c. 2003 Religion News Service
Boston Archdiocese Improves Fund Raising After Abuse Scandal
(RNS) The Archdiocese of Boston, which suffered a precipitous drop in donations last year because of the clergy sex abuse scandal, said a fund-raising appeal is seeing new life under new Archbishop Sean O’Malley.
Church officials said Wednesday (Oct. 1) that donations to the Catholic Appeal are up 18 percent to 20 percent from a year ago, and one-third of donors are people who did not give last year.
“I am hopeful that our people, as they become more and more aware of the need and the good works that are supported by this appeal, will once again step up to the plate,” O’Malley said, according to The Boston Globe. “I certainly think that people are happy that we are on the road to settlement.”
The church has set a modest goal of $9 million this year, up slightly from $8.9 million last year but far lower than the $16.2 million raised in 2001 before the scandal broke.
O’Malley said the church has raised $6.6 million so far this year from 31,000 people. O’Malley is personally asking parishioners at various churches to help meet the goal for the end of the year.
“We are coming through a difficult time and are strongly committed to bring our Catholic family together with safeguards for the future,” O’Malley said in one sample letter, according to The Globe.
Officials say parishioners are encouraged by the $85 million offered by O’Malley to settle 500 abuse lawsuits, as well as the resignation last December of embattled Cardinal Bernard Law.
“This is very clearly in response to the installation of Archbishop Sean,” Damien J. DeVasto, the campaign’s director, told The Globe. “Many donors gave again in response to the wellspring of good feeling that came from his installation.”
Wealthy Church Says Grants to Continue Despite Divisions on Sexuality
(RNS) A wealthy Episcopal church on Wall Street said it will continue to fund development projects in Africa despite deep disagreements between the two continents on homosexuality.
The historic Trinity Church, founded in 1697, distributed $2.23 million in grants last year, including more than $848,000 to Anglican churches in Africa. The Episcopal Church is the U.S. branch of the Anglican Communion.
The Rev. James Callaway, director of Trinity’s grants program, told the Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa that money would continue, even though many African church leaders have rebuked the U.S. church for approving an openly gay bishop.
The Council’s new chairman, Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, has called the election of Bishop-elect Gene Robinson “a satanic attack upon God’s church.”
“We do not believe we have to see eye to eye with you on every issue to work with you around common mission concerns,” Callaway said. “More concisely stated: You don’t have to agree with us to be eligible for a Trinity grant. This has been our policy in the past, it is our policy now, and it will remain our policy.”
In June, Akinola called on African churches to become financially self-sufficient so they would no longer rely on “handouts from the rich churches of the Western world.” Trinity gave Akinola’s church $288,980 to supply churches with Internet access.
Two years ago, the church revoked a grant to Anglicans in Rwanda after three Rwandan bishops illicitly ordained bishops to shepherd a group of breakaway Episcopalians. Trinity said the Rwandan prelates had been promoting “schism” in the U.S. church.
Callaway said theological differences would not stop the flow of money, but said Anglican churches must not intervene in the internal authority and discipline of other provinces.
“It would be inappropriate for us in the United States to take your dissenting parishes and dioceses within our jurisdiction, or to be consecrating bishops in your provinces who wish to set themselves up in opposition to you,” he said.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Religious Leaders Support Family of Man Killed in 9-11 Hate Crime
(RNS) Leaders of the National Council of Churches say the family of a Pakistani man murdered four days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks should be allowed to stay in the United States and not be deported.
NCC General Secretary Bob Edgar and President Elenie Huszagh have signed on to a campaign to give green cards to the widow and four daughters of Waqar Hasan, who was murdered in a Texas convenience store on Sept. 15, 2001.
The man charged with Hasan’s murder, Mark Anthony Stroman, told police he shot Hasan in the face “to retaliate on local Arab Americans or whatever you want to call them. I did what every American wanted to do but didn’t.”
Hasan had applied for legal residency and was trying to start a convenience store business in Dallas. His family, who were living in New Jersey near relatives, were set to join him in Texas.
Without Hasan, U.S. Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., said the family faces deportation and financial despair. He has introduced a bill to grant the family legal residency status.
“This would be a blot on America if, because of this hate crime, this family was either deported or deprived of legal residency,” Holt told the Newark Star-Ledger last year. “America needs to resolve this.”
Also joining the campaign are United Methodist Bishop Melvin Talbert and Thomas Jeavons, general secretary of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (the Quakers).
_ Kevin Eckstrom
English Catholic Bishops Criticize Government’s Same-Sex Proposal
LONDON (RNS) The British government’s proposals to create civil partnerships for same-sex couples have been strongly opposed by the Roman Catholic bishops of England and Wales.
Instead, the bishops said, the government should concentrate on the “very much bigger issue” of the lack of rights enjoyed by cohabiting heterosexual couples and their children.
The proposals have, however, been welcomed by the Roman Catholic Caucus of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement. The caucus said the new proposals begin to move the country away from seeing a stable same-sex relationship as merely a private contract toward giving it a public status.
But the bishops said the government’s proposals would not promote the public good because “they would in the long term serve to undermine marriage and the family.” What is proposed for same-sex couples was “tantamount to civil marriage in all but name” and would send the signal that “marriage as husband and wife, and a same-sex relationship, are equally valid options, and an equally valid context for the upbringing of children,” English and Welsh bishops said.
“By publicly elevating same-sex relationships to a legal status virtually equivalent to civil marriage, the signal given to society would be that these two states of life are equally deserving of public protection and respect, when in fact they are not,” the bishops added.
They argued that recent changes to the law outlawing discrimination, coupled with the ability of same-sex couples to make private legal provision covering such aspects of their lives together as joint ownership of homes, undermined the argument that the proposals were necessary to protect human rights.
“If the aim is to combat injustice and uphold human rights in the context of human relationships in relation to property and financial assets, then the government is overlooking a much greater source of current injustice: the problem of long-term heterosexual co-habitees and their children, many of whom persist in believing the myth that there is such a thing as `common law marriage’ which confers rights on them,” said the bishops.
According to figures they quoted, 11 percent of family households with children were formed by heterosexual cohabitees compared with 0.2 per cent of all United Kingdom households consisting of same-sex couples.
The bishops concluded by stressing that the church’s teaching is that homosexual people were to be “accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity” and added: “Sadly, this is still not always the reality either in our society or in the church, and we must all continue to work to achieve it.”
_ Robert Nowell
Promise Keepers Names New President and CEO
(RNS) Promise Keepers has named Thomas S. Fortson Jr., its executive vice president, as its new president and CEO.
Fortson succeeds founder Bill McCartney, the evangelical Christian men’s ministry announced Wednesday (Oct. 1).
McCartney announced his resignation in early September so he could take care of his ill wife and eventually explore “other ministry interests.”
His successor has been the executive vice president of administration and operations for the Denver-based ministry since 1996.
“If I could paint a big picture of where I think PK needs to go, it’s to build on our foundation in the U.S. and to reach the world,” Fortson said in a statement. “That’s our vision _ men transformed worldwide. It may take a little time to get there, but God’s heart is for the world and that’s where he’s called us.”
Before coming to Promise Keepers, he spent time in the corporate world as an administrator at General Motors Corp. and a vice president of human resources at Edwards Baking Co. in Atlanta, the ministry said.
Board Chairman Alonzo Short said Fortson’s election was unanimous. He credited him with helping the ministry through difficult economic times.
“Tom Fortson has managed the operation of Promise Keepers since 1996, through challenging times and multiple changes, and we stand strong as a ministry today, thanks in large part to his steady hand,” Short said in a statement.
The ministry said its budget is estimated at $27 million and it currently has 70 full-time and 15 seasonal staffers.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Quote of the Day: Author Anne Lamott
(RNS) “I do believe that faith without works is excruciating for the believer, because I know that the way my cup is filled with the water of the Holy Spirit is by giving it away _ that we are not hungry for what we do not have, but for what we do not give.”
_ Anne Lamott, author of the best-selling novel “Blue Shoe,” in an interview with World magazine.
DEA END RNS
