VOL. 32, NO.5.
Friday, January 29, 1988
FALL RIVER, MASS.
Most of the country's Catholic parishes supported the boycott. The bishops said "irregularities and fraud" were widespread during the election. They said children 11-13 years of age were allowed to cast ballots and that some people were allowed to vote more than once. They denounced the arrest of church pastoral workers during the election campaign "on the pretext of propaganda against the elections. "Certain fundamental moral values were violated during the electoral process and on election Turn to Page Six
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58 Per Year
Vatican studies tax resistance moral aspects
Haiti bishops rap elections VATICAN CITY (NC) - Haiti's bishops said the country's January presidential election was unjust, unfair and fraud-ridden. But in a statment Jan. 23, six days after the ballot, they appealed to Haitians to avoid violent expressions of their post-election disappointment. "[Violence] is not a solution. On the contrary, it would be a test of force from which the nation would emerge bruised, maimed and paralyzed." the bishops said. The statement was made public at the Vatican Jan. 25. Haitian officials said Jan. 24 that Leslie F. Manigat, the candidate favored by the military government. had won the election. The vote was boycotted by Haiti's four main opposition leaders. Gregoire Eugene, head of the Social Christian Party and a former ally of Manigat who also ran in the presidential race, said. "We will not collaborate with a president we do not recognize as such."
Southeastern Massachusetts' Largest Weekly
A MARCH FOR LIFE participant walks through crosses on the V. S. Capitol lawn. 4,400 crosses were set up to represent the number of V.S. babies lost daily through abortion. (NC photo)
Pro-lifers mourn WASHINGTON (NC) - Temperatures were in the 30s last Friday as an estimated 50,000 abortion opponents began marking the 15th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. At the annual March for Life in the nation's capital, the marchers appealed for both science and law to recognize the rights of the unborn. The Fall River diocese was represented at the march by a number of individuals, including Alice McAndrews of Holy Ghost parish, Attleboro, who traveled to
Washington with her husband John, son Raymond, daughter Christine and an ecumenical contingent of pro-lifers. Mrs. McAndrews, who participated in the march for the third time, noted that first-timers in her group "had a very positive experience. "We were very satisfied," she said. "It was the largest crowd I've seen. And it was a pro-life crowd, opposed to just an anti-abortion crowd." Mrs. McAndrews said she obTurn to Page Six
VATI CAN CITY (N C) - The Vatican's doctrinal congregation is studying the moral aspects of nonpayment of taxes by Catholics who object to the way the revenue is used, a Vatican official said. The study comes after several bishops and priests in Italy gave public support to a growing "fiscal objection" movement, in which citizens have refused to pay the tax portion \hat would be allocated for military spending. The Vatican official, who asked not to be identified, said that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was eventually expected to publish an instruction or some other statement on the moral dimensions of tax nonpayment. He said the congregation was not studying economic or political aspects of the question. Requests for such a study, the official said, had come from persons in a number of countries. In the meantime, the congregation has cautioned Italian bishops on the issue, saying they should not encourage positions that "could turn out to be without serious doctrinal foundation." The advice was contained in a note from the congregation to Italy's regional bishops' conferences. The note was later leaked to the Italian Catholic news agency ASCA. The "fiscal objection" movement gained nO'toriety in 1985 when about 2,500 priests and religious in
northern Italy formed "Blessed Are the Peacemakers," a group that argued for the legitimacy of nonpayment of taxes to protest military spending. Since then, several thousand Catholics throughout the country have joined the organization. . The movement won support from some Italian bishops. More recently, Bishop Luigi Bettazzi of Ivrea declared that he would not pay the tax amount that would go toward armaments. Another Italian bishop said "fiscal objection" could be legitimate if the tax amount were placed in an account used for charitable purposes. In the V nited States, dozens of people, including priests, have withheld taxes to protest use of the money for nuclear and military buildup. Since 1982, Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen of Seattle has withheld 50 percent of his taxes in protest of the nuclear arms race. In 1984, the Internal Revenue Service began garnisheeing his wages to ¡collect tax money he owed. A spokesman for the archdiocese said that the IRS still garni.shees the archbishop's wages. He said the archbishop directs the unpaid portion of his taxes to the Conscience and Military Tax Campaign.
Changes in church, priesthood seen underlying seminary tensions PALM BEACH, Fla. (NC) Changes in the church and the style of priesthood underlie many of the tensions facing V.S. seminaries today, participants at a recent gathering of researchers, seminary leaders and foundation executives said. Coadjutor Archbishop Thomas J. Murphy of Seattle, in a keynote speech opening the meeting in Palm Beach, highlighted a growing need for priests to work effectively with lay ministers and to reconcile tensions in parishes. Franciscan Sister Katarina Schuth of the Weston School of Theology in Cambridge. who has spent the last three years researching the current state of V.S. seminaries. said one of the main divisions today is between those who back the "single purpose, single sex" seminary environment encouraged by the Vatican and those who think theology schools with "a
mixed student body" provide better formation for the priesthood today. The conference, "U .S. Catholic Seminaries and their Future," was cosponsored by the Lilly Endowment and FADICA, Foundations and Donors Interested in Catholic Activities. Archbishop Murphy, a leader among V.S. bishops on issues of priestly formation, life and ministry, acknowledged tensions in V.S. seminaries but described them as "challenges" that face not only seminaries but the church at large. He said many V.S. seminaries responded to changes in the church after the second Vatican Council by evolving "into centers for not only the education and formation of priests but also the education and formation of other ministers in the church today, while utilizing the gifts and talents of laity, reli-
gious, deacons and priests as faculty persons." A new Vatican emphasis in recent years on more priests in seminary faculties and on distinct, separate priesthood formation programs "placed new expectations on seminaries," he said. He said the acceptance by seminaries only of males with a commitment to lifetime celibacy "is a reality which has profound ramifications in the recruitment of candidates as well as on the ever.increasing desire of women to have a more significant participation in
CATHOLIC SCHOOLS WEEK BEGINS SUNDAY SEE PAGES 7 to 10
the life, government and. leadership within the church." Sister Schuth said a key problem is lack of scholarship and endowment funding of Catholic seminaries and theology schools, leading many Catholic students to turn to non-Catholic theology schools for financial reasons or because oftheir superior academic resources. . Sister Schuth also cited the quality of seminary candidates as a serious concern. According to her research, "about the top 10 percent or so who used to enter seminaries are not doing so," she said. Vincentian Father David Nygren' of Boston University, a collaborator in Sister Schuth's research, said the differences between the separate and the mixed-program models for seminaries are based on serious differences in the perception of what a priest should be. The idea of a separate seminary
program, he said, is based on the view that a trainee learns best to be a priest by being surrounded with role models and developing a strong identity which enables him to face later challenges to it. The other approach is based on the view that an identity developed in isolation is inadequate and that testing in an integrated life setting provides a deeper, fuller formation, he said. At another conference session, Mary Patricia Mulligan, professor of pastoral theology at the Pontifical College Josephinum in Worthington, Ohio, said that lay people coming into ministry need formation linked closely to their own experience, not geared to those entering ordained ministry or consecrated life. Panelists responding to her talk agreed that the church does not Turn to Page Six