c. 2003 Religion News Service

Lay Catholics Call for New Hampshire Bishops’ Resignation

(RNS) A Catholic lay reform group in New Hampshire has called for the resignation of the state’s two Catholic bishops because of their mishandling of sexually abusive priests.

The New Hampshire chapter of Voice of the Faithful on Sunday (April 6) called on Bishops John McCormack and Francis Christian to resign after a “pervasive pattern of behavior to conceal and cover up their evil actions.”

“Both (bishops) observed a general disregard for the testimony of sexual abuse victims and an unwillingness to remove predatory priests from contact with children,” said Jeffrey Blanchard, chairman of the group’s steering committee.

Voice of the Faithful is a national grass-roots movement founded a year ago as the sexual abuse crisis erupted in Boston. Its national leaders have been careful not to call for bishops’ resignations out of fear that it could damage the group’s fragile relationships with the hierarchy.

McCormack has come under fire for his service as a top deputy to Cardinal Bernard Law in Boston before his appointment to New Hampshire in 1998. Christian has served as auxiliary bishop in Manchester since 1996.

Last December, McCormack signed an agreement with state prosecutors that avoided criminal charges but acknowledged “failures in our system that contributed to the endangerment of children.” In March, McCormack said past efforts to deal with the problem were “inadequate and ineffective.”

The New Hampshire chapter of Voice of the Faithful says the state’s 325,000 Catholics no longer have faith in their bishops and have asked the bishops not to preside at confirmations and other rites. The group’s 600 members said the diocese is in a “state of spiritual distress” and suffers from a “crisis of religious and moral leadership.”

It is the second time lay Catholics have called for the bishops’ exits. On March 31, New Hampshire Catholics for Moral Leadership launched a petition drive to force the resignations.

At the time, the diocesan chancellor, the Rev. Edward Arsenault, told the Associated Press that a lay revolt “neither serves the people nor does it constructively contribute to healing in the church in New Hampshire.”

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Reports Growth

(RNS) The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has announced its total membership had grown to more than 11.7 million people by the end of 2002.

The First Presidency of the Salt Lake City-based religious group announced Saturday (April 5) that the total membership is 11,721,548. That’s a 2.9 percent increase over the 2001 worldwide membership of 11,394,522.

Latter-day Saints reported that 283,138 converts were baptized in 2002.

The religious group has 61,638 full-time missionaries and 114 temples in operation.

The statistics were announced on the same weekend as the Latter-day Saints’ Annual General Conference. On Sunday, Gordon B. Hinckley, president of the LDS church, addressed matters of war and peace.

He said members of his church “long for peace” but also believe in defending liberty when it is in jeopardy.

“I believe that God will not hold men and women in uniform responsible as agents of their government in carrying forward that which they are legally obligated to do,” he said. “It may even be that he will hold us responsible if we try to impede or hedge up the way of those who are involved in a contest with forces of evil and repression.”

_ Adelle M. Banks

Canadian Churches Modify Ritual to Cope With SARS Outbreak

TORONTO (RNS) Canadian churches whose rites include physical contact, such as Holy Communion and shaking hands, are modifying their rituals in light of the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS.

The disease has killed nine people to date in Canada. In addition, there have been 179 probable and suspected cases in Ontario and 217 nationally.

A total of 23 probable cases of SARS in Ontario have been discharged from the hospital and will remain in isolation at home for seven to 10 days, said Dr. Colin D’Cunha, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health.

Toronto’s Roman Catholic archdiocese has issued a letter to priests saying that while attending Mass “is not a risk,” they can, if they wish, omit both the common cup of wine from the eucharist liturgy as well as the practice of shaking hands in the exchange of peace.

Priests are reminded to wash their hands, cover their mouths when they cough or sneeze, and clean taps and doorknobs regularly.

At Savior of the World Church in Mississauga, Ontario, Father John Lung is wearing a surgical mask to hear Confessions and while distributing Communion, reports the Catholic Register. He has also suspended the sharing of the wine in his parish.

At the Toronto archdiocese’s own chapel, a note was posted asking people who normally receive Communion on the tongue to receive it in their hand for the time being.

The Very Rev. Douglas Stoute, dean of Toronto’s St. James’ Anglican Cathedral, has decided that for now only eucharistic bread will be given to worshippers by priests during Communion. Those who want Communion wine will have to go to a side chapel.

The Rev. Simon Chin, rector of Vancouver’s St. Matthias & St. Luke Anglican Church, was slated to tell his largely Chinese-Canadian congregation this Sunday to dip their bread into the wine _ a practice known as intinction _ rather than sip from the common cup.

At some Catholic churches, parishioners are being told at the start of services that a bow or wave is an appropriate substitute for the Kiss of Peace _ the greeting worshippers exchange during the Mass, which, in any event, has changed over the centuries into a handshake.

David Gould, a cardiologist from Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, who did a study for the national Anglican Church two years ago on the risks of disease transmission in church, was quoted as telling the Globe and Mail that the likelihood of getting SARS during a eucharist service is virtually nonexistent.

Protestant ministers across the country report that it’s all right if worshippers smile, wave or bow slightly, instead of shake their hands, as they file past following services.

More poignantly, some hospital chaplains say the intimacy of their work has been diminished in light of the SARS scare because they must wear gowns, masks and gloves, and are unable to touch patients.

_ Ron Csillag

Atheist Group Wants Mother Teresa Off Bus Passes

(RNS) The Freedom From Religion Foundation has asked the city bus system in Madison, Wis., to stop using an image of Mother Teresa on bus passes.

The group of atheists and agnostics said that members of the public complained after seeing an image of the well-known nun on bus tickets for the month of April. Mother Teresa died in 1997 and is scheduled to be beatified by the Vatican this fall.

Anne Nicol Gaylor, president of the foundation, said Mother Teresa knew the depths of poverty caused by overpopulation yet “campaigned throughout her life against contraception, sterilization and abortion for anyone, promoting Roman Catholic dogma.”

“Women who ride the publicly owned Madison Metro bus service should not have to spend a month looking at her,” she said. “Religious figures do not belong on monthly passes of publicly owned transportation facilities,” Gaylor said.

Julie Maryott-Walsh, a spokeswoman for the bus system, said there are no plans to remove the Mother Teresa bus passes. Other figures in the yearlong series include Martin Luther King Jr., Eleanor Roosevelt and Henry Ford.

Maryott-Walsh said the Calcutta nun was chosen for her service to the poor and as a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, not for her Catholic faith.

“Some people may view her as a religious figure,” she said. “We did not.”

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Pope Urges Swift End to Fighting in Iraq, Aid to Iraqis

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope John Paul II, who worked unsuccessfully to avert war in Iraq, has urged a swift end to the conflict now under way and “a new era of pardon, love and peace.”

The 82-year-old Roman Catholic pontiff made the appeal Sunday (April 6), addressing thousands of pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square for the noon Angelus prayer. Meeting two days earlier with French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, he underlined “the necessity to abbreviate the suffering” of the Iraqi people.

John Paul linked his peace appeal to the 40th anniversary of the Encyclical “Pacem in Terris,” which Pope John XXIII issued on April 11, 1963, at the height of the Cold War.

Describing the encyclical as having an “extraordinary topicality,” he quoted his predecessor’s assertion that building peace is “a permanent obligation” and said, “The reality of these days demonstrates it in a dramatic way.”

“My thoughts go, in particular, to Iraq and to so many involved in the war that rages there,” the pope said. “I think in a special way of the defenseless civilian population that in various cities is being subjected to a hard trial.”

John Paul said he prayed that “this conflict finishes quickly to open the way to a new era of pardon, love and peace.”

The pope’s meeting Friday (April 4) with the French foreign minister is the latest in a series of consultations with world leaders that began in February.

Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said John Paul spoke to de Villepin about the Iraq war “and the necessity to abbreviate the suffering of that civilian population.”

The pope agreed with France’s efforts to give the United Nations a major role in post-war aid and reconstruction, expressing “the wish that the international community might aid the Iraqis and be the craftsman of reconstruction.”

Receiving an ecumenical delegation from San Francisco on Monday (April 7), he said he prayed that “at a time of conflict and grave unrest in the world,” its witness to the gospel message of “reconciliation, solidarity and love will be a sign of hope and a promise of the unity of a humanity reborn and renewed.”

Catholic Archbishop William Levada, Episcopal Bishop William Swing and Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Anthony also are meeting the archbishop of Canterbury and the patriarch of Constantinople and visiting pilgrimage sites on a trip across Europe.

_ Peggy Polk

Qatar to Get First New Church Since Seventh Century

LONDON (RNS) For the first time since the seventh century, a church is to be constructed in the predominantly Muslim Gulf emirate of Qatar.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams blessed a cross-shaped stone for the new building at a service for Qatar’s Anglican community Sunday (April 6) conducted by the Bishop of Cyprus and the Gulf.

Williams was in Qatar for the second “Building Bridges” seminar of Christian and Muslim scholars, including seven from the United States, to examine the state of Christian-Muslim relations.

In his remarks, Williams said for many people the priority in Christian-Muslim dialogue, especially at a time of tension, would be the practical tasks they could share.

“But this dialogue has been conceived rather differently,” he said. “Christians are Christians and Muslims are Muslims because they care about truth, and because they believe that truth alone gives life.

“About the nature of that absolute and life-giving truth, Christians and Muslims are not fully in agreement. Yet they are able to find words in which to explain and explore that disagreement because they also share histories and practices that make parts of their systems of belief mutually recognizable: a story reaching back to God’s creation of the world and God’s call to Abraham; a practice of reading and absorbing scriptures and of sharing a life in response to the Word God speaks to creation.”

The purpose of this meeting, he said, is to discover more about how each community believed it must listen to God while being conscious of how very differently they identified and spoke of God’s revelation.

“Listening to God and listening to one another as nations, cultures and faiths have not always had the priority they so desperately need,” the archbishop said. “So this space for reflection is all the more important: It is both a symbol and an example of this kind of engagement.

“In this dialogue, we are not seeking an empty formula of convergence or trying to deny our otherness: indeed, as we reflect on the holy texts we read, we shall be seeking to make better sense of how we relate to the other, the stranger with whom we can still speak in trust and love.”

_ Robert Nowell

Quote of the Day: Law professor Patrick J. Schiltz

(RNS) “This litigation has the potential to do to churches what many a tyrannical government could not.”

_ Patrick J. Schiltz, a professor at St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis, speaking to a forum at Boston College about state laws and legal action that arose after the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. Church lawyers say the laws threaten the church’s sovereignty in many cases. He was quoted by The New York Times.

DEA END RNS