c. 2000 Religion News Service
Survey Finds Increased Lay Participation in Running Parishes
(RNS) A new study of Roman Catholic parish life has found that the use of staff teams to run a congregation are increasingly collaborative rather than top-down and lay participation in such efforts is growing.
Pastors have embraced the change, with 91 percent reporting “they are satisfied with their overall parish ministry,” concluded the report by the National Catholic Parish Survey, which surveyed 704 parishes randomly selected by American Church Lists in Arlington, Texas.
The report also found that more lay ministers than priests serve in parishes today, noting the average parish has two lay ministers and 1.8 priests. The number of lay ministers serving the average parish has grown by 54 percent, said the report, though the number of priests serving the average parish has dropped 28 percent.
Fifty-three percent of parishes today are staffed by only one priest.
The increase in lay participation could be due to a diminishing number of Catholic priests, suggested Project Director Jim Castelli. He said 19 percent of the priests serving parishes today are retired or hold another job in addition to their parish duties.
“There is no way that parishes can serve their members even in the near future, without the continued, even accelerated growth of lay ministry,” said Castelli.
The study also noted major demographic shifts within the Catholic Church in the United States, with one in eight parishes _ 12 percent _ reporting dramatic demographic shifts within the past five years. Nationwide, 19 percent of Catholics are non-white, and among urban parishioners in the West that percentage increases to 40.
“This study has turned up things we didn’t know before,” said the Rev. Eugene Hemrick, the survey’s associate director. “And it is the first to document that the change in parish staffing that everyone talks about happening in the future is already here. The parish as we once knew it has turned to a new page in its history.”
Vatican Relents: Romero to be Named Among 20th Century Martyrs
(RNS) – Reacting to a barrage of criticism, the Vatican relented Friday and said Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador will be among those remembered in a Jubilee religious service Sunday (May 7) commemorating 20th century Christian martyrs.
“His name is in one of the prayers that will be pronounced by John Paul II,” chief Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls told reporters.
Navarro-Valls also confirmed Romero will be included in a list of 20th century “witnesses to the faith,” which the Vatican is expected to publish in August. The list, which is still being compiled, contained 12,690 names as of March 30.
The Vatican apparently acted to defuse the controversy threatening to cloud an event that the pope has called central to celebrations marking the start of the third millennium of Christianity.
In announcing plans for Sunday’s Ecumenical Commemoration of Witnesses to the Faith in the 20th Century, Vatican officials said on April 28 that the prelate assassinated at the altar in 1980 would not be cited by name.
The evening prayer service, which will begin in Rome’s ancient Colosseum, will commemorate Christians on every continent who stood fast in faith under communist, Nazi and other fascist regimes and withstood the persecution of Catholics and racial and tribal conflicts.
During the service, the testimony of 16 witnesses representing eight geographical and ideological categories of martyrdom will be read, but Romero and other defenders of human rights killed in Central America in the 1980s and 1990s were not included.
An editorial in the May issue of Jesus, a magazine published by the Italian branch of the Society of St. Paul for the Apostolate of Communications, criticized those who questioned Romero’s faith “only because he set out on new and unexplored roads in theological reflection and pastoral action.”
“He was, in short, too close to those poor who, when asking for justice, appear to smell of communism,” the magazine said.
Romero was shot to death March 24, 1980, as he celebrated a funeral Mass in a hospital chapel. The accused death squad, led by Capt. Alvaro Saravia, was never imprisoned, and its members later were amnestied.
The archbishop’s many admirers include John Paul, who prayed at his tomb in the crypt of the San Salvador cathedral on both his visits to El Salvador in 1983 and 1996.
Methodist Bishop Predicts Multiracial Merged Denomination
(RNS) The newly elected president of the Council of Bishops for the United Methodist Church said Friday (May 5) he forsees a day when black and white Methodist churches will merge into one body.
The Rev. William B. Oden, the church’s bishop in the Dallas area, said a service of racial reconciliation held Thursday during the church’s General Conference meeting signaled a new era in race relations.
Over the past 200 years, the Methodist church founded by John Wesley has split into separate predominantly black and predominantly white denominations. Thursday night’s service was the first time the United Methodist Church apologized for the institutionalized racism that drove black Methodists into the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and the Christian Methdodist Episcopal Church.
Oden said he predicts that current discussions of a possible merger will eventually lead to a biracial church that incorporates all the followers of John Wesley’s Methodism. Talk of such a proposed merger has circulated in church circles for several years, but many consider it unlikely.
“Do I forsee a day when we will see a body that is fully inclusive, fully Wesleyan?” Oden said. “Yes, I envision such a day and long for such a day, but I do not have a sense of when that will happen.”
Oden said the Councils of Bishops from the United Methodist Church and the three black denominations will continue to meet together every other year.
The four Wesleyan churches have cooperated in publishing, education and drug prevention programs and sit on a Commission on Pan-Methodist Cooperation. A proposal at this year’s General Conference meeting would merge that commission with another United Methodist Commission on Union.
House Majority Whip Proposes `Counterattack’ to Promote Religion
(RNS) House Majority Whip Tom DeLay proposed “a very aggressive counterattack” against those who he believes have banned religion from public places if Republicans win the White House and a greater majority on Capitol Hill in November.
In a speech Thursday (May 4), DeLay, R-Texas, suggested that Congress should add two anti-religious discrimination measures to spending bills, The Washington Post reported.
One would permit religious institutions and groups to get federal funds. He said that would make it easier for Catholic schools to receive government funds without excessive oversight from federal officials or for parents to use tax credits to pay for their children’s private religious education.
The other measure would forbid states and schools receiving public money from banning private voluntary prayer and religious activities.
“What we need is simply a return to the healthy appreciation for religion that has always sustained the nation,” said DeLay. “Government can’t enforce religious teachings or doctrines of specific faiths. But at the same time, federal power must not be distorted into a wedge that splits the vast majority of Americans from the sacred ideals that guide their lives.”
The Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of the Washington-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said he thinks DeLay’s speech shows his “unparalleled ignorance” of the law.
“His idea for additional government support for religion is clearly unconstitutional,” Lynn told Religion News Service. “Vouchers have failed almost every court test. And no one is trying to prohibit private voluntary prayer.”
Three African-American Pentecostal Church Groups to Reunite
(RNS) Three predominantly African-American Pentecostal church groups will reunite in a “Service of Concordat” in Greensboro, N.C., on May 8.
The United Holy Church of America announced that it will be rejoined by the Original United Holy Church and the Southern District Holiness Churches.
The United Holy Church was created in 1886 in Method, N.C., and is one of the nation’s oldest Pentecostal denominations.
The Original United Holy Church was founded in 1980 by the late Bishop James Forbes Sr., father of the Rev. James Forbes, prominent pastor of New York City’s Riverside Church. It broke off from the United Holy Church over doctrinal issues.
Southern District Holiness Churches, composed of former members of the United Holy Church of America from the southern part of the United States, were created in 1977 in Goldsboro, N.C.
Presiding Bishop Odell McCullom of Columbus, Ohio, leader of the United Holy Church of America said of the ceremony: “This is the greatest single event in the entire recorded history of the United Holy Church of America.”
Sherry DuPree, president of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, said the reunification is a good sign for African-American Pentecostalism.
“It is bringing them back together and showing unity,” she said of the churches.
Presiding Bishop J. Delano Ellis II of the Cleveland-based United Pentecostal Churches of Christ will preside at the ceremonies reuniting the church bodies.
Methodist Leaders Denounce U.S. Raid on Vieques
(RNS) United Methodist church leaders have criticized the federal raid Thursday (May 4) on Vieques island in which more than 200 protesters _ including a Methodist bishop and several nuns _ were taken into custody by hundreds of armed federal agents.
“We are disappointed that the U.S. government chose this course of action rather than continuing negotiations (with demonstrators), and we stand in solidarity with the people arrested and the citizens of Vieques,” said Bishop Charlene Kammerer of Charlotte, N.C.
The United Methodist Church reported that Bishop Juan Vera Mendez, of the Methodist Church of Puerto Rico, was among the demonstrators arrested in the pre-dawn raid at a U.S. military bombing range on the Puerto Rican island, anticipated since Monday (May 1) when three U.S. warships arrived in the area. Vera Mendez was among some 300 people who had camped at the Navy compound and refused to move in protest of the U.S. military’s bombing exercises in the area.
The campaign to end the 60-year practice of military training on the island intensified last spring when an errant bomb released during a U.S. Navy training mission killed a civilian security guard and injured four others.
The incident prompted some opponents of the U.S. military’s presence to set up camps blocking access to the bombing range, but a January agreement between Washington and Puerto Rican Gov. Pedro J. Rossello allowed the U.S. Navy to resume limited bombing practice with dummy bombs until a referendum can be held.
Victor Ortiz, a colleague of the arrested bishop and a layman from the Methodist Church of Puerto Rico, said Vera Mendez was freed several hours after he was arrested.
Though Ortiz said United Methodist leaders were arranging legal assistance for Vera Mendez and other protesters, Attorney General Janet Reno has announced that protesters will not face charges if they did not assault federal officers during the raid and agree not to return to Vieques.
“We’re trying to make sure that people understand that we intend to enforce the laws but that we want to do so in a fair and measured way,” she said.
Former Seminary President Resigning Pastorate Amid Charges
(RNS) A former president of a European seminary plans to resign from the pastorate of a Florida church after facing allegations that he misappropriated about $184,000 in church donations to the seminary.
During the April 30 worship service at Deermeadows Baptist Church in Jacksonville, a church administrator announced that Altus Newell had offered his resignation and that deacons were “working with him on closure.”
Doran McCarty, interim church administrator, did not state a reason for Newell’s resignation but church leaders say the man who pastored the church for nearly 10 years was ordered to resign after acknowledging he misled the church about the use of money meant for the International Baptist Theological Seminary in Prague, the Czech Republic. He also admitted to falsifying receipts to cover up his actions.
Newell told Associated Baptist Press his resignation is mostly due to health reasons. He told the independent news service that questions concerning the contributions are “in the process of being resolved.”
Church officials said Newell, who was the seminary’s president in mid-1980s, insisted that false documentation of the contributions was necessary to protect missionaries who received the money from being persecuted.
Going Bald to Fill the Pews
(RNS) Nothing seemed unusual about the service Sunday (April 30) at Sunne Lutheran Church in Wilton, N.D.
Nothing that is until attendance was tallied at the end of the service.
That’s when a congregation member gave the Rev. Paul Schauer a haircut in front of the entire congregation.
“I’m one of those guys who will try weird things to increase worship attendance,”said Schauer, who had promised parishioners in March he would cut his hair if attendance averaged 180 people at each Sunday service held in April. At the service held Sunday (April 30), 189 people attended, the Associated Press reported.
Schauer said he issued the challenge because he wanted to attract at least half of the church membership. Usually about 110 people attend Sunday services at Sunne Lutheran, he said.
Schauer said he was inspired by a similar challenge issued by a local junior high basketball coach to his team. The coach, Perry Smith, was an usher at Sunday’s service.
Bad weather put a damper on the first service held in April, which drew just 102 people. But soon attendance picked up, and attendance at the next three services jumped to 210, 240 and 199.
Though his decision “got the whole town talking,” Schauer said there are limits to what he would do.
“Someone asked if we averaged 200 if I would get my ear pierced,” said Schauer. “I told them no.”
Quote of the Day: Drug Counselors Association Spokesman Bill McColl
(RNS) “We’ve worked so long and hard to combat the stigma that substance abuse and delinquency and mental health are a symptom of a breakdown of morality, and to convince people they are an illness. This would roll us back 60 years, right back to when people thought you were an alcoholic merely because you didn’t accept Jesus as your personal Savior.”
Bill McColl, spokesman for the National Association of Drug and Alcohol Counselors, who believes Texas Gov. George W. Bush has placed too much emphasis on the idea that faith alone can heal addiction through new laws concerning faith-based drug treatment programs. He was quoted in the Friday (May 5) edition of The Washington Post.
DEA END RNS
