Human Rights – Page 76 – Hear Our Voices

November 19, 2011

Pope in Africa condemns graft, labels AIDS an ethical issue

Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday labelled AIDS a mainly ethical problem and condemned corruption as he laid out a vision for his church’s future in Africa on his second visit to the continent.

Benedict signed off on a 135-page roadmap for the Roman Catholic Church in Africa during his trip to Benin, a voodoo heartland and Catholic bastion where thousands have greeted him joyously since his arrival on Friday.

The document — an apostolic exhortation called “The Pledge for Africa” containing conclusions from a 2009 synod of African bishops — includes peace, reconciliation and justice as its main message.

It calls for good governance, the abolition of the death penalty and denounces abuses, particularly against women and children, while describing AIDS as a mainly ethical problem that requires a medical response.

Changes in behaviour are needed to combat the disease, including sexual abstinence and rejection of promiscuity, it adds.

“The problem of AIDS in particular clearly calls for a medical and a pharmaceutical response,” it says. “This is not enough however. The problem goes deeper. Above all, it is an ethical problem.”

The Catholic Church’s position on AIDS and the use of condoms has long been controversial and carefully scrutinised, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, home to nearly 70 percent of the world’s HIV cases.

The pope’s comments on his first African trip to Cameroon and Angola in 2009 caused a global outcry when he suggested condom distribution aggravated the AIDS problem.

He has since seemed to ease that stance, saying in a book published last year that condom use is acceptable “in certain cases,” notably to reduce the risk of HIV infection.

Speaking at the basilica in the city of Ouidah, where he signed the document, Benedict addressed the themes of peace, reconciliation and justice contained in the roadmap.

“These are important issues for the world in general, but they take on a particular urgency in Africa,” said the 84-year-old pontiff.
“We need but recall the tensions, the acts of violence, the wars, the injustices and abuses of all sorts, new and old, which have marked this year.”

Benedict earlier on Saturday denounced corruption, warning it could lead to violent upheaval, and called on African leaders not to rob citizens of hope.
“At this time, there are too many scandals and injustices, too much corruption and greed, too many errors and lies, too much violence which leads to misery and to death,” he said in a speech at Benin’s presidential palace.

“These ills certainly afflict your continent, but they also afflict the rest of the world. Every people wishes to understand the political and economic choices which are made in its name. They perceive manipulation and their revenge is sometimes violent.”

He added later in the speech before politicians, religious leaders and diplomats: “From this place, I launch an appeal to all political and economic leaders of African countries and the rest of the world.

“Do not deprive your peoples of hope! Do not cut them off from their future by mutilating their present!”

He also seemed to make reference to uprisings in the Arab world and spoke of the independence of South Sudan, Africa’s newest nation.
“During recent months, many peoples have manifested their desire for liberty, their need for material security, and their wish to live in harmony according to their different ethnic groups and religions,” he said.

“Indeed, a new state has been born on your continent. Many conflicts have originated in man’s blindness, in his will to power and in political and economic interests which mock the dignity of people and of nature. Human beings aspire to liberty.”

The audience for the speech in the economic capital Cotonou included voodoo chiefs who also heard the pontiff call for inter-religious dialogue to take place without improper fusion of beliefs. Catholicism and voodoo beliefs often mix in Benin.

Benedict is on a three-day trip to the country that ends on Sunday.

Complete Article HERE!

November 15, 2011

The Catholic Church and Sexuality: If Only the Hierarchs Would Listen and learn

COMMENTARY — John Falcone

Few Roman Catholic seminaries can boast an active and vibrant GLBT student organization. Boston College’s School of Theology and Ministry is one. Since April 2011, the “GIFTS” group (“G/L/B/T Inclusive Fellowship of Theology Students”) has planned and hosted prayer services for the school community. We’ve celebrated the long tradition of believers who have lived their Catholicism through same-sex love, non-traditional gender roles and the quest for social justice. We have also asked some difficult questions: How can GLBT lay people with a proven calling to ministry best serve the Catholic Church? What is our responsibility to a clergy and leadership which is often homophobic and paternalistic, and profoundly conflicted about sex?

Recently, four GIFTS members and I drove to Fairfield University in Connecticut for “The Care of Souls: Sexual Diversity, Celibacy and Ministry” — the last of this autumn’s “More than a Monologue” series on sexuality and the Catholic Church. We went to hear Rev. Donald Cozzens, a respected researcher on the Catholic priesthood and a former seminary president; Mark Jordan, a queer theologian and ethicist at Harvard Divinity School and Jeannine Gramick, a Catholic nun who was silenced by the Vatican for her work with lesbians and gays. We found four themes particularly compelling: the struggles of a closeted clergy, the dynamics of Catholic patriarchy, the troubling theology of priestly vocation and the powerful Christian witness offered by lesbian nuns.

For Cozzens, the Vatican’s prohibition of gay men entering the priesthood has worked much like the (now defunct) policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Gay men have not left the priesthood (Cozzens estimates they make up 30-50 percent of US priests), and they also continue to enter — either by lying about their orientation, or by keeping it under wraps at the direction of seminary directors. Yet gay priests must steer firmly clear of their sexual identity in their preaching and public personas. As GIFTS member Oliver Goodrich asked, “How can so many priests, who preach a gospel of liberation and authenticity, lead such inauthentic lives?”

Jordan was more provocative. In a church that defines “the few and the proud” as its straight male celibate clergy, power gets tangled with maleness. But the clergy’s desire for power animates an unseemly dance of dominance, submission and career advancement. Within all-male hierarchical settings, this can smack of sado-masochist pleasures. Accepting gay men into seminary, or acknowledging same-sex love, shines an unwelcome light on these homoerotic dynamics. To keep this psychology intact and in shadow, the hierarchy must keep gay men (and straight women) out.

The notion that ritual and organizational leadership requires abstinence from sexual love is another problem for Catholic ministry. For almost 2000 years, Catholic monks and nuns have accepted celibacy as a form of spiritual practice. For 1100 years, Catholic priests could marry and raise children. Today, Church officials insist that everyone called to the priesthood automatically receives the “grace” (or spiritual power) to live a celibate life. Why must these two be connected? As Jocelyn Collen, another GIFTS member, remarked, “Grace is not given to someone on command. No one — not even the Vatican — can direct the grace of God.”

Gramick’s reflections were perhaps the most hopeful. Drawing from decades of work with lesbian nuns, she described a non-patriarchal model of ministry in which warm and affirming female friendships support lives of celibacy, service and prayer. For these nuns, the experience of sexual orientation is about the longing for intimacy, the romantic desires that shape personality and interpersonal life. This makes profound psychological sense. Lesbian and gay celibates need intimate same-sex friendships; in the same way, straight men called to celibacy need warm and affirming relationships with women. Without such intimate friendships, frustrations multiply, boundaries decay and ministers tragically act out.

At the end of the day, we drove back to Boston through the worst October snowstorm in years, and a certain chill still remains. I’ve co-written this article with another GIFTS student, whose goal is to teach in a Catholic school. The insights of this minister-in-training are all over this article. But to protect his/her future employment, I cannot disclose a name. Like the prayers that GIFTS has written, and the GLBT saints that we’ve recalled, the insights of marginalized Catholics speak of Spirit, courage and truth. Our hierarchs should listen and learn.

Complete Article HERE!

November 14, 2011

For U.S. bishops, economic justice isn’t on the agenda

Catholic leaders, meeting in Baltimore this week, fail to put society’s main problems front and center

At a time of staggering poverty, rampant unemployment and growing income inequality, Catholic bishops will gather for a national meeting in Baltimore today and remain largely silent about these profound moral issues. A recent Catholic News Service headline about the meeting — “Bishops’ agenda more devoted to internal matters than societal ills” — is a disappointing snapshot for a church that has long been a powerful voice for economic justice.

The U.S. bishops’ relative silence contrasts with a recent Vatican document that urges stronger regulation of the financial sector and a more just distribution of wealth. Urging reforms to the left of even the most liberal Democrat in Congress, the Vatican spoke in stark terms about a global financial system that is unhinged from moral values. It’s a thoughtful critique of free-market fundamentalism, in keeping with centuries of Catholic teaching as articulated by several popes. A Vatican cardinal even acknowledged that the “basic sentiment” behind the Occupy Wall Street movement aligns with Catholic values on the need for ethical corporate practices and humane financial systems.

Twenty-five years ago this month, Catholic bishops were anything but quiet. They helped drive attention to poor and working families with a landmark pastoral letter, “Economic Justice for All,” that offered a subtle but sober critique of the Reagan administration’s embrace of tax cuts for the rich and draconian cuts to government protections for the poor. The bishops spoke not as policymakers but as moral leaders in touch with the needs of the unemployed and concerned about conservative political leaders’ efforts to strip workers of basic union rights. As a longtime staff member at the U.S. bishops’ conference, I was so proud of the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago and his colleagues, who insisted that a Catholic vision for human dignity did not stop with concern for the unborn but must include a commitment to economic fairness, peace, care for the environment and opposition to the death penalty.

Where are the bishops’ priorities today? In recent years, church leaders have opposed historic health care reform, lashed out at the University of Notre Dame for inviting President Barack Obama to give a commencement address, and publicly chastised pro-choice Catholic politicians even as they give a pass to Catholic lawmakers who push economic policies antithetical to Catholic teaching about the common good. The bishops’ decades of advocacy for comprehensive health care took a detour last year when they opposed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act because of concerns it would provide taxpayer funding of abortion — a flawed policy analysis, according to independent experts, some pro-life lawmakers and even the Catholic Health Association.

In recent weeks, the bishops have augmented their campaign against same-sex marriage, appointing a “defense of marriage specialist” to a top position at the U.S. bishops’ conference, and challenged the Obama administration to create a stronger exemption for Catholic organizations that oppose insurance coverage of contraception.

These are important issues, properly addressed by the bishops. However, at a time of economic crisis and growing anti-government ideology embodied by the tea party, Catholic bishops would do well to once again offer a compelling moral response to radical individualism and unbridled capitalism.

Most Americans probably don’t know that Catholic bishops helped lay the groundwork for the New Deal as far back as 1919, when they advocated for a minimum wage and insurance for the elderly, disabled and unemployed. Much of this proud legacy is under threat today from lawmakers, including prominent Catholics like House Speaker John Boehner and Rep. Paul Ryan, who think tax breaks for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans are more important than funding nutrition programs for low-income women and children.

The U.S. bishops deserve credit for their participation in an interfaith coalition defending government safety-net programs that save lives and provide a measure of dignity to the most vulnerable. Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the bishops’ conference, was right to recently urge pastors to address poverty from the pulpit. And the bishops’ national anti-poverty initiative, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, is a vital resource that helps community-based organizations empower those living on the margins of society. But I fear the church’s revered social justice witness is being crowded out by divisive culture-war battles at a time when Americans need a stronger moral message about the dignity of work and economic justice for all.

A new generation of bishops must find their voice.

Complete Article HERE!

November 14, 2011November 14, 2011

I’m a Christian, and the Catholic church doesn’t speak for me

COMMENTARY — John Aravosis

I’m getting increasingly fed up with the Catholic church following the lead of the religious right in claiming that a) they’re oppressed, and b) they speak for all Christianity. No you’re not, and no don’t.

I’ll get to the first part later, but let’s start with this notion that the Catholic church speaks for all Christians. I am not a Catholic, yet still, I’m a Christian. Magic! No, not really. Lots of us are Christians and not Catholic, and that’s okay. And lots of us are Americans and not Christians, and even that is okay. Of course, the Catholic church often doesn’t even speak for Catholics, certainly not American Catholics (and I suspect the church leadership’s soft spot for enabling pedophiles isn’t much appreciated by most of the non-American Catholics either).

What has the Catholic church in such an uproar of late is America’s slow but steady march towards civil rights and liberty for all. You see, the Catholic church, like the evangelical far right, believes that common decency is a zero sum game. They actually believe that recognizing the civil rights of all Americans somehow takes something away from the Catholic church – no, strike that, they claim that America’s civil rights laws somehow oppress the religious liberty of Christians, not Catholics, but Christians.

This, in spite of the fact that the Catholic church is exempt from new civil rights laws covering gays, for example, so the church is free to practice as much bigotry and discrimination as it wishes to in the name of Christ. But that’s not enough. The Catholic church thinks that it’s not entirely free unless you’re note entirely free. It’s not enough for them to demand their own followers practice bigotry, they, like the Mormon leadership, or the evangelical far right, aren’t content unless they’re forcing everyone, even those of other faiths or no faith, to live under their rules.

So now the Catholic church is throwing a hissy fit over gay marriages (even though, again, they’re exempt) and state laws governing contraceptives. You see, the Catholic church is happy to feed at the government teat by accepting over $2.8 billion a year from the government at all levels. Yes, you read that right. Sixty-seven percent of Catholic Charities $4.27 billion in annual revenue comes from the government.

Understandably, the Catholic church would prefer that American taxpayers fund them to the tune of over two billion dollars a year and not attach any strings, such as not permitting Catholic charities to discriminate in their charity work against those very Americans who are paying 67% of Catholic charities’ bills. Heck, I’d love two billion a year with no strings attached, who wouldn’t? That’s why Catholic Charities stopped helping a segment of the poor and disadvantaged in Washington, DC and in Illinois – in both states they’re no longer providing foster care and adoption services to needy children – because Catholic Charities couldn’t stand the fact that local laws required them to use state tax dollars in a non-discriminatory manner. So rather than treat all Americans fairly – rather than help needy children – Catholic Charities decided to just pull the plug and stop helping the needy.

Oh, and saw a quick aside, it’s interesting that Catholic Charities is trying to claim that it’s still the Catholic Church, so civil rights laws shouldn’t apply to it. Really? The American taxpayer is funding the Catholic Church’s proselytizing to the tune of $2.8 billion a year? I’m a bit confused about that one. I didn’t think we funded any faith. So how is it that the Catholic church is now claiming that its charity work is somehow its faith, when we’d never fund its proselytizing in the first place?

What’s really going on is that the Catholic Church’s anti-gay animus is deemed more important than the needs of children. (Then again, the Catholic Church doesn’t exactly have a stellar record of late when it comes to giving a lick about the needs of children.)

And now the Catholic Church is becoming increasingly hysterical, screaming about how America is quickly becoming unfriendly territory for Christians (which certainly begs the question of when America will finally have a Christian president, or elect a Christian to Congress).

Maybe, just maybe, this debate isn’t about religion at all. After all, it doesn’t quite make sense, all this talk about America – which is run and ruled by Christians for the most part, and has been for over two hundred years, and whose government regularly nods towards Christianity far more than most modern democracies – becoming “anti-Christian.” So what’s really going on?

Maybe, just maybe, the Catholic Church is more worried about the $2.8 billion it gets every year from the American government (at all levels) than it is about some nonsensical notion of religious freedom when the Catholic church is exempt from every civil rights law its complaining about. Maybe, just maybe, this is all about money, and not about religious freedom at all.

PS I’ve asked it before and I’ll ask it again: What are bigots like this doing on the board of the supposedly progressive Coalition on Human Needs? You have to wonder if CHN would have racist or anti-Semitic organizations on its board. No, you don’t wonder – we all know they wouldn’t. But somehow when the prejudice is against gays and lesbians, some of our top “liberal” organizations find it in their hearts to look the other way.

Complete Article <big>HERE</big>!

November 11, 2011

It’s Time to Occupy the Catholic Church

COMMENTARY

Jeff Ward: Chicago Cardinal George just can’t seem to get it right!

As I was pondering the positive effects of the Occupy Wall Street protests, another local news story caught my eye. The two events may appear to be disparate, but if you consider some interesting parallels, I think they actually complement each other quite well.

Essentially what I’m saying is, I think it’s time for an “Occupy the Catholic Church” movement.

Of course, whenever I broach this touchy subject, all kinds of cross-wearing folk come out of the woodwork to accuse me of Catholic bashing and being anti-church. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Let’s start with those nine years (including kindergarten) at St. Nick’s. Armed with that education, I waltzed into all honors classes at Evanston Township High school. I was an altar boy, a church reader and volunteered on numerous projects. I still keep in touch with some of the nuns, teachers and priests from that time.

The Jesuits at Loyola University of Chicago put anything the Ivy League can offer to shame. And three of my most prized possessions include two quotes done in calligraphy by one of those nuns, and a cross made out of wood from an old St. Nick’s pew.

Though the thought didn’t come to me in exactly that fashion, at some point I began ascribing to Sting’s notion that, “Men go crazy in congregations, but they get better one by one.”

But despite declaring myself an official ex-Catholic, in no way does that mean I’m minimizing or disowning that heritage. On the contrary—I’m proud of it!

That said, let’s move on to our local news story.

Stopping just short of excommunication, Chicago Cardinal Francis George and his fellow bishops indignantly blasted Gov. Pat Quinn, a Catholic, for presenting a pro-choice PAC leadership award. They said, by “aligning” himself with that group, he was “supporting the legal right to kill children in their mothers’ wombs.”

My first thought was, “When will the church apply that same kind of zero-tolerance religious zeal to themselves?” But instead of going down that road, let’s just move on.

So my second thought was, “Isn’t this man throwing the first stone, the same man who, in the face of a mounting church child-sex-abuse scandal, allowed The Rev. Daniel McCormack to prey on young boys for 14 long years?”

In 1992, two men and one minor accused McCormack of abusing them while he was in the seminary. The subsequent letter placed in McCormack’s file simply “disappeared.”

In 1999, an assistant principal informed the archdiocese that the priest had abused a fourth-grade boy. Though she delivered that letter herself, the archdiocese said they never received it.

In 2003, a woman called the archdiocese to report her grandson was being molested by McCormack. Violating the very policies set forth by the cardinal himself, the archdiocese refused to call the police.

After McCormack was first arrested in August 2005, an independent review board created by the cardinal directed him to remove McCormack from the priesthood. He did not.

Finally, in 2006, 19 long years after that first case of abuse, McCormack was arrested when another parent complained to another principal who had actually had the good sense to go to the police.

And how did the church punish George for his complicit failure to protect children? They named him president of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops. If it were you or me, we’d be sitting in a jail cell.

But back to the present. After the cardinal trashed the governor, it turns out the award wasn’t going to any kind of abortionist, it was being presented to “pre-eminent” rape-victim advocate Jennie Goodman, herself a rape victim at the age of 18.

Goodman, who’s neither had nor encouraged as much as one abortion, a woman who could have justifiably issued a scathing counterattack on the Catholic Church, simply replied, “It hurts for all those people who have been raped.”

That’s certainly a far cry from George’s statement attacking her because the governor was “rewarding those deemed most successful in this terrible work.”

It kind of makes you wonder whether George or Goodman should be the cardinal.

When he finally understood the magnitude of his mistake, just what did the cardinal do? It certainly wasn’t anything as rash as issuing an apology. He stoically claimed he “regrets” that Goodman felt attacked and added, had he been aware of her story, “We may have found another occasion to say something about the governor.”

Ah, yes! Being a Catholic cardinal or bishop means never having to be aware of anything.

Aren’t these the same religious leaders who commissioned the John Jay Report, which blamed the sex-abuse scandal on the ’60s counterculture, the rise of feminism and the tolerance of homosexuality? Let’s not forget that document also claimed priests were only pedophiles if they molested someone under 10 years of age.

Isn’t this the same church that hasn’t punished one bishop or cardinal for their role in a worldwide child-sex-abuse cover-up?

And then Cardinal George attacks a rape-victim advocate. Talk about throwing the first stone …

My first thought was to call on Catholics everywhere to follow my lead and leave a church that so dismally falls short of the expectations they place upon their own flock. But considering all the good the Catholic Church does, I believe that would be the equivalent of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

And then I remembered the fine example being set by the “Occupy” protestors. In spite of this country’s many faults, they’re not abandoning it, they’re reminding our leaders what made it so great in the first place.

So, I’ve decided to issue this challenge instead. Catholics! Take back your church.

Complete Article HERE!