c. 1997 Religion News Service

Australian denomination in turmoil over gay issue

(RNS) The Uniting Church in Australia, the nation’s second largest Protestant denomination, has been thrown into turmoil over the bitter debate on the role of gays and lesbians in the church.

In the latest incident, the denomination’s top mission’s director, the Rev. Dorothy McRae-McMahon resigned her post Sept. 1 after strong criticism from conservative parishes and church groups.

McRae-McMahon, who announced in July that she is a lesbian, said she was resigning because her presence in the senior position in the church might distract the denomination from its real work.

But McRae-McMahon said she would not resign her ordination because”it is of God,”Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news agency reported.”I also cannot fall from my genuine conviction that I am standing on the prophetic ground of the gospel of Jesus Christ,”she said.

Intense pressure had been put on McRae-McMahon after she and several lay people revealed their homosexuality during the church’s National Assembly in July.

The denomination’s largest congregation, the Wesley Mission in Sydney, immediately began withholding its dues in protest against the National Assembly’s failure to bar the ordination of homosexuals.

Wesley Mission’s superintendent, the Rev. Gordon Moyes, has been one of McRae-McMahon’s sharpest critics. He and other conservatives have called for her resignation from the church leadership and from the ministry.

Moyes said McRae-McMahon’s resignation as mission’s director solved nothing because she had not repented of her”life of immorality.””Her years of deceit while accepting a salary from among the offerings of ordinary people was part of the church’s problem, but her resignation is not part of the answer,”he said.

But McRae-McMahon, who is also a moderator of a World Council of Churches committee preparing the worship for the WCC’s next assembly, said her resignation should not be taken as a sign that opponents of gays and lesbians had won the battle.”I’m not going to move away from the struggle. … I’m much freer to speak when I’m not in a representative position,”she said.

Archaeologists find what may be apostle Paul’s detention site

(RNS) Archaeologists in Israel have uncovered a Roman governmental complex where they believe the apostle Paul, the New Testament epistle writer, was held in detention nearly 2,000 years ago.

The 161,000-square-foot site is in the Mediterranean costal village of Caesarea. It includes a large palace, office, a bathhouse and courtyards.”The … complex served as the seat of Roman government in the province of Judea, later renamed Palestine, from the start of the first century A.D. until the middle of the third century,”Yosef Porath, an Israel Antiquities Authority official, told Reuters.

He said the archaeologists had unearthed a mosaic bearing a Latin inscription suggesting one office served as a government agency in charge of internal security matters.”This inscription helps solve the problem of where the hearings of St. Paul before the Roman governor described in the New Testament took place,”Porath said.”It has tremendous importance for Christian pilgrims and tourism to the site.” The apostle Paul, born Saul of Taursus, is best known for his dramatic conversion to what became Christianity. He was the first Christian missionary to the gentiles.

He was imprisoned, according to the New Testament book of Acts, by Herod from 58 to 60 A.D. until, as a Roman citizen, he appealed to the Roman governor and was taken to Rome for trial. It is believed he was killed during the emperor Nero’s persecution of Christians.

Sainthood `fast-track’ for Mother Teresa?

(RNS) As tens of thousands around the world continue to pay their respects to Mother Teresa, a top Roman Catholic official at the Vatican said the Nobel Peace Prize-winning nun may be put on a faster track to sainthood than other candidates.”I am not privy to the innermost ideas of the Holy Father,”Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said.”I think he wants it (the sainthood process for Mother Teresa) to be speeded up.””Whether he will intervene, I don’t know, because the pope has a great respect for procedures,”said Ratzinger, one of the pontiff’s closest aides.

Ratzinger made his comments to reporters on Tuesday (Sept. 9), Reuters reported.

According to Vatican procedures, the long and complicated process of being declared a saint cannot begin until five years after the death of a person and sainthood can take decades, even centuries.”I think there are cases that are so clear that even the ordinary procedure can move more swiftly,”Ratzinger added.

But the Associated Press quoted the cardinal as saying it is unlikely that unusual measures would be taken to speed things up. Mother Teresa had”a life so resplendent before the eyes of all, that I don’t think it will be too long a process,”he said.

In Calcutta, where Mother Teresa founded her religious order, the Missionaries of Charity, church leaders said they were waiting for evidence of a miracle that could be attributed to the nun _ a necessary criterion for sainthood.”It is a sign from God that we wish for, we pray for that,”said the Rev. Francis Gomes, vicar general of the Calcutta diocese.

But for the mourners flocking to St. Thomas Church, where the nun’s body is lying in state, or at Mother House, the headquarters of the religious order, such discussion is irrelevant.”She is already a saint, we don’t need the Vatican’s word,”said businessman Abhijit Sen.

Quote of the day: Archbishop Desmond Tutu

(RNS)”It does give one very considerable joy to be able to come to the very places where one used to go asking for help in the fight against apartheid, to go back to those places and say, `We came asking for your help, you gave it and now the victory has been won.” The Rev. Desmond Tutu, retired Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, at a news conference Monday (Sept. 8) in Washington where he received an award from the National Peace Foundation.

MJP END RNS