February 1990 Print

 

Church to Let Women Officiate at Weddings

(Washington) — The Vatican has granted the far-flung Roman Catholic archdiocese of Alaska permission for six female parish administrators to officiate at weddings when priests or deacons are not available, church officials said Thursday.

The National Conference of Catholic Bishops had asked for such permission at its November meeting, responding to a request from Archbishop Francis Hurley of Anchorage.

The bishops, in announcing the approval from Rome, quoted Hurley as saying, "The church and canon law are not as rigid as some are prone to think."

The Catholic Church "has a history of adjusting to extraordinary situations," Hurley was quoted as saying in Friday's edition of his church newspaper.

The extraordinary situation in Alaska, Hurley said, was a land area bigger than many nations and served by only a few priests.

Hurley flies his own airplane to travel the great distances between Alaskan parishes. In presenting his request last November, he told fellow bishops that bad weather can delay him, upsetting long-scheduled wedding plans.

Officially, the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship granted permission for Hurley to delegate authority for weddings to nuns or lay people otherwise qualified—knowing how to perform the ceremony, licensed by the state and other details.

Hurley's newspaper said the ruling in this case applies to five nuns and one lay woman serving as parish administrators in his archdiocese.

The permission applies only to Alaska for a trial period of five years but could be extended to other U.S. dioceses.

(Commentary of St. Paul: "Let women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted them to speak, but to be subject, as also the law saith." — I Cor. xiv)

 

Losing the Habit

The Advent of a "yuppie" lifestyle has resulted in a shortage of young men choosing a life of the cloth in Australia.

And a spokesman for the Catholic Church said today the situation would not be reversed until men stopped measuring success by the thickness of their wallets.

Father Brian Lucas said young boys were today socially conditioned to believe success came in the bounty of material goods.

"Success is measured in terms of being a "yuppie", he said.

He said that for the first time since 1939, there was not an ordination in the Sydney Diocese this year.

Father Lucas put part of the blame on the media. "There is no news in saying priests do a good job so there are no positive stories.

"Rather priests are continuously represented as being freaks."

 

Award-winning painting hails Mary in new light

An irreverent painting that melds the personalities of Mary Magdalene and Virgin Mary won this year's Blake Prize for Religious Art yesterday.

Titled "Hail Mary," the controversial portrait show the Virgin Mary sitting naked, biting her fingers, a halo at her feet.

Next to her sits Mary Magdalene—daring and shadowy like her tainted reputation.

Melbourne artists Warren Breninger, 41, used a combination of painting, sketching and photography to create the image of the two women characters on photographic paper.

Breninger, a Christian, does not see his painting as controversial.

"It's all too much the same as it's always been. The tradition of the halo always being around the head is completely bankrupt, so I inverted that idea and put the halo around the feet.

"After all, why should the mind be given more importance than the flesh, the body or the dirty toes?"

He said "Hail Mary" was an attempt to show that all people, no matter how grand, have weaknesses.

"The figure sucking its fingers is a symbol of all the forms of maladjustment in people," Breninger said.

 

Cardinal Bernardin announces closings to offset deficit in Chicago

CHICAGO (RNS) — Cardinal Joseph L. Bernardin has announced plans to close at least 37 parishes, schools and missions by mid-1991 to battle a deficit in the Archdiocese of Chicago that totaled $28 million last year. The planned closings were announced in a letter by Cardinal Bernardin read at weekend services Jan. 20-21. He said advisers told him that if closures and massive efforts to raise funds aren't made, archdiocesan debts could swell to $142 million through 1993. The plan announced by Cardinal Bernardin represents the largest program of financial cutbacks in the 146-year history of Catholicism in Chicago. It rivals the recent closing of 35 parishes in the Archdiocese of Detroit, which was the largest program of cuts in the country.

 

Ratzinger in U.S. decries 'culture of death' in modern society

WASHINGTON (RNS) — Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican's designated guardian of faith and morals, has condemned what he termed an "anti-culture of death" that has spread throughout every part of the world and corroded modern society.

The cardinal, giving a sermon-like talk here Jan. 20, used the AIDS virus as a metaphor for what he described as the moral and spiritual breakdown of culture.

"The unshackling of sexual desire, drugs, and the sale of armaments have formed an unholy trio whose lethal net stretches ever more oppressively over the world's people," said the cardinal.

Contrasting modern values with the message of Jesus, the white-haired cardinal said, "Abortion, suicide and power blocs are concrete ways in which this syndicate of death operates."

He said the AIDS virus, which breaks down the body's immune system, has become "a portrait for the interior sickness of our culture. There are no longer any elements to protect spiritual immunity."

 

Former governor says he regrets being a 'cafeteria Catholic'

(RNS)  — Former New York Gov. Hugh Carey, who supported Medicaid funding of abortions and vetoed a parental-consent bill during his term of office, told Catholic lobbyists and legislators Jan. 17 that he now regrets having done so. Addressing a luncheon during a day-long Public Policy Forum held in Albany by the New York State Catholic Conference, Mr. Carey said he was once a "cafeteria Catholic"—one of those who "pick and choose {on church doctrine} until they get to the pro-abortions checkout counter, where they dump their tray of beliefs." In 1975, the former Democratic congressman became the first Roman Catholic to be elected governor of New York since the days of Al Smith in the 1920s. During his two terms, he became a national symbol of Catholic office holders who supported funding for abortions despite their personal opposition procedure. In 1979, Gov. Carey vetoed the last bill to pass the state legislature that called for parental consent before minors could obtain abortions. "I regret having vetoed that bill," he told the luncheon. "It would have been better to have gone on record on the issue than to veto a bill based on technicalities." In those days, Mr. Carey said, "I held high public office, and I could call my own judgments on faith and morals in slight disagreement with the church." But now, he said, he believes that "no Catholic can responsibly take a pro-choice stand when the choice in question involves the taking of innocent human life."

 

Cuomo and bishop exchange sharp words over abortion policy

NEW YORK (RNS) — The governor of New York and an auxiliary Roman Catholic bishop exchanged sharply-worded views Jan 23 on abortion, hell and public policy. The exchange of comments is the latest round of a continuing theological-political dispute over the issue of abortion and the role of elected Catholic officials in supporting public policy at odds with church teaching. In a response to Bishop Austin B. Vaughan, who warned him that his support for abortion rights put him at risk of "going to hell," Gov. Mario Cuomo said that politicians, like bishops, would be judged "by a higher and wiser power." Bishop Vaughan told a New York Post reporter that the governor was a "Sunday Catholic" who is supporting "an unspeakable crime." "I think for a believing, educated Catholic to take the position he's taken, he takes a very serious risk of going straight to hell," said Bishop Vaughan. Gov Cuomo is "seriously violating God's law," he said in a later interview, pointing out that standard Catholic teaching is that hell awaits those who die in an unrepented state of estrangement from God. An auxiliary bishop under Cardinal John J. O'Connor in the New York Archdiocese, Bishop Vaughan made the comments from Albany County Jail, where he currently is serving a 15-day sentence for blocking access to an abortion clinic last March. He is reportedly the highest ranking Catholic cleric arrested for anti-abortion protests.