Legion of Angels News Archive

VATICAN CITY (RNS) - Catholic-Jewish tensions over Pope Pius XII flared again after a church official suggested on Saturday (Oct. 18) that a Jerusalem museum exhibit about the World War II-era pontiff was an impediment to Israeli-Vatican relations.

The statement prompted a response from Israeli President Shimon Peres, and was followed by an Israeli Web site displaying an image of Pope Benedict XVI covered by a swastika.

Critics allege that Pius, who reigned from 1939 to 1958, failed to do or say all he could to stop the Nazis’ persecution and genocide of the Jews. The late pope’s defenders counter that he heroically condemned anti-Semitism throughout Hitler’s reign, and both directly and indirectly saved thousands of Jewish lives during the Holocaust.

This latest episode in the long-running controversy began when the Rev. Peter Gumpel told the Italian news agency ANSA that Benedict would not visit Israel unless the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum removed a plaque suggesting that Pius had been indifferent to the survival of the Jews.

Gumpel is the official advocate for Pius in the process that will determine if the wartime pontiff becomes a saint. In May 2007, a Vatican body voted unanimously to declare Pius “venerable,” a prerequisite to sainthood, but Benedict has yet to sign the decree.

On Saturday, Gumpel said Benedict’s delay stemmed from concerns about the reactions of Jewish groups.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi, head of the Vatican press office, said afterwards in a statement that the Yad Vashem display was not the “determining factor” in Benedict’s decision about whether to make his first visit to Israel as pope.

Peres said on Monday (Oct. 20) that a papal “visit to Israel should not be tied to controversy over Pius XII.” Peres reiterated a standing invitation offered to Benedict when the two met at the Vatican in September 2007.

Also on Monday, an Israeli Web site supportive of the country’s governing Kadima party briefly displayed a photograph of Benedict superimposed with a Nazi swastika, but removed the image shortly after it was publicly condemned by the party’s leader, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

Source — The Pew Forums

It has become commonplace in American politics: Certain Roman Catholic bishops declare that the faithful should cast their ballots on the basis of a limited number of “nonnegotiable issues,” notably opposition to abortion. Conservative Catholics cheer, more liberal Catholics howl. And that is usually the end of the story.

Not this year. Catholics, who are quintessential swing voters and gave narrow but crucial support to President Bush in 2004, are drifting toward Barack Obama. And this time, some church leaders are suggesting that single-issue voting is by no means a Catholic commandment.

In an interview yesterday, Gabino Zavala, an auxiliary bishop in the Los Angeles Archdiocese, said his fellow bishops have long insisted that “we’re not a one-issue church,” a view reflected in their 2007 document “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship.”

“But that’s not always what comes out,” says Zavala, who is also bishop-president of the Catholic peace group Pax Christi USA. “What I believe, and what the church teaches, is that one abortion is too many. That’s why I believe abortion is so important. But in light of this, there are many other issues we need to bring up, other issues we should consider, other issues that touch the reality of our lives.”

Those issues, Bishop Zavala said, include racism, torture, genocide, immigration, war and the impact of the economic downturn “on the most vulnerable among us, the elderly, poor children, single mothers.”

“We know that neither of the political parties supports everything the church teaches,” he added. “We are not going to create a culture of life if we don’t talk about all the life issues, beginning with abortion but including all of them.”

Zavala was careful to say that he did not want to take issue with any of his fellow bishops. But his view contrasts with that of others in the hierarchy.

This month, for example, Bishop Joseph F. Martino of the Scranton (Pa.) Diocese issued a letter warning that “being ‘right’ on taxes, education, health care, immigration and the economy fails to make up for the error of disregarding the value of a human life.” He added: “It is a tragic irony that ‘pro-choice’ candidates have come to support homicide — the gravest injustice a society can tolerate — in the name of ’social justice.’ ”

Bishop Zavala’s desire to speak out with an alternative view is a sign of how much has changed in four years: Progressive Catholics are now as organized as conservative Catholics were in 2004. At Web sites such as http://ProLifeProObama.com, they are arguing that the abortion question does not trump all other concerns.

The impact of the new Catholic politics could be substantial. Catholics are often a decisive electoral group partly because church membership ranges from upscale to working-class whites, a large group of Latinos, and a significant number of African Americans.

Catholics typically make up about a quarter of the electorate, and they are strategically located. White (non-Latino) Catholics are important in such swing states as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, while Latino Catholics make up a notable share of the populations of New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and Florida.

Polls have varied in measuring the Catholic shift toward the Democrats, but Obama seems to be running ahead of John Kerry’s performance in 2004. According to the network exit polls, Bush carried 52 percent of the Catholic vote to 47 percent for Kerry. By contrast, a mid-October Pew Research Center survey showed Obama leading John McCain among Catholics by 55 percent to 35 percent.

Post surveys over the same period have found more modest Catholic gains for Obama. A Post tracking poll released yesterday showed Obama and McCain splitting the Catholic vote at 48 percent each. Obama’s Catholic share probably stands somewhere between the Pew and Post numbers. But even a split among Catholics could mark a sufficient improvement over Kerry’s performance to tip key states the Democrat’s way.

In many respects, Catholics simply reflect the country as a whole in moving toward the Democrats because of frustrations with the economy and the Bush years. But the Catholic debate entails a very particular argument over what counts as a commitment to life. To an unexpected degree, this election could hang on the struggle of Catholic voters with their priorities and their consciences.

Source — Washington Post

Three aspiring Catholic priests will be anointed and prayed over this weekend in an ordination liturgy that will resemble the traditional in most ways but one: The three being ordained are women.

The ordination ceremony Sunday, at a historic Protestant church in the Back Bay, is the first such event to take place in Boston, one of the most Catholic cities in the nation.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, in accord with Vatican teaching, says the participants in the ordination ceremony will be automatically excommunicating themselves.

But the women being ordained say they are acting because they feel called to the priesthood and compelled to resist what they view as a wrong church teaching.

“We’re part of a prophetic tradition of disobeying an unjust law,” said Gabriella Velardi Ward, a 61-year-old Staten Island architect with two children and five grandchildren, who will be ordained along with Gloria Carpeneto of Baltimore and Mary Ann McCarthy Schoettly of Newton, N.J.

Ward said she has wanted to be a priest since age 5, and that she actively considered becoming a nun before deciding that the priesthood was her calling because she wants to be able to celebrate Catholic sacraments.

“Excommunication or not, I will still be a validly ordained priest and still will be able to serve the people of God,” she said.

The women are to be ordained by Dana Reynolds, a California woman who was consecrated as a bishop in Germany in April.

Reynolds and the others are part of an organization called Roman Catholic Womenpriests, which has been holding ordination ceremonies for women since 2002; the organization says there are now 28 women Catholic priests in the United States.

Among those already ordained is Jean Marchant, a former director of healthcare ministry for the Archdiocese of Boston, who with her husband presides over a small congregation that has a weekly Catholic Eucharist in a Protestant church in Weston.

The organization says its ordinations are valid because its first bishops were ordained by Catholic bishops in good standing - bishops whose names have not been released because they would face sanction by the Vatican.

But the Vatican says the ordinations are illegal under church law and yesterday the Archdiocese of Boston sent an e-mail to all priests declaring that women play key roles in the church, but cannot be priests.

“Catholics who attempt to confer a sacred order on a woman, and the women who attempt to receive a sacred order, are by their own actions separating themselves from the church,” the archdiocese said. “As a faith community rooted in the loving ministry of Jesus Christ, we pray for those who have willingly fallen away from the church by participating in such activities.”

The ordination will be Sunday afternoon in Church of the Covenant on Newbury Street in Boston’s Back Bay. The church is affiliated with two Protestant denominations, the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the United Church of Christ.

The interim pastor of Church of the Covenant, the Rev. Jennifer Wegter-McNelly, said the congregation decided to rent its historic space, with Tiffany windows depicting women of the Bible, at a nominal fee to show support.

“It’s our effort to encourage and celebrate with them,” Wegter-McNelly said. “This church’s commitment to women goes back a long time.”

The ceremony has been scheduled to coincide with the first joint conference of four organizations pushing for the admission of married men, as well as of women, to the priesthood. That conference begins today at the Hyatt Harborside.

In St. Louis, a recent Catholic women’s ordination ceremony at a synagogue led to a rift in Catholic-Jewish relations.

The Boston archdiocese declined to comment about the Protestant church’s decision to allow the dissident Catholics to meet there.

The Vatican has repeatedly said that women cannot be priests because Jesus did not have female apostles.

In 1994, in the most definitive recent Vatican statement on the issue, Pope John Paul II issued an apostolic letter in which he wrote, “I declare that the church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women.”

In its own statement, sent to priests by a vicar general, the Rev. Richard M. Erikson, the archdiocese said, “The ordination of men to the priesthood is not merely a matter of practice or discipline within the Catholic Church, but rather, it is part of the unalterable Deposit of Faith handed down by Christ through his apostles.”

But the archdiocese also said it hopes the women involved will seek “reconciliation” with the Catholic Church, and said, “Following our devotion to Mary, the church is committed to, and sustained by the many important contributions of women each and every day.”

Clarification: The main headline on a report in yesterday’s City and Region section may have led to the erroneous impression that three women will be recognized as priests by the Roman Catholic Church after their ordination tomorrow. As the report and a subordinate headline made clear, the women’s status after the ordination is a matter of dispute. Although the organization hosting the ceremony will consider the women to be Catholic priests, the Vatican and the Archdiocese of Boston will regard them as having excommunicated themselves and therefore as being neither Catholic nor priests.

Source — The Boston Globe

Douglas Kmiec is the kind of Catholic voter the GOP usually doesn’t have to think twice about. The Pepperdine law professor and former Reagan Justice Department lawyer (Samuel Alito was an office mate) attends Mass each morning. He has actively opposed abortion for most of his adult life, working with crisis pregnancy centers to persuade women not to undergo the procedure. He is a member of the conservative Federalist Society and occasionally sends a contribution to Focus on the Family.

He is also a vocal supporter of Barack Obama. Kmiec made waves in the Catholic world in late March when he endorsed the Democratic candidate. But Kmiec insists that while he still considers himself a Republican, his choice is clear this election year. “I have grave moral doubts about the war, serious doubts about the economic course Republicans have followed over the last seven years, and believe that immigration reforms won’t come about by Republican hands,” he says. “Senator McCain would not be the strongest advocate for the balance of things that I care about.”

A new TIME poll of Catholic voters reveals that Kmiec is part of a broader pattern. Although Obama was thought to have a “Catholic problem” during the Democratic primaries, in which Hillary Clinton won a majority of Catholic votes, he has pulled even with John McCain among that constituency — Obama now polls 44% to his GOP opponent’s 45%.

There are 47 million Catholic voters, and while they are too numerous and varied to speak of as a monolithic Catholic bloc, they have long been a kind of holy grail for presidential candidates. The winner of eight out of the past nine elections has captured a majority of Catholic votes (they voted for Al Gore in 2000), and there are large Catholic concentrations in key states like Florida, Ohio and New Mexico.

The trick is figuring out what Catholics want. For decades, they were part of the New Deal coalition and were largely concerned with economics and foreign policy. More recently, Republicans have cut into that advantage by appealing to Catholics on social issues, a courtship that culminated in George W. Bush’s victory in 2004. The TIME poll confirmed that a majority of Catholics (59%) can be broadly defined as pro-life (opposing abortion except to protect a woman’s life or health or in cases of rape or incest). But these pro-life Catholics are actually split into two voting camps.

Many conservative Catholics consider abortion to be the determining factor in their electoral decisions, and as a result they almost always support Republican candidates. But for other Catholics, social issues can be trumped in times of economic and national insecurity. What’s interesting about this year is that Catholics like Kmiec are moving from the first group of voters to the second.

Republicans entered this election season from a position of disadvantage with Catholics for the same reasons they face problems with the general electorate: the economy, high gas prices and the ongoing war in Iraq. But they’ve also failed to embrace the model of Catholic engagement that Bush spent six years putting into place. The Obama campaign is taking advantage of that opportunity. Just as Ronald Reagan brought large numbers of Catholic Democrats into the GOP in the 1980s, Obama is hoping to woo them back and create a new Catholic category: Obama Republicans.

Tending the Flock
When Kmiec was growing up in Chicago in the 1950s and ’60s, Catholics ran the city’s Democratic political machine. The New Deal had cemented their loyalty to the party, but those ties began to fray in the late ’60s and early ’70s as many Catholics felt alienated by everything from the Roe v. Wade decision to urban busing initiatives. Kmiec was part of the wave of Reagan Democrats who were drawn to the Republican President’s policies and vision.

The Republican Party worked to keep them in the fold. In the late 1990s, the Republican National Committee (RNC) created a Catholic Task Force, and by the end of the 2000 election cycle, the party had compiled a list of 3 million church-attending Catholics. The RNC spent $2.5 million contacting these targeted Catholics with direct mail and phone calls.

But that was just a dry run. Four years later, the RNC recruited some 50,000 Catholic team leaders to conduct parish-level outreach for Bush’s re-election campaign; the volunteers were led on the ground by more than 75 field coordinators working for the party. Their efforts were supplemented by a group of outside organizations funded by leading conservative Catholics like Tom Monaghan, the founder of Domino’s Pizza. One of these groups, Priests for Life, spent $1 million on television and newspaper ads in the last month of the campaign.

The Catholic initiative was the most ambitious religious outreach effort ever undertaken by either party. And it paid off. Bush might have expected more competition for those votes from his Catholic opponent. But John Kerry found himself the target of stinging criticism from a few bishops who argued that he should be denied Communion because of his support for abortion rights. No one on the Kerry campaign was devoted to Catholic outreach, and Kerry chose not to respond to the attacks. Bush won the Catholic vote that year, 52% to 47%.

Faith of the Democrats
The GOP’s success with Catholic voters in 2004 was an astounding victory born out of Bush’s personal appeal to pro-life voters and six years of party organizing at the parish level. But it also sparked a backlash in many Catholic circles that is shaping the current election.

Alarmed that their fellow Catholics were being told that abortion and gay marriage were the only relevant Catholic issues, progressive Catholics have founded several organizations in the tradition of the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, who preached a “consistent ethic of life.” One group, Catholics United, ran radio ads in the fall of 2007 targeting pro-life Republicans who voted against expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, arguing that such votes were not “pro-life.”

The American bishops also made an effort to broaden their teaching. In the fall of 2007, they released Faithful Citizenship: A Call to Political Responsibility, an unusual document that counsels against divisive politics and reminds Catholics that “all life issues are connected.” Such statements have cleared the way for Catholics like Kmiec to re-evaluate what it means to cast a pro-life vote. “It’s been 20-some years of trying to get the next vote on the court to overturn Roe,” says Kmiec, “and I asked myself, What does that amount to?” He worries that by backing the GOP strategy of holding out for a ban on abortion, pro-life voters have not focused on more pragmatic ways to reduce abortion rates.

In a climate in which Catholics aren’t voting based on a rather narrow ideological agenda, the mechanics of how campaigns court them become more important. And it’s on that level that perhaps the biggest changes from 2004 can be seen. McCain has a team of Catholic politicians, including Sam Brownback and Frank Keating, who serve as his surrogates but has few aides within the campaign to coordinate outreach. The lack of high-level religious advisers became obvious earlier this year when McCain accepted the endorsement of Evangelical pastor John Hagee, who has called the Catholic Church “the great whore of Babylon,” a phrase unlikely to warm the hearts of McCain’s Catholic supporters.

Obama’s campaign more closely resembles the 2004 Bush outreach effort. An extensive religious outreach team has focused the bulk of its work on training ordinary Catholics to reach out to friends and neighbors by holding “values” house parties and explaining their support for Obama. The Democrat also has a roster of high-powered Catholic surrogates who have fanned out across swing states — including Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey Jr., whose father, the pro-life former governor, was widely viewed by Catholics as a victim of Democratic intolerance after he was not allowed to speak at the party’s 1992 convention.

Obama, whose work as a community organizer was partly funded by a Catholic social-justice group, recently laid out his plan for a new and improved faith-based initiative. It is a policy extension of the phrase he often uses — “I am my brother’s keeper” — to express his belief that members of a society are responsible for one another. And it is an idea rooted in the Catholic concept of the common good.

This “bottom-up, personal responsibility” message, as he describes it, appeals to Kmiec, allowing him to be not just a McCain skeptic but also an Obama supporter. That decision has not come without a cost — this spring Kmiec was denied Communion by a priest who denounced his endorsement of Obama. But with Catholics almost twice as likely to name the economy, Iraq and terrorism as their top concerns over abortion and gay marriage, Kmiec has plenty of company. Come November, that priest may be holding on to a very full bowl of wafers.

Source — TIME