LITTLE NOTES

2005 Little Notes
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Contents © 2005
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

LITTLE NOTES
January 2005

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Regarding the establishment of a Gay Pride group on campus, Pastoor wrote, "The guidelines governing Pride clearly state that the organization was established for the purpose of education and support; that advocacy of the gay lifestyle was not to be part of their function on campus."

Giery, in his answer to Pastoor's response, wrote that the campus Pride group was indeed advocating the gay lifestyle. "One brazen example of how the USD Pride students promote homosexuality," he said, "is their distribution of 250 T-shirts on April 21, 2004 to commemorate the Day of Silence, an annual pro-gay propaganda campaign in which students take a day long vow of silence to protest for homosexual causes. The T-shirts distributed that day contained logos advertising USD Pride, ACT-UP, and even USD's own official logo. ACT- UP stands for AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. [It's] a radical homosexual group best known among Catholics for desecrating the Holy Eucharist during Mass at [New York's] St. Patrick's Cathedral."

NOT ALL CATHOLIC COLLEGES HAVE BEEN HOMOSEXUALIZED. Seton Hall, the Catholic University in South Orange New Jersey, has been in an uproar since March when a gay student was denied official recognition of a pro-gay campus organization he was attempting to start. The student sued the university and the issue has been hotly debated on campus and in the local press ever since. Leading the charge against recognizing gay agenda groups at The Hall is Claudine Metallo, a professor who teaches Italian. "If these individuals wish to act in a deviant manner," Metallo wrote in a letter to the campus newspaper, The Setonian, "they can feel free to do so at a public institution at the peril of their own souls. They have no right to endanger the souls of the students."

Metallo quoted the 1910 catechism of Pius X which labels sodomy "a sin that cries out to Heaven for vengeance."

Viva Metallo!

While visiting the St. Vincent de Paul/ St. Michael's Poway store on December 7, Patrick Bump, an Escondido Catholic, was looking through their religion section and found several Jehovah's Witness and Mormon books as well as several titles by dissenting priest and ex-Catholic theologian, Fr. Charles Curran. The inside covers of some of the dissenting literature had the signature of Fr. James Paulsen, pastor of St. Gregory the Great parish.

Bump took them to the counter to inform the two women working there (one was a senior and the other appeared to be middle-aged) that they had anti-Catholic literature on their shelves that ought to be discarded. His diligence was not appreciated. "They looked at me with straight faces and said, 'Oh, we don't think it really matters what religion it's about. If it's on our shelves, we're selling it. We don't just get Catholics in here you know.' I replied that since this was a store run by a Catholic church, the pastor wouldn't want to be promoting and profiting from anti-Catholicism and/or literature that promotes other faiths as true and Catholicism as false. The younger woman replied, 'Well there are lots of different religions out there and people have a right to believe what they want to.' I replied. 'Yes, there are, but as Catholics, don't we have the right and really the obligation to propagate our own Faith and to at least not promote other faiths that are contradictory to our own?' Then the older lady, putting her hand on the stack of books I'd placed on her counter, chimed in, 'Well these are just Christian books, they're not so bad.' At this point, I was amazed and annoyed that I was even having this conversation. I said, 'No, they are not just Christian. They are not Christian at all. Some are by the Jehovah's Witnesses and the others are Mormon books. Both groups are extremely anti-Catholic and are definitely not Christian! They are cultists. They need to be thrown in the trash, not sold in a Catholic book store.' So the little lady just put the stack behind the counter and said she'd take care of it. I made my purchase and left."

AN ABORTION CLINIC WAS CLOSED DOWN in the high desert town of Victorville in late November. Dr. Joseph Durante, the oft-sued abortionist, closed down the clinic due to lack of business.

Durante, who has been sued over botched abortions and disciplined by the state medical board several times, told a local newspaper that he believes there will be fewer and fewer abortion facilities in the future because medical professionals are not interested in working at them. "Most doctors don't want to get involved with that," he said.

THE THOMAS MORE LAW CENTER, a non-profit, public interest law firm "dedicated to the defense and promotion of the religious freedom of Christians, time-honored family values, and the sanctity of human life," has scored another victory, this time in Florida. On December 15, a federal judge ruled that the town of Bay Harbor Islands must allow resident Sandra Snowden to display a nativity scene, purchased with her own money on public property. For several Christmas seasons, the town had denied Snowden's request to display the nativity scene despite the fact that menorahs and stars of David were displayed on public property every Hanukkah.

The More center's west coast office in Rancho Santa Fe is leading the legal battle to preserve the cross on Mount Soledad.

TRAUMATIC CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES are known to have a destabilizing effect on some people later in their lives. That's what makes this bizarre Christmas story by Philip Paulson, the rabid atheist who has waged a 15-year legal battle to topple the Mount Soledad cross, so interesting. "When I was a young boy attending my first grade of elementary school," Paulson wrote, "the teacher excused the class early for recess on the day before the December school season break. So, I went to the school playground, and then my playmate shouted, 'Hey, look up in the sky! There goes Santa Claus!' And sure enough, I saw Santa Claus and his reindeer trekking across the sky and then disappearing behind the clouds before my very own eyes.

"The experience was not make-believe to me. Oh, no! I was convinced that I saw Santa Claus. It was an observable fact. Moreover, it was an observable fact that was first-hand, eye-witnessed and verified by my fellow classmates. My classmates and I talked about it for several months. The Santa Claus sighting placed an indelible imprint on my mind at the time.

"Then, Santa Claus and our parents surprised us that day by coming into our first grade classroom. Santa Claus then handed out gifts to the children in the class, and I was relieved to know that I was on the nice side of his "naughty or nice" list. Please understand that I enjoyed getting gifts from Santa and presents found under the Yule tree.

"Years later I was told by my father, that what I really saw was a small airplane that flew overhead pulling a long banner with the picture of Santa Claus and his reindeer. What I eye-witnessed was not really a live person in the sleigh being pulled by reindeer. Prior to flying overhead, the airplane pilot alerted the teachers to schedule a recess for their students in time for young impressionable minds to see Santa Claus flying overhead.

"I presume that the teachers and parents played along with the game by giving us children an opportunity to accept the fantasy of a Santa Claus sighting. But, I did not take this Santa Claus sighting as a fantasy. Instead, I had become highly disappointed and saddened. I found out that Santa Claus was not real at all but only make-believe.

"Is there any possible difference between believing in the myth of Santa Claus and believing in the myth of a deity? Put the two together and draw your own conclusions."

Oh, we've drawn some conclusions all right.

THE WAGES OF SIN.... The County of San Diego's health and human services department's sexually transmitted disease prevention program reported December 9 that syphilis is on the rise in San Diego. "Through the end of September 2004," the report stated, "89 cases of infectious syphilis have been reported, which if maintained at this rate, will result in 119 cases for 2004, a 9% increase from 109 cases in 2003. Of the 89 cases, 68 (76%) were MSM [men who have sex with men]."

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