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Contents © 1998
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

November 1998

-- "Lion in Winter," by Robert Moynihan, Inside the Vatican, October 1998


ERIC HARRAH: "THERE'S NOBODY WHO TRACKS THE MONEY that comes from the birth control companies that flood through the clinics -- the paybacks. There's nobody who tracks the insurance companies that give incentives to physicians for performing abortions, because insurance companies would rather pay for abortions than pay for a full labor and delivery."

Dr. Wilke: You get those incentive payments?

Harrah: Oh yeah, they flow like water. If you're a participating member of an insurance company, they will give you incentives to perform an abortion. First trimester abortions are $250, and insurance companies such as ______, _______, ________ -- I've seen them pay over $2,000 for those abortions, because they would rather pay $2,000-$2,500 for a first trimester case than pay $7,000-$8,000 for prenatal, labor and delivery....

What worked, and what I hated the most, were the sidewalk counselors who would stand there and give a brochure about the local CPC. Those were the most effective because that's when the girl would stop to have a conversation....

You never minded it when the men were outside picketing, because that was good, especially if they were loud and obnoxious, telling women they were going to go to hell....Women were much more effective at it than men, definitely. We knew which one was going to be successful. What I found, in my personal experience, is that the women didn't usually respond to younger women because they would typically look at them and say, "You're my age -- what do you know?" But who they did respond to was older women -- middle-aged women and senior citizen women because I think, in their minds, those women had valuable advice....

Over the last couple of years groups such as NOW, NARAL, and The Fund no longer control the abortion industry. They did for a while, but the feminists no longer control it. What you have now is a bigger struggle going on now between them and Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is hated by any doctor or [abortion] clinic that is independently owned and operated. Their [Planned Parenthood's] bread and butter is the abortions that they do. They don't do it because they care about women. That's where the majority of their money comes from. Planned Parenthood is shrewd, though, because it's easier for a politician to stand behind Planned Parenthood to support them than it is to stand behind some entrepreneurial businessman or woman who has an independent clinic. It's more socially acceptable.

-- "Abortion Clinic Chain

Operator Speaking Out," Life Issues Connector, July 1998


I LIVE IN A HOMESCHOOLING COMMUNITY, and I have been homeschooling myself for about fifteen years. I have seen again and again that those who are successful at homeschooling are those whose children are obedient, and who are themselves disciplined. I say this with some trepidation, because I know I am not the best role model in this area myself; but it is nonetheless true that obedience is key in homeschooling.

Obedience is not the only virtue, but it is central -- not only to our lives as homeschoolers but also to the teaching of other virtues.

-- "Character Formation," by Laura Berquist, Sursum Corda!, Fall 1998


A TREND OF DECISIONS


IN THE LOWER FEDERAL COURTS began to block virtually every law on partial birth abortion passed in the separate States. By late May, the laws in eleven states were enjoined from enforcement; by the middle of July, the Washington Post put that figure up to seventeen.

-- "The Adventures of Summer," by Hadley Arkes, Crisis, September 1998


YOUNG AMERICAN MEN ENTERING THE PRIESTHOOD TODAY are far more conservative and tradition-bound than many of their elders and most American Roman Catholics, according to bishops, priests and church surveys....

"My generation was reacting against the tight, ritualized church of the '50s," said Monsignor Timothy Dolan, the 48-year-old rector of the Pontifical North American College of Rome, a seminary for Americans preparing for the priesthood. "These kids are reacting against the '60s and '70s, the psychedelic vestments, the Coke and pretzels at Mass."

Dolan, who was himself a seminarian at the college in the mid-'70s, added: "Now the bias is only in favor of tradition and authority. When I was taught, the bias was against it."

-- "U.S. Catholic Seminarians Turning to Orthodoxy," by Alessandra Stanley, New York Times, October 13, 1998


BEFORE EVANGELIUM VITAE, THIS WRITER AND OTHERS argued for the use of the death penalty on various grounds consistent with St. Thomas Aquinas.... However, EV has shown that these arguments are insufficient....

Jerry Falwell, in his interview with Jesse Jackson on CNN, February 8, 1998, opposed [Karla Faye] Tucker's execution but said, "I've always believed that there needed to be in the system capital punishment for the monsters of society like the Ted Bundys, the Timothy McVeighs, the John Wayne Gacys, etc."

Jerry has it wrong. The state has no right to execute a person because he is a "monster" or because of the gravity of what he has done, but only where that killing is absolutely necessary to protect other persons from that criminal. John Paul has it right. Ad so did Karla Faye Tucker when she said that what her supporters "were really speaking out for is the cause of Christ. I believe that they see what Jesus Christ has done in a life, the way he has transformed a life. And what they're speaking out for is saying, he's real. If he did this in this life, in this person who did something like that, he can do that in anybody's life." And we should give Him the chance.

-- "Showdown in Texas: the Pope vs. the Culture of Death," by Charles Rice, Catholic Dossier, September-October 1998


QUESTION: IS THEOLOGICAL STUDIES A RELIABLE SOURCE for Catholic seminary students?

Answer: A candid answer would be "no".... It is, of course, useful for keeping abreast of the critics of Catholicism and a very useful index of what the tenured dissenters are currently handing on to hurried middle managers. But, in the last 15 to 20 years, it has become the academic, advanced placement version of the National Catholic Reporter....

The inside cover lists a Jesuit editor and book review editor. The editorial consultants number 15 of whom only 6 are Jesuits and those consultants are themselves a discreet disclosure. To my knowledge, all are dissenters, in part or whole, from Humanae Vitae (1968) and Familiaris Consortio (1981), some are vociferous in their dissent against Veritatis Splendor (1993), indeed, one may be one of the designated minor targets of that encyclical.

-- "Questions Answered," by Monsignor William B. Smith, Homiletic & Pastoral Review, October 1998


1921. EDITH VISITS HER PHILOSOPHER FRIENDS, Professors Hans and Hedwig Conrad-Martius, in Bavaria. Hedwig reports that she and Edith were each in the midst of a "religious crisis." One evening the Conrad-Martiuses are away and Edith is alone. She chooses to read a book from their library -- it is St. Teresa of Avila's Autobiography. She reads through the evening and into the morning. She puts the book down, saying, "This is the truth."...

1928....A Benedictine nun reports: "I was sent as a young religious to attend to community business near Speyer and was thus able to spend some time with Edith Stein. Sunday morning we attended solemn high Mass in the Cathedral together. For almost the entire liturgy, Edith Stein remained on her knees with her eyes closed and her face resting in her hands. To a young, liturgically-minded Benedictine like myself, that made no sense at all. Afterwards, I told her [so]. I don't remember what she answered."...

1933....On October 12, the Jewish Festival of Tabernacles, Edith attends synagogue with her mother. On the way home her mother asks, "It was a beautiful sermon, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"Then it is possible for a Jew to be pious?"

"Certainly, if one has not learned anything more..."

Then came the despairing reply: "Why have you learned more? I don't want to say anything against him. He may have been a very good man. But why did he make himself God?"

That night she holds her mother in her arms and both weep until they are too exhausted to weep any more.

-- "A Martyr for Reconciliation," Inside the Vatican, October 1998


ACCORDING TO THE SCRIPTURES, Judas kissed Jesus at the moment of betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane. In Terrence McNally's "Corpus Christi,'' a new play that opened off Broadway Tuesday, the Judas kiss is no peck on the cheek but a full buss on the mouth, planted by a former homosexual lover....

Same-sex sermonizing is not the only aspect of the new play that may offend the pious. For instance, a cigarette-smoking Virgin Mary drawls, "You listen to nuns, you get entirely screwed up.'' The Last Supper begins a la Da Vinci but degenerates in a drunken haze....

The most provocative scene in ``Corpus Christi'' has rabbi Jesus perform a same-sex, double-ring wedding on behalf of the apostles James and Bartholomew, complete with canopy. "I bless this marriage in your name, Father,'' he pronounces. "Now let's all get very, very drunk.''

At that point a Jewish priest arrives to denounce Jesus for condoning "violations of God's natural order.'' Jesus castigates his accuser as a bigot and hypocrite. "I despise you.''...

McNally's Jesus, sometimes hesitant and confused, hardly seems the sort who would have commanded a devoted following in his own lifetime, much less billions of people centuries later.

-- "Plenty to Offend in 'Jesus' Play," Associated Press, October 14


A CATHOLIC WOMAN IN CANBERRA has been told by a bishop, who is also her parish priest, that she is not to receive communion, read at Mass or take part in the parish council because she publicly advocates the ordination of women.

The instruction is believed to be the first of its kind in the world.

Ms. Ann Nugent, an executive member of Ordination of Catholic Women (OCW), a national group committed to the ordination of women in the Catholic Church, ...was told of the decision on the telephone by Bishop Geoffrey Mayne earlier this month. Bishop Mayne, 70, is the Catholic bishop to the Australian Defense Forces and
parish priest of St. Thomas More parish in the Canberra suburb of Campbell....

"It's overkill on [Bishop Mayne's] part," Ms Nugent told the Herald. "I don't know why."...

Bishop Mayne said he had warned Ms. Nugent that her attacks on the church's teaching would not be tolerated but she had ignored his admonishments.

"I, as a bishop or a priest, cannot in conscience give communion to someone who is working against the teachings of the church," he said. "It's as simple as that."

-- "Communion denied to female priests advocate," by Chris McGillion, Sydney Morning Herald, September 28, 1998

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