c. 2005 Religion News Service
Detroit Archdiocese Cancels Reception for Nun Supportive of Gay Catholics
(RNS) Supporters of a nun silenced by the Vatican for her work with gay and lesbian Catholics have been turned away from a Detroit-area parish because their mission is “not in accord with the mission and message of the church.”
The Archdiocese of Detroit ordered a halt to a reception at St. Mary’s Church in Royal Oak, Mich., that was scheduled for Sunday (Jan. 30) following a screening of “In Good Conscience,” a documentary about the work of Sister Jeannine Grammick.
Detroit’s archbishop, Cardinal Adam Maida, led a Vatican investigation into Grammick’s work with the Maryland-based New Ways Ministries that led to a 1999 directive to cease her work. Grammick transferred to a different order of nuns and continues to advocate for greater inclusion for homosexuals.
Maida’s office said the “sensitive and necessary” discussions about ministry to gay Catholics “can cause more harm than good if it is conducted in the midst of controversy and ambiguity.”
The archdiocese said church property was “not the appropriate setting” for Grammick or the reception. Grammick, in a statement, said the move was “uncalled for.”
“Decisions like that are what makes the Catholic Church look foolish in the eyes of the world,” she said. “It’s embarrassing to me as a Catholic that the leaders of my church would censor.”
Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministries, said the decision reflected the church’s “paranoid” approach to gay issues.
“Repressing discussion is not an authentically Catholic way to deal with the complex and sensitive issue of homosexuality,” he said. “Censorship and silencing by church leaders are a source of scandal for all Catholics.”
_ Kevin Eckstrom
New Tests Show Shroud of Turin Could Be Older than First Thought
(RNS) A New Mexico scientist said the Shroud of Turin _ the linen cloth that many believe was used for Jesus’ burial _ could be 1,300 to 3,000 years old, which puts it in the same time frame as Christ’s death.
The shroud had been deemed a hoax after Vatican-approved tests in 1988 at three separate laboratories dated the shroud from between 1261 and 1390. Scientists concluded that the cloth and the image of Jesus it seemed to portray were a deception from the Middle Ages.
But Raymond Rogers, a retired scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, said those tests were inaccurate because they sampled a 16th century patch from the shroud, not the original material.
Rogers, writing in the Jan. 20 issue of the chemical journal Thermochimica Acta, said chemical compounds such as lignin and vanillin would drop over time, but should be easy to spot in a 700-year-old cloth. Neither was found in the 1988 tests.
Other ancient cloths, like the material used to wrap the Dead Sea Scrolls, also do not contain traces of lignin or vanillin.
“The disappearance of all traces of vanillin from the lignin in the shroud indicates a much older age than the (1988) radiocarbon laboratories reported,” he wrote.
Rogers was part of a 1978 team that took samples from the original shroud. His tests on those samples were radically different than the results found in 1988, he said.
“Even allowing for errors in the measurements and assumptions about storage conditions, the cloth is unlikely to be as young as 840 years,” he said.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Lawmakers and an Actor Urge Tougher Action on Sudan
(RNS) A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers, accompanied by Oscar-nominated actor Don Cheadle, are calling on the United States and the international community to take stronger measures to end the civil war in Sudan’s Darfur region.
“This killing goes on day in, day out,” Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., told a Thursday (Jan. 27) news conference on Capitol Hill. “I saw young children who have lost their hands. I asked how, and he said by sword, by the Janjaweed.”
Royce led a congressional delegation, with Cheadle, to Sudan earlier this month.
The Janjaweed are Arab militia, armed and backed by the Sudanese government who are fighting black African rebels in the Darfur area of Sudan. The U.S. government has labeled the Darfur fighting genocide on the part of the Khartoum government.
On Thursday, a United Nations-appointed commission of inquiry into whether genocide has occurred in Darfur delivered its report to Secretary General Kofi Annan. U.N. officials said that after Annan reads the report it will be sent to the Sudanese government, which will have three days to respond. It is expected to be made public and delivered to the Security Council next week.
Following a peace agreement between the government and rebels in southern Sudan, the two sides agreed to a cease-fire.
But even as the U.S. members of Congress were holding their news conference, there were reports that Khartoum had violated the agreement by bombing a village in North Darfur state. The United States and Britain both condemned the reported attack.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States was “appalled” by the increase in violence.
“All the parties, the government of Sudan, the militias that are allied with the government and the rebels, are to blame for this increase in violence,” Boucher said. “It must stop immediately.”
At the Capitol Hill news conference, Royce, chairman of the House International Relations subcommittee on Africa said Sudan “is not a problem for Africans alone to solve. The whole world must be engaged.”
Cheadle, nominated for an Oscar for his role in “Hotel Rwanda,” a film about the violence in Rwanda that killed more than 500,000 people in 1994, drew a parallel to the Rwanda events and contemporary Sudan.
“People saw the film and said, `Wow, that’s terrible. What happened? Wish I had known.’ Now you know,” Cheadle said, the AP reported.
_ David E. Anderson
Israeli Official Says Military’s Religious Program Won’t End After All
JERUSALEM (RNS) Despite reports to the contrary, Israel’s Defense Forces may not disband a program that enables religious soldiers to both serve their country and study Torah.
An Israeli government official told Religion News Service on Friday that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will not dissolve the “hesder” yeshiva program. The official said it does, however, intend to place hesder soldiers _ who until now have served in separate, religiously observant army units _ into mainstream units.
The official, who spoke on condition that he not be named, said that “there was never any intention to abandon the (hesder) program. Those fears were based on a big misunderstanding. What will change is where hesder soldiers serve. Until now they had their own unique units, but it appears that they will be integrated into regular units in the near future.”
Tuesday’s revelations by the newspaper Yediyot Ahronoth that the IDF intended to disband “hesder units” as early as March sparked an uproar in religious-Zionist circles.
Many members of Israel’s religious-Zionist community, who place a high value on both Jewish religious observance and military service, initially believed that the IDF intended to dissolve the popular hesder program altogether.
Critics had charged that the decision to place hesder soldiers in non-religious units was timed to prevent large numbers of religious soldiers from refusing to remove Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank. The removal is slated to occur this summer.
Some yeshiva heads have told their students that uprooting Jewish communities from these areas runs contrary to Jewish law.
_ Michele Chabin
Vatican Signals Desire to End War of Words with Spain
VATICAN CITY (RNS) The Vatican has signaled it is ready for a truce in its escalating war of words with Spain’s Socialist government over the alleged “secularization” of what was once one of Europe’s most Catholic countries.
Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls, himself a Spaniard, said in a statement on Thursday (Jan. 27) that the Vatican noted with “satisfaction” that the Spanish government wants to maintain dialogue with the Catholic Church on terms of “reciprocal respect.”
“This has always been the line of the Holy See,” he said.
At the heart of the dispute were the decisions of the government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, which took office in April, to streamline the procedures for divorce and abortion, legalize same-sex marriages and make religious education classes optional and ungraded.
Pope John Paul II told a group of visiting Spanish bishops, led by Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco Varela, archbishop of Madrid and president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, on Monday (Jan. 24) that he feared for religious freedom in an increasingly secular Spain.
John Paul deplored a “temptation to moral permissiveness” in Spain, which he said stands in sharp contrast to “the most noble Spanish traditions” marked by the country’s deep Catholic faith.
Expressing concern that Spanish children were growing up in ignorance of their “rich spiritual patrimony,” the pope said it was the “duty” of the state to guarantee parents the right to religious education for their children.
On Wednesday, Archbishop Manuel Monteiro, the Vatican’s envoy to Madrid, was summoned to the Spanish Foreign Ministry to hear the government’s response.
The Spanish government expressed “its amazement” over the reference to a government-driven secularization capable of limiting religious freedom, said Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs Luis Calvo Merino.
Navarro-Valls noted “with satisfaction the will of the Spanish government to maintain a fruitful understanding with the Church through a permanent dialogue animated by reciprocal respect.”
_ Peggy Polk
Quote of the Day: Hala Dahroug, of Cairo
(RNS) “Being unveiled doesn’t necessarily mean you are more intellectual or smarter. I meet unveiled girls who’ve got nothing in their brains, and I meet veiled ones who care about the world. The important thing here is freedom of expression and the freedom to practice whatever rituals you believe in. Women should choose to wear it or not.”
_ Cairo resident Hala Dahroug, 33, who stopped wearing a tradition Muslim veil at age 20. She was quoted in the Los Angeles Times.
MO/JL RNS END
