c. 2008 Religion News Service

Cincinnati archbishop bans trips to `Bodies’ exhibit

(RNS) The Roman Catholic archbishop of Cincinnati has barred Catholic schools from visiting a controversial science exhibit on the human body, saying that it “fails to respect the persons involved.”

“Bodies … The Exhibition,” which displays preserved human cadavers and organs posed to demonstrate how the body works, begins a seven-month run at Cincinnati’s Museum Center on Friday (Feb. 1).

But Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk said Catholic schoolchildren should not see it.

“The public exhibition of plasticized bodies, unclaimed, unreverenced, and unidentified …is unseemly and inappropriate,” he said. “It seems to me that the use of human bodies in this way fails to respect the persons involved. Therefore I do not believe that this exhibit is an appropriate destination for field trips by our Catholic schools.”

The traveling exhibit, currently on view in 10 cities around the world, has drawn 4 million viewers, according to its organizers. It has also drawn controversy from those who question how the cadavers were obtained. The cadavers are unclaimed or unidentified bodies from a university in China, according to Premier Exhibitions Inc., the group that runs the exhibit.

The exhibit’s director of education, Cheryl Mure, told reporters she was surprised by the archbishop’s statement.

“The exhibition has been seen by more than 350,000 schoolchildren, including those of Catholic schools. This is the first time a diocese has taken this stance with `Bodies,”’ Mure said.

The diocese of Pittsburgh expressed concern last year about where the cadavers came from, but later said it was shown documentation that the bodies were of those who had died of natural causes and had been deceased and unclaimed for at least four years.

Moreover, the diocese said it was told that the bodies would be returned to China “at the proper time for cremation or interment,” and that fetus cadavers had died naturally and not as a result of abortions.

_ Daniel Burke

Bush touts push for permanent faith-based programs

BALTIMORE _ President Bush on Tuesday (Jan. 29) visited a Baltimore faith-based program that helps ex-offenders as part of his renewed push for continued federal funding for religious social service programs.

Standing between two men who had been trained for new jobs after leaving prison, Bush said efforts like the Jericho program should not have to worry about losing federal funding when people’s needs are being met.

“We shouldn’t say to programs such as this, `We’ll help you with a Department of Labor and Justice grant’ and then turn our back on the program when it’s successful,” Bush said. “There ought to be consistency of policy. … We ought to say, thank God there are people such as this in our neighborhoods and societies helping these good men.”

Bush visited the program run by Episcopal Community Services of Maryland after he used his State of the Union address on Monday to ask Congress to permanently extend a provision of the welfare reform law called “charitable choice.” The provision has increased governmental funding of faith-based social services.

In his speech, Bush said such a move would “help guarantee equal treatment of faith-based organizations when they compete for federal funds.”

The Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said he doubted Congress would agree to Bush’s proposal.

“Bush’s `faith-based’ initiative has been a colossal failure,” Lynn said. “It undercut civil rights laws and jeopardized important religious liberty safeguards. I don’t believe Congress is going to adopt it at this late date in the administration’s tenure.”

The Jericho program Bush visited received a three-year, $1.8 million grant from the Department of Labor’s Prisoner Re-entry Initiative in 2006. It reports that the recidivism rate of its nonviolent male ex-offenders is 22 percent, less than half of Baltimore’s average recidivism rate of 52 percent.

_ Adelle M. Banks

New Orleans Catholic churches still in flux after Katrina

NEW ORLEANS (RNS) Scores of Catholic priests, parishioners and staffers at the Archdiocese of New Orleans are immersed in plans to redefine Catholic life in a smaller, poorer regional church after Hurricane Katrina.

The new plan will decide which dormant, hollowed-out Catholic parishes will have to close permanently, which have demonstrated enough vitality to reopen, and which will continue to limp along under the wing of a healthier nearby parish.

The result, expected to emerge this spring, must strike dozens of difficult compromises, said the Rev. Michael Jacques, a pastor who is leading the planning process.

The plan, he said, almost certainly will require the archdiocese to:

_ Close parishes in some struggling depopulated neighborhoods, while supporting selected weak ones that might be catalysts for neighborhood recovery.

_ Shift priests to the burgeoning north shore of Lake Pontchartrain to minister to thousands of Catholics transplanted from shattered St. Bernard Parish, but not give up its historic presence in the poor inner city.

_ Follow dispassionate, empirical criteria for deciding when to order struggling middle-class Catholic communities to give up their identities and merge, while following Archbishop Alfred Hughes’ mandate to provide special assistance to struggling enclaves of blacks, Hispanics and members of other ethnic groups.

And it must do so, Jacques and others have said, constrained by a steadily declining number of priests available for service _ a reality that is shaping the future Catholic landscape almost as much as Katrina.

Jacques said the church expects to lose five to 10 priests to retirement, resignation, illness or death this year, as it has in recent years. It expects just one newly ordained replacement in the spring, he said.

In February 2006, having absorbed nearly $250 million in damages to dozens of schools and churches, the archdiocese underwent a forced, temporary reorganization of parish life.

Ten of the 151 parishes or missions in the archdiocese were permanently closed, although that number was later reduced. Operations were shut down in 23 others.

Although the 23 church parishes remain technically open, members have been assigned to neighboring parishes until the archdiocese can sort out the future and develop a long-term plan for recovery.

According to archdiocesan figures, it has lost more than a fifth of its former population of 491,000 Catholics. Hughes estimated on Katrina’s first anniversary that the archdiocese’s uninsured flood losses amounted to about $120 million.

Jacques said the rebuilding plan is being built from the ground up, with significant lay participation. Neighboring pastors have been meeting in regional clusters called deaneries to discuss their common futures.

The archdiocese has set criteria that parishes must meet to reopen or remain open. Those include the presence of significant lay leadership, proof that at least two-thirds of the pre-Katrina congregation are regularly back at worship, financial self-sufficiency and sufficient vitality to run a range of ministries.

A parish must receive the votes of two-thirds of the pastors in its deanery to be recommended for reopening, according to the plan.

_ Bruce Nolan

Quote of the Day: The Rev. Walter Coleman of Chicago

(RNS) “It’s unfortunate we have to do this. This church has other priorities, like helping the poor in this neighborhood. But God didn’t give us a choice. When God says do this, we say `Yes, sir!”’

_ The Rev. Walter Coleman, pastor of Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago, where Mexican immigrant Flor Crisostomo is seeking protection from deportation. Crisostomo is the second woman in the past year to seek sanctuary in the church.

KRE/PH END RNS