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News Briefs
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NEWS BRIEFS Nov-19-2008
By Catholic News Service
U.S.
Group prays that U.S. treasury secretary will halt foreclosures
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Berenice Ramos never thought she and her family would have their house lost in foreclosure. Ramos, 39, is a financial planner. "What about that, huh?" she said as she shook her head. Her husband has been in the flooring business for 20 years. Ramos herself took in additional income cleaning houses. "This was our third house," she told Catholic News Service about the house where she and her husband and three children lived for three years until it was foreclosed on in November. They bought the house for $580,000 and had a monthly payment of $3,000. But after a two-year freeze on the interest rate ended, the payment shot up to $4,600. By the time they were forced out of the house, the payment had neared $5,000, said Ramos, a member of Holy Rosary Parish in Antioch, Calif. The family now rents a house two blocks from the home they lost. Asked if she knew others whose homes have gone into foreclosure, Ramos replied, "Too many, too many." Ramos and about 100 other members of the Oakland, Calif.-based PICO National Network converged on the sidewalk outside the Treasury Building, next to the White House, for a prayer service Nov. 18.
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Daschle chosen to head Health and Human Services
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- President-elect Barack Obama has chosen Tom Daschle, former Democratic senator from South Dakota, to be the next Health and Human Services secretary. The New York Times reported Obama's choice of Daschle Nov. 19, attributing it to people the paper described as "being close to the transition team." Daschle, a Catholic, represented South Dakota in the Senate from 1986 to 2004. Before that he was a member of the House of Representatives for eight years. In the Senate he was minority leader, 1994-2001. In January 2001 he was Senate majority leader for a brief stint, then in May 2001 was again named Senate majority leader, a post he held until January 2003. Although he has reportedly accepted Obama's nomination, a formal announcement is not expected until other Cabinet members are chosen. He currently serves as a public policy adviser in a Washington law firm and has been appointed head of Obama's health care policy group. His interest in health care is spelled out in a book he wrote, "Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis," which was published in February. In 2001-03, when Daschle was the Senate majority leader, he was criticized by South Dakota's bishops for his support for legal abortion.
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Surface mining takes away the mountaintop, 200 million tons at a time
CHAVIES, Ky. (CNS) -- Any kid enamored of big trucks would have been in his element to see gigantic earth-graders, even bigger diggers and absolutely huge haulers driving on the top of a mountain. Well, not a typical mountain with peaks, not anymore. Isaiah's prophecy comes more to mind: "Every valley shall be exalted, and every hill made low." It's hard to say whether Isaiah had this in mind, though. Pine Branch Coal is literally taking the top off the mountain to get to the coal that lies close enough to the top to make the mountaintop removal process cost-effective. A privately held company, Pine Branch Coal has been in business for 51 years, yet has never had to go more than 10 miles in any direction from its Chavies headquarters to extract coal. But instead of sending workers into a hole in the ground to scrape out coal with a pickax and pile it into small train cars -- the stereotypical image of coal mining -- the graders, diggers and haulers now take off the top of the mountain to get to the coal. The visit to the mountaintop removal site was part of a Nov. 9-11 Appalachian study tour jointly sponsored by the Catholic Press Association and the Catholic Committee on Appalachia.
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Student programs at Jesuit universities awarded $80,000 in grants
SAN FRANCISCO (CNS) -- Jesuit college and university programs for students of color, low-income students and students who are the first in their families to attend college received grants totaling $80,000 from the Jesuit Network for Equitable Excellence in Higher Education. The grants, announced Oct. 29, are funded by the Lumina Foundation for Education. They were awarded to 18 programs from eight Jesuit universities across the country. The recipients were: Canisius College, Buffalo, N.Y.; Creighton University, Omaha, Neb.; Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles; Santa Clara University in California; St. Joseph University, Philadelphia; Seattle University in Washington; the University of San Francisco and Xavier University in Cincinnati. Grant recipients were chosen for their dedication to addressing the needs of low-income and ethnically underrepresented student groups by providing educational and mentoring initiatives, leadership training, retention programs and retreats. The programs aim to provide students with the resources they need along with leadership skills to succeed.
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WORLD
Faith, charity go hand in hand, pope says at weekly audience
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Being saved by faith in Christ alone and not by works does not mean that people can do whatever they want as long as they recognize Christ as their savior, Pope Benedict XVI said. Faith in Christ "necessarily means conforming oneself to Christ" and being like him, especially in loving and helping others, the pope said Nov. 19 at his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square. With an estimated 15,000 people gathered in the square, Pope Benedict continued his audience talks about the life and teaching of St. Paul, focusing on the apostle's teaching about how people become justified or made righteous in the eyes of God. A dispute over what St. Paul meant when he wrote that people are justified by "faith alone" was at the center of the 16th-century Protestant Reformation, the pope said, but while people are justified by faith alone, true faith always translates into love for God and for one's neighbor.
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Kenyan cardinal says church will resist moves to legalize abortion
NAIROBI, Kenya (CNS) -- The Catholic Church will resist any moves to legalize abortion in Kenya, said Cardinal John Njue of Nairobi. Cardinal Njue, president of the Kenya Episcopal Conference, led hundreds of Catholics into the streets to demonstrate against the Reproductive Health and Rights Bill 2008, which would legalize abortion. He said the bill should be opposed at all costs. Urging legislators to vote against the measure, he reminded them they were sent to parliament by voters to make good laws. The cardinal, who celebrated Mass at Nairobi's Holy Family Minor Basilica Nov. 15 after the demonstration, described abortion as murder and said it showed disrespect for life and human dignity. "We have come here not to condemn anybody, but (to condemn) the act itself. We hope the lawmakers we have sent to parliament will confine (themselves) to making good but not destructive laws such as this attempt to have abortion legalized in the country," said the cardinal. Without elaborating further, Cardinal Njue said the forces behind the move to have abortion legalized in the country were foreign.
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Sant'Egidio leader calls for kindness, says money isn't everything
NICOSIA, Cyprus (CNS) -- To speak of the global need for dialogue, peace and simple human kindness when the world economy is in crisis may seem ridiculous, but a lack of humanity and solidarity are what triggered the crisis in the first place, said the founder of the Community of Sant'Egidio. Andrea Riccardi, founder of the Rome-based lay movement, spoke at the Nov. 18 closing ceremony of the annual interreligious gathering for peace organized by Sant'Egidio. "Today, in the midst of a global crisis of great proportions, one for which all the consequences cannot be seen, we feel a need to affirm that the economy and finance are not everything," Riccardi said. "Too much has been overlooked: all that regards the human person and the spirit," he said. "In order to build a world of well-being for a few, we have given growth to a world of pain for many." Hundreds of Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Sikh and other religious leaders gathered Nov. 16-18 in Nicosia to promote interreligious dialogue, the peaceful resolution of conflicts and joint action to alleviate poverty and human suffering.
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Attitude about AIDS in Arab Syria changes slowly with awareness
DAMASCUS, Syria (CNS) -- In Syria, AIDS has long been a taboo subject. The topic is discussed, but primarily as part of a discussion about the disease in other countries. "That's one of the problems. People here don't acknowledge the real situation," said Maronite Father Tony Dawra, who has been involved in an AIDS education project with the U.N. Development Program since 2005. "They don't tend to like to talk about it." But that attitude has been changing slowly over the past several years. The disease has become a regular topic on Arab talk shows. This year Syria had its first TV drama about people with AIDS. A year and a half ago Syria opened AIDS counseling centers in all 12 provinces, and the U.N.-sponsored AIDS education program has been teaching Arabs about a disease that historically has not been an open topic in the religiously conservative Middle East. "Normally religious leaders don't like to talk about these things," Father Dawra said. "I'm different."
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Pax Christi to help send peace prayers for Bethlehem at Christmas
JERUSALEM (CNS) -- As Christians around the world prepare to celebrate Advent and Christmas, Pax Christi International joined a call for prayers for peace to be sent to Bethlehem, West Bank. In its eighth year, the prayers for Bethlehem project is being carried out this year by the World Council of Churches and its Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum. Among others, it is being supported by Pax Christi International, the Catholic peace movement. The project will be launched at the beginning of Advent, Nov. 30. "People in Bethlehem greatly appreciate receiving wishes and prayers from people outside the region, both as personal and spiritual gestures of comfort and hope on the occasion of Christmas. These messages are one way of breaking through the isolation they live in," the council said in a press statement. The Christmas messages and prayers for peace should be e-mailed to the Arab Educational Institute at aei@p-ol.com, before Dec. 25 for Christians using the Gregorian calendar and before Jan. 7 for those using the Julian calendar. Messages can be read online at: www.aeicenter.org and www.paxchristi.net.
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Nuns learn to enculturate art to help renew Chinese Catholics' faith
BEIJING (CNS) -- Producing Christmas cards, stained-glass art and wooden candleholders is a way to help Chinese Catholics renew their faith and enculturate church art, said an official of the national seminary in Beijing. Father John Chen Binshan of Qingdao, the seminary's academic dean, observed that many rural Chinese Catholics prefer religious articles in Western style. However, "just as our faith needs renewal, the form of religious art also needs to catch up with modern society," he told the Asian church news agency UCA News. The seminary set up its Religious Art Department in 2007, but officially enrolled students only this October, Father Chen explained. He said only nuns applied as full-time students. Sister Xu Xiuqing, who is interested in design, painting and carving, said she hopes to put to good use what she is learning at the seminary, formally the National Catholic Institute of Philosophy and Theology. "I wish to set up a religious art workshop in my convent someday," she told UCA News.
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PEOPLE
Mother Teresa still has lessons to teach world, says priest-author
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- More than 10 years after her death, Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta still has lessons to teach the world, according to the priest who co-founded the Missionaries of Charity Fathers with her and has written a new book about her. Father Joseph Langford, a 57-year-old native of Toledo, Ohio, said he wrote "Mother Teresa's Secret Fire" (Our Sunday Visitor, $19.95) to try to explain "what made Mother Teresa Mother Teresa" and how she sustained hope, joy and a belief in the possibility of change in the face of inner and external challenges. "As America faces its own dark night of the soul," he said, Mother Teresa shows Americans and the rest of the world "how to live joyfully, creatively, in a way that leaves a legacy." In a Nov. 18 interview with Catholic News Service, Father Langford said Mother Teresa asked him to write the book after she revealed to him in 1986 the details of her "call within a call" 40 years earlier. On a day in 1946 that she came to call "inspiration day," as she was on a train to Darjeeling, India, to begin a retreat, Mother Teresa heard a call from God to give up her safe, relatively comfortable life as a schoolteacher and as a Sister of Loreto to live among the destitute and dying in Calcutta and establish a new religious community.
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Kentuckians struggle to be heard above din of coal industry, state
DAVID, Ky. (CNS) -- Coal has been king in Appalachia for more than a century, and despite some alarm to the contrary, will likely continue to be atop the region's economy for the foreseeable future. That is cold comfort to Kentuckians who feel they have been treated badly not only by the coal companies, but also by the state of Kentucky when they register complaints about the coal companies violating their land and water rights. Rick Handshoe, of Hueysville, said he has complained so much to state regulatory officials -- and been treated so dismissively by state employees in return -- that one employee told him, "We're going to put you on a do-not-call list. We will not listen to anything you say." That state employee, Handshoe told Catholic News Service Nov. 14, has since retired. A couple of new employees have been paying attention to his complaints, but while Handshoe figures his chances at getting some satisfaction have improved, he thinks he still has only a 30 percent chance of prevailing. Handshoe is a member of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, a new citizens' group that seeks to correct injustice, and empower Kentucky citizens to stand up for their rights.
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Nobel winner listens to testimony of workers rounded up in Iowa raid
POSTVILLE, Iowa (CNS) -- She came from Guatemala to Postville for one purpose. "I have come to listen specifically to the testimonies of the people who have suffered abuses here from the raid," Rigoberta Menchu said. "I come not only to listen to your suffering, but also to identify with your suffering. Your pain is my pain." So began the message of the 1992 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for her work in human rights, first in Guatemala and now on the international stage. About 300 people gathered in St. Bridget Church Nov. 8 to hear her message, to pray together and to hear the testimony of people who had been detained following the morning raid last May at Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The majority of the immigrants were from Guatemala. In the raid 389 employees were arrested and detained. Most of those arrested were charged with felonies relating to the use of false IDs. They accepted plea agreements calling for five-month sentences before they were to be deported.
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Copyright (c) 2008 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
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