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Restorative Justice
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 Hundreds of Catholic Legislative Network members joined many other grassroots advocates in support of the effort to revise the sentencing of juveniles to life without parole only to fall two votes shy on the Assembly floor last night.
Thank you for your quick action and support throughout the process! We heard from many Assembly Members that they heard your message loud and clear, but opponents painted SB 399 (Yee, D-San Francisco) Juvenile Sentencing as a soft-on-crime measure and it couldn’t pass in an election year. This was a controversial bill from the start and it faced the opposition of many district attorneys around the state even as it attempted to apply the tenets of restorative justice in the real world. Assemblyman Yee has pledged to revise the bill and re-introduce it next year.
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Economic Justice
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 In his Labor Day statement on behalf of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, William F. Murphy, Bishop of Rockville Center, emphasizes the need to protect workers, help the unemployed and exam the impact of globalization on today’s workers.
Bishop Murphy draws heavily on Pope Benedict XVI’s latest encyclical, Charity in Truth. He examines the parallels between adjustments needed in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution to those needed now with the challenges created by globalization. Both Leo XII who wrote Rerum Novarum (“Of New Things”) in 1891 and Pope Benedict XVI stressed the ethical and moral imperative to keep people in the forefront as markets and economies bend to new realities.
“This Labor Day we must seek to protect the life and dignity of each worker in a renewed and robust economy,” wrote Bishop Murphy, chairman of the Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development. “Workers need to have a real voice and effective protections in economic life. The market, the state and civil society, unions and employers all have roles to pay and they must be exercised in creative and fruitful interrelationships.”
Download the full statement in English or Spanish. |
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National News & Information
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 The United States Postal Service will honor the life and work of the Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta with the dedication of a new stamp on Sunday, September 5th at a ceremony at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.
According to the Catholic News Agency, Postmaster General Jack Potter will dedicate the stamp at a ceremony. Roy Betts, a community relations manager with the USPS Stamps department, stated that “the stamp program recognizes Mother Teresa for her work as a humanitarian… and it is well deserved.”
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Bioethics
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 WASHINGTON - Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, chairman of the Committee on Pro-Life Activities of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, welcomed the federal court injunction against the Obama administration’s funding of human embryonic stem cell research, calling the ruling a “victory for common sense and sound medical ethics.” He said this ruling also vindicates the bishops’ reading of the Dickey amendment, the amendment approved by Congress since 1996, which prevents federal funding of research in which human embryos are harmed or destroyed.
“I hope this court decision will encourage our government to renew and expand its commitment to ethically sound avenues of stem cell research,” Cardinal DiNardo added. “These avenues are showing far more promise than destructive human embryo research in serving the needs of suffering patients.”
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California Politics
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 The following appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday, August 9, 2010. Click here to view the original.
Holy Family Day Home would be hit hard by state budget cuts. - Making budget priorities is essential in tough economic times. But we need to remember that although closing a park may be inconvenient, closing down programs like CalWORKS hurts children and destroys families.
This is the problem facing the governor and the Legislature as they confront the glaring $19 billion California state deficit.
If they could craft a fair and responsible way to increase revenue, then that would be welcomed. The fact remains that the Legislature cannot possibly increase revenue enough to cover such a huge deficit. State government services will have to cut back.
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