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Contents © 1997
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

December 1997

"It's kind of harmless, frankly,'' said Auxiliary Bishop Joseph M. Sartoris of Los Angeles...."The characters were human,'' Bishop Sartoris said. "I haven't found the Catholic faithful to be scandalized by it. There's a place for it.''...

"I haven't had much response at all. Evidently, San Diego's preoccupied with other things,'' said Bishop Robert H. Brom of San Diego, adding he has not seen the show. "There's been no mail or communication directed to me about it,'' he said.

"Nothing Sacred, Nothing Sacred,'' mused Bishop F. Joseph Gossman of Raleigh, N.C. "I think I've seen every segment,'' he said. "I've enjoyed it. It's not perfect. It's brash.'' Bishop Gossman said Nothing Sacred represents "the first time we've had anything Catholic on television. Some people want the Catholic catechism in 3-D. The networks aren't going to put the catechism out there.''

-- Mark Pattison, Catholic News Service wire, November 12


I DO THIS WITH SOME HESITATION this week because I know there will be those who will think: "He's definitely lost his mind." Who knows? Some might even report this to the Diocese or the Thought Police (aka newsnotes) -- the least of my worries....

I am talking about the program Nothing Sacred....I tuned into the second show of the series, then the third. To be quite frank, not only did I -- as a priest of twenty years -- not find much objectionable about the program, I actually liked it....

Is this an ideal show? No. Is it an honest show? Pretty much. Is it anti-Catholic? Not at all. Is it for everybody? No, but no show is. Should it be condemned, boycotted, slapped around and mocked? No. I, for one, find it refreshing and an inspiration to my own ministry as a priest in 1997!

There. I've said it. Go ahead and report me.

-- "From the Pastor," by Father Dennis Mikulanis, St. Charles Parish (Imperial Beach) Sunday bulletin, October 12, 1997


UNLESS MANY RECENT CONVERSATIONS around the country mislead me, intelligent Catholics in significant numbers seem not to be on the same wavelength as Pope John Paul II. In some ways this is odd, because intelligent Catholics usually like an intelligent and articulate pope, and this one is perhaps the most intellectually original, articulate and prolific pope of the past 100 years....

Many are willing to admit, however, that they simply do not see what this pope is up to -- do not follow, cannot recount, his arguments. To a remarkable extent, in rather wide circle of U.S. Catholicism a certain resistance to John Paul II seems to be the expected attitude. It is sad, I think, to be alive during one of the great pontificates in history and to be in passive opposition to it.

-- "John Paul II: Christian Philosopher," by Michael Novak, America, October 25, 1997


A GROUP OF PROMINENT Chicago priests has requested a meeting with Archbishop Francis George, telling the Roman Catholic leader that criticisms he has made during parish visits in his first few months on the job "left damage in your wake.''

George, according to their report, has been tagged by some with the unfortunate nickname "Francis the Corrector.'' The sobriquet refers to the archbishop's reported disapproval of some practices he has encountered, from the order in which lay ministers received communion at one parish to the absence of kneelers in a seminary chapel....

In addition to the communion practice and kneelers, specific concerns listed in the report include George's intervention in the debate in Oak Park over gay rights, his insistence that priests wear gray vestments at funerals and comments he supposedly made regarding foreign priests -- comments the archdiocese has since asserted were misreported....

"We will resist being treated as branch managers for some huge international corporation who simply take orders from headquarters, be that at the Vatican or at the Pastoral Center (which serves as archdiocesan headquarters),'' the report asserts.

-- "His pastors scold George on his style, substance," by Steve Kloehn, Chicago Tribune, November 10, 1997


GABE HUCK, an acquisitions editor for Liturgy Training Publications of Chicago, which published the letter ["Gather Faithfully Together: A Guide for Sunday Mass," a pastoral letter distributed in September by L.A. archbishop Roger Mahony] for national distribution, said the letter comes at a crucial moment in the life of the U.S. Catholic church.

"We've been through the sacramentary wars at the bishops' meetings, then the lectionary wars last spring. It sort of seemed to people that the excitement and renewal is past, that there was retrenchment," Huck said....

For example, in St. Louis, Archbishop Justin Rigali recently mandated 13 liturgical norms for the archdiocese that ranged from a requirement to kneel during the eucharistic prayer to reverential methods of purifying communion vessels.

"It was that kind of atmosphere. And here comes one of the most important church leaders saying things like, 'We don't learn to be Catholics from the catechism, but from doing our liturgy.'...At a point where a major figure needed to be heard from, here he is.... It was wonderful," Huck said of Mahony's letter.

He said he believes that many bishops who are feeling timid in an atmosphere of retrenchment will, with Mahony's letter, be emboldened.

-- "Heading west for good liturgy," by Leslie Wirpsa, National Catholic Reporter, October 24, 1997


"FATHER JOSÉ RAMIREZ" said many priests were insulted, too, by the authoritarian way in which the pastoral [Mahony's "Gather Faithfully Together"] was issued. "The first time they got to read it was in the Tidings [the archdiocesan newspaper]," he complained. They resent it that when we're supposedly using a 'collaborative model' of the Church, they're expected to implement this but they were never consulted about it. It's like something sent down from on high."...

[The letter's] second theme, after the priesthood of the laity, is the need to build inclusive community in a diocese comprising many cultures and language groups....But how should the Church respond to the Hispanic presence?...If the genuine cultures of Mexican, Peruvian, Guatemalan, and Korean Catholicism are far more traditional, and their liturgies more quietly reverent than those of American Catholicism, what does "inculturation" mean in practice? Is the Archdiocese of Los Angeles prepared to show respect for the traditions of those people whose cultures are steeped in traditional Catholicism?

-- "The Liturgical Counterattack," by Donna Steichen, Catholic World Report, November 1997


ON A COLLEGE CAMPUS [Bishop Donald Trautman] recently saw a tee shirt with the message, "Join the resistance -- support Vatican II." I have seen the same tee shirt. The bishop took it as a message of support for the changes since Vatican II. The young woman wearing the tee shirt I saw explained that she supports the understanding of Vatican II advanced by John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger, and urges resistance against those who have wreaked change and confusion in the name of "the spirit of the Council." Obviously, there are major disagreements about the meaning of Vatican II. But it obviously is not obvious to Bishop Trautman, for whom any criticism of his version of the reform is an attack on the Council.

-- from "The Public Square," by Father Richard John Neuhaus, First Things, October 1997


RICHMOND, VA. -- More than 200 gay and lesbian Roman Catholics attended the first Mass for homosexuals in the Richmond diocese.

"You know you belong here," Bishop Walter F. Sullivan said during his homily at the Sacred Heart Cathedral. "It's about time somebody says that to you....This is your spiritual home."

In the last two decades, while most churches struggled over gay ordination or efforts to ease church doctrine, the Roman Catholic Church stood firm, teaching that homosexual activity is morally wrong.

But in recent years the church has said that homosexual sex is immoral because it occurs outside marriage but that homosexual orientation is not sinful because it is not freely chosen.

And earlier this month, U.S. Catholic bishops, in a groundbreaking letter, urged parents to put love and support for their sons and daughters before church doctrine that condemns homosexual activity.

-- "Virginia diocese welcomes gays," Associated Press report in the San Diego Union-Tribune, October 31, 1997

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