Updates

Must church pay for abortions?
A day may be coming when the U.S. Catholic Church is forced by law to pay for abortions, according to church leaders throughout the United States.

In California, Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Sacramento is challenging a 2000 law mandating that employers’ group-health plans offer contraception coverage, including pills and devices that might cause abortions. The California law has a limited “conscience clause” for “religious employers,” allowing them to opt out of offering such coverage, but in the state’s eyes, Catholic Charities is not a religious employer.

Similar legislation has been passed by legislatures in Massachusetts and in New York. Some form of contraceptive coverage mandate has been passed or in the works in several other states, according to the U.S. bishops’ Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities.

Police chaplain’s fund reviewed
Archdiocesan officials are conducting a review of Father Thomas Nangle’s relationship to the non-profit Police Chaplains Ministry Fund.

Nangle has headed the fund for 15 years, and draws an $84,000 annual salary from it in addition to the $26,000 annual salary he receives from the archdiocese for serving as chaplain to the Chicago Police Department, according to an April 9 report in the Chicago Tribune.

The fund pays for outings and materials for the families of slain police officers. Since its inception, about 35 cents of every dollar it has raised has gone towards charitable activities, the Tribune report said.

Auxiliary Bishop Jerome E. Listecki and Chancellor Jimmy Lago will meet with Nangle to review Nangle’s association with the fund.


News:
Panel to advise on English
‘Vox Clara’ formed to respond to ICEL criticisms

Vatican City - The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments intends to establish a commission of English-speaking bishops to advise the congregation on English liturgical translations.

The working name for the commission is “Vox Clara” (Clear Voice), and the congregation hopes to hold its first meeting with commission members before summer, a Vatican official said.
Several bishops already have been asked to serve on the commission, he said. Cardinal George will attend the inaugural meeting in late April.

Vatican urges respect for popular piety
Just because an expression of popular piety may seem “a bit strange” in another culture, it does not mean that it is not an expression of Christian faith, said the head of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments.

Venerating relics, kissing sacred images, re-enacting the Lord’s Passion, making a pilgrimage on one’s knees and carrying statues of saints in procession through city streets have been signs of faith in different parts of the world for centuries, said Chilean Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez, prefect of the congregation.

Pope’s May trip is confirmed
Despite knee problems, Pope John Paul II will make a five-day visit to Azerbaijan and Bulgaria as planned in late May, the Vatican announced.

The May 22-26 trip will be the first visit by a pope to either country.

Cardinal George: Honesty, healing top priorities
Cardinal George, speaking after a talk at the dedication of the Ave Maria School of Law, said honesty and making the protection of children the top priority are keys to healing the wounds caused by clergy sex abuse scandals.

“I think you have to face it honestly,” Cardinal George told reporters March 21. “You have to examine all the policies-how have we protected kids? Just as an individual’s trust is destroyed when he or she is abused, so the whole community’s trust is wounded when these things come out.”

Cursillo: Teaching Christian life for 40 years
When Angelo Del Guidice made his first Cursillo in May 1962, he was among the first people in the Archdiocese of Chicago to take the three-day “short course in Christianity.”

Forty years later, Del Guidice is still on his “fourth day,” and thousands of other Chicago-area men and women have joined him.
Many of those will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Cursillo movement in Chicago at a special Mass at 6:30 p.m. May 10, to be celebrated by Cardinal George at Old St. Patrick’s Church, Adams and Desplaines streets, the site of that first Chicago Cursillo. The Mass will be followed by a light supper.

New catechesis director dreams big
Maria Hilaria Sedano has barely been in Chicago a month and already she is dreaming big dreams. The Archdiocese’s new director of the Office for Catechesis believes a positive outlook is the only way to live and make things happen.

“I like to look at life positively and dream about what might be,” she said.

“I think it is important to tell people good news, give them hope. There is a reason for living. Even when times get bad we can still dream.”

Looking for God
—and sometimes finding him
Joe Sargassi and Salvador Gutierrez each have a special decision to make—determining whether God is calling them to the priesthood. To help guide their thinking, the two young men chose to attend Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary, the high school seminary for the Chicago Archdiocese.

The nearly 100-year-old school on the Near North Side, a Gothic masterpiece not far from bustling Michigan Avenue, offers students a unique setting that helps them decide whether they have a vocation to the priesthood. In addition to the strong academic environment, Quigley provides a prayer life and host of activities that heighten students’ Catholic identities.

Bethlehem U. becomes an Israeli camp
The Israeli army has taken over Bethlehem University and is using it as a headquarters, said the university’s vice chancellor.

“There are 50 or more soldiers on campus, and they are in most of our buildings,” said Christian Brother Vincent Malham, university vice chancellor, in a telephone interview. “They are using this as a headquarters. This is certainly one of the strategic areas.”

Ancient, revered Church of Nativity under fire, damaged
Franciscan friars at Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity compound said that even after 24 hours, the Israeli army would not let them remove the body of a Palestinian killed in a gun battle.

They also said they had no electricity and were running out of food and that the Israelis were not permitting supplies to reach them.

In a telephone interview April 9, Franciscan Father Amjad Sabbara, who lives in the compound occupied by about 200 Palestinians, said it remained fairly calm the day after the Israeli-Palestinian gun battle.

In the back pews:
Class studies attendance, seating habits at churches
A Catholic University of America sociology class study of people’s arriving and sitting habits at Sunday services unearthed somewhat surprising findings as to what those habits say about people and how they correlate to faith, group size and timing.
But the results also backed up an age-old stereotype.
The major finding of the study, according to D. Paul Sullins, an assistant professor of sociology at the university whose class conducted the study, is that “people who arrive earlier tend to sit up toward the front, much more than those arriving later. The stereotype of the person who arrives just in time and slips into the back has some foundation to it.”

Allegations surface around U.S.
Los Angeles Cardinal Roger M. Mahony April 5 categorically denied a psychologically disturbed woman’s claim that he molested her 32 years ago when she was in high school.

He urged law enforcement and church authorities to investigate the claims thoroughly and quickly.

The woman’s allegation against one of the country’s highest-ranked Catholic leaders marked a new turn in a growing church scandal over clergy sexual abuse.

The growing round of U.S. clergy sexual abuse scandals began this January in Boston with the trial and conviction of John Geoghan, a defrocked pedophile priest accused of abusing scores of children, and a series of investigative reports in the Boston Globe

Miss America ‘at home’ at teachers’ convention
When Angela Perez Baraquio was crowned Miss America 2001 she was told she could do whatever she wanted.

“Tomorrow’s Sunday, can I go to Mass?” she asked, and then added that she would like to attend Mass every Sunday.

Baraquio was told that no one had ever made that request before, but the pageant officials would work it out.

Comedy helps woman cope
A young Catholic woman in Toronto is turning to stand-up comedy as a way of coping with a potentially debilitating chronic disease.
Chrystal Gomes has been making a name for herself on the comedy club circuit in the Toronto area and beyond.

Gomes, a part-time clerical worker for the Archdiocese of Toronto, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1994 and was forced to abandon plans to work in the tourism industry.

On-line museum tells humorist Bombeck’s life
Erma Bombeck made people laugh at their foibles and put words to their lives.

Now, thanks to her alma mater, the University of Dayton, its alumni and others, her works live on in a new form.

Two years after the Bombeck family announced that it would donate Erma’s papers and artifacts to the university, the school is sharing part of the collection via the Internet. Bombeck died in 1996 from kidney disease.

On Dec. 16, 2001, the statue of Our Lady of the New Millennium was moved to Sacred Heart Parish, 8245 W. 111th St., Palos Hills, where it will remain throughout the winter months. The 33-foot-tall stainless steel sculpture has been traveling to sites in the archdiocese for two years. A final determination of its future has not yet been announced.

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