Window Into the Confessional

SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, Aug. 11 — After a few well-publicized, horrifying reports of priests in other dioceses abusing young penitents in the confessional, the Diocese of San Jose, Calif., has decided to install windows in confessionals in all its 52 parish churches, according to a report by the Mercury News.

Bishop Patrick McGrath is the first bishop to take such a step, and it is unknown whether other dioceses will follow suit.

“I want to make sure people feel safe, that everything's aboveboard, and that confession is visible, but not audible,” Bishop McGrath explained.

The newer confessionals, which permit the sacrament “face to face,” will be the ones renovated, according to the diocese. The traditional confessionals, found in about a quarter of local parishes, will not be modified, since they offer no chance for priest/penitent contact and are not open to abuse, the paper explained.

Will Couples Be Cloned?

LIFESITE NEWS, Aug. 7 — At least one infertile American couple will allow themselves to be cloned by self-anointed cloning pioneer Panos Zavos, according to the Canadian pro-life news service Lifesite (www.lifesite.ca). Six other couples will also take part in the experiment.

“We want the world to know we are progressing responsibly,” Zavos told reporters.

The plan is to emulate the cloning of Dolly the sheep by transferring DNA from a cell taken from each of the mothers into donor eggs that have been hollowed out, deprived of a nucleus.

“The fusion would then be electrically stimulated, and any resulting embryo transferred to the womb of a surrogate mother,” according to LifeSite.

The experiments have been denounced by local politicians and by Dr. Arthur Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics.

“The technology does not exist,” Caplan said. He described Zavos' experiments as “way outside the box as far as where the science is today.”

Catholic Vietnamese Celebrate Marian Days

ASSOCIATED PRESS, Aug. 10 — Some 40,000 Vietnamese Catholics from that country, the United States and Canada gathered in Carthage, Mo., for a four-day-long Marian Days festival, according to Associated Press.

It began with a solemn procession through the streets led by Boston Cardinal Bernard Law. The celebration was held at the Congregation of the Mother of Co-Redemptrix, a Vietnamese-American monastery.

Associated Press reported that “another 20,000 people lined the Ozark town's streets to watch the four-block procession behind a float covered in flowers and bearing a statue of Our Lady of Fatima.”

Cardinal Law encouraged the attendees to witness forcefully to Christianity.

“You are the future of the Church in this country and in Vietnam,” the cardinal said. “From you will come the political leaders in this country, from you will come business leaders in this country.”

Cardinal Law, once the bishop of a neighboring diocese in Missouri, had been instrumental in helping some of the Vietnamese when they were “boat people” and in founding the monastery.