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Contents © 1997
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

May 1997

Geographical toleration has always been one of the governmental bulwarks in dealing with sexual exploitation. Houses of prostitution were allowed to function more or less unmolested by public authorities as long as they confined their activities to certain parts of town or certain towns or certain states, places like Nevada....

All these deterrent factors change, however, with access to Internet. Now pornography is in your house 24 hours a day if you have a computer and a modem.

-- E. Michael Jones, "Internet in Gaza: Sexual Liberation as Political Control," Culture Wars, February 1997


CHUCK COLSON OF PRISON Ministries International makes the remarkable assertion that "more Christians have been martyred for their faith in this century alone than the previous nineteen centuries combined."...

In Iraq, Christians have decreased from 35 percent to 5 pcercent of the overall population since the early part of the twentieth century; in Iran, the decline has been from 15 percent to two percent; in Syria from 40 percent to two percent....

"It is ironic," [Michael] Horowitz [of the Hudson Institute] says, "that the cause of Soviet Jewry was taken up as a cause cèlébre by the U.S. government, but now it and much of the Christian community is silent about the more pervasive persecution of Christians abroad."...

Archbishop Theodore McCarrick of Newark...is...a member of the State Department's Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom. When this committee held its first meeting the other day, McCarrick, an ultra-cautious contender to replace Cardinal O'Connor as archbishop of New York, managed to sit through the entire session without saying a word."

-- Tom Bethell, "Saving Faith at State," The American Spectator, April 1997


THE NEW ARCHBISHOP [of Chicago, Most Rev. Francis George] is glib, articulate and fast. His predecessor, Bernardin, was not nearly as quick on the draw. Bernardin chose his words carefully, as if searching the tree for the best specimen. Further, he always left a little wiggle room. George appears to prefer the declarative to the subjunctive....

During one philosophical foray, he tried to make a distinction between relationship and symbol, holding that the church was more symbol than function. Thus, women could function as well as men as priests but the symbolism would be lost. Instead, he lost his media sound bite audience who were only asking his position on the ordination of women.

-- Tim Unsworth, "Portland's George Goes Back to Chicago," National Catholic Reporter, April 18, 1997


...655 HOMOSEXUAL PRIESTS, lesbian nuns, and other Church workers...came here for New Ways Ministry's 20th aniversary conference, held at the plush Doubletree Hotel in downtown Pittsburgh, March 7-9.

The conference began Friday evening with an address by Dr. Richard Isay....He stressed the importance of "coming out" for homosexual youth and outlined the reasons homosexual young people are entitled to "sexual experimentation" and "affectionate relationships" with adult men....

The most terrible threat to the homosexual youths' self-image, he warned his audience, is attempts by some in the psychiatric community -- he mentioned Catholic psychiatrist Dr. Joseph Nicolosi by name -- to counsel them into heterosexuality. He described such attempts as "insidious."

-- Paul Likoudis, "Change in Catholic Morality Inevitable, Speakers Say," The Wanderer, March 20, 1997


ACCORDING TO THE PAPER [Bergen County (NJ) Record], two doctors at Metropolitan Medical of Englewood [NJ] estimated that their clinic performed 3,000 abortions a year on fetuses 20 to 24 weeks old, half by partial-birth abortions techniques.

Metropolitan...fired back with a letter saying that documents it submits to the state health department and medical board "show that the annual number of abortions between 12 and 23.3 weeks is about 4,000, with the majority...between 12 and 16 weeks."

Others have questioned the article on statistical grounds. For example, according to federal studies, the percentage of abortions occurring past 20 weeks averages about 1.3% nationwide. If the newspaper's number is correct, New Jersey's percentage of late abortions would be 5.5%, four times higher than almost any other state in the survey.

Then again, Metropolitan's math doesn't inspire any great trust.

The abortion numbers it turned over to the health department and medical board last year were completely at odds with each other, say state officials, who after a five-month investigation came up with yet another number. The new total is much lower than the newspaper's, but officials won't release an exact number.

Even some skeptics concede privately that the Record probably quoted the doctors accurately. Which leaves two puzzling possibilities: Either the physicians were independently wrong, or New Jersey (and maybe other states) underreports the number of abortions done in later pregnancy.

-- Roy Rivenburg, "Partial Truths," Los Angeles Times, April 2, 1997


DO YOU HAVE ANY WORDS specifically to say to American Catholics?

Wu: Yes. Your brothers and sisters in China are suffering. Today, the Church has been totally destroyed. When you do your praying, please think about them and pray for them. Don't go welcome these Patriotic Church priests. It's a sham. Your real brothers and sisters are being suppressed in the underground church. If you are a businessman and you also go to church on Sunday, think about it. Do you want to make money from the forced labor of these suffering people?

-- Robert R. Reilly, "Harry Wu, One Man Against China," Crisis, April 1997


ON MARCH 12, PRO-ABORTION Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) unveiled a "substitute amendment" that he intended to offer to replace the language of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act. Straight-faced, Hoyer and his chief Republican co-sponsor, Rep. Jim Greenwood (R-Pa.), labeled their amendment the "Late-Term Abortion Restriction Act." But in truth, not a single partial-birth abortion would have been made illegal under the Hoyer-Greenwood proposal.

Nevertheless, the White House told Democratic congressional offices that the Hoyer-Greenwood proposal was "consistent with the President's position."

Hoyer-Greenwood would allow partial-birth abortion with no limits until "viability." Medically, "viability" means the point at which prematurely born babies have a substantial chance of surviving with neonatal care -- currently 23 weeks. But Hoyer-Greenwood empowers the abortionist himself to define "viability."

-- Douglas Johnson, "How Clinton Is Having It Both Ways on Partial-Birth Abortion," NRTL News, March 24, 1997

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