Office for Social

Number 1: Father Frank Pavone, director of Priests for Life, to present at the San Diego Diocesan 2004 Church Ministers Conference on Saturday, September 25th. Don't forget to "Save the Date."

The title for the 2004 Annual Conference for Church Ministers is "Proclaiming the Kingdom of God." The keynote speaker is Bishop Jaime Soto (see photo at left), Auxiliary Bishop of the Diocese of Orange.

The day (a detailed schedule for the conference to be given in June) will include a Eucharistic Liturgy with Bishop Brom, Keynotes in Spanish and English, workshops in Spanish and English, and displays from religious vendors and service organizations. The cost for the day is only $15.00 (lunch on your own). Past Conferences have drawn crowds of more than 2,000.

Fr. Pavone's (see photo at left) presentation, "We proclaim the Kingdom, but can we vote for it?" will be a hard-hitting reflection on human values, justice, and the responsibility Christians must exercise in a democratic society.

Fr. Frank will demonstrate how Christians have been given not only the power to proclaim the Kingdom of God but the power to create a society that reflects that Kingdom, with fundamental human values at its core. Come prepared to be challenged.

Registration materials will be available on-line this summer. We will inform you when they are. But please save the date!

Number 3: Rachels Hope, San Diego's Catholic post-abortion healing ministry, helped to coordinate the first-ever Catholic post-abortion healing retreat in the Diocese of Tijuana and perhaps all of Mexico.

Maria De La Rosa (center) posed for a photo with Sisters Veronica and Nina from Tecate. The three facilitated the retreat which had been announced after the Masses held on the convent grounds. Six women attended the workshop, four from Tecate and two from San Diego.

Following is the beginning of an article on the healing retreat by Rosemary Benefield taken from the Southern Cross . To view the entire article, go to the following web site:

http://www.thesoutherncross.org/default.asp?issueid=03-sept-11&cid=1&aid=211

TECATE, Mexico - The weekend of Divine Mercy Sunday, April 16-18, was a special weekend of mercy for post-abortive women at the convent of the Sisters of the Trinitarians of Mary in Tecate, Mexico. The women had gathered for the first retreat that organizers were aware of given in Mexico on post-abortion healing. The retreat was given as an outreach of Rachel's Hope, a San Diego-based healing program...

Thank you Rosemary and Maria for all you are doing to bring healing to our part of the world!

Number 4: Association for Life members host luncheon to bid farewell to Becky Dobbins.

As the sole male at the table (missing to take the photo) I was blessed to be surrounded by women of such caring and courage. The Association for Life is a consortium of pregnancy care centers and culture-of-life groups that meets quarterly to provide mutual support, encouragement, and a forum for planning joint activities.

Becky (on the far left in blue), our honoree, made the difficult decision, after much prayer and consultation over several months, to close the doors of the Birth Choice of Encinitas. Prudence, the virtue that helps us make practical decisions when competing benefits collide, determined that the resources, both material and personal, of the Birth Choice center were not being put sufficiently to good use given the center's client load had declined significantly over the past couple of years. A difficult decision to make, Becky gracefully closed the doors for the good of other more active agencies not too far away.

The assets of Birth Choice of Encinitas will be distributed throughout the network to again be put to use in the spirit of the Birth Choice mission. Becky, staff, and volunteers will continue serving the community in other ministries, many in nearby pregnancy care centers.

We thank Becky Dobbins and all those who served with her over the years for their dedication and for having the courage to end ministry when that is appropriate, thus freeing up people and resources to serve the community in new and more productive ways.

God bless you all!

Kent

Join with the Bishops of the United States to send a message to Congress, "We must renew the mind of the media!"

Parents are finding it more difficult to find entertainment for their families that is untainted by harmful portrayals of sex and violence, even among broadcast listings. Primetime fare includes programming - and even advertising - unsuitable for younger audiences. As fewer companies own larger segments of the news and entertainment industries, and stockholders demand greater profits, it is reasonable to believe that sex and violence will be even more prevalent on television and in the movies than it is today.

Grassroots efforts in 2003 in response to the potential for greater media consolidation proved what the nation's bishops said in Renewing the Mind of the Media that regular citizens can have an impact on the media and our government, which regulates the media.

Have no fear about calling Darrell Issa's office. You'll get a very amiable 'gatekeeper' from Encinitas who will chat you up a little as she thanks you for you input. Though fiscally conservative as they are socially conservative, the GOP congress will work with the President if their constituents let them know they want them to.

Thank you Fr. Bill for taking the time to call U.S. Representative Darrell Issa's office on behalf of those who lack health insurance!

Human trafficking is a form of modern-day slavery. Victims of human trafficking are young children, teenagers, men and women. Approximately 800,000 to 900,000 victims annually are trafficked across international borders world wide, and between 18,000 and 20,000 of those victims are trafficked into the U.S., according to the U.S. Department of State. Victims of human trafficking are subjected to force, fraud, or coercion, for the purpose of sexual exploitation or forced labor.

After drug dealing, trafficking of humans is tied with arms dealing as the second largest criminal industry in the world, and is the fastest growing.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has initiated the Rescue & Restore Victims of Human Trafficking campaign to help identify and assist victims of human trafficking in the United States.

The Trafficking Information and Referral Hotline, 1.888.3737.888, connects victims of trafficking to Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) that can help victims in their local area.

The hotline helps intermediaries (members of law enforcement, the medial community and churches) to determine whether they have encountered a victim of human trafficking. It also helps connect victims to resources and coordinates with local social service organizations to protect and serve victims of trafficking.

To learn more about the program and to download up to four posters (Pdf format) for use in your church or organization, click on the Rescue and Restore logo above or go to:

If you are planning an event that falls within the mission of social ministry, send the particulars four to five weeks in advance to the Office for Social Ministry via e-mail, osmelink@diocese-sdiego.org. The OSM reserves the right to publish or not to publish any proposed event information. We hope this will assist your local efforts to re-build a culture of life.

1. Striano Piano Quartet in Concert - Sunday, June 13, 2004 At Church of St. Timothy

Join St. Timothy parishioners at this special event featuring the Striano Piano Quartet. All proceeds from the event will go to support the Culture of Life Family Services. St. Timothy Parish is located at 2960 Canyon Rd., Escondido, CA, 92026. Call the parish for more information: 760-489-1242.

4. Demolition party at the Culture of Life Family Services, Escondido on Saturday, June 12 at 10:00 a.m.

Join in the fun of knocking things down on Saturday, June 10, 2004, knowing that within weeks a new phase of COLFS building will begin. The COLFS address is 430 North Rose St., Escondido, CA. If able: Bring gloves, hammer, sledgehammer, trash bags, broom dustpan, or Shopvac
If you want to cheer from the sidelines, the workers will also be in need of cold drinks and snacks.
No children under 15 years please.

A Pastoral Statement by The Most Reverend John J. Myers,
Archbishop of Newark - May 5, 2004

Our times demand honesty. It is possible to value sincerely one’s Catholic heritage and to revere one’s Catholic forebears and yet not to have Catholic faith.

Faith is a free and personal act inspired by the Holy Spirit, by which we entrust ourselves to the living God and to Jesus Christ his Son and our Lord. While intensely personal, the act of faith is always at the same time ecclesial. This means that the act of faith embraces the Church to which Christ Himself has entrusted His mission. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “Whoever says ‘I believe’ says ‘I pledge myself to what We believe.’” In other words, faith, while free and personal, is also a commitment to make one’s own faith the faith of the Church.

It is always a temptation to emphasize the personal aspect of faith with the intent of “reducing” the faith to those elements with which we are comfortable in our life. This is deeply erroneous. The commitment of faith is a commitment to grow not only closer to Jesus Christ but also to continue to grow, sometimes through questions and struggles, into the full faith of the Church.

It is clear in the constant teaching of the Church, and recently articulated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, that protecting the fullness of the proclamation of the faith in any generation is a task entrusted to the bishops of the world in union with the Bishop of Rome. Through the grace of the Holy Spirit, the bishops are charged in each era and in each culture with proclaiming the truth of the Gospel and maintaining that truth in good times and in bad.

Cardinal Christoph Schonborn of Vienna has pointed out that perhaps the most powerful words in the Creeds of the Church are those that come first: “I believe in God the Father Almighty Creator of Heaven and Earth….” With these words we acknowledge that God is the source of the universe and of our existence. It is God’s world in which we live and it is our task to come to understand and respect that and live in the world as God intended. Authentic Christians know that it is not ours to define our own being in an absolute way, but rather it is ours to discover and live with joy the being in the world, which God has given us.

This is also true for the human conscience. Clearly each human person has a conscience and should follow it because by definition conscience is the intellectual act of judgment of what is right and wrong to do or not to do. It is the last best judgment of what one ought to choose. Thus, conscience must be formed through education and prayer, and be informed by the teaching of Christ. We cannot form our conscience in solitary isolation or simply with reference to cultural practices or convictions. Conscience can only be formed authentically by reference to the truth. Truth and conscience go together. Following an authentic conscience builds the truly human. Following a conscience without reference to truth sets an individual and society adrift on a sea of hopelessness.

There are many implications of these principles. We profess our faith not merely in a formula of words, but rather in the realities to which those words refer. And that certainly applies in the matter of abortion, euthanasia, cloning and other issues which are before the American people and the world public at this time. Long before science made clear that each individual is genetically new and unique from conception, the Church taught that abortion is a great evil. She still teaches this even in the face of the tragedy in our country where respect for the sanctity of human life has been eroded.

There is no right more fundamental than the right to be born and reared with all the dignity the human person deserves. On this grave issue, public officials cannot hold themselves excused from their duties, especially if they claim to be Catholic. Every faithful Catholic must be not only “personally opposed” to abortion, but also must live that opposition in his or her actions. In Robert Bolt’s play A Man for All Seasons, St. Thomas More remarks, “I believe, when statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties…they lead their country by a short route to chaos.” Sadly, too few follow the example of St. Thomas More. As voters, Catholics are under an obligation to avoid implicating themselves in abortion, which is one of the gravest of injustices. Certainly, there are other injustices, which must be addressed, but the unjust killing of the innocent is foremost among them.

At the same time, I point out that this is not simply a Catholic issue, but a basic moral issue of justice and human dignity. It applies to all persons. Some justify their actions by saying that they must respect the consciences of others. But this “respect” for another’s conscience should never require abandoning one’s own properly formed conscience. Conscientious opposition to abortion, rooted in an understanding of the sanctity of human life, may not be sacrificed simply because others, whose consciences are gravely mistaken, would unjustly take the life of an unborn baby.

I have already said this before, in a previous Pastoral Letter in 1990: “Although we must all follow our conscience, the task of conscience is not to create moral truth, but perceive it. It is quite possible for an individual to perceive the moral reality of a particular situation erroneously. Such a person may be sincere, but he or she is sincerely wrong.

“Catholics who publicly dissent from the Church’s teaching on the right to life of all unborn children should recognize that they have freely chosen by their own actions to separate themselves from what the Church believes and teaches. They have also separated themselves in a significant way from the Catholic community.

“The Church cannot force such people to change their position; but she can and does ask them honestly to admit in the public forum that they are not in full union with the Church.

“One who practices such dissent, even in the mistaken belief that it is permissible, may remain a Catholic in some sense, but has abandoned the full Catholic faith. For such a person to express ‘communion’ with Christ and His Church by the reception of the Sacrament of the Eucharist is objectively dishonest.”

This is not a new teaching of the Church. From the earliest years, it has been pointed out that one cannot claim to be a Christian and yet believe other than what the Church teaches. In the second century St. Justin Martyr described the Eucharist in this way: “No one may share the Eucharist with us unless he believes that what we teach is true, unless he is washed in the regenerating waters of baptism for the remission of his sins, and unless he lives in accordance with the principles given us by Christ.”

The law and discipline of the Church recognizes this fact in various ways. It is a time for honesty. I ask and urge that Catholic voters and Catholics in public life carefully consider their position if they find themselves in opposition to Church teaching in these matters. Sadly, I must point out that to continue down this road places them in danger of distancing themselves even more from Jesus Christ and from His Church.

Perhaps it is also time to remind ourselves of the meaning and purpose of communion. No one has an absolute right to the Eucharist. It is a gift given to us by a merciful and gracious God. In fact, the Eucharist is God’s gift of Himself to us. In receiving Him we are made one flesh with him. This reception also symbolizes and makes real our union with the whole Church. To receive unworthily or without proper dispositions is a very serious sin against the Lord. St. Paul explicitly teaches this in his letter to the Church at Corinth when he wrote, “This means that whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily sins against the body and blood of the Lord. A man should examine himself first; only then should he eat of the bread and drink of the cup. He who eats and drinks without recognizing the body eats and drinks a judgment on himself” (1 Cor 11: 27-29). “Without recognizing the body” refers both to recognizing the presence of Christ in the Eucharist and recognizing the Body of Christ, which is the Church. Obviously this means that no Catholic should approach communion unless properly disposed (without unconfessed mortal sin on one’s conscience, having fasted at least one hour in accordance with the Church’s discipline, etc.).

But, receiving the Eucharist also means that one is in fact in full communion with Christ and His Church. To receive communion when one has, through public or private action, separated oneself from unity with Christ and His Church, is objectively dishonest. It is an expression of communion by one’s action that is objectively not in accordance with one’s heart, mind, and choices.

Communion is Not Private
Because the Eucharist is the source and summit of our faith, the most sacred action of our Church, to misuse the Eucharistic symbol by reducing it to one’s private “feeling” of communion with Christ and His Church while objectively not being in such union is gravely disordered.

This is particularly true when it comes to the area of protecting human life. Abortion and infanticide are, as Vatican Council II stated, “abominable crimes” (Gaudium et Spes, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, 51). The fact that all too many U.S. citizens have grown comfortable with the on-going injustice of abortion on demand is quite upsetting. That some Catholics, who claim to believe what the Church believes, are willing to allow others to continue directly to kill the innocent is a grave scandal. The situation is much much worse when these same leaders receive the Eucharist when they are not objectively in communion with Christ and His Church. Their objective dishonesty serves to compound the scandal.

Some might argue that the Church has many social teachings and the teaching on abortion is only one of them. This is, of course, correct. The Church’s social teaching is a diverse and rich tradition of moral truths and biblical insights applied to the political, economic, and cultural aspects of our society. All Catholics should form and inform their conscience in accordance with these teachings. But reasonable Catholics can (and do) disagree about how to apply these teachings in various situations.

For example, our preferential option for the poor is a fundamental aspect of this teaching. But, there are legitimate disagreements about the best way or ways truly to help the poor in our society. No Catholic can legitimately say, “I do not care about the poor.” If he or she did so this person would not be objectively in communion with Christ and His Church. But, both those who propose welfare increases and those who propose tax cuts to stimulate the economy may in all sincerity believe that their way is the best method really to help the poor. This is a matter of prudential judgment made by those entrusted with the care of the common good. It is a matter of conscience in the proper sense.

Injustices Are Impermissible
But with abortion (and for example slavery, racism, euthanasia and trafficking in human persons) there can be no legitimate diversity of opinion. The direct killing of the innocent is always a grave injustice. One should not permit unjust killing any more than one should permit slave-holding, racist actions, or other grave injustices. From the perspective of justice, to say “I am personally opposed to abortion but…” is like saying “I personally am against slavery, but I can not impose my personal beliefs on my neighbor.” Obviously, recognizing the grave injustice of slavery requires one to ensure that no one suffers such degradation. Similarly recognizing that abortion is unjust killing requires one—in love and justice—to work to overcome the injustice.

Among my most important responsibilities is that of pastor and teacher. In light of recent developments in our nation, I wish once again to affirm the teaching of the Church. Human life is a gift from God and as Catholics we have a most grave obligation to defend all human life from the moment of conception until natural death. God help us if we fail in this most fundamental obligation.