c. 2007 Religion News Service

Catholic Bishops Condemn Maguire on Birth Control, Gay Marriage

(RNS) The U.S. Catholic bishops have denounced as “irresponsible” and “false teaching” a longtime Catholic theologian’s insistence that Catholics are able to dissent from the hierarchy’s opposition to contraceptives, same-sex marriage and abortion.

Daniel C. Maguire, a professor of moral theology at Marquette University, has written pamphlets that are “erroneous and incompatible with the Church’s teaching,” the bishops said in a statement released Thursday (March 22).

“We deplore as irresponsible his public advocacy of his views as authentic Catholic teaching,” the bishops said. Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokeswoman for the bishops, said the denunciation carries the full weight of the U.S. bishops.

Such condemnations are “not unheard of, but they don’t happen every week,” Walsh said. The U.S. bishops supported the Vatican’s condemnation of Jesuit theologian Roger Haight in 2005 and “expressed concern” over the Rev. Richard McBrien’s book “Catholicism” in 1996, according to Walsh.

Maguire, 75, said in an interview that he’s been disputing the Catholic hierarchy’s views on sexuality since 1968, when Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical, Humanae Vitae, that opposed artificial birth control.

The bishops practice “theology in a cocoon. They’re out of touch with mainstream theologians,” he said. A tenured professor at Marquette, a Jesuit institution in Milwaukee, Maguire said he does not expect to be punished by the school.

“They’ve been defending my academic freedom for 35 years and I don’t think it’s going to stop now,” he said. Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy Dolan has banned Maguire from speaking on church property, Maguire said.

Last June, Maguire sent two pamphlets, “The Moderate Roman Catholic Position on Contraception and Abortion” and “A Catholic Defense of Same-Sex Marriage,” to 270 U.S. bishops. Maguire said between 1,500 and 2,000 pamphlets were also distributed by the Religious Consultation on Population, Reproductive Health and Ethics, which he serves as president.

In the pamphlets, Maguire asserted “there is no one position on contraception and abortion” that can be called “Catholic.” The bishops are but one of three “sources of truth,” he argued, insisting that the laity and theologians share a role in formulating doctrine.

The U.S. bishops sharply disagreed. “The bishops are the successors of the apostles, who are given the authority to proclaim the teaching of Jesus Christ,” the bishops’ doctrine committee wrote.

“Laity and clergy embody and express the sense of the faith precisely when they conform their consciences to what the Church authentically professes and teaches,” the bishops’ wrote.

_ Daniel Burke

Judge Dismisses Suit Against Marriage Institute With Faith Ties

WASHINGTON (RNS) A federal judge has dismissed a case involving a Washington state program that a church-state separationist group charged was misusing government funds for Bible-based marriage workshops.

At one time, the Northwest Marriage Institute offered biblical marriage counseling, but it shifted its mission to provide secular counseling when it wanted to qualify for federal funding. It continues to produce a newsletter that includes religious content.

“The institute altered its mission and no longer offers Bible-based marriage workshops,” U.S. District Judge Franklin D. Burgess of Tacoma, Wash., wrote in a Tuesday (March 20) order.

He said the “religious motivation” of a sectarian institution that provides secular services doesn’t “transform the secular services into religious activity.”

Burgess added that the initial grants received by the institute were to help prepare for secular workshops. And the newsletter is not produced on a computer that was purchased with federal money. The institute received $97,750 in grants in 2005 and currently has a grant of $246,728.

“The fact that a sectarian organization continues with separate religious activities after receiving grant monies for sectarian endeavors does not constitute a violation of the Establishment Clause,” the judge ruled.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group that filed the suit, was disappointed with the dismissal. But its executive director, the Rev. Barry Lynn, said the ruling should be heeded as a warning for faith-based groups seeking federal funding.

“If you take `faith-based’ funds for your ministry, you cannot continue to preach, pray or indoctrinate as part of that program,” he said.

The Alliance Defense Fund, the legal group that represented the institute in the case, welcomed the dismissal.

“Christian groups are not second-class citizens that have to give up their religious identity to receive federal funds,” said Tim Chandler, legal counsel for the fund, which is based in Scottsdale, Ariz.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Update: Fessio Rehired at Ave Maria University

(RNS) A day after the Rev. Joseph Fessio was fired as provost of Ave Maria University, he was re-hired to be the school’s theologian-in-residence.

“I’m back and I’m glad,” Fessio told the Naples Daily News.

The 66-year-old Jesuit was fired on Wednesday (March 21) after meeting with Ave Maria’s founder and chancellor, Domino’s Pizza magnate Tom Monaghan. Fessio said he was not given a reason. The university, based near Naples, Fla., said he was ousted because of an “irreconcilable difference over administrative policy and practices.”

On Thursday, Ave Maria said “as a sign of our esteem for his great gifts and abilities, we have asked Father Fessio and he has agreed to continue a relationship.”

Fessio will keep a room on campus and teach during the spring semester, the university said. He will also attend the commencement exercises, teach a planned summer course and look into semester-abroad programs in Rome and Austria, according to the university.

Monaghan, who envisions Ave Maria and its surrounding town as bastions of Catholic orthodoxy, has poured millions into the project. Founded in 2003, Ave Maria plans to open its new campus later this year.

_ Daniel Burke

Pub Owner, Bell Ringers, Object to Cellphone Tower Atop Church

LONDON (RNS) The landlord of a British pub, egged on by a team of church bell-ringers, has squared off against the neighboring church over plans to install a cellphone mast atop the church’s 600-year-old tower.

The Anglican St. John the Baptist Church in Marldon, in southwest England, and the parochial council that runs it want the mast because cellphone operator T-Mobile is willing to pay about $147,000 over 20 years to install it.

But Julian Cook, who runs the Church House Inn, virtually in the shadow of the historic church, is infuriated. He told BBC radio that if the mast goes up, he will ban Rev. Peter Bellenes’ flock from using his pub’s parking lot to attend Sunday morning worship.

The dispute has split the picturesque village (population 470), largely over fears that microwave signals from the cellphone tower could be damaging to human health, but also over concern about the impact on the 15th-century church. The tower itself is the oldest part of the edifice, dating from around 1400.

Among those on Cook’s side are St. John the Baptist Church’s own bell-ringers, who have told Rev. Bellenes and the church council that they will stop ringing if the mast is erected. They are worried about potential health risks if they play in the church tower.

The church council insists that the financial offer from T-Mobile was an option that it had to consider if the building was to be maintained.

For its part, T-Mobile insists that people living near such cellphone base stations face “extremely low” potential health risks from microwave radio transmissions.

Bellenes, the pastor, has urged opponents to ease up and become “less entrenched.” Their stance against the mast, he says, is simply “sad.”

_ Al Webb

Quote of the Day: Zambian Archbishop Pius Ncube

(RNS) “The biggest problem with Zimbabweans is they are cowards, myself included, but as for me, I am ready to stand in front, even of blazing guns.”

_ Archbishop Pius Ncube of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, who has called for non-violent street protests against President Robert Mugabe’s government. He was quoted by the Daily Telegraph of London.

KRE/RB END RNS