c. 2007 Religion News Service
Bush names Glendon as Vatican ambassador
WASHINGTON (RNS) President Bush has nominated Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard Law School professor and prominent conservative commentator, as U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.
Glendon, 69, is a longtime opponent of abortion and gay marriage and has written widely on culture and ethics in books and scholarly journals.
Her appointment must be confirmed by the Senate.
In 1994, Pope John Paul II named Glendon to the then-new Pontifical Council Academy of Social Sciences, a Vatican advisory panel. She headed a Vatican delegation to the United Nations’ Women’s Conference in Beijing the next year.
The Massachusetts native has also served on the President’s Council on Bioethics and, until her nomination Monday (Nov. 5), was an adviser to the presidential campaign of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
“While I may have lost her trusted counsel to our campaign, our country has gained an extremely gifted ambassador,” Romney said in a statement.
Kishore Jayabalan, director of the Rome office for the the Grand Rapids, Mich.-based Acton Institute, said Glendon’s Vatican experience makes her appointment “unprecedented.”
“She knows the strengths and weaknesses of the Roman Curia,” he said. “She has no learning curve when it comes to Vatican City.”
_ Daniel Burke and Francis X. Rocca
Catholics urge civility in run-up to 2008 elections
WASHINGTON (RNS) A year to the day before the 2008 presidential elections, a group of Catholics urged civility in American politics, asking Catholic voters and politicians to avoid dragging the church into divisive partisanship.
With five Catholic candidates in the presidential field, the group released a statement co-written by former U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Thomas Melady addressing issues raised in the campaign.
The document also comes one week before Catholic bishops will meet in Baltimore to debate their election-year document, “Faithful Citizenship” on the role of Catholics in public life.
Forty-seven prominent Catholics, including former politicians and ambassadors, signed the statement, which was released Tuesday (Nov. 6) by Melady and 14 others at a Washington news conference.
It is not the place of lay Catholics to question whether politicians who take positions conflicting with church teaching should receive Communion, their statement says.
At the same time, “Catholic politicians who advertise their Catholicism as part of their political appeal, but ignore the Church’s moral teachings in their political life, confuse non-Catholics by giving the appearance of hypocrisy,” the statement said.
The statement also urges church members to remember there are Catholics “of equally good will but differing political convictions” who deserve their respect.
Other signers included former Republican National Committee chairman Frank Fahrenkopf; Terry McAuliffe, former head of the Democratic National Committee; and former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating.
So far, the effort is geared strictly toward lay Catholics. The group has not invited clergy to sign because “they are not supposed to take part in partisan politics,” Melady said.
_ Beckie Supiano
Indian seminary issues fatwa against Hajj farewell parties
CHENNAI, India (RNS) A leading Islamic seminary in northern India has issued a fatwa, or religious edict, against pompous farewell parties for Muslims making the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.
The Darul Uloom seminary in Deoband said the practice of big community dinners and lunches on such occasions was against Islamic law. The Nov. 2 fatwa, issued by two senior clerics of the Sunni seminary, asked Muslims to keep their Hajj pilgrimage a simple and low-key affair.
Darul Uloom is among the influential seminaries held in esteem by India’s Sunni Muslims, who generally abide by its rulings. Shia Muslims, however, are not likely to follow the fatwa.
More than 100,000 Muslims from all over India are likely to undertake the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca next month _ a religious journey that all Muslims try to make at least once in their lifetime.
_ Achal Narayanan
Calvin tells black prof to choose between school, church
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (RNS) Professor Denise Isom loves her work at Calvin College and her Grand Rapids church, Messiah Missionary Baptist. The problem: Isom must choose one or the other.
The Calvin board last month refused to exempt Isom from a rule that requires professors to attend a congregation with ties to the Christian Reformed Church.
The issue sparked a student “prayer protest” and discussion about how the church-membership policies may hurt diversity on campus. It also has drawn disdain from Isom’s pastor, the Rev. Clifton Rhodes Jr.
“I’m not sure I understand the position of the school,” Rhodes said. “She’s not involved in some cult. We are a community of believers and we, in my eyes, are quite compatible.
“I think it’s rather narrow of the college to say: `If you want to continue your worship, you’ll have to find different employment.”’
Isom, an assistant professor of education since 2003, is black and her research focuses on race and education. She told the board she finally found what she was looking for at the predominantly black Messiah Missionary Baptist.
“Though there are CRC churches and communities that are striving to reflect a multicultural vision in the church’s make-up and worship content, they’re not `there’ yet,” she wrote in a recent letter requesting the exemption.
Since the board’s Oct. 18 decision, college leaders and Isom have been exploring her options, according to Provost Claudia Beversluis. Those include Isom’s departure from the private college or finding a partnership with a CRC church.
Isom, 42, told the board she visited churches of various denominations without finding a good fit.
“I need a place of worship that is already consistent with my culture and able to grapple with issues of race in ways which make it a respite, a re-charging and growing place for me, as opposed to another location where I must `work’ and where I am `other,’ ” she wrote.
Beversluis said the issue is a difficult one that has prompted much discussion on how to retain the college’s Christian Reformed identity while becoming more diverse.
“I wish there was a (Christian Reformed) congregation in Grand Rapids that was fully multicultural or even that there was one that was largely African-American,” Beversluis said.
_ Nardy Baeza Bickel and Nate Reens
Quote of the Day: Dale Bentley of Preservation North Dakota
(RNS) “Churches were the glue that held rural communities together. In some ways, they’re the most important buildings in the state.”
_ Dale Bentley, executive director of Preservation North Dakota, quoted in USA Today about efforts by his organization to give grants to save rural church buildings, 10 of which close every year.
KRE DS END RNS
