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News Briefs
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NEWS BRIEFS Sep-23-2011
By Catholic News Service
U.S.
Supreme Court term starts with case over church school employment
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The constitutionally thorny question of where the line lies between a church school's religious autonomy and the legal rights of its teachers comes before the Supreme Court Oct. 5, two days after the term starts. Other cases on the court's docket this fall include consideration of standards of indecency on network television and at least two cases over what activities warrant deporting immigrants. Within the court's first weeks, the justices also will decide whether to hear a challenge to Arizona's immigration enforcement law. They also will consider whether to hear several other appeals of how immigration and asylum laws are applied and yet another in a series of challenges to the display of crosses in public places. The church school case could have broad implications for other religious groups. Cheryl Perich was an elementary school teacher at Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church in Redford, Mich., in 2004 when she became ill with narcolepsy. When she prepared to return from disability leave more than six months later, the school asked her to resign, citing concerns about her readiness to work and the contract it had with her replacement teacher. Perich threatened to sue under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the school fired her. She then filed a case with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, charging that she was fired for threatening to sue. The school has maintained that because Perich had the status of "called" teacher, a designation the Evangelical Lutheran Church gives those involved in religious instruction, the ADA is not applicable in her case and the EEOC has no jurisdiction. Perich taught a standard fourth-grade curriculum but also taught some religion classes and was occasionally responsible for chapel services.
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Dominican sister says advocacy for migrant workers part of God's plan
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Dominican Sister Gabriella Williams, this year's winner of Catholic Extension's Lumen Christi Award, sees her work with migrants and other immigrant workers in Southern California as fulfilling part of God's plan of love for all of humanity. "We are all God's people, brothers and sisters. I support whoever I can because we are part of a big family and all that we do must be centered on God. God is love and I try to live this fact by my example," she said in a Sept. 20 telephone interview with Catholic News Service. "I am just a little part in a big puzzle and when we all live as God wants us to, then his plan of love can become a reality," she added. This marks the 34th year the award has been given to recognize the achievements of individuals who have sought to be like Christ in serving the poorest in their under-resourced dioceses. Sister Gabi, as she is known, received the award Sept. 21 at a reception following a special Mass at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Indio, Calif. The Catholic Church Extension Society, based in Chicago, supports various ministries in the nation's 86 mission dioceses, including evangelization and religious education; vocations and seminary education; church construction, repair and furnishings; and emergency relief needs. Sister Gabi works with migrant and immigrant workers in the "lower desert" in the Diocese of San Bernardino, Calif. As the Lumen Christi winner, she received a grant of $25,000 for her ministry and the diocese also receives $25,000. She was nominated for the award by Bishop Gerald R. Barnes of San Bernardino, who was the main celebrant of the Mass in Indio.
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Campus ministries devise ways to sustain college students' faith
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- While a new study of evangelical college students finds that up to half of them can drift from their faith while attending school, Catholics in campus ministry say that the findings are applicable to Catholic college students as well. The study, "Sticky Faith," found that the drift applied whether a student was living on campus or commuting from home, and that students were just as susceptible even if they were enrolled at a religiously affiliated school. Kara Powell, one of the study's authors who teaches at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., told Catholic News Service that the first two weeks of school frequently determine whether a Christian student's faith will be sustained during their undergraduate years. "They're in a world where there's nobody they know," Powell said. College is a lot like a second junior high -- experimenting with their identities. They'll be one way one day and another way with a different group of people. There's no coherence between their current peer group and their former peer group." The transition made by students who were members of their local congregation's youth ministry was examined by "Stick Faith." Powell said teens not involved in a church youth ministry were not examined. "Those surveys are probably somewhat true. I have no reason to think otherwise," said Nick Cardilino, associate director of campus ministry at the Marianist-run University of Dayton, with 20 years in campus ministry at the Ohio Catholic college.
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WORLD
In land of Martin Luther, pope prays for Christian unity
ERFURT, Germany (CNS) -- Visiting the land of Martin Luther, Pope Benedict XVI prayed for Christian unity and told Lutheran leaders that both secularization and Christian fundamentalism pose challenges to ecumenism today. "God is increasingly being driven out of our society, and the history of revelation that Scripture recounts to us seems locked into an ever remote past. Are we to yield to the pressure of secularization and become modern by watering down the faith?" the pope said in a meeting Sept. 23 with 15 representatives of the German Evangelical Church Council. The encounter in the central German city of Erfurt, followed by a joint prayer service, marked the ecumenical highlight of the pope's four-day visit to his homeland. The pope stopped to pray in the Erfurt Cathedral, where Luther was ordained a Catholic priest in 1507, and then met with the Lutheran leaders in a wing of the former Augustinian monastery where Luther lived until 1511. The pope listened as a mixed Catholic-Lutheran choir sang hymns in the vaulted chapter house of the former monastery, which has become a memorial to Luther, the founder of the Protestant Reformation. The pope's visit was much-anticipated in Germany, and before his arrival there had been speculation that he would make an important ecumenical announcement or concession. But during the prayer service in the church of the ancient monastery, the pope said this conjecture about an "ecumenical gift" demonstrated a "political misreading of faith and of ecumenism." Progress in Christian unity is not like negotiating a treaty, he said. Ecumenism will advance when Christians enter more deeply into their shared faith and profess it more openly in society, he said. The pope's two talks did not examine major ecumenical issues that have been taken up by Catholics and Lutherans in recent years. Instead, he focused on the common need to witness the Christian faith in a broken world.
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Catholics, Muslims can work together to build better world, pope says
BERLIN (CNS) -- Believers in God have a contribution to make toward building a better world marked by respect for each human being, Pope Benedict XVI told representatives of Germany's Muslim communities. "As believers, setting out from our respect convictions, we can offer an important witness in many key areas of life in society," including "the protection of the family based on marriage, respect for life in every phase of its natural course or the promotion of greater social justice," the pope said. He met Sept. 23 with 15 Muslim representatives -- men and women -- in a small meeting room at the apostolic nunciature in Berlin. Officials of the German bishops' conference said they tried to invite people who could represent the variety present among the almost 4.5 million Muslims living in Germany. About 70 percent of the country's Muslims are of Turkish origin; the others come from Arabic countries, the Balkans and Iran. Pope Benedict said the importance many Muslims give the role of religion in their lives is thought-provoking in a country that "tends to marginalize religion or, at most, to assign it a place among the individual's personal choices." While real differences exist between Muslims and Christians, he said, mutual respect exists and grows where believers meet one another and work together to promote and protect the dignity of each human being and other basic ethical values.
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In Germany, pope makes pilgrimage to a community that kept the faith
ETZELSBACH, Germany (CNS) -- The Marian sanctuary of Etzelsbach does not show up on most maps of Germany. But for Pope Benedict XVI, the tiny shrine looms large on the country's religious landscape. Despite decades of persecution under communism, this small Catholic community kept the faith. The pope helicoptered to the pilgrimage site at the end of the second day of his Sept. 22-25 trip to his German homeland. After addressing the German parliament, celebrating Mass in Berlin's Olympic Stadium and holding a historic encounter with Lutheran leaders, the stop in Etzelsbach might have seemed an afterthought. But that would be to misread Pope Benedict's priorities. If the stated theme of his German visit was to remind a secularized society about God, here was a place where religious values remain strong -- an island of belief in a sea of religious indifference and, for the pope, well worth a pilgrimage. "I think the pope is coming here to meet the base of the church community. He wants to meet the very simple people, people who have remained faithful in a very traditional way," said Doris Binder, a 55-year-old Catholic who sat on a hillside next to the sanctuary. "Perhaps being far from the big cities was better for people here. Their faith held them together," Binder said.
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Pope meets with clerical sex abuse victims in Germany
ERFURT, Germany (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI met with five victims of clerical sexual abuse in Germany, expressing his deep regret and the church's commitment to preventing such crimes in the future. The Vatican said the 84-year-old pope was "moved and deeply shaken by the suffering of the victims." He met with the group, two women and three men, in the seminary in Erfurt Sept. 23, the second day of a four-day visit to his homeland. The victims, from various parts of Germany, had suffered sexual abuse by priests and other church personnel, the Vatican said. They were accompanied by Bishop Stephan Ackermann of Trier, who has helped draw up new measures to deal with abusive priests. "The Holy Father expressed his deep compassion and regret over all that was done to them and their families," said a statement from Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman. "He assured the people present that those in positions of responsibility in the church are seriously concerned to deal with all crimes of abuse and are committed to the promotion of effective measures for the protection of children and young people," the statement said. Father Lombardi described the climate of the 30-minute encounter as "serene and communicative."
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PEOPLE
US group gives Vatican ways to put social encyclical into action
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- A group of U.S. Catholic Latino business leaders presented Vatican officials detailed reflections on how laypeople can fulfill Pope Benedict XVI's call to make today's societies and economies more just. Four members of the San Antonio-based Catholic Association of Latino Leaders and Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez presented a written reflection, "Caritas in Veritate -- Charity in Truth: Our Response in Faith," to a number of Vatican dicasteries Sept. 22-23. The group was hoping to present a special white leather-bound copy of the booklet to Pope Benedict after his return from his Sept. 22-25 trip to Germany. The group presented red leather-bound copies of the booklet to the cardinals and archbishops who head the Vatican's other offices, including Cardinal Peter Turkson, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and Cardinal Stanislaw Rylko, president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity. The written reflection is meant to provide a way for all women and men of faith to consider what the 2009 social encyclical "is asking us to do differently in our business and profession, in economic and public life and in our role as faithful citizens" as well as "provide a U.S.-Latino perspective of Caritas in Veritate," the document said. The 28-page reflection is also meant to be a resource and a tool for the Vatican because CALL's mission "is to assist our priests, bishops, church and the Holy Father," the organization's president and CEO, Robert Aguirre, told Catholic News Service Sept. 23.
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