News Briefs

Roman Catholic priests send 'joyous welcome' to female bishop

WASHINGTON (RNS) — Clashing with the official church position, a liberal Catholic priests' group has extended a "joyous welcome" to the first woman bishop in the Episcopal Church.

Priests for Equality, which claims an international membership of 3,000 priests, deacons, brothers, and bishops, sent a letter to Bishop Barbara Harris saying her Feb. 11 ordination in Boston gives hope to many Roman Catholics "for equality within our own church."

On several occasions before her installation, Pope John Paul II and other church leaders expressed disappointment over the ordination of women priests and the prospect of women bishops in the worldwide Anglican Communion, which includes the Episcopal Church in the United States. Catholic leaders have described the ordination as a stumbling block to unity between the two faiths.

Coalition asks Notre Dame to discontinue annual boxing match

(RNS) — The National Coalition on Television Violence is asking the University of Notre Dame to discontinue an annual boxing match that is held to raise funds for Holy Cross Missions in Bangladesh.

The anti-violence group, based in Champaign, Ill., said it is "hopeful that Notre Dame will be more sensitive to the moral and psychological issues raised by this sport and set an example for the Olympics."

Notre Dame has been holding the boxing matches on campus since 1923. The coalition had asked for permission to stage a protest against this year's match Feb. 24 but was refused on the ground that only "members of the university community" may stage demonstrations on campus.

The Rev. William Beauchamp, C.S.C., Notre Dame's vice president, has told the coalition that the issue will be reviewed at the end of the school year.

The coalition said it has already helped to persuade Boys Clubs in Illinois and the Illinois Prairie State Games to drop amateur boxing matches. Although regulations on amateur boxing are designed to make it less harmful than professional boxing, the coalition said it objects to the effects on spectators.

Comment — This is a joke. With all the trash on television, they object to an amateur boxing match at a university, that draws maybe a few thousand spectators. Why don't they use their hot air to help rid TV of all the programs that are making America grow soft. There is nothing wrong with amateur boxing, young men are like bucks, sometimes they need to knock each other around a little bit. It's a contest, not violence.

No religious prisoners left in Soviet Union, State Department says

(RNS) — All religious prisoners in the Soviet Union have now been released, according to an announcement made by U.S. State Department officials at a briefing for human rights advocates in Washington.

U.S. Baptist leaders who attended the briefing said the information was confirmed by the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, known as the Helsinki commission, and Kreston College in Kent, England, which monitors religious freedom in communist countries.

Comment — Can we believe it? After all the first hand accounts of what was done... it's not easy to believe this.

Scholars say Jesus did not predict end of the world or his return

SONOMA, CALIF. (RNS) — Jesus never predicted He would return to earth in a second coming, according to a March 4 vote taken by a group of biblical scholars from across the country who met in this northern California town.

The decision by members of the Jesus Seminar contradicts a key tenet of orthodox Christianity—that Christ will return on "clouds of glory" to gather the righteous before the end of the world.

Instead, seminar members voted overwhelmingly that Jesus did not predict the end of the world or that He would return. His description of a second coming, found in the Gospel of Mark (chapter 13: 24-27), actually was composed at least four decades after the crucifixion, with the gospel writer drawing on Old Testament sources in the book of Daniel, the seminar declared.

Members of the seminar, which was organized in 1985 in Berkeley, have spent the last four years critically examining the gospels in an effort to separate what they think Jesus actually said from words that might have been attributed to him later by early Christian writers.

Meeting in Atlanta last October, the same group voted that Jesus never composed the Lord's Prayer, that the prayer contained some of Jesus' ideas but was composed by early Christians.

The discussions on the second coming were even more decisive. More than 75% of the seminar members at the meeting voted that predictions of Christ's return were fabricated by the gospel writer.

Members acknowledged that their findings might shock many Christians. However, one member, Dr. Vernon Robbins, a professor of religion at Emory University, said the group is more interested in informing the public about current biblical scholarship and encouraging people to read the Bible with fresh eyes.

His view was echoed by another member, Dr. Arthur Dewey, a professor at Xavier University, a Roman Catholic institution in Cincinnati. Dr. Dewey said the seminar hopes to prod people "to think about Jesus and re-imagine Him, if they have the courage to do that."

Comment — It just goes on...

Vatican issues new oath to be required of theology teachers

(RNS) — The Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has issued a revised profession of faith and a companion oath of fidelity to the church's teaching authority to be taken by teachers of Catholic theology and church leaders.

The two documents were published, in Latin, in the Feb. 25 edition of L'Osservatore Romano, the semi-official newspaper of the Vatican. Although the measure was to take effect March 1 and applies to, among others, all those newly appointed to teaching posts, the news of the measure has spread slowly.

"The oath strikes me at first reading as heavily disciplinary," the Rev. John Boyle said. Translating roughly from the newspaper text, he said the oath demanded fidelity to the "whole deposit of faith" and avoidance of any doctrines contrary to official church teaching. "It occurred to me that this is an anti-dissent oath. It's an obedience oath as much as anything else."

The new profession of faith retains the traditional Nicene Creed, but adds three sentences that constitute a revision of the 1967 profession of faith and apparently expand the types of teachings to be viewed as official. Boyle is the president of the Catholic Theological Society of America.

Comment — If Paul VI hadn't thrown out the oath against Modernism composed under the reign of Pope St. Pius X this all wouldn't have been necessary. What's happening now is that the cat has been let out of the bag, and these modernists are out of control.

Vatican orders dissident nuns to leave convent in New Jersey

(RNS) — A Vatican official has ordered the five women involved in a protest at a Carmelite convent in Morris Township, N.J., to leave the premises where they have barricaded themselves since last October.

But a representative of the protesters indicated that they would not obey the directive from Cardinal Jerome Hamer, head of the Vatican Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes.

The protesters object to the leadership of Mother Teresa Hewitt, complaining that the prioress had introduced innovations like television and brighter lights in the chapel after she was appointed by Paterson Bishop Frank J. Rodimer in August, 1987. But the seven other nuns in the convent say the dissidents were given special privileges by the former prioress, who is now living in France, and had separated themselves from the rest of the community after Mother Teresa was appointed.

Both the bishop and the dissidents had agreed to accept mediation by Cardinal Hamer's Vatican congregation. On March 3, the Paterson Diocese announced that Bishop Rodimer had received a letter from Cardinal Hamer reaffirming "confidence in the present government of the monastery" and saying that "despite the difficult situation created by some of the religious the fundamental principles of religious life were firmly retained with prudence and charity."

The cardinal's letter told Sisters Teresita Romano and Maria Ercalano to transfer to other Carmelite monasteries and noted that the temporary vows of two other protesters, Lynn Williams and Nicole Prescott, had expired. They were ordered to leave the monastery immediately. A fifth protester, 72-year-old Sister Philomena, was told she could remain if she professed obedience to the prioress.

Bishop Rodimer delivered the Vatican announcement to the convent in person March 3, sliding it under the door. But Betty Slutton, a volunteer at the monastery who has been serving as a spokesperson for the protesters said, "They are not going anywhere. They don't believe the decision. The papal seal was not on it."

Tim Manning, communications director of the Paterson Diocese, told RNS March 6 that "the diocese continues to await a response from the nuns themselves." He said the diocese would wait "a reasonable length of time," which he described as "several days," before deciding on whether to take any action against the nuns if they remained recalcitrant.

Federal court says racketeering law applies to abortion protests

(RNS) — Militant abortion protesters have been put on notice by a federal appeals court that a law designed to fight organized crime can be used against them.

In a March 2 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia said that provisions of the Federal Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as the RICO law, may be used in cases of civil disobedience.

The court upheld a 1987 ruling of a lower court that 26 abortion protesters who demonstrated at the Northeast Women's Center, Inc. in Philadelphia from 1984 to 1986 were liable for $43,000 in damages and $65,000 in lawyer's fees under the law. The ruling was based on charges that the demonstrators had threatened employees and patients at the abortion clinic.

Comment — Strange world we live in, now the ones trying to prevent murder are punished, while those guilty of killing innocent human beings are free to continue their crime. There is no difference between killing a child days before he's born, or days after, but the Supreme Court would like us to think so.

Küng says papal stand on contraception divides church

ROME (NC) — Pope John Paul II is polarizing Catholics by committing the church to the "dubious" teaching that use of artificial contraceptives is immoral, said Father Hans Küng, a theologian who has his permission to teach Catholic theology removed by the Vatican in 1979.

"At this point, the grave problem is the damage produced by the authority in Rome in committing itself to a dubious thing," he said in an  interview in the Feb. 7 Rome daily, La Republica.

The interview was conducted in Tubingen.

"The office of the pope exists to promote the unity of the church. Today, de facto, this unity is affected by the authority in Rome. There is no unity. Polarization is provoked," said Father Küng.

"I am convinced that the great majority of Catholic moral theology professors think that it is not possible to base the prohibition against contraception on Scripture and tradition," he said.

Father Küng was one of the 163 theologians who signed a declaration in January which criticized the pope for his birth control teachings. The declaration also criticized recent papal namings of bishops and said theologians who agree with Rome are granted permission to teach Catholic theology at public universities.

Father Küng said his criticisms do not stem from a resentment of papal authority. "In all my books I have declared myself for a pastoral primacy of the pope. I believe that I have done more for the credibility of the papacy in the ecumenical world than any other theologian," he said.

Comment — He's also done more for the loss of respect toward Catholic theologians than any other. The man is simply a Protestant.

Vatican sharply rebukes critics of church's birth control stand

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — The Vatican has sharply rebuked theologians who in recent weeks have criticized Pope John Paul II's stance on artificial birth control.

A front-page editorial last week in the Vatican daily, L'Osservatore Romano, warned that the Roman Catholic Church's position on contraception is not a matter for free discussion among theologians.

The article mentioned a "well-known" moral theologian and "several other theologians." They are assumed to be the noted German thinker, the Rev. Bernard Haering, who in a recent article criticized the "intolerance" on birth control of a theologian close to the pope; and the 163 German, Austrian, Dutch and Swiss theologians who a few weeks ago issued a document stating that papal attitudes on contraception are not based either on the Scripture or on Christian tradition.

The editorial, signed with the three asterisks that denote papal approval, said that if moral theologians are to be faithful to their profession they ought not to allow themselves to sow doubt in the consciences of married couples.

This happens, said the article, "when doubts are fed and confusion created by public challenges to constantly repeated church teachings."

Observers said that such phrases appear to be a direct response to Father Haering's article in a northern Italian periodical, Il Regno. In that article, the elderly theologian urged the pontiff to poll the world's bishops on their doctrinal views on birth control. The editorial stressed that "the church's teachings can find adequate understanding and full acceptance in faith alone."

Comment — This so-called theologian wants to poll the bishops of the world? Truth does not depend on numbers, any Catholic ought to know that, yet the "theologians" don't.

Vatican to study ban on women acolytes

VATICAN CITY (NC) — A Vatican-named commission is "studying the possibility of reconsidering" the Church's ban on installing women as acolytes and lectors, said Archbishop Jan Schotte, general secretary of the Synod of Bishops and a commission member.

But this does not mean that current Church rules will be changed, he said.

"Nothing is excluded," but "nothing has been decided," he added. The study commission is only empowered to present information to Pope John Paul II for his use, he added.

Although Church rules bar women from being formally initiated as lectors and acolytes, as a practice many women do the readings at Mass and in some places women or girls have served at the altar.

Comment — Many of you probably have already read or heard that altar girls were even being used at the Vatican. Many times the Vatican is its own worst enemy.