LITTLE NOTES
2003 Little Notes
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Contents © 2003
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
LITTLE NOTES
December 2003
WHO WILL BE THE NEXT POPE is something the sporting-minded can now wager on. A British gambling website, www.online-betting-guide.co.uk/Next-Pope.htm, has published short list of (ital)papabile with odds on who is most likely to be the next pontiff. In one day, the list jumped from seven to 13 candidates. The favorite, Dionigi Cardinal Tettamanzi of Genoa was last given 5/4 odds. Close behind are Jaime Cardinal Lucas Ortega y Alamino of Havana at 7/2 and Francis Cardinal Arinze of Nigeria at 4 to one. Other popular Cardinals in the running include Schoenborn (Vienna), Ratzinger (Prefect of the Holy Office), Daneels (Brussels) and Lustiger (Paris).THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE rejected a letter submitted by local journalist, Tom Barbarie, accusing a Balboa Park Museum of unfair treatment of Catholicism. "The Museum of Man's Halloween exhibit of torture devices allegedly used by the Catholic Church during the Inquisition," Barbarie wrote, "is just another cheap shot at Catholicism. When will the museum grace us with an exhibit of the instruments used to torture and execute Catholics in post-Reformation England? The historical record is clear: there was no monopoly on cruelty then, nor has cruelty disappeared from the earth since the disastrous breakup of Christendom which began in the 16th century.
PLANNED PARENTHOOD Affiliates of California, Inc., has released its 2003 legislative scorecard. The scorecard details how members of the Legislature voted on bills that deal with abortion and parental notification.
The measures used to tally the scores were:
* SB 932, which prevents the Attorney General from allowing the sale, transfer, or lease of a nonprofit health care facility in which the seller restricts the type of services that are provided at the facility. This was widely believed to be aimed at Catholic and other faith-based hospitals that sell to secular institutions and then try to prevent abortions from being performed in their hospitals after they sell them.
*AB 561, which preserves teen pregnancy prevention programs that reduce teen pregnancy through promotion of contraception, promote responsible parenthood, and increase teen awareness of sexually transmitted diseases.
*Four amendments to the budget offered in the Assembly that would have placed restrictions on Medi-Cal abortion funding, and would have prohibited Medi-Cal abortion funding for minors without parental consent.
The scores for San Diego lawmakers (10% being the most pro-life):
Assm. Bonnie Garcia: 30%
Assm. Ray Haynes: 10%
Assm. Shirley Horton: 50%
Assm. Christine Kehoe: 100%
Assm. Jay La Suer: 10%
Assm. George Plescia: 20%
Assm. Juan Vargas: 100%
Assm. Mark Wyland: 10%
Sen. Dede Alpert: 100%
Sen. Jim Battin: 10%
Sen. Denise Ducheny: 100%
Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth: 10%
Sen. Bill Morrow, who scored 10%
MONSIGNOR E.T. GOMULKA, a Navy chaplain formerly stationed in San Diego, has written to California bishops across the country with a proposal for forming a system of political awareness groups in American parishes. "I would like to see," Monsignor Gomulka wrote, "the United States Conference of Bishops create a subcommittee to consider the feasibility of establishing a 'Thomas More Political Life Committee' in every U.S. Catholic parish that would 1) encourage parishioners to be registered and to vote in every election; 2) keep parishioners informed of important national, state and local legislation through flyers and bulletin inserts that would provide the mailing and e-mail addresses of elected officials who will be voting on said legislation; and 3) inform parishioners on the voting records of elected officials so that they (like the former Governor of California) might recognize that they can be removed from office or not be reelected if they are not responsive to the wishes of their constituents."
The political life committees, Gomulka postulates, "would seek on the parish level to inspire social and political involvement of Catholics under the patronage of Saint Thomas More who taught by his life and his death that "man cannot be separated from God, nor politics from morality."
BISHOP ROBERT F. VASA, of Baker Oregon, recently penned this defense of Terri Schiavo, the comatose patient threatened with death by starvation and dehydration at the hands of the those who should be caring for her. "The Catholic Church," Bishop Vasa wrote, "teaches that hydration and nutrition are simply water and food. These must always be provided as long as the food or water itself or the method of delivery is not unduly burdensome to the patient. There does not appear to be any indication from Terri that the provision or the method of provision of food and water is burdensome to her.
"The one 'burden', which so many seem so determined to lift from her, is that one thing that allows Terri to continue to be a living breathing human person, life itself.
"Life itself cannot be the burden from which we in the Catholic Church seek to deliver the faithful. This is the Assisted Suicide attitude. Life is a grace and a blessing and yes the living of that life does entail some burdens, sometimes great burdens, but the solution can be neither murder nor suicide -- these are offenses against life itself and the Lord who gives it.
"Terri is alive. She is kept alive by the same things that keep me alive -- food, water, air. Her disability deprives her of the ability to ingest these things, it does not deprive her of the ability to digest them. She may well die in the future from an inability to digest food but it would be murder to cause her death by denying her the food she still has the ability to digest and which continues to provide for her a definite benefit -- life itself."