c. 1999 Religion News Service
Pope appeals to Christians to remember the poor during Lent
(RNS) Pope John Paul II, opening the penitential season of Lent, called on Christians to make charity toward the poor an essential part of their Lenten regime.”This time is a propitious period to think of the too many `Lazaruses’ who are waiting to collect the crumbs fallen from the table of the rich,”the pope said in his Ash Wednesday (Feb. 17) sermon.”The image that is before us is that of the banquet, symbol of the provident care of the heavenly father for all of humanity. Everyone should be able to participate,”he said.
The Roman Catholic pontiff said these private acts of charity underline the need for a new model of development worldwide that will permit”a more just distribution of goods so that everyone can live with dignity, safeguarding the creation at the same time.” The 78-year-old pope spoke at a Mass in the 6th century Dominican Basilica of Santa Sabina. According to custom, the celebration began with a procession of cardinals and monks from the nearby Benedictine Church of Sant’Anselmo to Santa Sabina.
Lent, which lasts for 40 days, is the period in which Christians prepare with prayers and fasting for Easter, the joyous feast marking the resurrection of Jesus.
The pope will attend a week of spiritual exercises in the Vatican, starting on Sunday (Feb. 21) and will suspend his weekly general audience of Feb. 24, the Vatican said.
The 78-year-old pontiff observed without public comment another landmark of his pontificate. John Paul, elected to lead the Catholic Church on Oct. 16, 1978, today became the 12th longest-serving pope in the history of the church.
His reign has now surpassed that of the 18th century Pope Clement XI, and on April 1, he will move up another notch, outdoing St. Leo III, whose reign began in the 8th century.
British Methodist worship book invokes”our Father and our Mother”God
(RNS) A new Methodist Worship Book for British Methodists published on Ash Wednesday (Feb. 17) offers worshippers the option of invoking”our Father and Mother”God in one of its three services of Holy Communion for ordinary use.
The new book, authorized by last year’s Methodist Conference and which church officials say includes a much richer provision of liturgical texts, also underscores the considerable ecumenical convergence in current worship trends. It replaces the 1975 Methodist Service Book and has more than twice as many pages and a number of new or alternative services.
In addition to offering three services for Holy Communion, the new book also has special Eucharist services for Advent, Christmas and Epiphany, Ash Wednesday or the first Sunday in Lent, Lent and Passiontide, Easter, and Pentecost.
In defending the invocation of God as both mother and father, the Rev. Neil Dixon, secretary of the Methodist Church’s faith and order committee, told a news conference that while God is without gender, human beings were made in the image of God, and so both male and female aspects of humanity help people to understand the nature of God.
The variety of services of Holy Communion is in sharp contrast to the 1975 book, which had only two.
The new book also contains a special funeral service for a child and a special funeral service for a stillborn child, as well as an”office of commendation”which can be used on hearing of someone’s death or on the day of the funeral by those who cannot be present at it.
For the first time, a full range of services is provided for Holy Week, including the washing of feet on Maundy Thursday, the proclamation _ rather than veneration, as in Catholicism _ of the cross on Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil. The compilers of the new book borrowed at ease from other traditions, including the Roman Catholic.
Drafts of the new services were made available for use throughout British Methodism from 1992 onwards, with Methodists encouraged to send in their comments and suggestions.
Before Wednesday’s publication date, over 163,000 copies of the new book had been ordered, which is also being published in a bilingual Welsh/English edition.
Abstinence programs may be causing drop in teen pregnancies
(RNS) Programs promoting teen sexual abstinence may be a significant factor in the decline in adolescent pregnancy, abortion and birth rates, a study has found.”The decline in the overall birthrates among adolescent females during the 1990s is due primarily to teens that have never had sex or are not currently having sex,”the study states.”Abstinence-only programs may be playing an increasing role in bringing about reduced teen sexual activity.” The study by a team of 11 doctors was presented in a report commissioned by the Consortium of State Physicians Resource Councils.
The report stated that the birthrate for unmarried female teens dropped 4.2 percent from 1991 to 1996, while it dropped 11.9 percent for all female teens in that period. During a similar period, the rate of abortions for teens declined 28.2 percent. The rate of teen pregnancies dropped 9.1 percent between 1992 and 1995.
The researchers cited an”explosive growth”during this decade in privately funded abstinence-only programs, including those using pledge cards and those featuring curriculum and speakers.
They cited the use of pledge cards in the True Love Waits abstinence campaign as an example of abstinence programs that have been popular in some church youth groups.”Nearly 16 percent of all female teens and 10 percent of all male teens have signed pledge cards and joined peer support groups through True Love Waits and similar programs,”the report stated.
Researchers said other factors leading to increased teen abstinence include the HIV/AIDS epidemic and an increased cultural acceptance of abstinence.”The evidence points to sexual abstinence, not increased contraceptive use, as the primary reason for the decline in teen pregnancy and birth rates throughout the 1990s,”the report concludes.”It appears possible that programs aimed at producing abstinent behavior have been more successful than programs aimed at increasing safer-sex practices in reducing unintended births to adolescents.”
Bishops urge end to Cuba embargo, more freedom for Cuban Catholics
(RNS) Roman Catholic bishops from across the Americas have ended two days of meetings in Havana on the church’s role in the Western Hemisphere with a meeting with Cuban President Fidel Castro and a call for an end to the U.S. embargo against Cuba.”It has always been the position of the bishops of the United States … to seek the lessening and even the ending of the embargo,”said Archbishop Theodore McCarrick of Newark, N.J.
Thirty-one bishops from North, South and Central America are attending the first meeting of the Latin American Episcopal Conference to be held in Cuba.
It was also the first time U.S. and Canadian prelates attended the meeting and church officials said it could represent the first move to permanently expanding the conference.
Pope John Paul II, in his visit last month to Mexico City, urged greater cooperation among the leaders of the church in North and South America.
The bishops also said they hoped the meeting would advance the freedom of the church in Cuba.”We hope that this will be another good step toward the openness that the Holy Father spoke of,”McCarrick said of John Paul’s visit to Cuba in January 1998.
Archbishop Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, said the group planned to provide the Cuban church with funds to build more sanctuaries and to send more priests and missionaries to the island nation once it gets the approval of the Cuban government, the Associated Press reported Wednesday (Feb. 17).
Charges against top Catholic official in Canada dropped
(RNS) Charges of criminal harassment against Pope John Paul II’s second-highest official in Canada have been dropped by the prosecutor’s office in Ottawa.
Monsignor Vito Rallo, who is the papal envoy to Canada, had been charged Nov. 10th with criminally stalking one of his former employees, 59-year-old cultural attache Josephine Greco.
But the Ottawa prosecutor’s office quietly dropped the charges early this month, citing insufficient evidence against Rallo, who is the second-highest official at Canada’s papal nunciature in Ottawa.
After learning the charges would not be pursued, Greco said she felt like”somebody who has been hit over the head.”Greco is an Italian citizen who was stripped of her Vatican diplomatic status after being fired Sept. 30 from her attache job. The status of her Canadian work permit is now under review.
Ottawa crown prosecutor Andrejs Berzins said Rallo’s prominence did not play a role in the decision to withdraw the charges.
In a separate but related matter, the number one papal envoy in Canada, Archbishop Carlo Curis, was replaced this month as papal nuncio, after announcing earlier he would retire at age 75.
The nuncio’s successor is Archbishop Paolo Romeo, 60, who is currently the apostolic nuncio in Colombia. Romeo is expected to arrive in Ottawa in early March.
Israeli wins Agnelli Foundation Prize
(RNS) The Agnelli Foundation has announced it will award its prestigious prize for promoting dialogue among the world’s cultures to Andre Nathan Chouraqui, an Algerian-born Israeli intellectual, who has worked for reconciliation among Christians, Jews and Muslims.
Marcello Pacini, president of the foundation, called Chouraqui a”pioneer of the dialogue between cultures in what is perhaps the most conflictual area of our times: the Middle East.” Giovanni Agnelli will present the $55,000 prize to Chouraqui, 81, in a ceremony at Turin, Italy, headquarters of the Agnelli family’s Fiat automotive empire.
Previous winners of the biennial award, established in 1988, include the the late British philospher Isaiah Berlin, Indian economist Amartya Sen, and Tunisian historian Mohammed Talbi, who was honored in 1997.
Chouraqui was educated at Catholic schools in Algeria, studied international law at the Sorbonne and fought in the French resistance during World War II. In 1957, he settled in Israel where he served as President David Ben Gurion’s”adviser on the fusion of the communities”and for eight years as deputy mayor of Jerusalem under Teddy Kollek.
A poet and essayist, Chouraqui retained close ties to Paul Claudel, Jacques Maritain, Cardinal Jean Danielou and other leading French Catholic thinkers. He was an official observer at the Second Vatican Council and remains the only scholar to have translated the complete texts of the Old and New Testaments and the Koran, according to foundation officials.
Chouraqui was convinced that the best solution to the Arab-Israeli problem would be establishment of a confederated state of Israel, Palestine and Jordan, and to that end he worked to improve Israel’s relations with Arab leaders.
King Hassan asked Chouraqui to visit Morocco in 1977, making him the first Israeli ever officially invited to an Arab country and opening the way to dialogue with Egypt and other Arab states.
Chouraqui’s books include”Letter to An Arab Friend,”published in 1969, and”Letter to a Christian Friend,”1971.
Pope names new bishop coadjutor for Wichita, Kansas
(RNS) Pope John Paul II has named Monsignor Thomas J. Olmsted, president of the Pontifical Josephinum College in Columbus, Ohio, and a former papal chaplain, to serve as bishop coadjutor of Wichita, Kan., the Vatican said Tuesday (Feb. 16).
Olmsted, 52, and a native of Oketo, Kan., has strong ties both to the American Midwest and to the Vatican.
He attended St. Thomas Seminary in Denver, Colo., and was ordained a priest in 1973 for the diocese of Lincoln, Neb. In 1979, he went to Rome to study for a degree in canon law at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He also worked for the Vatican Secretariat of State and served as an assistant spiritual director at the Pontifical North American College.
Olmsted was named chaplain to the pope in 1984 and a prelate of honor in 1988. In 1993, Olmsted was appointed dean of Josephinum College and in April was named president.
As bishop coadjutor, he will assist the incumbent bishop and automatically succeed to the post of bishop when it becomes vacant.
Quote of the day: Church consultant Leonard Sweet
(RNS)”Sit-and-soak worship spaces create pew potatoes.” Church consultant and futurist Leonard Sweet, writing in the March/April issue of Your Church magazine about his belief that future houses of worship need to move away from the dark woods and hard benches of the past.
DEA END RNS
