Point7Now! gauntlet to be made clear to federal lawmakers
Catholic san Francisco Northern California’s Weekly Catholic Newspaper
Members of the Bay Area faith community supporting a national Catholic campaign to triple federal spending on global anti-poverty measures are gathering in San Francisco next month to challenge lawmakers to back legislation that advances that long-term goal. The Point7Now! Action Conference, set for Saturday, Oct. 27, from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at St. Mary’s Cathedral, will center on speeches by three activists in the global campaign: Bridget Chisenga, who works in HIV/AIDs treatment for Catholic Relief Services in Zambia; Marc D’Silva, who served as CRS country representative for India from 2002-2006; and Winston Hugh Njongonkulu Ndungane, the Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, and the successor to Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The speakers will lead a “Call of the Poor,” pressing lawmakers to support policy changes that will add to the sum the federal government spends on global poverty relief. The spending now amounts to two-tenths of a percent of the gross domestic product. Campaign leaders are seeking policy changes in three areas – farm subsidies, international aid and trade policy – to gradually increase it to seven-tenths of a percent. The target is consistent with the United Nations Millennium Goals approved in 2000 by all UN member states. Campaign leaders say the United States in particular has the capacity to do far more to ease the worst suffering in developing countries. Conference organizers, representing the Catholic Church and other faith organizations, are inviting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, U.S. Representatives Tom Lantos, Anna Eshoo and Lynne Woolsey and California Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer. Their aim is to secure commitments from the lawmakers to support pending legislation in all three areas of antipoverty policy. “The purpose of this conference is an action,” said George Wesolek, director of Public Policy and Social Concerns Office for the Archdiocese of San Francisco. POINT7NOW!, page 19
Key meeting on future of boys’ home Sept. 25 Marin County’s Board of Supervisors will hold a public meeting Tuesday, Sept. 25, at 1:30 p.m. at Marin Civic Center to address proposed land use policies that could determine the future viability of St. Vincent School for Boys. St. Vincent’s has proposed constructing senior housing and assisted living facilities on a small percentage of the school’s 770 acres, leaving 85 percent of the property as open space. School officials say the development of much-needed senior housing would protect the surrounding natural environment and allow St. Vincent’s to continue providing residential care for abused and neglected boys. Marin’s Catholic clergy have voiced support for the St. Vincent plan and opposition to proposed land-use restrictions that they say place the future of St. Vincent School for Boys in jeopardy. Father Tom Daly, chaplain at St. Vincent’s, said he hopes there will be a strong showing of support for the boys at the Sept. 25 Supervisors’ meeting.
(PHOTO BY TOM GIULIANO)
By Rick DelVecchio
Teacher, Rob Pheatt, and eighth graders, Annie Hanna, Jennifer Rizzo and Danny Loftus, preview new MacBooks at St. Isabella School in San Rafael. As of Oct. 1, the school’s eighth graders will all use the laptops at school and at home in curriculum that “integrates technology … from religion to art,” said Principal Cynthia Bergez. See story on Page 7.
National bioethics gathering set for San Francisco By Rick DelVecchio Hundreds of Catholic workers in health, science and education are expected to gather in San Francisco Oct. 3 for a conference designed to affirm Church principles of human dignity at a time when advances in biology are raising new ethical challenges for those making beginning-of-life and end-of-life decisions. The conference, “Urged on by Christ: Serving the Human Person in Health Care and the Life Sciences,” will be held at St. Mary’s Cathedral from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. It is being presented by the Philadelphia-based National Catholic Bioethics Center and sponsored by the Daughters of Charity Health System and Immaculate Heart Radio. Scheduled speakers include the bioethics center’s president, John Haas, who will discuss the role of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic health care services. The directives ground the Catholic health ministry in “the sacredness of every human life from the moment of conception until death.” Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, the center’s director of education, will speak on human embryonic stem cell research, human cloning and the determination of death for the purpose of organ transplantation. Thompson Faller, a professor of philosophy and health care ethics at the University of Portland in Oregon, will cover ordinary and extraordinary means of prolonging life. “This is really a first, that it’s open to the entire Bay Area,” said Charlotte Kiesel, a bioethics center board member and parishioner at Our Lady of Angels in Burlingame. “It’s not just geared for caregivers. There will be issues for the laity, lawyers, students.” The conference is taking place against the backdrop of an expanding stem cell research program in California and a parallel debate over the ethics of creating or destroying human embryos to obtain stem cells. Approved last December, the state’s strategic plan for stem cell research sets a 10-year goal to develop at least
one disease cure and to advance therapies for two to four other diseases to clinical trials. It also outlines initial work on potential therapies for dozens of other diseases. The plan is a blueprint for spending up to $3 billion over 10 years on stem cell research in the state. Voters authorized the funding in 2004 by passing Proposition 71, the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative. In May, the California Supreme Court declined to review a lower-court decision upholding the constitutionality of the research program. In an interview with Catholic San Francisco, Father Pacholczyk said the conference is an opportunity to educate not only Catholic workers but also the general public about what the Church has to say on scientists’ responsibilities toward human life at its very beginnings. “The utilitarian approach has gained the ascendancy,” said Father Pacholczyk, who has a degree in neuroscience from Yale and was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard, working as a molecular biologist. “There has been a readiness and a willingness to sideline moral concerns in the name of progress,” he said. “The receptivity among certain audiences to the moral concerns is declining. What’s happening is, as we make moral concessions we put our foot on slippery slopes and before we know it we’re very far down the slopes.” Father Pacholczyk continued: “What the Church has done is say that life is good and a gift and we have certain responsibilities toward that life. The term that is used is stewardship. We have to be good stewards of what God has given us.” The same principles hold true in non-Catholic settings, he said. “Many of these judgments are actually based on something called the natural law,” he said. “We don’t have to have something like a Bible to see the rightness and the wrongness of these things. This is not something that only is understandable through revelation. Revelation reinforces what we already know by natural law.” Added Father Gerald Coleman, ethicist for the BIOETHICS, page 18
INSIDE THIS WEEK’S EDITION Santa Rosa settles . . . . . . . . . 5 Cancer center opens . . . . . . 10 Letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Scripture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Datebook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Vallombrosa Retreat Center Retired priests are not Catholics in China – unity celebrates 60th anniversary really very retired at all is challenge to the Church Classified ads . . . . . . . . 22-23
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SEVENTY-FIVE CENTS
www.catholic-sf.org VOLUME 9
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No. 27