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News Briefs
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NEWS BRIEFS Mar-18-2005
By Catholic News Service
U.S.
Sisters of slain Irishman meet Bush, ask his help seeking justice
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The five Irish sisters pressing to bring their brother's murderers to justice were assured of President George W. Bush's support during a brief St. Patrick's Day meeting. Robert McCartney's five sisters and his fiancee, Bridgeen Hagans, asked Bush to use his influence in resolving the murder. They met during a St. Patrick's Day reception at the White House March 17. McCartney, 33, a forklift driver from the Catholic area of Short Strand in Belfast, Northern Ireland, was stabbed to death after a pub brawl Jan. 30. His sisters and Hagans say more than 70 people witnessed the fight, but are afraid to give evidence to the police because outlawed Irish Republican Army members were involved. The IRA said it expelled three people who had a hand in the incident and offered to execute the men who killed McCartney. The McCartneys and Hagans have rejected that offer, saying they want those responsible to be tried in a court of law.
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Varying views on the budget: War on poverty or war on the poor?
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Do President George W. Bush's proposed budget for fiscal 2006 and the recently announced Senate Republican anti-poverty initiative represent a new war on poverty or a war on the poor? That's one of the questions occupying Washington as spring approaches, and representatives of various religious communities are not hesitating to give their views on the matter. "We ask that Congress not attempt to balance the federal budget through reductions in discretionary programs assisting low-income families," said Father Larry Snyder, president of Catholic Charities USA, in a letter to all members of Congress. The Rev. Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners magazine and founder of the Call to Renewal anti-poverty movement, was even more blunt, saying that Bush's $2.57 trillion budget for 2006 shows "unacceptable priorities."
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CRS collects $121 million in tsunami aid
BALTIMORE (CNS) -- Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. bishops' overseas relief and development agency based in Baltimore, has collected $121 million for tsunami relief operations as of March 16, said Elizabeth Griffin, CRS media relations director. Griffin said that the amount of tsumani contributions will continue to rise as many dioceses still have not reported how much money they have collected. The sum collected so far means CRS can extend its programs in the disaster areas as the amount exceeds the agency's $80 million program commitment, she told Catholic News Service in a March 17 telephone interview. An article in the March 17 issue of The Chronicle of Philanthropy listed CRS as the U.S. charity that has collected the second highest amount for tsunami relief programs. Listed first was the American Red Cross.
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Bishops stress need for theology to develop from church teaching
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The U.S. bishops' Committee on Doctrine has reaffirmed the hierarchy's encouragement of creative theological work while reminding theologians that their positions must be founded on church teachings as defined by "the bishops in union with the pope." Authentic church teaching extends beyond catechetical instruction and is the foundation for "theological teaching and inquiry," said the U.S. bishops' doctrinal committee statement. The statement, approved by the committee March 14 and released March 17, expressed support for criticism from the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that a book by U.S. Jesuit Father Roger Haight contains "serious doctrinal errors" and that Father Haight can no longer teach as a Catholic theologian. The bishops' statement came a month after the Catholic Theological Society of America's board of directors criticized the Vatican, saying the critique of Father Haight's book blurred the "traditional distinction" between catechetical instruction and the "speculative dimension" of theology.
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Domestic rural poverty, development focus of new anti-hunger report
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- While hunger remains far more prevalent in poorer nations, especially in the Southern Hemisphere and parts of Asia, those regions share something in particular with the United States: Rural inhabitants tend to be the poorest people and those most vulnerable to hunger. This is one of the conclusions of Bread for the World's annual hunger report, issued March 15. Titled "Strengthening Rural Communities," it said two-thirds of the world's hungry inhabitants rely on agriculture for a significant percentage of their incomes. In the United States, the highest percentage of people it considers "food insecure" live in rural areas. The report added that one in five rural children is "food insecure," defined as "a condition of uncertain availability of or ability to acquire safe, nutritious food in a socially acceptable way."
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WORLD
Priest's words at consecration must guide way he lives, pope says
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The words a priest recites when consecrating the Eucharist must be the words that guide the way he lives, Pope John Paul II said. Thanksgiving, self-sacrifice, a desire to show others the way to salvation, remembering Christ's saving work, holiness and hope must mark not only a priest's celebration of Mass, but his whole life as well, the pope wrote in his annual Letter to Priests for Holy Thursday. The text of the letter, released March 18 at the Vatican, was signed by the pope March 13, shortly before he left Rome's Gemelli hospital after undergoing a tracheotomy to ease breathing difficulties. Pope John Paul began the letter by writing, "My thoughts turn to you, dear priests, as I spend this time recuperating in hospital, a patient alongside other patients, uniting in the Eucharist my own sufferings with those of Christ."
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Ecuadoreans concerned about attacks that include Jesuit foundation
LIMA, Peru (CNS) -- Ecuadorean and international human rights organizations are expressing concern about recent threats and attacks against journalists, human rights workers and government opponents in the tiny Andean nation. The targets include a Jesuit-run foundation that operates housing and social outreach projects, as well as Jesuit services for refugees and migrants in Ecuador. Retired Archbishop Alberto Luna Tobar of the highland city of Cuenca led a March 15 demonstration calling for respect for democracy in the country. Local media said about 20,000 people turned out for the march. "The government has been incapable of opening up channels for dialogue with its opponents," said Pablo de la Vega, coordinator of the Segundo Montes Human Rights Center in Quito, the nation's capital. The center, founded in 1991 by graduates of Jesuit schools, takes its name from one of the Jesuit priests murdered in El Salvador in 1989.
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Ex-U.N. official says political leaders must use power to serve
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Political leaders must use their power to serve others and promote the common good, not to subordinate or dominate others, said the former head of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development. Speaking at a Vatican conference marking the 40th anniversary of the pastoral constitution "Gaudium et Spes," former U.N. official Rubens Ricupero quoted from the Second Vatican Council document in outlining the moral limits of political power. "The exercise of political authority 'has always to be conducted within the limits of moral order and to promote the common good,'" he said. When "'rulers of nations' seek power as a means to control, to oppress, to dominate," those rulers "see power as an extension of their control over their own households, where people become objects of their personal ownership," he said in his March 17 address.
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Vatican official says church must be committed to life at all stages
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Catholic Church's commitment to justice must include a commitment to protecting human dignity at every stage of human life, said Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. The church rightly is praised for its work on behalf of the poor, but when it comes to protecting the life of the unborn, it often is ridiculed, said the cardinal, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Cardinal Ratzinger was the main celebrant and homilist at a March 18 Mass for participants in a Vatican conference marking the 40th anniversary of "Gaudium et Spes," the Second Vatican Council's Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World.
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PEOPLE
In brief TV appearance, pope blesses Rome's young people
ROME (CNS) -- In a very brief live television appearance, a pale and thin Pope John Paul II gave his blessing March 17 to young Romans preparing for World Youth Day. An estimated 2,000 young adults gathered at the Basilica of St. John Lateran, Rome's cathedral, for prayer, singing, reflection and eucharistic adoration. In the past, the pope has joined the young people from Rome on the Thursday before Palm Sunday for a diocesan youth gathering. But because he is still recovering from a Feb. 24 tracheotomy to ease breathing difficulties, he joined the young people for less than a minute by television, making the sign of the cross to bless them.
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St. Faustina Kowalska's letters published in Poland
WARSAW, Poland (CNS) -- The letters of St. Faustina Kowalska, the nun whose visions gave rise to the Divine Mercy devotions, have been published in her native Poland. The volume, issued by the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy, contains 50 letters to family members, fellow nuns and her confessor, Father Michal Sopocko. In one, she describes her visions a year before her death from tuberculosis. "I now feel such a strong longing to unite myself forever with God that I'm surprised death delays in coming to me," St. Faustina wrote to the priest. "I live in one permanent act of love, but I feel my heart will not long withstand."
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U.S. soldiers in Canada ask for support for their consciences
TORONTO (CNS) -- U.S. soldiers living in Canada to avoid duty in Iraq are asking Canadians to help them stand by their consciences. "I believe it's my human right to choose not to kill innocent people," said Darrell Anderson, who served seven months in Iraq and was awarded a Purple Heart before he headed north from his Kentucky home while on leave. "I don't think anyone can understand what it's like to look down the barrel at a 14-year-old kid," said Iraq War veteran Cliff Cornell of Arkansas. "I would rather be up here than fighting. I think that's the right choice." Christian tradition should mandate church support for the war resisters who have applied for refugee status in Canada, said Gerard Vanderhaar, professor emeritus of religion and peace studies at Christian Brothers University in Memphis, Tenn.
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Priest-survivor of Soviet massacre condemns Russian ruling
WARSAW, Poland (CNS) -- A Catholic priest who survived a 1940 Soviet massacre of Polish officers condemned a Russian prosecutor's ruling that the crime cannot be considered an act of genocide. "If this isn't genocide, then what is?" said 86-year-old Father Zdzislaw Peszkowski, chaplain of Poland's Katyn Families Association. "What should all the widows and orphaned families say whose husbands, fathers, uncles and grandfathers were murdered? Doesn't the crying, screaming and pain of these people play any role?" he asked. In the spring of 1940, Soviet forces shot more than 21,000 interned officers in the Katyn Forest, in what was then eastern Poland, in a campaign to destroy national morale. Around 2,000 Soviet secret police were involved in the killings, which were ordered March 5, 1940, by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
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Movies, TV shows, books, individuals honored with Christopher Awards
NEW YORK (CNS) -- Four movies, six television programs, 11 books and three individuals were honored at the 56th annual Christopher Awards ceremony, held March 10 in New York. Sargent Shriver was honored with the Christopher Leadership Award for a career "of exemplary public service." The first director of the Peace Corps, he was also at the helm of many other government and private social service initiatives in the 1960s and '70s, including Head Start, Job Corps, the federal Office of Economic Opportunity, the National Clearinghouse for Legal Services, Upward Bound and Volunteers in Service to America, known as VISTA. Shriver, U.S. ambassador to France in 1968-70 and the Democratic vice presidential candidate in 1972, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994.
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Florida judge rules Schiavo feeding tube can be removed
PINELLAS PARK, Fla. (CNS) -- One Florida judge overruled another March 18, deciding that the decision to remove the feeding tube from brain-damaged Terri Schindler Schiavo should go forward. A CNN report late in the day quoted Schiavo's sister as saying the tube had been removed. While the court maneuvering went on, about 40 people gathered outside the hospice in Pinellas Park where the Florida woman resides to protest any removal of the tube, and a U.S. bishops' pro-life official in Washington praised congressional efforts to keep Schiavo alive. Gail Quinn, executive director of the U.S. bishops' Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, supported separate legislation on Schiavo passed by the House and the Senate. "We strongly support legislation to provide Terri Schiavo access to the federal court so she can present her case," Quinn said March 18.
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Copyright (c) 2005 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
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