January-February 2001
January-February 2001
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| Dignity/USA and Soulforce, an interfaith gay rights group, demonstrated daily at the Vatican Jan. 3 through the Epiphany, Jan. 7, asking the Church to end its spiritual violence against gay/lesbian Catholics. They never got a blessing. When they tried to leave photos of gay people at the Christmas creche, they were prevented by police. For details on the Web, visit dignityusa.org and soulforce.org (Photo: Dignity/USA) |
Some bishops OK condoms to prevent AIDS
Vatican officials at an AIDS conference Dec.1 reiterated their categorical rejection of condoms. But bishops in France and Zimbabwe have said that where one spouse has H.I.V., a married couple may use condoms as the lesser of two evils. The Vatican has not quelled debate among Catholic moralists on whether to allow condoms in such extreme circumstances.
Kofi Annan joins Prejean against death penalty
Kofi Annan joins Prejean against death penalty U. N. Secretary General Kofi Annan Dec. 18 endorsed the petition for a worldwide moratorium on the death penalty. He had just received the petition, with 3.2 million signatures, from Sr. Helen Prejean and representatives of Amnesty International and the Sant’ Egidio Community, a Rome-based interfaith group. It asks the U.N. General Assembly for a resolution to halt executions and eventually ban them. “A moral theshold has been crossed,” Prejean said at the rally.
In Illinois, a statewide coalition against the death penalty is honoring Gov. George Ryan Feb. 5 for his current moratorium, and is mounting a two-year lobbying effort in Springfield to make the ban permanent.
President Fox begins demilitarizing Chiapas
Promising a new dawn for indigenous people in his Dec. 1 inaugural address, new Mexican President Vicente Fox is easing military tensions in the state of Chiapas. By early January, he had dismantled all military checkpoints, withdrawn federal troops from three of seven occupied regions, released the first 16 of 103 Zapatista prisoners, and resubmitted to Congress the implementation of the San Andres accords negotiated by Bishop Samuel Ruiz in 1996 between the government and the Zapatista movement, but never implemented by former President Ernesto Zedillo.
Carol Coston honored
Adrian Dominican Sr. Carol Coston, founding director of NETWORK in 1971, received the Presidential Citizens Medal from President and Mrs. Clinton Jan. 8 at the White House. The medal for ìremarkable deedsî for community and country has gone to some 90 people since 1969. Coston, 65, is the first nun to receive it. She is also a co-founder of Maryís Pence. She now heads Partners for the Common Good 2000, an alternative loan fund sponsored by 87 religious congregations and three Protestant denominations to support women-owned businesses and low income housing.
Congress funds Jubilee 2000 debt relief
The Jubilee 2000 call for Third World debt relief, signed by 20 million persons worldwide, scored a major victory late last year, when Congress fully funded Pres. Clintonís request for $435 million, four times the amount in 1999. And every dollar the U.S. contributes leverages an additional $20 from other countries. The Jubilee 2000 concept won supporters as diverse as Bono, the U-2 rock star, Pat Robertson of the Christian Coalition, the U.S. Catholic bishops, and Sen. Jesse Helms. How come? Said David Beckmann of Bread for the World, "The moral argument is at the heart of the campaign." In 1999, the Wall Street Journal was already calling Jubilee 2000 "a grassroots campaign reminiscent of the drive against South African apartheid."
Salvador generals cleared in 1980 slaying of nuns
Sued in a wrongful-death lawsuit under the 1991 Torture Victim Protection Act, the former defense minister and the former head of the National Guard in El Salvador stood trial for three weeks in a federal courtroom in Florida last fall for their role in the Dec. 2, 1980 massacre of four U.S. churchwomen. Last Nov. 3, the jury agreed with the claims of ex-Generals José Garcia and Vides Casanova that they didnít have command responsibility for the atrocities. Robert White, who was U.S. ambassador to El Salvador during the killings, testified otherwise, as he wrote in Commonweal (Dec. 1). But to condemn the generals, he said, the jury would also be condemning the U.S. government, which funded the Salvadorean military.
Human Rights Watch denounced the verdict. But Bill Ford, brother of slain Sr. Ita Ford, said the trial was still worth while, because ìjust bringing these guys into a courtroom to answer under oath is historic.î Auxiliary Bishop Rosa Chavez of San Salvador agreed: ìThe lesson is that human rights violators have nowhere to hide.î The two generals, who live in Florida, will be back in the same courtroom when a similar lawsuit by other Salvadoreans comes to trial.
‘Dominus Iesus’ continues to draw fire
Dominus Iesus, the September document from Cardinal Ratzinger's Vatican doctrinal office, "has had a very negative impact" on ecumenical relations around the world, according to Cardinal Edward Cassidy, who heads the Vatican office for Christian Unity but wasn't consulted by Ratzinger. Cassidy said the document led Anglican officials to decline the Pope's invitation to an Oct. 31 event honoring St. Thomas More, and caused cancellation of a reconciliation march from Assisi to the catacombs because all the invited leaders of Christian denominations refused to come.
Prominent Jesuit ecclesiologist Francis Sullivan of Boston College wrote in America magazine Oct. 28, "The positive assessment of the other Christian communities expressed at Vatican II, and recently confirmed by Pope John Paul II in Ut Unum Sint, would surely have warranted a more positive appreciation of the ecclesial character of the Anglican and Protestant communities than one finds in Dominus Iesus."
The Tablet (London) asked retired Cardinal Franz König of Vienna, one of the giants of Vatican II, if the other Christian churches are "gravely deficient," as Dominus Iesus says. "Certainly not in the modern meaning of that term," he replied. "In their modern connotation, those words sound offensive and rude."