by George P. Matysek Jr.

BALTIMORE (CNS) – When the Baltimore Ravens defeated the San Francisco 49ers on Thanksgiving night in 2011 – and John Harbaugh beat younger brother, Jim, in the first NFL matchup of coaching brothers – Jack Harbaugh peeked into the Ravens’ locker room after the game.

Jack Harbaugh, John and Jim’s father, was impressed by how ecstatic everyone was. There was nothing but celebration and smiling faces.

“I thought to myself, we really aren’t needed here,” Jack Harbaugh recalled, speaking to local and national media during a Jan. 24 conference call. He walked across the hallway at the Baltimore football stadium. The mood in the San Francisco locker room was quiet and somber, he said.

Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh, left, and his brother, San Francisco 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh, are pictured in a combination photo in late January. For Jack Harbaugh and his wife, Jackie, the upcoming rematch between their sons at the Feb. 3 Super Bowl in New Orleans means they are bracing for the “thrill of victory” and the “agony of defeat.” (Photo credit CNS)

“I found Jim all by himself,” said Jack Harbaugh, a former college football coach. “No one was around him. That’s where we were needed.”

For Jack Harbaugh and his wife, Jackie, the upcoming rematch between their coaching sons at the Feb. 3 Super Bowl in New Orleans is likely to be another excruciating study in contrasts. Someone will win, and someone will lose.

“It was the agony of defeat and the thrill of victory (a year ago),” Jack told The Catholic Review, newspaper of the Baltimore Archdiocese, in a telephone interview. “I’m not looking forward to that next Sunday,” he added.

Jackie Harbaugh, John and Jim’s mother, remembered how John ran to find his brother after the Thanksgiving game – hugging him and giving him words of encouragement.

Raising One Another Up

“It was just the epitome of how everyone in our family feels about each other,” she said. “We always try to raise one another up.”

Jack and Jackie, who raised their family in the Catholic faith and sent their children to Catholic schools, both said they will remain neutral at the Super Bowl. Younger sister, Joani Crean, also won’t take sides.

Despite several questions inviting him to compare his sons, Jack refused to go there.

“To make a comparison demeans,” he said. “They both have a love and passion for their families. They have a love and passion for their work. They enjoy being around the team. They enjoy being around their coaches. They really enjoy the fan base. They enjoy connecting with the people that have made this game so great.”

Jack credited his wife for the way his sons turned out in life.

“The rock of our family is Jackie,” he said. “She did all the heavy lifting. In our career, a 43-year coaching career, we moved 17 times, and she was the one that sold the house, bought the house, enrolled the kids in school, took the kids out of school. She was the one.”

While some in the media have dubbed this year’s big game the “Harbowl” and the “Super-Baugh,” Jack prefers to think of it as the “Lombardi Game,” while his wife refers to it simply as the “Super Bowl.”

“We are excited that they’ve brought their teams to the pinnacle of sports,” Jackie said. “The Super Bowl is the ultimate accomplishment. It’s the ultimate for them and for their teams and for all of the extended football family and all of the teams who have participated in this great game.”

Actors dressed as Joseph and Mary and the three Wise Men, part of a live Nativity scene, stroll past the U.S. Capitol after demonstrating outside the nearby Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. on Dec. 5. Members of the Christian Defense Coalition gathered with live actors and animals to demonstrate that such displays are protected by the First Amendment. The event was a reaction to other courts involvement in the banning of Nativity scenes in some parts of the U.S.

In the Jan. 15 edition of The Tablet, we printed the photo at right without its caption and invited readers to write their own captions.

At right, you can read the original caption that accompanied the photo. Below, you can read a cross-section of the ones that were submitted by our readers:

“We helped build this!” – James Brown

“The Wisest Men in Washington” – Christopher Devereux, Ozone Park

“St. John, St. Paul, St. George, St. Ringo crossing Abbey Road in Washington, D.C.” – Matthew Alioto, faithful reader

“The only Wise Men in Washington, D.C.” – T.J. Fasano

“Those Three Wise Men should pay a visit to Congress, not pass by!” – Josephine Harkay, Jamaica

“WISE MEN IN D.C.?…….REALLY?” – Joe Malkowski, Greenpoint

“Wise men still seek Him” – Karin Mille, Bedminster, N.J., and Glendale

“Strangers in a Strange Land” – Bill Carrington

“Are we finally getting some WISE men in Washington?” – Frank Cusack, St. Paul’s, Cobble Hill

“Congress could use a few more ‘wise men!’” – Father Jerome

“What an oxymoron! Wise Men in Washington!” – Kris Tapper, Greenpoint

“Just visited with King Herod” – Mercy Ocasal

“Three Wise Men Go to Washington” – Cecilia Ricafrente, St. Gerard Majella, Hollis

“Prayer and Praising… LET us adore Him!” – Josephine Sanges, Jackson Heights

“But they were warned in a dream…and returned to their own country by a different way” – Francis Sehn

ROME (CNS) – Biblical scholars are putting little credence in the authenticity of a newly published text containing a reference to Jesus’ “wife.”

But the tiny papyrus fragment, purportedly dating to the fourth century A.D., is being used to stir a debate about the Church’s attitudes toward marriage, sex and the role of women.

The fragment of papyrus with eight lines of Egyptian Coptic writing is the “only extant ancient text which explicitly portrays Jesus as referring to a wife,” wrote Karen L. King, historian of Christianity at Harvard Divinity School, in an academic paper she delivered Sept. 18 at an international Coptic studies conference in Rome.

“It does not, however, provide evidence that the historical Jesus was married,” she wrote, “given the late date of the fragment and the probable date of original composition,” at the end of the second century.

The best source of evidence giving an account of Jesus’ life and ministry is still the Gospels in the New Testament, King told reporters the next day, “and they are silent about his marital status.”

But she said the fragment is “direct evidence” that early Christians started debating in the second century whether Jesus could have been married or not.

Father Juan Chapa, a New Testament scholar at the University of Navarra in Spain, told Catholic News Service that the “Gospels don’t mention marriage, not because they wanted to hide something, but because it was clear that Jesus did not get married, and it’s consistent in the church’s tradition.”

He also noted that the gnostic gospel genre to which the fragment evidently belongs is one of the stories about Jesus that mainly take place after the resurrection, using language that is heavily allegorical. Thus, he said, the fragment’s relevant words — “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife’” — were likely not meant as a literal assertion about the life of the historical Jesus.

King said that the significance of the fragment lies in the light it might shed on debates in the early church over the necessity of celibacy to living a holy life.

According to Michael Peppard, a professor of theology and Coptic language at Fordham University, a belief in asceticism saw rapid development in the second to fourth centuries, especially in Egypt where Christian monasticism was born.

Some bishops at the time “were saying that the highest ideal was asceticism,” which included renouncing “all the trappings and worries of material life,” including marriage.

But Peppard said other bishops in the same period “were figuring out how to give everyone their space,” and letting it be known it was all right for Christians to live in the world.

The new text published by King may be a sign of early Christians “pushing back” against asceticism and moving closer to mainstream Jewish attitudes “of blessing sex and procreation,” Peppard said.

Catholic teaching, Father Chapa said, holds that “Jesus’ celibacy, by differentiating him from other rabbis, underlines his unique mission to fulfill the kingdom of God, and shows how he embodied the love of God” by renouncing conjugal love.

King said the reference to Jesus’ wife could just be a symbol of the Church, akin to the Gospel allegory of Jesus as bridegroom of the Church.

“What if what’s missing is saying, ‘My wife is the church?’”King said.

But both Peppard and King argue that the word does refer to a real person, since the line just below it includes the words: “…she will be able to be my disciple…”

The “wife” in question could be a “spiritual wife,” Peppard said. Other texts from the same period uphold “the image of an unconsummated spiritual marriage where the best kind of husband and wife live celibately,” he said.

King acknowledged that there would be continued debate over the authenticity of the fragment, whose paper trail goes back only to the 1980s.

“I would say it’s a forgery,” Alin Suciu, a papyrologist at the University of Hamburg who was attending the conference with King, told the Associated Press. “The script doesn’t look authentic” compared to other fourth-century Coptic papyri.

But Roger Bagnall, a papyrologist and director of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, studied the handwriting, the grammar and how the ink was absorbed by the plant fibers, and he concluded it was likely to date from the period between 350 and 400 A.D.

“We can’t ever know or be 100 percent sure if it’s authentic or a forgery,” Peppard said.

WARSAW, Poland (CNS) – The German bishops’ conference defended a controversial decree that said Catholics who stop paying a church membership tax cannot receive sacraments.

“There must be consequences for people who distance themselves from the church by a public act,” said Archbishop Robert Zollitsch of Freiburg, conference president, in defending the Sept. 20 decree.

“Clearly, someone withdrawing from the church can no longer take advantage of the system like someone who remains a member,” he said at a Sept. 24 news conference as the bishops began a four-day meeting in Fulda. “We are grateful Rome has given completely clear approval to our stance.”

The archbishop said each departure was “painful for the church,” adding that bishops feared many Catholics were unaware of the consequences and would be “open to other solutions.”

“The Catholic church is committed to seeking out every lost person,” said Archbishop Zollitsch, whose remarks were reported by Germany’s Die Welt daily.

“At issue, however, is the credibility of the church’s sacramental nature. One cannot be half a member or only partly a member. Either one belongs and commits, or one renounces this,” Archbishop Zollitsch said.

Catholics make up 30 percent of Germany’s population of 82.3 million, about the same proportion as Protestants, with two percent belonging to Orthodox denominations, according to government figures.

Interest in the Catholic Church revived after German-born Pope Benedict XVI’s April, 2005 election, but baptisms and weddings continue to decline. Church statistics show that about 13 percent of Catholics attend Mass weekly, compared with 22 percent in 1989.

A total of 126,488 Catholics asked to stop paying the membership tax and be removed from registers in the 27 German dioceses during 2011, according to the bishops’ conference. In 2010, some 180,000 Catholics took the same step.

by Dennis Sadowski

WASHINGTON (CNS) – Determining what to spend taxpayer money on is being scrutinized this presidential election cycle perhaps more closely than in elections past, even as the overriding concerns are jobs and building a robust economy.

Is government too big or does government contribute to the common good? Should taxes be raised for the highest wage earners, or should there be another round of tax cuts for those at the top? To reduce deficit spending, should cuts come in entitlement programs such as Medicaid, Medicare and food stamps, or do such programs always deserve support?

In the end, as Matthew Shadle, associate professor of moral theology at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa, told Catholic News Service (CNS), “It’s not so much a matter of budget. It’s a matter of how we think of the government … to meet human needs.”

While questions on the government’s role have been debated throughout the past 40 years of presidential elections, this time around the divide between Democratic and Republican views is perhaps as wide as ever and is illustrated in their approach to federal spending priorities.

Republicans Mitt Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan favor a reduced role for government so that personal initiative is not stifled and individuals can assume more responsibility in their lives. That strong sense of individualism is reflected across the Republican budget plan, especially in calls for sizeable cuts in discretionary spending and entitlement programs and the restructuring of Medicaid and Medicare so that only the neediest people receive government assistance.

Romney has endorsed much of the plan introduced by Ryan, a Catholic from Wisconsin, whose 2013 budget adopted by the House of Representatives in March reflects a belief in smaller government and that too many people depend on federal programs.

In addition to reduced spending, the GOP platform calls for simplifying the tax code by closing loopholes, eliminating certain tax credits and lowering individual and corporate tax rates. Under the plan, the highest tax rates would be set at 25 percent, down from 35 percent.

Romney and Ryan maintain that such steps are the best way to address the country’s $15 trillion debt.

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic ticket, see a bigger role for government and call for government spending on things such as road construction, education and environmental protection to remain largely unchanged. They also want to largely preserve entitlement programs, especially as the economy slowly recovers from a deep recession.

Additionally, they want to see the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts expire for the highest income earners as one way to offset spending and begin reducing government debt.

Despite their views, both tickets have revealed few specifics.

Allocating limited resources is not easy, said Bishop Stephen E. Blaire of Stockton, Calif., chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development. Nevertheless, he said, budgets must be judged by basic moral principles.

“I always find it a matter of balance,” he told CNS. “I feel you’re constantly trying to achieve a balance and that’s not easy. Different people are going to come to different perspectives. I think the question is you have to make all these choices, so you’ve got to be guided by (moral) principles.”

Bishop Blaire offered three questions for people of faith to consider:

• How does a budget promote the life and dignity of the human person?

• How does a budget follow the principles of Matthew 25 in caring for the “least of these?”

• How does it address the issues of the moment, such as unemployment and hunger? “

No matter what political persuasion you are, you still have to ask these questions,” Bishop Blaire said. “It’s not just a matter of saying who has the better approach. It’s raising the issues with the person you support.”

Father Robert A. Sirico, co-founder and president of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, told Catholic News Service he did not think bigger was better. The more local the source of services and the less government is involved, the better, he said.

Presentation Sister Richelle Friedman, director of public policy at the Coalition on Human Needs, said the massive changes proposed under the Republican budget would likely “erode” programs she said are vital to the poor and elderly.

by Mark Pattison

In January, 2000, Nellie Gray received the Brooklyn Diocese’s Sanctity of Life Award during a liturgy at St. James Cathedral-Basilica, Downtown Brooklyn.

WASHINGTON (CNS) – Nellie Gray, who started the annual March for Life to protest the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion nationwide, has died at age 86.

She was found dead in her home Aug. 13 in Washington’s Capitol Hill neighborhood by a March for Life staffer, Gene Ruane, who said the medical examiner will determine the cause and date of her death.

The March for Life has grown into one of the signature events of the pro-life movement. After the first march in 1974, Gray, a Texas native, established the March for Life Education & Defense Fund to sustain it.

Each year in her remarks, Gray exhorted pro-lifers to promote and adhere to a series of “life principles” that would eliminate abortion and enhance life, to which she said there should be “no exception! No compromise!”

Ruane, an administrative assistant with the March for Life, told Catholic News Service that leadership of the organization would be assumed by Terrence Scanlon, who has been its vice president “since the beginning.”

Funeral information was not immediately available. Gray was a member of St. Mary, Mother of God parish in Washington.

Born June 25, 1926, in Texas, Gray served as a corporal in the Women’s Army Corps during World War II. She later earned a bachelor’s degree in business and a master’s in economics. She worked for the federal government for 28 years at the State Department and the Department of Labor, while attending Georgetown University Law School. Gray later practiced law before the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a 2010 profile, Gray said she wasn’t a Catholic as a child, but “I had elements of the Catholic faith in my life.” As a young woman, she encountered a priest who brought to light what the Catholic Church was about, and he tutored her until she joined the Church.

Gray also spoke of the march’s origins. “I received a call from the Knights of Columbus,” she recalled. “I didn’t even know who they were, but they explained their stance against abortion and needed a place to meet to discuss plans for a march. That place was my living room. About 30 people gathered there, and they asked if I could help get speakers for the event since I knew Capitol Hill well.

“What I couldn’t get was a master of ceremonies for the event,” she added. “Politicians didn’t want to get involved in a march, and people at that time weren’t interested in marches after the civil rights movement and other things. That left the emcee job to me.”

Tributes to Gray poured in as news of her death spread.

“The indelible mark she has left in this world can be seen in the generations of lives saved as a result of her dedicated work on behalf of the unborn,” said a statement from Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life. “As we approach the tragic 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we are confident her legacy of pro-life activism will continue to inspire and effect change.”

“She had a fierce heart that valued all people – born and unborn – fearlessly working to create a picture worth a thousand words – the sight of hundreds of thousands of peaceful Americans calling on their courts and their legislators to defend life in law,” said a statement from Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life.

“As a colleague in national pro-life leadership, Nellie was always an inspiration to the rest of us,” said a statement by Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life. “Her devotion was on display that same year, 2008, when, despite being in the hospital during the March for Life, she nevertheless was present at an all-day meeting of national leaders the very next morning.”

Gray “mobilized millions to protest the injustice of Roe v. Wade and to speak out on behalf of unborn children, who have no voice of their own. While Miss Gray did not see Roe overturned in her lifetime, the movement she helped build – especially its young members – will not rest until the right to life is restored once again,” said Deirdre McQuade, assistant director for policy and communications at the U.S. bishops’ Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities.

In 2008, the National Pro-Life Religious Council presented Gray with its Pro-Life Recognition Award. Later that day, she tripped and fell on the stage at the opening rally for the March for Life and had to be taken to the hospital with a head injury.

“My heart is broken by the loss of Nellie Gray, a true pro-life hero and role model. At the same time, I celebrate that Nellie is with our Lord who she loved so dearly,” said an Aug. 13 statement by Bryan Kemper, founder of Stand True Ministry and director of youth outreach for Priests for Life.

“I have had the honor of working with Nellie for years and every time I march in D.C. in January, I know she will be watching over us and praying for us.”

U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), who is co-chairman of the House Pro-Life Caucus, called her an “extraordinary pro-life leader” who was unstoppable as emcee of the march “even in the worst of weather and poor health.”

Because of her leadership, the Roe decision “has been marked annually with a somber remembrance that gives voice to the defenseless unborn and the women wounded by abortion,” Smith said. “In Nellie’s name, we will continue her legacy of unceasing commitment to defending the unborn.”

“Many pro-lifers sometimes seem to take the annual march for granted, but the longevity of the March is actually a remarkable achievement,” said a posting on National Review Online by Michael J. New, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and an assistant professor at the University of Alabama.

“Some 39 years ago, pro-life activists felt a need to properly commemorate the first anniversary of the tragic Roe v. Wade decision. That is when the idea for the March for Life was born. Interestingly, there was no plan to repeat the first march, but when deciding what to do with the leftover funds, someone suggested hosting a march the next year,” New said. “Since then, the march has been a key contribution to the pro-life cause.”

Gray is survived by three nieces and one nephew, all of whom live in Texas.

by Dennis Sadowski

WASHINGTON (CNS) – Father Frank Pavone, one of the country’s most visible and vocal opponents of abortion, has been suspended from active ministry outside the Diocese of Amarillo, Texas, over financial questions about his operation of Priests for Life.
The suspension was made public in a Sept. 9 letter from Amarillo Bishop Patrick J. Zurek to his fellow bishops across the country, but Father Pavone told CNS that he was returning to Amarillo and planned to continue functioning as a priest there.
“My decision is the result of deep concerns regarding his stewardship of the finances of the Priests for Life (PFL) organization,” Bishop Zurek wrote. “The PFL has become a business that is quite lucrative which provides Father Pavone with financial independence from all legitimate ecclesiastical oversight.”
Bishop Zurek said “persistent questions and concerns” from clergy and laity about how the “millions of dollars in donations” the organization has received are being spent led to the action.
The bishop also asked Father Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, to return to Amarillo “to spend time in prayer and reflection.”
Father Pavone, meanwhile, spoke to CNS from Birmingham, Ala., where he had been taping programs for Eternal Word Television Network for more than a week, that he planned to comply with Bishop Zurek’s request to return to Amarillo. Father Pavone said he was scheduled to leave Birmingham the afternoon of Sept. 13 and meet with Msgr. Harold Waldow, vicar for clergy in the Amarillo Diocese, immediately after his arrival.
“Bishop Zurek asked me to go back to the diocese today, which I am doing for a limited period of time,” Father Pavone said. “I am going there and my (priestly) faculties are fully intact and I’m in good standing.”
Father Pavone was incardinated in the Amarillo Diocese in 2005 when Priests for Life moved some of its operations to the Texas panhandle city. Priests for Life was welcomed to Amarillo by now-retired Bishop John W. Yanta, who served on the organization’s board of advisers.
Priests for Life no longer has offices in Amarillo. It is based in Staten Island.
Records filed with the Internal Revenue Service show that the organization’s income topped $10.8 million in 2008, the latest year tax forms were available. In 2007, Priests for Life showed income of $9.2 million.
The same records show that Father Pavone received no income from the organization during those years. He said when he originally took the position with Priests for Life that he would claim no salary.