c. 2000 Religion News Service
Study Finds Latino Catholics Are `Segregated’ Within the Church
(RNS) A new study by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops found that Latino Catholics are twice as likely to worship in “separate and unequal settings” as their non-Latino brethren.
According to the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press, the study also found that Latino Catholics still hold relatively few leadership positions within the church, even in dioceses where Latino believers are the majority.
The study, “Hispanic Ministry at the Turn of the New Millennium,” is scheduled to be released March 15. The problems of integration are especially seen in large states with large immigrant populations, such as New York and Texas, but conditions are better in Southern California, where Latinos comprise 62 percent of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the nation’s largest.
According to the study, Latinos comprise about a third of the country’s 62 million Catholics. But those numbers are not reflected in Catholic seminaries, where fewer nuns and priests are studying Spanish or Latino culture and only 511 Latinos were enrolled last year.
Ronaldo M. Cruz, executive director of the bishops’ Secretariat for Hispanic Affairs, told the Los Angeles Times the figures highlight areas where the church needs to become more inclusive.
“This is a long-term process,” Cruz said. “The hope of the bishops is that what happens gradually is that Latinos will be fully integrated into the church. This is not the end of the story. It can’t be.”
Polish Archbishop Warns of New Rise of European Fascism
(RNS) One of Poland’s leading voices for interreligious dialogue warned of a growing class of “frustrated” Europeans who are looking for simple answers to their problems and often find them in the far-right ideology of a new breed of European fascism.
Speaking to the American Jewish Committee in Washington on Tuesday (Feb. 29), the Rev. Jozef Zycinski, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Lublin, said the church and Polish Jews must guard against a rising wave of anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant sentiment.
Zycinski’s comments came a day after Joerg Haider, the leader of Austria’s Freedom Party, stepped down as chairman after a new coalition government that included Haider’s party was roundly condemned by the United States, Israel and much of Europe. Zycinski also criticized the French National Front, led by Jean-Marie Le Pen, the elder statesman of the European right wing.
“There has been a genesis of a new group of frustrated people throughout Europe,” Zycinski said. “They look for black and white explanations. The simpler, the better.”
Zycinski, who is also the grand chancellor of the Catholic University at Lublin and a close associate of Pope John Paul II, has worked hard to forge an alliance with Poland’s Jewish community. Zycinski recently railed against two Polish professors who said Auschwitz, the infamous Nazi concentration camp, was nothing more than a labor camp and that Jews were not routinely executed there.
Zycinski said the growth of fascist ideology embraced by people like Haider and Le Pen would not derail the delicate peace between Polish Catholics and Jews, but said both groups must be vigilant against its growth.
“There is a group of pseudo-intellectuals who enjoy simpler visions of reality, so when Le Pen and Haider offer simpler solutions, they are embraced,” he said. “But the critique of (these parties) has been so strong that it has exposed the extreme attitude of the right.”
Resolution Calls for Condemnation of Bob Jones University
(RNS) Insisting lawmakers have an obligation to condemn the school, Democrats introduced a resolution Tuesday (Feb. 29) to denounce Bob Jones University, the South Carolina institution whose allegedly racist and anti-Catholic views were thrust into the spotlight by a visit from Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush.
“George W. Bush’s stop at Bob Jones University has turned over a rock under which has lived all sorts of bigoted practices,” said Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.
The school has drawn criticism for its ban on interracial dating and its policy regarding Catholicism. On its Web site, the university writes its ban on interracial dating began nearly 50 years ago, a time when “Christians nationwide understood that interracial marriage was best avoided.”
The university also states, “If there are those who wish to charge us with being anti-Catholic, we plead guilty. But we are not Catholic-haters. … All religion, including Catholicism, which teaches that salvation is by religious works or church dogma is false.”
While appearing in Cleveland last week at a Catholic family center, Bush apologized for not speaking out against the university’s policy on Catholics when he appeared there during his campaign for the South Carolina primary.
“My regret is that I didn’t speak out against anti-Catholic bias when I had the opportunity to do so,” said Bush on Tuesday (Feb. 29). “I had the mike.”
Democrats said Bush’s apology did not go far enough, pointing out he did not apologize for his silence about the university’s policy on interracial dating.
But Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., refused to consider the Democrats’ resolution, which was introduced in both the House and Senate.
“We’re not going to vote on it,” he said. “We’re not going to get into the primaries. We’re not going to play games with the presidential primaries in the United States Senate.”
Several Republican legislators are affiliated with the school. Rep. Asa Hutchinson, R-Ark., and his brother, Sen. Tim Hutchinson, R-Ark., are alumni of Bob Jones University. Last year the school gave honorary degrees to Asa Hutchinson, Rep. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sen. John Ashcroft, R-Mo.
Republicans are still grappling with charges of an anti-Catholic bias as they seek a resolution to the controversy generated by the appointment of a Protestant minister as chaplain of the House of Representatives, a position that has never been held by a Catholic.
After Pilgrimage to Sinai, Pope Looks Forward to Holy Land
(RNS) Newly returned from a pilgrimage to Mount Sinai, Pope John Paul II said Wednesday (March 1) he now looks forward to a visit later this month to another “holy mountain” where Jesus completed the laws handed down to Moses.
“With great joy I was able to go in pilgrimage last week to Egypt in the footsteps of Moses,” the pope told 23,500 Holy Year pilgrims attending his weekly general audience. “The high point of this extraordinary experience was the stop at the foot of Mount Sinai, the holy mountain.
“Mount Sinai recalls to my mind today another mountain to which, God willing, I will have the joy of going at the end of this month, the Mount of the Beatitudes in Galilee,” the Roman Catholic pontiff said.
John Paul is scheduled to travel to biblical sites in Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories March 20-26 on the second stage of a spiritual pilgrimage marking the start of the third millennium of Christianity.
The 79-year-old pontiff will hold a service for young people on the Mount of Beatitudes overlooking the Sea of Galilee where the New Testament says Jesus preached to his disciples of the blessings of those who look forward to salvation.
The pope said the Sermon on the Mount gave new meaning to the Ten Commandments, which Moses received from God on Mount Sinai.
“The Beatitudes constitute the evangelical completion of the laws of Sinai,” he said. “The alliance stipulated earlier with the Hebrew people finds its perfection in the new and eternal alliance sanctified in the blood of Christ. Christ is the new law, and in him salvation is offered to all peoples.”
Church of England to Study BBC Religious Programming
(RNS) An independent body to monitor the quantity and quality of religious programming on radio and television will be set up by the Church of England in cooperation with other churches and interested parties, the church’s General Synod decided Tuesday (Feb. 29).
The synod unanimously adopted a motion critical of the reduction and rescheduling to unpopular times of some BBC religious programs and called on the BBC to maintain and develop high-quality religious programs designed for a general audience, including young people, to be broadcast at peak viewing hours.
The resolution was put forward by broadcaster Nigel Holmes, who told the synod that, while the total output of both BBC television channels had gone up by a half over the past 10 years, religious output was down by a third.
In adopting the resolution, the synod also adopted an amendment expressing gratitude for the “coherent, intelligent, entertaining and engaging” religious programs that had been produced while regretting the reduction and rescheduling of certain religious broadcasts by the BBC.
One reason why religious broadcasting had not done so well in recent years, said Jayne Ozanne, formerly a member of the BBC’s senior management team and now a member of the Archbishop’s (of Canterbury) Council, is that all of the BBC’s planning, debates, reviews and research focused on “genres” _ groups of programs that had the same style, such as drama, entertainment, sport, news or music. But religious broadcasting was not classed as a genre.
“There is therefore very little focus at a central level on religion as a broadcasting genre, no central objectives are set for it, and therefore there is no end-of-year measure and thus no central accountability,” she said.
“Until this changes, there will, I predict, be little noticeable change to religious broadcasting within the BBC,”she said.
Quote of the day: Phil Roberts, Southern Baptist Convention official
(RNS) “If we were genuinely anti-Semitic, you know what we would do? We wouldn’t share the gospel, and we wouldn’t share our concern with the Lord in prayer for Jewish friends and neighbors and others of other religions.”
Phil Roberts, vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board, defending the denomination’s efforts to convert Jews and people of other faiths, in a speech in Denver in mid-February as reported by Baptist Press.
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