c. 2000 Religion News Service
Cardinal Mahony Presents Los Angeles Janitors with Justice Award
(RNS) Signaling the growing ties between American labor and the Roman Catholic Church in Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger Mahony presented city janitors, victors in a three-week strike last April, with the annual “Empowerment Award” bestowed by the Archdiocese’s Justice and Peace Commission.
Mahony made the presentation during the Twelfth Annual Justice and Peace Recognition Dinner Saturday night. The commission singled out “Justice for Janitors,” Local 1877 of the Service Employees International Union, for the union’s “commitment to the empowerment of the poor and to institutional change which breaks the cycles of poverty.”
Cueing the translator of the evening’s events he would not require her services, Mahony addressed the audience in both English and Spanish. The cardinal praised the union’s strike, which he said “brought the issues and concerns of working people to a national audience.”
Citing a litany of labor actions that had benefited from the janitors’ efforts, including the recently concluded Los Angeles bus drivers’ strike, Mahony said, “these campaigns seek to ensure that the wealth and prosperity of the region are distributed more equitably among all those who make contributions to it.”
Accepting the honor with other union members, president of SEIU local 1877 Mike Garcia said, “it was Cardinal Mahony’s intervention that really sparked the support that we needed to build.”
Garcia was referring to Mahony’s efforts to end the strike, including celebrating a Mass last April 10 at Our Lady Queen of Angels Church that climaxed a downtown procession of striking workers.
After the ceremony, Garcia mentioned Mahony’s role in bringing together key figures to solve the dispute, including Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan. Mahony has “a connection to both the poor and rich,” Garcia said. “It’s highly significant that a struggle like ours gets recognized by the Catholic church.”
In his comments, Mahony referred to the analysis of work in Pope John Paul II’s encyclical “Laborem Excercens.” Echoing papal teaching, Mahony said, “work should provide a person with a living, family wage” and should be “the foundation for the formation of a stable family life.”
Vatican Denies Renewed Speculation That Pope Will Retire
(RNS) The Vatican flatly denied Monday (Nov. 6) renewed speculation that Pope John Paul II, who is 80 and ailing, may become the second pontiff in Roman Catholic history to retire from office.
“The news does not have any foundation,” Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said in a statement. To underline the denial, the spokesman said John Paul already has scheduled a visit to Ukraine in June.
The German newspaper Bild said late last week that because of worsening health, the Polish-born pontiff may be planning to announce at Christmas that he will retire to a monastery in Poland after the current Jubilee Holy Year ends on Jan. 6. The pope suffers from a debilitating neurological ailment.
The Bild report followed similar speculation by three prominent churchmen.
Belgian Cardinal Godfried Danneels said last month John Paul may ask to retire in 2001 for health reasons. All bishops are required to submit their resignations at age 75, but popes are elected for life.
In his new book, “Frankly Speaking: Six Conversations With the Cardinal,” Danneels said, “it would not surprise me if the pope were to retire after 2000. He wanted at all costs to reach the jubilee year 2000, but I consider him capable of retiring afterwards.”
“It is a personal opinion of Cardinal Danneels and finds no confirmation whatsoever,” Navarro-Valls said Oct. 19 in response to reporters’ questions.
The Vatican also countered a warning by Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger of Paris in April that the pope eventually may become totally paralyzed by his neurological disorder and a statement in January by Archbishop Karl Lehmann of Mainz, president of Germany’s Catholic bishops conference, that he thought “the pope would be capable of (retirement) if he judged that he was no longer able to guide the church with authority.”
Article 332 of the church’s Code of Canon Law states that a pope may resign from office as long as he does so of his own free will. So far the only pope to resign was Celestine V in 1294.
Despite his trembling left hand and his difficulties in walking and articulating clearly, the pope has kept up a busy Holy Year schedule, including pilgrimages to Mount Sinai and the Holy Land. He turned 80 in May and on Saturday celebrated his saint’s name day by dining with 11 cardinals aged 80 and older.
Vatican sources have said that in addition to the trip to Ukraine, John Paul hopes to visit Syria, Malta and Poland next year.
Priest in Dog Racing Ad Prompts Controversy
(RNS) The appearance of a Roman Catholic priest in a television campaign to save the embattled dog racing industry in Massachusetts touched off public outcry this week, prompting sponsors to pull the ad off the air.
The Rev. Michael Guarino, a priest in the dog-racing city of Revere, went on TV with his adopted greyhound to say he would vote against a Nov. 7 ballot initiative to ban racing in Massachusetts.
“I felt very sad that people were being led astray by something that isn’t true,” Guarino said in the ad, referring to anti-racing publicity.
More than 100 angry callers protested to the Archdiocese of Boston, even though the archdiocese had no role in the advertisement and has not taken a position on the ballot issue.
“I can see how people would be confused” and mistakenly think the archdiocese supports dog racing, said spokesman John Walsh. “But (Guarino) acted completely on his own by doing this.”
The calling campaign seemed to be coordinated by animal activists, Walsh said. But ban sponsors known as Grey2K said they had not orchestrated protests. Rather, the group said, individuals took offense independently.
“There are a lot of Roman Catholics in Massachusetts, and people were very upset that a priest would take a stand that wasn’t right,” said Carey Theil, spokesperson for Grey2K. He declined to comment on the propriety of using a priest in an ad, but observed, “When you put a priest on TV, I think that’s going to elicit a response.”
Calls from animal rights activists to the archdiocese were “mostly reasonable,” Walsh said, though some he described as “anti-Catholic.”
For decades, people have bet on dog racing at tracks in Revere and Taunton, Mass. Industry critics say dogs are mistreated and die when they stop winning. Supporters say dogs are treated humanely in a vital industry that employs 1,200.
The Massachusetts Animal Interest Coalition, which sponsored the ad, did not respond to calls from RNS.
Vatican Rules Out Use of Embryo Stem Cells, OKs Adult Cells
(RNS) A panel of Vatican experts said Monday (Nov. 6) the production and therapeutic use of embryonic stem cells violates Roman Catholic teaching on respect for life from the moment of conception, but welcomed similar research with adult stem cells.
In a 19-page “Declaration on the Production and the Scientific and Therapeutic Use of Human Embryonic Stem Cells,”the Pontifical Academy for Life stressed “the seriousness and gravity of the ethical problem posed by the desire to extend to the field of human research the production and/or use of human embryos, even for an humanitarian perspective.”
But, it said, “adult stem cells represent a more reasonable and human method for making correct and sound progress in this new field of research and in the therapeutic applications which it promises.”
“These applications are undoubtedly a source of great hope for a significant number of suffering people,” the declaration said.
The academy, established by Pope John Paul II in 1994, studies problems of biomedicine and law that relate to church teaching on the promotion and defense of life. Its members include biologists and physicians and experts on ethics and the family.
Stems cells are basic, unspecialized cells that serve as the point of departure for the differentiated cells making up muscle, neural, blood and germinal tissues. Researchers are seeking to use them for such purposes as repairing the brain and spinal cord.
The academy noted that the governments of the United States, England, Japan and Australia are under pressure to relax opposition to research involving the destruction of human embryos so that scientists can pursue embryonic stem cell research.
In the United States, the academy noted, the federal government’s National Bioethics Advisory Committee has urged that “public money should be given not only for research on embryonic stem cells but also for producing them.”
“Indeed,” it said, “persistent efforts are being made to rescind definitely the present legal ban on the use of federal funds for research on human embryos.”
The academy cited the church teaching that “the result of human procreation, from the first moment of its existence, must be guaranteed that unconditional respect which is morally due to the human being in his or her totality and unity as body and spirit.”
This teaching, it said, rules out the test tube production and use of embryonic cells, including therapeutic cloning, for any form of research or treatment.
“No end believed to be good, such as the use of stem cells for the preparation of other differentiated cells to be used in which look to be promising therapeutic procedures, can justify an intervention of this kind. A good end does not make right an action which in itself is wrong,” the declaration said.
The academy said that research by pharmaceutical firms involving adult stem cells has shown some success and raised “genuine hopes for the not too distant future.”
The church also opposes test tube pregnancy, all forms of artificial contraception and abortion, including the so-called morning after pill.
The Vatican issued the declaration, which is dated Aug. 25, in six languages.
Quote of the day: Monica Garreton, University of Illinois student
(RNS) “The chief is a religious figure for Native American people and he doesn’t belong as entertainment for drunk football fans at half time.”
_ Monica Garreton, a senior at the University of Illinois, who is an activist in the campaign to have the school drop Chief Illiniwek as a university symbol. She was quoted by the Associated Press on Nov. 6.
DEA END RNS
