Belgian Catholics urge bishops to empower laymen to counter priest shortage
Belgian Catholics have petitioned their bishops for reforms including ordaining women and married men and allowing laymen to lead church services as ways to counter their growing shortage of priests. The petition, handed over on Thursday, represented yet another challenge to the Belgian Church, deeply shaken by revelations of clerical sexual abuse that prompted police to raid its offices across the country for evidence of crimes last month.
The 8,235 signatories in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking half of the bilingual country, included politicians and intellectuals as well as about a 10th of all Flemish priests, deacons and lay Church workers. Their reform call echoes similar initiatives in Austria, Germany and Ireland. “The concerns and laments of Flemish believers exist in most if not all Western European countries,” the group Kerkenwerk (Work of the Churches) said in a statement about the petition entitled “Believers have their say”.
A steep decline in vocations in recent decades has left the Catholic Church in many Western countries with a mostly aged clergy and few young priests available to replace them. The Church’s response has been to close little-used churches and merge small parishes into larger ones, creating a regional staff of priests who minister to scattered congregations. These overworked priests cannot always visit villages every week to celebrate Sunday Mass or lead the baptisms, funerals and other ceremonies that used to be a regular part of parish life.
The Vatican has refused to scrap clerical celibacy or ordain women. Under Pope Benedict, it has begun limiting the role of lay people in the liturgy, especially women and girls, in the hope this will make the priesthood more attractive to young men.
“We do not understand why leadership of our local communities (for example, parishes) is not entrusted to a man or a woman, married or unmarried, employee or volunteer who has received the necessary training,” the petition declared. “We do not understand why these fellow believers should not preside at Sunday services,” it said, adding that lay people should be able to preach and distribute Communion and divorced and remarried people should be readmitted to the Eucharist.
“We also argue that both married men and women should be admitted to the priesthood within the shortest time. We believers now need them desperately,” it concluded. Brussels Archbishop André-Joseph Léonard, head of the Belgian bishops conference, accepted the petition along with the Flemish bishops and thanked the group for its “quite critical but still churchly initiative”.
The group said its petition “is not an end, but only a beginning”. It said it wanted to work with the bishops to solve problems that increasingly frustrate practising Catholics. Commenting on the petition, the Flemish Catholic weekly Tertio wrote that the priest shortage threatened the future of the Catholic faith. “Not only the institutions are in crisis – the ground on which they’ve been built is sinking away under our feet,” it wrote this week.
UK Christian leaders warn religion is being pushed out of public life
They are recited at the beginning of Britain’s parliamentary sessions and many school assemblies, but Christian leaders fear prayers could be driven from public life after a court ruled that a council had acted unlawfully by allowing them at meetings.
Although Britain has increasingly become a secular society, it is still a mostly Christian nation, and the Church of England is the established or state church, with the monarch as its supreme governor. But an atheist ex-councillor, backed by the National Secular Society (NSS), on Friday won a High Court judicial review in London, effectively nibbling away at the Church’s influence. It is the latest legal defeat for Christians in the High Court, and came on the same day a religious couple lost their appeal against turning away a gay couple from their Bed and Breakfast guesthouse.
“I’ve no doubt at all that the agenda of the National Secular Society is inch-by-inch to drive religion out of the public sphere,” the Church of England’s Bishop of Exeter, Michael Langrish, told BBC television. “If they get their way it will have enormous implications for things such as prayers in parliament, the Remembrance Day, the Jubilee celebrations (marking the 60-year reign of Queen Elizabeth) and even the singing of the national anthem.”
Government minister Eric Pickles entered the fray by describing the council ruling as “surprising and disappointing”.
“We are a Christian country, with an established Church in England, governed by the Queen,” he said in a statement. “Christianity plays an important part in the culture, heritage and fabric of our nation. The right to worship is a fundamental and hard-fought British liberty.”
The case was won on a point relating to the statutory construction of local government legislation, the Press Association reported, and could apply to the formal meetings of all councils in England and Wales. Prayers could be said as long as councillors were not formally summoned to attend though, the judge ruled.
“Acts of worship in council meetings are key to the separation of religion from politics,” Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society (NSS), said. “This underlines the need for shared civic spaces to be secular and available to all, believers and non-believers alike, on an equal basis.”
Japanese Zen monk fights Fukushima’s invisible demon: radiation
On the snowy fringes of Japan’s Fukushima city, now notorious as a byword for nuclear crisis, Zen monk Koyu Abe offers prayers for the souls of thousands left dead or missing after the earthquake and tsunami nearly one year ago.
But away from the ceremonial drums and the incense swirling around the Joenji temple altar, Abe has undertaken another task, no less harrowing — to search out radioactive “hot spots” and clean them up, storing irradiated earth on temple grounds.
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, some 50 km (31 miles) away, suffered a series of explosions and meltdowns after the massive earthquake and tsunami last March 11, setting off the world’s worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in 1986 and forcing 80,000 people from their homes.
Radiation, carried on winds and by snow, spread far beyond the 20 km (12 miles) evacuation zone around the plant, nestling in hot spots across the region and contaminating the ground in what remains a largely agricultural region.
Many of those who fled have no idea when, if ever, they can return to land held by their families for generations.
Read the full story by Ruairidh Villar and Yuriko Nakao here. . Follow all posts on Twitter @ RTRFaithWorld
Catholic Church launches Internet project to help clergy fight pedophiles
Roman Catholic Church leaders unveiled an Internet teaching project on Thursday to help clergy around the world root out pedophiles in their ranks and protect children from potential abusers.
Ending a four-day conference on child abuse in Rome, Father Francois-Xavier Dumortier said the 1.2 million euro ($1.60 million) project would provide multilingual advice and access to research on pedophilia and how to respond to the problem.
“It will help to develop a culture of listening…a different face to the culture of silence,” said Dumortier, who is rector at the Pontifical Gregorian University where the conference was held.
An association for victims of abuse, while not commenting directly on the Internet project, has dismissed the conference as “window dressing” and said the Vatican should publish its documentation on abuse and hand it over to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague.
Victims’ groups for years have accused some bishops in the Church of preferring silence and cover-up to coming clean on the scandal, which has darkened the image of the Church around the world.
via Catholic leaders to use Internet against pedophiles | Reuters.
Slideshow: Drive-thru funeral parlor in California
The Robert L. Adams drive-through funeral parlor, in business since 1974, and is thought to be the only drive-through funeral home in southern California, according to office manager Denise Knowles-Bragg. Knowles-Bragg said the parlor offers a convenient alternative to older people who find it hard to walk, those who want to make a quick stop during the lunch hour, and the families of well-known deceased people who expect many visitors.
Click here for the full slideshow by Lucy Nicholson.
Malaysia arrests fugitive Saudi blogger over his Prophet Mohammad tweets
Malaysian police have arrested a Saudi Arabian columnist who fled his country after making comments on Twitter deemed insulting to the Prophet Mohammad, prompting a surge of online outrage and calls for his execution. “It is confirmed that Malaysian police have detained the Saudi writer. This arrest was part of an Interpol operation which the Malaysian police were a part of,” a police spokesman told Reuters on Friday.
He gave no further details and would not comment on whether the writer, Hamza Kashgari, would be extradited to Saudi Arabia, where some Islamic clerics have called for him to be put to death for his comments.
Malaysia is a majority Muslim country with a close affinity with many Middle Eastern nations through their shared religion. The Southeast Asian nation is also a U.S. ally and a leading global voice for moderate Islam, meaning that any decision to extradite Kashgari certain to be controversial. Blasphemy is a crime punishable by execution under oil-rich Saudi Arabia’s strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law. It is not a capital crime in Malaysia.
The 23-year-old Kashgari reportedly posted the comments on his Twitter feed to mark the Prophet Mohammad’s birthday on Saturday, drawing thousands of outraged comments on Twitter and other social networking sites.
Reuters could not verify Kashgari’s comments because he later deleted them, but media reported that one them reflected his contradictory views of the Prophet.
Kashgari later said in an interview that he was being made a “scapegoat for a larger conflict” over his comments. “I view my actions as part of a process toward freedom,” Kashgari was quoted as saying in the interview with the Daily Beast website. “I was demanding my right to practice the most basic human rights – freedom of expression and thought – so nothing was done in vain.”
via Malaysia arrests Saudi blogger over Prophet Mohammad tweets | Reuters.
U.S. Muslim pleads guilty to threatening TV show over Prophet Mohammad image
A Muslim convert from New York pleaded guilty on Thursday for his role in threatening the writers of the satirical “South Park” television show for their depiction of the Prophet Mohammad and to other criminal charges, the U.S. Justice Department said. It said Jesse Curtis Morton, who is also known as Younus Abdullah Muhammed, admitted his guilt at a federal court hearing in Alexandria, Virginia. He ran a website that encouraged Muslims to engage in violence against enemies of Islam.
Morton pleaded guilty to making threatening communications, using the Internet to put others in fear and using his position as leader of the Revolution Muslim organization’s Internet sites to conspire to commit murder. He worked on website postings with Zachary Chesser, a Virginia man who pleaded guilty in October 2010 to sending threatening communications to the writers of the comedy show and to other charges.
Morton, 33, was arrested in Rabat, Morocco, last year and brought back to the United States. He faces up to 15 years in prison when sentenced on May 18.
Morton admitted that he aided Chesser in taking repeated steps in April 2010 to encourage violent extremists to attack the South Park writers for the episode on the cable channel Comedy Central that featured Mohammad in a bear suit.
Most Muslims consider any depiction of the founder of Islam as offensive. Morton and Chesser posted where the writers resided and encouraged online readers to “pay them a visit,” according to court documents.
Read the full story here. . Follow all posts on Twitter @ RTRFaithWorld
Islamist MPs clash in Egypt’s parliament over call to prayer during session
The Islamist speaker in Egypt’s parliament has reprimanded a hardline Salafi for reciting the call to prayer during a legislative session, telling him “you are no more of a Muslim than I am”. In an angry exchange broadcast on live TV, parliament speaker and Muslim Brotherhood member Saad al-Katatni told Mamdouh Ismail he had violated protocol by interrupting the session to recite the call for afternoon prayer.
The argument laid bare tensions among the Islamist groups that won 70 percent of the seats in the first parliament elected since Hosni Mubarak was ousted from power a year ago. Belonging to a school of Islamist thought calling for a strict application of Islamic law, the Salafis have emerged as a major rival to the long-established Brotherhood in the last year. The Muslim Brotherhood has the biggest parliamentary bloc.
“There is a mosque where you can make the call to prayer. This chamber is for discussion,” Katatni shouted on Tuesday at Ismail, a member of the Asala Party, one of the smaller Salafi groups represented in the new parliament.
The biggest Salafi group is the Nour Party, which won over a fifth of the seats, making it the second largest force in the chamber after the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, which won more than 43 percent.
Katatni accused Ismail of grandstanding. “You are a respected lawyer Mr. Mamdouh. Do you need a media show? Who are you addressing?” he said to applause from sympathetic MPs.
Ismail’s visibly angry response was not audible in the broadcast. The bearded fundamentalist caused controversy in parliament last month during his swearing in by adding the words “so long as it does not oppose God’s law” to the standard oath.
Iran’s President Ahmadinejad wants Pope Benedict to visit Tehran
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would like Pope Benedict to visit Iran, Tehran’s ambassador to the Vatican has said.
“If the pope decides to come, we will welcome him in an excellent way, and, as far as the government is concerned, we will welcome him with enthusiasm,” Ali Akbar Naseri told reporters on Wednesday. Benedict has a standing invitation to visit the Islamic Republic but has so far not accepted.
The Vatican has criticized Ahmadinejad for calling for Israel to be wiped off the map. The pontiff has repeatedly encouraged dialogue to resolve differences over Iran’s disputed nuclear program, which the West says is aimed at making nuclear bombs. Tehran denies that.
via Ahmadinejad wants pope to visit Iran.
Obama’s birth-control rule stokes U.S. election-year fight
The top Republican in the U.S. Congress have denounced President Barack Obama’s new rule on contraceptives as an assault on “religious freedom” and vowed to overturn it, as the White House sought to prevent the issue from becoming an election-year liability. Fanning a political firestorm, House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner joined an outcry from religious leaders and social conservatives on Wednesday over a requirement that health insurance plans, including those at Catholic hospitals, charities and universities, offer birth control to women.
Seeking to ease a controversy that has roiled the 2012 presidential race, White House spokesman Jay Carney appeared to leave the door open to compromise. He said Obama was sensitive to religious beliefs on contraception and hoped to find a way to implement the rule that can “allay some of the concerns.” But Obama, at a meeting with Senate Democrats, reaffirmed his decision and was “not equivocating,” Senator Frank Lautenberg, who attended the closed-door session, told Reuters.
Republicans have seized upon the issue, seeing a chance to paint Obama as anti-religion and put him on the defensive at a time when signs of economic improvement appear to have energized his re-election bid.
The White House, caught off-guard by the fury of the response and now trying to calm objections, accused the Republicans of trying to make “political hay” out of the issue. It said it had begun outside discussions but gave no immediate sign of what, if any, concessions it might make.
Read the full story by Thomas Ferraro and Matt Spetalnick here. . Follow all posts on Twitter @ RTRFaithWorld
Efficient: let people that want contraception pay for it directly. If insurance companies offer a rider for contraception then let people pay for it. Those working for religious organization can buy the rider as personal decision. Religious organizations don’t get involved. Problem solved.
Inefficient: Make everyone pay premiums that include contraception (adds overhead; an extra layer of delay in payment and those that don’t need it or want it pay).
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