c. 2006 Religion News Service

Lay Reform Group Calls for Top Bishops to Step Aside

BOSTON (RNS) The top two officers at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops faced new pressure Friday (March 10) to relinquish their national posts in light of allegations related to sexual misconduct.

Voice of the Faithful (VOTF), a Boston-based lay reform group that claims 30,000 members, called for interim leaders to replace Bishop William Skylstad of Spokane, Wash., and Cardinal Francis George of Chicago in their respective roles as president and vice president of the bishops conference.

Skylstad faces allegations dating back to the early 1960s from a woman who says he sexually abused her as a minor; Skylstad has denied the allegations. In Chicago, George is facing heat for having failed to act on a panel’s recommendation last October to remove a suspected pedophile from ministry. The accused priest, Daniel McCormack, was arrested in January.

Accused bishops should step down from their offices until investigations are complete, according to VOTF, a step that is required of all priests under the bishops’ 2002 Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.

“The public credibility of the Charter, the accused bishops, and the entire Conference of Catholic Bishops is at stake,” said VOTF President James E. Post and President-elect Mary Pat Fox in a statement. “There is no mistaking the seriousness of this moment.”

At the bishops conference, however, there were no signs of a shake-up. Spokesman Bill Ryan said nothing in the conference bylaws would require an office holder to step down as a result of allegations.

“Both Bishops Skylstad and Cardinal George will be continuing with their duties as president and vice president of the Conference,” Ryan said. “There’s no plan or procedure to ask them to step down from their offices.”

John Moynihan, a spokesman for the Boston group, said lay leaders are not calling for either Skylstad or George to resign their local positions as bishops at this time, but he suggested that could come next.

“This is step one,” Moynihan said. Asking bishops to leave their diocesan offices would be “step two.”

_ G. Jeffrey MacDonald

Orthodox Rabbis Issue Universal Conversion Standards

(RNS) A large gathering of Orthodox rabbis has agreed on some universal standards for Jewish converts, including the cost of conversion and which children can become Jewish.

The three-day meeting of 180 rabbis from five continents ended Tuesday (March 7) in Hollywood, Fla. It was organized by Eternal Jewish Family (EJF), a Monsey, N.Y.-based organization that considers itself a “clearinghouse” for standardizing Orthodox conversions worldwide.

Too many converts, said founder and rabbinic director Rabbi Leib Tropper, think they have had valid Orthodox conversion ceremonies, but then they move to a different country or a different part of the United States and are not accepted by the rabbis in their new home.

The goal of the conference was to put in place measures that would stop controversial conversions and make observant Jews feel more like a globally connected community.

“In order to have an unquestioned continuity of Judaism, we have to have standards that are unquestioned,” Tropper said.

To convert to Judaism is a very complex process, involving the supervision of a beit din, or rabbinical court, comprised of three rabbis who must rule that your religious convictions are genuine, and your commitment to living by Jewish law is rooted in both learning and faith.

Among the resolutions the rabbis agreed on were that a beit din can only accept $350 per rabbi in fees for conversion _ Tropper said that some were charging a total of $4,000 for those services, which he said was not right.

Also, the group agreed that although Orthodox Jews believe that only the child of a Jewish woman can be considered Jewish, the child of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother can undergo a conversion ceremony as long as the mother agrees to give the child an Orthodox education or undergo conversion herself.

The conference was attended by the chief rabbis of South Africa and Poland, the Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel, and rabbis from the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Brazil. U.S. rabbis from Salt Lake City, Boston, Charlotte, N.C., New York and other cities attended.

Tropper’s goal is for anyone who converts to Judaism to have “a Cadillac conversion,” which can never be questioned by any rabbi.

“Why settle for a broken Chevy, which may go down the highway, but nobody wants it in their driveway?” he said.

As intermarriage rates worldwide remain high _ the 2000-2001 National Jewish Population survey put the U.S. intermarriage rate at 47 percent _ Tropper says that universal conversion standards can take some of the confusion out of the process, and can even help stem the tide of intermarriage, which he calls “a serial killer for the continuity of the Jewish people.”

The conference did not debate the controversial issue, particularly in Israel, of whether Orthodox rabbis should recognize as Jews those who convert to Judaism under a Reform rabbi’s supervision.

_ Holly Lebowitz Rossi

Chinese Accuse Pope of Trying to Undermine Communism

VATICAN CITY (RNS) The recent appointment of a Hong Kong bishop as cardinal may be part of a strategy by the Vatican to bring down the communist government in China, the leader of China’s state-controlled Catholic Church said Friday (March 10).

Ending a weeklong spat between himself and Bishop Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, Liu Bainian, vice chairman of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CPCA), compared the Vatican’s potential role in China _ helped by Zen’s appointment _ to its role in communist Poland.

“Why would you appoint someone who doesn’t support communism as cardinal? Is it like Poland? Didn’t the church play a big role in Poland?” Liu said on Chinese public television.

Zen called the association between China and Poland, which Liu had made earlier in the week in an interview with Reuters, “far-fetched.” In a statement released by the Hong Kong diocese on Thursday, Zen denied that the Holy See has political interests in China.

“The only hope of the Holy Father is that the Chinese faithful may enjoy real religious freedom,” the statement said.

Zen has been a long-standing critic of the Chinese government’s interference with religious freedom. He was banned from the Chinese mainland for six years for defending the Vatican’s decision to canonize Chinese martyrs.

China severed diplomatic ties with the Holy See in 1951 because it continued to have relations with Taiwan, which China claims is part of its territory.

The Chinese government also forced Chinese Catholics to cut their ties with the Vatican, and in 1957, established the CPCA. Catholics who refused to join the CPCA adhered to the “underground” church.

But the Vatican has secretly recognized nearly all CPCA bishops in China. And Zen says that an increasing number of Catholics seek reconciliation with the Holy See, suggesting that Liu harbors only personal antagonism toward the Holy See.

_ Kristine M. Crane

Alabama College Struggles With Ties to Church Arsonists

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (RNS) Birmingham-Southern College has long prided itself on the actions of students who have gone all over the world to perform good deeds as part of the college’s social service emphasis.

Now the school is dealing with the aftermath of students accused of burning churches.

“I can’t imagine that there won’t be a discussion of its implications, self-reflection,” college President David Pollick said. “Those kind of discussions will be going on.”

BSC students have traveled as far away as Mother Teresa’s mission in Calcutta to engage in benevolent missions that accent the Methodist-affiliated school.

Federal agents ended an exhaustive investigation into arsons at nine Baptist churches in Alabama by arresting two Birmingham-Southern students and a University of Alabama-Birmingham student who had transferred from BSC.

Ben Moseley, 19, and Russell DeBusk, 19, were arrested at BSC early Wednesday. UAB student Matthew Cloyd, 20, was arrested at his apartment later in the day.

Pollick said Thursday (March 9) that the college has pledged to help burned churches rebuild, but not because the college feels responsible for the actions of its students.

“In this particular case, I don’t think we feel responsible at all. … I don’t think there’s a sense of guilt or a sense of repentance. There’s nothing to repent,” Pollick said. “We’re clearly in the limelight because they are our students.”

Pollick said his staff will be contacting each of the churches to determine “do they want help _ money or physical assistance. They have to be able to tell us what it is that will help them the most. We will move to do that. I’m sure people will want our help. It will be based on what their needs are.”

The Rev. Duane Schliep, pastor of Rehobeth Baptist Church in Bibb County, which burned to the ground Feb. 3, said the responsibility rests solely with the arsonists. “You couldn’t hold the school responsible for the acts of these three people,” Schliep said.

_ Greg Garrison

Quote of the Day: Evangelist Billy Graham

(RNS) “Some of your levees may have broken down as a result of the storms, but I sense other barriers have broken down here also _ barriers that have separated different churches and races from each other. May they never be rebuilt.”

_ Evangelist Billy Graham, preaching in New Orleans on Thursday (March 9), giving his first sermon since his New York crusade last June.

KRE/JL END RNS