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Contents © 2000
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

March 2000 CLIPS

"RCIA: Initiation Into What? And Why?" by Ray Ryland, Homiletic & Pastoral Review, February, 2000


EARLY IN JANUARY 1999 it was announced in Sacramento that our bishop and a Lutheran bishop would "exchange pulpits" On January 31. Catholic Bishop William Weigand would preach at the Lutheran Church, and the Lutheran bishop, Robert Mattheis, would preach in the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament. Some of us tried to convince Bishop Weigand not to have this exchange, not even sure of what was planned. Bishop Mattheis is a bishop in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). ELCA officially supports abortion, is pro-sterilization and pro-contraceptive, and pro-ordination of women, "gays," and lesbians, to name a few difference. Bishop Mattheis himself had permitted his pastors to bless "gay unions."

"Letters to the Editor," Homiletic & Pastoral Review, February, 2000.


I WAS MARRIED 26 YEARS AGO IN THE CHURCH. I was a Baptist at the time and my husband was Catholic. We were not questioned about living together or birth control. We went through 20 years of marriage with this same mentality until I became a Catholic and began doing some reading on my own.

I was crushed and wounded that no one had told me the beautiful teaching of the Church on marriage and sexuality. My life and our marriage would have been very different if someone had cared to tell me the truth.

"Letters to the Editor," Homiletic & Pastoral Review, February, 2000


GAYS AND LESBIAN ALLIANCE AGAINST DEFAMATION (GLAAD), a homosexual activist group, has launched a major pressure campaign against popular radio talk show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger, but the radical gay organization may have met its match in the feisty "Dr. Laura." ...Schlessinger said she began to reconsider her position on homosexuality after receiving nasty faxed letters (she does not give out her phone number) from gay activists who were upset that she was not doing enough to support the homosexual cause. Gradually her eyes were opened to the far-reaching and aggressive homosexual activist agenda that goes well beyond "tolerance," and she became aware of the reality that men and women could overcome their homosexual identity.

Now Dr. Laura uses NARTH's (National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality) information on the air and promotes reparative therapy. Her website (www.drlaura.com) is linked to NARTH's (www.narth.com).

"GLAAD Activists Target Dr. Laura," NARTH Bulletin, December, 1999.


"QUESTION: WHAT IS YOUR PARISH OR SCHOOL doing to raise funds and create excitement? Colorado Central Station has just the ticket! Arrange for a group of 35 or more for a casino day trip. Upon arrival in Black Hawk each passenger will receive: a free meal; $10 cash back; free drinks; free blackjack match coupon ... and more. What does it cost? You decide. Whatever you charge your members you keep (recommend $5 and $10 per). Who could resist?" What do you think of this ad?

I know some parishes need Bingo to stay afloat and some school activities would not exist without raffles. However, those very limited forms of gaming do not, I think, compare with State-sponsored -- or Church-sponsored -- casinos and lotteries.

...Thus, gambling in itself is not intrinsically wrong, but it can become so when genuine needs (food, rent, livelihood) are lost or risked. No one ever starved the children because of a Wednesday night Bingo or a $10 raffle ticket. Gambling is not an absolute occasion of sin but can be a "relative" one from the point of view of the person involved.

My problem with legalized gambling is the precise point of State sponsorship. Once legalized, the State starts advertising their lotteries and games -- note ad above: "Who could resist?"; it pays to advertise! Some see this as added State income, and thus lower over-all taxes. If so, it is the most regressive form of unacknowledged taxation. Those with the least disposable income are enticed to engage the most unfavorable odds.

"Questions Answered," Homiletic & Pastoral Review, December, 1999.


BERNARD F. CARDINAL LAW, Archbishop of Boston, Mass.

"In terms of a more pastorally acceptable location of the tabernacle, it just seems to me that the notion of a separate chapel is unrealistic given the realities of churches in our country."

James A. Cardinal Hickey, Archbishop of Washington, D.C.

"I would like to second the position of those who favor the centrality of the tabernacle in the sanctuary."

"U.S. Bishops Talk Tabernacles," St. Catherine Review, January/February 2000


HERE'S FTM'S LIST OF THE MOST IMPORTANT PEOPLE of the past millennium: 1) St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who made Europe; 2) St. Pius V, who saved Europe from the Muslims; 3) Pope Pius IX, inveterate foe of liberalism and modernism; 4) Abbot Suger, the architect who devised the flying buttress that made the Gothic cathedrals possible; 5) St. Joan of Arc, who preserved France as an independent Catholic nation, and preserved France from the coming Reformation: 6) Queen Isabella of Spain, who, with her husband, drove the Muslims out of Spain; 7) Mozart, who captured the sounds of Heaven in his music; 8) Christopher Columbus, who is not on anyone's list anymore; 9) Francisco Franco, who saved Spain from the Communists, fascists and Nazis and kept his country out of World War II; 10) Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle, models of Catholic politicians and statesmen.

FTM's list of the most pernicious people of the millennium: 1) Luther; 2) Calvin; 3) Voltaire; 4) Margaret Sanger, birth control propagandist; 5) Gregory Pincus and John Rock, inventors of the birth control pill; 6) John D. Rockefeller, financier of the sexual revolution through his agent, Alfred Kinsey; 7) Edward Campbell Allred, who, by his own admission, has killed by his own hands hundreds of thousands of preborn babies with additional millions killed in his chains of abortion facilities; 8) Calvin Klein, designer of indecent fashions; 9) Franklin Roosevelt, whose friendship with mass murderer Joseph Stalin helped bring Communist domination to half the world's people for more than 50 years; 10) Carl Jung, anti-apostle of the New Age cult and founder of the ersatz religion of psychoanalysis.

"From the Mail, The Wanderer, December 30, 1999

Editor's note: The following is excerpted from John Leo's December 6 column in U.S. News & World Report.


SEVERAL COLUMNS AGO, WHEN I WROTE THAT "students, disability activists, and pro-lifers" were demonstrating at Princeton, the copy desk here at U.S. News wanted to change "pro-lifers" to "abortion opponents." The proposed change was by the book. Like most news organizations, this magazine uses "abortion-rights activists" and "abortion opponents," not "pro-choice" and "pro-life." But in this case "abortion opponents was clearly not an adequate term. The issue at Princeton wasn't abortion. It was infanticide. The university had appointed a professor who believes parents should be allowed to kill their severely disabled babies.

Here's the verbal issue, debated for years in newsrooms: Pro-lifers don't like the word "pro-choice" because it eliminates the noun that faces up to the violent act involved (abortion) and replaces it with a warm and toasty abstract word that always scores well in focus groups (choice). And pro-choicers don't like "pro-life" because it implies that supporters of the abortion option are pro-death.

But pro-lifers aren't one-issue activists. They strongly oppose euthanasia, doctor-assisted suicide, ordinary suicide, infanticide, and (often, but not always) capital punishment. Terms such as "antiabortion advocates" and "abortion opponents" fail to reflect this broad commitment to the "life" side of so many life-or-death issues. Out of fairness (and accuracy), the media should restore the "pro-life" tag or come up with something similar. Given the ideological makeup of the newsroom today, this change is unlikely. In fact, in editorial columns at least, there is a small but growing trend toward using the sneering term "anti-choice" to describe pro-life beliefs. The general newsroom tendency to let every group call itself whatever it wants to (gays, Native Americans, African-Americans) is suspended for right-to-life activists.

National Right to Life News, December, 1999.

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