LITTLE NOTES

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Contents © 1998
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

July/August 1998 LITTLE NOTES

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Father White was sent to Sierra Tucson, an toney Arizona treatment center for addictive disorders favored by the diocese, but stayed less than a month. Since late August 1996 he has been living without official assignment at the rectory at St. Francis church in Vista, where his friend Father Ramon Marrufo is pastor. At the time of Father White's removal from Sacred Heart, several parishioners there vowed to bring up his past should he be reappointed to another diocesan parish. The TV news station was looking for sources, but was unsure if and when a story would be aired.

Many parishioners at St. Catherine Laboure are reportedly upset at the change in associate pastors. Father White's predecessor, Monsignor Fernando Gutierrez, was well-liked, and one parish worker says the bishop's transferral of Monsignor Gutierrez to St. Francis in Vista was "a bolt out of the blue."


THE "WHY SO MANY ANNULMENTS?" DEBATE RAGES ON. As reported last month, in an April 1998 Homiletic & Pastoral Review article, retired Notre Dame sociologist Robert Vasoli blasted local canon lawyer Ed Peters by name for his earlier defense in the same journal of the high U.S. annulment rate. In a June 7 review of Vasoli's new book, What God Has Joined Together, the religion writer for the New York Times, Peter Steinfels, calls it "a polemic, transparently angry, thoroughly one-sided and unrelievedly accusatory." Steinfels admits that Vasoli argues persuasively that many appeals to psychological theory made by American tribunals are no more than "junk science." But, he writes, "his Catholicism is a deductive system working from the top down, the 'top' not being the Gospels or Jesus or the Holy Spirit but the Pope and canon law. There is scarcely a glance at at real human beings who succeed or fail in marriage, and for whose spiritual nourishment, presumably, the church orders its sacramental life."

In the June issue of Homiletic & Pastoral Review, Monsignor George Graham, another canon lawyer who, like Peters, is part of the tribunal system, takes Peters's side in the argument, without mentioning him by name.


THE RELIGIOUS OF THE SACRED HEART (RSCJ) was one of the jewels of the Church's teaching orders of nuns when San Diego bishop Charles Francis Buddy tapped it in 1942 to establish the San Diego College for Women, the precursor of the University of San Diego. Though an RSCJ convent still lies tucked behind USD's Founders Hall on the south rim of Tecolote Canyon, the lessening of the order's influence on campus mirrors its diminishment in general. Like many orders of women religious who in the wake of Vatican II doffed their habits and eventually their fealty to Rome, the RSCJs's numbers are at an ebb. (Because of their USD connection, however, they still compose the largest women's religious community in the San Diego diocese).

One can only wonder what USD founder Mother Rosalie Clifton Hill would have made of one of her successors, Sister Ishpriya, RCSJ, Ph.D., who spoke June 12 at USD's University Center on "Spiritual Evolution in Adult Development." Draped in a short-sleeved Indian sari bereft of any identifiable Christian symbols, Sister Ishpriya posed to the approximately 40 people in attendance the question, "What is a human person?" She then presented a model of personhood derived from Ashtanga Yoga (a branch of Hindu philosophy) to serve as the group's guide for interaction and dialogue. She also offered Tibetan and Zen Buddhist views of human existence. "There is a trend in all disciplines back to the ancient Eastern disciplines," Sister Ishpriya said. Her talk was laced with terms such as the "universal self," "universal consciousness" and "universal wisdom."

Sister Ishpriya is founder of the Satsang Association, an international movement whose purpose is "seeking together and helping to create a planetary vision, a universal heart," according to a brochure available at the talk. "The security of a personal God offered by the traditional religions and once universally accepted as the basis of civilization, is dissolving," the pamphlet says. "At best, the personal God becomes a private affair...." Another Satsang brochure claims that "while remaining, in her unique way, within the Catholic tradition," Sister Isphriya "embodies, practices and lives out the universal truths from a variety of traditions...."

An Englishwoman, Sister Ishpriya has been in India since 1974, "learning and teaching spirituality with the Hindu sages" according to an order form for her taped talks. The event was sponsored by USD's Institute for Christian Ministries.


AFTER NEARLY FIVE YEARS OF INCARCERATION by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Chinese refugee Zhou Shiu Yon has been released from Elmwood Detention Facility in Milpitas. Zhou was freed on May 28 after intervention by Chinese human rights activist Harry Wu. Two days before her release, Wu and a reporter from ABC's Nightline show had visited Shiu Yon in prison.

According to Tim Palmquist of the Bakersfield pro-life group Voice for Life, Zhou claims that when she became pregnant without official permission, five Chinese government agents broke down her door (the pregnancy having been reported by her doctor) and took her to a hospital. She was forced to take an unknown pill then locked in a room and told a worker would return in 30 minutes to give her a shot -- possibly RU-486, according to Palmquist. Her boyfriend bribed one of the hospital workers to allow Zhou to jump out of the third-story window. He picked her up and arranged for her to escape China on a smuggler's boat.

The boat was adrift for the last 28 days of its 90 days at sea before it was intercepted in Mexican waters off Ensenada on July 11, 1993 by the U.S. Coast Guard. Zhou, extremely ill, was airlifted to UCSD Medical Center in Hillcrest, where she was told by staff that "they must take the baby out" to save her life. Zhou believes the baby was alive when she got to San Diego; she is still unclear about whether San Diego doctors aborted her baby or removed an already dead baby.

Wu and Zhou testified June 10 before the House Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights (led by Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey) about China's forced abortion and sterilization policy. Zhou told of women hiding throughout their pregnancies, nine-months-pregnant women being taken for forced abortions, and houses being burned down to punish people who violate the one-child policy.

Wu criticized the United Nations' granting of an award to China's population control program. "Americans must wake up to the cruelty and shame of a policy which makes brothers and sisters illegal," Wu told the subcommittee, "and the whitewashing of the UN on this issue must end."


IS HE CATHOLIC OR ISN'T HE? Mark Price, unsuccessful Republican candidate in the 75th Assembly District primary election, has been accused by Assemblyman Steve Baldwin of lying about, among other things, his Catholicism. In a June 3 letter to Cheryl Sullenger of the California Life Coalition, which endorsed Price, Baldwin wrote: "Mark Price was not a pro-life Catholic. I just got a letter from J. James Mowry, the Pastor at the Alpine United Church of Christ which claims Mark Price as one who regularly preaches from his pulpit. Were you aware that United Church of Christ is the most liberal pro-abortion, pro-homosexual church in this country?"

And yet the letter to which Baldwin refers was in response to Baldwin and fellow assemblyman Howard Kaloogian's request for Mowry's endorsement of their own candidate, Joel Anderson. Mowry turned down the request, and wrote that "prior to his announcement to run for political office, he [Mark Price] had substituted for me in the pulpit here...."

When contacted by phone, Price said he has been a Catholic since his baptism in 1957 at Mary Star of the Sea in La Jolla. He recounted his work with Father Bud Kaicher in diocesan youth and young adult evangelization activities, his participation in the bishop's committee on evangelization five years ago, and his founding of the Lay Pastor Society. The LPS, according to Price, was implemented in his parish, Queen of Angels in Alpine, in 1990, and has since spread to other Catholic and non-Catholic churches.

Price said he is sometimes invited to "deliver the message" (preach a sermon on a Scripture passage) at Protestant churches throughout the country, including the famous Crystal Cathedral in Orange County. He told News Notes he has "delivered the message" three times at Alpine Community Church and was unaware of its denominational affiliation until Baldwin wrote to Sullenger. Price speculated that most members of the church are probably unaware of its ties to the United Church of Christ; Reverend Mowry is a Methodist minister, said Price, and the congregation knows of his pro-life convictions. Price said when asked to preach at non-Catholic churches he makes it clear that he is a Catholic, and delivers messages that are conservative and "pro-Gospel."

Price keeps the chancery updated on the activities of the LPS but said he has not spoken to Bishop Brom about his preaching at non-Catholic churches, nor does he recall mentioning it in discussions with former chancellor Monsignor Dan Dillabough.

Price furnished News Notes a copy of a 1989 letter written by Bishop Maher addressed "to whom it may concern," in which the bishop endorses Price as a speaker for diocesan and parish groups: "He [Price] has served our diocesan youth and adults for the past three years most successfully.... Be assured he has my support in his efforts at ministry."

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