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Contents © 1997
by Jim Holman.
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September 1997

L.A. ABORTIONIST James McMahon, inventor of the partial-birth abortion procedure, was given a Catholic burial at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City in late 1995. His wife, Gail, a nurse who assisted him in his abortion clinic, and who still works to promote partial-birth abortion through the Jim McMahon Memorial Fund, has purchased a plot next to McMahon's, with her headstone already installed. In August, Mrs. McMahon sold her late husband's two Eve Surgical Centers (in Los Angeles and Calabasas) to abortionist Christopher Dodson.

SAN MIGUEL MEDICAL CENTER is the major advertiser in the Los Angeles Archdiocese's official Spanish language newspaper, La Vida Nueva. A long running, full-page color advertisement in the paper shows pictures of clinic staff members and includes a list of the services the clinic provides. There are six locations, all in areas with high Latino populations, which are owned and operated by Dr. Mahfouz Michael. The receptionist at the Pomona clinic said they perform sterilizations and that a $20 pre-sterilization consultation was required of all patients.

Dr. Mahfouz Michael is currently under investigation by the medical board of California for allegations including insurance fraud, gross negligence, unprofessional conduct, and repeated negligence. Some of the allegations were made as recently as last December. Dr. Michael's list of Fictitious Name Permits filed with the board totaled 13 pages.

Has La Vida Nueva looked into the background of its largest advertiser? La Vida Nueva's publisher, in an April 12 phone conversation, said that Clinica Medica San Miguel has signed the required statement swearing that they do not perform abortions or sterilizations, and that is all the newspaper requires of them. The clinic's advertisements are still running in the diocesan paper.

ON JULY 17, NANCY PELOSI, a Catholic San Francisco congresswoman, helped kill a pro-life amendment designed to end U.S. taxpayer funding for international family planning programs which perform or actively promote abortion. Pelosi reported to her constituents: "On Thursday, the Democratic Women of the House shut down the House of Representatives. The Democratic Women acted after the the Rules Committee Republicans put forward an amendment on international family planning agreed to in a backroom deal, that had already failed to pass in the House weeks ago. Through a series of parliamentary maneuvers, we were able to alert the nation of the GOP's intent to silence the majority." Pelosi's theatrics prompted one Capitol Hill press secretary to observe: "Pelosi, fine Catholic that she is, is one of the most pro-abortion people in the House."

THE ROMAN CATHOLIC FAITHFUL, originally a group of laypeople fighting ecclesiastical corruption in the diocese of Springfield, Illinois, has branched out to Los Angeles. Over 300 people attended an rcf August 10 meeting near Santa Barbara. A letter from author Father Malachi Martin was read at the meeting: "Even though we are sure we always will have a Pope of Rome until the end of all human time, it is still a sad scene....It is not a question of mere heresy -- false teaching -- nor of schism as a revolt against authority. This, my friends and fellow Catholics, is the darkness of apostasy: the systematic evacuation of basic Roman Catholic dogmas by those in charge of teaching the Faithful."

Martin said that L.A. Cardinal Roger Mahony "will be reminded by the voices from 100,000 throats: that he is only one of over 4,000 bishops in the Church, all of whom -- like him--are subject to the infallible teaching of the papacy, past and present; that, while by papal permission, he has jurisdiction over the Los Angeles archdiocese, he has no personal jurisdiction over the Church Universal and its dogmas....Let no Catholic shrink from admonishing priests, bishops or Cardinals, if they act in ways that are irreconcilable with the Faith of our Fathers....We have an obligation to do so."

THE CALIFORNIA STATE Supreme Court, on August 5, struck down a California law requiring minors to obtain parental or judicial permission for abortion. Justice Ming Chin, a graduate of Jesuit-run Bellarmine and USF, provided the swing vote in the 4-3 ruling. A holder of USF's St. Thomas More award, Chin received an effusive endorsement from USF president Father John Schlegel at his confirmation hearing in March 1996: "Justice Chin is recognized as a man of principle and faith. A man who maintains the highest ethical standards, both personal and professional. There is a line from Aristotle that summarizes my appreciation of Justice Chin: 'We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an action but a habit.'"

"I LOOKED AROUND for a Catholic community theater...in San Francisco and Los Angeles and couldn't find one, then looked in the telephone book in Boston and New York and still couldn't find one...I was amazed because there are Jewish theater companies and various Christian theater companies. But no Catholic theater companies." Speaking is Cathal Gallagher, who in 1995 had completed a play about Cardinal Mindszenty, a Hungarian churchman imprisoned in the 1940s for opposing Communism. An Irish-born San Jose Catholic playwright, Gallagher assumed he could find a Catholic community theater to send his play.

Today, Gallagher knows of at least one Catholic community theater in America: his own. Gallagher, along with several other local Catholics dismayed by the poverty of Catholic culture in America, has founded the Quo Vadis Theatre company in San Jose "to bring to the stage new plays about the saints and martyrs of Church history."

In the last two weeks of May, Quo Vadis performed The Pearl of York, the story of Margaret Clitherow's martyrdom for hiding Jesuits in Elizabethan England, at the Sunnyvale Community theater in San Jose. "There was a tremendous response," he says. "The theater held 200 and despite the fact that it was graduation time and Memorial weekend, we averaged about 115 per night on two nights.

"Our long range plan is to have a Quo Vadis theater in every community in America. We think we have a great product and that no one else is doing this," says Gallagher. "Let us not waste our time protesting others. Broadway is not going our way. Neither is Hollywood. Let us go our own way."