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Contents © 1997
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

September 1997

On July 24, 11 plaintiffs...won a $120 million judgment against Father Kos and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Dallas. It is the largest sum ever paid in a clergy-abuse case....On May 7, 1996, Kos, 52, was also indicted on criminal charges of indecency with a child and sexual assault by contact....An initial hearing for Kos's trial has been set for September 15 in Dallas, Texas, where the alleged offenses took place in three parishes to which Father Kos was assigned....

For nearly four years Kos has been living and working in San Diego. Currently he lives on State Street, across from Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Church and 500 feet from Washington Elementary School....

"He hasn't been convicted in a criminal court," explains Lieutenant Jim Barker, in charge of sdpd's sex crimes unit. "We're not bound by any civil action. We have no reason to track him down."...

"He's a danger on your streets," insists Tom Economus, a victim of a pedophile priest in his own childhood and now president of Linkup, a Chicago-based organization for victims of clergy abuse...."There is no cure for pedophilia," says Economus. "The American Psychiatric Association tells us that."...

"If he's here, he's here as a private citizen," says Bernadeane Carr, the San Diego diocesan spokesperson. "He has not contacted the diocese. The diocese has not contacted him. That's the information we have."

But with children's lives at stake, does the local diocese feel any responsibility for this errant priest? Carr allows a long silence. "It would be a question of whether there is any legal responsibility, and then if there is any canonical responsibility...."

When I ask Father Louis Mary Solcia [of Our Lady of the Rosary church] about Father Kos, he says he doesn't know.... "He never came to church....I'm here in church all the time...." Priests like Father Kos, he says, "they move out. They move away. They disappear."

-- Bill Manson, "Accused Pedophile Priest Sets Up Housekeeping in Little Italy", San Diego Reader, August 7, 1997


WHEN THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE of Catholic Bishops held its annual summer meeting in Kansas City in June, this reporter ...was approached by Archbishop Michael Sheehan of Santa Fe, N.M.... Without a hint of consternation, Sheehan went on to say that he had been rector of Holy Trinity Seminary in Dallas when Rudolph Kos was admitted in 1977.

"In the four years he was in seminary, I never saw a problem," said Sheehan, who later testified at the trial in Dallas. What he didn't say was that Kos had been rejected a year earlier, in 1976, by the previous rector, the Rev. Gerald Hughes. Hughes said Kos had too many problems.

-- Pamela Schaeffer, "Reporter's Trial Notes," National Catholic Reporter, August 15, 1997


THE IMPLEMENTATION OF VATICAN II generally speaking, has gone along very well. The only place where it's being screwed up is at the level of the Vatican and the hierarchy.... We've had kind of a long period now when the pattern of making bishops is that they've got to be utterly loyal to the Holy See and that means loyal in the narrow sense of loyalty. That means your excluding most of your good priests....

The Common Ground Initiative. Is it going to make a difference?

Not under this pope, and not under Oscar Lipscomb, the Archbishop of Mobile....From the start, even the project committee -- very, very safe. A lot of conservatives, moderate conservatives. Amost no strong progressive people....I have great respect for [Cardinal Joseph] Bernardin's memory, but I don't expect this to go very far. In fact it's gone nowhere so far.

How about the issue of the church's polarization, is it real?

...The only people who are polarized are the small group of right wingers who are always handing out leaflets. They're very vocal. They're attacking the DRE. They're attacking the catechetical materials. They're writing letters to the chancery, or to the bishop because they noticed that someone was handing out communion in some way that was offensive....

Some people put it as if the middle of the church is caught in this crossfire. Is there a crossfire? No. There are shots, but they are all coming from one side; they're coming from the right.

-- 'That's my take on things,' interview with Father Richard McBrien in the Observer, Monterey, California's diocesan newspaper, July 1997


ACCORDING TO THE WASHINGTON State Department of Health, Governor Gary Locke's budget proposal includes $300,000 to fund the Washington State Vasectomy Project for an additional two years past June 1997. If the legislature agrees, the project would sterilize between 900 and 950 poor men each year and save the state, proponents say, between nine and eleven million dollars in social spending.

-- David Morrison, "WA state's assault on low-income men," HLI Reports, July 1997


TO STEM THE RISING TIDE of American annulments, I have three suggestions. First, the Church must work to reduce the demand for annulments, that is, by standing with pro-family groups to repeal no-fault divorce laws. Remember that the rise in demand for annulments is directly linked to the rise in civil divorce, which, in turn, is due to the fact that a divorce today is fairly easy to obtain. Second, more work in catechesis is needed, not just with engaged couples, but also with very young people, to instill in them the Catholic ideal of a lifelong marriage....Third, certain tribunals need to rethink their mission -- in their zeal to reconcile Catholics to certain sacraments, have they overlooked their duty to preserve another sacrament, the Sacrament of Marriage?

-- Joanne Sadler Butler, "Some Suggestions for Stemming the Tide of Annulments," The Wanderer, June 19, 1997


THE RADICAL SOCIALIST PARTY (RSP) was first to open fire on the Pontiff for his plan to pray at the tomb of Dr. Jerome Lejeune, an international leader of the pro-life movement and a personal friend of the Pope, who died in 1994 and is buried near Paris. The RSP -- which is a partner in the leftist coalition government of France -- said that the Pope's public display of affection for a pro-life advocate would constitute "a provocation."

An editorial in the newspaper Le Monde...argued that because of the current controversy over abortion, "the Pope's visit to Jerome Lejeune's tomb could be interpreted as legitimizing the violence which the Church has always condemned."

Then Bishop Jacques Gaillot, who was relieved of his pastoral responsibilities in 1995 because of his repeated statements in opposition to Church teaching, added his voice to the chorus, saying that by praying for a friend, the Pope would be giving "a blessing for the anti-abortion commandos."

None of the Pope's critics pointed to any instances of actual violence in the French pro-life movement, or any hint that Dr. Lejeune himself would have approved of such violence if it existed.

-- Catholic World News Service, Daily News Briefs, August 8, 1997


I PROPOSE...TO EMPHASIZE not so much the necessity of evangelization...but rather the very legitimacy of the evangelization movement that has developed in large part in response to the success enjoyed by Fundamentalists who have sought to pull Catholics from the religion of their upbringing....

Two of my predecessors in this series, Bishop Stephen E. Blaire and Fr. Thomas P. Rausch, have used the term "new apologetics" to label this movement....Fr. Rausch says, "Whatever their primary motivation, these new apologists are deeply suspicious of modern scholarship."... If I may be so bold as to criticize these comments, I would note first that "contemporary Catholic theology" is not of one cloth. William May is not Charles Curran. Joseph Ratzinger is not Edward Schillebeeckx. Bernard Orchard is not Raymond Brown....

Bishop Blaire remarked that "the NCCB Committee on Pastoral Practices has contracted with a liturgical and scriptural scholar to prepare reflections which incorporate the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church into the Sunday homily, while maintaining the integrity of the homily" as a reflection on the day's readings.

I confess that I found this news disconcerting. Have we so declined that parish priests them themselves incapable of composing good homilies without the supervision of a national committee?

-- "No Apology from the New Apologetics," text of an address given by Karl Keating at St. John's Seminary in Camarillo, CA, This Rock, May 1997


THE STUNNING PHENOMENON is a song called "Butterfly Kisses," written and sung by a previously unknown artist named Bob Carlisle. The album of the same name recently became the first Christian title to hit No. 1 on the Billboard chart since the Singing Nun ascended that spot in 1963.... The apogee of Mr. Carlisle's dizzying rise was his Father's Day appearance on "Oprah." After hearing his rendition of "Butterfly Kisses," the audience was not merely touched, but positively sobbing....

The chorus begins: "Butterfly kisses after bedtime prayer / Stickin' little white flowers all up in her hair / 'Walk beside me, Daddy, it's my first ride / I know the cake looks funny, Daddy, but I sure tried' / Oh, with all that I've done wrong, I must have done something right / To deserve a hug every morning and butterfly kisses at night."

Beyond emphasizing the importance of fathers, "Butterfly Kisses" unashamedly celebrates traditional values....Most of the weeping that this song elicits is surely due to its powerful evocation of childhood nostalgia. But perhaps some onf the tears signify the rightful sadness of so many women who know that their own daughters, growing up without fathers, wil never fully understand what the fuss is all about.

-- "A Miracle in Billboard Magazine," by Andrew Peyton Thomas, Wall Street Journal, July 22, 1997


IN A NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE of 4 June 1996, Fr. Robert Drinan -- who identified himself as a Jesuit priest...described those who supported the ban on partial-birth abortion as the "indignant voices" of the pro-life movement and the Reupblican Party....

Ten days later, in the absence of any response from Fr. Drinan, the Georgetown Ignatian Society petitioned His Eminence James Cardinal Hickey (under canon 1369 of the Code of Canon Law) to remove Fr. Drinan's priestly faculties in the Washington Archdiocese if a retraction was not forthcoming in the New York Times....

His Eminence did not respond, nor did he respond directly to any of the other letters sent to him by the Ignatian Society over the next seven months. That task fell to auxiliary Bishop William E. Lori....

The final letters to Cardinal Hickey and Bishop Lori were sent in January informing them that the Ignatian Society would now attempt to do what they (the bishops) should have done: bring Vatican and other religious pressure to bear. These letters went unanswered.

During all this time, Fr. Drinan continued to claim that no ecclesiastical authority was going to tell him what to do.

Two hundred and eighty-six days after having petitioned Cardinal Hickey, the Ignatian Society forwarded the entire file of correspondence to His Eminence Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect for the Congregation of the Faith. Forty-seven days later, the Washington Archdiocese issued Fr. Drinan's retraction.

-- Anne Sheridan, "Fr. Drinan Recants," HLI Reports, July 1997


TO THE OCCASIONAL CHAGRIN of pastors who pay teachers' salaries, the Cardinal [John O'Connor of New York] has been solidly pro-union, and he has never shaken his proletarian beginnings. "Just going into a Park Avenue building was almost too much for him," recalled a friend. "He tried to make jokes with the elevator man to show he was a regular guy."

The Cardinal was mortified in 1984 when a visiting Mother Teresa made some passing mention of the opulence of the Cardinal's residence at 452 Madison Avenue. So, a year later, the Cardinal began selling off what he called "baroque Renaissance" furniture on the first floor of the residence. His Eminence lives on the third floor in a room that is "so small I can't change my mind in it."

-- New York Observer, July 21, 1997


THE MARCH/APRIL ISSUE of The Hastings Center Report, one of the most respected of all journals focusing on medical ethics, contains an article by John Hardwig, a professor of medical ethics and social philosophy at East Tennessee State University. Its sobering title asks, "Is There a Duty to Die?"...

"There may be," Hardwaig writes, "a fairly common responsibility to end one's life in the absence of any terminal illness." You can be a burden to your family even when you're not at the edge of eternity. Actually, writes Hardwig, "there can be a duty to die even when one would prefer to live....To have reached the age of, say, 75 or 80 years without being ready to die is itself a moral failing, the sign of a life out of touch with life's basic realities."...

It is an even greater moral obligation "when you have already lived a rich and full life. You have already had a full share of good things life offers."

-- Nat Henthoff, "Are You Aware of Your Duty To Die?" Village Voice, July 22, 1997

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