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Contents © 1998
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

November 1998 LITTLE NOTES

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"I think the way it worked is someone [at the diocese] called my real estate agent and said they wanted to sell the house without advertising or putting a sign up," Pepper said. The agent knew of Pepper's interest in the house prior to its sale to the diocese, so she called the airline pilot and he and his wife jumped at the chance. The diocese paid $410,000 for the property and sold it for more than a ten-percent profit. A diocesan source confirms Bishop Robert Brom decided the work and money required to bring the property up to snuff was simply too much.

Pepper, who took residency in mid-July, recalled how before the diocese bought the property he used to drive by and sit and admire how the back yard pine trees stood out in sharp relief against the fog that moved in from the ocean at twilight. He would listen, he said, to the muffled sound of traffic on nearby Catalina Boulevard, watch an owl venture out from the tall trees as darkness fell, and imagine the house was his. "It's too bad they cut the trees down," he said. "The back yard is like the craters of the moon."


PRO-LIFE, PRO-FAMILY VOTERS have a candidate in Gary Kendrick, running for the Grossmont-Cuyamaca community college district's governing board. He was appointed from a field of 31 candidates to fill a vacancy on the board in December 1997. Kendrick currently serves on the El Cajon planning commission. To his knowledge, there is no abortion clinic within the El Cajon city limits, but Kendrick is prepared to factually rebut pro-abortion arguments should an abortion clinic seek approval from the commission. Immediately upon being appointed a commissioner in 1996, he took the California Pro-Life Council's class for public speakers on abortion. Kendrick says he has taken steps to mitigate the increased difficulty churches have often experienced in obtaining building and expansion permits from local governments, a trend he says is now a widespread problem. Kendrick is endorsed by the California Pro-Life Council and the California Life Coalition.


POPE JOHN PAUL II HAS WEIGHED IN on the annulments debate waged recently within these pages. (In the June News Notes, former Notre Dame University sociologist Robert Vasoli sharply criticized the number of annulments granted in the U.S.; San Diego diocesan canonist Edward Peters defended it.) Meeting with a delegation of U.S. bishops (from Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming) October 10, the pope said, "The indissolubility of marriage is a teaching that comes from Christ himself, and the first duty of pastors and pastoral workers is therefore to help couples overcome whatever difficulties arise. The referral of matrimonial cases to the tribunal should be a last resort."

The Holy Father also warned that easy availability of annulments could cause the faithful to misunderstand a declaration of nullity as "divorce under a different name." He also affirmed that the tribunal judge must be convinced of the "moral certainty" of the existence of the nullity, and not just the probability that it exists.

When determining if a psychological problem rendered a person incapable of contracting a valid marriage, Pope John Paul II said the tribunal must make use of a psychiatrist or psychologist "who shares a Christian anthropology in accordance with the Church's understanding of the human person."


TWO LOCAL CATHOLICS take the message of the Church on sacredness of life seriously. Ernie Lippe, dentist in Hillcrest, and John Murphy, retired Navy commander, are both running on November 3 as pro-life candidates for the Libertarian Party in races where both Democrats and Republicans are pro-abortion. Lippe is running in the 49th Congressional District (mostly coastal San Diego from Imperial Beach to La Jolla) against San Diego city councilwoman, Christine Kehoe, a lesbian Democrat, and incumbent Republican Brian Bilbray, who attends Sacred Heart parish in Coronado but consistently votes to fund abortions here and overseas. (Bilbray has voted with the heavy House majorities against partial-birth abortions, but on Title X funding of Planned Parenthood in 1995 when the vote was close, he spoke on the floor in favor of Plannned Parenthood, the world's largest abortion provider and promoter.)


THE ASSEMBLY RACE between Republican Jean Roesch, who favors legal abortion "in all cases," and incumbent pro-abort Howard Wayne, the Democrat, could be much closer, and Libertarian Murphy might make the difference. In 1990 Murphy ran against pro-abortion incumbent Republican Sonny Mojonnier and pro-abortion Democrat Dede Alpert, and garnered 11 percent of the vote, more than enough to tip the race toward the Democrats. Says one veteran pro-lifer: "It's far more important to defeat the pro-abortion Republicans, so we have at least one party willing to stand up for the unborn child."


THE CALIFORNIA MISSION bimonthly magazine continues its serialization of The Life of Serra (written by Francisco Palou in 1785) in its November-December issue. This issue describes the arrival in July 1769 at the port of San Diego ("It is truly beautiful, and with reason it is famous"), the death by scurvy of sailors who accidentally sailed by and missed San Diego, a bloody skirmish with the local Indians on August 15, 1769, a baptism by Serra cut short by Indian "rudeness," and Serra's subsequent suffering. The magazine ($16/year for subscription) is published by the Mission San Jose Community, P.O. Box 24589, San Jose CA 95154. Phone 408-371-2112.


FROM A PLANNED PARENTHOOD direct-mail solicitation sent mid-October to women in selected local neighborhoods: "Our community outreach efforts include services at the Las Colinas Women's Detention Facility, YWCA Battered Women's Shelter, San Diego Housing Authority, as well as a very successful Male Responsibility program through San Diego City Schools." (Do they offer abortions at Las Colinas, give out condoms at city schools?) An accompanying memo commends generous donors who "refuse to let self-righteous extremists impose their narrow-minded agenda on the majority population."


STATE SUPREME COURT justices Ronald George and Ming Chin, appointees of abortion advocate Governor Pete Wilson, are up for approval on November 3, and their sudden reversal of the state's parental-consent law is the issue on which the pro-life movement has called them to task. In the desert of San Diego coverage of the issue, an article on October 16 in the San Diego Daily Transcript stands out. Countering the arguments of Planned Parenthood's Cynthia Thornton ("Children make mistakes, but the state should not put up barriers to the minor receiving medical care") was Professor Janet Bowermaster of the Cal Western school of law: "We need to think about what a law [the court decision] like this does to us and what it means to allow children to take a life without parental consent."


THE 'LIFE CHAIN' HELD OCTOBER 11 was the first in San Diego since August 1996. For an hour and a half, about 500 pro-lifers lined both sides of Balboa Avenue between Genesee Avenue and the 805 freeway, to deliver, via placards, the traditional Life Chain message: "Abortion Kills Children." Participants also held signs that read "Jesus Heals and Forgives," "Abortion Hurts Women," and "Lord, Forgive Us and Our Nation."

"That's the largest gathering of pro-lifers in San Diego, probably, for two years," said coordinator Cheryl Sullenger of the California Life Coalition. (San Diego Life Chains had drawn thousands in years past.) Approximately 35 churches were represented this year, a little over half of which were Catholic. This was the first Life Chain attended by Gloria Williams and her 13-year-old daughter, Brittany, of St. Brigid parish in Pacific Beach. For an hour Brittany tallied the responses they observed from cars passing by. The results: 55 positive responses, nine negative. Gloria was surprised at the number of people who rolled down their car windows to show support. Lisa Smith, also of St. Brigid, concurred with the Williams's assessment of reactions from passersby. Sullenger believes Brittany Williams' tally to be fairly representative of her own observations this year.

Although Sullenger sent out press releases to the local news media, to her knowledge the Life Chain received no coverage.


HOW FAR WILL DAN LUNGREN GO to repudiate his pro-life views in order to be elected California governor? Lungren responded to a survey by the California Catholic Conference, reported in the October 22 Southern Cross, as saying "'as a practicing Catholic' he supports parental notification of abortions, would prohibit partial-birth abortions except to save the life of the mother, and would provide limited -- if any -- taxpayer funding on abortion." But the Republican National Coalition for Life e-mail dispatch of the same date carried an account of the latest gubernatorial debate between Lungren and Democratic candidate Gray Davis:

"Mr. Davis attacked Mr. Lungren for having a solid pro-life record, whereupon Mr. Lungren abandoned his long-held view and embraced exceptions for rape and incest. Indeed, according to the 9/17/98 issue of the Life Advocacy Briefing, he even appeared to repudiate the pro-life record he established while in Congress in the 1980s by telling AP reporter John Howard, 'I never voted to deny a woman's right to abortion.' Mr. Lungren, a Roman Catholic, made matters worse by saying, 'This is the first time in history that someone who takes a mainstream Catholic view is considered an extremist.'"

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