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New Developments on Stories Featured in Catholic World Report

Birzeit blocked
Israeli forces isolate a Palestinian community

At 1 am on Wednesday, March 7, the Israel Defense Force dug a trench and installed a blockade from the village of Surda, near Ramallah, to the town of Birzeit. The trench is six feet deep and 165 yards long. Its effect is to deny vehicular access to and from 25 villages, with a combined population of 65,000. Not only does this blockade prevent medical supplies and food deliveries from reaching their destination, but the damage done to water pipes and telephone cables in the digging process has disrupted service to many local residents. Abouna Iyad Twal, a Catholic priest in Birzeit, expressed the widespread sense of despair in his community: “This is the first day Ariel Sharon is in power. God help the souls of people in the days to come.” The Society of St. Yves (a Catholic human-rights center) is planning to appeal to the Israeli High Court against the measures. 

The blockade will also have an adverse effect on education. Birzeit is home to the most renowned university in the Palestinian territories, with 5,000 students from all over the Arab world, as well as many from Europe and America. Amongst its best-known associates is the spokesman, Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, who once headed the English department. But now access to the university has been denied, and as CWR goes to press there are serious concerns that the new term—scheduled to begin on March 17—will have to be postponed. 

Palestinians argue that the latest measures are unjustified. Dr Albert Aghazarian, director of the public relations office at Birzeit University, claimed:

There have been no recent clashes or demonstrations in the area. Furthermore, there have been no shootings reported—from any of the 25 villages —at Israeli soldiers or settlers. There are no genuine security or military reasons for taking these measures. The total siege is being imposed by the Israeli government as a repressive form of collective punishment, which is prohibited by international humanitarian law.

The blockade is also inconsistent with the Israeli government’s promise to make the Palestinian National Army, not Palestinian civilians, the focus of any military activities. 

Israelis insist that such measures must be taken in order to protect Israeli security. According to a government spokesman, “There have been five months of unmitigated Palestinian violence, and we have to take measures against that as any country would.” The Birzeit-Ramallah road, on which the blockade has been installed, is used by Jewish settlers living in land annexed by Israel in the 1967 war. The Israeli government is determined to protect the settlers. “The roads are being used by Palestinians to take pot shots,” said the spokesman. “Does that mean a settler is a free target?” There is also speculation that the blockade is a response to a bomb in the coastal town of Netanya which killed four Israeli civilians on March 4. The militant Palestinian party, Hamas, claimed responsibility for that bombing. According to the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz , the trenches are intended to contain “terror units” of Hamas based in Ramallah. 

The explicit isolation of Birzeit, a town which to date has been uninvolved in the latest outbreak of the intifada, has far-reaching implications. Birzeit has long been regarded by right-wing Israelis and their supporters as a potential fifth column. According to David Parsons, of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, “Birzeit is a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism.” When French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin visited the Birzeit University last February, he was stoned by students angered by his criticism of the Lebanese-based paramilitary organization Hezbollah. Indeed, such is Israeli concern that a full-time Mossad agent is believed to operate on the campus. 

University life disrupted

A closer look at the university reveals a variety of student opinions, typical of the undergraduate experience. Yusef Habash, president of the university’s Liberal faction, advocated economic and diplomatic tactics rather than car bombs and gunfights. Mohammed Hassouna, of the Fatah faction, insisted on the enforcement of international laws such as United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, which demands Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories. Hassouna accepted the right of Israel to exist within its 1948 boundaries. In contrast, a student who identified himself only as Abdullah, representing the university’s Hamas faction, said he hoped for the “liberation” of Palestine “from north to south, from river to sea.” 

Birzeit students are different in one important respect from other students: they have endured the repeated disruptions of their education, which have forced many of them to leave without a degree. This pattern of disruption prevents the brightest Palestinian potential from being fulfilled. Yusef, an engineering student who is now in the fourth year of what should have been a two-year program, explained: “The situation here is always bad. The intifada has just made it worse.” The university has been closed on a recurrent basis since its inception in 1975, and roadblocks have prevented access to Ramallah just as frequently.

During the “Oslo years” in which the peace process was supposedly in place, the university was still affected. In 1996, six weeks of the academic calendar were rescheduled as a result of punitive closures due to suicide attacks in Jerusalem and Birzeit. That year, Israel arrested 280 Birzeit students—10 percent of the student body—on the grounds that they were “deeply involved in terrorist attacks, financing and supporting people from Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the military wing of the Popular Front.” 

The current blockade may prevent students from reaching lectures, but history shows that they can be resourceful. During the original intifada (1987-93), the university was closed for more than four years. But underground study groups continued to operate out of homes, mosques, and churches. Many students took up to 10 years to complete four-year degree courses.

The Israeli measures may well backfire. Up until the time when the blockade was set up, Birzeit had been unusually passive. Now the students may be tempted to vent their frustration in demonstrations and riots. Moreover, these students are the potential Palestinian leaders of tomorrow—who, if peace continues to prove elusive, will eventually be negotiating with Israel. By taking away their right to education, the Israeli authorities are fostering hardened ideologies and destroying the will to compromise. 

The Palestinians have also become increasingly inventive in discovering side roads and alternative routes to reach their destinations. But only a minority are privy to such knowledge. The trenches, unlike manned checkpoints, exclude access on humanitarian grounds. Father Aktham Hijazin, whose village of Aboud has been cut off from Ramallah, observes: “Even ambulances have been forbidden entry.”

—Nicholas Jubber and Michael Hirst 

Making a silk purse ofa sow’s ear
Archbishop Pell implements a statement on women

When the Australian bishops released their Statement on Women in the Church last year, many Catholics wondered what the actual impact might be—as distinct from the rhetoric and platitudes. With a majority of dioceses under liberal control, feminists are already prominent in key decision-making areas, while in the minority of dioceses under more orthodox leadership, it was unclear how the some of more contentious “reforms” called for in the bishops’ Statement could be implemented without compromising the faith.

The newly inaugurated Commission for Australian Catholic Women held its first meeting on February 2, indicating it would be recruiting a full-time executive officer, whose major responsibility would be to work with that Commission “to develop processes to assist the implementation of the bishops’ decisions on the participation of women and indigenous Australians in the Church, as promulgated in the Social Justice Statement for 2000.”

Meanwhile, Archbishop George Pell has indicated how he intends to implement the Statement in the Melbourne Archdiocese. It is clear he plans to head off any outside pressures for precipitous action and to retain firm control over the process within his jurisdiction.

After a meeting late last year with delegates from WATAC (Women and the Australian Church), the feminist body that had originally prompted the project, the archbishop sent the group a message. It was a masterful blueprint for circumscribing any radical changes WATAC and other like-minded groups might have had in mind. As such, it offers a valuable line for other orthodox bishops to follow as they encounter feminist pressures.

Archbishop Pell prefaced his document with the observation that not all contemporary developments on the role of women were necessarily beneficial: “It will be a long-term and challenging task to discern together what is good, bad, or indifferent here, while respecting what is essential in the nature of the Catholic Church. . . .” Opinions within the Church, he said, are divided on these issues, and feminism itself contained many strands, not all of which are “compatible with Catholic teaching.”

The archbishop then set our four areas where he was willing to consider possible changes, subject to certain specific conditions.

First, a database of Catholic women is to be established, detailing their qualifications and particular expertise, with a view to widening the participation of talented women in the archdiocese. However, the nature of such participation, he emphasized, needed to be “consistent with the official doctrines and official pastoral policies of the Catholic Church.” To ensure that this is the case, he indicated he was appointing Anna Krohn from his Catholic Pastoral Formation Centre to oversee this task and to work with any groups wishing to contribute to the database. Given that Krohn has a track record of solid orthodoxy, the archbishop had every reason to be confident this work was in good hands.

The archbishop also agreed, in line with the recommendation in the bishops’ Social Justice Statement, that he would “formally request each Catholic theological faculty and adult education center in the Archdiocese of Melbourne to explore the theological and pastoral implications of the Report and the bishops’ response through public lectures, seminars, and learned papers.” However, whatever these bodies eventually put forward, he again emphasized, “must be consistent with the official doctrines and official pastoral policies of the Catholic Church.” 

In a less controversial area, Archbishop Pell indicated that he was asking Church welfare agencies to look at “ways of better promoting the range of pastoral and professional services on offer to women in the Archdiocese of Melbourne, and identifying any gaps in these services which need to be addressed.”

Finally, he called for the promotion of “contemporary Catholic female role models, especially for young women.” Such models, he said, had to:

. . . include coherent, appropriate promotion of the role of wife and mother, especially when the birth rate has dropped dramatically (Victoria’s rate is the lowest in Australia), many couples are living together, there is so much family break-up, and [there is] consistent advocacy for homosexual and lesbian lifestyles.

The archbishop expressed the hope that “all loyal Catholics” would be “involved in these endeavors.”

—Michael Gilchrist

Catholics pull out
End support for women’s March

Ten months of intense and unprecedented controversy in the Catholic Church in Canada came to an end in February when the Canadian bishops’ official social justice agency, the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace (CCODP), withdrew from the pro-abortion, pro-homosexual World March of Women.

In a press release February 7, the CCODP said that while it is still “proud” of its involvement in the march, it now “dissociates itself from future action of the International Organizing Committee.” The CCODP explained that its withdrawal was prompted by the organizing committee’s decision to lobby against United States President George W. Bush’s reinstatement of a ban on federal funding to international agencies which promote or provide abortions.

The scandal erupted last April, when the Toronto-based Internet news outlet LifeSite News reported that the CCODP had donated $135,000 (approximately $90,000 in American dollars) to the World March of Women in the Year 2000, an international series of feminist demonstrations coordinated from Montreal.

The “World Demands” of the march included the demand that “all states must recognize a woman’s right to determine her own destiny, and to exercise control over her body and reproductive function” and that the United Nations and its member states “formally recognize” a panoply of rights based on “sexual orientation.” The Canadian contingent had its own list of demands, calling on the Canadian government to “develop and enforce national standards related to the provision of quality, publicly funded abortion services in all regions and communities across Canada,” and to facilitate the recognition of a host of “lesbian rights.”

The CCODP had been joined in its endorsement of the March by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB), the Catholic Women’s League of Canada (CWL), the Canadian Religious Conference (representing men’s and women’s religious orders), and the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association. For the most part, these organizations focused their support for the March on what they said were its two main goals: the elimination of poverty and “violence against women.”

Reports on the scandal on LifeSite and in The Interim, Canada’s pro-life newspaper, led to an unusually clear, public division among Canada’s leading prelates. Toronto’s Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic, Vancouver’s Archbishop Adam Exner, Hamilton’s Bishop Anthony Tonnos, and Yarmouth’s Bishop James Wingle issued statements opposing Catholic participation in the march. Cardinal Ambrozic withheld a portion of the Toronto Archdiocese’s annual contribution to the CCODP, and Archbishop Exner temporarily withheld Vancouver’s entire contribution.

Archbishop Exner issued a statement saying some of the march demands were “directly opposed to essential and fundamental elements of Catholic teaching.” He added: “In conscience, one cannot give unqualified endorsement or be seen as giving such endorsement to a project that has morally objectionable goals mixed in with some good ones.”

Speaking out in favor of Catholic participation in the march were Ottawa’s Archbishop Marcel Gervais, London’s Bishop John Sherlock, and Calgary’s Bishop Fred Henry. Bishop Henry said that in dealing with the world, the Church must choose between withdrawing from society, seeking to overthrow the present order, or getting involved to work for change from within. He argued that in the case of the March, “it’s better to be there than not to be there.”

Bishop Henry and Bishop Sherlock also went on the attack against Catholics who had objected to Church support for the march. Bishop Henry said pro-lifers are among “the rudest people I have to deal with.” Bishop Sherlock said:

If the pro-life people had their way, we would all be living in a ghetto, and crying about how unclean the rest of the world is. That is not the way to convert the world. There are people who have their own particular agenda and unless the whole Church follows them they sit in negative judgment.

Bishop Sherlock later issued an apology for those remarks.

Controversy also erupted in the normally placid Catholic Women’s League. Several prominent diocesan CWL groups —including those in the cities of Toronto, Vancouver, and Hamilton, and the entire British Columbia-Yukon province—passed resolutions against the CWL’s participation in the March, and at least two parish CWL groups withdrew from the national organization. The CWL’s annual national convention, nevertheless, passed a resolution in favor of continuing participation.

The CCCB and the CWL followed the CCODP’s lead in withdrawing from the march after the international organizing committee’s lobbying of President Bush became public. None of the three organizations expressed any regret for their former endorsements; they implied that the March committee’s support for abortion was something “new.”

Almost from the moment the story broke last year, however, it was certain that the international organizing committee understood the march to be a pro-abortion project. In response to a request from a pro-life women’s organization to participate in the march, committee coordinator Diane Matte wrote that the committee had “unanimously decided that the demand to have a ‘pro-life’ contingent at the World March is unacceptable to us since the anti-choice position defended by your organization is in clear contradiction with the objectives pursued by the march.”

When asked about the bishops’ withdrawal from the march, CCCB spokesman Bede Hubbard took the position that the CCCB “never endorsed the World March of Women—only the objectives of the March with which it agreed.” 

—John-Henry Westen