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No church ministry for priests who abuse

At a historic meeting in Dallas June 13-15, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops ordered dramatic changes to protect children throughout the U.S. Catholic Church, notably forbidding a second chance in ministry for any priest who has ever sexually abused a minor.

After 11 hours of intense debate over two days, the bishops adopted a “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People” that all dioceses must implement.

“For even a single act of sexual abuse of a minor—past, present or future—the offending priest or deacon will not remain in ministry and will not receive a future assignment,” it said.

Chicagoans offer testimony on abuse, healing
As the roughly 300 bishops who attended the Dallas meeting returned to their dioceses to implement the new sexual abuse policy, Ralph Bonaccorsi and Michael Bland returned to Chicago to keep doing their jobs: offering pastoral care and support to people who have been sexually abused by clergy and their families.

“Our ministry is to respond to hurt and pain,” Bonaccorsi said, not to adjudicate or decide disciplinary measures.

Archdiocese reviewing new policies
Archdiocesan Chancellor Jimmy Lago said in a statement that the bishops’ decision will likely affect eight priests of the Archdiocese of Chicago, all of whose cases previously were evaluated by the Fitness Review Board.

They include three who were never withdrawn from parish ministry but allowed to function with monitoring, four who were allowed to minister in special services but not in parishes, and one, Father John Calicott, who was publicly withdrawn and then returned to parish ministry.

Speakers: laity losing trust
Two prominent American lay leaders June 13 told the U.S. bishops assembled in Dallas that, beyond addressing the church’s sex abuse crisis, they need to develop and implement a new attitude toward the laity.

“Whatever the causes of the scandal, the fact is that the dam has broken. A reservoir of trust among Catholics has run dry,” said Commonweal magazine editor Margaret O’Brien Steinfels.

Opus Dei
Bringing the Work to life
It starts with the “heroic minute.”

For members of Opus Dei, the effort to bring daily life together with the divine begins when their alarm clocks ring and they throw off the covers and hit their knees to make a morning offering.

For Yolanda Martinez, a mother of five from Oak Lawn, it comes early enough to allow another prayer session, daily Mass, a prayer of thanksgiving, a visit with the Blessed Sacrament and a decade of the rosary said while jogging-all before she gets her children out the door and to school by 9 a.m.

Doing good for girls
The 300 girls who attend Metro Achievement Center near Greektown are not the brightest or the most in need of academic help.

They are not all Catholic, not necessarily of any faith at all.

What they are, said director M. Sharon Hefferan, is the “forgotten middle,” girls whose families live in inner-city Chicago and often have low incomes, but who, with some gentle nudging in the right direction, can see themselves in college.

Searching the heavens
Vatican astronomer sees hand of God in the stars

When Jesuit Father George V. Coyne was a young seminarian, just starting his study of theology, he wrote to tell his provincial superior he wanted to get close to the heavens another way: as an astronaut.

As the story goes, the provincial wrote back, “But George, if I let you go, then everyone will want to go.” Still, he said yes.

“So I went to the NASA training center,” said Coyne, some 40 years later. “And I was there for a month before somebody noticed I wore eyeglasses and sent me back.”

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