February 11 , 2005 - Issue #3
Local News | Opinion/Editorials | Letters to the Editor
Knights of Columbus part ways with AK Right to Life
Disagreement over a medical procedure at the Catholic hospital in Anchorage has set the Knights of Columbus and Archbishop Roger Schwietz against Alaska Right to Life.
Historically allies in their mutual opposition to abortion, the Catholic fraternal organization and the state’s largest anti-abortion group are now, at least temporarily, going their separate ways.
Knights of Columbus statewide deputy Tom Malone of Juneau sent word Jan. 30 that Knights councils in the Anchorage Archdiocese are not to allow Alaska Right to Life to speak at Knights functions, and that councils should not make any financial contributions to the organization "at this time."
The move came after Alaska Right to Life distributed a statement critical of Archbishop Schwietz during the prayer service that the Knights coordinate every year to mark the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision on abortion.
Archbishop Schwietz led the Jan. 22 prayer service at Anchorage’s Memorial Park Service. After the event someone gave him one of the Alaska Right to Life fliers, which asserts that the archbishop is allowing Providence Alaska Medical Center to perform abortion. It also says that Alaska Right to Life "cannot join in any ceremony that includes the archbishop or his diocesan representatives."
This is the latest flare-up in a conflict that is nearly two years old.
At issue is a controversial procedure at Providence Alaska Medical Center, which is part of the Seattle-based Providence Health System operated by the Sisters of Providence.
A pregnant woman who comes to Providence may elect to induce labor in certain cases when a team of doctors determines that her unborn child is incapable of life outside the womb. An ethical team at the hospital must review the particulars of each case to ensure that inducing labor would conform to Catholic principles.
When it learned of the practice in 2003, Alaska Right to Life began picketing the hospital and claiming publicly that it performed abortion. The organization also appealed to Archbishop Schwietz to halt the procedure, which he has the authority to do.
The archbishop did briefly impose a moratorium on the early induction procedure later that year.
The archbishop then enlisted the help of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, a respected Boston organization that frequently provides ethical consultations for bishops, to ensure that the hospital’s practices were morally acceptable.
Over the next several months ethicists from the center worked with Providence ethicists and hospital leadership to revise the hospital’s guidelines on early induction.
The protocol "went back and forth until it reached the point where we thought it was fully in compliance with Catholic moral teachings," John Haas, Ph.D., president of the bioethics center, told the Anchor this week.
The Anchor reported last summer on the conclusion of the revision of Providence’s guidelines. However, Alaska Right to Life has continued to picket the hospital, and decided to step up its efforts last month.
According to Ed Wassell, an Anchorage Catholic who is president of Alaska Right to Life, the 13-member board unanimously voted to speak out on the matter during the Knights’ annual pro-life prayer service.
Wassell said the board wanted to use the occasion to "respectfully" call on Archbishop Schwietz to end the contested procedure at Providence.
However, when Wassell informed Knight James Curro of his intentions two days before the event, Curro, a key organizer of the prayer service, nixed the idea.
Curro and his wife, Ann, are the Knights’ "State ProLife Couple."
Curro told the Anchor last week that he was "shocked" at Right to Life’s proposal.
"It was a prayer service, not a political rally," he said.
He told Wassell that Right to Life members were welcome to attend the event, but that he couldn’t give them a platform to challenge the archbishop.
The next day, Wassell asked if Alaska Right to Life could distribute a memorandum at the event explaining its positions on early induction and inviting people to the picket.
Curro said that would be OK so long as it was done after the service.
However, the following day, when Curro arrived to begin setting up for the prayer service, he noticed a man handing out the Alaska Right to Life fliers. Curro said he asked the man to stop but he refused.
So Curro found Wassell in the growing crowd and reminded him of their agreement. Wassell then stopped the man who was handing out fliers.
The following week state deputy Malone took Curro’s recommendation that the Knights temporarily break ties with Alaska Right to Life.
"I don’t see where the Right to Life (organization) has any jurisdiction to be telling the bishop how to act," Curro told the Anchor later.
Archbishop Schwietz reiterated that point.
"It would seem that this organization has not taken the time to understand our Catholic principles," the archbishop said. Right to Life’s assertions that he and Providence approve of abortion "is character assassination," he added.
He noted that he initiated "the long and difficult process" of developing guidelines "that all the ethicists could agree with, the best Catholic ethicists we could find, in order to make sure that there was nothing akin to abortion going on."
Youth ministers find support during Anchorage retreat
About 25 youth ministers and religious educators poured into Anchorage from around the archdiocese for a two-day retreat that began Jan. 24 at Holy Spirit Center. The last time youth ministers and religious educators gathered for a retreat was six years ago in Talkeetna.
Bob McMorrow, full-time youth director at St. Benedict Parish in Anchorage, said the retreat helped youth ministers better support each other and work toward building a "common vision" for the archdiocese’s youth ministry efforts.
McMorrow has also served on the archdiocese’s Youth Evangelization Team, with Theresa Lutes of Holy Family Cathedral and Matthew Beck of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, since its establishment two years ago.
The three full-time, parish-based Anchorage youth ministers serve as a resource to other parishes and coordinate archdiocesan youth ministry events.
At the retreat, discussions about faith education extended beyond youth catechesis to look at a model of lifelong faith formation.
Last year, Archbishop Roger Schwietz solicited help from parishes in forming a Pastoral Plan for Evangelization to provide a framework for groups developing evangelization efforts. The plan is based on two documents written by the U.S. bishops, "Go and Make Disciples" and "Our Hearts Were Burning Within Us." The documents concern adult faith formation and a greater expression of that faith among the people.
The fruit of the archbishop’s request was evident at the end of the youth ministry retreat as leaders expressed the need for "whole community catechesis," in which entire families and adults engage in lifelong learning about their religion and are able to share the stories of their faith life.
"We can’t have good catechesis without faith sharing. Faith sharing is part of what we have to do as Catholics and once we own the faith as adults," said Donna Gum, who has been educating young people about their faith for 25 years.
For the last year and half, Gum has been pastoral associate at St. Anthony Parish in Anchorage. She said youth ministers will be "lone rangers, or a few rangers" until adult parishioners can help educate young people and others by sharing the lessons of their own faith.
Toward the end of the retreat, McMorrow stood to speak during a discussion of visions for the future of youth ministry in the archdiocese.
"I hear a lot about catechesis of the whole parish and I think that’s good," McMorrow said, "but a lot of educated people who aren’t holy doesn’t give us anything." Parishes have an opportunity to be centers of service, he added.
McMorrow, who has accompanied young Catholics to several international World Youth Day events, said he remembered Pope John Paul II advising young people to "train in holiness" through prayer, service and learning.
"That’s community," McMorrow told the group.
"I would agree that our pastoral plan (has) got to have content but it’s got to have heart," Archbishop Schwietz said.
Marti Rogers, faith formation director at St. Patrick Parish in Anchorage, said that in addition to learning about the traditions such as the Ten Commandments, beatitudes and parts of the Mass, religious education should include discussions about personal faith experiences and encourage people to openly share those lessons.
"What we need to do is share faith — which you have to do through experience. It can’t be just book learning," said Rogers, who has been involved in youth ministry for about 20 years.
"You are the evangelizers," Peter Zografos, director of the archdiocese’s Office of Evangelization, told the group. "You’re the movers."
Zografos suggested that youth ministry and evangelization should begin by providing ample opportunities for youth involvement in Sunday liturgies.
If liturgies offer compelling homilies, music and proclamation of Scripture, and if parishioners are "welcoming and holy," Zografos said, "you might ask your friends to come."
Days after retreatants packed up and headed back down from the picturesque Anchorage hillside setting to their parishes, Julie Thomas, director of youth ministry at St. Patrick, said the retreat imparted a "sense of renewal" and affirmation in her work. She said she connected with youth ministers and now knows people she can bounce ideas off of.
Thomas said the goal for religious educators and youth ministers is to encourage Catholics through lifelong catechesis to "have a relationship with God" and to "be an active participator of your faith" by serving the community, working for social justice, connecting to other parishioners and taking a more active role in liturgy, among other things.
Community difference-makers honored at banquet
Good food, corny jokes, generous people and well-deserved awards presented to members of the Catholic community — that sums up the 3rd annual St. Francis of Assisi Recognition Banquet held Feb. 2 at Anchorage’s Fourth Avenue Theatre.
The annual dinner is a little different from many Catholic events because it’s not a fund- raiser. There’s no silent auction and no one meets you at a door with a raffle ticket.
Instead, the night is dedicated, as Archbishop Roger Schwietz told the crowd, "to honoring ordinary people who do extraordinary things."
Catholics from Wasilla to Unalaska to Kodiak share the night with their Anchorage friends in a family-like atmosphere.
There are three categories for the awards: youth or youth group; priest, deacon, religious sister or brother; and layperson.
This year’s youth award was presented to the Youth in Theology and Ministry students from St. Michael Parish in Palmer. These young people participate in an institute at St. John University and Seminary in Collegeville, Minn., and return from the experience to plan a project within their own community.
Two clergy and religious awards were presented. Sister Diane Bardol and the Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart from Kodiak were selected along with Jesuit Father Vincent Beuzer from the archdiocese’s retreat and spirituality facility, Holy Spirit Center.
Sister Bardol has been the principal of St. Mary School in Kodiak for 34 years, and her order, the Grey Nuns, has served Kodiak for 60 years.
Father Beuzer is a former director of Holy Spirit Center who continues to serve on the staff there. He helped establish several Ignatian programs for lay formation as well as a program to train lay spiritual directors.
The layperson category this year produced three winners: Annabelle Wilt, a founding member and catechist at St. Christopher by the Sea in Unalaska; Paul Dixon, a Holy Family Cathedral parishioner who, at age 83, continues to devote weekends to taking Holy Communion to the Alaska Native Medical Center and other shut-ins; and Minnie Swalling, a member of Our Lady of Guadalupe whose long service includes helping to found the Bishop’s Attic and establishing outreach efforts that later resulted in the creation of St. Francis House and ultimately Catholic Social Services.
Father Scott Medlock, administrator at Anchorage’s St. Patrick Parish, and Father Leo Walsh, pastor at St. Andrew Parish in Eagle River, served as masters of ceremonies for the third year and provided their usual humorous banter.
The evening also marked the 15th anniversary of the investiture of Archbishop Schwietz as a bishop in Duluth, Minn.
In announcing this landmark, Father Walsh pointed out that it was also Groundhog Day as pictures of a groundhog and the archbishop appeared on the screen behind him.
"If the Archbishop sees his shadow today, we’ll have him with us for several more years," said Father Walsh, shining a spotlight at Archbishop Schwietz that produced a long shadow.
"I don’t know what’s worse, the pictures or the jokes," Archbishop Schwietz told the laughing audience.
The award banquet is sponsored by the Archdiocesan Office of Stewardship and Development. It was named to honor retired Archbishop Francis Hurley, whose patron is St. Francis of Assisi.
Recruiting for a Catholic education
Archdiocesan schools have unique benefits as well as challenges
When Paula Carpenter wrote her first tuition check to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic School in 1985, Ronald Reagan was president and the parish school was only 5 years old.
In the 20 years since, she and her husband, Charles, haven’t missed a payment. In May, their fourth child, Colleen, graduates from sixth grade and the Carpenters will finally "graduate" from the kindergarten-through-sixth-grade school, too.
At the current tuition rate of $3,380 per year (it was much lower when the Carpenters started), it wouldn’t take a calculus student at Lumen Christi — the archdiocese’s high school — to figure out that the Carpenters have invested heavily in Catholic education.
Why?
"It gives (the children) a chance to have ‘Catholic’ be a bigger part of their existence," Paula Carpenter said. She and her husband attended Catholic schools "and it was so much a part of our whole being, our whole life experience," she said. "We wanted that for the kids."
And although many Catholic parents are happy to extol the value of Catholic schools, especially during Catholic Schools Week (Jan. 30-Feb. 5 this year), there’s another question that begs an answer.
With hundreds of Catholic children attending public school in the archdiocese, and scores enrolled in other Christian schools, seats are empty at both St. Elizabeth Ann Seton and Lumen Christi. And at Kodiak’s St. Mary’s School, which offers kindergarten through eighth grade, almost half the students are non-Catholics.
Holy Rosary Academy, a private Catholic school that operates independently of the archdiocese, has a kindergarten-12th grade enrollment of 124 students.
Why aren’t archdiocesan Catholics clamoring for Catholic education?
For some, it boils down to a one-word answer: finances. Although some financial aid is available at all schools, it’s limited, and it doesn’t apply to the middle-class parent struggling with college savings and car payments.
At St. Mary’s, money is a big problem for the largely minority, low-income Catholic population.
"Our Catholic population can’t afford us," Grey Nun Sister Diane Bardol, the principal, told the Anchor last year.
Yearly tuition at St. Mary’s is $2,700 per student, with a $100 family registration fee. At St. Elizabeth Seton, the first child pays $3,380, with breaks for subsequent children. At Lumen Christi, yearly cost is $5,000.
But more goes into the equation than money.
At St. Elizabeth, enrollment was near the capacity of 175 for several years. But in 200l-2002, an internal dispute at the school resulted in the resignation of the principal and the majority of the staff. Many unhappy parents pulled their children from the school, and efforts to rebuild the population continue.
Jim Carden, current principal at St. Elizabeth, is optimistic about the future.
The current sixth-grade class, with only nine members, was one of those heavily affected by the pull-outs, he said.
"But kindergarten is at 22 (students) this year," Carden said, "and we anticipate the days when we may go back to a kindergarten waiting list."
Lumen Christi opened its doors in 1996 and has an enrollment of 82 with a capacity for 120. The school is still struggling to convince local Catholics that its academic program compares favorably to other junior-senior high schools in the area.
Carpenter sent a child to junior high there in the school’s early years, but pulled out because of internal bickering and an academic program lacking in college preparatory essentials, she said.
Today, however, Lumen Christi has taken giant steps toward academic excellence.
Tim Craig, a Holy Family Cathedral parishioner, has been there from the start because, he said, he was determined to have his children study in a Christian setting.
His son Adam, now a junior at the University of Portland, attended the school in the early days.
"I knew we paid a price," Craig said candidly. His son struggled to catch up the first two years of college. But, now, Craig said, he "wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the school to anyone." His daughter is a freshman at Lumen Christi.
Craig, who has served on the school board of directors and chaired the annual gala, gives principal Jim Yeargan much credit for the school’s progress.
"Mr. Yeargan turned everything around," he said. "He turned the school into a class operation."
Four years ago, the school became affiliated with St. Benedict Parish. This move, Yeargan said, brought stability to the school, a place to call "home," as well as an entirely new advisory school board. A large gymnasium was built for the school’s use at St. Benedict.
Yeargan also said Archbishop Roger Schwietz’s hiring of Barbara Weil as Catholic School Development director has helped the school in areas such as publicity and developing a standards-based curriculum.
With 10 classrooms and 10 teachers, Lumen Christi now offers a full roster of college preparatory classes, including advanced placement classes, as well as a growing list of extracurricular activities that includes sports, drama and even a jazz band.
Henrietta Callewaert is the fourth-grade teacher at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. With several years of public school teaching experience both in and outside Anchorage, Callewaert illustrates some of the comparative positives of Catholic education.
"When I went back to public school, I was frustrated," she said. "I felt like my conversations with kids were stifled because I couldn’t mention God, sin, the whole faith walk."
As for academics at St. Elizabeth, Callewaert said, they are "on a par with public school." But because of the focus on faith and the resulting discipline, a private school often has an edge, she said, pointing to recent deaths in the school.
"We gathered as a community in a powerful way to handle grief," Callewaert said. "You can bring in counselors who can focus on grief. But we can move on to resurrection."
A greater emphasis on community service and social justice separates public from Catholic school as well.
Perhaps no one exemplifies more the concept of faith in action and social justice in school than St. Mary’s School under the direction of Sister Bardol. There, children regularly investigate issues such as sweat shops and unfair trade practices.
This spring the school will present "The Thousand Cranes," a play based on a book about a girl who dies as a result of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
Sister Bardol said the art, including the effort to make 1,000 origami cranes, is "another form of prayer" at the school.
Catholic educators and parents often look with envy at the success of other Christian schools. One prime example is Grace Christian School, the kindergarten-through-high-school behemoth just a few yards down Huffman Road from St. Elizabeth. The nondenominational school has 684 students, about 10 percent of them Catholic, said a spokesperson. Tuition is slightly higher there than at the archdiocese’s schools.
Craig believes Catholics enroll at Grace and other Christian schools because the word isn’t getting out to Catholic parents that Lumen Christi has as much to offer academically.
"The archbishop has been terrific," Craig said, but "the schools could be better promoted by the archdiocese," especially through endorsements from the pulpit and more coverage in the Catholic Anchor.
It should be a no-brainer for Catholic leadership, Craig said.
"After all, those who attend Catholic schools are going to be more supportive in the long run, aren’t they?"
Southcentral Catholics give more than ever
Southcentral Catholics smashed their previous record of financial generosity in response to the Indian Ocean tsunami catastrophe.
Parishes and individuals have so far contributed at least $159,037 for tsunami relief to Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. bishops’ overseas relief and development agency.
The collection beats the archdiocese’s previous record of $95,117, contributed in 1997 for the annual national Religious Retirement Collection.
The massive outpouring for tsunami relief surprised Jim Caldarola, director of the archdiocese’s Stewardship and Development Office, in the sense that it was so much more money than he’s ever seen the local Catholic community donate for a single cause, he said. On the other hand, he added, he’s never before coordinated a collection for a disaster of this magnitude.
Money started coming in to the archdiocese in the first days after the Dec. 26 tsunami crashed onto the shores of 12 countries in South Asia and Northeast Africa, killing tens of thousands of people. Estimates of the total number of dead range between 175,000 and more than 300,000, making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in modern history. Hundreds of thousands of survivors lost their homes, boats and community infrastructure.
In late December Anchorage Archbishop Roger Schwietz asked parishes to take up second collections for Catholic Relief Services. Some parishes in the Anchorage Archdiocese had multiple collections and others organized additional fund-raisers as well. Nearly every parish and mission parish in the archdiocese contributed something.
Smaller parishes told the Anchor last month about donating their normal weekend offerings even though they already struggle to pay essentials such as fuel bills.
East Anchorage’s St. Patrick Parish was far and away the biggest donor, contributing $37,064 to the cause. Holy Family Cathedral was next, at $23,323. But St. Patrick’s funds include a whopping $20,500 from the parish’s Knights of Columbus council. Holy Family’s Knights plan to hold a tsunami fund-raiser in the near future.
Catholic Relief Services has amassed roughly $68 million for tsunami relief, according to its Web site. It has committed $80 million to the effort.
The organization has well-established programs in Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka, three of the hardest-hit countries, and is beginning to move beyond emergency relief to help victims restore their livelihoods.
Catholic Relief Services operates in 94 countries worldwide in the areas of emergency relief, health, agriculture, education, economic development and peace building.
Archbishop’s Column
Suicide an illness, not an act of despair; trust in God’s compassion
"Here’s what I’ve decided: The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance. But live right in it, under its roof" (Barbara Kingsolver).
These words about hope were in a Christmas card sent to me this year by a friend who "clung to hope and tried to live under its roof mightily this year." These words come back to me as we move away from the Christmas holiday season into Lent.
More importantly, they seem appropriate as we gradually emerge from the darkness of winter. Although the days have begun to get longer, we are still affected by light deprivation and the accompanying lethargy, if not depression. Life takes on a heaviness akin to the Wagner opera so well presented in Anchorage recently. We get into a somber mood and dwell on the difficulties we are experiencing in life or the painful losses we have experienced.
This time in which we are waiting for signs of life, of hope, gives me an opportunity to write about an experience that touches us all too often in Alaska: suicide.
Not that this is limited only to Alaska. These last few years I have become aware of suicides in just about every category of people throughout the country: young and old, successful and unsuccessful, clergy and laity.
In my years of priesthood, I have found it especially difficult to deal with cases of suicide by youths. Parents ask why this happened. Were they at fault? What could they have done to prevent this?
There are few answers to this tragic mystery. I would like, however, to reiterate some points about this subject made by Father Ronald Rolheiser, who will be with us in the archdiocese for several days early next month.
Father Rolheiser, a fellow Oblate, states that he writes a column on suicide every year, because some things need to be said over and over again, given the misconceptions we have about suicide.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that suicide "contradicts the natural inclination of the human being to preserve and perpetuate his life" (no. 2281) but that "Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide" (no. 2282). "We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives" (no. 2283).
Thus, we have to realize that suicide is not an act of despair, culpable and unforgivable. It is, in most cases, as Father Rolheiser puts it, "an illness, pure and simple."
We are made up of body and soul, and something can go wrong in either sphere. Just as there are malignancies of the body, so there can also be malignancies of the heart and soul that take a person out of life against his or her will.
"In most instances, suicide is a desperate attempt to end unendurable pain, much like the woman who throws herself through a window because her clothing has caught fire. That’s a tragedy, not an act of despair," Father Rolheiser wrote.
This is why the church prays for those who have died at their own hand. We know that God’s compassion can reach far beyond what we understand. In our limited human capabilities, sometimes all our love, patience and even professional help fail to release one from the pains and fears of this illness.
It is then that we must trust in the loving care of God who, in Jesus, gave his life that we may have life. Rather than spending our time in fruitless false guilt or second-guessing, we can choose to be a people of hope.
This does not mean that we should ignore or be insensitive to people who are going through difficult times or depression. We must extend every care and assistance we can.
This care should come from a community that values love and welcome over judgment and exclusion. It comes from a community that has found meaning in what we experience in this "vale of tears," in what our God has revealed to us in the Paschal Mystery of Jesus.
As a community of believers, "We know that affliction makes for endurance, and endurance for tested virtue, and tested virtue for hope. And this hope will not leave us disappointed, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us" (Rom 5: 3-5).
Editorials
Antics show need for new voices to come forth at Alaska Right to Life
The leadership of Alaska Right to Life overstepped the bounds of propriety last month when it attempted to transform a prayer service organized by the Knights of Columbus and led by Archbishop Roger Schwietz into a public admonition of the archbishop.
Fortunately the Knights blocked the antics, mostly. But it offended them enough that the state’s top Knight has suspended ties with their old ally.
What was the Alaska Right to Life board thinking?
The fact is, Archbishop Schwietz has been diligent and extremely thorough in his attempts to ensure that Catholic principles are being followed at Providence Alaska Medical Center. Likewise, Providence has been open to suggestions and has said from the start that it would abide by the archbishop’s decisions on the practice of early induction.
To ensure, as he says, that "nothing akin to abortion" was done at Providence, the archbishop asked some of the finest and most respected Catholic ethicists in the country to work with Providence’s top people to revise the existing protocol on early induction.
After the National Catholic Bioethics Center completed its consultation last summer and the revised guidelines were in place at Providence, the archbishop took two additional precautionary steps. He directed that the protocol be reviewed periodically to ensure it keeps pace with the rapidly changing medical world, and he sent the revised guidelines to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The congregation is still studying early induction as it is practiced at Providence and other Catholic health care institutions around the world.
If the doctrinal congregation asks for a change to the policy, Archbishop Schwietz will immediately comply. His goal is to uphold Catholic doctrine, after all.
Alaska Right to Life has a different goal, and a different, much more simplistic approach to the complex, tragic cases that occasionally confront pregnant women, medical experts and ethicists at Providence. The anti-abortion group’s leadership is utterly convinced that Providence allows abortions, and it wouldn’t matter if the pope himself were to disagree.
Alaska Right to Life is certainly free to picket the hospital and speak out against the archbishop. It’s a free society.However, when the group’s 13-member board (which includes seven Catholics) stoops to the level of attempting to disrupt a pro-life prayer service the archbishop is leading, it is time for more level-headed folks within the organization to make their voices heard.
Iraqis reaffirm value of democracy
If the value of democracy was in doubt in anyone’s mind, the Iraqi people reaffirmed that it is precious indeed. At least 50 Iraqis were murdered on Jan. 30 because they were among the millions who wanted to vote in the country’s first authentic elections in five decades.
People in free societies around the world were jubilant at the sight of hordes of Iraqis walking to vote, waiting at polling stations, proudly displaying their purpled index fingers. It was reminiscent of those crowds of revelers taking sledge hammers to the Berlin Wall, or Boris Yeltsin defiantly climbing atop the Soviet tank that was sent to snuff Russia’s budding democracy.
The continuing violence in Iraq makes the country’s historic vote all the more remarkable. Despite having been viciously oppressed for decades and now being occupied by a foreign coalition that has been unable to bring about stability, the Iraqi people clearly have not given up.
The means by which this election was made possible — war — may yet overwhelm the good that has resulted so far. But for now, the balance is tipped in favor of democracy.
Letters to the Editor
Halcro got it half right
Andrew Halcro was right on the money in supporting restoration of Denali KidCare eligibility requirements (Readers Respond, January 28). However, he should have stopped there instead of self-righteously feathering his own nest on the matter while singling out and tarring pro-life Republicans who may have had some serious problems with other aspects of that program. Also, Halcro was right again in saying that labels mean nothing in politics — or anything else for that matter. Take, for instance, pro-abortion politicians who "label" themselves Catholic while cavalierly defying the teaching of the church on the sanctity of life by their words and actions. God grant all of us the grace to be worthy of the "labels" to which we aspire.
Anchorage
Find good in Bush policies
Your Catholic Comment Jan. 28th, stated, "America and the world will eventually be more peaceful if Bush can turn his words into meaningful action and policy." The essay’s last line set the tone of failure, or at least an impossible mission, for Bush’s policies, as did most of the essay. The Anchor must look to the positives of the Bush’s foreign policies. A religious newspaper should strive to find good news to print and not consistently question the goals of our president as he spreads democracy and fights terrorism. I expect the liberal Daily News to espouse this discouragement, not the Anchor. I feel safer knowing we are waging war on terrorism, not just waiting for the next terrorist attack. The recent elections in Iraq show promise of democracy taking root. Hopefully, the Anchor will shed some encouragement in its next issue. P.S. Please, no derogatory pictures this time.
Wasilla
Right to life includes the born
The right to life encompasses the born as well as the unborn. The total post-1950 under-5 infant mortality has been 866 million for the world, 841 million for the non-European world, 13 million for Indo-China, 17 million for Israel’s immediate neighbors, 3 million for Iraq and 11 million for Afghanistan. The First World has a major complicity in this mass mortality through occupation, war, militarism and economic constraint. According to UNICEF (2005), in 2003 the under-5 infant mortality was 110,000 in occupied Iraq, 292,000 in occupied Afghanistan and 1,000 in the invading and occupying nation Australia. Ninety percent of the horrendous under-5 infant mortality in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan has been avoidable — is this mass infanticide or "collateral death" in wars justified as "democratic imperialism"? Catholics and pro-life humanity in general cannot ignore this. War kills. Silence kills. Silence is complicity. Please inform everyone. Save the children.
Melbourne, Australia