RNS

BRIEF CHALLENGES HAWAIIAN LAW DESIGNATING GOOD FRIDAY HOLIDAY

A legal challenge to a Hawaiian law recognizing Good Friday as a legal holiday has been filed in a federal appeals court by two Jewish groups and a church-state separationist organization.

The brief was filed with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals by the American Jewish Congress, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith and Americans United for Separation of Church and State after the U. S. District Court for the District of Hawaii ruled that the law did not violate church-state separation.

According to the district court, the Good Friday holiday gives Hawaiians a "needed day of rest" to spend as they choose. But the brief argues that Good Friday has an "unmitigated religious significance" and, unlike Christmas or Thanksgiving, has not become part of "secular culture."

The brief also noted that the Hawaiian law gives the Christian holiday a higher status than holidays of other faiths, such a Baha'i, Buddhist and Jewish holidays, that now have official recognition.

A spokesperson for the American Jewish Congress said Hawaii is believed to be the only state that designates Good Friday as a legal holiday.

TWO NUNS RESIGN AFTER FOUR-YEAR BATTLE WITH VATICAN

Two Roman Catholic nuns who appeared to have won a four-year battle with Rome over their espousal of pro-choice views revealed July 21 that they have resigned from their religious order, citing severe differences with the order's leadership.

The two former nuns, Patricia Hussey and Barbara Ferraro, also said they found it difficult to work with homeless women while remaining members of a community "in a patriarchal church."

Just six weeks ago, the leaders of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, in apparent defiance of Vatican wishes, decided against dismissing the two nuns for their outspoken pro-choice views on abortion.

The decision at the time was a surprising development in the four-year struggle that began in October 1984 when the nuns' names appeared as signers of an ad in The New York Times that supported the right of Catholics to dissent from Church teachings on abortion. They and twenty-four other nuns who also signed the ad faced a Vatican ultimatum to recant the view expressed in the view or be dismissed from their orders. Cases against the other nuns were dropped when they agreed to affirm their support of Catholic teaching.

Ms. Ferraro and Ms. Hussey refused to recant and weathered a series of warnings from the Vatican congregation in charge of religious orders before the Notre Dame leadership decided against dismissal.

While refusing to dismiss the nuns, the leadership harshly criticized the two for disregarding "their responsibility to be accountable to the religious community they freely chose to join. Sisters Barbara and Patricia have in practice placed themselves outside the life and mission of the congregation."

The order's leaders avoided discussing the issues in their statement. Instead, they referred to the emotion and publicity the dispute has generated and said, "We would not want to take such an action (dismissal) in this climate."

The dissident nuns, who operate Covenant House, a shelter for abused and homeless women in Charleston, W. Va., hailed the order's decision at the time as a "victory for all women," although many observers expected officials in Rome to re-enter the case and dismiss the pair.

The statement announcing their resignations, however, contained bitter criticism of the order's leadership. "We also find that the violence of the process used with us by the leadership, the lack of respect and understanding for our motivation for the good of the whole church by many in the community, are for us insurmountable barriers to the reconstruction of a positive covenant relationship."

Referring to their work at Covenant House, a center not associated with the Church, they wrote: "The past four years have shown us that to truly stand with people who are struggling, one must be in a relationship of equality with them. Thus for us to stand with women, we need to renounce the differences, privileges and even limitations that are part of membership in a religious community in a patriarchal church."

Ms. Hussey had been a nun for 21 years, Ms. Ferraro for 26 years.

According to press accounts, officials of the Notre Dame order in Rome greeted the resignations with a brief statement: "Sisters Pat and Barbara have done what the situation and their own integrity demanded. They know that the prayers of the Sisters of Notre Dame will follow them into the future."

ARRESTED ABORTION FOES REFUSE TO GIVE THEIR NAMES IN ATLANTA

More than 90 anti-abortion activists arrested here during protests that began during the recent Democratic National Convention remained in jail August 1st for refusing the give their names to police.

A total of 157 people from around the country were arrested during three anti-abortion protests that began July 19.

Protesters responded to the call of an organization called Operation Rescue to block the entrances to abortion clinics here. The three protests were peaceful, with demonstrators sitting or lying in front of the clinic entrances.

In the largest protest, during the convention, 134 people were arrested. A second protest July 29 resulted in the arrests of 13 more, and an additional protest July 30 led to 10 other arrests.

The two smaller protests took place after Pat Robertson broadcast an appeal for anti-abortion activists to go to Atlanta and shut down abortion clinics in the city.

Of those arrested, more than 90 remained in city jail August 1st for refusing to give their names to police. They identified themselves only as "Baby Jane Doe" or "Baby John Doe." A spokesman for Operation Rescue said that this tactic, which had not been used prior to the Atlanta protest, is an expression of solidarity with unborn babies.

Atlanta corrections officials declined to release the protesters, who gave false names, on the ground that they could not be traced if they failed to show up at their trials on trespassing charges.

One anti-abortion protester who was released, Curtis L. Dunn, Jr., said he became interested in direct action such as sit-ins at abortion clinics after the U.S. Senate rejected President Reagan's nomination of Judge Robert Bork for the Supreme Court. Mr. Dunn said he realized then "that our leaders weren't listening to us any more, that they had already made up their minds" on the issue of abortion.

VATICAN II LITURGICAL EXPERT URGES ORDINATION OF WOMEN

A Benedictine monk known internationally for his work in behalf of liturgical reform in the Roman Catholic Church has called on the Church to ordain women as priests.

The Rev. Godfrey Diekmann, who helped draft the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council, drew a standing ovation after he made his proposal at a symposium here honoring another Benedictine monk, the Rev. Virgil Michel, founder of the American liturgical movement, who died fifty years ago.

The 80-year-old Father Diekmann, who teaches patristics (writings of the early Church fathers) at St. John's University here, said the failure of the Catholic Church to ordain women was due to custom, not tradition. He said the Church in the East, as early as the third century had ceremonies for the laying on of hands for deaconesses, deacons, priests and bishops who had major liturgical functions to perform.

The liturgical functions for the deaconesses, Father Diekmann explained, was to provide total bodily anointing of women candidates for baptism. "Pastoral liturgical practice demanded and obtained women deacons," he added, adding that in the West "so-called deaconesses never had such a function, and there was no ordinational laying on of hands."

"Pastoral liturgical experience, in fact desperate liturgical needs, similarly cry out for women priests today," Father Diekmann said.

"Using lay persons on Sundays for tens of thousands of priestless parishes and communities is a necessary stop-gap," he said. "And it can be a very edifying experience. In the long run, however, it is a dangerous expedient. We don't need priestless communities in a normal situation. That would logically lead to a non-sacramental Church."

In this matter, Father Diekmann said, the Rev. Edward Schillebeeckx, a Dutch Dominican theologian, "is eminently right. We need communities which recognize and cherish ordained priests—women and men—in their midst who lead them by serving them. For this, dear God, we pray you."

CATHOLIC BISHOP: NO TURNING BACK ON VATICAN II GAINS

Collegeville, Minn. (RNS) —There is "no turning back" on the gains made by the Roman Catholic laity and women theologians since the Second Vatican Council, said a Catholic bishop here.

The Church cannot reverse itself, said Bishop Raymond Lucker of New Ulm, Minn., "once we say that every single member of the Church is called to an active participation in the life and mission of the Church and is called by baptism to share the priestly office of Christ."

Bishop Lucker was a participant in a symposium here (July 11-14) on "The Legacy of Virgil Michel and the Future of the Catholic Church in America." Father Michel, who died 50 years ago, was a Benedictine monk regarded as the founder of the American liturgical movement that, among other things, encouraged an active role for laity in the Catholic Church.

The Church is "set on a direction which I believe was begun to great extent by Virgil Michel and picked up by the Second Vatican Council," said Bishop Lucker.

"It is no longer possible for us to ignore men and women called equally to the ministry of the Church," said the bishop. Nor is it possible to have a "Church that ignores the experience of women in theology."

Bishop Lucker's remarks came in response to a symposium address on the "Vocation and Mission of the Laity" by Delores Leckey, executive director of the U.S. Bishops' Secretariat on the Laity and Family in Washington, D.C.

Mrs. Leckey described the "many faceted process" implemented by the bishops' committee on the laity to listen to the voices of American Catholics in preparation for the synod on the laity held in Rome in 1987.

"Co-discipleship, a biblical term that signaled the elected delegates's belief in the equality" of lay and ordained Christians, was the common point of departure for all the interventions made by the American delegates to the synod, said Mrs. Leckey.