NATION.
Legislative initiative to aid poor children launchedFor every dollar President Bush is investing in education, "he is investing $40 in a tax cut that will help mostly the rich," said Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children's Defense Fund, immediately prior to the May 23 launch of a new legislative initiative to aid poor children.
The Children's Defense Fund initiative, an omnibus child poverty bill sponsored by Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., will be supported, said Edelman, by "a compelling moral and political call to action and mobilization building on a new moral witness of women."
The 12 titles that constitute "The Act to Leave No Child Behind" cover issues of child health insurance, parenting, Head Start, tax relief for low-wage working families, child care assistance, nutrition, affordable housing, youth development, juvenile justice, gun safety and family-friendly workplaces.
Edelman said many of the titles tap into proposed legislation that already has bipartisan support in Congress.
Eleven million American children have no health insurance, she said, and 12 million children are not getting enough to eat. One child in six lives in poverty, three-quarters of those in working families. Millions of children live in "worst case" housing needs families, the 5.4 million households that pay more than half their income for accommodation, she said.
Whether the bill makes it through Congress, said Edelman, "depends on how much noise we make. And we're going to make a lot of noise."
Coalition to take anti-poverty bus tour
As President Bush attempts to pass a tax cut to substantially benefit Americans in the highest brackets, the Congressional Progressive Caucus has planned a bus tour to call attention to the plight of people struggling to make ends meet.
U.S. Reps. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., Earl Hilliard, D-Al., Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and other members of the caucus are scheduled to join California state and local policymakers to meet with Communities in the Bay Area on the Economic Human Rights Bus Tour. They will begin the tour in Oakland May 29 and finish in Salinas May 31.
The group plans to visit a variety of organizations, including: a soup kitchen at St. Mary's Center in Oakland; Building Opportunities for Self Sufficiency, the largest social service provider in the Bay Area; the Day Labor Program, an immigrant labor rights and support organization; an environmental justice coalition at the Bay View Hunters Point; an inner-city after-school program at Everett Middle School's Beacon Center in San Francisco; and United Farm Workers field sites in Salinas and Watsonville.
Personal testimonies from single mothers, immigrant farm workers, veterans and others are planned at the stops.
Organized by Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy, a grassroots anti-poverty movement, the touring group is calling for increased funding for programs including child care, health care, education, the right to adequate housing, and measures to address the relationship between race and poverty.
14 die after crossing border in Arizona desert
Fourteen undocumented immigrants have been found dead of exposure in the Sonoran Desert after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border near Yuma, Ariz., in temperatures hovering around 115 degrees. Eleven survivors have been found. The border patrol was continuing a search May 24 for at least three others.
According to The Arizona Republic, the immigrants were abandoned some 50 miles from the nearest highway by smugglers who told them that they would return later with water.
The 14 deaths marks the highest total of a group of immigrants to die crossing into Arizona in more than 20 years.
The number of deaths along the border has continued to increase since 1999, when patrol agents were diverted to urban crossing points, leaving the isolated mountainous desert areas unattended. Previously agents in those areas had served as a safety net for crossers (NCR, Feb. 2).
According to the Border Patrol, 106 people have died crossing into Arizona in the 12-month period that ended last Sept. 30.
"What's causing it is the deadly strategy of the border patrol that has forced people into the most hazardous areas of the desert," the Rev. John Fife told the Republic. Fife assists with a program that builds watering stations for immigrants near the border.
Nominee's human rights record questioned
President Bush's nomination of John Negroponte to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is raising human rights ghosts of the past.
At issue for Catholic and other human rights activists is his 1981-85 tenure as U.S. ambassador to Honduras when Central America was a Cold War casualty.
This put him in the middle of controversies involving U.S. covert support of contra rebels fighting the Marxist-influenced Sandinista government in neighboring Nicaragua. Questions also have been raised as to whether, in reports to Washington, he covered up significant human rights abuses by the anti-communist Honduran government.
According to an investigative report in the May 7 Los Angeles Times, Negroponte failed to report U.S.-backed operations by the Honduran military that resulted in deaths and disappearances of numerous political opponents. The Times report cited declassified documents and unnamed staffers who had worked under Negroponte in Honduras.
Embassy staffers were cited as saying that they were asked especially to downplay reports of fights abuses by a CIA-backed death squad called Battalion 316, which had been implicated in the torture and disappearance of nearly 200 political opponents.
Atlanta school meets first financial hurdle
The obituary for Atlanta's Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School will have to be put on hold for at least a few more weeks. Thanks to an anonymous donation of $230,000, a group of parents and parishioners trying to save the school were able to meet the first phase of a $1 million fundraising goal necessary to keep the school open for another year.
The future of Our Lady of Lourdes, an African-American parish school founded in 1912 by St. Katherine Drexel and her Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, has been in doubt since the archdiocese recently announced it would cut supplemental funding to the cash-strapped inner-city school that serves about 118 mostly African-American students (NCR, May 11).
A group of Lourdes parishioners met the initial $300,000 fundraising goal and got assurances that at least 50 students will enroll next year. The group now has until June 18 to raise an additional $500,000 and enroll 50 more students to meet a second deadline set by Lourdes pastor, Fr. John Adamski.
At a May 21 meeting, a Catholic couple in attendance pledged an additional $230,000 to go with $70,000 already raised.
In April, Archbishop John Donoghue announced the archdiocese would withdraw funding to Lourdes and St. Anthony's, another African-American parish school, and merge the two schools with a third school. In response to protests, Donoghue said the schools could remain open without archdiocesan funding.
Adamski said he was surprised his parishioners were able to meet the first deadline. "Things are continuing on," he said. "I think there's a lot of good energy around the issue of the school. Whether that translates into accomplishing these goals is not clear to me at this point."
--Patrick O'Neill
Bush woos Catholics in commencement speech
Quoting Dorothy Day, Knute Rockne and Lyndon Johnson, President Bush used his commencement address at the University of Notre Dame May 20 to promote his faith-based initiative plan and to appeal to Catholic voters.
Bush's initiative is designed to allow religious organizations to receive government money in exchange for fighting poverty, addiction, homelessness and a range of social ills.
"Any effective war on poverty must deploy what Dorothy Day called `the weapons of spirit,'" he said.
Whether Day would have supported Bush's plan is unclear, however. Jim Allaire, author of Praying With Dorothy Day, told Salon.com, an independent online opinion magazine, "It may be the case that somewhere a [Catholic Worker] house does take government funds, but in two cases I know of, the houses that started to accept grants delisted themselves from the [Catholic Worker] directory."
Day herself refused to incorporate Catholic Worker houses, saying: "No one asked us to do this work. The mayor of the city did not come along to ask us to run a breadline."
Bush quoted President Johnson from a 1964 speech that launched that administration's War on Poverty campaign.
"Will you decide to leave the future a society where a man is condemned to hopelessness because he was born poor? Or will you join to wipe out poverty in this land?"
The War on Poverty established a federal commitment to the poor, Bush said, adding that a 1996 welfare reform law "made that commitment more effective." Among other changes, the law set limits on how long people could receive government assistance and required recipients to work in exchange for aid.
Jesuit says `culture of death' label simplistic
Labeling an entire culture a "culture of Death" is simplistic and unworthy of Christians, a Jesuit sociologist told a national meeting of catechetical leaders.
"No culture is ever fully a culture of life or of death," said Jesuit Fr. John A. Coleman, professor of social values at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. "Those who are serious about discerning culture in the light of the gospel should cease using these gross terms to characterize a whole culture."
Coleman delivered one of the major addresses at the 65th annual meeting of the National Conference of Catechetical Leadership. The meeting, held in Buffalo April 29-May 3, drew about 900 religious education professionals from around the country.
In his talk, he urged Catholic leaders to form strategic alliances with those of other faiths and not try to go it alone in their efforts to change the U.S. culture.
In its mission to critique and transform culture the church must take account of the intertwining of culture and the gospel, he said.
"We need to remember that any real Christian critique is more than some generalized moaning about certain negative elements of culture. ... Even if evils exist in the culture, sulking and sniping are unworthy as Christian responses," he said.
College settles suit by anorexic student
A Catholic college in Easton, Mass., has reached a settlement with an anorexic student who was asked to leave the campus until she had brought her eating disorder under control.
Stonehill College, a school of 2,800 students run by the Holy Cross Fathers, and Keri Krissik announced a settlement May 18, but neither side would disclose the terms of the agreement.
"Keri has decided to dismiss the pending lawsuit against the college and continue her education elsewhere," a joint statement read. "The college wishes her every success in the future."
Krissik, 20, weighs less than 100 pounds, according to the Associated Press. She was accepted as a transfer student in January 1999 but was hospitalized last year because of heart failure related to her condition. When she prepared to re-enroll last September, she was told by the campus she could attend only if she lived off-campus.
Krissik sued, claiming her condition was covered under the Americans With Disabilities Act. Fr. Mark Cregan, president of Stonehill, said only that the school could not "support her in the way she needs to be supported."
Protesters arrested on Armed Forces day
Protesters opposing President George W. Bush's military space projects were arrested at Vandenberg Air Force Base near Lompoc, Calif., on May 19 and 20.
A number of Catholic Workers from the Los Angeles area took part in the demonstration. About 23 protesters were taken into custody after staging a nonviolent security zone occupation that consisted of crossing barricades and sitting down in front of the base's security forces. They were arrested on the spot.
About 18 other protesters performed a "back country action" that involved entering the base property from obscure areas late at night. Once on the base, the protesters carried banners, took photos, and positioned themselves at various spots on the base to witness against military defense initiatives.
The total number of participants at the demonstration was about 225. They came from various groups such as California Peace Action, The Direct Action Network, and The Nevada Desert Experience.
The group had intentionally chosen May 19, which is Armed Forces day, to stage their "Stop the Militarization of Space" protest. Eric De Bode, spokesperson from a Los Angeles Catholic Worker house, said, "On a day when the nation celebrates the armed forces we want to proclaim peace and nonviolence, especially in light of Bush's military programs."
Vandenberg was targeted because it is the testing ground for the National Missile Defense program, a program that the Catholic Workers claim "violates international and Christ's law." In gauging the success of the action De Bode said, "There is no success until we have world peace."
--Melissa Jones
Anointing of the sick not always available
With fewer priests available to administer the sacrament of the anointing of the sick, it is becoming increasingly difficult for seriously ill patients to receive the sacrament when requested by pastoral caregivers.
That was the key finding of a new study released during the international symposium of the National Association of Catholic Chaplains, held May 16-20 in Baltimore.
The association commissioned the Center for-Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University to conduct the study. It was based on a written survey of 3,365 hospital chaplains and a random sample telephone survey of 2,100 Catholics across the United States.
According to the study, launched in November, one in three chaplains who responded said a priest is on call no more than "occasionally" to administer the sacrament of the anointing of the sick. Nearly one in five chaplains said they minister in situations where there is "never or almost never" a priest on call.
According to canon law, only priests may administer the sacrament of the anointing of the sick.
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| Author: | Donovan, Gill; O'Neill, Patrick; Jones, Melissa |
|---|---|
| Publication: | National Catholic Reporter |
| Geographic Code: | 1USA |
| Date: | Jun 1, 2001 |
| Words: | 2303 |
| Previous Article: | `Use the gifts God gives'. |
| Next Article: | ADDENDA. |
| Topics: | |