Hyatt lawsuit ended

Remember February 1996? The Hyatt O'Hare Hotel unilaterally cancelled CTA's November 1996 space contract. Hyatt told CTA they had found a better paying client. So we were out on the street, just eight months before our convention, with no comparable space available in the area on our conference weekend. Hyatt was willing to pay CTA $54,000 in "liquidated damages", as per the contract agreement, for breaking the contracts for 1996 and 1997. CTA felt a moral responsibility to challenge the Hyatt's action in court. One of our local members agreed to take the case pro bono.

After two and a half years of litigation, the court ruled that Hyatt was not obligated to pay CTA more than the $54,000 stipulated in the contract. Hyatt then agreed to a negotiated settlement of an additional $28,000 payment to CTA in exchange for CTA's agreement not to further litigate on any matter related to the contracts signed with CTA for 1996 through 2000.

We are happy to have received a total of $82,000 from the Hyatt as a result of their cancellation. We are deeply grateful to our pro bono friend for representing CTA at no cost to us. Our taking Hyatt to court was very likely a factor in their ultimate decision to settle with us on the outlying contracts. In addition, the crisis enabled us to experience the great hospitality and support of our CTA friends in the Detroit and Milwaukee areas for our 1996, 1997 and 1998 conferences. Thus we can celebrate some silver linings in the clouds that first settled over us in February 1996.

Vatican and universities on collision course?

The U.S. bishops are currently caught between a rock and a hard place. The rock (appropriately) is the Vatican which says the bishops have to bring Catholic universities into conformity with the requirements of the 1990 apostolic letter Ex Corde Ecclesiae. The hard place is the universities themselves which predict the loss of their autonomy if they are hit with a battery of juridic regulations to guarantee absolutely orthodox teaching. The National Conference of Catholic Bishops' first attempt to comply with Ex Corde, approved overwhelmingly by the nation's bishops, was submitted to Rome in 1996 but was rejected as too loose and as failing to provide sufficient controls over the schools. The new proposal, under discussion now by the NCCB, has been sharply criticized by university officials at Notre Dame and Boston College for sacrificing "those prerogatives that make Catholic universities and their professional staffs the respected and influential members of the higher education community that they are." It would require all teachers of theological subjects to have "a mandate from the competent ecclesiastical authority."

Meanwhile, Cardinal Francis George said in February that universities have nothing to fear from hierarchical oversight. Americans are overly sensitive about control and suffer from a "poverty of imagination," he said. Stay tuned.

A pox on your Pax!

Pax Christi Michigan, the home unit of Bishop Tom Gumbleton, was forced to relocate its 1999 state conference by orders from the chancery office of Cardinal Adam Maida, archbishop of Detroit. The reason: featured speakers, Sr. Jeannine Gramick and Fr. Bob Nugent, are still under Vatican investigation for alleged offenses against orthodoxy in their writings and ministry to lesbian and gay Catholics.

Although no Vatican verdict has been rendered, the rebuff is a classic case of "presumed guilty until proven innocent." Maida chairs the Vatican committee conducting the investigation. Pax Christi Michigan moved its April 17 meeting from St. Patrick's Parish in downtown Detroit to the nearby Central Methodist Church. (See calendar)

Spirituality of work

Greg Pierce, former president of the National Center for the Laity, has begun a free weekly e-mail service. Over 300 people have already logged on, and receive Greg's weekly messages, with "ideas and initiatives in the development of the disciplines of a spirituality of work, and efforts to bring about the reign of God." To subscribe, send your e-mail address to gfapierce@aol.com

Laity to receive marching orders

Pope John Paul II spoke enthusiastically recently about the World Congress for the Lay Apostolate he has scheduled for Nov. 24, 2000. The event, he said, "cannot help but point out to the lay faithful the duties that await them in diverse areas of mission and service to man at the start of the third millennium." It is not yet clear if CTA members will be asked to help prepare the agenda, but when the question was put to a high Vatican official, he said, "Ché?"

Attention Catholic men: Flee from women!

A new book for Catholics, "The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity," explains why the modern world is beset with problems: good Christian men have gotten too close to women. A few excerpts: "Masculinity is always a journey away from the feminine ... Masculinity is a central concern of the Old Testament. God is masculine, and the response he calls for entails special responsibilities for men ... Though masculinity is always threatened by femininity, men cannot simply abandon all contact with women. Yet that union itself is a chronic source of problems for men ... As the result of a nearly 1,000-year trend toward a feminized Christianity -- which must be heartily masculine to be true to its Founder -- the Christian Church takes on the appearance of a neopagan goddess cult, as the prevalence of liturgical dance attests." It is time, says author Leon Podles, for men to reassert their position and drive those abominable dancers out of the sanctuary.