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Contents © 1998
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

June 1998 LITTLE NOTES

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Father Thomas Rausch, chairman of theological studies at L.A.'s Loyola Marymount University, spoke April 23 on "Vatican II at the Third Millennium: Some Unfinished Issues." Rausch was visibly upset over the Vatican's recent document re-delineating lay ministry which, he says, "bishops see as undercutting their authority." In typical upside-down reasoning, Rausch said national episcopal conferences should tell Rome what to do, not the reverse (he laments that so many bishops are "overly afraid of offending the Holy Father"); and because the Church's moral teachings are not being lived by the faithful, the Church's moral tradition itself "needs to be rethought," including its approach to homosexuality. Other Rausch nuggets: Catholic moral stances are "the Achilles' heel of the ecumenical movement"; before Vatican II there was an "overemphasis on the consecration" in sacred liturgy, which even now, he says, "overuses male images of God"; and, of course, the male-only priesthood is unjust.

The crowd of about 100 in Saloman Hall included students of USD feminist Latina professor Maria Pilar-Aquino, who had been assigned one of Rausch's books as a class text.


DR. KATHLEEN DUGAN, USD professor of theological and religious studies, attempted to prove that Nazi anti-Semitism sprang directly from Christianity in her April 27 talk "Christians and the Holocaust." Dugan opened by criticizing the new Vatican document on the Holocaust for distinguishing between Christian and Nazi anti-Semitism. She compared decrees on Jews issued by early Church synods with Nazi laws. Much of her talk was based on Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism, by radical feminist theologian Rosemary Ruether. She agreed with Ruether that Christian biblical exegesis and theology have contributed greatly to anti-Semitism and that language of the New Testament and Church Fathers deemed offensive to Jews should be changed or expunged. "We should be more careful when we say Christianity is the fulfillment of Judaism," she told her audience of about ten in a Maher Hall classroom, because "it has seemed to the Jewish community that we have co-opted their Scriptures." Dugan praised Pope John Paul II for the attention he has focused on Christian-Jewish relations.


DR. BERNARD COOKE, theologian and ex-Jesuit priest, spoke May 7 at the Manchester Center auditorium on "The Emerging Laity: Toward One Ministering Community?" Cooke said the existence of a "socially privileged group" (e.g., priests) within the Church is not meant to be, but "we're well on our way....I hope that in a relatively short time...the inappropriate division between clergy and laity will vanish."

In a Q&A session with the 150 or so attendees, Cooke said he supported Common Ground, contraception, and women's ordination; he questioned key Church teachings on marriage; and chafed against Rome's top-down authority and disciplining of errant theologians. Like Rausch, he was perturbed by the recent Vatican document on the laity. Cooke claimed when a couple of American bishops went to Rome and asked about the document, Cardinal James Stafford (head of the Pontifical Council for the Laity) told them the document was never intended for the American Church. "So," Cooke observed, "we're off the hook, whether they intended it or not."

When questioned further on obedience to Church documents, Cooke explained that different documents have different levels of authority. Does that mean every statement not issued ex cathedra is up for debate? Only if there is disagreement among bishops on it, he said. Cooke is a visiting theology professor at USD this spring.


MOTHER ANGELICA IS GETTING THE SQUEEZE by Cox Communications. Beginning June 1, the Eternal Word Television Network on Cox Cable TV will lose an hour of programming and be bumped even farther into the wee hours. Cox is moving EWTN from its daily 3-9 a.m. time slot on the Discovery Channel (channel 35 in San Diego, 24 in the North County) to 2-6 a.m. daily on channel 12, which the rest of the day broadcasts XEWT Televisa in Spanish. Additionally, the "Mother Angelica Live" program will be aired on channel 75 from 6-7 a.m. Monday through Friday.

A Cox spokeswoman verified that the company continues to receive numerous requests to expand its EWTN programming, which it receives free 24 hours a day. But, she said, the Discovery Channel is buying up the hours on its channel that Cox had been using to air EWTN. Until digital channel capability becomes available sometime within the year, the cable company claims not to have enough channels to broadcast networks such as EWTN that pay no fees.

To express your opinion, call Cox Communications at (619) 262-1122 in San Diego and (760) 599-6060 in North County.


A DONNYBROOK HAS ERUPTED between backers of Mark Price and Joel Anderson, both conservative, pro-life candidates for the 75th Assembly seat. At the April 7 San Diego County California Republican Assembly endorsement convention, local delegates unanimously approved rules stating a delegate cannot vote on the endorsement of a candidate by whom the delegate has been paid "for work done during the current campaign season." According to convention chairman Sylvia Sullivan, at the convention, delegate Jamie Langius repeatedly denied he was working for the Anderson campaign. When East County CRA vice president Michael Kumeta produced a campaign disclosure form showing a $1000 payment to Langius by the Anderson campaign in 1998, Langius voluntarily removed himself as a delegate. Sullivan and Kumeta also report that Langius works as a consultant for Schuman, Hoy & Associates, the political consulting firm managing the Anderson campaign, and that Langius has stacked his local CRA unit with paid employees of the same firm.

After Price received enough votes for an endorsement by the CRA, Langius challenged the legitimacy of the vote. The state CRA office ordered another endorsing convention, which took place on May 2. The group's state vice president Phil Stump told News Notes that, for a number of technical reasons, Langius and other delegates from his CRA unit could not be barred from voting at the May 2 endorsing convention. This time neither Price nor Anderson received the necessary two-thirds majority.

Some local CRA members disagree with the state CRA's interpretation of the bylaws. "It's ludicrous to allow a candidate's paid consultants and employees to vote in the endorsing convention for that candidate's district," Kumeta said, pointing out that Price received a two-thirds vote from CRA members not paid by a campaign in the 75th Assembly District. By a 9-6 vote at the May 2 event, a resolution was passed that "the endorsement granted to Mark Price on April 7, 1998 for the 75th Assembly District race was a fair, honest, and valid endorsement which is still binding and in effect." But according to Stump, no candidate for the 75th Assembly seat has been endorsed by the CRA for the June 2 primary.

The primary race is tight and some pro-lifers worry that Price and Anderson will split the pro-life vote, which could result in a victory for Charlene Zettel, who is pro-abortion.


IF YOU ARE TRAVELING and would like to know when and where to attend Mass, call 1-800-MASS TIME. Using your telephone key pad, enter the area code and exchange number, or zip code of the location where you'll be traveling. A computerized voice will give you the five nearest church locations and phone numbers, Mass times and the language in which the Mass is said.


CALIFORNIA ASSEMBLYMAN CRUZ BUSTAMANTE (D-Fresno), a candidate for lieutenant governor, says in the June 2 Candidate Voter Information Guide sent by the state to all registered voters: "I support a woman's right to choose." Like many Catholic politicians too timid to stand up for their supposed moral convictions, Bustamante has said he is personally opposed to abortion but will not impose his beliefs on others.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's 1974 Declaration on Procured Abortion stipulates the following: "Whatever may be laid down by civil law in this matter, man can never obey a law which is in itself immoral, and such is the case of a law which would admit in principle the liceity of abortion. Nor can he take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law, or vote for it. Moreover, he may not collaborate in its application."

News Notes contacted Bustamante's campaign office three times between May 14 and May 20 to ask how Bustamante reconciles his pro-abortion stance with his Catholicism. Campaign aides told News Notes they would either call back with Bustamante's response or have him contact News Notes himself. As of press time, no word.


MAY ALL BISHOPS BE SO BOLD: In late March, Bishop Norman McFarland of the diocese of Orange sent a letter to Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez (D-46th District), who is running for re-election, telling her she could not continue to address Catholics from the pulpit. The bishop's letter warned Sanchez, a staunch pro-abortionist, that it is "incumbent upon you to give witness to the consistent ethic of life that should animate all conduct, but most especially political conduct." The bishop said he was "becoming increasingly alarmed by your visits, I want to share with you my inquietudes in this matter before more public gestures on my part become necessary."

Beginning in early March, Sanchez made the rounds of parishes, including at least four in the Orange diocese. According to parishioners at St. Boniface in Anaheim, Sanchez was introduced from the pulpit by the pastor, Monsignor Wilbur Davis. He introduced her as a fellow Catholic but made no reference to her pro-abortion stance or her support of President Clinton's veto of the partial-birth abortion ban. Sanchez appeared at St. Callistus church in Garden Grove on Respect Life Sunday. According to one parishioner, when she confronted the pastor, Father Rudolph Preciado, with Sanchez' pro-abortion stance the next day, he told her that most priests are too busy to keep up with current events.

When contacted, Sanchez campaign manager Stuart Durst he said he was not familiar with this particular issue.


PAT BUCHANAN BLAMES HIS LOSS of the Republican nomination in 1996 on Alan Keyes. In an interview in the Spring 1998 Latin Mass magazine, Buchanan said, "If Alan Keyes had not been in the race, I would have won the Republican nomination. I believe I would have won Iowa. I think he got eight percent and I think I would have gotten the lion's share of it."

Interviewer Roger McCaffrey asks Buchanan "about what Keyes said in New Hampshire, which Terry Jeffrey quoted," that "Buchanan is 'trying to impose his Roman Catholicism on the country.'" Buchanan calls this alleged quote of Keyes "an overreaction...to a statement I made, I believe, in the Iowa debate. He would quote Jefferson's 'inalienable right to life,' and I said that the right to life goes back a long way before the Declaration of Independence. It goes back 2000 years at least. And, frankly, I didn't say this, but I should have: the right to life would exist if Jefferson had missed the stagecoach....

"But the truth is that those of us whose beliefs are rooted in biblical truths or Catholic teaching, or natural law, have the same right to try to have our views and values represented in law as those who get their views and values from Betty Friedan, or whomever."

Did Keyes lose the election for Buchanan? David Quackenbush of the Keyes 2000 Committee, says that, according to polling done after the Iowa caucuses, Keyes drew support away primarily from Senator Phil Gramm and attracted voters who would not normally have participated at all. Very little of Keyes' support, says Quackenbush, came from supporters of Buchanan.

What of Keyes's accusing Buchanon of ultramontanism? "Keyes never made this charge, or any other like it," Quackenbush says. "Keyes repeatedly warned that if Buchanan did not make it clear that his pro-life position could be defended by appeal to commonly held American principles -- best found in the Declaration of Independence -- then he would risk making moral conservatism look like a private religious opinion."

Quackenbush says Keyes, who often refers to his own Catholic faith, has stated, "We cannot do it [bring Americans back to moral principles] in a way that suggests that we aim for religious domination, because none of us do."

For more information on the Keyes 2000 Committee, call 1-888-307-2526; or view their website at www.Keyes2000.org.

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