c. 2007 Religion News Service
Pope Upgrades Interfaith Outreach Office
VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Benedict XVI will upgrade a Vatican office in charge of dialogue with the Islamic world, a little more than a year after subordinating it to another body.
The Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue will become “a dicastery in its own right,” Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who as secretary of state is the Vatican’s No. 2 official, said in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Stampa.
Dicasteries _ committees that implement policy and are typically staffed by cardinals and archbishops _ are the Vatican’s equivalent of government ministries.
In February 2006, Benedict reassigned the council’s president, Archbishop Michael L. Fitzgerald, the Vatican’s most prominent liaison with Islam, to Cairo, where he has since served as apostolic nuncio (ambassador) to Egypt.
A month later, the council was effectively downgraded by being placed under a joint presidency with the Pontifical Council for Culture.
Observers have already described the latest change in policy as an effort to improve the Vatican’s strained relations with Islam.
“This is a sign, to Muslims and people of other faiths, that the policies of Pope John Paul will continue,” said the Rev. Christophe Roucou, director of the French church’s National Service for Relations with Islam, in an interview with the Reuters news agency.
The late Pope John Paul II was well known for warm rapport with other religions, including Islam. Benedict, meanwhile, provoked an uproar last September with a speech in Germany in which he quoted a medieval Christian emperor describing the teachings of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad as “evil and inhuman” and “spread by the sword.”
In protest, churches in Palestinian areas were attacked, a nun was shot dead in Somalia and a group of Muslim scholars and leaders issued an open letter challenging the pope’s remarks.
Even before he became pope in April 2005, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger alienated many Muslims with his opposition to Turkish membership in the European Union.
_ Francis X. Rocca
Fund Helps Secure Amish Presence in Shrinking Ohio Heartland
MIDDLEFIELD, Ohio (RNS) To slow the loss of farmland to encroaching development, the Amish in Geauga County have decided to invest in a unique solution: themselves.
Over the past two years, the community has dug into its pockets and built a $4.5 million loan fund to help young families purchase property and solidify the rural Old Order settlement. Earlier this month, the nonprofit Geauga Amish Loan Fund _ in essence a small savings and loan _ granted its 40th mortgage.
The money has secured homes and a few hundred increasingly valuable acres, giving the Amish more elbow room in a landscape that’s gradually being carved into modern subdivisions.
The fund serves as an economic tool to help the Amish compete for property and maintain their way of life, said one of the organization’s founders and board members.
County records show that property values in the southeast corner of Geauga _ where the more than 10,000-member Amish settlement is concentrated _ rose roughly 15 percent between 2002 and 2004, the period before the loan fund began.
“If we’re going to stay around here, we’ve got to be able to keep up with land prices,” said one Amish man who, like others interviewed for this story, asked that his name not be used, a typical request within a culture where it’s taboo to display pride.
The fund is modeled after those established in other Amish communities. The Amish Helping Fund, in Ohio’s Holmes County, held mortgages exceeding $74 million, according to 2005 tax documents filed by the nonprofit organization.
A similar program called the Old Order Amish Helping Program in eastern Pennsylvania declared $56 million in loans in its tax papers filed for that same year.
The willingness to invest reflects the strong Amish belief in helping each other, said Donald Kraybill, an Elizabethtown College professor who studies the Amish culture. He described the loan fund as a financial version of the traditional barn raising.
“It’s an expression of their religious values,” Kraybill said.
Only Amish can invest in or borrow money from the Geauga loan fund, according to another of the organization’s board members. The program offers mortgages at below-market rates, making it easier for young families to acquire property within the settlement.
“We want to give people their best chance at success,” one organizer said.
_ John Horton
Calvin Seminary Adds Women to All-Male Faculty
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (RNS) Calvin Theological Seminary is moving to diversify its all-male teaching faculty by appointing two female professors.
Seminary trustees have voted to hire the Rev. Mary Hulst and Mary VandenBerg, subject to approval by the Christian Reformed Church’s Synod. It is the first time the CRC seminary has hired two female faculty members at once.
The women were recommended by a special search committee to fill two new teaching positions. The appointments reflect the seminary’s commitment to bring more women and ethnic minority teachers to the 300-student seminary while maintaining excellence, said its president, the Rev. Cornelius Plantinga Jr.
“The committee was not told, `Get us two women or two ethnic minorities,’ but it was told to bear in mind that the faculty is not particularly diverse,” Plantinga said.
The decision to create the posts followed last September’s departure of Ruth Tucker, Calvin’s first female professor, who said she could not continue teaching because she was “held to a different standard” than male professors.
Plantinga said Tucker’s charges were “painful to hear, so of course we had that in our minds.” But he insisted the seminary wanted to diversify long before her allegations.
“We’ve got a whole lot of white, Dutch males who have been here for quite awhile,” said Plantinga, a longtime supporter of women in church office. “The board thought, `We’re not going to wait for everybody to start retiring.”’
If approved by the Synod, Hulst and VandenBerg would be the only two women on the full-time teaching faculty at a seminary with 51 female students. Hulst was approved as an assistant professor of ministry effective this fall. She was the CRC’s first female minister in the United States when ordained at Grand Rapids’ Eastern Avenue Christian Reformed Church in 1996, where she served until 2003.
Hulst taught full-time at Calvin College and part-time at the seminary this year. The appointments are a significant step in the CRC’s long struggle over women’s ordination, Hulst said.
“It shows we are moving into a full recognition of what it means for men and women to work side-by-side in the kingdom.”
_ Charles Honey
Quote of the Day: Atheist philanthropist Robert W. Wilson
(RNS) “Let’s face it, without the Roman Catholic Church, there would be no Western civilization.”
_ Philanthropist Robert Wilson, an atheist who recently pledged $22.5 million to the Archdiocese of New York to fund a scholarship program for inner-city students. He was quoted by the Bloomberg news service.
KRE/LF END RNS
