The municipal council of Gamle in Oslo, Norway, authorized the Islamic muezzin’s public call to prayer for three minutes at noon on Fridays. In turn, Zenit news agency reports, a group calling itself the “Norwegian Association of Pagans” has requested permission to make this call: “God does not exist; come to our meetings.”
The real Oscar winner this was the culture of death, according to Fr. Richard Welch, president of Human Life International.
“This year’s Academy Awards will go down in Hollywood history as one of the darkest and most tragic ever,” he said. “The 72nd Academy Awards ceremony was a window to showcase Hollywood’s ‘house of horrors’—abortion, sexual promiscuity, and homosexuality propaganda.” At the Academy Awards ceremony on March 26 —on the same day Pope John Paul II ended his moving pilgrimage to the Holy Land—”American Beauty,” “The Cider House Rules,” and “Boys Don’t Cry” dominated the major Oscar awards.
“American Beauty” is the story of a dysfunctional American family steeped in sexual promiscuity and adultery, where the “gay” male couple next door is presented in contrast as happy, generous, and “normal.” “The Cider House Rules” is the story of a man who learns that abortion is “good.” (In his acceptance speech for best screenplay, author John Irving acknowledged the support he received from the Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League.) And “Boys Don’t Cry” tells the tragic story of a homosexual young woman living as a man who was murdered when her true gender was discovered, presenting her as a heroine for the homosexual cause.
(On his nationally syndicated radio show Oscars night, conservative media gadfly Matt Drudge took comedian Billy Crystal to task for making fun of the Pope’s in one of Crystal’s remarks as host of the Oscars broadcast. “Let me tell you something,” Drudge said. “I’d much rather have been by the Pope’s side this week than sitting in the back of some limo sipping champagne with one of these phonies like [best actor Oscar winner] Kevin Spacey.”)
“This is what Hollywood presents to the world as its best,” said Fr. Welch. “This is what Hollywood holds up to us as heroes, as ideals. The American movie industry is lost to the culture of death. We must reject this assault on our values. We must seek and patronize and reward writers, directors, and producers who denounce the agendas of these films and use this powerful media to teach the truth about life, love, family, and faith.”
One group already responding for years to Fr. Welch’s call is “Act One,” a Hollywood writer’s workshop founded in 1987 by Inter-Mission, a network of nearly 3,000 Christian entertainment industry professionals in Los Angeles and New York. The goal of Inter-Mission is to “build up the members of the Body of Christ professionally and spiritually in order to transform the entertainment community and ultimately the entire popular culture.”
“Act One: Writing for Hollywood” is a month-long, intensive program held in Hollywood for Christian screenwriters. Organizers maintain that a strategy for renewing culture necessarily includes preparing writers who can offer positive alternatives to Hollywood’s networks, studios, and production companies—writers who are passionate about screen storytelling and convinced of the potential of cinema to uplift the human spirit and transform lives. Applicants need at least two years of college and should be able to spend the entire month of August in Hollywood completely dedicated to the Act One program.
The program accepts 30 students and ten alternates each year. Tuition for the month-long, six-day-per-week program is $795. Applicants must submit a dramatic writing sample, an application form with a $35 fee, letters of recommendation from a professional or academic source and from a pastor or church leader, plus a personal statement describing their vision for cinema and their calling as a Christian artist.
Unfortunately, the application period for the year 2000 session is over, but the next workshop will be held next year. Interested? You can contact Act One via e-mail at actone2000@aol.com; write Act One: Writing for Hollywood, 1760 North Gower Street, Hollywood, California 90028; phone (323) 462-1348; or fax (323) 462-3199.
A Catholic Answers staff member received a flier in her parish bulletin recently from a visiting priest who, accordingto his literature, “travels extensively doing parish missions and retreats.” The flier consists of three questions and answers and is titled “Everything you ever wanted to know (but thought you should already know, so didn’t ask).” We’re not picking on this priest, but his answers reveal the type of deepseated misconceptions and de-emphasis that have caused such confusion in the Catholic Church.
“A basic question to ask at Sunday Mass is, ‘Why am I here and not home in bed, watching TV, or lounging in the yard where maybe I would rather be?'” the flier reads. To which the priest replies, “Those who came to avoid going to hell are probably gone already – to heaven, we hope.” This answer is ambiguous. It says those who come to Mass to avoid hell are probably either already dead or already saved, neither of which is likely.
“Why do we come?” the answer continues. “For any number of reasons: to hear God’s word, to come into deeper communion with God, to give thanks, to receive strength, to praise God with others. We come because Jesus, on the night before he died for us, asked us to remember him at the meal. We come to join our family of faith in celebrating God’s daily saving work in our lives. We come to be fed and strengthened to feed others. We come with a good sense of responsibility to gather with the community in which we claim membership.”
Nw, none of what the priest writes is wrong. But it emphasizes to a fault what modern liturgists like to refer to as the “horizontal” aspect of the Church – that of Mass as communal gathering, Eucharist as meal. In the process this mentality ignores the Mass and the Eucharist for what they are: the re-presentation of Christ’s salvific sacrifice on Calvary, whereby our Savior becomes physically present not only within our midst as community but within each one of us as we receive him in the Eucharist. You want people back in the pews? Emphasize that, not the self-involved buzzwords the priest does in his closing paragraph:
“Besides the praise we give God, our gathering for Eucharist meets many of our own human needs: for belonging, intimacy, freedom, purpose, direction, forgiveness, gratitude, self-inprovement, vision, and more.”
(By the way, for the few readers who might have seen this flier, the priests bats 1.000 – or strikes out, depending on your choice of analogy: He also has it wrong in his reasons why we should stand during the consecration and why we are required to receive Communion from the cup.)
A coalition of feminist groups want the United Nations’ new International Criminal Court (ICC) to declare the Catholic Church’s teaching on abortion a “crime against humanity,” according to the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-Fam).
C-Fam has publicized a new pamphlet by the Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice which asks governments to push the ICC as an enforcement mechanism for nonbinding resolutions such as the Platform of Action from the Beijing Women’s Conference. Although the platform never received a consensus, the caucus calls the ICC a means of “furthering the Beijing agenda.”
At a Rome conference two years ago, feminists introduced the concept of “enforced pregnancy,” referring to places where abortion is illegal, although feminists claimed the phrase meant only pregnancy by rape. In its pamphlet, the Women’s Caucus contends that “withholding abortion from raped women should be explicitly defined as a war crime and a crime against humanity.”
“This position is troubling to Catholics, since it would explicitly name a part of their religious beliefs—that abortion is always wrong—a crime against humanity,” said C-Fam in a written statement.
C-Fam also reported that some critics are also concerned with the term “sexual slavery” that has entered the ICC document. Feminists claim the term refers only to the kind of prostitution women are sometimes forced into during armed conflict. The same group, however, in a 1991 Utah court case, referred to marriage as “sexual slavery.”
United Press International reported that a recent University of Michigan study indicates living together without benefit of marriage is now the norm in the United States. Cohabitation has gone from involving just ten percent of households in 1965 to more than 50 percent in 1994. The quotation marks in the UPI item’s headline – “Living in sin’ now the norm” – indicates UPI may consider the phrase anachronistic. But we think the fact that it’s still being used at all is a sign of the subbornness of the natural moral order.
Between 1970 and 1995, 49,237 priests abandoned their ordained ministry without obtaining formal laicization from the Holy See. Now the Vatican has revealed a surprising statistic: Some 9,551—or nearly 20 percent—have returned to priestly duties.
In many cases, these wayward clerics were welcomed back to ministry by their bishops. In other cases, however, where a “canonical offense” was committed (i.e., a civil marriage), the approval of the Holy See was required. The Church stipulates that these priests “fulfill their obligations under natural law.” That entails providing for the education of any children and arranging an amicable parting from their wives. If the children are still young, permission will not be granted.
Returning priests are required to spend at least one year in a priestly community under the spiritual direction of an older priest, and they are also required to study again for the priesthood. Msgr. Vivies that during the 1970s, the most frequent cause of an abandoned priestly vocation was “a lack of intellectual formation.” The Vatican official observed that many priests “did not understand their identity and their place in the Church.”
Of the 9,551 priests who have returned to their duties, 6,811 are European. Two hundred sixteen are in North America.
Speaking of priests, the worldwide crisis of clerical vocations has ended, according to the prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy. Speaking to journalists on March 30, Dario Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos reported that there are now 109,828 seminarians preparing for the priesthood around the world, a slight increase over the 108,517 in 1997 and an enormous increase from the 60,142 in 1975.
The cardinal also observed that today’s seminarians are somewhat older than their counterparts of a generation ago. Many have completed undergraduate education, and quite a few have gained some experience in professional life before entering the seminary.
There were 404,626 priests serving the Catholic Church in 1999. Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos noted that some priests have returned to their ministry after having abandoned the priesthood (see the above item). And the number of defections from priestly life is falling; the cardinal pointed out that in 1975 there were 3,314 men who left the priesthood; in 1997 there were 1,006.
Fr. Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina’s Parish in Chicago has come up with a novel method of evangelizing women prostitutes: He is paying them to listen to the gospel.
“We want to buy their time, whether it’s for ten minutes or 30 minutes, whatever it takes,” he said. “If you’re selling yourself on the street, you’re not in a relationship with God. Obviously, there’s something missing, something out of whack with their lives. I’m not afraid to make that assumption.”
Fr. Pfleger gained attention in the past by his protests against the Jerry Springer Show, which tapes in Chicago, and against the marketing of alcohol and tobacco to teenagers. However, he assures confidentiality in this new program, whose outreach times will not be publicized so as to protect the prostitutes from the intrusive eyes of the media.
He told the Chicago Tribune that parishioners “ran out of the pews and started bringing money and placing it on the altar” when he announced the plan during a Sunday Mass. “It’s time to start being the Church in reality, besides having church on Sunday mornings,” said Fr. Pfleger. “We’ve forgotten that our call is to go outside of the Church.”
A new study has found that children respond equally to what their parents teach them about religion and values as they do to their parents’ actions.
Catholic World News reported that the Purdue University study found actions such as regular church attendance and service projects helped shape values. But “it was regular, specific conversations about religious beliefs that gave students a more accurate perception of what their parents actually believe.” The study, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, was based on interviews with 58 girls and 36 boys about their parents’ beliefs.
Of course, words and actions are, like faith and works, inseparable.