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No challenge on stem-cell decision
Bush policy remains in place
The US Senate has postponed consideration of proposals to overturn President George W. Bush’s ban on federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research (ESCR) until at least next year. Senate leaders made that decision in order to avoid a veto showdown.

Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a supporter of ESCR, had offered amendments to government spending bills that would have allowed federally subsidized scientists to conduct research on embryonic stem cells newly obtained from fetal tissue—a policy that would have gone beyond the terms of the compromise policy President Bush announced in August. When Bush threatened to veto a huge spending bill over the issue, supporters of the Specter amendment agreed to put off their proposals until next spring.

As part of the compromise, Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas agreed to drop his own plan to offer amendments that would have banned human cloning, and placed even tighter restrictions on stem cell research. Legislators on both sides of the issue agreed that passing the spending bills now was more important than a bruising debate on stem cells that would hold up the appropriations process.

Renegade parish “ordains” woman
Rochester group aided by “Old Catholic” sect
Bishop Matthew Clark of Rochester ordered priests of his diocese not to attend a November ceremony in which a breakaway church—formerly a parish within the Rochester diocese—”ordained” a woman to the priesthood. Bishop Clark called the November 17 ceremony a “public and formally schismatic act.” He said any diocesan priest who attends the event may be penalized under canon law. (The ceremony was also invalid; the sacrament of Orders cannot be conferred on a woman.)

Spiritus Christi Church announced that Mary Ramerman would be ordained to the priesthood by Peter Hickman, a bishop of the schismatic Old Catholic church, formally known as the Ecumenical Communion of Catholic and Apostolic Churches.

Spiritus Christi was founded in 1999 by Father James Callan, a diocesan priest who was excommunicated after disobeying the bishop’s orders to stop “concelebrating” Mass with Ramerman and officiating at same-sex unions. Ramerman had been hired by Callan and served for 12 years as “associate pastor” at the Corpus Christi parish, until she was dismissed after Callan’s removal.

Suspect faces extradition
French court to allow US trial
James Charles Kopp, the American charged with the murder of abortionist Barnett Slepian, has lost his last extradition appeal in France. The Cour de Cassation said Kopp—who was arrested in France after an international manhunt —can be returned to the United States for trial, since the US has given assurances that he will not face the death penalty.

Kopp, who has emphatically maintained that he is innocent, was said to be eager to return to the US to defend himself against the charges. But he was warned by his French attorney to continue to attempt to avoid extradition. Kopp’s Buffalo attorney, Paul J. Cambria, said recently, “Ultimately, I want him back here, and he wants to come back here to fight these charges. But his French attorney has been telling him to keep fighting extradition, because he couldn’t possibly get a fair trial in this country.”

Many American pro-life activists believe that Kopp has been wrongly accused. The Texas-based group Life Dynamics has produced a book-length manuscript listing the inaccuracies and inconsistencies in evidence provided by federal investigators in their petition for Kopp’s extradition from France.

[CWR plans to provide more extensive coverage of the Kopp case, and of the weaknesses in the prosecution’s case, in future issues.]

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