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News Briefs
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NEWS BRIEFS Feb-16-2010
By Catholic News Service
U.S.
Bishop says Oregon hospital can no longer be called Catholic
PORTLAND, Ore. (CNS) -- The Diocese of Baker has ended the church's official sponsorship of central Oregon's largest medical center, citing the hospital's refusal to adhere to some Catholic teachings. Baker Bishop Robert F. Vasa said St. Charles Medical Center in Bend "gradually moved away" from church ethical and religious standards and can no longer be called Catholic. "As bishop, I am responsible for attesting to the full Catholicity of the hospitals in my diocese, a responsibility which I take very seriously, and I have reached the conclusion that I can no longer attest to the Catholicity of St. Charles," Bishop Vasa wrote in the Feb. 18 issue of the Catholic Sentinel, diocesan newspaper for Portland and Baker. The main point of contention is tubal ligation, a form of permanent female reproductive sterilization. "It would be misleading for me to allow St. Charles Bend to be acknowledged as Catholic in name while I am certain that some important tenets of the ethical and religious directives are no longer being observed," the bishop said in a statement issued jointly with hospital officials.
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Collection for Black and Indian Missions nation's oldest, says priest
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Asked how the annual national collection for Black and Indian Missions supports evangelization around the country, Father Wayne Paysse easily drew on his recent travels for two examples. He cited increasing enrollment at St. Jude's Indian Mission School in the Diocese of San Bernardino, Calif., and a growing appreciation of the Catholic faith on the part of the students' families. He also pointed to St. Francis of Assisi, an African-American parish in the Diocese of Jackson, Miss., where students' "beaming smiles and laughter spoke volumes" to him about the importance of the collection. Father Paysse, who is executive director of the Washington-based office that administers the collection, was recently at the mission school for the children's first Communion and made a pastoral visit to the Mississippi Delta parish, where he spent time with students on the playground and in their classrooms. The collection for Black and Indian Missions was scheduled to be taken up in a majority of U.S. dioceses Feb. 21, the first Sunday of Lent, although a number of dioceses set their own date for it. A priest of the New Orleans Archdiocese, Father Paysse has been executive director of the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions since January 2007. In that role he also is executive secretary of the Black and Indian Missions collection and of the Catholic Negro-American Mission Board.
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Catholic Extension grants to support development of Hispanic leaders
CHICAGO (CNS) -- Catholic Extension has awarded more than $3.7 million to 41 U.S. dioceses to help support leadership development, youth and family ministries and effective advocacy programs for Hispanic Catholics. "As the Hispanic Catholic population grows, it is important that we help Hispanics become leaders, not just of other Hispanics, but in the church as a whole," said Arturo Chavez, president and CEO of the Mexican American Catholic College in San Antonio, in a statement. The Archdiocese of San Antonio will receive $85,000 to help support new bilingual bachelor's and master's degree programs at the Mexican American Catholic College that will prepare students to take on multicultural leadership roles in parishes across the country. Another $270,000 has been pledged to the Diocese of Salt Lake City over the next five years to help meet the needs of Utah's burgeoning Hispanic Catholic population. The funds will allow the diocese to create a lay ecclesial minister formation program to accommodate Spanish-speaking candidates seeking leadership roles in the church.
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Web site offers Christopher-honored entertainment for sale
NEW YORK (CNS) -- The Christophers have opened a one-stop Web site for finding uplifting books, films and TV programming for adults, children and families. A new Amazon Associates store is accessible through the Web site at www.christophers.org, where shoppers can buy Christopher Award-winning content for all ages. The organization will receive a small percentage of all purchases made through the store. The Christopher Awards, established in 1949 by Maryknoll Father James Keller, honor media that "affirm the highest values of the human spirit." Since that time, 1,360 films, books, TV shows and their creators have been honored. "Christopher Award winners run the gamut of subjects, styles and audiences, with one thing in common -- they remind us of our ability to make a positive difference in the world," said Mary Ellen Robinson, vice president of the Christophers.
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WORLD
Irish-Vatican summit on sex abuse ends with call for courage, honesty
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI said priestly sexual abuse was a "heinous crime" and a grave sin, and he urged Irish bishops to act courageously to repair their failures to deal properly with such cases. At the end of a two-day Vatican summit on the sex abuse scandal in Ireland, the Vatican said in a statement Feb. 16 that "errors of judgment and omissions" were at the heart of the crisis. It said church leaders recognized the sense of "pain and anger, betrayal, scandal and shame" that those errors have provoked among many Irish Catholics. "All those present recognized that this grave crisis has led to a breakdown in trust in the church's leadership and has damaged her witness to the Gospel and its moral teaching," the statement said. "For his part, the Holy Father observed that the sexual abuse of children and young people is not only a heinous crime, but also a grave sin which offends God and wounds the dignity of the human person created in his image," it said. "While realizing that the current painful situation will not be resolved quickly, he challenged the bishops to address the problems of the past with determination and resolve, and to face the present crisis with honesty and courage," it said.
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Tens of thousands of Brazilian Catholics pick alternative to Carnival
SAO PAULO, Brazil (CNS) -- Tens of thousands of Brazilian Catholics did something different during the four days of Carnival. While their counterparts danced in the streets to the latest samba rhythm, these Catholics attended spiritual retreats. Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians traditionally participate in the four-day, 24-hour Carnival parties that end as Lent begins on Ash Wednesday -- Feb. 17 this year. As part of a growing trend, this year hundreds of dioceses and Christian associations organized alternative activities that included prayer, music, reflection -- and a little dancing. The number of people attending these retreats has grown significantly during the last few years, and in some areas the retreats have become a tradition for those who want to a different Carnival experience. Cancao Nova (New Song) Catholic Community, a charismatic society and one of the largest Catholic groups in the country, gathered 70,000 people in its 2009 Carnival retreat in the interior of Sao Paulo state. This year organizers expected more than 60,000, and thousands more followed the festivities on the Internet.
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Bishops from North, South America meet; Haiti dominates discussion
OTTAWA (CNS) -- Rebuilding the church in Haiti dominated the agenda of this year's annual meeting of the bishops of the church in America. More than 20 delegates representing bishops from North and South America met in Montreal Feb. 8-11 to discuss challenges to the priesthood in honor of the Year for Priests, said a statement issued by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops. Newfoundland Bishop Douglas Crosby of Corner Brook and Labrador said bishops discussed how the Haitian relief effort could be better coordinated as well as the "rebuilding of a church that has been devastated." Bishop Crosby, co-treasurer of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, said delegates received information on how many priests, seminarians and religious sisters were killed in the Jan. 12 Haitian earthquake and how many churches and schools were destroyed. "It certainly opens your eyes to the situation of the church in the wider world," he said, noting that bishops "often get focused on our own agendas." He also said the group discussed the increasing persecution of the church in Venezuela and the difficult situation in Honduras after its president was deposed.
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Bishops ask Mexico to reconsider strategy against drug cartels
MEXICO CITY (CNS) -- The Mexican bishops' conference has released a pastoral letter calling on the government to reconsider its strategy of depending heavily on soldiers and federal police to combat powerful narcotics trafficking cartels. The letter also asked the government to halt a wave of violence that has claimed more than 18,000 lives over the past three years. "Security is not directly or principally related to the ability to use force, the number of police officers, the degree of militarization or the purchasing of weapons," the letter said. "With the passage of time, the participation of the armed forces in the fight against organized crime has provoked uncertainty in the population." "It's very clear this environment of violence and insecurity in which we are living denotes a sense of the loss of God," it said. The letter, released Feb. 15, also asked citizens to denounce crimes and criminal behavior and asked Catholics to do more to help the victims of violence.
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Witness of joy is key to promoting vocations, pope says
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The witness of a life lived joyfully and prayerfully is the key to attracting new vocations to the priesthood and religious life, Pope Benedict XVI said. In his message for the World Day of Prayer for Vocations, to be observed April 25, the pope said that while the call to priesthood and religious life comes from God, "it is also helped by the quality and depth of the personal and communal witness" of priests and religious. "God's free and gracious initiative encounters and challenges the human responsibility of all those who accept his invitation to become, through their own witness, the instruments of his divine call," the pope wrote in the message released Feb. 16. The pope said that especially for priests, but also for religious brothers and sisters, a personal example is particularly important for helping others see what answering God's call can mean.
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PEOPLE
Politicians who support gay marriage are not Catholic, says cardinal
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Public officials who openly support same-sex marriage cannot consider themselves to be Catholic, said an Italian cardinal. "It's impossible to consider oneself a Catholic if that person in one way or another recognizes same-sex marriage as a right," said Cardinal Carlo Caffarra of Bologna. The Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, reprinted a portion of a doctrinal note the cardinal released Feb. 14 concerning "Marriage and Homosexual Unions." The note, which appeared in full on the archdiocese's Web site, was aimed at helping enlighten Catholics in public office so that "they would not make choices that would publicly contradict their affiliation with the church," he wrote. Catholic politicians must not only promote the common good; they also "have a serious duty to make sure their beliefs, thoughts and proposals concerning the common good are consistent," he wrote.
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German psychiatrist calls clerical sex abuse of children 'repugnant'
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Clerical sexual abuse of a child is "particularly repugnant" because a priest's paternal role in the life of Catholic children means "the act has something incestuous about it," said a German psychiatrist who works closely with several Vatican offices. Dr. Manfred Lutz, chief of psychiatry at Cologne's Alexanier Infirmary, said the Catholic Church also "cannot remain indifferent" to the fact that abuse at the hands of a priest "destroys or seriously shakes faith in God." The Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, printed an article by Lutz Feb. 16, the same day the Irish bishops ended their meeting at the Vatican with Pope Benedict XVI to discuss the sex abuse scandal in Ireland. However, the German psychiatrist, who is a consultant to the Congregation for Clergy and a member of the executive council of the Pontifical Academy for Life, wrote his article in response to a growing sex abuse scandal in Germany. In late January, a former Jesuit admitted that he forced boys to have sex at Canisius College in Berlin between 1975 and 1983. Since then almost 100 men have come forward claiming they suffered abuse at the hands of Jesuit priests or lay teachers at Jesuit schools in Germany.
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Sister Dianna Ortiz to direct Washington office of Pax Christi
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Ursuline Sister Dianna Ortiz, who has been speaking out for torture survivors since she was abducted, raped and tortured in Guatemala in 1989, has been named director of the Washington office of Pax Christi USA. In the new post, Sister Dianna will direct policy, build coalitions and coordinate and supervise a new Washington-based internship program for the national Catholic peace movement. She also will be active in fundraising and development for Pax Christi USA, which is based in Erie, Pa. Dave Robinson, executive director of Pax Christi USA, praised Sister Dianna as "a distinguished and passionate leader in the Catholic peace and justice movement" in a news release announcing the appointment. Before joining Pax Christi USA, Sister Dianna was founder and executive director of the Washington-based Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International.
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