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Contents © 1999
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

May 1999

...According to a 1994 Los Angeles Times survey, nearly half of American priests believe that birth control is seldom or never wrong; even more say the same of masturbation. As a result, few Catholics hear preaching on touchy sexual issues on any given Sunday.

This is about to change, say the seminarians at Mount Saint Mary's -- they have every intention of preaching on these topics, and some deacons already have done so in the parishes they were assigned to last summer....

After asking permission from his pastor, Cook preached against contraception in the parish he was assigned in Omaha, Neb., last summer. "I was nervous," he recalled. "If I hadn't really prayed on it and done it in a way that I think was not overbearing.... I said, 'What is the nature of marriage? To give of oneself.' I didn't use the word 'contraception' until the end. People came up to me afterward and said, 'No one ever preaches on that. Thank you.'"

Holloway gave me a tape of a lecture he delivered to teen-age boys, in which he told them: "Let me be perfectly clear. Sometimes people just won't say this: masturbation is always a seriously disordered act.... In itself, it is always wrong." He urged the boys to confess their sins, and afterward, I was told, they did, lining up in scores outside the confessionals.

-- "The Last Counterculture," New York Times Magazine, April 4, 1999

EVEN IN AN AGE WHEN SENSITIVITY AND DIVERSITY ARE SAID TO BE PRIZED, and no one would dream of asking a childless couple why they have no children, one of the last acceptable prejudices is against people who refuse to use contraception. Over the years I have wondered what drives normally polite people to cross the line into impropriety. Clearly the zero population growth (ZPG) propagandists have done a great PR job, and some people who are outspoken to pregnant ladies sincerely believe that the earth's resources are threatened by large families, that having a large family is selfish. But would any of them consider giving a lecture on more responsible use of resources or on selfishness to a stranger, an acquaintance, or even a friend who was buying a vacation home or shopping for a third car?

--"Why Is It O.K. to Insult a Pregnant Lady?" New Oxford Review, April 1999

ACCORDING TO EXIT POLLING BY THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, 12 percent of Gray Davis' voters said abortion was one of the "most important issues in deciding" their vote. Twelve percent. Here's the funny thing about that. Thirteen percent of Dan Lungren's voters said precisely the same thing.

Let's do a little math here. Twelve percent are rabid pro-choice voters, 13 percent are rabid pro-life voters, and the rest really couldn't care less but they'll usually tell a pollster they're pro-choice just to get the pollster to go away.

The point is, most voters don't consider this to be a deciding issue. It is only at the margins where it becomes decisive, and then it splits about evenly.

Now here comes the question, and it is an important one. Think about that 12 percent of hard-core single issue abortions rights Gray Davis voters. Exactly how many are going to flock to the Republican candidate because we've suddenly repudiated the pro-life voters of our party?

Bonus question. Exactly how many of that 13 percent who are with us solely because we are pro-life, are going to stay with us once we are no longer pro-life?

--Assemblyman Tom McClintock, "Notes on the State of California," March 1999

WHEN I READ A FEW WEEKS AGO that Mayor Willie Brown was about to conduct another of his now annual "marriage" ceremonies for gay and lesbian couples at City Hall, I wondered whether to file the piece under "March madness" or "Lenten penance." Unfortunately, what I suppose many thought of three years ago as our new mayor's penchant for flamboyance has now turned out to have a far more subversive purpose.

...A Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) initiative has qualified for the March 2000 ballot in California. It proposes to add one sentence to the California Family Code: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

The Catholic bishops of California have decided to endorse this initiative. We see this as a necessary step to guarantee the institution of marriage and family in present social climate. We will do our best to provide public education on this issue through reasonable and, I hope, persuasive argument, and not with inflamed rhetoric. --"Initiative is a necessary step to defend marriage and family,"

San Francisco's Archbishop William Levada,
The Catholic Herald, April 3, 1999

OF COURSE, MANY TRADITIONAL HYMNS also address the other believers rather than God. But a close look at such hymns (for example, "Now thank we all our God," "Praise, my soul the King of heaven," or "Ye watchers and ye holy ones") reveals a crucial difference: the traditional hymns address others only to invite them to worship God, while most contemporary songs invite us to glorify ourselves.

"Bread of Life" by Rory Cooney, provides a splendid example of this self-centered conversation. The theme of the song lends itself to the Communion rite. But unfortunately, the words distort the meaning of Communion and the dialogue that should be taking place:

I myself am the bread of life
you and I are the bread of life
taken and blessed, broken and shared
by Christ
that the world may live.

Aside from the fact that this song radically distorts Our Lord's "Bread of Life" discourse, it also leaves God out of the conversation: we talk to ourselves.

...(I)n the song "Hosea" by Gregory Norbet, OSB, we sing God's words to us:

Come back to me with all your heart,
don't let fear keep us apart,
Long have I waited for your coming
home to me
and living deeply our new life.

The question arises: To whom are we speaking? We cannot possibly be speaking to God, because it would make no sense for us to speak these words to Him.

...Similarly with the chorus of the song "I Have Loved You" by Michael Joncas:

I have loved you with an everlasting love,
I have loved you and you are mine;
I have loved you with an everlasting love,
I have called you and you are mine.

Of course, the "I" here is God -- not us. So why are we singing God's part?

...At certain moments of the Mass, the peculiarity of these lyrics becomes strikingly clear. At Communion, for instance, when the Creator comes to dwell within His creatures, and we come forward to receive the Almighty, we often act like anything but creatures:

I, the Lord am sea and sky,
I have heard my people cry,
all who dwell in dark and sin
my hand will save.
I who made the stars of night
I will make their darkness bright
Who will bear my light to them?
Whom shall I send?

Granted, the chorus of the song ("Here I Am" by Dan Schutte) reflects the proper dialogue. But the verses have us speaking in God's voice....

--Father Paul Scalia, "Ritus Narcissus: Why Do We Sing of Ourselves and Celebrate Ourselves?" Adoremus Bulletin, March, 1999 for May

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