June 30, 2006 - Issue #13
Local News | Opinion/Editorials | Letters to the Editor
In Anchorage, Refugee Day has personal touch
Catholic Social Services’ first-ever celebration of World Refugee Day attracted about 150 people on a blustery, overcast afternoon to Lions Park in Anchorage’s Mountain View neighborhood. Many of the people on hand for the June 20 occasion were refugees — almost all of them Hmong families originally from the highlands of Laos.
Hmong women passed babies from lap to lap while their husbands chatted in their first languages and teased children who orbited the outdoor pavilion like a fresh mayfly hatch. Small girls, wrapped in sweaters on the chilly summer day, ran hand-in-hand toward the playground.
Then Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich introduced William Lo, a Hmong man standing a little over five feet tall, wearing a gray blazer and tie. Lo, a small-business owner, took the podium to talk about his experience as a refugee fleeing communist-controlled Laos and his new life in the United States.
"I want to tell you some parts of my story to encourage you to dream big and work hard," said Lo, who owns an Asian grocery store in Mountain View. He spoke English and his words were translated into Hmong by a Catholic Social Services volunteer. "I came to the United States 13 years ago. I was a refugee like you," he said.
Lo first resettled in Merced, Calif., picking blueberries, strawberries, tomatoes and plums at a farm by day and attending English language classes for three hours at night. There he married his wife, Sara, and they had a daughter, Gaozong, in 2001.
A few months later, the family moved to Anchorage and Lo found work in the kitchen of a Thai restaurant and later cleaned cars for an auto-rental agency.
"I wanted to own my own Asian grocery store," said Lo, who speaks Hmong, Lao, Thai and English. "I had not enough credit at a bank but I had friends and my wife and I had saved a little money." He finally opened the doors of New Asian Market on Mountain View Drive a little over two years ago.
"We are proud to own our own business," Lo said. "My English is not perfect. I do not have a new car and I do not own my own home yet. But I had a dream and a goal and I reached it."
As the wind blew through the pavilion where families crowded picnic tables and hot dogs roasted on nearby grills, Lo told the group that "America is a country of freedom."
"If you work hard and keep your goal in front of you, you too will achieve your dreams. Congratulations to all of you," he said. "You and your children are part of the future of America."
The pavilion echoed with applause.
Also at the event, Catholic Social Services staff members recognized certain refugees for their accomplishments. Those who had learned English or acquired a driver’s license or a green card or a job stood to accept small gifts, including the American flag.
The Hmong people have a unique relationship with the United States. When U.S. military involvement in Vietnam grew in the 1960s, the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) recruited and trained a secret army of nearly 40,000 Hmong villagers in Laos, teaching them to gather intelligence, battle communist ground forces, secure supply lines and rescue downed American pilots, according to the United States Refugee Program.
Two-thirds of the Hmong soldiers died in the fighting and roughly 5,000 Hmong civilians were killed.
Since the war ended in 1975 and Americans pulled out of Southeast Asia, the Communist Pathet Lao regime has retaliated by hunting down and murdering Hmong people.
Hundreds of thousands of Hmong refugees fled to Thailand, and eventually, most were resettled in France and the United States, according to a history compiled by the Lao Family Community of Minnesota, which serves the state’s Hmong people.
Laos maintained close ties with the Soviet bloc until the Soviet Union dissolved in the early 1990s, according to the U.S. State Department.
So far, Catholic Social Services has helped 176 Hmong families make Alaska their new home, according to Karen Ferguson, director of the agency’s refugee assistance program.
Lo’s father, who is now in his 80s and still living in the Laos countryside, fought for Americans during the Vietnam War.
"He was a soldier — shot in the foot," Lo said as he made a chopping motion on his instep and swept his hand away. Before that, his parents farmed corn and rice in the hills of northern Laos.
Lo was a student and figures he was in his late 20s when he fled to Thailand; age is ill-defined in the rural areas of his homeland, he said.
Since the Vietnam War in Laos, Lo said, there’s much oppression of Hmong people.
"They try to keep you down. It’s very, very hard," he said. "You cannot talk what you want. You cannot do what you want. In my life, I want freedom — to talk, to build my life, my family."
Lo said he has that freedom now.
He and his wife manage the store seven days a week; it’s open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
"All the hard work, we do it together," he said.
"My baby goes to school. She likes it," he added, looking out toward his daughter as she pushed a tire swing on the playground.
When recent Hmong arrivals to Anchorage shop at his Asian grocery store, Lo hears about their worries. They miss their homeland. They want to go back. They haven’t learned English yet and they’re afraid they won’t find a job to support their families.
"We are like newborns in this country," Lo said.
Which is one reason he decided to speak at Catholic Social Services’ World Refugee Day celebration — to encourage other refugees.
"It’s very hard to start a new life here," he said. "How can we catch our goal? We have to work hard first, speak English. We can do.
"Thailand’s not my country," he said. "I feel this, United States, is my country because Laos is still communist. United States is freedom for us, to build our future, build our life."
Disabilities are key to L’Arche communities
In a perfect world, which may be a way of describing the kingdom of God, people with disabilities would live in community with people without disabilities and everyone would learn from one another.
That is essentially the world envisioned by Jean Vanier, a Canadian Catholic who founded L’Arche after inviting two mentally disabled adults to live with him in 1964. Today, there are 126 L’Arche communities in 31 countries.
Clarissa Schoenberg is the operations coordinator for L’Arche USA. Recently, while visiting Anchorage, she spoke to the Anchor about the organization.
"One difference between a group home and L’Arche is that there are no shift workers," Schoenberg said. "People choose to live in a family environment."
Although many people think of L’Arche as a Catholic organization, it is interfaith and not aligned with any particular religion. For example, L’Arche has a Hindu home in India.
L’Arche is founded on the principles of the Beatitudes, and people of all faiths and no faith live in the communities, which are committed to "forgiveness, celebration and transformation," Schoenberg said.
In a series of articles last fall dealing with disabled individuals in the local church, the Anchor reported that many families hope to see some kind of home established for the disabled in the archdiocese.
How would one go about starting a L’Arche community in Anchorage?
Schoenberg stressed that it isn’t an easy thing to do. It requires, she said, a faith community dedicated to the concept of L’Arche, which also is able to take on the fund-raising and bureaucratic red tape involved in setting up such a facility.
Although L’Arche has an international structure — there are eight "zones" worldwide and the United States is considered one — each local L’Arche is a legally incorporated nonprofit with a board of directors.
The core members of a L’Arche home are those with disabilities. These members should really need L’Arche, said Schoenberg, and really want to live in and participate in community.
"L’Arche celebrates," Schoenberg said. "There are community nights, there are prayer nights."
The other people living in the house are called "live-in assistants." They usually commit to at least a year in the L’Arche community, Schoenberg said, although some see L’Arche as their vocation.
Live-in assistants are provided with room, board, health insurance, and in some communities, a stipend. Assistants do not work outside of the L’Arche home. In Portland, each L’Arche house comprises four core members and 3 assistants.
Jean Vanier was a young Canadian living in France when he became scandalized by the conditions he saw in institutions serving the disabled and invited the two disabled men to live with him.
Vanier believed that his new friends had much to teach him about life, and as his experiment began to draw others, he established more houses in France and later throughout the world.
Schoenberg said Vanier, at 77 is still "a very charismatic man," remains active within L’Arche but is gradually pulling away to ensure others will carry on L’Arche’s mission.
The mission statement of L’Arche is threefold: to create homes where faithful relationships based on forgiveness and celebration are nurtured, to reveal the unique value and vocation of each person, and to change society by choosing to live relationships in community as a sign of hope and love.
"In our society, we’re trapped in materialism," said Schoenberg. "L’Arche is about choosing an alternative way of life. It’s about looking to the weakest members to teach us."
Although Schoenberg said L’Arche is small in numbers, it stands as a symbol of hope for what people living in community can do.
For more information on L’Arche, visit: www.larcheusa.org or www.larchecanada.org
Faith formation director travels great distances to study, minister
By 6:30 a.m., Bonnie Cler is on the road, beginning the hour-long commute from her Wasilla home to East Anchorage’s St. Anthony Parish, where she became director of faith formation June 5.
The long drive is worth it, she said. In fact it’s pretty paltry compared with the 3,600-mile jaunt she’s been making in her Ford Taurus to St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn., the past few summers in pursuit of a master’s degree in theology.
The petite, 56-year-old parish ministry fixture will graduate from the university in December.
Cler’s connection to St. John’s began about six years ago, when, heading up faith formation efforts at Palmer’s St. Michael Parish, she took two young parishioners to the Youth in Theology and Ministry summer program there.
Since then, more and more high school students have attended the two-week program with Cler, listening to theology lectures, sweating out service projects in the afternoons and bonding with other teenagers in the program.
The youth program also encourages adult parish ministers to constantly learn more about their faith, and Cler took that to heart when she enrolled in the master’s program in 2004. By that time, her four children had graduated high school and were flying the coop for college or fledgling careers.
"It was like I was born again," Cler said. "I got the freedom to go and do what I wanted to do."
What she wanted to do was study Scripture, to dig deeper into the Old and New Testaments, she said.
She didn’t quite expect, however, that while she was hitting the books at St. John’s she would also take a job as director of faith formation at a nearby 1,200-family parish with a school and house-sit for a professor whose six sheep and small farm needed a ranch hand.
All of those experiences meld into congruent meaning for Cler.
Morning and evening, she fed the wooly creatures, then attended Scripture lectures and coordinated religious education classes and sacramental programs at the parish.
"When God says tend my sheep, he doesn’t say ‘tend sheep.’ He says ‘tend my sheep.’ If we look at it like none of this belongs to us — it’s all a gift, everything is a gift, every individual he puts in our lives — we would take better care of it, and of each other," she said.
She also learned a great deal about the practical aspects of a theology degree by working with St. Joseph Parish located just off the St. John’s campus.
The best part about taking care of her community as a faith formation director, she said, is not just accepting great responsibility but "being in relationship with people," she said.
That’s something people in the United States must make a real effort to cultivate amid much "distraction," she added.
She was also able to share Scriptural reflections at St. Joseph when, on several occasions, the pastor asked her to speak during Mass.
During Lent, she talked about love — about the quest to deepen relationships; about the hard-to-convey love her husband had for their son when son left home for the Air Force; about Jesus asking John again further, "Do you love me?"
"Those are those heart moments … very sacramental, sacred moments," Cler said. Our relationship with God should have those same transformative elements of "rending, turning inside out," she added.
As a theology student, Cler has discovered that the word "heart" is one of the most oft-mentioned words in the Bible, along with "love" and "Lord."
"Not the heart as a physical working part but the heart as being our center," she said.
What does it mean that those words season Biblical texts so liberally?
"That it’s very important that our heart burn within us," Cler said. "It’s a way of looking at our lives with more awareness of how precious and wonderful this gift that God gives us is."
Now that she’s back in Anchorage and working at St. Anthony as faith formation director, Cler said she hopes to stoke that fire in the hearts of parishioners and to guide lifelong quests to know more about the faith and act fervently in the parish, the community and beyond.
"To me, theology, according to St. Ambrose, is faith seeking understanding, and it’s a lifelong passion," Cler said. "You’re never there."
She said the mandates of Catholic social teaching, the preferential option for the poor and global solidarity motivate her life.
She said she’s especially excited to put her academic knowledge to work serving a parish so rich in cultural diversity as St. Anthony, which has contingents of Samoan and Korean and Alaska Natives as well as Filipino, African American, Hispanic and other peoples.
As for Cler’s plans for the future, she said: "I’m already in love with the life that God gave me. I’m already living the dream.
"I love doing parish ministry."
Sixth annual Alaska Catholic Youth Conference: Life is Christ
Meaningful prayer, powerful messages over four days as 200 teenagers gather for fellowship
Amplified drums and guitars rocked the halls of Anchorage’s St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish as an enthusiastic crowd of nearly 200 teens sang, played and prayed June 12-15 at the sixth annual ACYC (Alaska Catholic Youth Conference).
At the opening Mass, Bishop Michael Warfel of Juneau set the stage for the week’s theme, Life is Christ, by telling the teens that their lives as Christian saints should be "lives that reflect charity and justice" and "address the underlying causes of poverty and violence."
Bishop Warfel spoke of his admiration for his "hero," Dorothy Day.
Telling the students that there is "a profound link between the God we see on the altar and the God of the poor," the visiting bishop told the students Dorothy Day saw "the same living Christ in the elements of bread and wine as she saw in the poor of the Bowery of New York City."
A balance of workshops, social events, prayer and service followed the opening Mass and spread across the campus of the large South Anchorage parish.
Morning prayers, liturgies and keynote speeches were held in the sanctuary. Volunteers grilled hamburgers and hot dogs in the parking lot, and private nooks and crannies were found for the sacrament of reconciliation. Classrooms were filled for presentations by 15 visiting speakers and musicians, and the adoration chapel had numerous visitors.
A varied and vibrant group of presenters delivered workshops and keynotes.
Having become something of a fixture at ACYC, Bob Bartlett, a popular youth speaker from Minnesota, returned to talk about the subject many adults find hard to discuss with kids: sex.
Bartlett told the teens he knew many were thinking, "What can this guy tell me that I don’t already know?"
While at the same time assuring them that he knew they had "the basics," and setting them at ease by using correct anatomical terms and plenty of jokes, he told them he wanted to talk about the emotional and spiritual side of intimacy.
"If you’re a Catholic, you are involved in an intimate religion," he said.
He then explained that "yadah," the Hebrew word for "know," describes both sexual intercourse and knowing God. "That tells you what an intimate religion this is."
He also told the youths that people are "born sexual beings," and that they require intimacy from the start.
"If babies are not cuddled, touched, held, they will be emotionally or psychologically disturbed and they may even die," he said.
Brother John Mary Ignatius urged the teens to throw out their "Teen People" magazines and other "trash" and reach for the Bible.
"Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ," he told the crowd.
Other presenters included the archdiocese’s own Father Michael Shields, pastor of Nativity of Jesus Parish in Magadan, Russia.
Mike Patin came from Louisiana to deliver talks entitled "Growing up young, cool, and oh, by the way Catholic" and "The Real World — A Manual."
Patin was a favorite of Kenneth Avessuck, 17, of St. Joseph Parish in Nome.
"He was energetic and funny," Avessuck said. "He talked about the top 10 things that cause teenage stress. I could identify."
Nearly 50 people attended the event from Fairbanks, including Blyss Veer, 21, from St. Raphael Parish. It was Veer’s third ACYC, and tops on her list this year was Sarah Hart, "one of my favorite Christian singers," who performed at Masses as well as a public concert at East High School.
Veer also praised the "strong, educated women" of Project Rachel who conducted a workshop, led by Carol Szopa, about their mission: helping women to heal spiritually and emotionally after abortion.
ACYC has become so popular statewide that it appears to be spawning similar conferences in other parts of Alaska.
Gloria Slagle, director of faith formation at St. Raphael, said Fairbanks has brought Bob Bartlett up two years in a row for a mini-conference in March.
And two women from Immaculate Conception Parish in Bethel came with the express purpose of gaining insight for a rural conference they’re planning for August, chiefly for villages from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.
Rose Domnick, a retired state worker and a Yupik Eskimo originally from St. Marys, said she had two goals when she retired: to start a youth group at her parish and to plan a conference.
Helping her achieve those goals is Lisa Whalen, a Jesuit Volunteer who next year will be the youth minister at the Bethel parish.
Whalen said that ACYC provided many insights and that she was glad to see kids "excited about being Catholic."
But she felt, despite a promising start with Bishop Warfel’s homily, that the event would have profited from "more emphasis — more talks — on living justice."
The idea of service to others was emphasized Tuesday afternoon when teens chose from among 11 different venues, including Brother Francis Shelter, the Anchorage Pioneer Home and Bean’s Cafe, where they could help out for a few hours.
On Wednesday afternoon, it was time to socialize. Busloads of kids left for shopping at Dimond Center, a hike up Flattop Mountain or water play at H2Oasis.
A few folks even opted for an educational afternoon at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art.
The lively Masses, featuring energetic music — including St. Elizabeth’s parochial vicar Father Ron Licayan taking his turn on the drums — were a hit with many teens.
Samantha Ayuluk from Sacred Heart in Chevak said her favorite part was "the really good Masses" and the wonderful feeling they gave her.
Her youth adviser, Charlene Tuluk, agreed; the "singing and energy" made the liturgies a high point.
Nathan Cross of Anchorage, 18 and a recent South High School graduate, said that energy is what keeps him coming back year after year.
"I get more out of this than I do regular Mass," he said. "Most of the kids really want to be here."
News & Notes
Focus turns to food
The clients of Catholic Social Services’ St. Francis House have spoken: 94 percent of them come to the agency’s assistance program in dire need of food, according to a Catholic Social Services survey.
"A two-day emergency supply of food is what brings them to our location," Susan Bomalaski, Catholic Social Services’ executive director, wrote about St. Francis House clients in a letter to supporters.
To better focus on serving the hungry, St. Francis House, located on East 20th Avenue in Anchorage, will no longer be accepting furniture or clothing donations after July 1. The program will phase out distribution of non-food items.
However, St. Francis House is launching a new partnership with the Bishop’s Attic, an independent, nonprofit thrift store that directs proceeds to the Archdiocese of Anchorage. Non-food donations are accepted at Bishop’s Attic, 1100 Gambell St. in Anchorage, Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Archbishop's Column
Meeting of U.S. bishops was an inspiring time for attendees
June 15-17 saw the U.S. Catholic bishops gathered in Los Angeles for their spring meeting.
In many ways, it was a significant meeting.
First, it enabled Cardinal Roger Mahony the opportunity to invite the bishops to celebrate the Eucharist with him in his newly completed massive cathedral. The celebration was truly impressive. It is clear that the structure was planned with large celebrations in mind.
As the nearly 300 bishops, archbishops and cardinals processed in, the choir sang the litany of saints, which was made visible in the massive tapestries of the saints lining both sides of the main body of the church. It was an inspiring experience.
The meeting also was the first opportunity for our new apostolic nuncio (the pope’s representative to this country) to address the body of bishops. Archbishop Pietro Sambi came across as approachable and humorous but with extensive experience and intelligence.
I had the opportunity to speak with him personally later in the meeting and invited him to visit Alaska.
He said that he is just beginning to get a sense of how vast a country the United States is but that he would like to make the visit sometime.
The assembly considered and approved several proposals: the continuation of the collection for retired religious, the drafting of a document entitled "Stewardship and Teenagers," and the continuation of the planning process to downsize the conference (reducing the number of committees).
We also heard a heart-rending report of the extensive devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina from the bishop of Biloxi, Miss.
What took up an extensive amount of time was the presentation, discussion and voting on the English translation of the Latin version of the New Roman Missal.
It was clear to the bishops that some changes were necessary. The English translation made nearly 40 years ago was rushed in order to get the Mass in vernacular to the people.
The ensuing years of experience and the development of principles of translation made it possible to prepare more accurate texts.
At the same time, the bishops want to keep to a minimum the changes in the responses and prayers learned by the people.
Some adjustment by us all will be necessary.
Thus we accepted the more Scriptural response to "The Lord be with you" as "And also with your Spirit" instead of what we say now: "And also with you." The new response is reminiscent of St. Paul’s writings.
On the other hand, we voted to retain other responses. For instance, in the Creed, we kept Jesus as "one in being with the Father" while other English-speaking countries accepted what the translators preferred, "consubstantial with the Father."
We also voted to retain the American adaptations that we are used to, for example, the acclamation "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again," which is not in the Latin text but permitted by the Holy See.
The approved text now goes to Rome to be considered by various offices for final approval.
Whatever the final text turns out to be, as Cardinal Francis George of Chicago remarked at the meeting, "It is a much better translation, and richer in its reference to Sacred Scripture."
Hopefully it will enable us to pray together in an ever more respectful and inspiring way.
Editorial
Congress should act on minimum wage
Justice should inspire members of Congress to boost the federal minimum wage this year. Embarrassment should inspire them to grant to the lowest wage earners the same annual cost of living raises they routinely give themselves.
Each year members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives automatically get a cost of living adjustment unless they vote to block it. House members voted this month to increase their salaries by $3,300 to $168,500, the seventh year in a row they have given themselves a raise.
There is no such automatic raise for those working for minimum wage, who earn just $10,172 at full-time, year-round jobs. Unfortunately, Congress, which must pass a law to raise the minimum wage, has been as stingy regarding the minimum wage as it has been generous with its own members’ salaries.
The last time Congress and the president raised the minimum wage was 1997. In the 1980s, they let the country go nine years and three months without increasing the minimum wage; this dubious record is set to be broken unless the current Congress and president raise the wage before December.
It is debatable whether any "public servant" should be paid nearly $170,000 per year. But it isn’t a terrible thing that Congress gets an annual pay raise to keep up with the rising cost of living. Once a fair wage has been determined, it makes sense to adjust for inflation each year so the wage remains the same in real dollars.
The scandal is that these elected officials recognize the importance of inflation-proofing their own big salaries but deny the same to the nation’s poorest workers.
Because of their self-bestowed raises, members of Congress earn the same amount in real dollars today as they have for the past seven years. By contrast, after adjusting for inflation, the real value of the minimum wage is now at its lowest level since 1955.
The politicians in Washington are ultimately to blame for this shameful failure to act, but the business lobby no doubt has a lot to do with it.
Complaints about the heavy burden a higher minimum wage would impose ring hollow in this era of obscenely lavish executive compensation. Average CEO compensation among the Standard & Poor’s 500 companies was $11.75 million last year, according to The Corporate Library. That’s up about 3.7 percent from 2004. It’s also 1,155 times the annual pay of a minimum wage worker.
No wonder the gap between rich and poor continues to expand in this country.
Business leaders also continue to assert that raising the minimum wage will lead to massive loss of low-level jobs, thereby hurting the very workers it is designed to help.
But most research defies that assertion; apparently one reason employers find it unnecessary to cut jobs is that better pay results in happier employees and less job turnover.
In any case, the job loss scenario doesn’t appear to have happened in Alaska, which gave its minimum wage a big boost — from $5.65 to $7.15 per hour — in January 2003.
According to the state Department of Labor, in 2002 there were 17,738 jobs in "food services and drinking places," big employers of minimum wage workers. In 2005 there were 18,862, an increase of 6.3 percent. The total number of jobs statewide only grew 5.3 percent during the same period.
The Alaska Conference of Catholic Bishops was a big supporter of the 2003 raise, and the national conference of bishops will surely play a similar role in any push this year to raise the federal minimum wage.
The Catholic Church actually advocates a "living wage" that would be much higher than any minimum wage proposals that might see the light of day in Congress.
But a law that boosts the federal minimum wage and includes annual cost of living adjustments is a step in the right direction.
Congress members need to hear from millions of voices that if annual raises are necessary for them, they are vastly more necessary for those on the bottom rung of the economic ladder.
Letters to the Editor
Credit for Lumen Christi
Having just read the story on Lumen Christi High School’s first alumni picnic (News, June 16), I would like to add a few facts about the school. I’m sure it was just an oversight, but, had it not been for Father Alfred Giebel, with permission from Archbishop Francis Hurley, there would be no Lumen Christi at St. Benedict Parish. It was Father Giebel who led the construction of the school and gymnasium at St. Benedict, and who hired Mr. Yeargan as principal. Also, Mrs. Pat Wagner was the first principal of the school after it moved to St. Benedict.
Anchorage
Unity important in Catholicism
Some of you are like me, I know. You would like Gregorian chant at every Mass, coupled with incense and maybe some Latin. My husband and I promote natural family planning and bristle when people attack the teachings of Holy Mother Church. Did you read the June 17 story in the Anchorage Daily News ("Bent on Kneeling") about the parish divided because of posture? Christ’s prayer was, "May they be one, Father, as you and I are one." When I think of these words, I usually think of different faiths. He is also talking to us as the Mystical Body of Christ. St. Louis de Montfort knew the fruit of obedience: He spent 15 months laboring to build a lifelike Stations of the Cross. When told to take it down, he complied, saying, "Blessed be God!" My fellow Catholics, we are gently called to humility when standing after Holy Communion. Archbishop Schwietz is "the visible source and foundation of unity" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 886). When we disobey him, we disobey Christ.
Anchorage
‘Code’ is a danger to some
I read the Modern Morals question in the June 2 Anchor. I, too, am interested in the works of Leonardo da Vinci. The paragraph that to me seems to put the entire matter in a nutshell says: "Viewers may not keep up as the storyline wanders between facts and fantasy." No, I have not seen the film. I was repelled when I heard what was in it. I never did want to see it. I think the film is dangerous for anyone who has not met Christ yet or who doesn’t know much about him, especially for children.
Anchorage
‘Code’ story is not good or true
I will not watch "The Da Vinci Code" because I am Catholic in more than name. I hope that my intellect and will are ordered, despite my sins, toward God. The proper object of intellect is the truth, and the proper object of will is the good. By God’s grace I should want to contemplate only truth, and to love only the good. In regard to our faith, which is held "in a fragile vessel," this obligation cannot be taken lightly. Dan Brown’s fantasy is neither true nor good, since it departs from the Gospel in precisely those areas where divine revelation is the sure guide. I would waste my time and offend God if I indulged a gratuitous cinematic distortion concerning the savior of the world. What excuse could I make for those two hours’ "entertainment" when I face Him in judgment? Some commentators who decried Mel Gibson’s "The Passion of the Christ" as "unhistorical" or "too violent" can only discern in Brown’s ludicrous effusion a thought-provoking essay, as they throw moral discretion to the winds and do violence to the historical faith of the church.
Anchorage