ministry and all our works of faith flow. For, when all is said and done, the parish is nothing less than a eucharistic community called together in faith around the altar, called to holiness and sent forth on our common mission as followers of Christ."

The three synod topics were, said the Herald, "'The Parish Community,' which included discussion on the Eucharist and the sacraments, as well as collaborative ministry and shared decision making; 'The Domestic Church' ('households of faith'), which focused on the role of parents in teaching the faith to their children; and 'Handing on the Faith,' which dealt with evangelization and catechesis." Recommendations for how to implement these topics were to be sent to Bishop Weigand for his approval and possible inclusion in a final synod document to be issued in the next few months.

"THERE IS A DIVERSITY among you of cultures and languages. There's also a diversity of theologies," Brother Loughlan Sofield, one of two facilitators for the Sacramento diocesan synod, told members on the opening day of the synod. What did Brother Loughlan mean by "a diversity of theologies"? Did he mean that the synod was a gathering of Thomists, Augustinians, Molinists, Lullists, and Bonaventurians, among others? This is uncertain. But Brother Loughlan told the gathering, "if the journey is going to be made together, there has to be a willingness to listen to one another. This isn't just some sort of organizational group gathering to make decisions. Everyone here comes with the same concern of how to make this diocese grow more fully into the future." Sister Carroll Juliano, Brother Loughlan's co-facilitator, said synod members needed to "have an attitude of passion and hope for this diocese." She said, "you come with a piece of the truth, realizing that no one person has the whole truth."

Openness seemed to be a hallmark of the synod proceedings; the Herald reported that a member of the synod's board of moderators, Father Sylvester McDermott, expressed his amazement "at how open people are to be tolerant and receptive of other's opinions." Indeed, according the Herald, "participants had a chance to express their opinions and views about any local or universal church concern during an open-ended 90-minute evening session on Oct. 11.... Synod members voiced their ideas on a range of issues, including the ordination of women and married men to the priesthood, optional celibacy for priests, the growing shortage of priests and its negative impact on weekend Masses, and the church's outreach to gay and lesbian Catholics."

The Herald noted that the open session "was not a formal part of the synod agenda." This could be an important nota bene; for, according to the 1997 Instruction on Diocesan Synods, issued by the Holy See's Congregations for Bishops and for the Evangelization Peoples, "the Bishop has the duty to exclude from the synodal discussions theses or positions -- as well as proposals submitted to the Synod with the mere intention of transmitting to the Holy See 'polls' in their regard -- discordant with the perennial doctrine of the Church or the Magisterium or concerning material reserved to Supreme ecclesiastical authority or to other ecclesiastical authorities." [Emphasis in original.]

"WHAT WE HAVE ENDURED at the hands of terrorists has changed many things," wrote Oakland's bishop Allen Vigneron, "but it has not changed the fundamental mission and message that Christ Our Lord has given to us, his disciples." Bishop Vigneron used his October 18 "In His Light" column for the diocesan newspaper, the Catholic Voice, to stress that Catholics must return to moral principles when they vote. The questions voters must ask, said the bishop, are: "what kind of nation do we want to be? What kind of world do we want to hand on to the generation after us? And most importantly, how will we shape the life of our society so that it conforms to our Father's plan for the way he made us to act and to live?" Our answers to these questions must be guided by moral principles, which the bishop lays out.

The first of these principles, said Bishop Vigneron, is, "because every human person is created in the image and likeness of God, we have a duty to defend human life from conception until natural death." Bishop Vigneron singled out abortion and euthanasia here, for they "attack the cornerstone and foundation of the most basic natural good offered by God -- life." "No matter how morally compelling" the positions of candidates or political parties "may seem on other issues," said Vigneron, "their stand on these crucial life issues must be judged as fundamentally flawed." Too, because it is "closely related to abortion," the "destruction of human embryos as objects of research is also wrong." Cloning, said the bishop, or other means of creating human life are also wrong.

Though other bishops have reduced the question of waging war to merely a prudential matter, Bishop Vigneron -- without addressing the Iraq War directly -- stressed its moral dimension. Because it is a purposeful taking of human life, wrote Vigneron, "the intentional targeting of civilians in war or terrorist attacks is always wrong."

HOW SHOULD A CATHOLIC VOTE? "It is our moral duty," said Bishop Vigneron, "to elect politicians who promote laws and social policies that protect human life and promote human dignity to the maximum degree possible." In particular, Vigneron stressed that Catholics must "support the passage of laws and programs that promote adoption as an alternative to abortion and that assist pregnant women and children. It is our duty especially to try to change the hearts and minds of people who frame our laws in order to protect innocent life at every stage."

Addressing politicians themselves, Bishop Vigneron said the Holy See has said "that a well-formed Christian conscience does not permit a Catholic politician to vote for a program or law that contradicts the fundamental contents of faith and morals." Bishop Vigneron said that the principles he laid out "for directing our political decisions ... are not the invention of any group of human persons. They are unchangeable truths of the moral law. God wrote them on the hearts of every man and woman on the day he created them."

"THIS IS NOT A FORUM for investigative reporting," said lawyer James Sweeney, who represents the diocese of Sacramento in the consolidated sexual-abuse case involving Northern California dioceses. Sweeney was responding to media demands that personnel files of alleged priest molesters be released to the public. On October 14 the Associated Press reported that two days earlier, Alameda superior court judge Ronald Sabraw issued a tentative order saying that the defendants' employment records should be released to the public. Sabraw said those records do not need to be kept confidential if there is an overriding public interest to the contrary. Their content, said the judge, "is a matter of public concern and interest and outweighs privacy interests of the defendants," though medical and psychiatric records could remain confidential. But on October 13, Sweeney argued that the employment records should be kept confidential at least through the discovery phase. Of the news organizations, he asked, "do they have right of access to everything at this very second?"

BUT JUDGE SABRAW REVERSED his decision on October 27, said the October 29 San Francisco Chronicle. Sabraw said that certain personnel documents could be sealed from public scrutiny, including that of the press, "without offending the First Amendment." Because the Church is not a public entity, Sabraw said, "the laws to ensure public access to public records do not apply to religious institutions. The court treats the church defendants and the individual defendants just as it would other private parties." But Karl Olson, an attorney representing the Chronicle, said "there is a strong public interest" in the personnel records. "We will be monitoring what happens in an effort to ensure that the public's right to know is not sacrificed."

THE OAKLAND CITY planning commission on October 6 approved the construction of the diocese of Oakland's $131-million cathedral complex on Lake Merritt, said the October 8 San Francisco Chronicle. "We're thrilled," cathedral campaign spokesman Lee Nordlund said. "It will be a beacon of hope for people of all faiths and a place that welcomes everybody." Besides the Cathedral of Christ the Light itself, the complex will include a conference center, diocesan offices, the bishop's residence, a mausoleum, a café, and a gift shop.

According to the Chronicle, San Francisco architect Craig Hartman has designed the Cathedral of Christ the Light as "two intersecting spheres of textured glass." An earlier design by Santiago Calatrava (which, some said, looked like a giant clam), though approved by the diocese, was later rejected.

DOLORES HUERTA, the co-founder, along with Cesar Chavez, of the United Farm Workers, received a cool reception at the union's convention when she proclaimed her support for abortion "rights" and homosexual marriage, said a column by Juan Esparza Loera in the September 20 Fresno Bee. Two hours after a convention Mass, the 74-year-old Huerta voiced her displeasure at Republican attempts to draw more Latino votes by emphasizing traditional morality. "I'm the mother of 11 children, and I'm Catholic," said Huerta in Spanish. "But [abortion] is the proper choice of every woman. It's not the government's decision to determine how many children we're going to have." "Instead of the usual loud applause and shouts of 'Sí' ('Yes') common at UFW conventions," wrote Loera, "there were only scattered voices of support." Huerta then attacked Republican support of reserving the definition of marriage to unions between men and women. "Who cares if two men or two women get married?" asked Huerta. "What matters most to us is how much money they'll spend for educating our children."

"Huerta's comments caught the largely Latino audience by surprise," said Loera, though he noted that "they match the sentiments of many Latinos who, in poll after poll, have made education and jobs their tortilla y frijoles issues." According to Loera, in a recent poll conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center, Latinos identified education (54 percent), economy/jobs (51 percent) and health care (51 percent) "as extremely important in their vote for president this year," while "moral values ranked eighth" at 36 percent. But the surprise evinced by the crowd at Huerta's comments, perhaps, indicates that the Pew and other polls do not tell the whole story as far as Latinos are concerned.

A BILL IN THE U.S. SENATE that would provide funding to help restore the California missions violates the principle of the separation of church and state, say some critics. According to the October 12 San Francisco Chronicle, the bill, sponsored by Senator Barbara Boxer, would allow up to $10 million in federal funds to restore the missions while requiring matching funds from the California Missions Foundation. State funds from Proposition 40, which set aside $267 million for historic preservation projects, might also go to helping the missions, though state attorney general Bill Lockyer has yet to rule on the legality of using state funds to restore church-owned property. Boxer's bill passed the Senate on October 12 and had to go to House for a second vote. The House approved an earlier form of the legislation in 2003.

But Joe Conn, a spokesman for Americans United for Church and State, said his group "is very concerned about the constitutionality" of the Boxer bill. "Our legal department will look at it and consider a lawsuit. I don't think the Founding Fathers intended for Congress to maintain these buildings in this way." Nineteen of the 21 missions, said Conn, operate as churches. To avoid such a challenge, the Senate bill was amended to say that the department of justice would review applications for grants to make sure the monies would not promote religion but only preserve the missions' historic features. Under President George W. Bush, Old North Church in Boston and the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island have benefited from similar federal funding.

IN THE OCTOBER 10 AND 17 editions of the Madonna del Sasso parish bulletin, Father Larry Kambitsch, the Salinas parish's pastor, warned his flock against the evils of "Catholic fundamentalism."

Kambitsch carefully distinguished the absolutism of fundamentalism from conservatism, which he claimed plays an important role in preserving Catholic heritage and liturgical practices. He asserted that fundamentalism on the other hand "sees the world as filled with evil forces conspiring against everything that it knows [emphasis his] (absolutely) to be true and good." Citing an article by Jesuit Father Patrick Arnold, Father Kambitsch listed several characteristics of fundamentalism: paranoia and self-righteousness; fear and rage; belief in a myth of a "former golden age;" the conviction that all truth is found in a single source such as the Koran or papal pronouncements; and a linkup that occurs with right-wing political regimes or movements in the hope of advancing absolutist or theocratic policies. The fundamentalist, according to Kambitsch, is always "at your jugular" demanding others to adopt his take on reality. "A particularly venomous tactic of the the fundamentalist, which causes great division," said Kambitsch, "is the attempt to purge people or purge an agency, department or even church of 'wrong thinking' individuals."

Who are the Catholic fundamentalists? And does Kambitsch believe the Catholic faith is objectively knowable? It wasn't clear, but he cited an example of those who say Catholic colleges are not teaching Catholicism. Such doubt, Kambitsch fears, may lead to a "witch-hunt." To avoid this dangerous behavior, Kambitsch warned that we need to "fine tune our critical thinking skills these days with a 'high alert' setting."

MUSLIM ORGANIZATIONS and the American Civil Liberties Union joined together to protest recent attempts by the FBI to question Arabs and Muslims about a possible pre-election terrorist attack, said the October 6 San Francisco Chronicle. Special Agent LaRae Quy with the FBI's regional office in San Francisco said the agency is "trying to go into mosques and work with Muslim community leaders. We are not showing up with guns or handcuffs, just pencils and pieces of paper." But Shirin Sinnar, president of the Bay Area Association of Muslim Lawyers, said the latest campaign was an attempt to "sow fear in the Muslim community and chill Muslim political expression." Muslim groups and the ACLU, said Sinnar, began handing out cards in English, Arabic, and Urdu telling Arabs and other Muslims that they have the right to have a lawyer present when talking to the FBI and offering a phone number for free legal advice.

But Quy said, "we're trying to learn about the Muslim community and understand how a terrorist could move or hide in that community, or find out who in that community might be funding terrorists. If this were a Catholic jihad, we'd be going into Catholic churches."

SINCE 1993, OPERATION RESCUE and other pro-life groups "have maintained a low profile in the Bay Area," said the October 6 San Franicsco Chronicle. But that appears to be changing. "I want the world to know that abortionists can't just go and hide in the godless, liberal San Francisco Bay Area," Operation Rescue's Troy Newman said. "You can't hide." Though based in Wichita, Kansas, Newman and Operation Rescue have focused a campaign on Oakland abortionist, Dr. Shelley Sella, who works for Planned Parenthood in Contra Costa County but also one week out of every month performs abortions for Women's Health Care Services in Wichita. Mailings postmarked from Wichita were sent to residents in Sella's North Oakland neighborhood, saying the gynecologist "is perpetuating the American Holocaust" and "bringing the shame of bloodguilt on her neighborhood." Newman neither confirmed nor denied that Operation Rescue was the source of the mailings, but he said that Sella "comes to our neighborhood to kill babies, so we think it's appropriate that we tell her neighbors what she does for a living. We feel it's just like notifying neighbors of a sex offender under Megan's Law."

Jane Brunner, the Oakland councilwoman who represents Sella's area, said she would do whatever she could to protect Sella and a woman's "right" to abortion. "North Oakland is one of the strongest areas for pro-choice," Brunner said. "This will backfire in North Oakland. I'm shocked at this."

"GAYS, LESBIANS, AND PRO-LIFERS should be natural allies in protecting life," said an editorial by Brian O'Leary Bennett in the October 8 San Francisco Chronicle. Bennett, a member of the executive committee of the California Republican Party, said "science is perilously close to where sexual orientation could be among the genetic traits that parents could 'select.' This should be a wakeup call for gays and lesbians worried about 'our' future generations. It also demands outside-the-comfort-zone vigilance by pro-lifers who claim to believe in the fundamental right of every child to be born."

But Bennett's challenge was directed more to pro-lifers than homosexuals. "If you knew you were going to have a gay baby, would you keep that baby?" He said he asked various pro-life or nearly pro-life Republicans this question, and they said they would. "'Then why aren't you doing something to create a positive environment in which a parent will want their gay child to be born?' Inexplicably," said Bennett, "though they accept the underlying genetic premise -- there is nothing but silence from all of these pro-lifers in word and deed."

But Bennett also claimed betrayal. He said, in 2000 then-Governor George W. Bush told him that a Bush presidential administration would honor diversity, giving "gays and lesbians a seat a the table and a America that treated [them] respectfully;" yet, said Bennett, President Bush has made the lot of homosexuals "worse by sanctioning extreme amendments and convention platforms, endorsing an attack on our independent federal judiciary and legitimizing peddlers of intolerance and bigotry -- pro-lifers Gary Bauer, Jerry Falwell, Lou Sheldon and James Dobson -- in their un-Christian crusade against lesbians and gays."

A "TRANSGENDER" MAN (WOMAN?) Robert Haaland was one of 22 candidates vying for the San Francisco's fifth supervisor district, which includes the Haight-Ashbury area, said the October 21 San Jose Mercury. The number of candidates, noted the Mercury, was a "city record" -- but so was Haaland. In fact if Haaland had won, she/he would have become the first transgender office holder in the United States.

The 40-year-old Haaland, said the Mercury, was born a girl in Austin, Minnesota. In the Mercury's somewhat confusing mode of expression, "Haaland declared himself a lesbian at age 20," whereupon "his father threw him out of the house." Moving to Berkeley, Haaland attended the University of California and earned a law degree at Hastings College of Law. While at the university, Haaland, in the words of the Mercury, "began identifying himself as a man -- changing his name and getting a driver's license that identifies him as male." The Mercury didn't say, given Haaland's gender change, whether "he" still identifies himself as lesbian.

Despite Haaland's colorful background ("he" also had won a lawsuit against the city after a policeman groped "him" to discover "his" sexual identity), "he" was hardly a shoe-in for the office of supervisor, since "his chief challengers" were "an HIV-positive gay African-American and two Green Party activists." Stiff competition, indeed.

CAMPAIGN FOR CALIFORNIA FAMILIES and the Proposition 22 Legal Defense Fund, two groups that oppose homosexual marriage, will join Attorney General Bill Lockyer in defending California law defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, said the October 16 San Francisco Chronicle. Both groups say that their help is needed in the lawsuit since Lockyer, who supports homosexual marriage, cannot be trusted to defend the law.

Superior court judge Richard Kramer ruled October 15 that both pro-family groups could take part in the hearings and have the right to appeal, though plaintiffs argued the groups have no legal rights at stake and so should only file written arguments. But Robert Tyler, an attorney for the Proposition 22 Legal Defense Fund, said in a statement that his group is "uniquely qualified to defend this law. They will seek to prevent any activist organizations from thwarting the will of Californians."

CALIFORNIA HAS THE RIGHT to grant homosexual couples nearly all the rights of marriage while defending "the deeply rooted and historic understanding of marriage," said Attorney General Bill Lockyer, according the October 9 San Francisco Chronicle. In defending marriage, Lockyer appeals to tradition, said a statement written by Senior Assistant Attorney General Louis Mauro. "The common understanding of marriage as between a man and a woman predates the founding of this state or nation, and is deeply rooted in our history and traditions," wrote Mauro. "There simply is no deeply rooted tradition of same-sex marriage in California or in any other state."

Lockyer, however, appealed to state law, not tradition, in rejecting arguments that homosexual marriages harm children and threaten the stability of society. These are contrary to the state's policy of equal treatment, he claimed. In another statement, Lockyer noted that "committed and loving relationships between two individuals deserve recognition under California law;" but whether they should be allowed to marry, he said, should be decided by voters and the legislature, not the courts.

Robert Tyler, a lawyer with the Proposition 22 Legal Defense Fund, however, criticized Lockyer's disregard of studies on the effects of homosexual marriage on children and society. "The attorney general did not forward any evidence in support of the public policy behind preserving marriage to be between a man and a woman,'' said Tyler. "We will do our best to insure that that evidence gets before the court."

IN SCHEDULING A HEARING on December 22 to determine the constitutionality of California's same-sex marriage ban, superior court judge Richard Kramer told both sides in the dispute that he would decide nothing but the legal merits of the question, said the October 27 San Francisco Chronicle. Does the forbidding of homosexual marriage amount to an unconstitutional discrimination against homosexuals or a violation of the right to privacy would be the questions Kramer said he would ask; he would not concern himself with the alleged negative effects of such a law on homosexuals nor whether homosexual marriage is harmful to children or destabilizes society. "My job is not to sit here and figure out ... who's right about their values," the judge said. Kramer, however, said if he saw that the "factual" issues beyond simple constitutionality were necessary to decide on the matter, he would schedule a further hearing.

"THEY'RE HERE. THEY'RE QUEER. They have kids" is the "bottom line" for Jenn Shreve, in a special for the September 28 San Francisco Chronicle. In his "Gay-by Boom" article, Shreve wrote that in recent years, "a growing number of same-sex couples have taken up parenting," especially in the Bay Area. So many homosexual couples, in fact, are becoming parents, said Shreve, that many couples feel a social pressure to follow suit. According to Devon Brooks, associate professor at the University of Southern California School of Social Work, of the estimated six to 14 million children being raised by homosexual or lesbian parents, an above-average percentage live in the Bay Area.

While some say that homosexuals having children will lead to greater social acceptance of homosexual marriage, some homosexuals worry that the phenomenon may change the homosexual world. According to Shreve, one homosexual man, Ken Swyt, thinks the homosexual community should serve as a kind of "counterpoint to the straight world," not imitate it. "And, truly," wrote Shreve, "some of the boldness and quirkiness that characterize the gay and lesbian community will be lost as its members increasingly begin to live lives that are more vanilla."

FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR to the Holy See, Raymond Flynn, in late October challenged Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger over his endorsement of Proposition 71, the fetal stem-cell research initiative on the November California ballot. Flynn, a Catholic, a Democrat, and the president of the Washington-based Liberty and Life organization, called on Schwarzenegger to "reconsider why you are a Catholic." In a letter to the governor, Flynn wrote, "I seriously question whether you understand the teachings of our Catholic faith on the importance of promoting a culture of life in our country." A Schwarzenegger spokesman declined comment to the October 21 Contra Costa Times on Flynn's letter.

THE U.S. SUPREME COURT declined an appeal of a lawsuit alleging that Planned Parenthood covered up information linking abortions to breast cancer, said an October 18 Associated Press story. The case, Bernardo et al v. Planned Parenthood, brought by three women, Pamela Colip of Loma Linda, Agnes Bernardo of Chula Vista, and Saundra Duffy-Hawkins of Sacramento against Planned Parenthood of San Diego and Riverside Counties and the national Planned Parenthood organization, had been dismissed by the California supreme court, which ordered the women to pay Planned Parenthood' s more than $77,000 in attorneys fees. The federal supreme court let this decision stand, without comment.

TOP