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Contents © 1999
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

February 1999

As the only scripture scholar in the special Vatican working group that brokered the final version of the American lectionary, or the collection of Bible readings for Mass, sources told NCR that Waldstein's contributions were critical....

At age 19, Waldstein came to the United States to enroll at Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, Calif. It was a natural fit, given the college's reputation for fierce devotion to what it sees as Catholic orthodoxy.

-- "Conservative Austrian intellectual played key role in lectionary group," National Catholic Reporter, September 25, 1998

I AM WORKING AS A TUTOR IN ADAMS HOUSE, which is an undergraduate house at Harvard. The students there are very smart, sophisticated, self-possessed, and energetic, But I have never found among them the intellectual vitality which I remember from Thomas Aquinas College and which I just experienced there again. It is not that the students at Thomas Aquinas College are smarter than those at Harvard. The opposite is true. But it is as if Harvard undergraduates were intellectually no longer young people. The problem is not that they are intellectually mature. They seemed to have skipped intellectual youth and passed from childhood to premature old age.

--"Alumni Profile: Michael Waldstein, Class of 1977," Thomas Aquinas College

WHAT PRO-CHOICE CATHOLIC POLS UNDERSTAND is that the bishops will not go to the mat. That much was clear in the backroom wranglings over the bishops' own statement, which says that Catholics who depart from church teaching on the inviolability of human life harm their "spiritual well-being." The original draft language was "jeopardize their own salvation," but this was watered down in a closed-door committee session after pressure from two cardinals who did not relish the thought of taking on prominent pro-choice Catholic pols in their own dioceses.

-- "Going Their Way: Bishops, Where Is Thy Sting?" Wall Street Journal, December 4, 1998

I'VE BECOME A CONVERT to home schooling and I'll answer objections anybody has, because sure, they're human beings, there's original sin-- read that footnote in Milton and you'll find out what that is-- but I have never found a group of youngsters so well socialized, so knowledgeable in their faith, so friendly, and so well educated as home schooled youngsters. I really haven't. They are tremendous. Do you know how many there are? I've heard this from a person who spends his time analyzing the situation. There are 30,000 new Catholic home schooling families every year. Benedict had 15,000 monasteries after about 10 centuries. We're getting twice as many little monasteries every year in the Catholic Church.

-- "The Family: Monastery of the New Dark Ages," Catholic Dossier, November-December, 1998

WITH ONE EXCEPTION it was an unbroken string of defeats, beginning in November of last year and gathering momentum in the spring and summer. The box score is now 18-1. The laws against partial-birth abortion have been invalidated or blocked in 18 states; only the law in Virginia has managed to survive (so far) in a judgment written by federal Judge Michael Willig.

The federal judges have formed themselves into a remarkable concert, making it clear that they will not brook even the slightest restraint on abortion. A partial-birth abortion may be gruesome, but the judges have argued that it is not much more gruesome than other late-term abortions.

-- "Courts Strike Down Laws Against Partial-Birth Abortion," Wall Street Journal, Monday, December 7, 1998