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Contents © 2000
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

January 2000 CLIPS

--"One Billion and Counting," The Catholic World Report, November 1999


WHAT ABOUT CHINA'S ONE CHILD per family rule? It is a terrible policy and, as a longtime pro-life activist, I find that nation's population control methods immoral. At the same time, rising prosperity has played a role in reducing the number of forced abortions in China. Free enterprise is giving the Chinese people the strength and means to resist the bureaucrats. In many cases, families are finding that they have enough money to pay the fines and have the extra children. Local official even are said to encourage larger families as a means of raising revenue.

--"The Trouble With Sanctions," USA Today: The Magazine of the American Scene, September, 1999


THEN, I SPOKE TO THE HOPE CLINIC'S public-relations director about late-term abortions -- surgeries performed even up to 24 weeks into pregnancy. Her bluntness shocked me. She actually said: "Doctors dismember the older fetuses and pull them out." Sally added: "We comfort the women by telling them their baby won't feel any pain because we stop the fetal heart before the abortion." It disturbed me that the staff seemed to find one method of killing more palatable than another. After all 32 of the day's abortions were performed, I asked Sally if I could see the fetal remains. I wondered how the nurses and doctors could stand to look at them every day. Besides, I didn't want to pretend abortions hadn't really been performed. Sally soon announced: "The products of conception are ready for us to view." Then she opened the fridge and said: "Does anyone want a sandwich? I'm really hungry."

I was disappointed when we were on our way to her hotel and she said there couldn't be any dialogue between pro-life and pro-choice people because there isn't any common ground. But when I said I want abortions to become more rare -- and she said that given the hundreds of millions of women in this country and their years of fertility, 1.37 million abortions a year is rare....

--Micheline Jenkins, "Living with the Enemy," Marie Claire, December, 1999


MY HIGH-SCHOOL CHEMISTRY TEXTBOOK stated unforgettably that the level of civilization in a country could be measured by the amount of sulfuric acid it consumed.... The Germany in which Hitler ranted certainly used more sulfuric acid than the Paris in which St. Thomas Aquinas taught or the Italy in which St. Francis preached. Did Nazi Germany therefore have a higher level of civilization?

--"American Catholics as Cultural Protestants," New Oxford Review, November, 1999


WE'RE GOING TO BE LAUNCHING a project in church venues by picking one large church whose pastor will not preach against abortion -- we're going to put these signs outside the church every Sunday until he does.

And we'll have a very long list of things that the church could be doing and should be doing, and when the church is ready to start doing these things, we'll move on to the next church. We want pastors to wonder whether their church is going to be next, and if pastors aren't going to tell the truth about abortion inside, we're going to tell it outside.

--"An Interview with Greg Cunningham," Life Legal Defense Lifeline, November, 1999


EVEN MOTHER TERESA, who was always a perfect lady, could piously let you have it. She sweetly told me off on more than one occasion. It only took me six weeks to recover the last time. Perhaps it is this elemental realism that delivers the true saints from that least attractive aspect of most seriously religious people, being boring.

...I often recall a time when I failed to talk Mother Teresa into taking a convent in the Bronx, a task given me by Cardinal Cooke. I was then stuck between two possible saints. She adamantly but humbly refused because the building was too imposing. I was left holding the proverbial bag. When Mother Teresa asked me how I felt about "the whole thing," I answered that I was humiliated but unfortunately not humbled. Her response was, "Well, cheer up. Humiliation can be a road to humility."

--Father Benedict Groeschel, "Watch Out," Inside the Vatican, November, 1999


THE PBS SHOWING OF JOHN PAUL II: The Millennial Pope has come and gone, and on balance one must count it a plus. When producer Helen Whitney came to discuss the project several years ago, I was not at all sure what she was up to. I'm still not entirely sure, but I suspect she may be one crafty lady. It is true, for the talking heads in the two-and-a-half-hour program she rounded up the usual suspects -- James Carroll, Hans Kung, et al. -- to do their Pope-bashing routine, and the repeated theme was that of a Pope at war with modernity. But the actual footage from John Paul's life and pontificate overwhelm the standard silliness. And Ms. Whitney, in order to explain the Pope's thinking on abortion, even sneaked in a substantial piece of Bernard Nathanson's Silent Scream, the famous filming of the unborn child in the womb. Imagine, Silent Scream on PBS.

--"The Public Square, First Things, December, 1999

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