LITTLE NOTES

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Contents © 1995
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

December 1995 LITTLE NOTES

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In the beginning was God...
God, moaning
God, labouring
God, giving birth...
And God loved what she had made...

Then God, gathering up her courage in love, said,
Let there be bread!
And God's sisters, her friends and lovers, knelt on the earth
planted the seeds
prayed for the rain
sang for the grain...

We, the sisters of God, say today,
All shall eat of the bread,
And the power...


ALSO IN OCTOBER at Our Lady of Peace, Ms. Kathy Beard's junior religion class studied an overview of John Sanford's book Evil, the Shadow Side of Reality. Sanford discusses the idea of evil in mythologies (including Christianity), and then proposes that everyone has a "shadow side" which we sometimes repress, calling it evil. Instead, he says, the shadow needs to be accepted and nurtured, so it won't go out of control. He considers "the devil" to be invented by society as a symbol of these repressed characteristics. He asserts, "Christianity has refused to accept the Shadow side of the personality and has rejected the dark side of the Self."

One student, upset by this attack on Catholic doctrine, did research using such texts as Thomas Merton's New Seeds of Contemplation and Father Mitch Pacwa's Catholics and the New Age (to refute the article) but she was not allowed to present her findings to the class. The student's parents wrote complaints to OLP principal Sister Dolores Anchondo and Ms. Beard.

OLP's 1994 commencement speaker, Midge Constanza, made an appearance with Bella Abzug November 15 at the Mission Bay Hilton, discussing their experiences at the Beijing conference and feminist goals for the future.


KUDOS TO OUR BISHOP. The Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction is an Omaha-based research and medical clinic supporting the Church's teachings on natural family planning. The September/October '95 issue of the group's newsletter, Love and Life News, listed Bishop Brom as a donor to the organization. Contact Pope Paul VI Institute at 6901 Mercy Rd, Omaha, NE 68106.


DR. JAMES MCMAHON, developer of the "partial birth abortion" method which Congress is attempting to ban, died October 28 during surgery for a brain tumor and was buried at Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Culver City, with a funeral Mass said by Father Patrick Comerford, a chaplain at St. John's Medical Center in Santa Monica. (Dr. McMahon did not die at St. John's -- was Father Comerford a family friend who knew McMahon's history?) Once complaints from Los Angeles pro-lifers began pouring in, Father Comerford was instructed to keep silent by chancery officials. As part of his financial preparations before undergoing brain surgery, McMahon established a Jim McMahon Fund with the National Abortion Federation to finance lobbying efforts for his abortion method. Family members are asking that, instead of sending flowers, well-wishers donate money to the McMahon fund.


PALOMAR/ POMERADO Health System head Andrew Deems, in a November 8 memo to his board of directors, discussed means to keep board member Nancy Scofield, outspoken abortion foe, from participating in board functions. Deems suggested changing bylaws to keep undesirable members off committees. Scofield's attorney said there appeared to be "a conspiracy to keep Scofield from carrying out her duty as a publicly-elected official." The hospital board decided to take up the issue at next month's meeting (December 11). Dr. Howard Brown, a member of the board of directors, was angered that the issue had not been resolved quickly. Standing next to Scofield, he demanded, "Can we have a closed meeting without her?" The board lawyer, George Root, informed Dr. Brown that Ms. Scofield, as an elected board member, had a right to attend all board meetings. Concerned voters can contact Andrew Deems at 675-5106.


THOUSAND OAKS ATTORNEY Marcella Ketelhut was so impressed by what she saw at the July 29 Catholic Family Education Conference at USD that she gave up her law practice and started homeschooling her kindergartener. She was most impressed by Laura Berquist's talk about Classical Education at home, saying that she was reassured by the intellectual caliber of Catholic homeschooling leaders like Berquist. Ketelhut also admired close relationships between parents and home-educated children, and thorough religious instruction homeschooling can provide, adding, "When God judges me on how well I raised my daughter, the school teachers and CCD instructors won't be standing there with me, taking part of the blame."


ONE ASPECT of Uni High sex education (see story page one) which remains unclear is the role of school nurse Ann Bukovchik (she also goes by the name "Ann Buko"), whose duties include, according to the 1994 curriculum guide, "sex/AIDS education." Buko says she does no sex teaching at Uni, but Dr. Kelly said Buko serves as a consultant and does personal counseling. He said the "sex/AIDS education" aspect may come up in her counseling of Uni students. Buko has a history of sex education in San Diego Catholic schools. As school nurse at St. Francis in Vista, she introduced the now-banned New Creation series. Buko traveled to parishes to teach 5th and 6th grade sex ed and courses for Catholic school girls in tampon use (a woman whose child attended one of Buko's sex ed classes reports that Buko was up-front to parents about her disagreement with Humanae Vitae). Buko also serves as regional coordinator and board member of CORPUS, an association of married ex-priests and sympathizers which seeks to change the Church's position on celibacy and women's ordination. Buko and her ex-priest husband Joe head the planning committee for the CORPUS annual meeting, to be held in San Diego June 28-30, 1996 (one speaker will be ultra-feminist Edwina Gately). The Bukovchiks hold Masses in their home every Sunday, inviting selected North County Catholics.

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