2001 Little Notes
December
November
October
September
July/August
June
May
April
March
February
January

Letters

Confessions
Talk About Movies
Roamin' Catholic
Follow Me




Contents © 2001
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

FEBRUARY 2001 LITTLE NOTES

---

SAN DIEGO DIALOGUE, a project founded in 1991 by William McGill, former chancellor of UCSD for "research projects and public education programs on issues affecting the future of both San Diego and the San Diego/Tijuana cross-border region" announced on January 12 that they were hiring Ms. Deni Robey as their communications director. According to the release, "Robey comes to Dialogue from Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, where she developed a communications, marketing, and public education strategy and led efforts that resulted in a significant increase in patient visits." Listed as friends of S.D. Dialogue are names from local businesses and groups-- Kyocera, Cox Communications, the zoo, the city of San Diego, the port district -- and a handful of names from Baja. Imagine explaining to our friends from Tijuana in plain language that this new hire helped kill ever more brown babies in the L.A. area.


OPT OUT. Campaign For California Families, the Pro-Family Law Center, Life Legal Defense Foundation, United States Justice Foundation, and the Pacific Justice Institute have drafted an exemption form to protect students against anti-family indoctrination in public schools. The form answers the state law, AB 1785, which introduces "sexual orientation diversity" education into California's public schools. Governor Gray Davis signed the bill last fall. In a January 15 press release, the Campaign for California Families asserted, "Based on parental rights provisions in state and federal law, the Student Exemption Form is the best opt-out form to date." The form can be obtained from the above-mentioned organizations, most of which have the form posted on their web sites. Campaign for California Families, P.O. Box 782, Sacramento, CA 95812, (916) 443-1410, www.savecalifornia.com; The Pro-Family Law Center, 6060 Sunrise Vista Dr., #3050, Citrus Heights, CA 95611, (916) 676-1057, www.abidingtruth.com; Life Legal Defense Foundation, P.O. Box 2105, Napa, CA 94558, (916) 727-4396, www.LLDF.org; United States Justice Foundation, 2091 E. Valley Pkwy., #1-C, Escondido, CA 92027, (760) 741-8086, www.USJF.net; and Pacific Justice Institute, P.O. Box 4366, Citrus Heights, CA 95611, (916) 857-6900, www.pacificjustice.org.


DURING THIS YEAR'S legislative session state senator Ray Haynes (Riverside/San Bernadino) will be proposing specialty license plates with the message "Choose Life". Proceeds from the sales of these specialty plates are to go to organizations that promote adoption, not abortion. The "Choose Life" license plates were released last August in Florida and have soared to 13th place, passing 38 other specialty tags sold by the state. Sales have topped 10,000 (Florida statutes require specialty plates to sell 8,000 tags in any five-year period.

For information about the Florida plates, contact www.choose-life.org; for information about the California plates -- www.WomensResourceNetwork.org


LEE HARALSON, business manager, advertising/circulation director for San Diego's diocesan paper, the Southern Cross, has founded Puzzles For Catholics. Haralson is confident that a crossword puzzle could help Catholic papers build readership, get more results for their advertisers, and teach Catholics their faith. For more information, email: cathpuzzle@home.com


"CLOTHED IN LOVE, SUMMONED BEYOND" is the theme of the 2001 Los Angeles archdiocese's Religious Education Congress, to be held February 15-18 at the Anaheim Convention Center. The theme, wrote Roger Cardinal Mahony in his welcome letter in the conference registration guidebook, "calls us to celebrate God's abundant love for each and all. In gratitude, we celebrate God's delight in us and give ourselves to God's desire for us. Transformed by and into love itself, we become creative, self-giving and deeply concerned about others as 'we clothe ourselves with heartfelt mercy, kindness, meekness and patience' (Col. 3:12)."

The congress, this year, offers, says the guidebook, "several eucharistic liturgies of different character," including: "Byzantine, Jazz, Hispanic, Nigerian/African-American, Asian and Young Adult." The keynote speaker is Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee, who in 1994 expressed his "inner turmoil" over the pope's declaration that women could not be priests. "I know that in the long run my obedience will result in a deepening of my faith," wrote Weakland, "but I state sincerely that it will not be done without much sacrifice and inner searching. Yet, as a bishop," continued the archbishop, "I would not be loyal to the Holy Father if I did not again point out the pastoral problems I now will face in my archdiocese. These have to be the object of my concern because many will be confused and troubled, discouraged and disillusioned, especially younger women and vowed religious, who still see this question as one of justice and equality, all protestations to the contrary notwithstanding? What effects will this declaration have on those men and women for whom the issue of the way in which the church exercises its authority is already a problem? Many are still wrestling with Humanæ Vitæ, and thus have difficulty accepting that a single person alone can decide what they must in faith accept. Are they now to be put against the wall, as it were, over this issue?"

Weakland has been friendly to Call to Action, a dissident group that calls for women's ordination, Church permission for remarriage of divorced Catholics, and recognition of homosexuality as a valid orientation, among others issues. Call to Action held its national conference in Milwaukee in early November, 2000, that featured Father Michael Crosby and Sister Helen Prejean -- both of whom are addressing the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress this year. Other congress speakers who follow the Call to Action circuit are Megan McKenna, Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia, and the sexologist team of Sister Fran Ferder and Father John Heagle. Father Richard Rohr will speak again at the congress this year. Rohr, a promoter of the Enneagram, is the founder and former director of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which promotes "wild man" initiation rituals for men and Zen Buddhist contemplation.

Of, perhaps, more conventional interest will be a talk given by Dr. Paul Ford of St. John's Seminary in Camarillo which will discuss the subject of "God's Delight in Us, God's Desire For Us" as found in the Scriptures, and in the writings of St. Augustine, Julian of Norwich, St. Therese of Lisieux, C.S. Lewis, and others. Father Alexei Smith, pastor of St. Andrew's Russian Catholic Church in El Segundo will dedicate his workshop to the spirituality of the Byzantine holy week.

For those interested in liturgical dance, Betsey Beckman, a "freelance liturgical dancer, choreographer, movement thereapist, author and storyteller," will address "dancing our liturgies to life." Participants of Beckman's workshop will "explore gesture, sign language, dance and drama as ways of involving our assemblies in moving prayer and dancing though death to new life."

According to the guidebook, the Religious Education Congress will feature 150 speakers who will offer "over 250 workshops in English, Spanish, Vietnamese and Mandarin." Dioceses across the country send their religious educators to the congress whose attendance every year reaches about 20,000.


DURING THE CAMPAIGN over Proposition 22, which defined marriage in California, Bishop Tod Brown sent a memo on February 15, 2000 to the priests of the diocese of Orange: "Attached are two articles, 'Moral Theology' and 'Is Proposition 22 Discriminatory?', by Father Gerald D. Coleman, SS, regarding the marriage initiative, you will find them helpful to you."

Coleman had written his second article in reply to an article in the January 18 issue of the San Jose Valley Catholic; he defended the bishops' support of Prop 22, but went on to what he considered the real controversy: "Can one simultaneously affirm authentic respect and sensitivity toward homosexual persons and hold that marriage is a union only between a man and a woman?" Coleman wrote, "Jesus did not change the meaning of marriage. Jesus did not create a sacramental bond that evaluates a non-sacramental bond as unworthy or undignified. Jesus merely pointed out that the marital union, when celebrated by two Christians, bears the additional meaning of a sacrament, a living sign of the unique marriage which Jesus has established with His Church."

In following paragraphs, Coleman was more explicit: "Some homosexual persons have shown that it is possible to enter into long-term, committed and loving relationships, named by certain segments of our society as domestic partnership.

"I see no reason why civil law could not in some fashion recognize these faithful and loving unions with clear and specified benefits. These unions would then be recognized by society as sustaining an important status deserving our respect and protection. I believe that this possibility could be pursued without equating such unions with marriage, and without in any way demeaning our needed respect and protection for the institution of marriage."

On May 31, 2000 Dr. Robert Lynch of Concerned Roman Catholics of America sent Bishop Brown a letter quoting Coleman's paragraphs advocating legal recognition of homosexual union. Lynch then commented, "These assertions are grotesque and completely contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church. The long-term, committed and loving homosexual relationships that Coleman sees no moral reason for not recognizing in civil law with certain rights and obligations are in fact unions based upon intrinsically disordered acts condemned by the Church. I am troubled that you as the ordinary of the Diocese of Orange not only sent, but also recommended to all priests in your jurisdiction, an article that clearly contradicts the teachings of the Catholic Church and promotes false moral teachings in a substantial matter; that you told them this article containing the heretical assertions noted above and another article 'expresses [sic] very well my own thoughts on this subject,' and that you hoped they 'will find them helpful.'

"I am also troubled by the fact," continued Lynch, "that your staff, after sending me copies of Coleman's two articles, refused to send me a copy of your cover memorandum, claiming that communications between you and your priests are not for dissemination to the laity. This fact and the fact that Coleman's article and your approval of same to date have not been published or referred to in any issue of the diocese of Orange Bulletin lead me to conclude that you intended to keep your approval of his article and assertions hidden from your lay followers."

Bishop Brown repied to Lynch on June 26: "I am sorry that you are disturbed and perplexed in regards to the subject of your letter. You should know that Father Gerald Coleman's articles appeared in the archdiocesan Catholic San Francisco. Father Coleman is a highly regarded and respected theologian in the United States.

"While the church is very clear regarding the immorality of an active homosexual life, the civic and civil issues are very complex and require nuance. You can be assured that I have not nor will approve of active homosexual life styles. I am quite confident that our clergy here in the Diocese of Orange is of the same [sic]."


DIOCESE OF SAN DIEGO seminarians can expect to study under Father Gerald Coleman, author of the controversial articles in above news item. Father Coleman is rector of St. Patrick's seminary in Menlo Park (archdiocese of San Francisco), where graduates of San Diego's St. Francis seminary have regularly been sent for theology studies before ordination.

TOP