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Contents © 1999
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

January 1999

Just last June, in an address to the Catholic bishops of Texas, Pope John Paul II reminded them that Catholic hospitals and health centers under the control of Church institutions cannot be complicit in any way, shape or form in immoral (so-called) medical procedures, which are the operative arm of the"culture of death."

The Pope especially singled out providing contraceptives and surgical sterilization as gravely immoral activities.

--Wanderer, November 26, 1998

SOME BISHOPS SPEAK PRIVATELY about the positioning of Roger Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles as the successor of the late Cardinal Bernardin as the conference's impresario. The election of his Auxiliary Bishop Stephen E.Blaire as chairman of the important Committee on Pastoral Practices --defeating Bishop Robert J. Carlson of Sioux Falls, S.D. -- reinforces that impression.

Mahony himself defeated Brooklyn Auxiliary Bishop Joseph M. Sullivan to chair the Committee on Domestic Policy.

Also, the election of Mahony ally Bishop Tod D. Brown of Orange, Calif. as chairman of the Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs adds to Mahony's influence in the conference.

--from "Bishops' Elections Signal Return to Business as Usual," Wanderer, November 26, 1998

WITH 180 VOTES REQUIRED to give a majority of bishops in each metropolitan province the right to decide whether the Solemnity of the Ascension is celebrated on Thursday, 40 days after Easter, or on the seventh Sunday of Easter, the measure squeaked through by one vote.

In 1991, the issue was brought to a vote at the bishops' plenary meeting, but failed to pass. With 180 votes needed, the proposal to eliminate the Ascension Thursday holy day failed by a vote of 151 to 97.

In 1992, at the request of Cardinal Mahony and other bishops from western provinces, the Holy See capitulated, and allowed the bishops of California,Oregon, and Washington to experiment with transferring the solemnity. Since then, other bishops, primarily from the west and Midwest, wanted the indult expanded to cover their regions.

Bishop Alfred C. Hughes of Baton Rouge, La., expressed his fear that if the solemnity were transferred to Sunday, it would represent another capitulation and accommodation to the culture, contributing to the loss of the sense of the transcendent and to the loss of Catholic identity.

Bishop Raymond L. Burke of La Crosse, Wis., said that the proposal would not only create unnecessary confusion, but that there were no compelling reasons of hardship or necessity to justify the measure.

Archbishop William J. Levada of San Francisco said that the experiment of celebrating the Ascension on Sunday was very good for the priests and people in his diocese, and he said that priests especially like it because it gives them more time to preach on the significance of the feast.

--"Bishops Approve Ascension Sunday By One-Vote Margin," Paul Likoudis, Wanderer, November 26, 1998

RECENT TEXTBOOKS CLAIM that the Church condemns contraception because it is artificial, and that natural family planning is morally acceptable because it is not artificial. In truth, the artificiality of contraception figures not at all in the Church's condemnation of contraception.

The sexual act is morally performed only within marriage where it has the ordination both to deepening the union of the spouses and to building a family. Sexual acts that fail to deepen the union or deliberately preclude building a family are thereby immoral. Contraception violates both meanings ofthe conjugal act. It obviously violates the procreative aspect of sex, but it also impedes the union of the spouses.

--Janet Smith, from "Contraception, a Symposium," First Things,
December, 1998