|
|
|
|
News Briefs
|
NEWS BRIEFS Jun-13-2006
By Catholic News Service
U.S.
Torture 'morally intolerable,' says ad signed by cardinal, others
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick joined with 26 other faith leaders June 13 in calling for a clear U.S. policy against torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of detainees. The cardinal, the retired archbishop of Washington, was among the signers of an ad in The New York Times sponsored by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. "Torture violates the basic dignity of the human person that all religions, in their highest ideals, hold dear," the advertisement said. "Any policies that permit torture and inhumane treatment are shocking and morally intolerable." In a news release, Cardinal McCarrick said every human being has "a special dignity ... that comes from the fact that we are brothers and sisters in God's one human family." He added, "It is because of this that we all feel that torture is a dehumanizing and terrible attack against human nature and the respect we owe for each other."
- - -
Young adults give little, but most goes to church
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Young adults don't give much money to their church or other philanthropies, but most of what they give goes to the church, said a report by Empty Tomb, an Illinois church stewardship research and consulting company. In its report, released June 7, Empty Tomb analyzed the findings of the 2004 Consumer Expenditures Survey of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics -- a study of American spending habits based on interviews with more than 30,000 Americans. It found that adults under 25 give only 0.8 percent of their after-tax income to their church, religious organizations or other charitable or philanthropic causes. The national average across all adult age brackets is nearly double that, 1.5 percent. Among people ages 65-74, the average amount of philanthropic giving is 3.6 percent of after-tax income. The report came out the week before the U.S. Catholic bishops were to decide, at a national meeting in Los Angeles, on a proposal to prepare a statement encouraging young people to exercise responsible stewardship of their time, talent and treasure for the church.
- - -
Lay ministers applaud bishops' statement on their ministry
CLEVELAND (CNS) -- When the U.S. bishops issued their document on lay ecclesial ministers last November, it sent a message to the nearly 31,000 professionals and another 2,100 volunteers in lay parish ministry that they play an important role in the work of the church. Feelings of affirmation, satisfaction and gratefulness about the document were expressed widely by 200 lay ecclesial ministers who gathered in Cleveland June 1-4 for the 30th annual conference of the National Association for Lay Ministry. They discussed and analyzed the practical implications of the bishops' document, "Co-Workers in the Vineyard of the Lord," and what it means in their work at parishes across the country. "Lay ecclesial ministry has emerged and taken shape in our country through the working of the Holy Spirit," the document states. Karla Bellinger, pastoral minister at Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in Wadsworth, Ohio, said the document acknowledges the "validity" of the call of lay people to ministry within the church. "Perhaps the document will, in time, give a name and credibility to the role of lay ecclesial ministers," she said.
- - -
Bishop welcomes participants to Hispanic youth ministry meeting
NOTRE DAME, Ind. (CNS) -- Bishop John M. D'Arcy of Fort Wayne-South Bend welcomed some 2,000 Hispanic youths, young adults and diocesan and parish leaders to his diocese for their June 8-11 National Encuentro for Hispanic Youth and Young Adult Ministry at the University of Notre Dame. The "encuentro," Spanish for "gathering," was the first national event of its kind for Catholic Hispanic young people and focused on their needs, aspirations and contributions relative to the church. The goal was to develop a common vision and pastoral principles, which will be presented to the U.S. bishops. Some 20 bishops attended at least some of the events. Bishop D'Arcy greeted his fellow bishops and the other participants at the opening event in the Notre Dame Athletic and Convocation Center the evening of June 8. "Pray for faith and go from this place and bring not yourselves, but Jesus Christ and his mother to the world," Bishop D'Arcy told the young people.
- - -
Cardinal challenges Hispanic youths to help new immigrants
NOTRE DAME, Ind. (CNS) -- A Honduran cardinal stressed the contributions of Hispanics to U.S. society and challenged young Hispanics to respond to the plight of newly arriving immigrants. "How interesting that at a time when the doors to free trade are being opened that the international borders are being closed to immigrants," said Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa, Honduras. The cardinal was one of the keynote speakers at the June 8-11 National Encuentro for Hispanic Youth and Young Adult Ministry at the University of Notre Dame. Cardinal Rodriguez said June 10, "We can't allow ourselves to forget that in the face of every immigrant there is a history." It is a history complicated by the humiliation and family disintegration suffered by those who choose to migrate to the United States, he said in Spanish. "They haven't come with the intention of taking jobs away from anyone, nor their way of making a living," he said to cheers and applause. "For this reason, they can't be called bad, usurpers or criminals."
- - -
Mexican-American nun tells Hispanics not to lose cultural heritage
NOTRE DAME, Ind. (CNS) -- A Mexican-American nun told Hispanic youths not to lose their cultural identity as they become increasingly a part of the U.S. church and society. Hispanics must maintain their cultural heritage if they are to achieve self-esteem and be leaders in a growing cross-cultural world, said Mercy Sister Maria Elena Gonzalez, president of the Mexican American Cultural Center in San Antonio. Hispanics also must be ready to assume leadership roles in the U.S. church as their growing numbers soon should make them the majority, said Sister Gonzalez. Her cultural center trains people for Hispanic and multicultural ministry. The aim of Hispanic church leadership should be to "build unity in our diversity," she said June 9 during a keynote talk at the National Encuentro for Hispanic Youth and Young Adult Ministry at the University of Notre Dame. The June 8-11 "encuentro," Spanish for "gathering," was the first national meeting of its kind. Its theme was "Weaving Together the Future."
- - -
Theologian calls U.S. bishops' lay ministry document best in field
CLEVELAND (CNS) -- The U.S. bishops' 2005 statement on lay ecclesial ministry "is the most mature and coherent ecclesiastical document ever produced on a theology of ministry," theologian Richard R. Gaillardetz told the National Association for Lay Ministry at its annual convention in Cleveland. The theme of the June 1-4 meeting, "Co-Workers in the Vineyard," reflected the bishops' document, whose full title is "Co-Workers in the Vineyard of the Lord." Gaillardetz, who is the Murray/Bacik professor of Catholic studies at the University of Toledo, Ohio, said one of the strengths of the bishops' statement "is the way in which it successfully integrates lay ecclesial ministry within a broader theology of church and ministry." He said the late Pope John Paul II did good separate documents on the theology of bishops, priests and laity, but "in no ecclesiastical document, papal or episcopal, has there been a successful theological integration of the various forms of ministry in the church. Until now."
- - -
Church handled 'Da Vinci' well, says Michigan marketing professor
DETROIT (CNS) -- There were no excommunications or top-down, churchwide boycotts to oppose "The Da Vinci Code," the movie many Christians believe distorts the legacy of Jesus Christ. With a ready-made audience owing to huge sales of the novel of the same name, not to mention copious advance publicity, the movie had a strong box-office opening around the globe. But according to University of Detroit Mercy marketing professor Michael Bernacchi, such a tempered response from the Catholic Church was exactly what the situation called for. "The church as a formal, institutional body could not have handled it any better," Bernacchi said after the movie's first week in theaters. "I think they're at the top of their game." The movie -- which was classified as "morally offensive" by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Office for Film & Broadcasting -- made more than $77 million in its first weekend, according to the movie industry Web site BoxOfficeMojo.com.
- - -
Food banks, charitable agencies struggle with high gasoline costs
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Continuing high gas prices have been eating away at the transportation budgets of Catholic and other charitable agencies around the country. Delivery fees are going up for transporting goods from food banks to Catholic Charities agencies, and that's a big concern these days for those running food and other programs for those in need, according to representatives of Catholic agencies and other organizations. They spoke with Catholic News Service in telephone and e-mail interviews. "It has impacted us," said Courtney Bryant, a social worker at St. Peter Ministries, the community outreach division of Catholic Charities of Memphis, Tenn. "In fact we no longer order our food to be delivered. The delivery fees are too expensive. It is cheaper for our staff to go pick up our food and pay our own gas. However, we lose in the way of staff time and staff utilization." In urban areas, many of the poor and working poor use public transportation to get to their local pantry. In some cities, recent gas price increases have resulted in higher prices for bus fare.
- - -
WORLD
Orthodox express concern about dropping 'patriarch of the West' title
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The bishops of the Ecumenical Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople have expressed concern over Pope Benedict XVI's decision to drop "patriarch of the West" from his official titles in the Vatican yearbook. In a June 8 statement, the chief secretary of the Orthodox bishops' synod said dropping "patriarch of the West" while retaining the titles "vicar of Jesus Christ" and "supreme pontiff of the universal church" is "perceived as implying a universal jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome over the entire church, which is something the Orthodox have never accepted." The statement was issued after synod members discussed the change during their early June meeting. The Vatican said in March that Pope Benedict dropped the title in the 2006 edition of the Annuario Pontificio because it was theologically imprecise and historically obsolete.
- - -
Vatican official: Globalization's wealth does not help enough people
GENEVA (CNS) -- While globalization is creating wealth, it is not helping enough people either because working conditions are poor or jobs do not exist, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi told the International Labor Conference. The Vatican's representative to Geneva-based international organizations spoke June 8 at the conference sponsored by the International Labor Organization. According to the ILO, the global unemployment rate in 2005 remained at 6.3 percent. Although 2.8 billion people over age 15 are working, half of them do not earn the $2 a day per family member needed to raise them above the global poverty line. Archbishop Tomasi said the benefits of the new wealth produced by globalization are not reaching millions of people, including undocumented agricultural workers, factory workers and domestic servants, women in the textile industry, and "workers labeled by their race, caste or religion" who are given access only to menial labor.
- - -
Russian Orthodox invite top Vatican officials to July world summit
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow has invited top Vatican officials as well as the bishop of western Siberia to attend a World Summit of Religious Leaders July 3-5 in Russia's capital. Through its interreligious council, the Moscow Patriarchate was organizing the initiative to bring together top religious leaders from a variety of spiritual traditions to discuss how world religions could help give a moral response to the challenges the world is facing. Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow invited Cardinal Paul Poupard, head of the pontifical councils for Culture and for Interreligious Dialogue; Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity; and Bishop Joseph Werth of Russia's Novosibirsk-based Transfiguration Diocese. The inclusion of Bishop Werth, a Russian citizen born in Kazakhstan, signaled an important gesture of rapprochement on the part of the patriarchate toward the Vatican.
- - -
Guatemalan bishop says free trade widens gap between rich, poor
TORONTO (CNS) -- Free trade under the current economic rules can only widen the gap between rich and poor in the Americas, said the head of the Guatemalan bishops' conference. "I am not against free trade in its true sense," said Bishop Alvaro Ramazzini Imeri of San Marcos, Guatemala. "But free trade has to be based on equal rules for all players." Bishop Ramazzini, who also heads a commission formed last year to negotiate mining reform, spoke June 8 at a public meeting at Ryerson University in Toronto. The bishop said he is afraid that under terms of the Central American Free Trade Agreement, U.S. food products will flood global markets, stifling domestic production for Guatemala. "The Guatemalan peasant farmer has no social security, no job security; neither does he have access to subsidies, (unlike) the U.S. farmer, who has farming equipment, irrigation systems, and who will inevitably produce more," he said.
- - -
PEOPLE
Cause for Japanese martyrs is proceeding, says official
ROME (CNS) -- The canonization process is proceeding for 188 17th-century Japanese martyrs who were decapitated, burned at the stake or scalded to death in the boiling water of a volcanic hot spring, said the promoter of the cause. Augustinian Father Fernando Rojo said the historical and theological commissions of the Congregation for Saints' Causes have issued opinions in favor of beatification, a step toward sainthood. However, the priest said that since the congregation's cardinal members and Pope Benedict XVI still have to approve the decree of martyrdom a beatification ceremony is unlikely to take place before May. The 188 martyrs include four Jesuit priests, other priests, brothers and nuns, lay men and women. They were killed in different cities between 1603 and 1639 after the Japanese government outlawed Christianity. In official terms, the martyrs' cause is referred to as that of Jesuit Father Petro Kassui Kibe and 187 companions.
- - -
Dutch churchman praises online contest for Christian soccer star
OXFORD, England (CNS) -- A Dutch bishops' spokesman has welcomed the launch of an online contest to elect a Christian soccer star during the 2006 FIFA World Cup. "There's a lot of resistance to the idea that a footballer can also be a Christian," said Pieter Kohnen, spokesman for the Utrecht-based Dutch bishops' conference. "It's good to show that players who'll become superstars during this tournament are also spiritual people who believe in Christ. It's a great way of evangelizing where you wouldn't normally expect it." Gristelijk, a group of Dutch Catholic and Protestant teachers and lecturers, published a list of 11 leading Christian soccer stars on its Web site, www.gristelijk.nl. Visitors can vote for their favorite in the site's right column. Kohnen said he hoped the players, who include several Catholics, would speak openly about their faith.
END
Copyright (c) 2006 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
CNS · 3211 Fourth St NE · Washington DC 20017 · 202.541.3250
|
|
|
|
