January 27, 2006 - Issue #2
Local News | Opinion/Editorials | Letters to the Editor
Holy Cross Parish improvises after its church is flooded
Holy Cross Parish administrator Sister Loretta Luecke has probably never been accused of having an easy job. She probably also never expected to find her church flooded, but that’s just what happened when she walked out of her office the afternoon of Friday, Jan. 6, to discover that the building was awash in ankle-deep, cold water.
"The pipe in the reconciliation room burst," Sister Luecke said. "I was here, but I didn’t hear anything. I just walked out and we had a flash flood, basically. There was water everywhere."
It was unclear why the water line broke. An alarm that should have gone off apparently malfunctioned, leaving the flood for Sister Luecke to discover on her own.
As word of the mishap spread that evening, parishioners of the Anchorage church started showing up by the carload to offer assistance.
"A lot of people came in to help us get things out of the water," Sister Luecke said. "I was very impressed."
Water flowed from the reconciliation room (which is situated off the sanctuary between the sacristy and the pastor’s office) and quickly flooded the adjoining rooms, then poured into the sanctuary and continued into the parish hall.
In all, Sister Luecke said, the damage totals around $115,000, all of which will be covered by insurance.
In addition to the insurance money, Holy Cross has received some donations, including a gift of more than $10,000 from nearby St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish.
"Happy Feast of the Baptism of the Lord," begins the letter from St. Elizabeth pastor Father Tom Lilly offering assistance. "You could probably use a little less water in your lives right now!"
Drywall will need to be replaced and office walls repainted, and the church will receive its first new carpet in 13 years.
That’s why JoAnn Twedt, who coordinates maintenance for Holy Cross, calls the flood "a blessing in disguise."
"My mother always said, before she died, something good comes from something bad," Twedt said last week, gazing around the damp, barren sanctuary.
Beyond new carpeting, an event such as this can have more substantial positive impacts, Twedt added.
"It brings your community a lot closer together," she said.
For old-school Holy Cross parishioners, the flood has stirred memories of their early days with their first pastor, the late Father Ernest Muellerleile, who celebrated Mass for the group in various temporary locations before the church was built.
"That was the first thing I thought of when I walked in this morning," Alice Garrod said. "It’s just like the old days."
Garrod said the flood hasn’t been "too terrible," although it does have an effect on her music ministry.
"We can’t do any new songs," she said, laughing. "I don’t know where the music is." But, she added, even that has a positive lining to it.
"It’s always good to be forced to do things differently," she said.
It will be some time before life goes back to normal at Holy Cross, but staff members and parishioners are adjusting. Services were canceled the first weekend but are now being held in the parish hall.
Workers set up as many pews there as the fire marshal would allow and added an altar and a few music stands.
Until the repairs are finished, probably in mid-February, pastor Father Dan Hebert (who was on retreat when the pipe burst) will celebrate Mass in the makeshift sanctuary, amid quilts commemorating the parish’s history, youth ministry bulletin boards and a "Pray For Vocations" display.
The songs for last Sunday’s liturgies were noted on a whiteboard next to the drinking fountain, surrounded by a child’s drawings of angels. The parish library has been converted to a stopgap sacristy.
Sister Luecke said that attendance was down just slightly the first weekend but that the 11 a.m. Mass was standing room only, and she added that she thinks the parish will "bounce back" once word gets around that Masses are back on their regular schedule.
Principals discuss Catholic schools on eve of special week
With Christmas break over and Catholic Schools Week just around the corner, the principals of the Anchorage Archdiocese’s three parochial schools paused to discuss their institutions and share plans for the special week.
The National Catholic Education Association, a voluntary organization of private educators and institutions, has been celebrating Catholic Schools Week since 1974 to drum up support for Catholic education. It runs Jan. 29-Feb. 4 this year.
The three parochial schools in the archdiocese are St. Mary School in Kodiak, affiliated with the parish there of the same name; St. Elizabeth Ann Seton School, affiliated with the parish of the same name in South Anchorage; and Lumen Christi High School, affiliated with St. Benedict Parish in West Anchorage.
A fourth school, Holy Rosary Academy in Anchorage, operates independent of the archdiocese although it has permission from Anchorage Archbishop Roger Schwietz to identify itself as Catholic.
Each fall the Catholic school on Kodiak Island rolls out a new theme that is integrated into lesson plans and classrooms throughout the year.
This year’s theme, "All is One," is meant to stress unity with God’s people and environment, with all of creation, explained Sister Diane Bardol, the petite Grey Nun who has been the school’s principal for 33 years.
St. Mary, which offers kindergarten through eighth-grade classes, will delve further into "All is One" during Catholic Schools Week, Sister Bardol said.
The school begins the week with a Mass and pancake breakfast with proceeds going to the computer upgrade fund. The next three days, students compete in academic decathlons. They’ll lead an evening prayer service for peace Feb. 2, processing with candles, singing and reading passages from the New Testament, Old Testament and the Koran, the holy book of Islam. They will also carry ribbons with the names of countries they have selected to pray for.
The school is also hosting a potluck of traditional foods prepared by its ethnically diverse families, who hail from the Philippines, Samoa, Mexico, El Salvador and elsewhere.
Archbishop Schwietz will celebrate Mass at St. Mary Parish on Feb. 3 and join the children for lunch and a fish fry fund-raiser later that day.
Sister Bardol said the prayer service and international potluck are designed to incorporate the "All is One" theme by illustrating that all people are connected.
"Since so many countries are at war or in a state of violence, our theme of oneness tells us that what is happening to one person or one group of people diminishes everyone," Sister Bardol said.
This year, enrollment is down at St. Mary from about 140 students last year to 128.
That may be because many of the island’s families have moved to Kodiak from other countries for seafood industry jobs and are struggling to make ends meet, Sister Bardol said. Many simply can’t budget the $2,800 annual student tuition, the $100 per family registration fee, and the time commitment the school asks of parents to volunteer and fund-raise, she said.
Meanwhile, St. Mary continues to partner with Delta Cyber School, an online Alaska public school program through which the school has secured the use of 15 Apple computers. This addition enables students to beef up math education with online courses and tests that compliment their in-class curriculum.
"The students really enjoy it," Sister Bardol said, and they see their progress charted regularly through the online program.
Computers were also added this year at Anchorage’s St. Elizabeth Ann Seton School, which replaced old computers and purchased a dozen more with a private donation and a portion of the roughly $89,000 raised at the school’s annual auction. Now all 25 students in the computer class can use their own machines.
Seven teachers (grades kindergarten through sixth) plus a librarian instruct 156 St. Elizabeth students, which is 18 more students than last year.
Enrollment is still shy of the 175-student capacity, but the kindergarten class is full, a good sign for the future, said St. Elizabeth principal Jim Carden.
Parents pay $3,550 annual tuition for one child and a couple hundred dollars less per student if more than one child attends.
At St. Elizabeth, students get two sessions each of Spanish, physical education and music instruction per week in addition to math, science, language arts, social studies and religion.
"Every child gets exposed to other things than just regular classroom work," Carden said.
Also, the staff has been meeting this year to "upgrade and update" the school’s math and science curriculum. Each year, Carden said, they form a committee to refine curriculum in a certain subject.
Carden was notified last week that the school had earned full accreditation from the Northwest Association of Accredited Schools.
Lumen Christi, the archdiocese’s junior-senior high school, is in the early stages of the accreditation process.
The grade 7-12 school already has "provisional accreditation" with the Northwest Association of Accredited Schools, according to principal Jim Yeargan.
"We’re recognized as a legit school, not only in Anchorage but throughout the nation," he said.
Within three years the school will conduct an in-depth self-study as part of its progress toward full accreditation.
There are some novel opportunities at Lumen Christi this school year. Forensic science, modern European history, Alaska history and full-credit art classes are all new.
Fourteen Lumen Christi students are enrolled in the forensics class, where they’ve learned to differentiate kinds of animal and human hair strands with a microscope and analyze types of sand and fingerprints. Yeargan praised the class for its "hands on" application of biology and chemistry knowledge.
The school also hired a new teacher and its first-ever assistant principal, and it added an after-school debate team.
Yeargan noted that a Lumen Christi education is not just academic but spiritual formation too. Sixty-seven of the school’s 80 students are Catholic.
"We’re unabashedly Catholic," he said, pointing to the four times a week that students attend Mass, plus the benediction and sacrament of reconciliation on each first Friday of the month and the regular school-wide recitations of the rosary.
Lumen Christi students joined their counterparts from Holy Rosary Academy and Grace Christian School on Jan. 20 in a protest of Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that removed state restrictions on abortion. The Catholic school students gather each year to pray the rosary in front of an Anchorage courthouse on the anniversary of the ruling.
Tuition at Lumen Christi is $5,000 per year. Enrollment is down slightly from last year, according to Yeargan.
Alaska bishops share legislative priorities
The public policy arm of Alaska’s Catholic bishops took on a new name this fall and is now monitoring legislation in Juneau as the Alaska Conference of Catholic Bishops. The group used to be the Alaska Catholic Conference.
The conference, made up of Anchorage Archbishop Roger Schwietz, Juneau Bishop Michael Warfel, Fairbanks Bishop Donald Kettler and retired Anchorage Archbishop Francis Hurley, has its own lobbyist in Juneau, Chip Wagoner, who works year-round as the group’s representative.
Last week Wagoner spoke with the Anchor about issues of particular concern to the conference. He had just wrapped up a series of meetings with the bishops aimed at determining where they wanted to focus their energy during the 24th Legislative Session, which began Jan. 9 and runs for five months.
"We look at bills that have been filed, look at Catholic social teaching, look at Catholic doctrine, and take all that into account," Wagoner said, describing the meetings.
Here, in no particular order, are the current conference priorities, minus at least two that Wagoner said the bishops are not ready to discuss publicly:
Wagoner stressed that the conference is concerned about "elective abortions" as distinct from those that are "medically necessary."
State law requires that medically necessary abortions be covered by Medicaid, the federal health care program for the poor.
The problem, according to Wagoner, is that the state does not do enough to determine when an abortion is medically necessary versus elective.
"Our contention is that they are also funding elective ones because there is nobody looking at the difference between medically necessary and elective," he said.
This issue has been a priority of the conference for several years. In 2002 the conference wrote the language for a bill that would have defined medically necessary abortions; it passed the Legislature but was vetoed by then-Gov. Tony Knowles.
The conference has not pushed the idea since then because Knowles’ successor, Gov. Frank Murkowski, has indicated that he, too, would veto the bill as written, according to Wagoner.
The push ever since has been to come up with veto-proof language, he said.
Currently there are no residential lockup facilities for youths with mental problems in Alaska, so they end up being shipped out of state for treatment, Wagoner said.
The conference supports the "Bring the Kids Home" initiative to build facilities here so that families and friends can remain more involved in the youths’ lives, Wagoner said.
Construction has already started on a facility in Anchorage, but the conference is making it known that it supports long-term funding for the project.
In 2003, before the advent of high oil prices that have produced a $1.2 billion state budget surplus, Murkowski ended the Municipal Revenue Sharing program that for 25 years had distributed state money to cities for local government projects.
The result has been devastating to many rural communities, and the conference supports re-establishing revenue sharing, according to Wagoner.
"The Legislature is very aware of the fact that some of our communities are not making it," he said. "Some are going bankrupt, some are closing down all administrative offices and contracting out all services. The bishops are supportive of funding, especially for rural areas where they don’t have a tax base but there’s still a need for services."
Several revenue-sharing measures are being discussed in the Legislature; the bishops’ conference does not at this point favor one over the others.
The conference supports efforts to "build a public — and I stress ‘public’ — prison in Alaska," Wagoner said.
For the past several years private prison operators have tried to push through legislation that would allow them to build and operate a large new prison in the state.
The bishops don’t support the private-prison concept, according to Wagoner.
"Rehabilitation is a primary goal of the bishops’ vision of corrections," he explained. "With a private prison, which is run for a profit, that can get lost, in our opinion."
He said that the bishops are concerned about the shortage of beds in state prisons that results in some inmates being flown out of state to serve their time. Almost 800 Alaska inmates are incarcerated in a private prison in Arizona, at a cost to the state of about $17 million per year.
This takes those inmates away from their local communities, where they have the best chance at rehabilitation, according to Wagoner.
The bishops oppose extending legalized gaming in the state to include commercial gambling.
Last year gambling proponents tried to bring casino-style card games to Alaska. The conference opposed that effort and continue to oppose "extension of gambling where it would lead to addictive behavior," Wagoner said.
The failed bill may be resurrected in the current session.
The bishops do not oppose Alaska’s currently legal forms of gambling, such as bingo, pull tabs and fish derbies whose proceeds primarily support permit-holding noncommercial entities.
At least two Catholic parishes in Southcentral Alaska have gaming permits for pull tab operations and other games.
"Gambling is not considered to be a sin; it’s the effects of gambling, when it causes people to not be able to take care of themselves or their families, that is the moral wrong," Wagoner said.
He cited national research that says 3 percent of those who take up gambling will become addicted to it. Alaska is not prepared to deal with the social costs of this new addiction, he said.
Although the current push would only legalize commercial card rooms, Wagoner said other forms of gambling would be sure to follow.
"What’s happened in other states is that this is just the first step and it just snowballs from there," he said.
Part of the problem is government itself, he said.
Once the public policy makers "have a new source of revenue … it’s almost impossible to get rid of."
This grant for over 20 years has provided money from state government that is matched by municipalities before being channeled to charity organizations in Fairbanks, Anchorage, and now the Matanuska-Susitna Borough.
Murkowski, who proposed eliminating the grant altogether in his first year in office, this year proposed boosting funding from last year’s $1.2 million to $1.8 million in his current budget.
The bishops’ conference supports the governor’s proposal for additional funding, according to Wagoner.
The bishops are also supporting House Bill 148, which would make trafficking in human beings a crime in Alaska. It is already a federal offense.
In 2001 a Russian man was convicted for his role in fraudulently bringing a group of Russian female folk dancers to Alaska and then trying to force them to be strippers.
Victims of human trafficking in the United States are predominantly women and girls who are forced into the sex industry, but they have also been found in sweatshops and private homes.
"Our concern is continued funding for the program," Wagoner said of Medicaid.
States administer the health care program and have some flexibility in doing so as long as they meet basic standards set by the federal government.
There has been a push in recent years by some Alaska politicians to reduce the state’s $1 billion Medicaid budget. In 2003 the governor and Republican legislators cut the income level at which a family would be eligible for Denali KidCare, the Medicaid program for low-income pregnant women and children, and froze eligibility at the reduced level instead of continuing to allow it to keep pace with inflation.
Wagoner said the conference will be watching for new attempts to reduce Medicaid services, even while the bishops are aware that the program is costly.
"We just don’t want to go backward on these things," he said, adding that any alternative proposals that reduce costs while not reducing services for the poor would be welcome.
Senate Bill 20 would make it a crime in many circumstances to harm or cause the death of an unborn child; it mimics a federal statute known as Laci and Connor’s Law named after murder victims Laci Peterson and her unborn son, Connor.
Senate Bill 20 contains an exception for legal abortion.
The conference is supporting the bill in concept but is also supporting one legislator’s attempt to clarify the bill’s language so it would not allow a pregnant woman to be charged if she failed to flee from a domestic violence attack in which her unborn child was harmed.
There can be many reasons why a pregnant woman may stay in a situation even if there’s domestic violence, Wagoner said, adding, "If an unborn child is harmed in that situation we don’t think she should be charged."
Father Blanco named pastor of Guadalupe Parish
Archbishop Roger Schwietz has appointed Father Vincent Blanco as pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the West Anchorage parish that dedicated a brand new church in December.
The appointment is more a shift in titles than roles for Father Blanco, who has served at Our Lady of Guadalupe for almost five years, first as parish administrator and most recently as parochial vicar.
Father Blanco arrived in the archdiocese in 2001 as part of an arrangement between the Anchorage Archdiocese and his Diocese of Butuan in the southern part of the Philippines. His original five-year commitment would have been up this year, but he recently received permission to extend his stay for an additional three to five years.
Father Blanco succeeds Father Robert Bester as pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Father Bester served in that role for about a year before abruptly moving out of state in May 2005 amid allegations that he had solicited sex from a man who secretly tape-recorded several of their conversations.
Since Father Bester’s departure, Archbishop Roger Schwietz has served as the parish’s de facto pastor, but Father Blanco continued to direct day-to-day operations as parochial vicar.
Father Blanco was born in 1963 and is the youngest of 12 children. He was ordained a priest in 1990 for the Butuan Diocese. In his last assignment in the diocese, Father Blanco served for six years as pastor of St. Ann Parish in the city of Tubay, a fishing and farming community of about 17,000 people.
When he boarded the plane for Alaska in 2001, it was his first trip out of his native country.
The priest has proven adaptable. When Guadalupe’s new church was dedicated last month, he told the congregation, "You are my life; you are my family."
Last week he told the Anchor: "I said yes to God for my priesthood and that’s the reason why I became a priest, to serve God’s people. You have to serve wherever God wants you to be."
He said that his "immersion" style of priesthood may have helped smooth the drastic transition from the rural Philippines to Alaska’s largest city.
In Tubay, he fished and farmed with the people and traveled throughout the area to visit 13 separate barrios within the parish boundaries, each with its own chapel and distinct community.
In Anchorage, the ministry is "more structured," he said, but he still visits parishioners frequently, sharing meals and listening to their concerns and hopes.
The "warm" people of his Alaska parish have made it easy to feel at home so far away from his roots, he said.
The closeness he feels "is a mutual thing," he added, explaining that parishioners’ "sense of longing" for a pastor and a priest meshes with his understanding of how he is called to serve.
Looking ahead, Father Blanco said he is "very glad" to be where he is at such an exciting time, when the parish is settling into a beautiful new church and people are excited about being a community.
"They are very willing to help," he said.
East Timor has a history of religious squabbles
Editor’s Note: When she visited Anchorage in November, Maria Ida "Deng" Giguiento, who works for Catholic Relief Services in the Philippines, delivered a fascinating speech about her peace and reconciliation work in her country and in nearby East Timor. We have received permission from Giguiento to reprint excerpts from her talk ("Building Peace in Multicultural, Interreligious settings"); here is the second of four parts. (click here to read part 1)
East Timor is a half-an-island nation. It is the newest nation in the 21st century.
East Timor was colonized by Portugal from 1515 to 1974. When the Portuguese first landed in the enclave known as Oecussi, there were already Muslims of Arab decent in the areas. They were a minority. The majority of the people were indigenous to the area, or were referred to as "pagans."
Not many were converted to Catholicism as this was perceived as a religion only for the elite. Less than 10 percent of the population was Catholic during the Portuguese time.
In the 1970s in Portugual, there was the Carnation Revolution that was led by the socialists, and they overthrew the government and gained power.
One of their first acts was to let go of the colonies as these were perceived as burdens to the coffer but also to be true to their being socialists.
Many East Timorese students who went to Portugal for their education came back to East Timor. This gave a vibrant life to the political scenario in East Timor — the very conservative political parties, suddenly feeling threatened with the perceived left-leaning Fretilin (Frente Revolucionária do Timor Leste Independente), launched a coup against the transitional Portuguese governing system, and they lost.
There were clashes between the two protagonists (conservatives and Fretilin) until independence was declared on Nov. 28, 1975. This independence was recognized only by a few nations (mostly Portugal’s colonies). But it was short-lived, as Indonesian troops invaded the new country on Dec. 7 of the same year.
Within the Indonesian rule of 24 years, Catholicism grew by leaps and bounds. The Indonesian government had a law that a citizen has to belong to an organized religion recognized by the state. The religions recognized by the state were Islam, Protestantism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Catholicism.
One person shared with me what was happening in the villages then. She said that the villages held discussions as to what religion they should choose. They did not know any Hindu or Buddhist; they knew that Islam was the religion of the people who came from Indonesia so they did not like that. They thought maybe Protestantism but then it is the religion of the people of West Timor (Indonesian part of the island) — some chose this but the majority did not.
Then they thought: "Catholicism is the religion of those people who used to be here. They already have their churches and some schools. Our rich people belong to that religion. Maybe it will be good to try that."
One priest described how tens of people would come to the churches and would ask to be baptized. Since it was a "life-death situation," there was only a short catechism and baptism followed.
The priest said, "I sometimes have to ask someone to hold my arm high to sprinkle the holy water because I was so tired of doing that sometimes 10 times a day!"
(I don’t know if he said that in jest or in exaggeration of the situation.)
Eventually, East Timor would roughly be 98 percent Catholic, 1.2 percent Protestant and 0.8 percent Muslim.
In the struggle for independence from Indonesia, the church played a key role.
Bishop Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo of Dili, East Timor, was often at the forefront of lobbying for the freedom of his people. He was the voice in the wilderness among the bishops in Indonesia.
The residences of priests and nuns became sanctuaries for those who were fleeing from the Indonesian military. They became the families and their convents the homes of children of revolutionary fighters.
In the 24 years of Indonesian annexation, around 200,000 East Timorese died or disappeared. Finally, they regained their independence when the whole population went out to participate in a "popular consultation" to choose whether to remain a part of Indonesia or not. They overwhelmingly voted "no."
The vote for independence led to more damage to the land as the "scorched earth" policy was implemented by the pro-Indonesian militias.
In the end, 97 percent of East Timorese structures were razed. Two-thirds of the population were forcibly herded out of the nation by boat, planes, trucks. Some of the people, especially the rich, left the country earlier to seek safety in other countries.
When the United Nations’ peacekeeping forces arrived Sept. 20, 1999, the Indonesian forces and militias left East Timor.
In the democratic exercise that followed, where people chose their leaders through voting for the political parties, Mari Alkatiri, No. 1 person for the Fretilin, became the prime minister and now co-heads the nation with the president and the parliament. He happens to be a Muslim.
Now, when the government does anything that the people think they do not like, it is often attributed to the fact that they have a Muslim prime minister. It is not written on paper, but the people talk and whisper about this.
I have often heard people say that they should not allow anyone from any other religion except Catholicism to enter East Timor and that all leaders should be Catholics.
There is now tension between the people (mostly Catholics) and the state in East Timor. Tension often results in demonstrations or rioting; it once resulted in burning down the house of the prime minister and damaging the mosque.
Next: How did religion exacerbate the conflicts in Mindanao and East Timor?
Editorials
‘Abortion is wrong!’ — and then some
As the movement to end abortion matures, the message is evolving, at least in Catholic circles, from "Abortion is wrong!" to "How can we help you through whatever problems are causing you to consider this tragic option?"
At the Jan. 21 Anchorage prayer service for the unborn sponsored by the Knights of Columbus, that message was prominent. Nationwide, it seems to be making progress.
Ann Curro, one-half of the Knights’ "State ProLife Couple" team, said that as the anti-abortion message has shifted in the last few years to a focus on assistance and alternatives, the pregnancy-abortion ratio is improving in favor of life.
"We were losing one out of every three babies; now we are only losing one out of every four," she said.
The message used to be "Abortion is wrong," period.
"Well, we know that," Curro said. "But what are we going to do to help the families through the crisis?"
Birthright and the Anchorage Crisis Pregnancy Center help families in trouble, working hand in hand with Catholic Social Services and others to address the root causes of abortion, as was pointed out at the prayer service. But the Curros also emphasize that you, too, can make a difference. You can support a crisis pregnancy group (or Catholic Social Services), for sure. You can also help by befriending and supporting single parents, or any family that seems to be struggling and stressed. Those folks, by and large, are the most vulnerable to abortion and the most open to choosing otherwise if help is offered.
Condemnation alone doesn’t work. It’s much more sensible (and Christ-like) to offer a helping hand.
Anchor Notebook
I grew up at Holy Cross. My family helped build the church. One might think I’d be upset by this month’s flood. But Holy Cross, to me, isn’t about the building.
The truth is, I see Holy Cross in the storefront on Lake Otis Parkway, our first real home, where, serving at Easter Vigil Mass at age 11, I nearly collapsed lugging around a soup tureen full of holy water because we didn’t have a real vessel. I see Holy Cross in the multipurpose room at Hanshew School, which was our church for years, and where I received my first holy Communion. I see Holy Cross in the people who have known me since I was small, who have encouraged me as life has taken me all over the country and the world, and who have always welcomed me home again.
Growing up at Holy Cross, packing missalettes into suitcases, borrowing space for special events, saving and working and praying for our own church, taught me one lesson: a church is not a building. The church is the people, no matter where they worship. No flood can change that. We find community in one another. And I thank my parish for that.
— Maia Nolan
Letters to the Editor
Intelligent design is sensical
The Dec. 30 "Catholic Comment" states that intelligent design is creationism fine tuned and shouldn’t be taught in science classes. That assertion misses the fact that, before science can begin, there must be a great deal of philosophical, logical, deductive and inductive reasoning and universal causes arrived at from cause and effect to the natural, preternatural and supernatural and science’s domain as the physical universe, etc. Intelligent design is philosophical, using cause and effect to arrive at its end, the truth. Truth is the proper object of human intellection, theological, philosophical, scientific, etc. There can never be a "theological" truth, "philosophical" truth, "scientific" truth that is independent of the truth, period. Mitochondrial DNA proves one woman is the mother of the human race; therefore, Darwinian evolution of man is impossible. Intelligent design demands an Intelligent Designer, God! Atheistic evolutionists can’t stand for this. The Anchor should reconsider its position.
Anchorage
Science, religion work together
At one time people believed Earth was flat. At one time the church believed the sun revolved around Earth. Neither science nor religion has the right to a monopolistic view. Your Dec. 30 editorial says, "The sensible ruling in the Dover case says these different realms can’t be combined in public school science class." That should concern us. Science teaches that in the beginning was the hydrogen atom. Religion teaches that that is not possible because the hydrogen atom would have to create itself. The key statement in the definition of science, "general laws subject to verification," has not been met and may never be met by evolution, so put Thomas Aquinas’ five proofs that a creator exists on every blackboard in every public school and force students to reason rather than blindly accept.
Kasilof
Adoption worth considering
I enjoyed reading the article on Catholic Social Services adoption program (News, Nov. 18, 2005). There are many ways with modern medical science to form a family, but I encourage people who want to parent to consider adoption. I understand the reservations regarding adoption are many. Just to name a few: the paperwork is daunting and the process can be uncertain and intimidating; adoption may be costly; there can be concerns about how a transracial/transcultural family will function, etc. Now let me name three compelling reasons to take the leap of faith regardless of these and other reservations: Alex (4), Jose Emmanuel (2), and Sonia Maria (5 months). The blessed bliss (and bedlam) they bring us every day is well worth the leap of faith. Our family formed through international adoption was a miraculous journey home involving both divine will and free will. There are many adoptive parents who welcome the opportunity to share their similar and yet unique journeys. If you have ever considered adoption please seek them out, and look to Joseph’s relationship with Jesus as an example.
Soldotna