c. 2003 Religion News Service
Louisville Archdiocese Signs $25 Million Deal With Abuse Victims
(RNS) After just five days of negotiations, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Louisville, Ky., agreed Tuesday (June 10) to a $25.7 million settlement with 243 sexual abuse victims.
Because church insurance will not cover the settlement, the deal represents one of the largest direct pay-outs by church officials in the past two decades.
“I apologize for what we did or what we failed to do that led to your abuse,” Archbishop Thomas Kelly said in a news conference Tuesday. “I hope that today’s settlement is seen as a sign of our willingness to support you in your healing.”
Victims accused 34 archdiocesan priests, two religious brothers and three laypeople of abuse spanning from the 1940s to 1997. Ninety of the victims said they had been molested by a serial abuser, the Rev. Louis Miller, who was sentenced to 20 years in jail last month, according to The New York Times.
The abuse scandal has hit Louisville hard because of its relatively small size _ 200,000 Catholics _ and already bleak finances. Last month the church announced 34 jobs cuts and a $2 million budget cutback.
Archdiocesan Chancellor Brian Reynolds said more budget trimming will be needed to pay for the settlement. The archdiocese reported $48 million in cash assets and investments worth $61.8 million, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.
“While it’s good to have a settlement, it is not good news the abuse happened in the first place, it is not good news it will take this amount of finances to respond to it, but the injuries need to be responded to,” Reynolds told the newspaper.
Victims said they remain angry at Kelly for transferring known abusers but expressed satisfaction at the settlement. “If you can’t punish someone by putting them in jail, the only way to punish them is to take money away from them,” victim Mike Turner told The New York Times.
At the same time, Cardinal Edward Egan of New York again angered abuse victims by announcing he will not disclose the results of church investigations into 13 suspected abusive priests. Egan said he will decide the priests’ fate after recommendations from an appointed review board.
“If the priest is to be returned to active ministry, he will simply be given a new assignment so that he can quietly resume his priestly work,” Egan told the archdiocesan priests council, according to the newspaper.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Southern Baptists Cut Dozens of International Mission Positions
(RNS) The Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board announced Tuesday (June 10) it has eliminated 61 management and support positions.
Board officials said 37 staffers in the Richmond, Va., headquarters of the mission board were notified that day that their jobs had been cut to help the agency’s expenditures for 2003 remain consistent with the income it anticipates.
Mark Kelly, spokesman for the mission board, said some of the other eliminated positions were vacant and some employees were transferred to new positions.
The reduction of full- and part-time staffers came less than a week after the mission board announced plans to limit the number of new workers who would be sent overseas.
The financial crunch was a result, in part, of the annual offering for international missions falling almost $10 million short of its $125 million goal. Mission officials also have faced declining investment income due to the stock market’s downturn.
Although giving from Southern Baptists increased over the previous year, there have not been enough resources to address a quickly growing missionary force.
“The decisions to reduce staff and hold back new missionaries were extremely difficult to make,” said International Mission Board President Jerry Rankin in a statement.
“This has been a painful process, and every effort had been made to minimize the impact of budget reductions.”
In addition to cutting staff and limiting new missionary appointments, the mission board also will reduce some products and services.
For example, it will no longer publish The Commission, the flagship magazine of the mission board, but will continue its online version.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Religious Groups Dismayed at Canadian Same-Sex Ruling
TORONTO (RNS) Religious groups voiced dismay Wednesday (June 11) over Tuesday’s ruling by an Ontario court that legalized same-sex marriages in the province.
“Today the court has fundamentally redefined marriage,” lamented Bruce Clemenger, president of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, part of the Interfaith Coalition on Marriage and the Family, an intervenor in the case.
The landmark June 10 ruling by the Ontario Court of Appeal rewrote the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples, saying denying gays and lesbians the right to marry offends their dignity, discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation and violates their equality rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The historic, unanimous judgment makes same-sex marriages legal for the first time in Canada.
Courts in British Columbia and Quebec have also struck down marriage laws, but gave governments until next year to rewrite their legislation.
The Ontario judgment goes further because it ordered Toronto’s city clerk and the provincial registrar-general to issue and accept marriage licenses for two couples who wed in 2001 under the ancient Christian tradition of publication of banns. That allowed them to avoid having to get city-issued licences.
The decision ignores “centuries of precedent” and renders “ordinary Canadians’ views irrelevant,” said Derek Rogusky, a vice president of Focus on the Family, which intervened in the case through the Association for Marriage and the Family in Ontario.
The Interfaith Coalition on Marriage and the Family, representing Roman Catholics, evangelical Protestants, Muslims and Sikhs, argued that across all religions and cultures in Canada and worldwide, marriage is understood as being between a man and a woman.
“The redefinition of marriage will reduce it to a commitment between two people, and there are many relationships in society which would meet the new definition,” Clemenger said. “Marriage will loose its distinctiveness.”
The court rejected the fear of churches that gay marriage infringes on religious freedom because it would force them to conduct ceremonies against their will.
“This case is about the legal institution of marriage,” the court said. “We do not view this case as in any way dealing or interfering with the religious institution of marriage.”
The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops urged the federal government to appeal the Ontario ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada, partly because “marriage is full of history, meaning and symbolism.”
“The state has a fundamental interest in this social institution where most children are procreated and nurtured and, according to recent statistics, continues to be the most stable environment in which to raise a family.”
_ Ron Csillag
Microsoft Deal Saves United Methodists $8 Million
(RNS) An innovative partnership between the United Methodist Church and Microsoft has saved local churches, colleges and other agencies $8 million in the past three years.
The TechShop program, launched with Microsoft in 2000, allows church entities to buy computer equipment and software at prices that are 50 percent or more below retail price.
The program has since expanded to include Apple, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba and other products at reduced prices, according to United Methodist News Service. Larry Hollon, head of the denomination’s communications agency, said savings of $100 or more can make a difference for small, cash-strapped congregations.
“TechShop helps United Methodists around the world share stories of God’s healing love,” Hollon said.
On Tuesday (June 10), the church signed an agreement with a Birmingham, Ala., company that will make church Web sites easier to create and maintain. The “E-zekiel” program provides 250 templates for church Web sites that require only a computer and Internet access to create.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Report: No Hindu Temple on Disputed Mosque Site
(RNS) A report submitted by the state-sponsored Archaeological Survey of India shows no evidence of Hindu temple remains under the ruins of a mosque in northern India.
The lack of archaeological evidence calls into question Hindu nationalists’ claims that the mosque in the town of Ayodhya stands on a sacred Hindu site marking the birthplace of the god Ram.
The archaeological dig to determine whether a temple ever existed under the mosque was ordered by India’s courts in March in an attempt to settle ongoing and sometimes violent clashes over the site.
Contention over the Ayodhya mosque site, located in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, has strained Hindu-Muslim relations since 1992, when Hindu zealots destroyed the 16th century mosque and incited nationwide riots in which 3,000 died.
The ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has claimed the site for Hindus in part to bolster support for its political platform, which promotes Hinduism as the state religion. Muslims, a minority at 12 percent of India’s population, say there is no evidence to back up Hindu hardliners’ assertion that the mosque was built over the remains of an ancient Hindu temple, Reuters reported.
“We are confident that no temple was ever pulled down to build the mosque. The excavations have only proved our position,” Zafaryab Jilani, counsel for the Sunni Central Waqf Board, told Reuters.
Hindu hardliners, meanwhile, say they are confident the final report, due at the end of June, will validate their claims as they continue their campaign to build a Hindu temple in Ayodhya.
In May, Acharya Giriraj Kishore, the leader of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad or the World Hindu Council and a political ally of President Atal Behari Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party, said his group would never allow a mosque to be built anywhere near the disputed site.
_ Alexandra Alter
Quote of the Day: Senior Policy Adviser Bill Wichterman
(RNS) “We need to understand what the implications are of our faith for everything we do, including the laws that we make and help to make and the laws that we help to stop on Capitol Hill.”
_ Bill Wichterman, senior policy adviser to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., speaking recently to congressional staffers. He was quoted by Family News in Focus, a Web site of Focus on the Family.
DEA END RNS
