U.S. dioceses facing financial squeeze, foundation leader says
PHILADELPHIA (CNS) -- Catholic dioceses in the United States "appear to be running through their reserves at an alarming rate," Francis J. Butler, president of Foundations and Donors Interested in Catholic Activities, told the National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management June 29. The round table, a gathering of more than 200 top Catholic executives in business, finance, law, philanthropy, academia, nonprofits and church institutions, including a dozen bishops, met in Philadelphia to discuss ways to improve the church's fundraising and financial management and reporting practices. Butler said he recently interviewed financial officers of several dioceses he considered "fairly typical and well-managed. The findings are striking," he said. "In the past eight years one archdiocese experienced a 47 percent decline in unrestricted net assets, whose value is probably the best barometer of financial health," he said. "This amounts to (a) decline of a whopping $16 million a year."
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Education summit looks at school closings, future
BOSTON (CNS) -- Catholic school educators and administrators took a close look at the challenges facing Catholic schools today, particularly school closings, during a June 23-25 summit at Boston College. The three-day session, co-sponsored by the college, the National Catholic Educational Association and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, focused on new initiatives to improve Catholic schools such as restructuring school systems to meet changing demographics and finding new ways to raise funds. The annual summit, called SPICE, for Selected Programs for Improving Catholic Education, typically highlights programs that work so other educators may replicate or adapt them in their dioceses. Jesuit Father Joseph O'Keefe, dean of the Lynch School of Education at Boston College, said the hope for Catholic schools was summed up in the words of Atlanta Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory, who attended a Catholic school as a non-Catholic and was led to enter the church through his education. "It brought home the great treasure that these schools are and how important these schools can be in the lives of kids," Father O'Keefe told The Pilot, Boston's archdiocesan newspaper.
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U.S. Catholic population up, most other church data down
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The U.S. Catholic population rose by more than a million last year, but the church registered declines in Catholic school enrollments and in sacramental practice, according to figures in the 2006 Official Catholic Directory. The 2,043-page tome, also known as the Kenedy Directory after its New Jersey publishers' imprint, came out at the end of June. It lists all ordained U.S. Catholic clergy, parishes, missions, schools, hospitals and other institutions. It also gives statistical data on the church by diocese and nationally. Its national figures include data from Puerto Rico, a U.S. commonwealth, and U.S. territories overseas such as the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa and Guam. Based on annual reports submitted by each diocese, the directory is supposed to be a snapshot of what the church looked like on Jan. 1, 2006. The Catholic population rose about 1.3 million last year, to 69,135,254, the directory said.
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Maryland bishops ask court to affirm state ban on same-sex marriage
BALTIMORE (CNS) -- The Maryland Catholic Conference is asking the state's highest court to overturn a lower court ruling that said it was unconstitutional to limit marriage to a man and a woman. The conference -- representing the archbishops of Washington and Baltimore and the bishop of Wilmington, Del., whose dioceses all include parts of Maryland -- filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the Maryland Court of Appeals June 26. In a Jan. 20 ruling, Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge M. Brooke Murdock said the state's current ban on same-sex marriage violates the Maryland Declaration of Rights because it "discriminates, based on gender, against a suspect class and is not narrowly tailored to serve any compelling governmental interests." The judge stayed her own ruling pending the outcome of an appeal filed by Joseph Curran Jr., Maryland's attorney general. The Maryland Catholic Conference brief was in support of Curran's appeal.
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Helping faith-based, community groups help those they know best
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- It all started with seven members of Hope of Glory Church, a nondenominational Christian congregation in Gretna, La., who met in late 2000 to talk about how to help the ailing community where most of them had grown up. The Hope Center that was born in those meetings is now a thriving, community-based nonprofit organization, offering job assistance to dozens of local residents. Despite the job-market adjustments needed after the terrorist attacks in 2001 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, it is about to start a construction training program to help fill a critical need in the New Orleans area. The Hope Center also is one of the success stories touted by the Department of Labor, which awarded $4 million in grants to 55 faith-based and community organizations June 28. The Gretna center received a $24,220 grant last year and $74,030 in the latest round of funding. All the funded organizations "are committed to serving the hardest-to-serve," including the homeless, those with limited English, the chronically unemployed, welfare recipients, high school dropouts and former prisoners, said Jedd Medefind, director of the Labor Department's Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
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Catholic family's foundation in San Antonio helps those in need
SAN ANTONIO (CNS) -- In the making of distilled spirits, there is the tradition of the "angel's share" -- a portion that evaporates as part of the natural distilling process. In San Antonio, a family has taken this concept to heart in their efforts to meet small but urgent needs in the community. Three years ago, the family anonymously founded a nonprofit Archangel Foundation to help individuals in need. They selected Roberto Pina as the executive director, based on his 25 years of work in various church ministries. Pina said the family that set up the foundation had discussed during a vacation the many blessings they had received and felt it was time that they gave something back to the community. They decided that even with their limited resources they should try to help others. "You always think of philanthropists as having the millions to give," said Pina. He described what this family has attempted as an experiment in microphilanthropy, because the family had hundreds of dollars to donate instead of millions. Since its founding, the foundation has met seemingly small needs, but all have been a matter of urgency for the recipients of funds. All assistance is given on a one-time basis.
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New natural family planning program aims to attract iPod generation
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (CNS) -- The Couple to Couple League unveiled its updated natural family planning program and materials during its June 25-28 convention at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway. The organization hopes the changes will appeal to a younger audience accustomed to colorful media presentations, iPods and the Internet and young people who want simpler rules to follow for natural family planning, said the league's executive director, Andy Alderson, in a telephone interview with the Arkansas Catholic, Little Rock diocesan newspaper, from his office in Cincinnati. "We have really tried to add some spice," he said. The materials include a new DVD presentation for users, Web-based training for teachers and users and a new book. The materials incorporate Pope John Paul II's teaching on the theology of the body. In addition, the number of required classes has been reduced from four to three to address couples' busy schedules, Alderson said. The new program will be available to new participants in October.
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WORLD
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Cardinal: Those involved in stem-cell research face excommunication
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Female egg donors, doctors and researchers involved in the destruction of embryos for stem-cell studies can face excommunication, said the head of the Vatican's family council. Because embryonic stem-cell research involves the destruction of a human embryo and therefore human life, "it is the same thing" as abortion and similarly entails excommunication, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Pontifical Council for the Family, said in a recent magazine interview. Italy's leading Catholic magazine, Famiglia Cristiana, published the interview with the Colombian cardinal in its July 2 issue, released June 28. "To destroy the embryo is equivalent to an abortion," he said, "and the excommunication applies to the woman, the doctors, the researchers who eliminate embryos."
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Vatican says documents from Pius XI's papacy to be available Sept. 18
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI has authorized the Vatican Secret Archives to make available to researchers all the documentation from the pre-World War II pontificate of Pope Pius XI. The documents of the 1922-1939 pontificate -- documents held in a variety of Vatican archives, including those of the Secretariat of State and the Vatican Secret Archives -- will be available to scholars beginning Sept. 18, said a statement published June 30 by the Vatican. In 2002, Pope John Paul II ordered the archives to begin preparing the material, particularly with a view to responding to requests for information about Vatican diplomatic contacts with Germany after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. In addition, he authorized the archives to make available to scholars the material from Pope Pius' pontificate that dealt directly with Vatican-German relations.
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Do not forget: Book aims to dispel unease after pope's Birkenau talk
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Amid lingering questions and even disappointment about Pope Benedict XVI's remarks at the Nazis' Birkenau death camp, the Vatican has published a book that attempts to place the speech in a wider context. The book, "Rouse Yourself! Do Not Forget Mankind, Your Creature," was released in Italian June 27, and an English edition is being prepared. The title is a line from the German-born pope's May 28 speech at the death camp in Poland, a speech that focused on the theological question of where was God when the Nazis were exterminating 6 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of other innocent people. While both Christian and Jewish scholars acknowledged the theological importance of the question, many of them expressed surprise and even criticism that the pope did not focus more on the question: Where were the Christians -- particularly German Catholics -- and other people of good will? In addition, some were puzzled that the pope did not use the occasion to condemn anti-Semitism.
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Priest says Gaza residents are used to living in difficult conditions
JERUSALEM (CNS) -- Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip are so used to living under difficult conditions that the latest Israeli bombings and border closings do not make much difference in their lives, said a Gaza parish priest. "It's not worse than it has been. We are so accustomed to what has happened before we don't see any difference. We have been living like this, but nobody spoke about it. Now people are speaking about it," said Father Manuel Musallam of Holy Family Parish in Gaza City. In a telephone interview with Catholic News Service June 30, Father Musallam said the Israeli bombing of Gaza's only power plant has left people with only about four to six hours of electricity per day, and lack of electricity affects the water pumps. The parish church and school have been able to use a generator for additional electricity, but not everyone has a generator, he said. "Neighbors around the school ask for one hour of electricity to pull the water up to the roofs," said the priest. "If there is a sick person in need of electricity, we give (it to) them."
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PEOPLE
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Soldier's death should not lead to 'unholy rage,' bishop says
BROWNSVILLE, Texas (CNS) -- The death of Army Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, the U.S. soldier captured and brutalized in Iraq, should not lead people to feel "unholy rage and anger," said Bishop Raymundo J. Pena of Brownsville during the June 28 funeral Mass for the soldier. During the bilingual Mass at the Brownsville Event Center, the bishop told hundreds of mourners that reacting with anger "would only dishonor Kristian's very name and Kristian himself." He said, "At this moment, we must, as he did, reach for the ideal: to work for peace and an end to conflict wherever we may find it -- at home, on the streets or even in a foreign land." The 23-year-old soldier, the son of a Mexican immigrant, was one of three U.S. Army soldiers who died after a June 16 insurgent attack at the checkpoint they were guarding. Menchaca and another soldier, Pfc. Thomas Tucker from Madras, Ore., were missing for three days before their mutilated bodies were found booby-trapped with explosives. The third soldier, Spc. David J. Babineau from Springfield, Mass., died in the initial attack.
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Community of missionary nuns launches new Web on their life, ministry
PHILADELPHIA (CNS) -- The Missionary Sisters of the Holy Rosary in Philadelphia have created the Web site
www.holyrosarysisters.org about their life and ministry to help others understand what it is like to be a missionary living and working with the poor around the world. "One cannot express the joy we feel in working alongside the people of God in so many wonderful cultures," said Sister Monica Devine, the congregational leader. "The Holy Spirit guides all of us as we come together in good works responding to the diverse needs of many. It is wonderful to know we can share our spiritual journey with so many others on the Internet." The community was begun by eight women in 1924 to help women and children in Nigeria. Today it has 380 members working in 15 countries in the Americas, Africa and Europe. They opened a new mission in Liberia to aid refugees.
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Pakistani archbishop says bias against Christians has increased
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Discrimination against Christians and the desecration of church buildings in Pakistan have increased in the past year, said Archbishop Lawrence Saldanha of Lahore, Pakistan. Archbishop Saldanha told Catholic News Service June 27 that the "common people" are biased against Christians, who are often the poorest and least-educated people in Pakistan. Christians have become "quite unpopular with the radical Muslims" since the strategic partnership of Pakistan and the United States to fight terrorism, the archbishop said. "We thought we would be good, get some sort of aid" from the partnership, but "it certainly has made it worse" when the increased anti-Christian sentiment is taken into account, said the archbishop. Pakistani church leaders often have said that many Muslims equate Christianity with Western societies. Archbishop Saldanha spoke with CNS in Washington during a two-week trip to the United States.
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