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Methodist clergy vow to defy church…

200 Illinois Methodist clergy vow to defy church, bless same-sex unions

Some 200 United Methodist clergy of the church’s Northern Illinois Conference have pledged to bless same-sex unions in violation of the church’s policy on the matter, doing so despite the risk of suspension or defrocking.

The Northern Illinois clergy’s declaration comes fast on the heels of a Wisconsin pastor, the Rev. Amy DeLong of Osceola, being found guilty of overseeing a 2009 lesbian union in a church trial last week. She was also found not guilty of being a “self-avowed practicing homosexual.” DeLong was punished with a 20-day suspension, a sentence that she said will not dissuade her from continuing to officiate same-sex unions.

Earlier in the month, the clergy took their initial vote to end discrimination against LGBTQ individuals and announced they would send petitions to that effect to next year’s global gathering, according to the Windy City Times. Methodist clergy in other states, including Minnesota, New York and the New England region, according to the Boston Globe, have also taken similar actions in recent weeks.

As reported by the Chicago Tribune, pro-LGBT United Methodist clergy in Northern Illinois were emboldened by the state’s recent passage of civil union legislation, as well as DeLong’s trial, the latest in a series of punishments for church clergy blessing gay and lesbian relationships.

“Unfortunately the church has lost its prophetic voice on this issue,” the Rev. Gregory Gross, a deacon, told the Tribune. “Our civil society has taken the lead. Now the church is trying to catch up.”

The conference’s bishop, Hee-Soo Jung, earlier in the month applauded the Illinois legislature and Governor Pat Quinn for approving the civil union legislation and called for “patience, respect, grace and a willingness to struggle together as we hold one another in prayer and community” as the church goes forward in reconciling clear divisions on the matter within their ranks.

The United Methodist Church is the largest U.S. mainline denomination and the nation’s second largest Protestant church, ranking behind only the Southern Baptist Convention. The last time the church took up the matter of approving same-sex unions in 2008, it was voted down 501-417. The issue is expected to be back on the table in next year’s international conference, which will be held in Tampa, Fla.

Complete Article HERE!

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Poland Complains to Vatican Over Priest’s Remarks

By VANESSA GERA

A Polish priest and media mogul has sparked uproar in Poland by calling the country a totalitarian state that “hasn’t been ruled by Poles since 1939” — a statement many interpret as code for saying Jews are secretly running the country.

The Rev. Tadeusz Rydzyk, who has previously been accused of fomenting anti-Semitism through his politically influential, ultra-Catholic radio station Radio Maryja, made the comments at the European Parliament last week.

Poland’s Foreign Ministry sent a diplomatic note to the Vatican on Saturday accusing Rydzyk of “harming the image of Poland abroad,” the first-ever such complaint by the Polish government to the Holy See. The Vatican is the supreme authority for Rydzyk’s Redemptorist order.

Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi told Polish news agency PAP on Monday that Rydzyk speaks in his own name and his statements do not involve the Holy See or Poland’s Church.

He did not say if the Vatican will offer a formal reply, according to PAP.

Jerzy Buzek, the head of the EU Parliament and former prime minister of Poland, has called Rydzyk’s remarks “scandalous and unacceptable.”

Rydzyk spoke during a seminar on renewable energy last Tuesday. His remarks went largely unnoticed in Brussels but have since sparked days of debate in Poland, with weekend talk shows and newspaper opinion columns devoted to analyzing the powerful priest’s words.

Poland is preparing to take over the rotating presidency of the European Union on Friday — which Warsaw sees as a chance to improve its image on the European stage.

“The tragedy of Poland is that Poland hasn’t been ruled by Poles since 1939,” Rydzyk said, according to Polish media reports on the speech. He added that, “this isn’t an issue of blood or affiliation,” but that those who rule Poland today “do not love in a Polish way, do not have a Polish heart.”

He also said Poland today is a totalitarian and “uncivilized country.”

Though he did not mention Jews by name, his language echoed that of anti-Semites who claim that Jews hold excessive power in Poland and that Polish Jews are not “real Poles” with Polish interests at heart.

The number of Jews in Poland today is tiny. There were 3.5 million Jews in Poland before World War II, but most were murdered by Germany during the Holocaust and many of those who survived fled anti-Semitic violence and prejudice after the war.

Michael Levi, the president of Beit Warszawa, a Jewish Reform community in Warsaw, said he considered Rydzyk’s language to be anti-Semitic since it comes in the context of his support for far-right politicians and anti-Jewish remarks his radio station has aired. It is “pure hate propaganda” that encourages extremists, Levi said.

Poland also is far from being a totalitarian state. After throwing off communism 22 years ago, Poland has joined NATO and the EU and stands as a model of democratic transition that has even advised the new Tunisian leadership following the recent revolution there.

Rydzyk runs a conservative media empire that includes the Catholic station Radio Maryja and the television station Trwam, both popular among some conservative, nationalist Poles.

He was at the center of a scandal in 2007 when he was allegedly caught on tape suggesting that Jews are greedy and that then-Polish President Lech Kaczynski was subservient to Jewish lobbies.

International Jewish organizations protested his comments at the time, and were also angered when Pope Benedict XVI held a private meeting with Rydzyk that year.

Complete Article HERE!

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Listen to those sinned against

An underlying theme of the shameful story of clerical sex abuse in the Catholic Church has been the neglect of the victims. At last this is changing, and next year’s intense study of the whole issue being organised at the Gregorian University in Rome will mark a watershed in the way this aspect is treated. The proposed symposium has the support of the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal William Levada, and will bring together experts and those with pastoral experience in the field.

So far there are no plans to include victims themselves, which would be a loss. It is not simply that they need to be heard as part of a possible healing process. The marginalisation of victims represented a mindset whose origins lay in traditions of Catholic spirituality that emphasised the avoidance of sin and the recovery of sinners through penance and repentance. That mindset implied that the real tragedy of an act of sexual abuse by a priest lay in the defilement of the priestly office by the commission of an act of unchastity, rather than a grave and possibly permanent psychological injury inflicted upon an innocent and defenceless child.

Those with that mindset, blinded by the lesser evil, could not see the greater. It meant the Church, in response to acts of abuse that came to official notice, gave priority to the treatment of the transgressor and forgot about the one transgressed. This was the very essence of the clericalist deformity of ways of thinking and acting in the Church that prepared the way for all the scandals of cover-up, denial and deception.

By no means everyone in the Church has learned this lesson. The Rosminian order has failed to respond adequately to reve­lations of sexual abuse at one of its institutions in Africa. One priest involved was one of the best-known Catholic priests in London, the late Fr Kit Cunningham of St Etheldreda’s, Ely Place. Before he died, he even returned his MBE to Buckingham Palace because he felt it had been awarded under false pretences. Those whom he had served and who had loved him in London have found it hard to believe he was capable of such crimes: perhaps the knowledge of his own depravity could have added to his sensitivity as a pastor; it almost certainly lay behind his heavy drinking. It was only the surfacing of some of his victims years later, however, that exposed his true history to public view. The Cunningham case confirms what a unique and essential service to the Church victims proffer, yet it is one that the Church has barely recognised.

One key speaker at the Gregorian event will be Baroness (Sheila) Hollins, the former president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists who took part in the pontifical visitation of the Irish Catholic Church. She has played a central role in placing victims at the centre of the Church’s concern. She has said that in her professional experience, men who become child abusers were invariably abused themselves when they were children. This raises the question, urgently calling for further research, into how many priest abusers were themselves abused in childhood (but not necessarily by priests). If this import­ant link in the chain of causality has been missed, that is one more damaging consequence of marginalising the victims.

Complete Article HERE!

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Call To Action Names Leadership Award Winner

Call To Action is pleased to announce that Margaret Mary McBride, RSM will be the recipient of the 2011 Leadership Award at this year’s conference!

Sr. Margaret, an administrator at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, assisted in the decision to save the life of a patient who was pregnant and suffering from pulmonary hypertension.

Medical providers determined that death of both the 27-year-old woman and her 11-week-old fetus would occur unless the pregnancy was terminated.  Sr. Margaret, as part of the hospital’s ethics committee, agreed to the abortion that saved the woman’s life.

Call To Action’s board recognizes Sr. Margaret’s careful work with a complex issue, her courage in a time of censorship and public pressure, and her witness to the need to stand firm in the face of opposition while striving to protect life in all its venues.

Complete Article HERE!

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Jesuits remove popular Maryland priest

A prominent Jesuit priest has been permanently barred from public ministry for allegedly improperly touching a minor in the 1980s.

The Maryland Province of the Jesuits said Tuesday that it removed the Rev. James Glenn Murray from church work after an investigator hired by the Roman Catholic order found evidence supporting the allegation. Murray is living in a monitored Jesuit residence.

The Jesuits sent notice of their action to dioceses and high schools where Murray has served since his 1979 ordination.

Murray is a liturgy specialist who helped draft a 1990s document for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on African-American worship in the Roman Catholic Church.

The priest could not be reached for comment. The religious order did not release Murray’s location, but a spokeswoman said they would try to reach him.

Complete Article HERE!

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Priest pleads not guilty to aiding jailed mobster

A Roman Catholic priest pleaded not guilty today to federal charges he tried to help Outfit hit man Frank Calabrese Sr. spirit a family violin away from the federal government after it had seized the imprisoned mobster’s possessions.

Rev. Eugene Klein

The Rev. Eugene Klein, 62, who wore a black suit and his priest collar, was released on $20,000 bond after he made his initial appearance in federal court in Chicago following the charges earlier this month.

After court, Klein’s lawyer ridiculed the government case as “preposterous.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Methodist Clergy Risk Careers To Defy Gay Marriage Ban

A growing number of pastors in the United Methodist Church say they’re no longer willing to obey a church rule that prohibits them from officiating at same-sex marriages, despite the potential threat of being disciplined or dismissed from the church.

In some parts of the U.S., Methodist pastors have been marrying same-sex couples or conducting blessing ceremonies for same-sex unions for years with little fanfare and no backlash from the denomination. Calls to overturn the rule have become increasingly vocal in recent weeks, ratcheting up the pressure for the Methodist church to join other mainline Protestant denominations that have become more accepting of openly gay leaders.

Complete Article HERE!

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Archbishop’s Theology is Wearing No Clothes

Many readers of Archbishop Timothy Dolan’s blog think there is layer upon layer of deep theological thinking about natural law, church-state relations, and the like. I am here to assure such well-meaning colleagues that nothing of the sort lurks in these lines.

As New York State moves closer and closer to approving same-sex marriage, Dolan becomes, as Peter Montgomery points out, increasingly histrionic unto hysterical. His remarkable blog entry, “The True Meaning of Marriage,” will endure as the intellectual last wag of the dog’s tail on a question that has long been solved in the minds of many Catholics.

Timothy Dolan apparently subscribes to the Sarah Palin School of Research: saying it makes it so. Showing zero familiarity with the ample body of evidence that marriage is a changing institution, he pronounces the “undeniable truth” about what marriage means. One may not like that marriage has changed over time, and one may not think it ought to change over time, but these proclivities are not license to pass over the historical reality before us. Everyone understands and expects disagreement, but no one is fooled by truth claims that do not hold water.

Complete Article HERE!

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Bishops Won’t Focus on Abuse Policies

Despite recent cases in which Roman Catholic bishops failed to report or suspend priests accused of child sexual abuse, the bishops head into a meeting in Seattle on Wednesday proposing no significant revisions to the abuse prevention policies they passed in 2002 at the height of the scandal.

Bishop Robert W. Finn

The bishops had promised that they would take a hard look at their policies in light of new accusations in Philadelphia and Kansas City, Mo., that have shaken many Catholics, not just in those dioceses, but across the country as well. The incidents have led some Catholics to question whether bishops are complying with their own policies, and whether there is any accountability for bishops who do not.

In the diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Bishop Robert W. Finn admitted last month that he allowed a priest who had taken pornographic pictures of parish girls to continue celebrating Mass and having access to children.

Complete Article HERE!

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Pope fires bishop who backed ordaining women

An Australian bishop has been fired by Pope Benedict XVI after suggesting the church consider ordaining women and married men.
Image: Bishop William Morris

William Morris (foreground), Catholic Bishop of the vast Queensland diocese of Toowoomba since 1993, was “removed from pastoral care,” an unusually strong move  by the Vatican.Catholic Diocese of Toowoomba via AFP – Getty Images file

An Australian bishop who was fired by Pope Benedict XVI after suggesting the church consider ordaining women and married men defended his actions on Tuesday and accused the Vatican of becoming increasingly authoritarian.

Community members rallied around Bishop William Morris of the Toowoomba diocese, west of Brisbane, and eight priests signed a letter of support for the popular parish leader, calling his removal disrespectful.

The Vatican confirmed in a statement Monday that Morris had been “removed from pastoral care,” an unusually strong move by Vatican standards. Generally, church leaders who are being ousted are asked to resign, with the Vatican later announcing the pope has accepted their resignations.

Morris said he was removed because of a letter he wrote to his parish in 2006 in which he suggested that the church could help solve the problem of priest shortages by considering ordaining women and married men.

Benedict, as did his just-beatified predecessor, John Paul II, has staunchly upheld Vatican teaching that only celibate men can be ordained in the Roman Catholic church, although married men in the Latin rite church loyal to the pontiff can become priests.

‘Local bishops have been sidelined’
On Tuesday, Morris said he hadn’t meant to advocate the idea that women and married men should be priests, but simply wanted the church to keep an open mind on the matter. In an open letter to his parish this weekend, Morris said a handful of people unhappy with his leadership used his 2006 comments as a basis for complaint to the Vatican, which then launched an investigation.

Although not angry over his removal, Morris said he was “sad” the Vatican had not given him or his parishioners a voice in the matter.

“There’s a creeping centralism in the church at the moment that everything is going to centralization and there’s a creeping authoritarianism,” he told Australian Broadcasting Corp. “I think in many ways local bishops have been sidelined.”

Eight priests from the Toowoomba diocese issued a statement of support for Morris, calling his leadership “constructive, informed and life-giving.” Catholics in the Toowoomba area planned to hold a candelight vigil in his honor later Tuesday.

“In our view, Bishop Morris has not been treated fairly or respectfully,” the priests’ statement said. “We find his removal profoundly disheartening.”

The auxiliary bishop of Brisbane, Brian Finnigan, was asked to oversee the Toowoomba diocese while a permanent replacement is found for Morris, who had been Toowoomba’s bishop since 1993.

Finnigan also issued a statement praising Morris’ service, particularly his handling of a sexual abuse case in which students at a Toowoomba Catholic school were assaulted by a teacher. Morris quickly accepted legal liability for the abuse, sparing the victims a court trial.

“The good work that Bishop Morris has done to address the needs of the victims will continue into the future,” Finnigan said.

Complete Article HERE!