A Senator and Her Dead Constituent

LIFENEWS.COM, Oct. 20 — California's Barbara Boxer touts herself as a voice for women in the U.S. Senate. But at least one woman may be dead because of Boxer's meddling with the Food and Drug Administration, LifeNews.com has suggested.

The FDA and California state officials are looking into the death of Holly Patterson, 18, who died days after taking the abortion drug RU-486. Citing a report by Concerned Women for America, the news site pointed to a June 2000 letter by the senator asking the FDA to relax its testing standards to speed the approval of RU-486. The agency approved it only months later.

Concerned Women for America president Sandy Rios suggested the letter might have encouraged the FDA to loosen its safety standards.

“Sen. Boxer's eagerness to carry water for the abortion lobby may very well have contributed to the death of one of her own constituents,” Rios said. “Certain patient safety standards were eliminated by the FDA — standards that Sen. Boxer insisted be eliminated.”

The safeguards removed included limiting the pill to doctors trained to handle complications — such as those that may have killed Patterson.

Exhausted Church and Pope?

THE NEW YORKER, Nov. 3 — “The Church is exhausted, waiting for change.”

That's Jane Kramer's assessment of the Bride of Christ as she celebrated Pope John Paul II's silver anniversary.

For Kramer, the Pope today is not so much a Pope who can be credited for the New Evangelization as one who is “in every way incapacitated, beholden to his oldest obsessions, his harshest dicta and his most reactionary keepers.”

He's not the Pope who helped free millions of people living under the Soviet Empire but a Pole who has filtered the world through the lens of his experience under a Stalinist police state back home. That's why he condemned Latin American liberation theology, she said.

But if the magazine's columnist's hopes for a humble Pope were dashed by the shape of one of the longest pontificates in history, it's not stopping her from echoing the wishes of those who look forward to the next successor of St. Peter, one who may let the Church relax a bit.

The Church exhausted? Kramer seems to have ignored the worldwide outpouring of love for a Pope — and his choice to beatify, during his own celebration, a woman whose life reminded millions of people of how to live the Gospel.

Church Closings Ahead for Archdiocese of New York

THE NEW YORK TIMES, Oct. 26 — The Archdiocese of New York, with its famous St. Patrick's Cathedral and many churches built by immigrants, has begun a comprehensive overhaul of its financial and parish structure, which is likely to see older, urban churches demolished and suburban parishes expanded, The New York Times reported.

The church review will use data collected in parish surveys of 2001-2002, employing four benchmarks to determine the viability of parishes: daily and weekly Mass attendance, the number of parochial school students and the number of baptisms.

The Times reported that 149 of the 413 parishes in the archdiocese fell short on all four of these criteria and may be targets for closure, noting that “at least 17 churches reported an average of fewer than 100 worshipers each weekend.”

The paper predicted that “nowhere near 149 churches will close” and noted comments by archdiocesan officials who said numbers alone would not determine a parish's fate.