c. 2008 Religion News Service
Gay Catholics implore pope to listen and love
WASHINGTON (RNS) Gay and lesbian Catholics on Thursday (April 10) urged Pope Benedict XVI to see their lives and hear their testimonies during his U.S. visit next week, even as many acknowledged that may be unlikely.
With humor and intensely personal stories, the gay and lesbian Catholics declared their love for the faith and their longing to be accepted in a church that considers homosexual activity an “intrinsic evil” and homosexuality “objectively disordered.”
Benedict embraces the church’s traditional prohibitions against homosexuality; he has called gay unions “pseudo-matrimony” and wrote in 2003 that same-sex adoptive parents do “violence to these children.”
But the gay and lesbian Catholics said leaving the church isn’t always an option.
“There’s nothing that could push me away from the church. Nothing,” said Heather Mizeur, a Maryland state legislator, who said she encouraged her partner to convert to Christianity.
“All the 10 Commandments boil down to love,” she said. “We are rooted in love as Christians.”
New Ways Ministries, a Maryland-based support group for gay and lesbian Catholics, has tussled with Benedict before. In 1999, Benedict _ then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger _ silenced the nun and priest who ran the group for positions that were “doctrinally unacceptable.”
But gay Catholic advocates say time is on their side. “I believe that change will happen.” said Gregory Maguire, a novelist whose book “Wicked” was made into a major Broadway production. “The youths on this issue are smarter than we are.”
New Ways director Francis DeBernardo said the pope has walled himself off from rank-and-file gay Catholics. “Unfortunately, this leader does not understand the issue of homosexuality or does not understand gay and lesbian people,” said DeBernardo.
But Maguire said the pope could fix that by sitting down with gay Catholics, perhaps over dinner.
“As Christ sat with the suffering, come sit with us,” he said. “Chicken or fish? Red wine or white? …You are welcome any time, and you can take us as you find us, though a little advance notice would allow us to clear the bikes out of the driveway and tidy up the living room.”
_ Jonathan Rubin
Clinton, Obama to square off on compassion in Pennsylvania
HARRISBURG, Pa. (RNS) Poverty, AIDS, Darfur and climate change will be on the agenda when Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton visit Messiah College for a “Compassion Forum” nine days before the Pennsylvania primary.
The organizer of Sunday (April 13) night’s event is Faith in Public Life, whose mission is to broaden the faith-based political agenda beyond the religious right’s familiar focus on abortion and homosexuality.
Organizers said candidates will answer questions about what they say are pressing moral issues that attract little attention in the campaign.
As the host, Messiah, in suburban Grantham, offers a forum for “compassion, reconciliation and social justice issues” that resonate with the college’s values, President Kim Phipps said. Messiah identifies its mission as Christian, and many of its students are evangelicals.
The event displays the clout of a voting segment that Rice University sociologist Michael Lindsay calls “cosmopolitan evangelicals.” They’re still against abortion, but they’re not culture warriors.
And their growing concern for issues such as poverty and the environment can lead them to candidates who support abortion rights _ as Clinton and Obama do, Lindsay said.
“Obama and Clinton are fighting for their support, and they could be a deciding factor, especially in Pennsylvania,” said Lindsay, author of “Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite.”
Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, was invited to the forum but declined, citing a scheduling conflict.
_ Mary Warner
German Catholics admit to wartime forced labor
COLOGNE, Germany (RNS) The Roman Catholic Church in Germany reported on Tuesday (April 8) that almost 6,000 people were used as forced labor in Catholic facilities during World War II.
The report by the German Catholic Bishops’ Conference found that 1,075 prisoners of war and 4,829 civilians were made to work at nearly 800 Catholic facilities, such as hospitals, monasteries and cemeteries.
The laborers were primarily from Poland, Ukraine and the Soviet Union. They worked as grave-diggers, gardeners and medical orderlies, among other jobs.
The 700-page publication, “Forced Labor and the Catholic Church 1939-1945,” is part of the church’s effort to reconcile its involvement with Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime, a difficult period of history for Catholics.
The Vatican and the wartime pope, Pius XII, have been accused of turning a blind eye to the plight of Jews and other minority groups systematically killed by the Nazis.
Karl Joseph Hummel, a historian who lead the research for the report, said the German Catholic church engaged in “cooperative antagonism” with Hitler _ a position between collaboration and resistance.
While at times in step with the Nazi party, several major Catholic leaders in Germany voiced their opposition to its policies and several thousand Catholics were sent to death camps, he said.
In terms of forced labor, he noted that the church kept the workers in relatively good conditions, while the Nazis would frequently work people to death.
Cardinal Karl Lehmann, who stepped down in February as head of the German bishops, said the number of workers used by the church was small compared to the 13 million people estimated to have been forced into labor by the Third Reich.
“They nevertheless remain a burden of history that our church will keep facing up to in the future,” he said.
Since 2000, when the church admitted to using forced labor, it has provided $2.4 million to 587 workers who are still alive. In addition, it has paid $4.3 million for more than 200 “reconciliation projects” between Germany and Eastern Europe.
_ Ian Wilhelm
Abuse victims ask pope to shun O’Malley
(RNS) Survivors of clergy sexual abuse are asking Pope Benedict XVI to shun Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley during the pope’s U.S. visit after an independent firm reported that the Archdiocese of Boston is not fully providing abuse prevention training to Catholic children.
A recent report from the Boston-based Gavin Group, which has surveyed U.S. dioceses on compliance with abuse-prevention policies, found that 64 of 295 do not have mandated safe environment programs for children. The Boston archdiocese had complied with the other 12 of 13 requirements.
On Thursday (April 10), leaders of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) complained in a letter sent to the pope’s U.S. ambassador, Archbishop Pietro Sambi.
“O’Malley’s repeated breaking of the national bishops’ policy is scandalous and dangerous,” said Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, outreach director for SNAP.
“For five years, bishops have been required to teach all Catholic kids how to protect themselves. But by O’Malley’s own admission, he’s failed to provide that training to 20 percent of Boston’s Catholic children. That’s inexcusably reckless.”
The Boston Globe reported Thursday that not all Boston parishes have welcomed the “Talking about Touching” curriculum, and O’Malley has faced resistance from some parishes who find it too detailed or inappropriate.
After the Gavin Group report last month, O’Malley vowed to “continue to work diligently to ensure our children’s safety in the Archdiocese of Boston.”
But SNAP criticized O’Malley for failing to bring his archdiocese into compliance for the second straight year.
“Boston, of all places, should be the most vigilant, compliant diocese in America _ the last place to ignore or break the church’s official, nationwide child sex abuse prevention promises,” Dorris said.
_ Brittani Hamm
Quote of the Day: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
(RNS) “The more Beijing tightens its grip, the more the hearts and minds of the Tibetan people will slip through its fingers.”
_ House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., speaking of China’s crackdown on Tibetans protesting for autonomy. A House resolution calling on China to end the repression and enter a dialogue with the Dalai Lama passed on Wednesday (April 9) by a vote of 413 to 1.
KRE/PH END RNS
