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ROAMIN' CATHOLIC







Contents © 2006
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

NEWS
July/August 2006

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WHITE WITCH TELLS ALL. Speaking at the 49th San Francisco International Film Festival in late April, Tilda Swinton, the Scottish actress who played the White Witch in the recent film, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardobe, told her audience that she is not really white but red. According to a May 8 LifeSiteNews.com report, Swinton said she is a member of the British Communist Party. Referring to religion in America, she said, "last year, in the process of promoting two fantasy films for different Hollywood studios, I was advised on the proper protocol for talking about religion in America today. In brief, the directive was, hold your hands high where all can see them, step away from the vehicle and enunciate clearly, nothing to declare."

Speaking of her character, the White Witch, Swinton said they "made her whiter than white, the ultimate white supremacist, and we managed to railroad the knee-jerk attempt to make her look like an Arab." The film managed, she said in an earlier interview with Netribution in the United Kingdom, to enhance what, in Swinton's mind, is the "anti-religious" character of C.S. Lewis' Narnia series. "I would go so far as to say that not only is this not a religious book, but, if anything, it's actually an anti-religious book in the sense that it is about the very opposite of following a dogma, following a doctrine," she said. "It's about being resourceful and self-sufficient and following your own conscience and your own star, which is a very private issue and not anything to do with any set down religion." Swinton said that filmmaker Derek Jarman altered Lewis' story to introduce a note of indifferentism. "When Aslan is resurrected," she said, "-- you know, according to the resurrection myth in most standard religious belief systems -- when the children ask him what's going on, originally there was the idea that there was a deeper magic that even the witch didn't understand. But in fact in our film his answer is that had she interpreted the deep magic differently.... The idea of interpretation is right there in the heart of the film and belief is in the eye of the beholder, and people can slap on it whatever they want."

"CARDINAL MARTINI is rightly using this principle" -- the principle of choosing the lesser of two evils -- in judging that, in certain circumstances, condoms may be used to prevent the spread of HIV, an article in the May Valley Catholic, the newspaper of the San Jose diocese, opined. Former Milan archbishop, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini's statement occurred during a "fascinating exchange" with an Italian transplant surgeon, detailed in the April 10 L'Espresso magazine, said the Valley Catholic; which continued: "Cardinal Martini made reference to classical 'moral theology [which] has always sustained the principle of legitimate defense and of lesser evil.' He specifically mentioned the case of 'a couple where one partner is infected [with HIV/AIDS] and the other isn't.'" Other "Catholic authorities," said the Valley Catholic, "have articulated" Martini's position -- theologians, bishops, cardinals. And the Opus Dei priest, Monsignor Angel Rodriguez, a consultor to the Holy See's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, "has said that there is no debate about the moral principle of the lesser of two evils," according to the Valley Catholic. "The moral argument for condoms as a lesser evil is, he stated, fairly clear in the context of HIV/AIDS."

"The Catholic Church is not condoning the use of condoms," said the Valley Catholic. However, the diocesan organ made it sound like the Church condones the use of condoms in cases of HIV/AIDS under two conditions of the use of the lesser evil: "1) the person counseled is determined to commit and is prepared for the commission of the greater evil, and 2) there is no other way of preventing the greater evil."

THE PROBLEM, HOWEVER, is that the Church has not permitted the use of condoms as a "lesser evil" to halt the spread of HIV, though some thought she shortly would. Not long after Cardinal Martini's statement on the lesser evil and condoms, Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán, head of the Pontifical Council for Health Care, announced that Pope Benedict XVI had commissioned a study on the HIV/condom issue. "My council is studying this attentively with scientists and theologians expressly charged with preparing a document on the subject, which will be made public soon," said Barragán. "It was Pope Benedict who asked us to make a study on this particular aspect of the use of condoms by those with AIDS and other infectious diseases." But when news reports spread Martini's and Barragán's statements, inducing hopes that the Church would liberalize her teaching on at least one use of an artificial contraceptive, Cardinal Barragán back peddaled, announcing that only an internal study on the issue was being produced and that his congregation had no authority to make an official pronouncement on the issue. Then, in early May, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, told Colombia's Radio Cadena Nacional that the Church "maintains unmodified the teaching on condoms." Pope Benedict XVI, he said, has not commissioned any studies on altering the prohibition on condoms. "As a dicastery," Lopez Trujillo said, "we do not have any instruction or any indication to the contrary, to carry out a study about something new with regards to condoms." As for Cardinal Martini, his ideas on condom use "are nothing more than his own personal opinions, which do not reflect [Church] teaching," said Lopez Trujillo.

THE WAY OF THE CHURCH: SELF-CONTROL. Writing in the May 6 Rome-based Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica, Jesuit Father Michael Czerny, director of the African Jesuit AIDS Network, touched on the question of HIV and condoms, as they relate to Africa. The May 22 edition of web journal, www.chiesa, where a portion of the article can be read in English translation, noted that La Civiltà Cattolica, "printed under the supervision of the Vatican authorities, doesn't usually post to its website the complete text of all of the articles published in each of its editions.... But there are exceptions. In the case of an important editorial, or of another article also held to be significant, La Civiltà Cattolica immediately puts the entire text online, in order to bring the thinking of leading Church authorities to a wider audience." This was done with Czerny's article, continued www.chiesa, "presumably because during the preceding weeks there had been worldwide coverage of the controversy over the Church and AIDS, and in particular over the question of whether or not the use of condoms should be permitted. The dispute was reignited by remarks from cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, and by later indiscreet comments about a possible Vatican document on the topic."

In his article, Father Czerny points out that, unlike in the West, where sex is "equated, from a moral point of view, with eating and drinking, as a response to an appetite that is satisfied solely for the sake of pleasure," in Africa, "there are taboos that encourage self-control in sexual matters. Some of the traditions are opposed to sexual relations during pregnancy and lactation, and in cases of adultery. In many ethnic groups, virginity before marriage is obligatory." Furthemore, said Czerny, "in Africa, fertility is a primary value, because it generates life, and chastity is a value insofar as it protects life and the quality of life, which is thought of as a direct connection between the living and the dead. Sexuality is considered morally neutral, and, in itself, neither good nor bad. It is often compared to a fire in the home. Fire can be domesticated and used for cooking, or it can burn down the roof and the whole house."

Father Czerny noted that "the rich countries have harshly criticized the African Church for not distributing condoms in order to resolve the crisis" of AIDS. But, he continued, "Catholic morality is, in reality, more faithful to African culture, which does not justify free sex or treat sexuality like a commodity. The campaign in favor of condoms has a sense of cultural imperialism about it, and when faced with such an alternative the Church will always take the side of the poor." Further, while "the secularists opt for a pragmatic approach ... based upon the issue of public health," said Czerny, "the Church must offer to those who will listen a moral and spiritual ideal, rather than a purely pragmatic approach, and many persons have decided prejudicially, for whatever reason, to ignore this message. If some have turned their backs on the idea of personal responsibility open to the transmission of life, is it likely that they need or appreciate the Church's advice on how to minimize the deadly consequences of their actions? It will be difficult to get a hearing for such an appeal to human decency, and the risk of appearing to support promiscuous, excessive, and destructive behavior is too high for the Church to tolerate."

THE CAUSE OF THE AIDS epidemic in Africa, the worst in the world, Father Czerny said in the May 6 La Civiltà Cattolica, is simply "poverty." This answer is not one "that finds much enthusiasm in the West," he said, "and yet the poor and marginalized members of African society do not have access to basic education, to information about HIV and AIDS, to health care, work, treatment, or support. Such a situation of injustice makes people more vulnerable to the threat of HIV and to the tragic consequences of AIDS, which they would not suffer if they had a standard of life somewhat similar to that in the West."

To effectively and responsibly combat AIDS, wrote Czerny, "we must teach respect for the sacred value of life and a correct approach to sexuality. But doing this without considering the often extremely difficult conditions in which African people live would mean insisting always on good intentions and on will power alone, overlooking the forces and structures that oppress the poor. One would then fall into moralism without being able to accomplish anything positive. For this reason, whether one refers to the reduction of poverty, sustainable development, the millennium goals, or the fight against AIDS, the objectives are always the same: the hope is that the Church in the West may be capable of following the Church in Africa in the struggle for justice and victory over AIDS."

LIVING WAGE UPHELD. Alameda County superior court judge Steven Brick on May 11 ruled that Ohio-based Cintas Corporation owed $1.4 million in fines and back pay to employees for violating the city of Hayward's living wage law, the May 17 San Francisco Chronicle reported. In 1999, Cintas, which calls itself the largest uniform supplier on the continent, contracted with Hayward to launder city employees' uniforms. As part of the contract, Cintas agreed to pay its employees who have no health insurance $10.86 an hour -- Hayward's mandatory minimum wage -- but did not. The union representing the workers took the company to court last year for allegedly violating the contract. In September, Judge Brick ordered the company to pay current and former employees $805,000 in back pay and slapped the company with a $259,000 fine. On May 11, Brick ordered the company to pay $350,000 interest.

AN UNDOCUMENTED WORKER in San Francisco who won a wage settlement against her employer after filing a complaint in June 2005 now faces deportation, Associated Press reported May 12. The San Francisco Office of Labor Standards Enforcement awarded Sonia Cano and 13 other employees of Si Señor Taqueria $22,000 because, as they charged, their employer paid them less than minimum wage. Cano claimed that shortly after the settlement she was fired and, with her husband, was anonymously reported to immigration authorities. In December, Cano's husband was arrested and taken to an immigration jail in Arizona; she was eight months pregnant. He has since been released but must leave the country. Though Cano's four-month-old son is a United States citizen, she fears she too will be forced to leave the country.

SCIENTISTS AT THE UNIVERSITY of California at San Francisco are preparing to clone human embryos for their stem cell lines using a technique that has thus far proved unsuccessful, the May 6 San Francisco Chronicle reported. The technique, somatic cell nuclear transfer, was attempted at the university in 1999 and 2001 but failed to produce the wanted stem cell lines. In May 2005, a South Korean research team led by veterinarian Woo Suk Hwang announced that it had produced stem cell lines using the transfer technique, but the claim proved fraudulent. The technique involves removing the nucleus from an ovum and inserting into the ovum a person's DNA taken from a skin or other body cell. The hope is to produce a cloned embryo, which subsequently is to be destroyed once it produces the desired stem cells. The project is, for now, backed by private donations. It has obtained all required ethical approvals.

"What is ultimately being proposed in therapeutic cloning is the generation of very young beings that are human so that desirable cells may be removed from them, thereby always destroying those young human beings," the Rev. Tad Pacholczyk, director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, told the Chronicle. What the university is doing, he said, creates "a situation where the ethical objections are about as serious as they could be."

WE JUST DON'T KNOW. Regulators with the federal Food and Drug Administration told a May 17 congressional hearing in Washington, D.C. that they do not know whether the abortion drug RU-486 increases the likelihood of contracting the deadly bacterium clostridium sordellii, which killed four women, including Holly Patterson of Hayward, who took the drug. According to Associated Press, the bacterium is responsible for the deaths of "a handful" of other deaths, including women who died after childbirth or after a miscarriage. Some have claimed that the RU-486 regimen suppresses the immune system. Representative Mark Souder, who called the hearing, cited FDA reports of 950 women who have had adverse reactions to the drug regiment. This include 18 cases of severe infections requiring antibiotics and hospitalization. However, Dr. Janet Woodcock, the FDA's deputy commissioner for operations, told the commission that "it is not possible at this time to determine whether the current mifepristone/misoprostol regimen for abortion results in increased risk for C. sordellii infection."

Since FDA approval of RU-486 in 2000, about 600,000 women in the United States have used it. About 1.5 million European women have reportedly used the drug.

BETTER OFF, FOR WHAT? Reviewing the book, The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade by Ann Fessler, in the May 8 San Francisco Chronicle, Chico-based writer Robert Speer makes this observation. "For all the concerns we may have about the permissiveness and pervasive sexualization of modern life, Fessler's book reminds us that we have made real progress." As the title of the book suggests, Fessler's book weaves together interviews of women who gave up children for adoption in the years before Roe v. Wade gave them the legal option of killing their children. The years before this momentous decision, according to Speer, were brutal. "In the years between the end of World War II, in 1945, and the legalization of abortion, in 1973, more than 1.5 million young women surrendered their babies for adoption, almost all of them secretly," he said. "In many of these cases, these girls were shunned by family and friends, shamed by priests and pastors, kicked out of school and sent away to 'homes for unwed mothers,' where they had their babies alone. Often they were still children themselves."

And Speer continues that "it's easy to forget, in this era of innovation and change in the structure of the American family, just how puritanical white, middle-class society was 40 or 45 years ago. Sex outside of marriage was considered shameful, birth control was hard to obtain, and abortion was either available only to well-to-do families with the right connections or was life-endangering. The suffering experienced by the 1.5 million women represented in this book testifies to the damage such rigidity produced. "

Presumably, Speer thinks that, rather than being forced to give up their babies for adoption or birth them alone, the girls would have been better off killing them. Or, at least, having the option of killing them. Hence, his conclusion that "the era when young women who found themselves pregnant were coerced into giving up their babies is over. Today they have choices, and all of us, men, women and children, are better off for it." How the lot of the children whose mothers choose abortion "are better off," is, perhaps, a question Speer did not deeply consider.

THREE PRIESTS, two originally from Asia and one a late vocation, were to ordained to the diocese of Oakland May 20, the diocesan newspaper, the Catholic Voice, reported May 8. Weerasak (Lee) Chompoochan said his vocation began in his native Thailand when, as a boy, he watched the priest say Mass. "I thought to myself, 'he's dressed very nice,'" Chompoochan said. "And I wanted to be like him." Later, Chompoochan worked with missionaries in Thailand. He joined the Sacred Heart congregation, studied English in England for two years, and studied theology at the major seminary in Bangkok. "Needing a break," said the Voice, Chompoochan, left the seminary after completing his theological studies to work as a teacher in Bangkok. After 14 years with the Sacred Heart congregation, and one year before he was to be ordained priest, Chompoochan left the congregation because he said he felt called to be a diocesan priest. Invited by Father Terry O'Malley, his former rector in Thailand, Chompoochan moved to the Bay Area in 2002, where he entered the Oakland diocese's priestly formation program.

Though inspired by his uncle, a priest of 54 years in the Sacramento diocese, Jim Sullivan delayed his entry into the seminary. Instead, he studied political science at the University of California at Berkeley and then worked at the campus' Career Planning and Placement Center for 15 years. In his mid-30s, however, Sullivan followed his call to the priesthood, enrolling at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in 1995 and then at St. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park. Though he originally thought to serve in the Sacramento diocese, Sullivan said he chose Oakland because of its intellectual formation opportunities. "Between St. Patrick's Seminary and the Graduate Theological Union I can take the occasional course to help stay fresh and active mentally," he said.

Peter Son Vo was born in central Vietnam in 1970. Living under an oppressive communist government (his father was a political prisoner), Vo and his family nevertheless nurtured their faith. As a boy, he lived next door to a Catholic church, where he heard Mass daily. Though the priest took him in to help with housework, gardening, and chores in the church itself, Vo said he did not consider the priesthood for himself until, after finishing high school, he accompanied the priest on visits to the sick. "I believe that I started thinking seriously about the priestly vocation from that day on," he said. He studied in the formation program of the diocese of DaNang as well as English at Ha Noi University. In 1998, after graduation, Vo and his parents came as refugees to the United States. He was accepted into the formation program of the Oakland diocese by Bishop John Cummins and Father Jerry Kennedy. Vo entered St. Patrick's Seminary in 2000.

DEACON JOSEPH LEE was to be ordained a priest on June 3 as a member of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, and, said the May 16 Valley Catholic, would celebrate a Mass of Thanksgiving, June 18, at Santa Clara Mission church. Lee was born in Portland, Oregon in 1978 and graduated from Jesuit High School in 1996, after which he earned a Bachelor in Liberal Arts degree at Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula. In 1999 his family moved to Santa Clara, and in 2000 Lee entered the Priestly Fraternity, "the particular aim" of which, he told the Valley Catholic, "is to minister to those of Christ's faithful who are attracted to the traditional Latin liturgy" -- the Mass of St. Pius V, otherwise called the Tridentine Mass.

"As I prepare for ordination," Lee told the Valley Catholic, "I offer my thanks to Bishop McGrath and Monsignor Francis Cilia (Vicar General), and the Jesuit Community at Santa Clara, all of whom have aided the plans for my first Mass."

HOMOSEXUAL CONTRIBUTIONS to United States history must be taught in California's social studies programs in public schools, the state senate voted May 11. Some wonder, however, what it will mean for public school social studies course if the bill is approved by the state assembly and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. "How far do we have to go? " asked 35-year veteran history teacher James Berger of the bill, sponsored by Democratic senator Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica), according to the May 12 Los Angeles Times. He continued, "I read one time that [Nazi leader] Hermann Goering liked to wear dresses. Is that important to note? Because he was also a murderer, and that seems to be the essence of what he was about."

The Times asked similar questions in regards to other historical figures. For instance, because a new biography claims Abraham Lincoln was homosexual, must this be mentioned in a textbook? Or must it mention that Eleanor Roosevelt had "a relationship with a woman"? The problem is that, despite mandating the inclusion of homosexual contributions in textbooks, the bill does not specify how this is to be done. Backers of the bill say that it would most likely mandate the inclusion of the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion in New York as an example of the American civil rights movement. Other bill proponents suggest the inclusion of homosexual Harvey Milk, a San Francisco supervisor, who was shot along with Mayor George Moscone in 1978....

Or even the inclusion of tennis champion Billie Jean King, who beat Bobby Riggs in the 1973 "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match. King would be presented not only as a tennis champion and feminist icon, but as a lesbian (she had a romantic relationship with her female secretary), according to Jennifer Richard, Senator Kuehl's legislative director. King's lesbianism was as central to her role, said Richard, as much as baseball champion Jackie Robinson's race (he was black) was to his role. "That is an important part of Jackie Robinson's story," Richard said. "It is also an important part of Billie Jean King's story, that she was the first openly lesbian athletic star. There are gray areas we have to make decisions about all the time in history, and not just about aspects of sexual orientation. I imagine that filtering process will take place with this as well."

NO FREE SPEECH AGAINST HOMOSEXUALITY. Several students in Sacramento-area high schools were suspended for protesting the pro-homosexual "Day of Silence" during the last week of April, said a May 2 report from the Pacific Justice Institute. During a "Day of Silence," students are encouraged to go an entire day without speaking to protest the silence allegedly imposed on homosexual students in schools. In protest of the "Day of Silence," several students at Roseville's Oakmont High School came to school wearing t-shirts that read, "Homosexuality is sin. Jesus can set you free." When the school told them to remove the shirts or face disciplinary action, 13 refused and were suspended for two days. "Many kids were upset because their shirts were rude," said Katherine Sirovy, Oakmont's principle. Pacific Justice Institute is representing 12 of these students and has filed appeals with the school district and may file a lawsuit.

But even some "Day of Silence" supporters think the school stepped over the line. Lance Chih, a high school student and co-chair of the Sacramento Regional Gay Straight Alliance, told the Sacramento Bee, "if they're stating their own belief that homosexuality is wrong, that's not promoting hate or violence against us. If I want to promote my civil rights, I can't tell another group of students that they can't do it."

THE SACRAMENTO DIOCESE suspended a priest, the Rev. Roldolfo Delgado, 54, after an Oregon man alleged that Delgado molested him over 20 years ago, said the May 9 Sacramento Bee. Said the Rev. David Deibel, the diocese 's vicar episcopal for canonical affairs, "preliminary indications are that there is a sufficient semblance of truth to warrant further investigation." Father Delgado has been pastor of St. Philomene's church in Sacramento for two years.

The alleged victim, whose name has not been released, claims Delgado molested him when he was 15, in 1983. The alleged molestation, said the victim, lasted two years at St. Joseph's parish in Rio Vista and the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament in Sacramento. No other allegations have been brought against Delgado, whose St. Philomene's has an elementary school and is next door to Loretto High School.

Delgado is the third priest in active ministry to be suspended by the Sacramento diocese. The other two -- Vincent Brady and Michael Walsh -- no longer serve as priests and are thought to have left the Sacramento area.

THE SANTA CLARA DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S office said it will not investigate a San Jose diocesan priest charged with rape, the May 16 Valley Catholic reported. A 29-year-old Oregon woman claimed that Father Randy (Rolando) Benas, parochial vicar at Sacred Heart in Saratoga, raped her at a motel in Sunnyvale on March 28. The two had allegedly been corresponding for a year. Father Benas was allegedly the woman's spiritual director. Police arrested Father Benas on March 30, and he was released on $200,000 bail. But no arraignment took place. Yet though no civil prosecution will occur, the San Jose diocese has placed Benas on administrative leave while it carries on its own investigation of the alleged affair.

THE CITY OF CITRUS HEIGHTS was looking to take a "monumental step," for Sacramento County, at least, by adopting a rent control ordinance for mobile home parks that lease space, the May 11 Sacramento Bee reported. The Citrus Heights city council considered such an ordinance after the private firm that bought Lakeview Mobile Home Park from the diocese of Sacramento last year announced it would raise rents on residents $175 a month. Seniors who live in the park of about 1,000 residents say they cannot afford such an increase. News of the hike moved residents of other mobile home parks to sign petitions to stop similar rate hikes in the future.

The Sacramento diocese sold Lakeview for over $45 million (to raise money to cover sexual abuse settlements) to a mobile home management firm, Bessire and Casenhiser Inc. The new owners earlier this year proposed five to ten-year leases that include the monthly increase (to take affect in November) over and above a yearly increase of four percent or higher, beginning in 2007. No maximum can be charged on the annual increase. According to Lakeview residents, under diocesan management, they paid annual increases of two to three percent, and services were included in the rent. Last year, residents tried to buy the park from the diocese, but their bid fell $10 million short of Bessire and Casenhiser's bid. The investment company said that rate hikes would not be anywhere near as high as the reported $200 a month that residents would have had to pay if they were to buy the park themselves.

THWARTED BY THE STATE LEGISLATURE, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in May turned to a nearly moribund state agency to approve his proposed one-dollar-an-hour minimum wage hike, the May 19 Sacramento Bee reported. Democrats in the legislature have opposed the governor's proposal, backed by business interests, to increase the minimum wage in two steps, from $6.75 to $7.75 an hour. Democrats have opposed Schwarzenegger's proposal because it does not contain a formula that would index wage increases to cost of living increases. Last year, the legislature passed a one-dollar-an-hour wage increase with an indexing formula only to have it vetoed by the governor. This year, Schwarzenegger's wage proposal did not make it past the senate labor committee.

So it was that the governor asked the Industrial Welfare Commission, which has had the task of approving wage increases, to approve his minimum wage proposal. Democratic legislators in 2004 eliminated the commission's funding, but commissioners still hold their appointments. Schwarzenegger-appointed commission chairman, Bill Dombrowski (president and chief executive officer of the California Retailers Association), said it was possible the commission could approve the pay raise in six weeks, meaning that the first 50 cent raise would go into effect on July 1 or on January 1 at the latest. The second increase would go into effect nine months later.

THE SERVICE EMPLOYEES INTERNATIONAL UNION and the United States Chamber of Commerce have at least one thing in common -- they both favor immigration reform that includes amnesty for illegal workers currently in the country and a program that would allow more workers from Latin America into the United States. U.S. employers, said the May 8 Sacramento Bee, face labor shortages that can only be met by allowing in more foreign workers. Employers also don't know when workers are using faked documents. To get labor and business "on the same message" regarding immigration reform was the work of the Washington-based National Immigration Forum in the 1990s. Since then, business and labor groups have worked together to achieve immigration reform.

In 2005, the Service Employees and other unions broke with the AFL-CIO to form a new labor coalition, Change to Win. Change to Win favors increasing work visas for immigrants, but only if they can earn legal residency and citizenship, bring their families to the United States, and gain full labor protections and the right to leave their employers. Mike Garcia, president of the Service Employees' Local 1877 in Sacramento, said more liberal immigration policies are merely a response to the changed global economy. "We have international economies," he told the Bee. "Capital can cross borders, but labor is being excluded from moving to where the jobs are. Employers want the work force stabilized and legalized. They don't want to operate under the threat of immigration raids."

MANY CALIFORNIANS ARE HOMELESS, said Nancy Berlin of the California Partnership, because state support payments for the poor and disabled are so low. The California Partnership, said the May 17 Sacramento Bee, organized a rally on the west steps of the capital in Sacramento on May 16 to oppose budget proposals made by Governor Schwarzenegger touching Supplementary Security Income for the disabled. The governor proposed withholding SSI cost-of-living increases for the first three months of 2007. Most single recipients would get $836 a month until April 1, when the amount would increase to $849 a month. Opponents of the governor's plan complained that it was made last year when state tax revenues were not as great as they have been this year. Since January, state revenues have increased by $7.5 billion. Recipients should not have to wait so long to receive a cost-of-living increase, they said.

The increase of $23, said Nancy Berlin, would not go far enough to remedy the plight of SSI recipients, though it was a move in the right direction. Unlike in other states, she said, California SSI recipients are not eligible to receive food stamps.

PARENTS MAY CHOOSE TO REMOVE their children from diocesan training programs in child sexual abuse, the United States bishops announced on May 15. The bishops established such "safe environment programs" for clergy, religious, diocesan lay employees, volunteers, parents, and even children as part of their pledge to prevent sexual abuse of minors. However, many parents objected to having their children attend such programs, arguing that it constitutes sex education, which the Church says is the responsibility of parents. Under the new policy, dioceses are to give parents program materials and a form which they can sign to excuse their children from the program.

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