April 14, 2006

Catholic san Francisco Northern California’s Weekly Catholic Newspaper

(CNS PHOTO/CROSIERS)

He is Risen. He is truly Risen!

INSIDE THIS WEEK’S EDITION News-in-brief . . . . . . . . . . . 4 NDV celebrates 150th . . . . 6 Supervisors sued . . . . . . . 11 “Gospel” of Judas. . . . . . . 13 Editorial and letters . . . . . . 14

Day of prayer for Immigration

National Prayer Breakfast

Remembering the Great Quake

~ Page 3 ~

~ Page 7 ~

~ Pages 16-19 ~

April 14, 2006

SEVENTY-FIVE CENTS

Datebook . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 ‘Tsotsi’ movie review . . . . . 24

www.catholic-sf.org VOLUME 8

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No. 13

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Catholic San Francisco

April 14, 2006

On The Where You Live

by Tom Burke Congrats all around to mom, dad and grandfolks of Sabrina Maria Philip born February 5th to Bridget and Brian Philip, both grads of Our Lady of Angels Elementary School in Burlingame and today making their home on the Peninsula. Bridget, an alum of Notre Dame High School in Belmont, is now Dr. Mom having earned her M.D. at Georgetown Sabrina Maria Philip University Medical School and practicing today as a Pediatric Anesthesiologist at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. Brian, an alumnus of Junipero Serra High School earned a law degree from the University of San Francisco. Happy grandpops and grandmoms are Jan and Dave Philip of Foster City and Franca and Joe Marchetti of Burlingame. Also aboard the Baby Sabrina Welcome Wagon are aunts and uncles Dana and Jeff Aspillera, Kevin Philip and Diana Marchetti, whose engagement to John Barrett, III was recently announced. “They met at a Youth Search Retreat where Diana was speaking on the Gift of Love and John was a visiting adult helping with the Youth Group,� said Diana’s mighty proud

Charity drove a recent effort at St. Rita Parish and School in Fairfax. More than 80 backpacks chock full of helpful items were donated for homeless people living at a shelter facility in Novato. Accepting a “hats off� for themselves and all who took part are school principal, Marilyn Porto, left, Kalyn Smith, pastor, Father Kenneth Weare, Courtney Crispin, Aki Newman, Diana Ramos.

mom and John’s future mom-in-law, Franca Marchetti. Also bustin’ at the seams are Diana’s dad, Joe, and John’s folks, Mary Anne and John Barrett‌.One more proud mom is Linda Shah whose daughter, Julie, has been a faithful volunteer with Thanksgiving Once a Month since her adolescent years. Julie, now matriculating toward an undergraduate degree at Santa Clara University, is an alum of St. Thomas More Elementary School and Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory. Her good-hearted efforts at Thanksgiving Once a Month have included shopping and wrapping gifts and – so appropriate to the season we’re in – planning and filling Easter baskets for the poor. In addition, Julie

Singin’ in the Rain or at least learning what makes it were 3rd graders at San Domenico School in San Anselmo, where KPIX-5 meteorologist, Samantha Mohr, recently took them through the weather paces. Happy to share the spotlight with their celebrity guest were Christopher Perrando, left, Jordan Patric-Steinberg, Sawyer Cairns, Marly Schatz, Ali Imperial and Rita Larson.

Mathletes from St. Stephen Elementary School recently put their heads together for a National MathCounts contest. “The contest is a high level Junior High math competition sponsored by the National Society for Engineers,� said Patrick Bell who coaches the squad and has been teaching 7th and 8th grade Math and Science at St. Stephen’s for five years. Factors in the success story are Tatiana Tam, top left, Reina Ramos, Emily Chang, Brian Ha, William Lyons, Coach Bell, and Jeff Dea, bottom left, Christian Pabalan, Walter Kardum, Michael Vasquez-Pompili.

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April 14, 2006

Catholic San Francisco

3

Archbishop Niederauer calls for day of prayer for immigration legislation San Francisco Archbishop George H. Niederauer called upon Catholics in the Archdiocese of San Francisco to set aside April 23, Divine Mercy Sunday, as a day of prayer for U.S. legislators who are considering immigration reform legislation.

PAGE 13

San Francisco Auxiliary Bishop John C. Wester will celebrate the 12 noon Mass at Mission Dolores Basilica, at 16th and Dolores Streets in San Francisco. All parishes in the archdiocese are invited to participate in a special liturgy for immigration legislation.

Following the Mass, Archbishop George H. Niederauer will lead an interfaith prayer on the steps of the church asking for just and humane immigration reform. He also will lead a march to nearby Dolores Park, where people may join a larger rally, sponsored by the Bay Area Coalition for Immigration, and a 2 p.m. march to the San Francisco federal building.

In a statement released April 12, Archbishop Niederauer encouraged local Catholics to pray on Divine Mercy Sunday “for just and humane immigration reform legislation that respects the dignity of our brothers and sisters who have come here from other lands.”

(CNS PHOTO/NANCY WIECHEC)

More on Immigration

Hundreds of thousands rally April 10 in the nation's capital for changes in immigration laws.

He urged solidarity with undocumented immigrants, noting that in the Church “no one is a stranger,” and describing the Church as “the place where illegal immigrants are also recognized and accepted as brothers and sisters.”

Archbishop Niederauer said an important way to express solidarity with these “brothers and sisters” is to pray and advocate for just and humane immigration reform legislation.

He said such legislation world respect family unity and reunification; create effective and welcoming opportunities for undocumented immigrants to become citizens; allow for secure borders with humane enforcement; and recognize the important work that is done by the immigrant community in our society.

Dozens of marches in support of humane immigration reform have taken place over the past several weeks. The marches have protested the immigration bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in December, which contains punitive measures.

A Senate immigration bill, which many religious leaders consider more acceptable, passed the Judiciary Committee late last month, but the bill has been stalled.

Earlier this week, a number of immigration rallies were held in U.S. cities, including the nation’s capitol. As many as 500,000 people gathered at the National Mall April 10 to voice their support for immigrants, chanting the words “Si, se puede” and “We are Americans, too.”

Patricia Zapor of Catholic News Service contributed to this report.

Statement by San Francisco Archbishop George H. Niederauer In the spirit of solidarity with undocumented immigrants, I ask that April 23, 2006, Divine Mercy Sunday, be a day of prayer for our nations’ legislators who are debating immigration legislation.

I encourage all Catholics in our Archdiocese to pray on Divine Mercy Sunday for just and humane immigration reform legislation that respects the dignity of our brothers and sisters who have come here from other lands. Further, I urge our Catholics to pray and make sacrifices for this intention throughout the coming weeks, and to contact their legislators in this regard.

The Catholic Bishops of the United States and Mexico in communion with John Paul II in his 1995 World Migration Day message have said: In the Church no one is a stranger, and the Church is not foreign to anyone, anywhere. As a sacrament of unity and thus a sign and a binding force for the whole human

race, the Church is the place where illegal immigrants are also recognized and accepted as brothers and sisters. It is the task of the various Dioceses actively to ensure that these people, who are obliged to live outside the safety net of civil society, may find a sense of brotherhood in the Christian community. Solidarity means taking responsibility for those in trouble. (Strangers No Longer, p. 47) One important way that we can “take responsibility” for these brothers and sisters among us is to pray and advocate for just and humane immigration reform legislation that respects family unity and reunification; that creates effective and welcoming opportunities for undocumented immigrants to become citizens; that allows for secure borders with humane enforcement; and that dignifies the important work that is done by the immigrant community in our society.

As recently as April 5th, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Holy See’s permanent observer to the

United Nations, said: “sometimes (immigration) is painted as a threat and is manipulated for short-term political gain, at the expense of the most natural rights of all human beings – the right to life, to citizenship, to work and to development.” On that same day, Bishop Gerald Barnes, chairman of the U.S. Bishop’s Committee on Migration, said that the most recently proposed Senate version of immigration reform is “a good start.” Bishop Barnes stated further: “The earned legalization program…represents sound public policy because it would not only enhance our national security while stabilizing the labor force in many important industries, but it would also allow families to stay together.”

Liturgical and educational materials to help prepare for the special day of prayer and fast are available by calling the Office of Public Policy and Social Concerns at (415) 614-5572.

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4

Catholic San Francisco

NEWS

April 14, 2006

in brief

UNITED NATIONS — When immigration is seen as “a problem to be solved,” it may be “painted as a threat and ... manipulated for short-term political gain,” the Vatican’s representative to the United Nations told the U.N. Commission on Population and Development April 5. Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the permanent observer of the Holy See to the international body, said such an approach can be detrimental to “the most natural rights of all human beings — the right to life, to citizenship, to work and to development.” The archbishop said, “For this reason, the upcoming high-level dialogue on this subject is very welcome; indeed it is a long overdue discussion on a perennial social question with consequences for people far beyond the 191 million or so presently considered migrants.”

The commission met April 3-7 at U.N. headquarters in New York to prepare for the Sept. 14-15 dialogue on international migration and development, also to be held in New York.

Last fresco fragments restored in Italy’s Assisi basilica ASSISI, Italy — Restorers have replaced the last fresco fragments in the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi, more than eight years after an earthquake sent parts of the ceiling crashing to the floor. With the aid of computer technology, experts were able to recompose most of the damaged images — including an archway with Sts. Francis and Clare, and a rib vault decorated with a depiction of St. Jerome at his desk. St. Matthew did not fare as well: His image today, high above the main altar, is a series of chromatic stains against a white background. “We preserved a relic of this major work by (Giovanni) Cimabue, but not the work itself,” Giuseppe Basile, who oversaw the restoration project, told a press conference in Assisi April 5. When the vault section fell in September 1997, four people below were killed. Cimabue’s fresco of St. Matthew exploded into more than 120,000 pieces, many of them smaller than a fingernail.

Vatican official urges Catholics to be reverent during Mass LONDON (CNS) — The head of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments urged Catholics to be reverent during Mass and to venerate the Eucharist properly.

During a talk in Westminster Cathedral April 1, Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze called on priests to restore tabernacles to central positions in churches and for Catholics to rediscover the

(CNS PHOTO/ANTONY NJUGUNA, REUTERS)

Vatican nuncio at U.N. urges ‘people-centered’ policies

A severely malnourished Kenyan boy sits on his mother's lap in early January at a hospital in Wajir, 300 miles northeast of Nairobi. As the U.S. Senate began considering a supplemental appropriations bill in early April, representatives of the U.S. bishops and Catholic Relief Services asked it to add essential funding to the current fiscal year to meet urgent human needs abroad.

tradition of reverent genuflection in the presence of the Eucharist. He also called for an end to adding details to and subtracting them from the approved rites of the Mass and for an end to soft background music during Mass and other times when people were trying to pray in church. “This is doubtless well intentioned, but it is a mistake,” said the cardinal. “People enter churches to pray, not to be entertained.” The cardinal told about 400 audience members that Mass was the “supreme act of adoration, praise and thanksgiving which humanity can offer God.”

Vatican Museums present new ways of looking at old things VATICAN CITY — The problem with being a 500-year-old museum is that the science of collecting and displaying pieces has changed dramatically. To celebrate its half-millennium, the Vatican Museums has decided not to host special temporary exhibits, but to focus on restoring, rearranging or reopening significant pieces of its permanent collection and opening new collections. One of the Vatican Museums’ new collections is composed of the smallest items that once belonged to the PioChristian Museum: a collection of sculptures, epigraphs and sarcophagi from the catacombs of Rome. The collection includes more than 1,000 medals, cameos, etched or gold-painted glass, ivories, oil lamps and bronze or silver cups and bottles

found in the catacombs of Rome and surrounding towns. While they are not famous masterpieces, “the objects are signs of deep personal devotion, of martyrdom and of conversion — this is the value, the beauty they still transmit today,” said Francesco Buranelli, director of the Vatican Museums.

Commitment to truth needed by Christian community, says pope VATICAN CITY — The love and unity that are essential marks of a truly Christian community cannot endure without a strong commitment to truth and fidelity to the Gospel, Pope Benedict XVI said. Those who believe in Christ and want to live in communion with his church have “a precise obligation” to “interrupt communion with those who have moved themselves away from the doctrine that saves,” the pope said April 5 at his weekly general audience. Differences and divisions have marked the history of the church since its beginning, he said, “and we should not be surprised that it exists today as well.” Preserving the unity of the church requires a firm commitment to loving others and to holding fast to the truth, the pope said during an audience talk marked by repeated departures from his prepared text. “Truth and love are two sides of the same gift that comes from God and is preserved in the church thanks to the apostolic ministry,” he said.

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Catholic san Francisco Northern California’s Weekly Catholic Newspaper

Official newspaper of the Archdiocese of San Francisco

Most Reverend George H. Niederauer, publisher Maurice E. Healy, associate publisher & executive editor Editorial Staff: Jack Smith, editor; Evelyn Zappia, feature editor; Tom Burke, “On the Street” and Datebook

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Advertising: Joseph Pena, director; Mary Podesta, account representative Sandy Dahl, advertising and promotion services Production: Karessa McCartney, manager Business Office: Marta Rebagliati, assistant business manager; Judy Morris, circulation and subscriber services Advisory Board: Jeffrey Burns, Ph.D., James Clifford, Fr. Thomas Daly, Joan Frawley Desmond, James Kelly, Deacon William Mitchell, Kevin Starr, Ph.D.

For information contact: Mary Ann Finch, Director Care Through Touch Institute PO Box 420427, San Francisco, CA 94142 (415) 345-9265 caringtouchinst@aol.com Catholic San Francisco editorial offices are located at One Peter Yorke Way, San Francisco, CA 94109. Tel: (415) 614-5640;Circulation: 1-800-563-0008 or (415) 614-5638; News fax: (415) 614-5633; Advertising: (415) 614-5642; Advertising fax: (415) 614-5641; Advertising E-mail: penaj@sfarchdiocese.org Catholic San Francisco (ISSN 15255298) is published weekly (four times per month) September through May, except in the week following Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day, and twice a month in June, July and August by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco, 1500 Mission Rd., P.O. Box 1577, Colma, CA 94014. Periodical postage paid at South San Francisco, CA. Annual subscription price: $27 within California, $36 outside the state.

Postmaster: Send address changes to Catholic San Francisco, 1500 Mission Rd., P.O. Box 1577, Colma, CA 94014 If there is an error in the mailing label affixed to this newspaper, call 1-800-563-0008. It is helpful to refer to the current mailing label.

April 14, 2006

Catholic San Francisco

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Honors for ’06 Fire Chief DAY OF CONSCIENCE FOR DARFUR at Holy Cross Cemetery SUNDAY, APRIL 30, 2006 Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Colma will mark the 100th anniversary of the Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire by honoring former San Francisco Fire Department Chief Engineer Dennis J. Sullivan.

Sullivan was at the Chief’s Quarters at 410 Bush Street with his wife when the earthquake struck.

The jolts caused the dome of the adjacent California Hotel to fall into the chief’s rooms on the third floor crashing the chief and his wife through the building to the ground. Chief Sullivan died four days later. His wife survived.

Sullivan, who was well respected and whose expertise would have proved use-

ful in battling the ensuing fires, was later honored by the City when the new chief’s residence was dedicated for him by Mayor James Rolph in 1923.

The ceremony at Holy Cross begins at 3:00 p.m. on April 18.

San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne HayesWhite will lay a wreath at Sullivan’s grave and Fire D e p a r t m e n t Chaplain Father John Greene will lead a prayer service. Fire chiefs from throughout the Bay Area will be present. The service also pays tribute to the heroic efforts of San Francisco firefighters during the 1906 disaster.

All are invited.

10:00 a.m.

1:30 p.m.

4:00 p.m.

Golden Gate Bridge Crissy Field, The Presidio Temple Emanu-El

We invite you to join us on April 30th to raise awareness of the 3.5 million victims of genocide in Darfur, Sudan.

“The horror of events unfolding in Darfur, to which my beloved predecessor Pope John Paul II referred on many occassions, points to the need for a stronger international resolve to ensure security and basic human rights. Today, I add my voice to the cry of the suffering.”

Pope Benedict XVI

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Catholic San Francisco

April 14, 2006

Notre Dame des Victoires Church Celebrates 150th Anniversary Four days of festivities are planned for the 150th Anniversary of San Francisco’s Notre Dame des Victoires Church, May 4-7, 2006.

The celebration includes a variety of activities including historical, cultural, culinary and athletic. The celebration concludes with a Thanksgiving Mass presided by Archbishop George H. Niederauer, May 7 at 12:15 p.m.

May 4: The Annual NDV Parents Association Golf Tournament launches the celebration at San Francisco’s Presidio Golf Course for a daylong tournament at the cost of $145, which includes green fees, a box lunch, and dinner held at the Presidio with a no-host bar.

Golfers of all skill levels are welcomed – beginners are encouraged. The proceeds will benefit various NDV school sports and cultural enrichment activities.

May 5: NDV Church, 6:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. Self-guided tours of the historic stain-glassed windows begin 6:30 p.m. A new booklet on the history of the Church windows will be introduced, and placed on sale that evening.

At 7 p.m. a free piano concert will begin in the Church performed by Suzanna Perez, an international classical pianist, and former NDV School parent.

Following the concert, a no-host cocktail reception will be held in the Church Hall, where a silent historical

video will be shown. The video was transferred from 16-millimeter film and burned on DVD. It depicts Notre Dame des Victories from 1923 to approximately 1962.

There is no charge for viewing the film – but it can also be purchased.

May 6: NDV School Auditorium, 6-10p.m. An informal gathering with food and wine ($17 donation per person) will be held at the NDV School auditorium. A complimentary commemorative wine glass will be given for each donation. Drink tickets will be available for $2.00 each.

Marist Father Etienne Siffert will unveil his book titled the 150th Anniversary of Notre Dame des Victories, San Francisco (1856-2006). The book chronicles NDV’s 150 years of Service to the French Catholic Community in the City. The cost is $17.

Artifacts and memorabilia regarding the Church will be available for viewing. Old books and pictures of the Church before and after the 1906 Earthquake will be displayed including French daily newspapers (1893 – 1920), and the trowel used by Bishop Edward J. Hanna, May 18, 1913 for the rebuilding of NDV. Other historical church artifacts will be displayed.

May 7: NDV Church 12:15 p.m. A Thanksgiving Mass will be presided by Archbishop George H. Niederauer. NDV School parents will be hosting a

reception immediately following the Mass in the Church Hall. Students of NDV will provide music. A tour of the School will be available.

Eglise Notre Dame des Victories was originally founded in 1856 to serve the spiritual needs of the French Catholic immigrants who came to San Francisco during the Gold Rush. In 1887, Pope Leo XIII signed the decree placing NDV under the charge of the Marists for perpetuity and giving it the designation of being a French National Church.

The church building was rededicated in 1915 after rising from the ashes of the 1906 Earthquake and Great Fire. The City of San Francisco declared NDV Church an historical landmark in 1984. After the 1989 Earthquake, the NDV Church and Rectory were thoroughly retrofitted in record time. The retrofit was fully paid with all funds coming from parishioners and parish fundraising activities.

Today, NDV continues its ministry to the French Catholics. Under the leadership of Marist Father Rene Iturbe, Eglise Notre Dame des Victoires consists of a vibrant, cross-cultural, cross-generational, and international faith community.

TV program airs April 16 on KRON-4 Father Rene Iturbe, a Society of Mary priest and pastor of Notre Dame des Victoires church in San Francisco, highlights the beginning of the parish 150 years ago, and talks with host Maury Healy about challenges of life, Marist spirituality, and modern-day outreach in an urban parish.

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Friday, April 28th • 1:30 - 3:00 p.m.

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Catholic San Francisco

7

By Patricia Zapor WASHINGTON (CNS) — From commonly used language to societal priorities, the “moral relativism” decried by Pope Benedict XVI often seems to be the only way to cope with modern times, said Bishop Robert C. Morlino of Madison, Wis., urging participants at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast April 7 to work against that tide.

In a program that also included remarks by President George W. Bush, the Vatican’s representative in Washington and the priest who is supervising the reconstruction of Catholic schools in New Orleans, Bishop Morlino’s keynote address warned about the “dictatorship of relativism” and described what he said are the “members of the junta” and the enforcement mechanisms they employ in maintaining that dictatorship.

He said the mass media and “those who pander to polls” keep society focused on relativism. They employ inconsistency between civil laws and practices and the use of language which hides the true meaning of certain activities to keep people from applying the moral standards of natural law to everyday life, he said.

Bishop Morlino gave the example of protests by some people against surveillance without warrants by government agencies in

pursuit of information about terrorism, while at the same time other U.S. groups encourage “warrantless surveillance” of people’s garbage bins, to ensure they are following local laws about recycling.

One type of surveillance is considered “politically incorrect,” he said, while the other is “politically correct” and accepted by the same people who decry the other type of surveillance.

“Redefinitions, euphemisms and anomalies” are among the language games he said people use to make what under natural law would be morally unacceptable to everyone become an accepted part of the normal life, Bishop Morlino said. For example, he said, Supreme Court justices are urged to be “uniters not dividers” by upholding Roe v.

Wade, the decision that legalized abortion nationwide.

Yet it is the Roe decision itself that divides the country in the first place, he said.

“Language games are very dangerous,” Bishop Morlino said, citing the confusing use of the word “mother” in situations where a child is conceived by in-vitro fertilization, or an embryo is implanted in a woman with no biological connection to it, or a newborn baby is adopted by another woman.

He encouraged the audience of about

EDUCATION –––– SUMMER GUIDE

(CNS PHOTO/BOB ROLLER)

At Catholic prayer breakfast, bishop urges battling moral relativism

U.S. President George W. Bush waves to the audience as Mother Assumpta Long of the Sisters of Mary Mother of the Eucharist and Joseph Cella, founder of the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, smile as the president departs the April 7 breakfast in Washington.

1,600 people from around the country to try to encourage the acceptance of natural law as the prevailing moral principle of society and to come up with a “catchy sound bite” that would help get the philosophy into general public usage.

Bishop Morlino described natural law as the innate understandings that humans of

all backgrounds come to — that God exists, that human beings have unique dignity and that a union of one man and one woman for a lifetime is the way nature intended.

In his remarks, Bush expressed appreciation for the Catholic Church’s role in encouraging “a vision of human freedom PRAYER BREAKFAST, page 11

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Catholic San Francisco

April 14, 2006

Send-off of pilgrim cross opens countdown to World Youth Day 2008

By John Thavis VATICAN CITY (CNS) — With the carrying of a pilgrim cross and the cheers of young Australians, the “road to Sydney” and World Youth Day 2008 were officially opened at the Vatican.

Pope Benedict XVI sent the World Youth Day cross on a two-year trip across Africa and Oceania after a Palm Sunday liturgy April 9. Accepting it were young Australians, eager for the spiritual spotlight that will soon begin to swing across their country.

With Australian flags unfurled, the young people indulged in some lively celebration after the liturgy in St. Peter’s Square.

“That was the spirit of Sydney on display,” Morris Iemma, premier of the Australian state New South Wales, remarked at a press conference afterward.

He predicted that young people would find Sydney “the friendliest city and the most welcoming city” in the world.

Pope Benedict XVI gave the organizers a morale boost when he told pilgrims, “See you in Sydney, God willing.” When Australia was announced last year as the venue for the next international gathering, there was doubt about whether the pope would make the trip, but he recently assured Cardinal George Pell of Sydney that he planned to come.

Civil authorities expect about 130,000 foreign youths to come to Australia in 2008 for the July 15-20 celebrations, to be joined by about twice that number from Australia.

Some 500,000 people are expected to attend the closing papal Mass, which would make it the biggest event ever to take place in Sydney.

Malcolm Turnbull, the parliamentary

secretary to Prime Minister John Howard, announced at the Vatican press conference that the federal government was donating $20 million (about US$14.5 million) to World Youth Day, as well as providing logistical services.

Cardinal Pell said authorities had been extremely cooperative in discussions on visas, a chronic problem during the international World Youth Day encounters. He said the government would keep current immigration rules in place, but would impose no quotas on visas — and no quotas on individual countries.

The cardinal said authorities would try to make sure that those applying for visas were genuine Catholics. But he said Australia would not duplicate the muchpublicized effort by Germany, host of World Youth Day in 2005, when some visa applicants were given a catechism quiz.

Within Australia, Bishop Fisher said, the invitation to participate will be broader.

“What we’re saying is that World Youth Day is an unabashedly Catholic event, but is open to all — those who have any or no religion,” he said.

It’s the first time the event will be held in Oceania, and the distance means fewer participants are expected from Europe, North America and South America.

On the other hand, organizers are drumming up interest in New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the Pacific, offering travel

subsidies to poorer youths, and are counting on significant participation from Asian nations like the Philippines, South Korea and India.

Cardinal Pell said World Youth Day would also welcome Chinese Catholics “with open arms.”

“I suppose that depends partly on what happens between the government of China and the Vatican, where, please God, they’re on the brink of a new level of cooperation,” he said.

Cardinal Pell said Sydney would meet the organizational demands with flying colors.

“The real challenge for us, the Catholic community, is the spiritual and religious dimension,” he said.

The pilgrimage of the World Youth Day cross will have a key role in awakening interest and spurring spiritual reflection across the country, Bishop Fisher said. He compared it to the

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relay of the Olympic torch, which came through Australia when the country hosted the Summer Olympics in 2000.

“But this time it’s not about sport; it’s about faith, and hope in young people,” he said.

The World Youth Day program includes a Way of the Cross through Sydney, which will probably traverse five of the seven bridges over Sydney Harbor, Bishop Fisher said.

The World Youth Day logo, publicly displayed during the Palm Sunday liturgy, features a design that combines the cross, the flame of the Holy Spirit and the distinctive shells of the Sydney Opera House.

When Australian journalists wondered, tongue in cheek, whether the opera house was in flames, Cardinal Pell assured them, “No, that’s the flame of love.”

Young people submitted hundreds of ideas for the logo, and a professional design company worked with the best suggestions.

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Catholic San Francisco

April 14, 2006

9

Christian Churches Together in the USA is officially started

By Jerry Filteau WASHINGTON (CNS) — Christian Churches Together in the USA — the broadest, most inclusive ecumenical movement in U.S. history — was officially founded during a March 28-31 gathering near Atlanta.

Its founding 34 Christian churches and national organizations represent more than 100 million Americans. Twenty-two additional churches and organizations are participating as observers or are in the process of deciding about joining, and more than 30 others are in conversation with Christian Churches Together.

Cardinal William H. Keeler of Baltimore, who hosted a 2001 meeting in Baltimore at which plans for the new organization first took shape, will represent the Catholic Church as one of its five co-presidents. He said he was “delighted that the work we began in Baltimore has continued to prosper.�

Christian Churches Together is intended as a forum of ecumenical dialogue and witness involving the participation of representatives from all five major Christian families of churches in the United States: Catholic, Orthodox, historic Protestant, evangelical/Pentecostal, and historic racial/ethnic.

Its mission is “to enable churches and Christian organizations to grow closer

together in Christ in order to strengthen our Christian witness in the world.�

National leaders from all five families participated in the late March meeting, held at the United Methodist Church’s Simpsonwood Conference Center, a wooded retreat site on the Chattahoochee River outside Atlanta.

The nation’s Catholic bishops voted to participate in Christian Churches Together during their November 2004 meeting. A 12-member delegation of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, headed by Bishop Stephen E. Blaire of Stockton, former chairman of the USCCB Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, attended the founding meeting.

In accord with the structure of the new organization, the USCCB delegation chose Cardinal Keeler, Bishop Blaire and Paulist Father Ronald G. Roberson, an associate director of the USCCB Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, to serve on the Christian Churches Together steering committee.

Another Catholic, Mercy Sister Ana Maria Pineda of the religious studies department of Santa Clara University in California, was chosen as an at-large member of the steering committee.

Throughout its formational stages Christian Churches Together has given pri-

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ority to sharing in prayer and worship, building relationships of trust and discerning the challenges of more faithful Christian witness that need to be addressed in society.

During the founding meeting the group focused on poverty in the United States. It engaged in biblical reflection on the issue and conversations with academic experts and people who have experienced poverty.

The participants affirmed that working to overcome poverty is “central to the mission of the church and essential to our unity in Christ.� They committed themselves to working together on the issue.

Bishop Blaire called Catholic participation in Christian Churches Together “an important step forward in the process towards

Christian unity that Jesus Christ wills for us.� “The Catholic Church is deeply committed, as integral to her mission, to the full, visible communion of all Christians,� he said.

Father Roberson said he believes the founding meeting will come to be viewed as a watershed in the U.S. history of ecumenism. “At the same time, we did this with a sense of incompleteness,� he said. “We really felt the absence of some of our country’s churches and we continue to hope they will join us in this new initiative.�

The nation’s second largest Christian denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, is still considering whether to join, as are the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the Church of God in Christ.

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Catholic San Francisco

April 14, 2006

Local sister wins Human Life Award Sister Marie Ignatius Clune, a religious who has dedicated her life to helping young people, particularly young women, achieve their goals within the context of their faith, was awarded the 2006 United for Life Human Life Award.

While many recipients of the award are San Franciscans who have made headlines, Sister Ignatius’ award was for a lifetime, presenter Mary Ann Schwab said at the March 25th award banquet held at the Irish Cultural Center.

Schwab who coordinates the Archdiocese of San Francisco’s outreach to those suffering following an abortion said Sister Ignatius provides “living witness to the spiritual and corporal works of mercy of the Church.� “Without any doubt she is an extraordinarily apostolic woman,� said John Galten, president of Trinity Grammar and Prep in Napa, and former director of the Saint Ignatius Institute at the University of San Francisco. “She is a striking example of what the Second Vatican Council meant by the renewed religious life.�

For many years a teacher and then a principal, Sister Ignatius then obtained two graduate degrees in theology and worked for 20 years in campus ministry for the University of San Francisco and later Campion College.

Twelve years ago, Sister Ignatius founded Heart of Mary

Ministries, a program that offers a faith-filled group living experience for up to fourteen young women, primarily college students, living in San Francisco.

Sister Ignatius’ 46 years of work as a religious always included pro-life ministry, tutoring and other service to children from disadvantaged areas, Schwab said. Some of those activities included going with her “girls� to Rosaries for life at abortion clinics, attending the annual March for Life in Washington, advocating in Sacramento, and serving hot chocolate to the homeless in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. “She has exceptional devotion to the poor,� said Galten. “The list of things that she does, getting kids involved in visiting homeless shelters, going down to St. Anthony’s Kitchen.

There’s a women’s shelter in San Francisco that she’s been quite devoted to. She took a group of students down to Tijuana. She is very, very committed to the social justice teaching of the church, very committed to young people.�

Sister Ignatius is a member of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary and a familiar black-clad figure in the environs of St. Ignatius Church, walking, talking with her proteges, advising those who ask, and praying quietly in front of the Blessed Sacrament.

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Catholic San Francisco

11

San Francisco Supervisors face lawsuit for anti-Catholic stance

By Jack Smith The San Francisco Board of Supervisors are being sued in a civil rights action over a resolution they passed unanimously March 21 condemning Catholic Church teaching, the Vatican and Cardinal William J. Levada.

Supervisor Tom Ammiano brought the resolution before the Board after Levada, responding to a Boston Globe inquiry on adoptions to same-sex couples, said, “Catholic agencies should not place children for adoption with homosexual households.”

The Supervisors’ resolution said Levada’s statement amounted to meddling from a “foreign country,” was “hateful and discriminatory . . .and shows a level of insensitivity and ignorance which has seldom been encountered by the Board of Supervisors.”

The resolution said Levada is a “decidedly unqualified representative of his former home city, and of the people of San Francisco.”

Supervisors urged San Francisco Archbishop George H.

Prayer Breakfast . . .

■ Continued from page 7 and dignity rooted in the same self-evident truths of America’s founding.” He also acknowledged the church’s role in providing social services, and in “welcoming neighbors and helping them become good citizens.”

Referring to the ongoing legislative battle to craft an immigration bill, Bush repeated his call for changes to “an

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Niederauer and Catholic Charities to “defy all discriminatory directives of Cardinal Levada,” and resolved to urge Levada to “withdraw his discriminatory and defamatory directive.”

The suit, brought by the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan, claims “the startling attack by government officials on the Catholic Church . . . violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.” It asks the United States District Court to declare that the Supervisors have violated the Establishment Clause of the Constitution and enjoin the Supervisors’ practice of “attacking religion and religious beliefs and practices that they disagree with.”

The action is brought on behalf of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and San Francisco citizens Valerie Meehan and Dr. Richard Sonnenshein.

Sonnenshein, along with 6,000 others in the Bay Area, is a member of the Catholic League and Meehan is a third generation Catholic San Franciscan.

Thomas More Law Center President Richard Thompson

told Catholic San Francisco “the Constitution prohibits the promotion of any religion,” and that it has “also been interpreted to bar the disapproval of or interference with the internal affairs of any religion.” The Supervisors are “promoting hostility to the Catholic Church,” he said, and “Catholics are made to feel outside the political community.”

Thompson said the case was “highly unusual” and that he is “not aware of any modern case where a government agency has specifically attacked a church . . .No other city has gone to the extent San Francisco has.” Thompson said the effect of the resolution is “that faithful Catholics become intimidated and keep their mouths shut.”

The lawsuit was filed April 4 with the United States District Court. The City has 60 days to respond from the date they are served, which Thompson said would be at their regularly scheduled Board meeting on April 11.

The Thomas More Law Center, www.thomasmore.org, is a non-profit public interest law firm which defends the religious freedom of Christians.

immigration system that forces people into the shadows of our society, or leaves them prey to criminals.”

As Congress continues the debate, he said, its members must remember “we are a nation of immigrants. And immigration has helped restore our soul on a regular basis.”

Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the Vatican’s diplomatic representative to Washington, and Dominican Father Neal McDermott, who is in charge of school reconstruction in the Archdiocese of New Orleans, also made brief remarks.

Among those attending the third such Catholic prayer

breakfast were Chief Justice John Roberts, Republican Sens.

Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Sam Brownback of Kansas, a handful of Republican members of Congress and one Democratic member, Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan, as well as several current and former officials of the Bush administration.

Cardinals Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington and Anthony J. Bevilacqua, retired archbishop of Philadelphia, were joined by Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of San Antonio, Bishop Paul S. Loverde of Arlington, Va., and Auxiliary Bishop Martin D. Holley of Washington.

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Catholic San Francisco

April 14, 2006

RESURRECTION OF THE LORD THE MASS OF EASTER DAY Acts 10:34a, 37-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 16-17, 22-23’ Colossians 3:1-4 or 1 Corinthians 5:6b-8; John 20:1-9 A READING FROM THE LETTER OF SAINT PAUL TO THE COLOSSIANS (COL 3:1-4) Brothers and sisters: If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not of what is on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.

A READING FROM THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES (ACTS 10:34A, 37-43) Peter proceeded to speak and said: “You know what has happened all over Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power. He went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.

We are witnesses of all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree.

This man God raised on the third day and granted that he be visible, not to all the people, but to us, the witnesses chosen by God in advance, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commissioned us to preach to the people and testify that he is the one appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead. To him all the prophets bear witness, that everyone who believes in him will receive forgiveness of sins through his name.”

OR THE FIRST LETTER OF SAINT PAUL TO THE CORINTHIANS (1 COR 5:6B-8) Brothers and sisters: Do you not know that a little yeast leavens all the dough? Clear out the old yeast, so that you may become a fresh batch of dough, inasmuch as you are unleavened. For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed.

Therefore, let us celebrate the feast, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

RESPONSORIAL PSALM (PS 118:1-2, 16-17, 22-23) R. This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever.

Let the house of Israel say, “His mercy endures forever.”

R. This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.

“The right hand of the Lord has struck with power; the right hand of the Lord is exalted.

I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord.”

R. This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.

The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

By the Lord has this been done; it is wonderful in our eyes.

R. This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.

A READING FROM THE HOLY GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN (JN 20:1-9) On the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark, and saw the stone removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him.” So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb. They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first; he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in. When Simon Peter arrived after him, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there, and the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place. Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed. For they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.

Russian icon of the Resurrection.

Scripture FATHER ALLAN WHITE, O.P.

He finds us The message of the resurrection is that If you mention the word theology to many people they are liable to turn up Christ still lays hold of us. The way we can their noses and imagine scholarly stud- stay in touch with him is by allowing ouries, containing shelf upon shelf of dusty selves to be touched by him and in bringing and abstruse volumes, pored over by des- his touch to others.

The only person who declines to touch iccated scholars who habitually dwell in the higher realms of abstraction. But it is him is in fact Thomas. Thomas was the one actually possible to study theology who clung to the literal reality of the death of Jesus. Others might have preferred to forget through art.

The artistic traditions of the eastern the reality of Jesus’s death, but Thomas and western Churches portray the resur- could not: for him the wounds were real.

When confronted with the risen Christ, he rection differently. We westerners are very concerned with history and with declines the invitation to place his hands in events. We like to try and freeze the res- the marks of his sufferings. There is no need.

Thomas confesses that Jesus has laid hold on urrection into an event.

The fact that there is no description in him; he has been touched by the risen Christ.

The lesson that the earliest generations scripture of the process of the resurrection, far from inhibiting western artists, of Christians learned is necessary for us has actually given their imaginations free too. We need to allow ourselves to be rein. You will all be familiar with the touched by Christ, to be drawn into comspectacular depictions of Christ emerg- munion with him.

The Welsh poet R. S. Thomas has a line ing from the tomb in various states of undress, radiating power and majesty in one of his poems: He is such a fast brandishing the standard of the resurrecGod, always before us and tion, a red cross on a white ground, Leaving us as we arrive. before him.

The eastern tradition does not show We often imagine ourselves pursuing an the event so much as its effect. The finest elusive God, trying to find him as the treasure in ikons show a majestic Christ, springing the field. The message of the resurrection is that down amongst the ranks of the faithful he finds us. The seekers at the tomb could not dead, drawing them up in a glorious find him until he had found them. Redemption chain dance of joy. Christ lays hold of is allowing oneself to be found by God. them all, and in the Spirit, draws them Fr. Allan White is Prior Provincial into the communion he enjoys with the of the English Province of the Father, a communion that even death Order of Preachers. cannot sunder.

Jesus’ mission was physical. He reached out and touched especially those excluded from the communion of society; those who followed him had also, in some way, been touched by him. He had laid his hands on them, drawn them away from their nets, from their tax offices, from their hearths and homes.

His touch had caused them to leave everything and follow him. Their despairing conviction when faced with his death was that they would never again know his touch. The withdrawal of Jesus from their lives may involve their losing touch with each other.

When the women went to the tomb with spices, it was to embalm the body.

They did not want it to wither away. They wanted to preserve it, to hold on to it, to stay in touch with it. But the precious body of the Lord was not there.

They meet the risen Christ when they have turned away from the tomb, and left everything behind them. Jesus discloses himself to them by greeting them or calling them by name. The spontaneous reaction that this evokes is the desire to hang on; the women fall at his feet and cling to him.

It is almost as if they wish to ensure that he stays there firmly planted in their midst. He will Women at the tomb (detail) – only stay there if they Benozzo Gozzoli, 1440-1441. hang on to him.

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Catholic San Francisco

April 14, 2006

Welcoming the stranger: Thoughts on illegal immigration

By Father Peter J. Daly According to my father, I am descended from illegal immigrants. At least on my father’s side. My father’s family was from Ireland. His father was a Daly. His mother was a Murphy. (You can’t get much more Irish than that.)

Both families, Dalys and Murphys, came into the States via Canada. In those days, Ireland was part of the British Empire. So was Canada. Evidently it was fairly easy for Irish to get a ship to Canada, which they could enter legally. From there they could make their way across the northern U.S. border to Irish communities in Boston or New York. They had no papers. Nobody was checking. When they got here they got lost in a sea of their countrymen.

Some were legal, a great many were here illegally.

Five generations later, some descendents of the same people who came here — sometimes illegally — from Ireland, Germany, Scandinavia and Italy want to slam the door on others, especially Mexicans.

Mexicans are not the first people to enter the United States illegally in large numbers. After all, the epithet hurled at Italian Americans for years was “WOP,” for many an acronym for “without papers.”

In the 19th century, when many Irish immigrants arrived by the boatload, there was a xenophobic movement in this country. (Xenophobia is the “fear of foreigners.” “Xeno” in Greek means “stranger” or “foreigner.”)

These xenophobes had a nickname: Know Nothings.

They even became a political party for a while. They existed to keep out the tide of immigrants, mostly Catholic, that threatened the way of life of mostly Protestant America.

Today we have new xenophobic groups, like the Minutemen. They are the spiritual heirs of the Know Nothings. Like their spiritual ancestors, they know just about nothing about history, culture, religion, justice and economics.

Ever since people migrated across the Bering Sea and down from what is now Canada thousands of years ago to become what we call Native Americans, people have been coming to this hemisphere. Migration cannot be stopped. It can only be channeled.

Our goal should be to create a legal way for people to enter our society without criminalizing their quest to improve lives.

The Pew Research Center conducted a poll of residents of the Washington, D.C., region by telephone and in English. Some 54 percent of the area’s people favor government-supported labor centers. More than one-third

37 Million Immigrants Less than a third of those born in other countries are in the U.S. illegally. legal permanent residents

Unauthorized Population Demographic profile of estimated 11 million unauthorized migrants in the United States

WHO THEY ARE

31%

28%

naturalized citizens

adult males

49%

30%

7% refugees 3% temporary legal residents

35%

adult females

16% children

unauthorized immigrants

WHERE THEY CAME FROM Source: Pew Hispanic Center demographic estimates based on 2005 Current Population survey

©2006 CNS

of those surveyed (37 percent) would let illegal immigrants stay permanently. Another 28 percent of Washington-area residents would create a temporary “guest worker” program. Only 21 percent were in favor of deportation.

In other words, two-thirds of the people around Washington think illegal immigrants should be given some kind of legal status.

An immigration bill that recently was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives would make it a felony to hire or assist anyone who is the United States illegally.

Our church, like many other Catholic churches, has been helping immigrants for many years. We do not ask if someone is here legally or illegally. Most of these people are from Mexico or Central America or the islands of the Caribbean. Most are probably illegal.

We are not going to stop our assistance. That would violate God’s law to welcome the stranger.

I hope the House bill does not become law. If it does, I will just have to commit civil disobedience.

I owe it to the hardworking, good, gentle people who come to my door. I also owe it to my ancestors who came here the same way.

Father Peter J. Daly writes a column for Catholic News Service

All Gospels are not created equal Christian history as a battle between competing understandings of who Jesus was. The Christians who called themselves “orthoOn April 6, the National Geographic Society published an dox” had the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, English translation of the long-anticipated “lost” “Gospel of and John that appear in today’s New Testament. Other Judas,” a Coptic text on papyrus dug out of the Egyptian desert. Christians, including the Gnostics, had their own gospels, but The release of this Gnostic neither the orthodox nor the text, which makes a sympathetGnostics had truer insights into ic figure out of Judas Iscariot, Jesus. The orthodox just hapthe disciple who betrayed Jesus, pened to win the battle. has generated a furor of exciteUnfortunately, this picture is ment. Bart Ehrman, author of wildly misleading at almost every the best-selling “Misquoting point. The most important point Jesus,” called the Gospel “one is that all gospels are not created of the greatest historical discovequal. Some have more historical eries of the twentieth century.” credibility than others, more A headline in The Washington claim to provide an accurate and Post declared: “Ancient ‘Gospel nearly contemporary picture of of Judas’ Translation Sheds the time of Jesus and his first folNew Light on Disciple.” The lowers. Among the various comNew York Times quotes a claim petitors, the four canonical

by Elaine Pagels, author of gospels have no serious rivals.

“The Gnostic Gospels,” that the All were in place in substantially discovery of the Judas Gospel their modern form by around 100 and related Gnostic texts “are C.E., and all describe historical exploding the myth of a monosettings firmly rooted in the first lithic religion, and demonstratcentury. By contrast, the vast ing how diverse—and fascinatmajority of Gnostic gospels were ing—the early Christian movecomposed after 150 C.E., and Judas kisses Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane ment really was.” many as late as 250. as Jesus is handed over to soldiers in this detail But readers who scan the Gnostic gospels also differ from a contemporary Bible illumination.

“Gospel of Judas” might wonfrom the Big Four in their lack der what the fuss is all about. of interest in historical setting The 24-page gospel consists mostly of a long conversation and background. In the Gnostic gospels, Jesus, Judas, Peter, between Jesus and Judas. Like most Gnostic texts of the sec- and Mary Magdalene are not even historical characters, but ond-century C.E. (which is when the original of the Judas have become mere mouthpieces for spiritual truths—so it is Gospel was probably written in Greek), Jesus talks about ridiculous to suggest that the “Gospel of Judas” sheds any many different Gnostic deities and angels. It seems that light on the actual Judas or his motives.

Judas is the only one of the 12 disciples Jesus deems worthy Also dubious are the claims made for the supposed startling of imparting this secret knowledge to. Jesus then asks Judas or revolutionary qualities of the “Gospel of Judas.” Nothing in to betray him so that his mortal body will be killed and he it—in tone, content, or substance—differs significantly from can rejoin the spiritual world. Judas agrees and goes to the any one of dozens of Gnostic texts whose contents we have high priests to betray Jesus: That’s the end of the gospel. known since at least the 19th century, with the publication of The reason that many scholars and members of the press have works such as the Pistis Sophia, a second- or third-century text characterized this ho-hum Gnostic document as a momentous recording a prolonged conversation between Jesus and Mary leap in our understanding is that it fits in with their model of early Magdalene. To appreciate just how much non-specialists (CNS PHOTO/NANCY WIECHEC)

By Philip Jenkins

in millions

6.2 2.5

Mexico

other Latin American countries

1.5 Asia 1 other WHEN THEY ARRIVED IN U.S.

40%

1990s

44%

20002005

16% 1980s

TYPES OF WORK THEY DO » » » »

service industry construction, extraction production, installation, repair sales, administrative, support

Source: Pew Hispanic Center 2006 report based on March 2005 Current Population Survey

31% 19% 15% 12% ©2006 CNS

Just what is gnosticism?

An understanding of gnosticism is key to making sense of the newly unveiled Gospel of Judas, a gnostic writing put on display April 6 at the National Geographic Society in Washington.

Early Christians used the term to describe various sects that arose in the second century which exalted arcane knowledge, mixing Christian belief with pagan speculation and theories. “Gnosis” is the Greek word for knowledge. Repudiated as heretics, gnostics claimed that salvation could be obtained only through the knowledge and acceptance of certain divinely revealed mysteries which they alone possessed.

Until the 20th century most of what was known about gnosticism came from the anti-gnostic writings of Christian theologians of the second and third centuries.

That has changed since 1945, when an ancient library of about 50 gnostic works in Coptic, including the so-called Gospel of Thomas, was discovered in a cemetery near the modern Egyptian village of Nag Hammadi. already knew about the Gnostics and their worldview, look at a best-selling popular guide like the “Apocryphal New Testament” of M. R. James (1924), or read Robert Graves’ spectacular fantasy novel, “King Jesus” (1946). And both were written long before the Nag Hammadi material became available, or indeed before the discovery of the “Gospel of Judas.”

Furthermore, contrary to what Pagels and others imply, scholars have realized for more than a century that early Christianity was kaleidoscopically diverse and that many weird and wonderful scriptures circulated. As early as 1893, E. J. Dillon wrote: “Nowadays, no impartial critic, or even enlightened theologian, holds to the once general belief that the four gospels of the Christian canon either headed the list of written narratives of the living and working of Jesus, or absorbed the vast mass of tradition which speedily gathered around his name.”

In short, the “Gospel of Judas” tells us nothing about the historical Jesus or Judas; it adds next to nothing to our knowledge of early Gnosticism or of sectarian Christianity; and it actually adds very little indeed that was not already known from texts published a century or more ago.

Philip Jenkins is Distinguished Professor of History and Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University and the author of “Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way” and other books. This article originally appeared on Beliefnet.

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Catholic San Francisco

April 14, 2006

Catholic san Francisco Northern California’s Weekly Catholic Newspaper

In the state’s image and likeness

By Father Richard J. Neuhaus Some tough words from the usually understated and scrupulously cautious Mark Chopko, general counsel of the U.S. bishops conference: Surveying legislative and regulative initiatives impinging upon various medical, social, and educational ministries, he says religious institutions are being “subjected to pressures to conform to the culture in ways that are contrary to their teachings.

These pressures are overt and subtle, direct and indirect . . . Our institutions are under pressure to deliver services exactly as their secular counterparts do” and “the ability of religious institutions to ask that those who work for us act in harmony with the mission of the Church is under assault.”

In some places, says Chopko, the political process “is dominated by legislators and interest groups that believe Catholic ministries and practices are out of touch and should either be forced to reform through the process of law or withdraw from those ministries.” “At its core, this debate is not only about abortion or contraception or lifestyle or any particular issue; it is about an expansive government remaking religious agencies in its own image and likeness.”

In the forthcoming issue of FIRST THINGS, which should be in the mail in the next ten days or so, I have an extensive reflection on Benedict XVI’s first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est (God is Love). In that document, he cautions that Catholic ministries in the public square must assiduously protect their integrity against the ambitions of the modern state to subsume all social services. In the same issue, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver has a forceful article underscoring the ways in which state legislators, under the guise of “protecting children,” are working in tandem with trial lawyers and interest groups to gravely cripple the Church’s educational and social ministries.

In Boston and San Francisco, the hot issue is adoption by same-sex couples, and over that issue the Boston Archdiocese was forced out of providing adoption services. In other places, anti-discrimination laws are employed to prevent church-related social services from hiring people on the basis of their sharing the mission for which such services were established. Medical services are being bullied into providing contraceptive measures and abortions, or at least referral to abortionists, in direct contradiction of the Church’s teaching.

This is not just a Catholic concern. While the Catholic Church is the largest community and has the largest network of social and educational services, the assault is against the free exercise of religion. Religious communities that do not necessarily agree with Catholic moral teaching should be taking alarm. It is past time for them to be speaking out. They, too, will sooner rather than later be targeted by those who are driven by a prejudice that is accurately described as totalitarian. I use the term advisedly. It was Mussolini who first set forth the totalitarian maxim: Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.

Of course, those who are pressing religious institutions to conform to the culture (as they define the culture) and who are advancing the subordination of such institutions to state control do not think of themselves as fascists or totalitarians, and in other respects they are not. But in many circles there is a powerful mindset that views religious and other independent social services as an anomaly. In a modern, rational, well-ordered society, it is said, all such services would be coordinated under government control. In this view, there is little or no room for what Peter Berger and I described in To Empower People as the “mediating institutions” of society that stand between the isolated individual and the megastructures such as the state. The current attack is also an attack on pluralism, which includes institutional pluralism.

It is perhaps ironic that this comes at a time when the administration in Washington is enthusiastic about “faith-based initiatives.” Others would say that it is not ironic at all; that, whatever the good intentions, the faith-based initiatives program will have the result of seductively co-opting religious services by making them dependent on state funding. But that is an argument for another time.

What is disturbingly evident now is, as Mark Chopko says, the new aggressiveness in “expansive government remaking religious agencies in its own image and likeness.” The Catholic Church is the main target, in part because it is the biggest target. The efforts to increase the Church’s financial liability by, for instance, suspending statutes of limitations for sex abuse and other offenses, is also driven by legal looters who presume that the Catholic Church has the deepest pockets. That is the case if, as some courts have ruled, every Catholic institution over which a bishop has jurisdiction is deemed to be an asset that can be seized for damages. In this way, some dioceses have already been forced into bankruptcy. The patrimony built by the sacrificial offerings of generations of the faithful is now increasingly up for grabs.

There are many dimensions of this new aggression, with different players and different motives involved. What is at stake, and what is newly imperiled, is religious freedom and the diversity of institutional ways in which Americans have traditionally addressed human needs. This is not just a Catholic thing.

This article originally appeared on the Weblog of First Things, the Journal of Religion, Culture and Public Life (www.firstthings.com). Reprinted with permission.

Easter 2005 Message from Archbishop George H. Niederauer “The Lamb who was slain is alive. . . bearing the marks of his Passion in the splendor of the Resurrection. He alone is master of all the events of history. He proclaims, in time and beyond, the power for life over death.” (Pope John Paul II) As we recline with Jesus in the upper room on Holy Thursday evening; as we follow the Way of the Cross and stand beneath it with Mary on Good Friday; as we wait, hoping against hope, on Holy Saturday; as we sing with joy at the Easter Vigil and on Sunday, let us give thanks for the constant, immediate, daily reality of Resurrection in our life with Christ.

The good news of Resurrection in Christ, like any gift, is given us to share. “What you have received as a gift, give as a gift.” (Mt. 10:8) the Risen Christ calls us to proclaim and live the gospel of life. When we oppose abortion, support and protect unwed mothers, work for decent living conditions and health care for all families, and pray for all human life in its beginnings, we do the work of resurrection. When we oppose war and all violence, and pray for peace and the safe return of our troops, we are doing the work of resurrection. When we fight against euthanasia, pray for and visit the sick, and give special attention and help to the aging, again we do the work of resurrection. When we welcome the stranger among us, when we deal justly, fairly and compassionately with all immigrants, we do the work of resurrection.

Many times we will bear the scars of such personal and social strivings, just as the Risen Jesus bore the marks of the nails in his hands and feet. But we will be alive, as he is alive, with the good news of the Father’s love, the good news that cannot die, and will allow no final dying in anyone it fills with Risen life.

Church of the masses For the first time in several years, I decided to go to a movie last weekend. Like many Catholics, I have rather low expectations when it comes to movies, so I wasn’t surprised to leave the theater with a feeling of discontent.

But it wasn’t anything I saw or heard during the film that troubled me; it was what I didn’t hear. Remarkably, not once during a two-hour movie did I hear people chatting, cell phones ringing, babies crying, toddlers screaming, or children chasing each other through the aisles.

It wasn’t troubling, of course, that I didn’t hear these things in the theater; in fact, it shouldn’t have even been surprising (after all, such distractions simply aren’t tolerated there). The thing that disturbed me was the realization that behaviors regarded as offensive and intolerable in a movie theater have become standard practice during the celebration of the Eucharist.

Imagine the absurdity of this astonishing fact: man’s quest for spiritual truth and enlightenment has arrived at a point where George Clooney commands a greater sense of reverence and piety than the Divine presence of God. How did we come to this point? When did the holy mass evolve from a sacramental offering in memory of Christ’s suffering and death on the cross to a mere weekly social gathering? How did the aisles of God’s house become runways for the weekly review of the Gap Kids spring collection?

Regrettably, the unavoidable truth is that we are responsible. By sitting in silence and tolerating the egotism and irreverence of those who carelessly disregard the solemnity of the Eucharist, we become responsible.

Ken Glasscock Novato

Illegal enablers

Catholic San Francisco welcomes letters from its readers.

Please send your letters to: Catholic San Francisco One Peter Yorke Way San Francisco, CA 94109 Fax: (415) 614-5641 E-mail: healym@sfarchdiocese.org

Practice nonproliferation TIME’s April 3 edition referring to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asked “Will This Man Get The Bomb?”

The proper question should be, “Why not?”

Weapons of Mass Destruction are morally evil because they are built, as their name implies, to kill indiscriminate masses of people, innocent civilians by the tens of thousands.

Since they are evil, they should not be in any nation’s arsenal of weapons, because no nation is morally permitted to use them.

Nuclear anti-proliferation talks are unreasonable and a waste of time as long as even one of the participants is permitted to have, and is able to use, nuclear weapons.

Isn’t it the duty of every responsible nation to arm itself against the possibility of a nuclear threat by building for itself a suitable nuclear defense?

Why should Iran (and North Korea) not have the bomb like the USA, Russia, Pakistan, India and Israel are currently permitted to have? Shouldn’t they also build an adequate nuclear defense against nations that have it?

In the USA we control literally thousands of WMDs. We are able to use them and we did use them. We are the only country on earth that has immorally used an atom bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing, maiming and disfiguring two hundred thousand innocent civilians. Who gave us the moral right to prevent Iran and North Korea from having, if they can develop it, the same weapon of mass destruction which we have and which we have used? Regrettable was the deafening silence of most official churchmen about the immorality of what must have been one of President Truman’s most difficult personal decisions. Yes, because of the unprecedented terrible pressure of that war moment, Truman can be easily forgiven his immoral decision, but that decision remains immoral.

Nuclear anti-proliferation talks will begin to make sense only when the United States and all the other nuclear-capable countries voluntarily destroy their own arsenals of WMDs, and unite firmly with every nation on earth against any nation that would dare rebuild them.

No nation could possibly survive the threat of a total boycott and embargo by a united world that preaches what it practices.

Fr. Larry N. Lorenzoni, S.D.B. San Francisco

L E T T E R S

I was stunned by your March 17 editorial by Father Larry Snyder on immigration. It’s a given that our immigration system is in real trouble, and families get caught up in this system and need help.

However I strongly disagree with the passage that illegals have the “right” to migrate. You are enabling this attitude which contributes to undermining the middle class of this country.

The construction industry has been decimated, especially in Los Angeles. Your are giving charity with other peoples wages and

Letters welcome

resources and that is wrong. Illegal immigrants drag down wages for legal immigrants, untrained workers and the handicapped. What about our overwhelmed schools and medical care system? What about our post 9/11 border security problems.

Pat Keylon South San Francisco

April 14, 2006

Catholic San Francisco

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The Catholic Difference Why is the cross the most apt of Christian symbols? G.K. Chesterton offered a typically, well, Chestertonian answer in his masterpiece, Orthodoxy. A circle, Chesterton wrote, suggests infinity and perfection, but a perfection “fixed forever in its size.” By contrast, the cross “has at its heart a collision and a contradiction.” And because of that, it “can extend its four arms forever without altering its shape. Because it has a paradox in its center it can grow without changing. The circle returns in upon itself and is bound. The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travelers.”

Chesterton’s insight into the universal embrace of the cross has a long pedigree in Christian theology; the Latin and Greek Fathers of the Church spoke of the cross in analogous ways.

Thus that late first century manual of Christian prayers and practices, the Didache, describes the cross as a “sign of expansion.”

St. Cyril of Jerusalem picked up on that image, noting that only God could be so expansive: “On the cross,” Cyril wrote, the Son of God “stretched out his hands to encompass the bounds of the universe.” Lactantius, a Christian apologist of the late third and early fourth centuries, saw in the cross a foreshadowing of the universal Church: in Christ’s suffering, “God stretched out his arms and embraced the world, thus prefiguring the coming of a people that would, from East and West, gather under his wings.”

St. Athanasius, one of the greatest of the Greek Fathers, pondered the cross of Christ surrounded by two other cross-

es, and saw in that scene on Calvary the reconciliation of Jew and Gentile into the one People of God: Christ, God made man, and thus made a creature capable of standing erect and extending his hands, reaches out to the two thieves, who figuratively represent the two peoples to be gathered into the one Church. And in his reaching out, the God-man tears down the walls of division between Jew and Gentile and extends God’s covenant of faithful love to the whole of believing humanity.

The cross, by pointing in all four directions, symbolizes the radical inclusivity of God’s redeeming purposes.

And thus Hans Urs von Balthasar, the 20th century Swiss theologian from whom I’ve borrowed these patristic images, suggests that the cross of Christ is the ultimate ground of solidarity: solidarity among the members of the human race; solidarity between humanity and God. Chesterton saw a “collision and a contradiction” at the heart of the cross. Balthasar takes a different tack and sees, at the center of the cross, not so much colliding wood but the sacred heart of Jesus. The heart of Christ crucified is, Balthasar writes, the fountain of the Church: “It is at the moment when Jesus suffers the most absolute thirst that he dissolves, to become an eternal fountain.” And from that fountain pour forth water and blood, Baptism and the Holy Eucharist: the sacrament from which the Church is born, and the sacrament from which the Church lives. In handing over his sacred heart in a perfect act of

obedience to the will of the Father, Jesus redeems our wayward hearts, and makes it possible for us to make a gift of ourselves – to hand over to others, in love, that which is most intimate and personal to us.

George Weigel Three times in my life, I have had the privilege of praying at the twelfth station of the cross – Calvary – in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. The memories of jostling one’s way through the Old City’s narrow, winding streets, the noise of the tourists, and the cacophony of contending rites and sects in the basilica all fade away. It is, perhaps, the easiest place to pray in the world – and not so much prayer in the sense of formulated words, but prayer as “practicing the presence.” At the twelfth station, we are immersed in the sacred heart of Christ.

And there we find the center of the world, and the truth of the world’s story. That is why it’s “Good” Friday.

George Weigel is a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

Family Life

Marriage after the first years I’ve watched Cinderella 10 times this week. My 2year-old is obsessed with the fairy tale. It might be the fantastic dress or the glass slippers, but it’s probably prince charming and the idea of “happily ever after.”

At 2, she may not be ready for a frank talk about marriage (how commitment and devotion have more to do making love last than a magical spell), but I think it’s crucial for her to learn the truth at some point because too many young adults go into marriage believing in the “happily ever after” myth.

As I approach my 10-year wedding anniversary, I don’t mean to sound like the grim reaper, suggesting that marriage is all work and no fun. But let’s face it: Sitting down at the breakfast table with my husband day after day for years on end loses a bit of its initial excitement; children and a combined “to-do” list hold hostage some of the spontaneity and romance of those first few years. Most of us have to work at keeping the flame burning.

Biologically speaking, there is a reason for this. When the first sparks of romance fly, the brain is flooded with a neurotransmitter called dopamine. Dopamine creates the

intense feelings, the exhilaration, that have you wanting to spend every waking moment with your loved one. But like a drug, the brain adapts to the neurotransmitter, and the neurons need more and more of it to produce the high.

In long-term relationships, successful couples have learned how to stimulate and sustain production of oxytocin, a hormone that promotes feelings of connection and bonding. According to anthropologist Helen Fisher, couples can do things to help production of oxytocin like massage and making love.

Knowing marriage has stages can be helpful to the young couple getting ready to say “I do.” “ Love changes,” says Les Parrott III, co-author of “Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts.” “There is an ebb and flow to it. When romance is present, life is wonderful. But we cannot demand this of love or of our partner.” Parrott blames the tragedy of so many failed marriages on the “happy ever after” myth we are sold in childhood.

When the romance fades, it’s critical for couples to hang in there and to communicate as best they can until they

find a new place of cooperation and comfort, and a real happiness that is different — and better — than what the myth promised. If they can make it through the disillusionment period, they eventually will Therese J. encounter a deeper intiBorchard macy with their partner in which they accept weaknesses and strengths together, and make good on their wedding vows.

Moreover, knowing that the good stuff comes with sticking it out can help when you wake up one morning and find your mate is no prince charming.

Therese J. Borchard writes a column for Catholic News Service.

Spirituality

Mary under the Cross . . .

One of the most popular images in all of scripture (an icon that’s been endlessly painted, sung, put into litanies, written up into poetry, and used to trigger every kind of pious feeling) is the image of Mary, the mother of Jesus, standing silently under the cross as her son dies.

As Jesus was dying, the Gospels tell us that Mary, his mother, stood under the cross. What’s in that image?

What’s in this picture that invites us to more than simple admiration, piety, or sympathy?

This is a mystical image and it is anything but pious.

In the Gospels, after Jesus, Mary is the most important person to watch. She’s the model of discipleship, the only one who gets it right. And she gets it very right under the cross.

What’s she doing while standing there?

On the surface, it seems she isn’t doing anything at all: She doesn’t speak, doesn’t try to stop the crucifixion, and she doesn’t even protest its unfairness or plead Jesus’ innocence. She is mute, seemingly passive, overtly doing nothing. But at a deeper level, she is doing all that can be done when one is standing under the weight of the cross, she’s holding the tension, standing in strength, refusing to give back in kind, and resisting in a deeper way.

What’s meant by this?

Sometimes well-intentioned artists have painted Mary as lying prostrate under the cross, the wounded mother, helplessly distraught, paralysed in grief, an object for sympathy.

But that doesn’t honour what happened there nor teach its lesson. Prostration, in this situation, is weakness, collapse, hysteria, resignation. In the Gospels, “standing” is the opposite, a position of strength. Mary “stood” under the cross.

Still, why the silence and why her seeming unwillingness to act or protest?

In essence, what Mary was doing under the cross was

this: She couldn’t stop the crucifixion (there are times when darkness has its hour) but she could stop some of the hatred, bitterness, jealousy, heartlessness, and anger that caused it and surrounded it. And she helped stop bitterness by refusing to give it back in kind, by transforming rather than transmitting it, by swallowing hard and (literally) eating bitterness rather than giving it back, as everyone else was doing.

Had Mary, in moral outrage, begun to scream hysterically, shout angrily at those crucifying Jesus, or physically tried to attack someone as he was driving the nails into Jesus’ hands, she would have been caught up in the same kind of energy as everyone else, replicating the very anger and bitterness that caused the crucifixion to begin with.

What Mary was doing under the cross, her silence and seeming unwillingness to protest notwithstanding, was radiating all that is antithetical to the crucifixion: gentleness, understanding, forgiveness, peace, light.

And that’s not easy to do. Everything inside us demands justice, screams for it, and refuses to remain silent in the presence of injustice. That’s a healthy instinct and sometimes acting on it is good. We need, at times, to protest, to shout, to literally throw ourselves into the face of injustice and do everything in our power to stop the crucifixion.

But there are times too when things have gone so far that shouts and protests are no longer helpful, darkness is going to have its hour come what may and all we can do is to stand under the cross and help eat its bitterness by refusing to participate in its energy. In those situations, like Mary, we have to say: “I can’t stop this crucifixion, but I can stop some of the hatred, bitterness, jealousy, brute-heartlessness, and darkness that surround it. I can’t stop this, but I will not conduct its hatred.”

And that’s not the same thing as despair. Our muted

helplessness is not a passive resignation but the opposite. It’s a movement towards the only rays of light, love, and faith that still exist in that darkness and hatred.

And, at that moment, it’s the only thing that faith Father and love can do.

Ron Rolheiser As the Book of Lamentations says, there are times when the best we can do is “put our mouths to the dust and wait!”

Sometimes too, as Rainer Marie Rilke says, the only helpful thing is to absorb the heaviness: “Do not be afraid to suffer, give the heaviness back to the weight of the earth; mountains are heavy, seas are heavy.”

That’s not passivity, resignation, or weakness; it’s genuine, rare strength. It’s “standing under the cross” so as to help take away some of its hatred, chaos, bitterness, and violence.

So this is the image: Sometimes darkness has its hour and there is nothing we can do to stop it. Sometimes the blind, wounded forces of jealousy, bitterness, violence, and sin cannot, for that moment, be stopped. But, like Mary under the cross, we are asked to “stand” under them, not in passivity and weakness, but in strength, knowing that we can’t stop the crucifixion but we can help stop some of the hatred, anger, and bitterness that surrounds it.

Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author.

JOHN EARLE PHOTO

The embrace of the Cross

16

Catholic San Francisco

April 14, 2006

April 18, 1906 – Faith in the midst of destruction Several City and Church institutions mark the 100th anniversary of the Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire April 18. The disaster ranks as the “watershed event” in San Francisco history much as the Civil War does for U.S. history, Dr. Charles Fracchia, founder of the San Francisco Historical Society, said during a lecture at the University of San Francisco April 6.

San Francisco at the time was a major city and the third largest port in the U.S. While the earthquake was devastating, Fracchia said, “If the earthquake was it, the City could have put itself back together” in a short period of time.

As it happened, the quake snapped the water mains leading to the City from San Mateo. Two fires started by the earthquake, one north and one south of Market near the Embarcadero, proved impossible to fight due to the lack of water pressure. San Francisco’s normal westerly wind blew from the east that day sending the fire into the City instead of toward the bay, he said. Another blaze, known as the “ham and eggs fire,” was started by a woman cooking breakfast in Hayes Valley four hours later. She was unaware that the quake had cracked her home’s chimney.

Aside from the unfavorable wind and the lack of water pressure, the death of the San Francisco Fire Department’s Chief Engineer Dennis Sullivan in the quake itself “deprived San Francisco of his experience and plans,” Fracchia said.

When the fire finally died out nearly 250,000 of San Francisco’s 400,000 residents were left homeless and numerous community institutions, including 80 churches, convents and synagogues were destroyed.

The magnitude of the disaster dwarfed the famous Chicago and London fires.

Dr. Fracchia said “no disaster of this magnitude” had struck any city prior to World War II. Support came in from throughout the country and Congress responded with a two million dollar grant, “the largest subsidy ever” made by Congress to that date.

For all of it’s fame as a San Francisco event, “you could also call it the Gilroy or San Jose Earthquake and Fire,” Fracchia said, “Many places were more proportionately damaged than San Francisco.”

In these pages, Catholic San Francisco presents earthquake damage and aftermath photos from the archives of the Archdiocese of San Francisco. We also pay tribute to the role of religious women in providing aid to the region’s devastated citizenry following the quake with an essay by Presentation Sister Stephanie Still, and an historical eyewitness account by Daughter of Charity Eugenia Garvey.

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April 14, 2006

Catholic San Francisco

17

A mission of teaching, caring and healing

Salesian Fathers offered the Sisters of the Presentation their basement to open a school and they begin to conduct classes there in August 1906.

The school remained open until June, 1907.

The Sisters of Mercy, shown at a tent, were called upon to nurse and care for the refugees, many of whom were injured in the earthquake and fire.

By Sister Stephanie Still, PBVM Arriving in California with other pioneers and settlers the 1840’s and 1850’s, by 1906 Roman Catholic Sisters of several Orders had established a network of schools, hospitals, orphanages, homes for the elderly, and other social programs throughout San Francisco and the larger Bay Area. Through these programs the Sisters were committed to caring for the most needy and vulnerable in society.

When the April 18, 1906 earthquake and resulting fire devastated San Francisco, the Roman Catholic Sisters not only found themselves homeless and facing dangers, but had the added dimension of needing to continue to care for those entrusted to them.

Letters, journals, annals and other documents in the archives of these Orders contain eyewitness accounts of the earthquake and fire as well as first hand accounts of the relief efforts that the Sisters immediately joined.

Sister Paul, a Sister of Notre Dame de Namur, described what many San Franciscans could echo of that early morning earthquake: “Oh, how one felt when the solid ground writhed and twisted under our

Sister Mary Mechtilde, PBVM, with students at a refugee school in North Beach.

feet as if we were standing on the back of an angry animal.”

That writhing and twisting of the ground caused damage to numerous public buildings, including Saint Mary’s Hospital, administered and staffed by the Sisters of the Mercy. According to the historical records of the Sisters of Mercy, with the help of friends, the Sisters secured “an old vessel lying in the harbor and secured ambulances and wagons to convey the sick and infirm on board.” The removal of patients and old people from the hospital and their transporting to Oakland was handled with order and calm.

However, the Sisters work had just begun as they received an urgent message that “small-pox, cholera, measles, scarlet and typhoid fevers have broken out amid the ruins and our help has been asked. …

We sent eight Sisters and twelve nurses over (from Oakland) with some of the doctors. Hospital tents have been pitched on the proposed hospital site. The Government will supply medicines and food.”

Sisters of the Presentation in their two convent schools in San Francisco – one at the corner of Taylor Street and Ellis Street and the other at the corner of Powell Street

and Lombard Street – awoke with the writhing of the land as did many San Franciscans. Their buildings were largely unaffected by the earthquake, but they decided to stay in the gardens attached to their convents as a safety precaution.

However, soon they were forced to abandon their convents. The Sisters at Taylor and Ellis first watched as the fire burnt its way up Market Street, then they watched as Army Engineers began dynamiting structures to create fire breaks. At 10:35 p.m. on April 18, the convent and school which they had nurtured for nearly fifty years and all that it contained, including a library that was considered one of the best private libraries in the city, was blown up by fire crews.

Sisters from this convent and the convent at Powell and Lombard were evacuated from the Powell site to the Embarcadero on Thursday morning. As they walked to the waterfront, crowds turned hostile because of their fear and terrorized state, blocked the Sisters way and shouted at them: “Pray now! Why don’t you pray now?”

The Presentation Sisters went to their convent in Berkeley, where they immediately joined in relief efforts there. They

helped feed and clothe 1,200 homeless refugees – by May 5, the Sisters in Berkeley would have sewed enough clothing for over 150 women and children.

On Wednesday, April 25, a week to the day after the earthquake and the first day that women were allowed to reenter the city, four Presentation Sisters returned to San Francisco. They began working at Relief Station 301, handing out baskets of food and other necessities, visiting the poor, sick, and bewildered people who huddled in tents and makeshift shelters. And, on April 27, two more Presentation Sisters arrived to open the first school in San Francisco after the disaster.

Two other Orders in San Francisco joined the refugees to provide aid and comfort. The Notre Dame Sisters were forced to leave their recently completed convent and school due to damage. One Sister said that the four-story structure was “rocking like a cradle.” The Notre Dame Sisters took refuge with hundreds of people in Duboce Park. They were immediately entrusted with the distribution of provisions for the needy by an Army officer.

When the Dominican Sisters of Mission San Jose heard that the injured were being A MISSION, page 19

18

Catholic San Francisco

April 14, 2006

‘Millionaires are poor men today.

Castles are gone up in flames’ The following is a letter to the motherhouse of the Daughters of Charity describing events in San Francisco. The account appears in the newly released book, Steel Frames, a collection of pictures and reminiscences of the 1906 Earthquake and Fire by the Daughters of Charity.

My own Beloved Mother, The grace of Our Lord be forever with us!

This is the first chance I have had of writing you as I am cramped in a tiny tent on the [O’Connor] Sanitarium lawn where all the sick are sheltered. No words can depict the awful horrors through which your daughters of St. Vincent’s have just passed.

On account of our position in the business part of the great city, the horrors of the fire followed the terrible earthquake. I will try to tell you just what we have passed [through].

Our dear Sisters were in the Chapel at 5:15 A.M. I had been very sick with sore throat and pleurisy and for three days under Doctor’s care (Doctor feared pleural pneumonia). Sister and I slept on the fourth floor of the Mission Street School. After a night of pain I was sleeping soundly when the terrific rocking began. We dashed down the long corridors and steep stairways. The stairs were going from side to side, the walls falling in, the plaster and gas fixture falling all about us.

We reached the ground floor unhurt.

The dear Sisters in the Chapel had the benches twisted from under them, the statues fell to the ground, and the Stations of the Cross turned faces to the wall. They rushed out and up the creaking stairway to find me (I was in the Mission Street building). When they reached the fourth floor they found me gone. I was calling them down to the front door. They all got down safe and sound, not a scratch on any Sister. I got habit on and with a blanket about me rushed out on the street with the rest of humanity.

When the rocking ceased, we returned to the ground floor. Our good Priests rushed over to see us. One gave us conditional absolution and he brought down the Blessed Sacrament and gave us Holy Communion.

Then we felt happy. In less than ten minutes the firemen rushed in and told us to leave at once and seek safety. We wanted to get our

good habits, books, etc.; but already our house was on fire, and a policeman and Father Horan, our good friend, led us through the surging mass of humanity. (On our sidewalk a crazed bull was goring a man to death; soon, however, the animal was killed.)

We reached St. Mary’s Hospital, Sisters of Mercy; there we were received kindly, given good hot coffee and a piece of bread, but the Hospital was threatened with fire and we started off to South San Francisco. (Later on, the sailors of the big vessel, Manchuria, carried the patients and Sisters of Mercy to their vessel on the Bay where they are in safety.) Almost falling upon our faces, almost, we reached [the orphanages] about eleven o’clock and remained there that night.

We sat up watching the flames consume our poor city. I never took my eyes off the flames the entire night. Even now when I close my eyes I see flames, nothing but flames.

After many slight shocks of earthquake, we became tranquil and began to think of others. We were safe in either [Mount St. Joseph Infant Asylum or Mount St. Joseph’s], some Sisters were in both places. But I felt that the Sisters of Charity should be braver than that, so Sister Alexis and I went down and begged a man to bring us to the city, where masses of suffering creatures lay in big halls, etc. He brought us to a car house where the dying lay thick upon the floor. The nurses were dropping on the floor from exhaustion. Doctors were glad to see us, so I sent back to South San Francisco for eight more Sisters. All day we knelt beside the sufferers, washed their faces and hands, fixed their beds and pillows, attended to other wants and proved ourselves acceptable nurses. We cared for the sick whilst the nurses went off to get a little rest in the cars standing about us. We left in the evening, and at the same time the patients had to be moved for the second time to another place of safety. We got an old rag wagon to take us to South San Francisco, paying the driver $5.00 for the ride.

Next morning one of our good Priests said Mass for us at the Infant Asylum. After Mass, Sisters Alexis, DeSales, Joannes, Hyacinth, Estelle, Josephine, Caroline and Cecilia and I started to the city in a big

Ruins of the second St. Dominic church in San Francisco.

The current structure is the fourth.

wagon which we met on the street. We went to find the sick, but they had been taken on trains to San Mateo. Doctors told us to go there and trains were taking people out of the city free, so we took the train for San Mateo.

We found the sick in a barn, but many nurses to look after them; so we went on to San Jose where we hoped to find the [O’Connor] Sanitarium intact, but to our astonishment the building was deserted and the sick were in tents on the grounds. Oh, Mother, here we received such a sisterly welcome. Our dear Sisters rushed with open arms to grasp us and bid us welcome, for they feared that we had been consumed in the flames.

Although I am stiff from the walking and

The walls of Saint Francis of Assisi church (above) still stand today, though its original interior was burnt out.

Saint Rose church (top left) at 4th and Brannan was destroyed by the earthquake and fire, but the South of Market parish remained until population shifts forced its closure in the 1920s. The former Saint Brendan church at Fremont and Harrison succumbed to a similar fate.

The old Saint Mary’s Hospital on Rincon Hill (left) was destroyed by fire.

bending all day over the sick that were laid on the floor of the car house, I am, considering all things, pretty well. Our Sisters are working with the nurses and all the Sisters. If the sun comes out, I’ll feel well and I can work well with the sick and I am in my glory doing it.

Our dear Sisters are heartbroken, fearing that never again will we be together with our hundreds of dear children in poor old St. Vincent’s. I comfort them by telling them that our dear Superiors will not separate us after all we have passed through together, that as soon as possible we will have a temporary school and the poor children will throng to us.

Archbishop Montgomery (Coadjutor Archbishop 1902-1907) must be in a dreadful state; churches, convents and big schools are no more. There is nothing left of St. Patrick’s Parish, Church, Schools, Priests’ new house, all gone!! All the Churches in southern part of the city are gone. The city is under martial law; the soldiers are shooting down any men who are found taking things. As we drove along the streets yesterday, there was the sight of the agonizing faces of the people who stood meekly in long lines awaiting their turn to get a loaf of bread; the soldiers keeping them in order. The soldiers wanted us to take some bread; but we told them we had just had some breakfast, that we did not need it.

A poor woman threw a bag of oranges into our wagon. These came in good for the sick whom we met on the train. You would scarcely know us we have been so black and dirty, no time to think of appearances. Here as in San Francisco, the streets are filled with bricks, etc. It is awful, but poor San Francisco, wicked San Francisco, was well chastened by fire. Oh, God’s hand is in it all. Many were trying to keep the people and children good, but A the vices of the city prevailed and all good people predicted some awful calamity. It has come and all like whipped children bow humbly down, acknowledging God’s justice.

Millionaires are poor men today. Castles are gone up in flames; the beautiful hills, so green and fresh, are covered black with people. Our parishioners are all south of [Mount St. Joseph’s]. Some of the older Sisters - Mary Alice, Angelica, Robertine and Stanislaus W. - are at [Mount St. Joseph’s]. I told them to go down to the camps and comfort the poor people. Sister Mary and Sister Carmelite are safe and quiet at [Mount St. Joseph’s] and seem not to want to leave it. If pestilence follows this scourge, God help us. Fortunately the flames consumed hundreds of the dead under the ruins. A few feet back of us on Minna Street, a big hotel caved in and buried two hundred.

CASTLES IN FLAMES, page 21

Catholic San Francisco

April 14, 2006

19

A mission . . .

■ Continued from page 17 taken to the Mechanics Pavilion near City Hall, they immediately left to give aid. They walked amidst falling debris from their Immaculate Conception Convent on TwentyFourth Street and Guerrero to the Pavilion, where they found hundreds of dying and wounded people needing care. Later in the day, when the fire reached the Pavilion, the patients and caretakers were loaded on to wagons and taken to the Presidio. A second team of Dominican Sisters arrived at the Presidio to care for the patients.

Throughout the month that followed, the Sisters continued to visit the sick and bring food, clothing, and comfort to the destitute living in the hills. When doctors asked that the Noe Valley Public School be converted into an emergency hospital, the Sisters were quick to volunteer. They not only nursed the sick but also prepared their meals and provided clothing for them.

In the North Bay, at first the Dominican Sisters of San Rafael had no idea of the extent of the damage and went to teach school at Saint Raphael’s as usual. However, it soon became apparent that it was not a normal school day as few

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The ruins of Saint Ignatius College (later USF and SI Prep) at one of its former locations, currently the site of Davies Symphony Hall.

children arrived for class. Sister Alexius Barthelemy wrote: “It was about 10 o’clock when another tremendous earthquake shook the school. Out jumped the children from each classroom, down the stairs into the street and off to their homes. The Sisters never saw a child of the school again until the opening of school in August.”

The Sisters were soon busy caring for the refugees from the Bay Area who had been transported by the Northern Pacific Railroad from Fisherman’s Wharf to San Rafael.

Since the refugees had walked distances to escape the heat of the fires raging in San Francisco, the Sisters tended to their sore feet with cans of Vaseline and bandages for their feet.

A refugee camp was established in San Rafael that lasted until the end of August.

Roman Catholic Sisters rose to the demands of the dual

catastrophe that engulfed San Francisco in April 1906.

Through their efforts many were nursed, clothed, fed, and given comfort. By returning to their normal activities, such as opening schools, the Sisters helped restore a sense of calm and an assurance that recovery was possible for the city and the citizens of San Francisco.

In recognition of the tremendous services the Sisters provided during the days of recovery and reconstruction from the earthquake and fire, the City of San Francisco, once public transportation was restored, declared that public transportation was free to all Sisters as a way of expressing the gratitude of the City for all that the Sisters had done for its people.

Sister Stephanie Still is Communicator for the Sister of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

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Catholic San Francisco

’06 Earthquake Events April 18: On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the ’06 Earthquake St. Emydius Parish in San Francisco’s Ingleside District will begin the look back with Mass at 5 a.m. At the approximate time of the earthquake, 5:13 a.m., a special prayer will be said to St. Emydius asking his intercession for the future protection of the City and its residents. Potluck breakfast follows. St. Emydius pastor, Father Bill Brady and Father David Pettingill, who grew up in the parish, will concelebrate. Call (415) 587-7066 for more information.

April 18: The National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi, which was among the small number of North Beach buildings to survive the ‘06 Earthquake and Fire, will observe the Centennial of the historic temblor with events in the shrine. The activities include ringing of the church bell at 5:13 a.m. – the approximate time of the earthquake – as well as Mass at 12:15 p.m.; Readings of Survivors’ Stories at 1 p.m.; a free concert featuring songs of the era by soprano Mimi Ruiz at 2 p.m. and blessing of North Beach at 3 p.m. An art exhibit will be available for viewing throughout the day. Call (415) 983-0405.

April 14, 2006

Datebook

Wed. at 6 p.m.: Notre Dame des Victoires Church, 566 Bush St. between Stockton and Grant, San Francisco. Call (415) 397-0113.

3rd Wed. at 7:30 p.m.: Sisters of Notre Dame Province Center, 1520 Ralston Ave, Belmont. Call (650) 593-2045 ext. 277 or visit www.SistersofNotreDameCa.org.

1st Fri. at 8 p.m.: Mercy Center, 2300 Adeline Dr., Burlingame with Mercy Sister Suzanne Toolan. Call (650) 340-7452; Church of the Nativity, 210 Oak Grove Ave., Menlo Park at 7:30 p.m. Call Deacon Dominic Peloso at (650) 322-3013.

April 16: The Chinese American Association of Star of the Sea Church says, “Hop on over” for their annual sale of “homemade goodies” following the 8 a.m. Mass and continuing till about 1:30 p.m. Call (415) 751-0450.

April 16: St. Stephen’s Annual Easter Egg Hunt takes place Easter Sunday, April 16 at Rolph Nichol Park (down the block from church) after the 9:30 a.m. mass. All are welcome! For more information, please contact Samantha Martinez at 650/994-6930.

April 22: Plant and Garden Sale at Mount Carmel Shop, 45 Lovell Ave. in Mill Valley, 9 a.m. – 4 p.m.

Proceeds benefit Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church.

Call (415) 388-4332.

April 25: One Fine Day, annual Luncheon Fashion Show benefiting the Sisters of the Good Shepherd at the Olympic Club Lakeside beginning with cocktails at 11:30 a.m. and lunch at 12:15. Tickets are $45 per person. Call Beverly Desmond at (415) 587-5374.

April 28, 29, 30: Our Lady of Mount Carmel School’s 18th Annual Spring Festival. “The Festival is 3-days of carnival rides, food booths that include homemade tamales and lumpias, games, entertainment, a cash raffle, a Fun-Run through the streets of Redwood City, and a dinner on Saturday night,” the Redwood City school said. Fri.: 3 – 9:30 p.m.; Sat.: 10:30 a.m. – 9:30 p.m.; Sun.: noon – 8 p.m. For more information, to be a sponsor, or participate in the Fun Run, please visit the school website at www.mountcarmel.org or contact the development office at (650)366-8817.

April 29: Our Lady of the Visitacion School (www.olvsf.org) will sponsor a Dinner & Auction to benefit the school’s technology center. Tickets are $25.00 and include admission to the auction and a Mexicanstyle dinner. Donations of goods and services to auction are welcome. For tickets call (415) 290-9416.

April 29: St. Stephen Women’s Guild invites you to their Spring Bake Sale the weekend of April 29 and 30, 2006. Delicious home-made treats of all kinds will be sold after each mass right outside church. Proceeds benefit St. Stephen School. Call Sandy Gandolfo (415/334-1494) or Maureen Mallon (415/566-9865).

April 28: Under the Big Top, annual Luncheon and Games Day benefiting work of Rosalie House Conference of St. Vincent de Paul with cocktails at 11:30 a.m. and lunch at noon at the Olympic Club Lakeside. Tickets are $50 per person. Call Marie Mahoney at (415) 333-9348.

Consolation Ministry

Without the help of fairy godmothers – or perhaps taking the place of same students from local fashion-study programs spun haute couture from donated clothing in an effort that raised funds for the St. Vincent de Paul Society of San Francisco.

Sierra Zumwalt, a student at San Francisco State, designed this elegant wedding dress from old handkerchiefs she plucked from the discard box at the Vincentian Help Desk in the Tenderloin. More than 50 art and design students followed her lead turning donated clothing into very wearable attire.

Taize Prayer

Food & Fun

rotate to different tables for each course, dancing, and door prizes. Reservations are necessary. For more information go to the website at www.catholicsinglesnetwork.com or contact Diane at dianep@catholicsinglesnetwork.com or 888-208-9555 x 85

May 2: 25th Annual May Crowning and Living Rosary in All Hallows Chapel, Newhall and Palou in San Francisco at 7:30 p.m. Sponsored by All Hallows #182 Young Ladies Institute. Call Sue Elvander at (415) 467-8872.

May 6: The Giddy-up Gala, annual auction and dinner dance fundraiser benefiting St Brendan School takes place in the Sister Diane Erbacher Parish Center. The event begins at 6 p.m. with complimentary Tequila Sunrises, cash raffle with $5000 grand prize, silent auction and live entertainment featuring Jeanie & Chuck’s Country Roundup. Dinner at 8 p.m. and live auction at 9 p.m. with celebrity auctioneers “Annie & Amy Smith”. Dance from 10 p.m. to midnight and wear your favorite western attire. Contact Theresa for event tickets at (415) 564-8372.

May 6: Hawaiian Luau and Spring BBQ benefiting Immaculate Conception Academy, 24th and Guerrero St. in San Francisco from 4 p.m. “Great fun and food with entertainment from ICA students,” the school said. Tickets are $15 adults/$8 children under 10. Call (415) 824-2052.

May 13: Moriarty Hall Gala, 6 p.m. – midnight at St. Anne of the Sunset, 850 Judah St. at Funston.

Archbishop George Niederauer is scheduled to formally bless the new building as a prelude to the event. Atirre is semi-formal. Tickets are $100 per person. Call (415) 665-1600, ext. 21.

May 13: St. Sebastian’s hosts11TH Annual “Whale of a Sale”, 9 a.m. – 2 p.m. Spaces are $35 early bird, $50 after April 15th. Sell your crafts or household items and keep all proceeds. Benefits the Saint Vincent DePaul Conference. Take a space and raise money for your group or club. For information or reservations contact Kathie Meier, 461-4133 or email, whaleofasale@ comcast.net or visit http://www.sswhaleofasale.com.

Reunions April 22: Mass and Luncheon for alumnae of Notre Dame High School at Mission Dolores Basilica and the Irish Cultural Center beginning at 10 a.m.

Special guests are Golden Belles of ’56, Silver Belles of ’81 and 70 year anniversary class of ’36.

Call Debbie Calgaro at (650) 583-1102. If you are a member of the Class of ‘56 and haven’t been contacted call Rose Doonan O’Leary at (415) 821-6512.

April 29: Class of ’56 from Holy Angels Elementary School, at Bertoluuci’s Restaurant, South San Francisco. Call Brent Smith at (925) 8387743 or (65) 755-0220.

April 29: Immaculate Conception Academy, class of ’66 at El Rancho Inn in Millbrae. Contact Donna Ricci McMorrow at (650) 589-7276 or Mimi Calcagno Shea at (408) 578-1802.

June 10: Presentation High School, class of ’51 at Basque Cultiral Center in South San Francisco at 11:30 a.m. Contact Yvonne Irick at (650) 941-1294 or Audrey Trees at (650) 592-0273.

July 8: Class of ’56 from Notre Dame des Victoires High School. Call Marilyn Donnelly at (650) 365-5192.

Oct. 15: Star of the Sea Academy, class of ’56 at El Rancho Inn in Millbrae. Contact Natalie Nalducci Sandell at (415) 453-3687 or Diane Donohoe Mulligan at (415) 664-7977.

San Mateo’s St. Matthew Elementary School will soon mark its 75th year. Graduates and former students should contact Nancy Desler Carroll ’83 at (650) 372-9536 or nancy.carroll@rcn.com. More too at school Web site, www.stmatthewcath.org/alumni.

April 28 – 30:WIDOWED, SEPARATED, DIVORCED WEEKEND at Vallombrosa Retreat Center, Menlo Park.

The weekend helps those who have suffered a loss move on to the future with renewed hope. For more information, call La Verne (650) 355-3978, Ward (415) 821-3390, or Donna (408) 371-0865, or see the website: www.beginningexperience.org.

April 29: Catholic Single Adults throughout Northern California are invited to a special Dinner and Dance Party at the Tarragon Restaurant—140 South Murphy Avenue in Downtown Sunnyvale. Reception and Registration begins at 6:30 p.m. and Dinner/Dance Party begins at 7:15 p.m.. The evening will feature facilitated ice-breakers, a four-course dinner where diners

April 21, 22, 23: The St. Pius Young People’s Theater presents Annie the musical, in Fitzsimon Center, St. Pius Church, 1100 Woodside Rd, Redwood City. Tickets are $12 reserved seating, $10 senior/student/child, $10 general admission,$8 senior/student/child. Call Margie Lawson for tickets, curtain times at (650) 366-6080.

April 29, 30: Smallest of All, a play about Lourdes St. Bernadette at St. Brendan Parish Hall, 200 Ulloa St. in San Francisco. Call (415) 681-4225 for curtain times. Admission free.

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Programs for Catholics interested in returning to the Church, have been established at the following parishes: Marin County: St. Hilary, Tiburon, Mary Musalo, (415) 435-2775; St. Anselm, Ross, call (415) 4532342; St. Sebastian, Greenbrae, Jean Mariani at (415) 461-7060; Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, Mill Valley, Rick Dullea at (415) 388-4190; St. Mary Star of the Sea, Sausalito, Lloyd Dulbecco at (415) 331-7949.

San Francisco: Old St. Mary’s Cathedral, SF, Michael Adams at (415) 695-2707; St. Philip the Apostle, 725 Diamond St. at Elizabeth/24th, SF. Call (415) 282-0141; St. Dominic, SF, Lee Gallery at (415) 221-1288; Holy Name of Jesus, SF, (415) 664-8590.

San Mateo County: St. Bartholomew, San Mateo, Dan Stensen at (650) 344-5665; St. Catherine of Siena, Burlingame, Silvia Chiesa at (650) 685-8336; Our Lady of Angels, Burlingame, Holy Names Sister Pat Hunter at (650) 375-8023; St. Dunstan, Millbrae, Dianne Johnston at (650) 697-0952; Our Lady of the Pillar, Half Moon Bay, Meghan at (650) 726-4337; St. Peter, Pacifica, Sylvia Miles at (650) 355-6650, Jerry Trecroci at (650) 355-1799, Frank Erbacher at (650) 355-4355; St. Matthew, San Mateo. Jim Shea at (650) 344-7622.

Meetings 2nd Wed.: Men’s Evening of Reflection: Being Catholic in the Modern World at the National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi, 610 Vallejo St. at Columbus, SF beginning at 7 p.m. Call (415) 983-0405.

Courage is a Catholic support group for persons with same-sex attraction. They meet in San Francisco Thursdays at 7:45 PM. Call Father Emmerich Vogt at 415-567-7824 or Father Lawrence Goode at 650-322-2152.

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Bibles, Books, Rosaries,Statues, Jewelry, Medals, Crucifixes, Baptism and Christening Gifts

Mon – Fri 9:30 to 5:30 Sat 9:30 – 5

SUNDAY EVENING MASS

415-614-5506 This number is answered by Barbara Elordi, Archdiocesan Pastoral Outreach Coordinator.

This is a secured line and is answered only

by Barbara Elordi.

SAINT PHILIP

For experience, knowledge & integrity call

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Sunday: 8:00, 10:30 a.m. and 6:00 p.m.

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(beginning March 5th) THE

Datebook is a free listing for parishes, schools and non-profit groups. Please include event name, time, date, place, address and an information phone number. Listing must reach Catholic San Francisco at least two weeks before the Friday publication date desired.

Mail your notice to: Datebook, Catholic San Francisco, One Peter Yorke Way, S.F. 94109, or fax it to (415) 614-5633.

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HELPLINES FOR CLERGY/CHURCH SEXUAL ABUSE VICTIMS

415-614-5503 If you wish to speak to a non-archdiocesan employee please call this nunmber. This is also a secured line and is answered only by a victim survivor.

Returning Catholics

Single, Divorced, Separated

Shows/Entertainment

Become a MENTOR for a homeless youth.

Local nonprofit seeks volunteers to mentor homeless / formerly homeless youth.

Grief Groups meet at the following parishes.

Please call numbers shown for more information.

San Mateo County: St. Catherine of Sienna, Burlingame. Call Debbie Simmons at 650-558-1015; St. Dunstan, Millbrae. Call Barbara Cappel at 650-6927543;. Good Shepherd, Pacifica. Call Sr. Carol Fleitz at 650-355-2593; Our Lady of Mercy, Daly City. Call Barbara Cantwell at 650-755-0478; Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, Redwood City. Call Parish at 650-366-3802; St. Robert, San Bruno. Call Sr. Patricia at 650-589-2800.

Marin County: St. Anselm, San Anselmo. Call Brenda MacLean at 415-454-7650; St. Isabella, San Rafael. Call Pat Sack at 415-472-5732; Our Lady of Loretto, Novato. Call Sr. Jeanette at 415-897-2171.

San Francisco: St. Dominic. Call Sr. Anne at 415567-7824; St. Finn Barr(Bilingual). Call Carmen Solis at 415-584-0823; St. Gabriel. Call Elaine Khalaf at 415-564-7882.

Young Widow/Widower Group: St. Gregory, San Mateo. Call Barbara Elordi at 415-614-5506.

Ministry to Parents: Our Lady of Angels, Burlingame. Call Ina Potter at (650) 347-6971 or Barbara Arena at (650) 344-3579.

Children’s Grief Group: St. Catherine, Burlingame. Call Debbie Simmons at 650-558-1015.

Information regarding grief ministry in general call Barbara Elordi at 415-614-5506.

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April 14, 2006

Castles in flames . . .

■ Continued from page 18 An unfortunate house of Negroes and whites next to us on Minna was crushed to the earth, everybody in it killed!! Lord have mercy upon them Oh, God is ever mindful of those who try to serve Him. Praise be His Holy Name!

Mother dearest, this is the time for our dear Community to stand by the Archbishop. Leave us in the city to work wherever we are needed. We will have to begin as the good Sisters in [1852]. Naturally, I would love to go east for I can never get over this shock; but then again, I get brave and want to remain here to comfort my dear Sisters who have been so true, so devoted to me. And I must hunt up our poor little ones and comfort the discouraged parents. I am a pretty good preacher and I’ll do some good among the people who have been very devoted.

We just heard that fire has again broken out in San

TRAVEL GUIDE

Francisco. It was under control when we left yesterday.

Twenty-five patients are just coming in here [hospital in San Jose]; we will be busy. I’ll forget my own ills in serving them. Poor little Sister Victorine is wonderfully calm under the great trial. Indeed, everybody is calm and resigned, all back to our primitive simplicity. Oh, God is wonderful! The glorious marble altar is useless; the Holy Sacrifice is offered in the open air, “God’s first temples.”

Don’t worry about us; we are left to do good. The chastening rod has done us all good, all who have felt it. Some have not felt it as hard as others. God knows best! Priests are doing great work for souls; God protect them. I tried to send you a telegram, but could not do so until yesterday. A Priest took it to Oakland and I hope it has reached you. Fond, devoted love [sent] to you from each of the Sisters who all love and appreciate our dear Community more than anything on earth. Love to dear Father Sullivan. I’ll write him later; you will please tell him something of this rambling letter. God keep you all from the horrors of earthquake and PACIFIC I’NTL TRAVEL AGENCY FOR ALL YOUR TRAVEL NEEDS SPECIALIZING IN

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($2,399 after Jan. 22, 2006)

($2,599 after 1/8/06)

Fr. Robert Hutmacher, OFM

Fr. Tim Mockaitis

Spiritual Director

Spiritual Director

Visit: Paris, Lisieux, Normandy, Versailles, Chartres, Nevers, Paray-Le-Monial, Ars, Lyon, Toulouse and Lourdes.

19-Day Panama Canal Cruise

Join your Spiritual Director Father Walter Grabowski, pastor of Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church in Eden, NY. This will be Father Walter’s third cruise as YMT’s chaplain. On October 23, 2006, you’ll board the ms Ryndam in Los Angeles.

Mexican Riviera ports include: Cabo San Lucas; Puerto Vallarta; & Puerto Santa Cruz Huatulco. Next there’s Quetzal, Guatemala. Here you may tour the museums, or visit a jade factory or volcano. On November 1 you’ll find yourself in Costa Rica. Next is the highlight, the daytime Panama Canal crossing where you will be raised and lowered by giant locks.

You will slowly float through the lush jungle and cross the rugged continental divide via 45 miles of canals and the largest man-made lake in the world, Gatun Lake. Next visit Cartagena, Colombia; Costa Maya, Mexico; and Cozumel, Mexico, in the Caribbean Sea. You’ll fly home from Tampa November 10. Prices (per person, double occupancy) start at only $2224 for outside ocean view staterooms; and $3099 for larger outside staterooms with private balcony. Add $539 port/taxes/gov’t. fees/services. Add $500 round trip airfare from Sacramento, Oakland or San Francisco. Last chance! Deposits are now due.

Cabins are selling out fast!

“Heaven in Stone & Glass” : Pilgrimage to Shrines of France 14 magnificent days on Retreat with Fr. Eugene Herbert July 3-16, 06 Paris ~ Lourdes ~Nevers ~ Tours ~ Chartres ~ Reims ~ Lisieux; St. Therese Shrines of Our Lady, St. Martin, St. Bernadette, Cathedrals and Basilicas & more Renaissance Italy and Medjugorje ~ 13 days ~ Apr. 15 - 27, 06 Rome ~ Assisi ~ Florence ~ Siena ~ and 3 glorious days in Medjugorje!

Enticing Italia May 25 - June 8, 06 Sister M. Paul McCaughey,OP 15 magnificent days visiting Stresa ~ Verona ~ Isola Bella ~ Venice ~ Padua ~ Florence Assisi ~ Amalfi Coast ~ Isle of Capri ~ Pompeii ~ Sorrento ~ and Bella Roma Holland Amrica Alaska Cruise w/ Fr. Lawrence Seyer ~ July 8 - 15, 06 Join Fr. Lawrence to the magnificent Hubbard Glacier ~ Sitka ~ Ketchikan ~ Juneau ~Victoria, BC

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Catholic San Francisco

fire. Don’t worry about us; we will get on okay. We are not maimed and crushed as are hundreds. We left all our good habits and linen in the flames. When a Sister comes to me crying about her good habit, I have to laugh at her.

It takes God to strip us of every toy attachment. I feel that never again will I look for anything earthly. Leave us, Mother, to carry on good work in the humbled, crushed city.

All hearts are now disposed to do good. My heart to you!

Your devoted daughter, Sister Eugenia Garvey [On Mission at St. Vincent’s School, South of Market] Love to our dear Officers and Sisters of our dear Mother House, Sister Eugenia My hand trembles too much to write well.

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Spiritual Director

Visit: Paris, Lisbon, Santarem, Fatima, Coimbra, Alba de Torme, Avila, Burgos, Loyola, Pamplona, Javier, Lourdes

21

800-886-5944

PILGRIMAGE TO THE HOLY LAND Sept. 3rd – 18th, 2006 Complete Price: $2,845.00

Catholic San Francisco

Lourdes

Visit: Tel Aviv, Netanya, Caesarea/Mt. Carmel, Upper Galilee, Tiberias, Jerusalem, Cana

Cana

For a FREE brochure on these pilgrimages contact: California Registered Seller of Travel Registration Number CST-2037190-40 Catholic San Francisco (415) 614-5640 (Registration as a Seller of Travel does not constitute approval by the State of California)

Please leave your name, mailing address and your phone number

22

Catholic San Francisco

April 14, 2006

Garage Sale / items needed

Catholic San Francisco

Classifieds For Information Call: 415-614-5642

Fax: 415-614-5641

Prayer to the Blessed Virgin never known to fail.

PUBLISH A NOVENA Pre-payment required Mastercard or Visa accepted

Email: penaj@sfarchdiocese.org

Cost $25

If you wish to publish a Novena in the Catholic San Francisco You may use the form below or call 415-614-5640

Piano Lessons

Most beautiful flower of Mt. Carmel Blessed Mother of the Son of God, assist me in my need. Help me and show me you are my mother. Oh Holy Mary, Mother of God, Queen of Heaven and earth. I humbly beseech you from the bottom of my heart to help me in this need. Oh Mary, conceived without sin.

Pray for us (3X).

Holy Mary, I place this cause in your hands (3X).

Say prayers 3 days.

R.G.

PIANO LESSONS BY

CAROL FERRANDO. Conservatory training, masters degree, all levels of students.

CALL (415) 921-8337.

Your prayer will be published in our newspaper

Prayer to the Holy Spirit

Name Adress Phone MC/VISA # Exp. ❑ Prayer to the Blessed Virgin ❑ Prayer to the Holy Spirit

Select One Prayer: ❑ St. Jude Novena to SH ❑ Prayer to St. Jude

Please return form with check or money order for $25 Payable to: Catholic San Francisco Advertising Dept., Catholic San Francisco 1 Peter Yorke Way, San Francisco, CA 94109

Holy Spirit, you who make me see everything and who shows me the way to reach my ideal.

You who give me the divine gift of forgive and forget the wrong that is done to me. I, in this short dialogue, want to thank you for everything and confirm once more that I never want to be separated from you no matter how great the material desires may be. I want to be with you and my loved ones in your perpetual glory. Amen. You may publish this as soon as your favor is granted.

G.V.

Organist ORGANIST WEDDINGS • FUNERALS

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For Advertising Information Call 415-614-5642 E-mail: penaj@sfarchdiocese.org

Auto Broker

650-244-9255 Spells Wally 650-740-7505 Cell Phone

P.O. Box 214 San Bruno, CA 94066

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If I can be of service to you, or if you know of anyone who is interested in buying or selling a home, please do not hesitate to call me . . .

415-239-8491 not a licensed contractor

* Parishioner of St. Gregory’s Church, San Mateo

NOTICE TO READERS Licensed contractors are required by law to list their license numbers in advertisments.

The law also state that contractors performing work totaling $500 or more must be statelicensed. Advertisments appearing in this newspaper without a license number indicate that the contractor is not licensed.

For more information, contact:

Contractors State License Board 800-321-2752

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Artwork Sports equipment Jewelry Books/cd’s

All Mfg. Warranty: Rebates and Special Dealer Finacing goes to Registered Owner/s

MICHAEL A. GYDESEN

PARTY RENTALS

PLEASE NO: Bedding Clothing / hats Shoes Stuffed Animals

Please confirm your event before contracting music!

Gydesen Const., Inc. General Contractor

ITEMS WANTED: Toys/baby items Dishes, ceramics, vases Appliances Quilts

All furniture/lamps Electronics Rugs Exercise equipment

Worship Services, Catholic Experience Marie DuMabeiller 415-441-3069, Page: 823-3664 VISA, MASTERCARD Accepted

PHOTO RESTORATION GENERAL CONTRACTOR

●

Save your “Treasures”!

Donations Sought for A HUGE Garage Sale Sponsored by the St. Ignatius College Prep Social Justice Club / Tanzi Project Saturday, April 22nd, 9 – 5 Corner of 37th and Rivera Streets

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Painting & Remodeling •Interiors •Exteriors •Kitchens •Baths Contractor inspection reports and pre-purchase consulting

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415-205-1235 Plumbing • Fire Protection • Certified Backflow

John Bianchi Phone: 415.468.1877 Fax: 415.468.1875 100 North Hill Drive, Unit 18 • Brisbane, CA 94005 Lic. No. 390254

Catholic San Francisco

April 14, 2006

DENTAL DIRECTORY SAN FRANCISCO COUNTY

Help Wanted

SAN MATEO COUNTY

WILLIAM L. FAMILY DENTISTRY Specializing in Cosmetic GALLAGHER, Procedures including Invisalign Invisible D.D.S. Braces, and Zoom!

FAMILY DENTISTRY

2 Teeth Whitening.

2345 Noriega Street

DOUGLAS D. BOUCHER, D.D.S. 825 OAK GROVE AVE., MENLO PARK (650) 325-8030

(415) 731-0816

DR. ERICH K. HABELT

DENTAL OFFICE SPACE FOR LEASE

Family, Cosmetics, Implant Dentistry

3500 Callan Blvd.

South San Francisco, CA First Floor space available

2033 TARAVAL STREET

Call Charley Haggarty (650) 344-3044

(415) 665-8397

Help Wanted

ADVERTISING SALES

beginning July 1, 2006, to continue the leadership of our Pre-School Send Resume to Fr. Harold Snider 1721 Hillside Drive Burlingame, CA 94010 or Fax (650) 347-3550

Fr. Joseph Walsh jwalsh451a@aol.com For questions, call (415) 681-2444

PRESCHOOL TEACHER IN THE PRESIDIO

Several full-time parish positions in the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon.

Competitive salaries and benefits.Training and continuing education opportunities.

Opening in western Oregon include metroplitan, suburban, small town, rural, coastal and southern parishes.

Strong emphasis on coordinating the implementation of Renewing the Vision.

The Serra Preschool, a developmental playbased school with a spiritual framework of Roman Catholicism, is looking to hire teachers to accommodate our expansion.

Teachers will be team teaching with our skilled and experienced teachers in a supportive, professional atmosphere.

Our five classroom school is located in the beautiful park setting of the Presidio of San Francisco. Benefits include highly competitive salaries, health coverage, holidays and 7 personal days. Applicants need a child development permit or at least 12 ece/cd units and 6 months experience in the field. Morning and afternoon positions available with jobs starting Aug. 30th.

SEND COVER LETTER AND RESUME TO: CYM Openings, Youth & Young Adult Ministry Office, 2838 East Burnside Street, Portland, OR 97214

Send your resume to The Serra Preschool, 7 Funston Ave., San Francisco, 94129, Phone: 415-561-2200 theserrapreschool@earthlink.net.

We are a non-profit corporation

BECOME A FARMERS INSURANCE & FINANCIAL AGENT

Admissions Director

Free Info Packet: 650-931-8608

We will train!

Send your resume: Jeannie McCullough Stiles, RN Special Needs Nursing, Inc. 98 Main Street, #427 Tiburon, Ca 94920

Pre-School Director

SEND RESUME INDICATING EXPERIENCE AND EDUCATION TO:

COORDINATOR OF YOUTH MINISTRY

Fax your resume to: Jeannie McCullough Stiles, RN 415-435-0421

Call 1-800-675-5051, Fax resume: 707-258-1195

to continue leadership of a successful Youth Ministry/Confirmation Program for High School teens.

For more information call (650) 593-6157

Work Full or Part-time in San Francisco – Marin County • Provide non medical elder care in the home • Generous benefit package

This is a Career Opportunity!

Pastoral Associate for RCIA and liturgy; part time, salary negotiable at St. Stephen Parish in San Francisco beginning mid-June.

Send resume to Fr. Stephen H. Howell 1040 Alameda de las Pulgas Belmont, CA 94002

We are looking for you.

• Honest • Generous • Compassionate • Make a Difference • Respectful

• Generous Commissions • Minimal Travel • Excellent Benefit Package • Stong Office Support • Work in Your Community

Youth Minister Needed Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish, Belmont, California beginning July 1, 2006

Part time position with benefits, salary negotiable.

Special Needs Companion Services

For The Largest Publisher of Catholic Church Bulletins

needed at Our Lady of Angels Parish Burlingame

Notre Dame High School, Belmont, sponsored by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, is seeking an Admissions Director for the 2006–2007 academic year. The successful candidate will possess a profound commitment to Catholic education for young women; great energy, vision, and dedication; strong abilities to work with many different constituencies; and superior administrative, organizational, technological, and communication skills.

Admissions experience in a Catholic school is highly desirable, and an advanced degree is preferred.

A competitive salary and benefits package commensurate with experience is offered. Interested candidates should send a cover letter and resume to: Ms. Rita Gleason, Principal Notre Dame High School 1540 Ralston Avenue Belmont, CA 94002 E-mail: rgleason@ndhsb.org Fax (650) 593-9330 www.ndhsb.org

23

GREAT WORK Opportunities OPPORTUNITIES Great Work Being 55 years or older is good for the environment!

The Senior Environmental Employment Program offers a unique opportunity in San Francisco for individuals age 55 and over to support the US Environmental Protection Agency through a grant sponsored by the National Older Worker Career Center (NOWCC). Apply today; your experience can make a difference!

Enjoy the work, great benefits and more! x x x x x x

Library Record Mgmt Adm Asst (Ref#CA312) Paralegal Support (Ref#CA337) Database Mgmt Asst (Ref#CA326) Administrative Support (Ref#CA340) Administrative Asst (Ref#CA341) Facilities Operations Asst (Ref#CA342)

Check out our program, benefits, qualifications and these position details at our website!

www.nowcc.org

To applyFax Resume and Application from our website to our recruiters Toll Free: 866-233-2542 Must be age 55 or older to apply. EOE

Notre Dame High School Belmont, CA

Business and Financial Manager Notre Dame High School, a Catholic independent school sponsored by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur and serving 700 students, is seeking a Business and Financial Manager.

Reporting to the President, the Business and Financial Manager has responsibility for all financial aspects of the school’s operations including budgeting, financial reporting, and physical plant management. The successful candidate must have the ability to provide leadership in financial longrange planning, strategic problem solving, and development of institutional policies and procedures. Additional responsibilities and oversight include human resources, food services, maintenance, security, contract services, project management, and local state, and federal compliance. The Business and Financial Manager also serves as administrative liaison to and support for several Committees of the Board of Directors including the Finance Committee, the Development Committee, the Audit Committee, the Strategic Planning Committee, and the Building and Grounds Committee.

The ideal candidate will have a CPA or an MBA with demonstrated skills and experience in the management of an organization’s fiscal and operational functions and staff, preparing and managing operating and capital budgets, accounting for not-for-profit organizations, managing computer network systems, identifying and managing risk management, and writing financial and personnel policies and procedures. Experience with Blackbaud accounting systems is desirable.

Interested candidates should send a cover letter and resume to: Ms. Rita Gleason, Principal Notre Dame High School 1540 Ralston Avenue Belmont, CA 94002 Fax (650) 593-9330 E-mail: rgleason@ndhsb.org

24

Catholic San Francisco

April 14, 2006

‘Tsotsi’ a must see Reviewed by Jeffrey Overstreet Tsotsi is an R-rated film about gangsters in Johannesburg, and thus it’s probably not the kind of movie you usually make a point to rush out and see. Take note: It’s time to turn over a new leaf. This is one of the must-see movies of 2006.

You’ll need a strong stomach, as the hoodlums who think they rule these shantytown streets are reckless, foul-mouthed, and willing to shed blood in order to get what they want.

But don’t leave... it’s the starkness of that darkness that makes Gavin Hood’s big screen adaptation of Athol Fugard’s novel such a satisfying story of redemption, the kind of thing to stir compassion in viewers’ hearts, and to remind us that sometimes God can reach even the most prodigal of his children.

Hood’s film follows a young gang leader through six days of crime, fear, and moral struggle. After he steals a woman’s car without thinking to check the backseat, Tsotsi (the name means “gangster”) discovers he has absconded with far more than he’d planned — namely, the woman’s infant son. Having never cared for a child before, Tsotsi debates whether to dump the child or to return him to his parents. But the cops are on his trail, combing the vast, chaotic Johannesburg townships for clues, and he’s forced to hide the baby in his apartment, keeping the screaming, hungry, frightened child concealed from his partners in crime.

Make no mistake — this isn’t another caper about childcare along the lines of Raising Arizona or Three Men and a Baby. This is a hard-hitting story about the tug-of-war between one young man’s sinful nature and the still, small voice of conscience that still whispers in his ear.

Some may view its tale of how a baby can melt a murderous heart to be sentimental or formulaic — and they’re not entirely wrong.

But Hood gives the simple storyline a compelling urgency, as though it is a lament not

just for this character but for the countless, “feral” youth of South Africa, and for the families devastated by AIDS. His film has surprisingly jagged edges that get their hooks into you and pull you in, and he convinces you with a level of detail that speaks of first-hand experience with the people, their environment, and the economic crisis that divides them. The whole endeavor is fueled by adrenalin-rush music, a blend of contemporary African styles called ‘Kwaito,’ which draws you along the troubling start to the riveting finale.

Fugard’s original novel was based in 1950’s South Africa, but Hood has done a fine job of updating the material, preserving its themes of conscience and redemption, while presenting audiences with an unnerving portrait of present-day Johannesburg.

Actor Presley Chweneyagae is wellcast, playing the strong, silent type of crook. He says very little, but he gives a complex and compelling performance, representing a generation driven by a need to survive, and lacking guidance and love.

And yet, Tsotsi succeeds in more than just illustrating African hardships. It also offers a powerful appeal for each viewer to appreciate the value of every human life, from infants to hardened criminals. Christian viewers, especially, should remember that some of the greatest heroes of the faith were raised up from lives of murder and crime. There’s no reason to believe it doesn’t still happen today.

Tsotsi is a vision of darkness and trouble, but out of its shadows beams a beacon of hope, like so many of scripture’s own redemption stories. In fact, it shines bright because of the authenticity and honesty in Hood’s depictions of darkness.

Moreover, the film also impresses upon us that crooks like Tsotsi don’t just materialize out of nowhere. Tsotsi is a boy without a family to care for him, without education to

Presley Chweneyagae stars in a scene from the movie ‘Tsotsi.’

enlighten him about the consequences of his actions, and without role models to show him the way. He’s surrounded by a gallery of other gangsters, some like naïve children, others like soulless predators who look eagerly for an excuse to do harm. The damage that has wrecked their heads and hearts has not always been self-inflicted. Children learn about the world largely from their parents’ example.

This is the key to finding compassion for Tsotsi, helpful in preventing others like him from straying off the straight and narrow.

But his conscience isn’t his own invention either. Where does it come from? He hasn’t had a role model to teach him right from wrong. Like the children of Calcutta’s Red Light district in the documentary Born into Brothels, who inform the camera that the men and women of their neighborhood are unequivocally wrong in their behavior, we have here a brilliant testament to the fact that eternity has been written in our hearts… that God’s voice is at work in us from the beginning, coaxing us in the knowledge of good and evil.

Finally, Tsotsi is a remarkable and rare work because of Hood’s willingness to give a crying, drooling, diaper-soiling infant so much time onscreen. This is not an idealized big screen baby chosen to get viewers ooohing and ahhhing. The child confronts viewers with the vulnerability and need of a tiny human being who is completely dependent upon others for survival. And actress Terry Pheto gives a sensitive portrayal of a woman who is willing to take risks in order to save him.

Does the lack of big screen babies contribute to our societal abandonment of infants and the unborn? Does our mainstream media shy away from visual reminders of our origins, because it makes us uncomfortable and chips away at our pride and selfishness? If more filmmakers took the time to portray the beauty, fragility, and dependency of children, might we as a culture come to value them more?

This review was originally published online at Seattle Pacific University's Response magazine (spu.edu/response).

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