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Contents © 1997
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

November 1997

-- "Holy Role," by Ted Johnson, TV Guide, October 10-18


DURING THE SIX HOURS we prayed in front of the clinic...we saw Msgr. [Philip] Reilly and Sr. Dorothy [Rothar] approach most of the seventy women scheduled there that day. They offered Rosaries to everyone who came to the clinic, both patients and their companions (whom Monsignor refers to as the "accomplices"). Most took the Rosaries along with a little pamphlet on how to say the Rosary. It was a strange sight to watch all those people walk into that clinic carrying Rosaries....

Of those seventy women that day, thirty-seven changed their minds. Most of them went on into the clinic, thought about it and came back out. Some embraced Sister or Monsignor, many took information about the crisis pregnancy center down the street. One young woman, who had sworn at Monsignor when he tried to speak to her on her way in, came out and kissed him after she changed her mind and decided to keep her baby.

-- "League learns from Msgr. Reilly," Pro-Life Action News, August


LAST SUMMER I HAD MY TUBES untied. Unlike the operation for sterilisation which was free on the medical plan and easy to get, the operation to restore fertility cost three thousand dollars, took three hours, and about one hundred stitches. This operation was an important step in my healing process [from a previous abortion]. When I got home from the hospital a few hours after surgery (they send you home the same day), I found a package waiting for me. Opening it, I found a large, 3' x 4' colourful banner of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Unborn. A girlfriend had felt like sending it to me; she had no idea what the picture represented (she is Jewish), and she didn't know I was having the operation.

-- "New Life," by Abigail Hearth, Nazareth Journal, Fall 1997


IN A RECENT ISSUE OF the Minnesota Christian Chronicle, Doug Trouten documented the Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper's inconsistent use of its stylebook. The stylebook instructs writers and editors to "always use" the terms "fetus" and "embryo" in place of unborn child or unborn baby. A straightforward directive. Trouten showed, however, that while Star Tribune articles use "embryo" and "fetus" when treating abortion-related issues, they tend to employ "unborn child," "unborn children," "unborn baby," and "unborn babies" when addressing the health, nutrition, safety, or parental rights of little persons growing in a uterus.

-- "You're an 'Unborn Baby' if She Wants You, a 'Terminated Fetus' if She Doesn't," by Brian Kurzhal, New Oxford Review, October


TWO PARISHES HAVE DISTRIBUTED copies of my tape (Contraception, Why Not?) to all families in the parish (one ordered 2500 copies; the other 1200). Some individuals order hundreds of copies of this tape at a time and distribute it like calling cards. One woman distributed 350 copies as favors at her daughter's wedding reception!

-- "Old and New Stuff," by Janet Smith, Catholic Dossier, September-October


THREE YEARS AGO, when we moved to San Diego, our family registered in the local Ruthenian Byzantine parish. "Why?" our Roman Rite Catholic friends asked. The first answer is that Nancy and I want our children to experience Sunday Mass powerfully. We want them to know the sense of the sacred -- the solemnity, majesty, and beauty of the sacrifice of the Mass. We want them truly to worship and praise God, as He wants to be worshiped and praised. We want them to swim in the symbols and signs and words of the Catholic Faith....They've jigged and poked the typical Roman Rite parish Mass into an intensely bland experience. The hymns stink, the sermons are lame, and the fire of faith is sputtering in the hearts of the people in the pews.

-- "Discovering the Catholic Church's Eastern Rite," by Patrick Madrid, New Oxford Review, October


WHEN I FIRST BEGAN doing pro-life defense work, I had long conversations with Fr. Bevilaqua, an Augustinian teacher from my high school. We discussed St. Thomas Aquinas, what is the binding force of just and unjust laws, and when civil disobedience of unjust laws is justified. Also, my wife Michelle and I are planning on entering the Franciscan Third Order. St. Francis had a deep love and respect for all life, and as Franciscans, we are called to live that same spirit.

-- San Diego attorney Richard J. Vattuone, interviewed by Daniel J. Grimm in Lifeline, September


YOUR HOLINESS SPEAKS of "new knowledge" and "a series of discoveries" favorable to evolution. One can only wish that Your Holiness had been more specific. These phrases imply that over the past fifty years advances in science have greatly strengthened the arguments for evolution. Non-believers in evolutionism would respectfully submit that the opposite is true, that scientific progress over the past fifty years has greatly weakened the arguments for evolution.

--"The Costs of Compromise," by Rev. David R. Becker, The Latin Mass, Fall 1997


ONCE AGAIN THIS YEAR, Detroit's largest convention hall will fill up with several thousand dedicated Catholic progressives for the annual Call to Action convention....But after the liturgical dances, the spirited songs and a few jabs at the hierarchy are over, there is a sense of unease. The largest group there are the nuns, but their ranks are rapidly thinning and their hair is graying.... Where are the liberal Catholics of tomorrow? Have they all joined Opus Dei, or are they watching Mother Angelica?...

I know of several quite intelligent graduate students, for example, who will attend daily Mass at our Catholic student chapel but insist on going on Sundays to a parish with a Tridentine Mass in Latin. One evening they persuaded me to go with them for a special Requiem Mass. The celebrant marched in wearing black vestments and a biretta. From the old prayers at the foot of the altar to the last Gospel, he used not a word of English. It was the Mass just as I myself had celebrated it for 10 years, and I remembered it all too well. I left the church feeling even more grateful for the Missal of Paul VI and the chance to celebrate the liturgy in a language people can understand. But not my young friends....

It might behoove all of us older Catholics to be open to their challenging questions, to examine our own "liberal" assumptions, to engage in a rigorous dialogue with them and to be delighted that there are, among the 20-somethings, zealous and searching young men and women who still care about their religious heritage.

-- "Young and Conservative," by Rev. Willard F. Jabusch, America, October 11

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