The Pequeños Pepper
Newsletter of Los Pequeños de Cristo
In This Issue…
CTA NM and Women’s Ordination
Explaining Humanae Vitae
High School Parents Concerned
Letters to the Editor
Justice for All
Vatican “Motu Proprio”
CTA-NM and Woman’s Ordination
By Stephanie Block
New Mexico’s Call to Action hosted “Women Saying Yes to God – A Prayer Service for Women's Ordination Worldwide Day of Prayer” on Monday, March 25, 2002 at Tiguex Park in Albuquerque. The speaker, Genevieve Chavez from the Diocese of Las Cruces, who is an active member in the New Mexico CTA. She is also Executive Director of the Women's Ordination Conference, a 2,000-member group based in Fairfax, Va..
In the early 1990s, Chavez and 54 other women in petitioned their local bishop, Most Rev. Ricardo Ramirez, to vote against a proposed women’s pastoral on the grounds that the document didn't “address the evils of patriarchy and sexism in the church.” [Gustav Niebuhr, “Bishops Weigh Women's Role: Draft of Catholic Pastoral Letter Angers Many,”Washington Post, 11/92] In particular, the pastoral draft affirmed the Church’s position that women could not serve the Church as ordained ministers.
On September 11, 2000, Bishop Fiorenza, then president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, met with a delegation of Call to Action organizations – including Ms. Chavez, representing the Women’s Ordination Conference – to focus on a discussion “of issues of mutual interest dealing with lay ecclesial ministry, married priests and creation of a welcoming atmosphere for gay and lesbian people in the Church.” [photograph and quote from Call to Action Michigan Newsletter, November 2000.]
The Women’s Ordination Conference, in addition to its primary effort towards women’s ordination, also supports the full spectrum of women’s “rights,” including abortion and contraception.
Explaining Humanae Vitae
It’s no secret that there has been inadequate evangelization about the evil of artificial birth control. Humanae Vitae, the encyclical written in 1968 to address the issue, has been largely ignored or worse, actively rejected, in many Catholic circles. The consequences have been catastrophic. Catholic women have surgical abortions at about the same rate as the general population, resulting in about 1.6 million deaths in the United States each year. Chemical abortions account for an additional 14 million deaths annually.
One remedy lies in helping people to understand Humanae Vitae. But how? While the document is not written in difficult language, its insights fly in the face of modern sensibilities. Not many people are prepared to engage in an intellectual and moral struggle to understand Church teaching.
Manuel Rodriguez is not one of them, however. In the days when Rodriguez worked as a pharmacist, he often found himself explaining the abortion-inducing properties of the chemicals women had been proscribed as birth control. He was astonished at how little understanding they had about the nature of birth control drugs – or their dangers.
A member of Pharmacists for Life for several years, Rodriguez came to a point where he knew that he needed to reach a wider number of people. In his letter of resignation from Albertsons, he wrote: “Pharmacists who maintain a shred of ethics…in their practive can do nothing less than demand that patients be clearly and completely informed of all mechanisms and adverse reactions from use of abortifacient/contraceptives so they may truly make and informed decision when they decide to use or not use these dangerous and toxic chemicals.”
What next? With the Legion of Mary and the Respect Life Committee of his parish behind him and praying to the Blessed Mother for direction, Rodriguez came up with an idea that he hoped would convert hearts and educate minds.
Beginning a New Program
Rodriguez envisioned a retreat program that, under the patronage of Mary, would offer participants a series of talks explaining Church teachings on contraception.
The pilot retreat was held in early March, 2002, at Our Lady of Belen in Belen, New Mexico. It began on a Friday evening, with great religious intensity. The room contained two beautiful statues of the Blessed Mother, both surrounded by flowers and candles and parish musicians welcomed the retreatants with hymns.
Deacon Rudy Zamora led two novenas and a Divine Mercy chaplet before giving his introductory talk. Deacon Zamora, drawing from his own life as a husband and father, spoke about the role of chastity in the Christian’s vocation. “In seeking to be chaste,” he said, “a person must acquire self mastery – which is long, exacting work, because one is always being tempted. In this self-mastery, however, there is true freedom, in which one can find self-knowledge, achieve obedience to God’s commands, and exercise virtue and prayer….Chastity blossoms in friendship, offering itself just as Jesus gave himself totally to us.” Deacon Zamora warned that the Church’s teaching on sexual impurity is often misunderstood by the society, but profanation of sexuality by many kinds of disordered or intrinsically evil acts not only offends God but caused great harm to the individual and to society.
Saturday’s first morning talk was given by Our Lady of Belen parishioner, Sue Williams, who spoke about Personhood. Williams, the mother of eleven children, began by telling the fable of the Emperor’s New Clothes, which she would later compare to the lemming-like mentality of people who parrot fashionable opinion, sometimes to their own detriment. In contrast, Williams offered both scientific evidence and Church teaching to support the personhood of human beings from the moment of conception. Explaining the meaning and value of personhood, Williams urged retreat participants “to respect the immortal soul God has given,” and to be prepared to defend it.
Williams’ was followed by Stephanie Block, editor of the Los Pequeños Pepper and mother of seven, speaking about the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae. This seminal document explains the dual thematic elements of every marriage – union and procreation – and the principles on which true love is grounded. It demonstrates that when these fundamental principles are violated, such as by deliberate interference with the unitive or procreative aspects of a marriage, great damage is done both to the individual and to society. Block also noted that while the truth expressed by this document may be unpopular, truth is not determined by majority opinion.
After a wonderful lunch, Vicente Sisneros, Grand Knight of the Belen Council of the Knights of Columbus spoke briefly of the commitment the Knights to “mobilize consciences” in support of life issues. He thanked Manuel Rodriguez for organizing the Humanae Vitae Retreat at Our Lady of Belen Parish, and urged participation in the new “Day of the Unborn Child” that was to be sponsored by the Knights of Columbus on March 25.
This served as a splendid introduction for Manuel Rodriguez’s talk on Chemical Abortions. It is not well known, Rodriguez explained, that many of the drugs marketed as “contraceptive” act to produce the abortion of a newly conceived child. After sharing some of his own conversion story, Rodriguez said that as the presence of Our Lady of Guadalupe to the Aztecs converted their hearts and stopped their human sacrifices, so too “must she enflame our hearts with her message.”
Lucille Zamora, wife of Deacon Rudy, gave the final talk of the day. Zamora, a certified Natural Family Planning instructor, stressed the importance of respecting a woman’s delicate ecology. In situations where it’s necessary to avoid pregnancy or conversely, when married couples are trying to have a child, understanding of a woman’s natural cycles of fertility are not only far more reliable than artificial birth control methods, but are also more nurturing of a marriage, respecting the conjugal relationship.
Carrying the Message Forward
The retreat ended on Sunday morning with a “Final Appeal” given by Jude Quintana and Isabel Molina. The two women described the many devotions and spiritual opportunities Catholics have to enrich their lives. They encouraged retreatants not only to draw strength from their parish communities but also to carry their faith, and the truths of Catholic teaching, out into the larger community.
Quintana, who is the Director of Religious Education for Our Lady of Belen, said that she had asked the older women at her table how they had learned about abortion and contraception because her own generation had somehow failed to learn the teachings of the Church. Not having a clear answer yet, Quintana made it clear that she saw her task as not perpetuating that failure further.
This is the goal of Manuel Rodriguez, too, and was the reason that he left pharmaceutical work. “I couldn’t continue to take part in the killing by selling birth control pills,” he laments. “It just had to stop.”
Pius X High School Parents Concerned
By Stephanie Block
A group of Saint Pius X High School parents have requested changes at the school to address their concerns about curriculum, particularly in religious education, Catholic spiritual formation, and counseling procedures.
Short term parental goals include having theology courses taught from approved Catholic textbooks, giving parents adequate opportunity to review – and decline, if they wish – materials with sexual content, and the development of school policies to insure respectful and timely for meeting with parents.
Long term goals are more complex. Parents wish to support Saint Pius X High School’s mission as a Catholic school. Foremost among the many ideas under discussion is the creation of an oversight mechanism for the high school’s curricula, perhaps by means of a review board of parents and priests, under the Archbishop, or by having all curriculum materials available for public review.
Additional suggestions are that teachers at Pius be asked to assent to Ex Corde Ecclesia guidelines, that the Catechism of the Catholic Church be used as the foundation for a four-year study, that clear guidelines for the counseling department be prepared and followed, and the recognized freedom to associate openly, as a parents’ organization, without interference or hostility from the school administration.
A parents meeting on March 25 at the school drew over 100 interested parents who were grateful for an opportunity to gather together and discuss issues pertaining to their children’s welfare.
Letters to the Editor
Dear Editor: [Regarding Fr. Pieroni’s Pope Teaches Conference on Modernism]…He did not mince words; he told it as it is and said what I learned in the Penny Catechism and from my parents…. It’s gratifying to see our young priests coming out of the Seminary adhering to the Magisterium; he, coming from so far away and without an assistant, has the time to come and teach orthodox religion….Can I take cookies to the next lecture?
Sincerely,
E.B.
Editor: Yes, please!
Gentlemen: [Also regarding Fr. Pieroni’s Pope Teaches Conference on Modernism]…It’s always wonderful to hear a dedicated, young priest. Fr. Pieroni clearly loves God and wants everybody to get to Heaven through correct and timeless catholic teaching…Father certainly did an entertaining job of cataloguing the ills of America in 2002.
Sincerely yours,
A.P.
Editor: I wish we could offer a tape of Fr. Pieroni’s talk. The folks who have taped past conferences have moved out of town. Any technologically advanced soul out there with some decent equipment? These Pope Teaches Conferences are real gems and it would be wonderful to preserve the evening.
Justice for All!
Powerful Pro-life Exhibit on the University of New Mexico Campus Sends a Message
“You have no right to make me ashamed of my body!”
“No one – not God, not you – have a right to tell me what to do with my body!”
“If men could bear children, this would not be an issue.”
Exhibitors of the enormous, painfully graphic, and in-your-face Justice for All anti-abortion exhibit were pummeled with these and similar slogans throughout their three-day stay on the University of New Mexico campus. Angry students drew coat hangers on the sidewalk around the exhibit and some set up NARAL and College Democrat booth to provide a abortion information.
But a curious thing happened once the slogans were used up. Exhibitors were able to probe the fury and engage students in meaningful conversations.
It was often apparent that impassioned support for abortion “rights” betrayed a profound despair about life. Students more often than not agreed that the fetus was human and living and that abortion was “a kind of” murder. Facing the huge photos of aborted babies, and trying to rationalize that one person’s “rights” might completely deprive another of any rights whatsoever demanded a nihilism that many students admitted.
Exhibitors weren’t discouraged., however. “They need to mull over what they’ve seen and learned,” said one. “For some, this is the first time they’ve seriously listened to or seen anything to contradict the abortion position. It’s confusing and understandably very disturbing. But they’ve begun to think about the illogical and unjust aspects of the abortion position and eventually it will take root in some of them. That’s why we do this.”
Sacramentorum Sanctitati Tutela
Tutelage of the Holiness of the Sacraments: Vatican “Motu Proprio”
Sacramentorum Sanctitati Tutela, Tutelage of the Holiness of the Sacraments, is a “motu proprio” (on his own initiative) published by John Paul II in January, 2002 that establishes rigorous ecclesiastical processes for priests involved in pederasty or who commit serious offenses involving the sacraments. The offenses include desecration of the Eucharist, direct violation of the seal of confession, and sexual sins between a penitent and confessor.
The document defines certain crimes with greater precision than in the past and makes the time of the prescription of these crimes twice as long – 10 years – than before. For example, in a case where a priest has abused a minor younger than 18 years, the time of prescription has been extended and begins to count when the minor reaches 18.
A spokesman for the Vatican, Archbishop Tarsicio Bertone, secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, expressed hope that this action of the Vatican will help those who have been hurt by the behavior of erring ministers to regain confidence in their priests, especially parish priests [and] educators, most of whom “behave in an exemplary way.”