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Contents © 2005
by Jim Holman.
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NEWS
June 2005

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DOMINICAN SISTER SUSAN MALARKEY (her real name) was one of those Catholics "holding out hope for change" in the days prior to the conclave which elected Pope Benedict XVI, said the April 11 San Francisco Chronicle. The 70-year-old Sister Malarkey, who directs the Saint Sabina spiritual retreat and conference center in San Rafael, said in a long interview with the Chronicle (a whole lot of Malarkey?) that she "wasn't particularly in sync with [John Paul II's] stands on a lot of disciplinary and doctrinal issues." But, she said, "I'd always felt an admiration for his moral stands." Sister Malarkey explained that John Paul "was socially progressive but doctrinally conservative." He needed "to sort of dig in his heels," she said, given that "the church was losing its moorings in this liberalism that he saw particularly in the developed countries — in the United States, especially."

But now the Church, according to Malarkey, has to develop its doctrine and unmake some its disciplinary laws. Asked what might change in the Church, Malarkey said, "well, I think it's possible in the next 20 years that we'll have married priests. I think gay marriage is a cultural phenomenon that within 25 years will probably be recognized [by the church] as a legitimate union of love between two people. I don't see it ever becoming recognized as marriage per se, but [it may be recognized] as a partnership of love — and a legitimate one." Though she distanced herself from "fundamentalist Christians," Malarkey seemed at least to be a proponent of sola scriptura. She dismissed clerical celibacy because "there is nothing in scripture to support that idea. The same is true for [the church's stand on] gay marriage."

"I REALLY DON'T PAY much attention to what goes on at the Vatican," Malarkey said. "I look at the Vatican as a political system.... I don't identify with that part of the church at all. I identify with the Gospel. I identify with people who live in parishes, carrying out that ministry of love, and compassion, and outreach to the world around them." Malarkey noted, however, that she wouldn't want to be a priest, even if the Church would allow her to be. Why not? Priests, she said, "have to teach exactly what the church is holding to at any particular time in history, whereas I feel more liberated to look at the whole broad picture of the church. If I were a priest and had to preach on Sundays, and I deviated from the official line, I'd be in trouble. I wouldn't want to live like that, with that kind of a constraint on my thinking and my believing."

RICHARD RIORDAN, former Los Angeles mayor and current California secretary of education, was scheduled to give the commencement address on May 14 at Dominican University in San Raphael, the Cardinal Newman Society reported. When running for governor in 2002, Riordan supported abortion "rights," said he was open to civil unions for homosexuals, and favored expanding benefits for homosexuals under California's domestic partnership law. Last year, Dominican University honored another pro-abortion politico, Senator Barbara Boxer. A Dominican press release called Boxer a "champion" of (among other things) "a woman's right to choose."

S.F. OFFICIALS SNUB THE POPE. Though over 3,500 people came to Saint Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco for a Mass offered by Archbishop William Levada in honor of the deceased Pope John Paul II, no San Francisco city officials were present, said the April 10 San Francisco Chronicle. The Chronicle quoted an e-mail from archdiocesan representative George Wesolek: "although specifically invited by phone and fax," wrote Wesolek, "no elected city officials were present — not the mayor, not one member of the board of supervisors. None sent staff to represent them. Only Mayor (Gavin) Newsom and Supervisor Aaron Peskin bothered to send regrets." And Wesolek continued, "I hope that this lack of response, and, quite frankly, this lack of respect, is not indicative of an aggressively hostile unwritten policy by city officials to turn a biased and even bigoted eye toward the Catholic Church and Catholic fellow citizens."

But Supervisor Sean Elsbernd, who thought Westolek's e-mail an "overreaction," said he had "no record of an invitation." If he had received one, he would have sent his regrets. Michela Alioto-Pier, a Catholic, said she thought she had sent her regrets that she couldn't attend, while Mayor Gavin Newsom, a Catholic (who has met the pope, he said, three times!) said he had another event to attend. But, explained Newsom, he did order the flag at city hall to fly at half mast in honor of John Paul and put out a condolence book for people to sign. Supervisor Tom Ammiano said he wouldn't have attended, even if he could have. "I would probably be more apt to attend when they have the first gay marriage at St. Mary's," Ammiano said.

A VATICAN VISITATION of United States seminaries called for by Pope John Paul II "is expected to move forward," Associated Press reported on April 30. After an April 2002 meeting over the sexual molestation crisis between the pope and U.S. cardinals, the Holy See announced a visitation to determine what professors at seminaries teach on sexuality and celibacy and perhaps discover whether and how the seminaries have contributed to the scandals. Vatican visitors will, some think, look into complaints that large numbers of homosexuals are enrolling in the seminaries and that homosexual activity is tolerated there.

The visitation, which was scheduled for this fall, will probably be very little delayed, despite the change in pontiffs. The visitors will evaluate about 200 schools — which could take several years. The last Vatican visitation of American seminaries occurred in the 1980s and brought little change. Will this one be any different? "There will have to be a process by which real criticism can be ferreted out," the Rev. Joseph Fessio, chancellor of Ave Maria University in Naples, Florida, told Associated Press. "The problem of course with these visitations is that they're friendly visitations and with friendly visitations you get results that can be predictable."

"HE WAS MY BOSS, you might say," Archbishop William Levada said, speaking of Pope Benedict XVI. In an interview published in the April 16 San Francisco Chronicle, Levada, who had been working in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith when Cardinal Josef Ratzinger became its prefect, spoke of his memories of the man who now is pope. "There were 40 of us in that congregation," said Levada. "It was quite an eye-opener: the cordial — I don't know if democratic is the word you'd use for the Vatican — way he treated everybody as equals." Responding to perceptions that the new pope is, in the Chronicle's words, "a bullheaded guardian of Catholic tradition," the archbishop said, "there's no doubt in my mind that he's clear and will speak what he believes has been the truth handed down from the time of Christ. But I have never seen him do so in a hostile or angry way. Part of it is the sound-bite perception that the media has."

But what will Benedict's papacy mean for a place like San Francisco, a bastion of feminism, homosexuality, abortion, and other nastiness? "When they're pope of the whole world," Levada said, "they may have some specific issues that need attention, but I don't know that San Francisco would be singled out in any way," Levada said. "It [the city] is not unique."

FIRMER PROTECTION FOR MARRIAGE. The Campaign for California Families announced April 26 that it and others hope to put an initiative on the June 2006 ballot to protect marriage in Calfiornia, the April 27 Los Angeles Times reported. Though in 2000 Proposition 22 supposedly did this, current attempts by members of the state assembly to pass a bill recognizing same-sex "marriage" threaten to undermine the initiative, and in March San Francisco superior court judge Richard Kramer ruled that a state ban on homosexual marriage violates the state constitution. Kramer's ruling is in abeyance on account of an appeal.

The proposed marriage initiative would undercut both legislative and judicial attempts to legalize same-sex marriage by changing the state constitution specifically to protect marriage. Meanwhile, the same day the Campaign for California Families announced their ballot initiative, the homosexual marriage bill passed the assembly judiciary committee on a 6-3 party-line vote. Though committee Republicans argued that the bill, sponsored by Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), would thwart the will of the people expressed in Proposition 22, Leno argued that the proposition does not forbid the recognition of same-sex marriage within California, but only recognition of such marriages contracted in other states.

THAT'S GRATITUDE FOR YOU. Though she has been a staunch supporter of homosexual rights, U.S. senator Dianne Feinstein received a public insult from the gay movement, said the April 10 San Francisco Chronicle. Feinstein joined past dishonorees, President George W. Bush and Dr. Laura Schlessinger, in winning the 2005 San Francisco Gay Pride Parade's "Pink Brick Award." When votes were counted, it was found she had even beaten the Rev. Lou Sheldon. But the slight, though queer, is explicable: the senator had criticized San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom's homosexual marriage policy, saying it was "too much, too fast, too soon." Hell hath no fury....

DAVID HAVERTY said he felt God was calling him to donate a portion of his liver to Sacramento's Bishop William Weigand, said the April 9 Catholic Herald, the newspaper of the Sacramento diocese. Bishop Weigand suffers from primary sclerosing cholangitis, a progressive liver disease that can cause organ failure. In November, doctors said the bishop needed a liver transplant; potential donors had to have type-O blood and the same body size as the bishop. Because of the risks associated with the surgery, the bishop ruled out potential donors who had small children or other financial dependents. Donors had to have health insurance and a job that would give them a leave of absence for recovery. David Haverty, a 50-year-old fireman, saw helping the bishop "as a tremendous opportunity and one that's spiritually led," he said. "It's a gift, one that we are allowed to give, and we look at it as a way to help others. It's not too far removed from what my fellow firefighters do every day when they take risks to help people survive." At a March 28 press briefing, a visibly moved Weigand told Haverty, "I will be forever eternally indebted to you for your generosity, your selflessness, for giving me a new lease on life."

Doctors at the University of California, San Francisco, Medical Center on April 1 removed over two-thirds of Haverty's liver and placed it in the bishop. Both patients' livers will regenerate. Haverty's sacrifice is a real one; liver transplants are six times more risky than kidney transplants, and, according to Dr. John Roberts, chief of liver, pancreas, and kidney transplantation at the medical center, "the donor in this operation is at an increased risk of death because we are taking part of an organ, which is often more difficult than taking the whole organ." The donor has a 30 percent chance of complications and full recovery will take several months.

BISHOP JOHN CUMMINS, retired bishop of Oakland, took the witness stand April 4 to testify in the case involving Bob and Tom Thatcher, who claim they were molested in the early 1980s by Father Robert Ponciroli, the former pastor of St. Ignatius in Antioch. As reported in the April 11 Catholic Voice, the newspaper of the diocese of Oakland, in the trial held in Hayward before Alameda County superior court judge Harry Sheppard, Cummins said that when similar molestation cases came to his attention in the early '80s, he "did not expect sexual abuse by priests to be a frequent occurrence." When one similar case, that of former priest Richard Kiesle (arrested in 1978) came to his attention, Cummins admitted that he had not sought out the victims. "I'm sorry," he said. Father Brian Joyce, pastor of Christ the King parish in Pleasant Hill, who testified, said while he was chancellor of the diocese, he had heard reports that Ponciroli was tickling and intimidating children, but that he did not think tickling was a sign of abuse.

But what of the 1975 memo, placed in Ponciroli's personnel file, in which former Oakland bishop Floyd Begin showed he was aware of abuse allegations against Ponciroli? Joyce said he had not seen the memo until six or seven months ago; Bishop Cummins said he saw the memo for the first time about two years ago. Both Cummins and Joyce said they did not look into Ponciroli's file when they appointed him pastor of St. Ignatius in 1979; they did not expect to find anything informative in the file, they said, adding that they only consulted the files of priests coming from outside the diocese. Bishop Begin, who died in 1977, never informed him of the accusations against Ponciroli, Joyce said. Cummins said he did not know Ponciroli had abused youth until 1994 or 1995.

Bishop Allen Vigneron took the stand. Asked if he had been aggressively eliminating the clergy sexual abuse in his diocese, he replied, "I've tried to do my duty."

THE JURY IN THE PONCIROLI CASE on April 13 awarded the Thatcher brothers nearly $2 million in compensatory and punitive damages — a sum well above the amount recommended by diocesan lawyer Allen Ruby but well below $27 million requested by plaintiffs lawyer Rick Simons. According to the April 13 and 14 San Francisco Chronicle, Ruby said that Simons' figure was "pulled out of the air;" instead, the brothers should be paid from $250,000 to $400,000 each in compensatory damages and nothing in punitive damages. The jury, however, awarded the 34-year-old Bob Thatcher $875,000 in compensatory damages and another $875,000 in punitive damages. Tom Thatcher, 33, who did not seek punitive damages, was awarded $180,000 in compensatory damages. The jury further decided that the diocese of Oakland is responsible for 60 percent of the compensatory damages while Ponciroli, now retired and living in Florida, is responsible for 40 percent. The diocese is entirely responsible for the punitive damages.

Diocese spokesman Father Mark Wiesner indicated that it was too early to say whether the diocese would appeal the decision. "Our focus," said Wiesner, "is where we've always tried to keep it — seeking to find healing and reconciliation with not only Bob and Tom Thatcher, but all those who have suffered priest abuse."

The Ponciroli case is one among the more than 150 abuse cases against Northern California dioceses. Dioceses were still involved in settlement talks in the Hayward courtroom over the remaining cases.

AFTER THREE DAYS of deliberation, a San Francisco superior court jury on April 20 awarded almost $6 million to three men and a woman who had been molested in the 1970s by a San Jose priest, the late Rev. Joseph Pritchard, said the April 21 San Francisco Chronicle. Plaintiffs' attorneys had asked the jury to award their clients damages totaling $15.5 million, while the San Francisco archdiocese's lawyer, James Goodman, had said the four plaintiffs should receive only $1 million. Though the archdiocese admitted responsibility, Goodman argued that it was unclear whether the psychological trauma sustained by Pritchard's victims could be attributed to the abuse alone; other factors, he said, could account for it. One plaintiff said he had started using drugs and alcohol in the fifth grade and had lost his faith at an early age; but Goodman said witnesses in the trial had contradicted the claim that the plaintiff's trauma was attributable to his being molested. The female plaintiff had suffered family violence as well as molestation from Pritchard. In March another San Francisco jury had awarded another Pritchard victim $437,000.

Given the similarity of the Pritchard cases to others against Northern California dioceses, the jury awards could influence the settlements of these cases.

IN A SETTLEMENT with the diocese of Santa Rosa, Roberta Saum, 44, won what her lawyer called the single largest award granted to a woman in a clergy abuse case, said the April 23 San Francisco Chronicle. The diocese will pay $3.315 million to Saum, who says she was abused for six years by now-defrocked priest, the Rev. Donald Kimball. Saum said the abuse started when she was 15. A troubled young woman living in a foster home, she had come to Kimball for help. But, instead, Kimball, said Saum, became "like my secret boyfriend all through high school and into adulthood." In April 2002, after California extended the statute of limitations in criminal sexual abuse cases, Kimball was sentenced to seven years in prison for two counts of lewd conduct with a 13-year-old girl in 1981. His conviction was overturned when the United States Supreme Court ruled that extending the statute of limitations in criminal cases is unconstitutional.

NOT ONLY VICTIMS but the dioceses they sue prefer out-of-court settlements to the drama and trauma of court trials, said the April 23 San Francisco Chronicle. The problem is, however, that dioceses and their insurers cannot agree on the extent of insurance coverage. The archdiocese of San Francisco alluded to just such a controversy in an April 21 statement on the verdict in the Pritchard trial. "The archdiocese," said the statement, "wishes to facilitate a fair and just settlement of the cases, and is committed to making significant and appropriate financial and personnel resources available to make that happen. The archdiocese and its insurers dispute the extent to which insurance covers these claims." Though juries have found the dioceses liable only for negligent acts, not intentional conduct, insurance companies, said victims' lawyer Robert Tobin, often come to a different verdict: since the dioceses knew of these molesting priests, they acted intentionally, not merely negligently. According to Tobin, many church insurance policies state that intentional conduct would not be covered. And if the insurance companies refuse to pay, the only recourse left for dioceses may be bankruptcy.

TWO STEM CELL RESEARCH-RELATED bills passed the state senate health committee April 20, the Associated Press reported. Planned Parenthood and the California Catholic Conference supported both bills.

Researchers in cloning projects funded by the state of California's $3 billion stem-cell research agency need women to donate their ova; but since ova are needed in large amounts, donors are given hormone injections to make them produce several ova at once. One bill, co-authored by Senators Deborah Ortiz (D-Sacramento) and George Runner (R-Lancaster), requires doctors to inform donors of potential risks of the procedure and to obtain donors' written consent. The second bill would place a proposition on the California ballot calling for a tightening of the stem-cell agency's conflict-of-interest policies, require any medicine developed from research be made affordable to Californians, and give the state a portion of monies generated from drug sales.

HOLLYWOOD DIRECTOR Rob Reiner ("Meathead" in the 1970s television program All in The Family) is pushing for the June 2006 ballot an initiative, "Preschool for All," that calls for free, half-day pre-school for all four year olds, the April 19 Associated Press reported. Attendance would not be mandatory. The initiative would call for a 1.7 percent tax on the upper one percent of wage earners that would generate an estimated $2.3 billion a year — the projected annual cost of the program. Reiner and initiative supporters claim that pre-school enhances a child's chances for academic and personal achievement by fostering a love for learning and "proper socialization." Monies would be available to religious schools that offer a non-sectarian curriculum.

Reiner is a long-time promoter of publicly-funded pre-school. Addressing the National Governors Association in Washington, D.C. in 2003, Reiner urged states to adopt free preschooling. By doing so, states would be "investing 18 to 20 years into the future," he said.

Reiner, it is rumored, is considering a run for governor in 2006 on the Democratic ticket.

SPANISH-LANGUAGE RADIO and television are more "homophobic" than the English-language media, the April 17 Monterey County Herald indicated. "If I were to put on a scale the sensitivity of Spanish-language radio to gay and lesbian issues, I would have to put it at less than 1 on scale of 1 to 10," Ivan Roman, executive director of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, told the Herald. "It's ridiculous. It's seen as perfectly normal to ridicule gays and lesbians, to see them as less than human." It's not that Latinos are more full of hate than are other groups, Roman explained; it's just that "we feel more free to express our homophobia. Spanish-language radio and television to some extent reflects the mores and cultural values of the country of origin" — and some of the shows aired come from countries that are "way behind the curve."

It seems the Spanish-language stations mostly indulge in anti-homosexual language and humor, but, at times, the ridicule goes further. In 2002, a San Francisco man, self-identified as "gay," Roberto Hernandez, received a call on his cell phone from a "Juan" who propositioned him. When Juan offered to give Hernandez his phone number, he announced that their conversation was being broadcast on the nationwide Spanish-language "Raul Brindis and Pepito" morning radio program. Hernandez worked for a company that produced the program — and that is how the show may have obtained his phone number. When the company refused to punish anyone involved in the prank, Hernandez approached the Federal Communications Commission, which fined the station that aired the show, KSOL in San Francisco, $28,000 for failing to obtain Hernandez's permission before airing the conversation. Hernandez is also suing Univision, which bought the station after the incident, for sexual harassment and invasion of privacy. FCC documents show that Univision has argued that they did not need to notify Hernandez because he was an employee — and, besides, Univision lawyers have argued, the company did not own the station at the time of the broadcast. The case went before an arbitrator on April 14.

BOXER BACKS DOWN. Last November, the United States Senate added a provision to a spending bill that would deny federal funds under the bill to federal and state agencies that discriminate against insurers and health care providers because they would not provide nor refer for abortions. At the time, Senator Barbara Boxer vowed she would challenge it in the new congress that convened this year. But on April 21, Boxer said she would not press for repeal of the provision. As reasons for her decision not to press the issue, the California senator noted two lawsuits pending against the provision and her preference to allow lawmakers to try to "repeal or modify" it when the bill expires September 30.

"Clearly, Senator Boxer recognizes that the majority of the Senate now would vote against forcing health care providers to participate in abortion," Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee told Associated Press. "She fears a Senate vote that would endorse the anti-discrimination law enacted last November, even though she earlier vowed to force just such a vote." But Boxer's spokesman David Sandretti, though admitting the vote on repeal "would have been close," said defeat was not inevitable.

FEDERAL STEM-CELL RESEARCH FUNDING. California United States Senator Dianne Feinstein on April 21 joined fellow Democrat Ted Kennedy and Republican senators Orrin Hatch and Arlen Specter to push a bill that calls for federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research, said the Associated Press. The bill, the "Human Cloning Ban and Stem Cell Research Protection Act of 2005," while prohibiting cloning to make a baby, would allow therapeutic cloning — the creation of embryos for experimentation. The bill would mandate informed consent of donors, forbid trade in unfertilized eggs, and prohibit research on embryos over 14 days old.

Why the need for federal funding? Well, the lack of it "has created a void," said Feinstein, which "is now being filled by states and by private entities. The result is a patchwork of laws, inadequate funding of research, and contaminated cell lines." If the federal government doesn't step in, Feinstein warned, scientists may end up "going to Great Britain; they're going to go to China, go to South Korea."

SALES IN FAIR TRADE PRODUCTS have risen steadily over the last six years, said an April 19 Associated Press story. According to Transfair USA, a non-profit group based in Oakland that promotes fair trade, retailers this year have sold about 50 million pounds of fair trade coffee; last year, they sold 34 million pounds, which represented about six percent of the gourmet coffee market. A number of large companies now sell fair trade products — not only coffee, but chocolate, tea, mangos, pineapples, rice, and sugar. Over the next few years, Transfair wants to extend fair trade items to include garments and shoes.

Fair Trade helps insure that growers and manufacturers in third world countries receive a just price for their products. For instance, while most coffee bean growers get 20 cents per pound for their coffee, those operating in the fair trade system get $1.26 per pound. Some doubt, however, that fair trade products will ever attract anything but a small percentage of consumers. "I think this will be a minor part of consumer spending," Bill Conerly, a business consultant at the National Center for Policy Analysis, said. "Most consumers are looking for good value. Americans are not willing to pay extra to help American workers. I think it's unlikely they're going to pay extra to help foreign workers."

FOR A HIGHER USE. The archdiocese of San Francisco in April announced it would demolish the inner-city St. Brigid's church and sell the land to a developer, said the April 22 San Francisco Chronicle. The archdiocese closed St. Brigid's in 1994, citing the high cost of retrofitting the structure, which suffered some damage in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Though a Committee to Save St. Brigid's Church fought to preserve the 105-year-old structure, and the San Francisco board of supervivors in February voted to accord the church historical landmark status, the archdiocese, it seems, will stand on a 1994 state law that forbids cities and counties to grant churches landmark status. Sale of the land on which St. Brigid's sits promises a significant cash windfall for the archdiocese.

According to the Chronicle, a confidential 1993 archdiocesan report (leaked to the press) explored the "highest and best use" of Church-owned real estate, including churches and schools, and how the value of the property might rise if these structures gave way to "maximum density" housing, among other uses.

But with the sale of inner-city churches, where do the faithful in those areas go? Speaking of churches in general, Barry Willibanks, a former pastor and divinity professor who sells church real estate in the Bay Area, told the Chronicle: "there is a trend toward house churches. These are people of a common faith meeting in their houses with a less professional leadership."

SAN FRANCISCO'S BOARD OF SUPERVISORS are considering a proposal that would require businesses operating in the city to provide employees with health insurance, said the April 22 Contra Costa Times. According to a legislative analysis, 12 percent of San Francisco's 30,000 private employers with 20 or more employees offer no health coverage, while 14 percent offer only limited coverage. An estimated 45,000 employees in the city are uninsured and cost the city $24 million a year. A critic of the proposal, Lee Blitch, president of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, said it might dissuade businesses from locating in the city. But supervisor Tom Ammiano said having so many employed uninsured "doesn't seem to gel with our idea of what health care means, which is to be a right and not a privilege."

MERCY MEDICAL CENTER in Mount Shasta will close its sub-acute care unit and layoff up to 60 workers in the coming months, said an April 26 Associated Press story. The hospital, owned by Catholic Healthcare West, cited as reasons for the closure high losses (more than $1 million last year) and a 36 percent increase in wages and benefits coupled with no increase in Medi-Cal reimbursement over the last two years. The sub-acute care unit treats patients with head and spinal cord injuries and degenerative diseases; many patients need specialized care, such as ventilators and feeding tubes. Besides Mercy's unit, the closest sub-acute care unit is in Willows, about 140 miles from Mount Shasta.

THE STATE SENATE HEALTH COMMITTEE on April 27 rejected Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to lower the cost of prescription drugs, despite support from the chairwoman, Senator Deborah Ortiz. Schwarzenegger's proposal would set up a program in which pharmaceutical companies could voluntarily discount the price of their drugs for anyone earning less than three times the federal poverty level. A competing proposal (which would appear as a ballot initiative), promoted by the Oakland-based advocacy group Health Access California, would mandate that drug companies provide discounted drugs for those Californians who earn less than four times the federal poverty level. Many Democrats in the assembly favor this measure.

Senator Ortiz told the April 28 Los Angeles Times that labor unions were to blame for the committee's rejection of the governor's proposal. The unions have been pressuring the pharmaceutical industry to support them in blocking a ballot initiative that would make it more difficult for unions to use member donations for political purposes. They have opposed Schwarzenegger's attempts to change public employee pension programs. Schwarzenegger is a friend to the pharmaceuticals — they have given his campaign over $300,000 and in early March held a fundraiser for him in Washington, D.C.

THE AVERAGE AGE OF NEW PRIESTS is increasing, said an April 18 Fresno Bee story. According to a United States bishops' report issued in April, the average age of new priests is 37, higher than what it was in 1988. The diocese of Fresno, said the Bee, has of late been ordaining older men — one, a former owner of an awning-tarp business in Fresno, was ordained four years ago at the age of 67. Currently, of the 20 seminarians studying for the Fresno diocese, nine range from 36 to 63 years in age.

The Bee story featured one recently ordained, older priest — Father Robert Borges, a former university lecturer on agricultural economics, who now ministers at Our Lady of Perpetual Help church in Clovis. Father Borges, according to the Bee, "opposes abortion, unmarried couples living together and artificial contraception but says so-called 'cafeteria Catholics' are 'not malicious or evil' when they pick which church doctrines to follow." Borges defended the celibacy discipline for secular clergy, saying a married priest would have a divided devotion between his wife and God.

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