News Briefs

VATICAN ORDERS CRITICAL REVIEW OF "LIBERATION THEOLOGY"

Vatican City (RNS)—On orders from the Vatican, liberation theology is under critical review in the Catholic Church, especially in its Latin American birthplace.

The wedding of a Christian "option for the poor" with Marxist analysis is an unholy alliance, in the view of West German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who oversees doctrinal orthodoxy for the Holy See.

Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Faith, has issued his warnings from a number of forums—in an Italian publication, at a Vatican news conference rare for the head of the doctrinal congregation, and in a personal meeting with Latin American bishops at the end of March in Bogota, Colombia.

He is believed to have the full endorsement of Pope John Paul II, who has been stressing the need for discipline and unity in Church ranks.

At a Vatican news conference on April 13, Cardinal Ratzinger said that a critical re-examination of liberation theology is needed today. He said it was wrong to "use Marxist analysis to interpret not only history and the life of society, but also the very Bible and the Christian message."

The Cardinal reported that he met with the doctrinal committee of the Latin American Conference of Bishops in Bogota. He said the bishops agreed that a new evaluation was needed.

"Marxist analysis is not scientific, is not real and does not serve to promote the society of those countries," he said. He emphasized that he wasn't dismissing "valid elements" in Marxism, only "the dogmatism." Some priests from the West, he said, accept a mix of Marxism and liberation theology out of "a sense of guilt" that they live in affluence compared to the poverty of the Third World.

Cardinal Ratzinger's warnings and the action of the Latin American bishops has triggered alarm in some theological circles that a condemnation of liberation theology is being prepared.

VATICAN ORDERS POPULAR U.S. CATECHISM QUASHED

New York (RNS)—Archbishop Peter L. Gerety of Newark has withdrawn his imprimatur from a best-selling adult catechism on orders from the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Paulist Press, publisher of the book Christ Among Us, announced that it was "immediately halting circulation" of the text, a longtime target of conservative Catholic groups which say it contains numerous doctrinal errors and also weakens Church teaching on sexual morality.

The publisher, in a press release from its Ramsey, N.J., headquarters, said the doctrinal congregation had sent a letter on February 28, 1984, signed by its president, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, to Archbishop Gerety. The letter asked the archbishop to remove his imprimatur and Paulist Press not to consider any reprint in the future.

"Even with substantial corrections," the cardinal said, a new edition, "would not be suitable as a catechetical text."

POPE MAKES SWEEPING CHANGES IN VATICAN GOVERNMENT

Vatican City (RNS)—In an unprecedented reshuffling, Pope John Paul II has changed the face of the central government of the Roman Catholic Church. In sweeping changes in the Roman Curia, he has in one stroke:

The changes were announced on April 9, in two papal letters and twenty-seven nomination and resignation announcements.

The Vatican's Secretary of State, Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, has virtually been made "deputy pontiff" as one clergyman put it.

With a special handwritten letter, the Pope granted Cardinal Casaroli, the Vatican's number one diplomat and former protege of the late Paul VI, a "high and special mandate to represent us in the civil government of the state of Vatican City, and to exercise, in our name and in our stead—while always informing us, especially in cases of particular importance—the powers and responsibilities inherent in our temporal sovereignty over the same state."

John Paul said that, effective immediately, the commission which governs the Vatican city-state, headed by Archbishop Marcinkus, will report on all matters to Cardinal Casaroli and also to a newly appointed president of the city-state government, Italian Cardinal Sebastiano Baggio.

While Cardinal Baggio won the post of president of the Pontifical Commission for the State of Vatican City, he lost his key international post as prefect of the Sacred Congregation for Bishops.

John Paul awarded that powerful post to Cardinal Gantin of Benin. He will be responsible for overseeing the appointment of about seventy per cent of all bishops worldwide and supervise diocesan activities. The only dioceses not within his jurisdiction are those in missionary countries.

Cardinal Gantin will be replaced as president of the Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace by French Cardinal Roger Etchegaray of Marseilles, who has long been a strong advocate of better Jewish-Catholic relations.

John Paul awarded the presidency of the Pontifical Commission for Social Communications, which runs the Vatican Press Office, to Msgr. John Foley, Editor of Philadelphia's diocesan newspaper.

The present structure of the Roman Curia was part of the church reforms initiated by the late Pope Paul VI in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, which ended in 1965.

MILITARY MIGHT TO SECURE PEACE ENDORSED BY POPE

Vatican City (RNS)—Military might that secures peace has won papal endorsement.

"Domestic and international peace can be served by weapons," by helping to "discourage human rights violations, or, in case of need, reestablish order," Pope John Paul II told an audience that included more than 15,000 troops from twenty-four countries, including the United States on April 8.

He added that armed force to dominate other nations is not justified.

VATICAN SAYS THIRD-PARTY SPERM FOR TEST TUBE BABIES IMMORAL

Vatican City (RNS)—An editorial in the Vatican's semi-official newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, said that artificial insemination using sperm other than the husband's was immoral.

The editorial, prompted by reports on the birth of "Zoe," the world's first baby developed from a frozen embryo, condemned all forms of insemination except that exclusively involving the sperm and eggs of a married couple.

It criticized the practice of masturbation to procure sperm and voiced serious concern over test-tube fertilizations that lead to the death of hundreds of embryos. "Having children in marriage is not an absolute right," said the editorial signed by the Rev. Gino Concetti, a Franciscan priest. "What matters most is not that the child is obtained but that it is obtained in a humane manner."

Father Concetti said the Church sympathizes with couples who suffer because they are unable to have children of their own and realizes that sterility can seriously harm marriages. But he reiterated the Church's condemnation of all types of artificial insemination that involve sperm other than that of the husband. "We understand sterile couples' desire to have children but it must be stressed that not everything one desires is right and not even scientific progress can make it so," the theologian said.

Father Concetti expressed concern about the destruction of fertilized eggs. "The destruction of these eggs, as in the case of failure, raises serious and profound questions of a moral kind," the clergyman said. He said the Church cannot condone masturbation, not even when its only purpose is to provide sperm for artificial insemination. "Can the end alone justify the means, namely, masturbation, which is condemned in any case by Catholic morality?" Father Concetti said. He said masturbation, whether purely "autoerotic and selfish," or "for diagnostic or procreative reasons," is unacceptable.

He quoted Pope Pius XII as saying in an address in 1949, "Artificial insemination outside matrimony must be simply and purely condemned as immoral" and that "artificial insemination inside matrimony but produced by the sperm of a third person is equally immoral and as such must be firmly rejected."