Catholics rally and take concerns to state legislators
Catholic san Francisco Northern California’s Weekly Catholic Newspaper
By Jack Smith
Young adults with Bishop John Wester at Lobby Day. (l-r) Joe Bernabe (St. Dominic parishioner), Diane Barberini (teacher at Carondelet High School), Bishop Wester, Mary Jansen (Archdiocesan Director of Young Adult Ministry & Campus Ministry), Stephanie Wesolek (Administrative Assistant for Young Adult Ministry & Campus Ministry),Tim Kortenkamp (Archdiocesan Office of Public Policy and Social Concerns).
Nearly 1000 Catholics from around the state attended the seventh annual Catholic Lobby Day in Sacramento April 26. Auxiliary Bishop John C. Wester accompanied a delegation of more than 80 people from the Archdiocese of San Francisco. The Archdiocesan group traveled individually from the Counties of San Francisco, San Mateo, and Marin, and also by bus from Stonestown Galleria with stops at St. John of God parish in the Sunset and St. Patrick’s downtown. After arriving and registering, participants took part in a presentation and strategy session on California’s Faithful Citizenship Project. Several San Francisco area parish communities have already successfully taken part in this voter registration project sponsored by the dioceses of California and the Pacific Institute for Community Organization. Mass was celebrated at the Crest Theatre this year because of continued renovations to the preferred venue of Sacramento’s Blessed Sacrament Cathedral. California Catholic Conference President and Stockton Bishop Stephen Blaire presided with Bishop Wester, Auxiliary Bishop Richard Garcia of Sacramento, and Auxiliary Bishop Jaime Soto of Orange concelebrating. Monsignor Eugene Boyle, a veteran worker for social justice and retired San Jose Diocese priest, delivered the CATHOLIC RALLY, page 8
Bioethics chairman speaks out against euthanasia, assisted suicide By Christopher Gaul BALTIMORE (CNS) — The chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics told a Baltimore audience of health care workers and executives, priests and seminarians gathered at St. Mary’s Seminary and University April 27 that the act of removing the feeding tube from Terri Schindler Schiavo amounted to killing her rather than letting her die. Dr. Leon R. Kass made the comments in a question-and-answer period following his delivery of the seminary’s annual John Carroll lecture on religion and society in which he addressed issues involving death with dignity and the sanctity of life. It was a timely topic given the recent very public but very different deaths of Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman who died March 31, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed, and Pope John Paul II, who died April 2 of septic shock and what was termed “irreversible cardiocirculatory collapse.” Kass was persuaded to give the lecture by fellow bioethics committee member, Dr. Paul McHugh, a
Johns Hopkins psychiatrist and member of St. Mary’s board of trustees. In his remarks, Kass noted that current debate about assisted suicide, for example, makes the notion of death with dignity and the sanctity of life appear to be opposing forces. “Some say that upholding the sanctity of life might seem to be denying some people the dignity of death, that they pull in opposite directions,” he said. The confrontation between the two, though, is nothing new, he said. “I don’t accept the polarization,” Kass said. “The opposite is true. Both are compatible and, if rightly understood, they go hand in hand.” He said the concepts of the sanctity of life and death with dignity are “entirely compatible” with allowing someone to die naturally, “but never with deliberately killing.” And, he said, “when in active euthanasia you have physicians killing patients, even if they ask for it, that violates intervening in the art of healing.” “The practices of assisted suicide and euthanasia do
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not conduce to human dignity,” Kass said, “and our rush to embrace them will only accelerate the various tendencies in our society that undermine not only dignified conduct but even decent human relations,” he said. Kass is the Addie Clark Harding professor in the Committee on Social Thought and the College at the University of Chicago and is also Hertog fellow in social thought at the American Enterprise Institute. He is a former research professor in bioethics at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University. His numerous articles and books include, most recently, the philosophical/theological work “The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis.” In taking a strong position against assisted suicide and euthanasia, Kass drew on moral, ethical, historical and biblically based theological arguments against society’s developing acceptance of the idea of assisted suicide and euthanasia, let alone actual use of them. He emphasized that there is a profound difference between euthanizing a suffering animal, something he called a “humane” act, and killing a suffering BIOETHICS CHAIR, page 8
INSIDE THIS WEEK’S EDITION Catholic Assemblywomen . . 4 Rejecting euthanasia. . . . . . . 5
St. Isabella
Editorial and letters . . . . . . 12
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Columnists . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Scripture and reflection . . . 14 Datebook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Pope Benedict XVI
Our Lady of Lourdes
Movie review . . . . . . . . . . . 18
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May 6, 2005
SIXTY CENTS
VOLUME 7
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No. 16