c. 2008 Religion News Service

Average age of new Catholic priests is 37

(RNS) The average Roman Catholic priest being ordained in 2008 is 37 years old, white and born in the U.S. He was raised by two Catholic parents, attended Catholic elementary school, worked a full-time job before entering the seminary, and a friend or classmate has tried to talk him out of joining the priesthood.

Since 1998, the U.S. bishops’ conference has been keeping tabs on men entering the priesthood through yearly surveys. This year’s class, which includes 401 potential ordinands (335 responded to the survey), largely continues recent trends. Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate conducted the survey for the bishops.

Though the survey did not mention it, the 2008 class _ particularly its size _ also exhibits the church’s steep decline in vocations. In 2000 the church ordained 442 priests.

Men, especially those joining religious orders, are entering the priesthood later in life. Half of the ordinands are 34 or older; the average age is 37; among men joining religious orders it’s 39; priests ordained for dioceses on average are 36.

Nearly 70 percent of the ordinands are white and were born in the U.S. Mexico and Vietnam follow, with 7 percent and 6 percent of ordinands, respectively, born in those countries. On average, the foreign-born ordinands have lived in the U.S. for 13 years.

While Asians and Pacific Islanders are over-represented among ordinands based on the U.S. Catholic population at large, Latinos are under-represented. Thirty-five percent of U.S. adult Catholics are Latino, compared to 16 percent of this year’s graduating seminarians.

Nine in 10 ordinands have been Catholic since birth, with 84 percent raised by two Catholic parents. Slightly more than half attended Catholic elementary school, 41 percent a Catholic high school and 45 percent a Catholic college. By comparison, only 8 percent of all U.S. Catholic adults attended a Catholic college.

Almost 40 percent of the ordinands don’t have a college degree, a slight increase from previous years. Most worked a full-time job before entering the priesthood, most often as educators.

Eight in 10 said a priest encouraged them to join the priesthood. Half said a friend did the same, and 40 percent said their mother offered encouragement as well. But 60 percent also said that a friend or classmate tried to talk them out of it.

_ Daniel Burke

Beverly Hills rabbi named to top Orthodox post

(RNS) Rabbi Steven Weil of Beverly Hills, Calif., has been tapped as the next top leader of the nation’s Orthodox Jews.

Weil, 42, has been the spiritual leader of Beth Jacob Congregation, the largest Orthodox congregation in the U.S. outside greater New York, for eight years. He will become executive vice president of the Orthodox Union on July 1, 2009.

Weil succeeds Rabbi Tsvi Hersh Weinreb, who has held the job since 2002. Weinreb said he plans to continue working for the OU as the “public face” of the movement at conferences, speeches and in the media.

As executive vice president, Weil will handle the day-to-day leadership of the movement, while the OU presidency is a rotating position among senior rabbis.

Weil “brings energy, vision and an incredible work ethic to this position,” said Rabbi Stephen J. Savitsky, the OU’s current president. “We look forward to his leadership and building on the great foundation that has been established by Rabbi Weinreb.”

Weil was ordained at Yeshiva University in New York and also holds an MBA in finance from the Stern School of Business at New York University. He and his wife have seven children.

“There are untold numbers of Jews across the country who are missing out on a real connection to the richness and beauty of Jewish life because they don’t have the resources, critical numbers nor tools for growth,” Weil said in a statement.

“It is my dream that this position will afford me the opportunity to help them build the kinds of programs and experience the opportunities that they richly deserve.”

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Vatican tells bishops not to share parish information with Mormons

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Seeking to stop Mormons from posthumously baptizing Catholic ancestors, the Vatican has instructed bishops around the world not to share parish registers with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy issued the directive in a letter to national bishops’ conferences in early April, according to Catholic News Service. The letter referred to “grave reservations” expressed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Catholic Church’s highest doctrinal body.

The Rev. James Massa, an official of the U.S. bishops’ conference, told CNS that the Vatican had acted to prevent the use of church records for the “proxy baptisms” of deceased Catholics by Mormons, which the letter calls a “detrimental practice.”

Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormons, believe that by performing such baptisms they can offer their ancestors the chance to become Mormons after death.

Massa acknowledged that the Vatican’s action might complicate dialogue between the Catholics and Mormons, but said the “purpose of interreligious dialogue is not only to identify agreements, but also to identify differences.”

Relations between the two churches took a step forward in April, during Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the U.S., when Mormon representatives took part for the first time in a prayer service led by a pope.

An LDS church spokesman declined to comment on the Vatican’s letter, saying that church officials had not yet seen the document.

_ Francis X. Rocca

Bartholomew, Dalai Lama, Richard Cizik make `Time 100′

(RNS) Religious leaders Bartholomew I, the Dalai Lama and the Rev. Richard Cizik are named in this year’s “Time 100” list of influential people.

Bartholomew I, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, and the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, were included among “leaders and revolutionaries” in the May 12 issue of Time magazine.

“To me, the most mystical thing about him is also the most ordinary: The Dalai Lama is happy,” wrote author Deepak Chopra in the magazine. “He’s happy in the midst of chaos and turmoil.”

Bartholomew I, the subject of a profile by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, is noted for his attention to the environment.

“In a way that is profoundly loyal to the traditions of worship and reflection in the Eastern Orthodox Church, he has insisted that ecological questions are essentially spiritual ones,” writes Williams of the patriarch.

In further attention to environmental activism, Cizik, the leader of the governmental affairs office of the National Association of Evangelicals, was named with Eric Chivian, director of Harvard Medical School’s Center for Health and the Global Environment, among “scientists and thinkers.”

Pope Benedict XVI didn’t make this year’s list but the Vatican didn’t object.

“I’m very happy that the pope isn’t on the list, because they have used criteria that have absolutely nothing to do with the evaluation of the pope’s religious and moral authority,” said the Rev. Federico Lombardi, papal spokesman.

Other religious leaders contributed to the list by writing profiles of those named in the “Time 100.” Dallas megachurch pastor Bishop T.D. Jakes profiled movie mogul Tyler Perry and Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu profiled performer Peter Gabriel.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Poll: One-third of voters say Wright has reduced their Obama support

(RNS) One-third of likely voters say they are less inclined to vote for presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama because of his association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, according to a new poll.

The same percentage of likely voters told pollsters they were less apt to vote for Obama’s opponent, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., because of her association with husband, former president Bill Clinton.

The USA Today/Gallup poll found that 60 percent of Americans were “very” or “somewhat” closely following the media coverage of controversial statements by Wright, who was Obama’s pastor for almost 20 years.

Of those following the controversy, 42 percent said they think Obama disagrees with Wright’s more controversial statements. Thirty-three percent of all Americans thought the same.

More than 60 percent of those following the controversy said Obama has handled the matter “very well” or “well,” and more than half said the Illinois senator’s relationship with his pastor is not meaningful and should not be discussed.

Splices of sermons taken from Wright’s nearly 36 years in ministry, in which he vehemently denounces the U.S. government, have circulated over the Internet and on television. In recent media appearances, Wright has explained his controversial remarks but not disavowed them.

Clinton holds a 7 percentage point lead over Obama among Democrats, the poll found.

The USA Today/Gallup poll was conducted May 1-3. The sample size for the Wright questions was 855 adults; the margin of error was plus or minus 4 percentage points. The sample size for the poll of Democrats was 516 adults; the margin of error was plus or minus 5 points.

_ Daniel Burke

Watchdog panel issues religious freedom recommendations

WASHINGTON (RNS) A federal watchdog panel said Friday (May 2) that 11 countries should be named “countries of particular concern” for their records on religious freedom, including three that are not currently on the State Department’s list.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom urged the inclusion of Vietnam _ which was removed from the State Department’s list in 2006 _ and Pakistan and Turkmenistan.

Commissioners who traveled to Vietnam in 2007 found “very uneven” progress on the improvement of conditions for religious freedom, said commission Chair Michael Cromartie in a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “Arrests, detentions, discrimination, and other restrictions continue,” he said.

Cromartie also cited continuing “religiously motivated violence” in Pakistan and “official harassment of religious adherents” in Turkmenistan.

The other countries recommended for the designation of “countries of particular concern” are Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Uzbekistan, which have been on the State Department’s list since 2006.

“Developments of the past decade have strengthened the importance of freedom of religion or belief, as the U.S. government navigates a world threatened by religion-based extremism and religion-imbued conflict,” Cromartie said in a statement that accompanied the release of the commission’s annual recommendations.

The commission also cited countries on its “Watch List” that require monitoring because of religious freedom violations permitted or implemented by the governments: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Cuba, Egypt, Indonesia and Nigeria.

Commissioners say they continue to be “seriously concerned” about religious freedom in Iraq, which was on their 2007 Watch List, and will be traveling to the region in May. They plan to issue a report on Iraq after the trip.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Father Damien moves one step closer to sainthood

VATICAN CITY (RNS) The unofficial patron saint of those with HIV/AIDS is on the verge of canonization, after Vatican officials attributed a second miracle to his intercession.

The Rev. Damien de Veuster, a Belgian priest known as “Father Damien” who spent more than 15 years caring for lepers on the island of Molokai, Hawaii, died there of leprosy in 1889.

Pope John Paul II declared Damien “Blessed” in 1995, after recognizing as miraculous the cure of a French nun who had prayed to the late priest only a few years after his death. A second miracle, occurring after beatification, is required for canonization as a saint.

On Tuesday (April 29), Honolulu Bishop Clarence (Larry) Silva confirmed that theologians advising the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints had recognized as miraculous a Hawaiian woman’s recovery from lung cancer after she prayed for Damien’s intercession. The case was the subject of an article in the Hawaii Medical Journal in 2000.

Damien’s canonization still requires the approval of the congregation and of Pope Benedict XVI.

Statues of Damien, who is also considered the patron of the State of Hawaii, stand in both the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., and the Hawaii State Capitol in Honolulu.

_ Francis X. Rocca

Presbyterian court clears lesbian pastor on wedding charges

(RNS) The highest court of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has reversed a lower court’s censure of a lesbian clergywoman who performed what critics called same-sex weddings for two lesbian couples in California.

“It is not improper for ministers of the Word and Sacrament to perform same-sex ceremonies,” ruled the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in a decision released Monday (April 28). “At least four times, the larger church has rejected overtures that would prohibit blessing the unions of same-sex couples.”

The decision about the Rev. Jane Spahr, who was charged in 2004 and initially cleared in 2006, hinged on language in the church’s Book of Order, which defines marriage as “between a woman and a man.”

The high court found that the lower court in the church’s Synod of the Pacific (SPJC) was mistaken in its determination last year that Spahr had violated that language.

“By the definition in (the Book of Order), a same-sex ceremony can never be a marriage,” the high court ruled. “The SPJC found Spahr guilty of doing that which by definition cannot be done. One cannot characterize same-sex ceremonies as marriages for the purpose of disciplining a minister of the Word and Sacrament and at the same time declare that such ceremonies are not marriages for legal or ecclesiastical purposes.”

Same-sex ceremonies and marriages should remain different, the court declared.

“We do hold that the liturgy should be kept distinct for the two types of services,” it said. “We further hold that officers of the PCUSA authorized to perform marriages shall not state, imply or represent that a same-sex ceremony is a marriage.”

Spahr, 65, said she was “grateful” for the decision, which she considers an affirmation of her longtime ministry to gays and lesbians.

“The church is a place of welcome and hospitality in which I will continue to honor relationships of love and commitment, regardless of sexual orientation,” she said in a statement.

_ Adelle M. Banks

N.J. mother, son charged in Santeria ritual

SPRING LAKE, N.J. (RNS) In what authorities say was part of a Santeria ritual, a woman and her son have been charged with dumping bags on a Spring Lake beach that contained decapitated chickens, ducks, Guinea hens and pigeons, as well as trash.

Diana Hernandez, 51, and her son, Alain Hernandez, 32, were each charged Monday (April 28) with 10 counts of animal cruelty, said Victor “Buddy” Amato, chief of police for the Monmouth County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Amato said both admitted they were carrying out a Santeria religious practice to create wealth and prosperity when a person spotted them on Sunday night disposing of five bags on a beach.

The witness took down their license plate, which led police to them so quickly, Amato said.

Hernandez and her son came to the Spring Lake police station under their own volition with an attorney Monday. “They were very well mannered, very articulate and very polite,” Amato said.

Diana Hernandez, a santera, or leader in the religion, told authorities she and her son traveled to Spring Lake to dispose of the carcasses, because she was directed to by another santera.

Santeria is a melding of Christian and African religious beliefs that sometimes uses the ritualistic sacrifice of animals in order to secure favors from its deities.

Three of the five bags laid at shore’s edge were swept out to sea by the tides. These charges are based on the two bags the police examined, Amato said.

Each count carries a $1,000 penalty and the cruelty to animals charge can carry up to six months in jail, Amato said. The mother and son are due in Spring Lake Municipal Court on May 21.

_ Ken Thorbourne

Catholic Worker Movement quietly marks 75 years

NEW YORK (RNS) On the eve of the Catholic Worker Movement’s 75th anniversary, volunteer Jane Sammon was doing what she does nearly every day: preparing dinner for a group of elderly residents at Maryhouse, one of two “flagship” Catholic Worker communities here that are dedicated to “hospitality for the homeless, exiled, hungry and foresaken.”

Thursday’s (May 1) commemoration was not likely to be different than any other anniversary celebration of the past, marked by a 5 p.m. Mass and a 6:30 p.m. dinner, said Sammon, 60, who has worked at Maryhouse for nearly 36 years.

“No one is going to jump out of a cake,” she said in an interview.

Celebrations are likely to be similarly low-key in the Worker’s nearly 200 communities in the United States and eight other countries, and that is probably the way co-founders Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin would have preferred it.

Founded on May Day, 1933, during the height of the Great Depression, the Catholic Worker began as a radical newspaper and grew into a wider movement of hospitality and social activism.

It remains committed to a “firm belief in the God-given dignity of every human person,” and to the ideals of “nonviolence, voluntary poverty (and) prayer,” protesting “injustice, war, racism and violence of all forms.”

Given what she calls society’s inattention to economic injustice, Sammon said she is not surprised that the number of Catholic Worker communities has doubled since Day’s death in 1980.

Day was famed as a one-time radical Greenwich Village bohemian who underwent a conversion experience and became renowned as a Catholic writer and social activist. There is still talk of making Day a saint _ a controversial suggestion that Day herself once rejected.

Sammon said Day would remind Catholic Worker communities of Jesus’ dictum that “the poor will always be with you,” and “noting that the constants of “power and greed” continue, “robbing the poor of their livelihood.”

_ Chris Herlinger

Quote of the Week: Hindu priest Ram Gopal Atrey of New Delhi

(RNS) “If poor people don’t even have enough for bread, how will they donate milk to the gods? This is very serious.”

_ Ram Gopal Atrey, head priest at Prachin Hanuman Mandir in New Delhi, who has noticed that rising prices have reduced the donations of food to Hindu deities at his temple. He was quoted by The Washington Post.

KRE END RNS