RNSdigest_06_02

RNS Digest
© 2010 Religion News Service

Muslims break ground on major Islamic centre in Toronto

By Ron Csillag

TORONTO (RNS) — The Aga Khan, leader of the world’s 15 million Ismaili Muslims, on Friday (May 28) joined Prime Minister Stephen Harper to break ground on a planned $300-million Islamic centre that will include the first museum of Islamic art and culture in North America.

More than a decade in planning and design, the complex will be home to the 100,000-square-foot Aga Khan Museum, designed by acclaimed Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki. Nearby, the larger Ismaili Centre Toronto will contain meeting and multi-purpose rooms, a prayer room, youth lounge and library.

Linking the two buildings in north Toronto will be a network of ponds, fountains, gardens and pathways.

According to the Aga Khan Foundation, the museum will house and exhibit “some of the most important works of Islamic art in the world.”

Some 200 pieces from the Aga Khan’s personal 1,000-piece collection will be on display in a permanent gallery. Some artifacts date back 1,000 years.

Temporary exhibitions will also take place, in addition to educational programs. The museum will host workshops and classes for the general public.

The complex “will introduce people of different backgrounds to the compelling history of Islam,” said Harper, who presented the Aga Kahn with honourary Canadian citizenship.

Born in Geneva in 1936, the Aga Khan is known as the 49th hereditary imam and a direct descendent of the Prophet Muhammad through the prophet’s daughter and son-in-law, Ali. Ismailism is a branch of Shia Islam and its second-largest sect. There are an estimated 30,000 Ismaili Muslims in Toronto.

The Aga Khan, who helps funds dozens of humanitarian projects around the world, has a soft spot for Canada, which he has called “the most pluralistic country on the face of the Earth” and “a beacon to the world.”

The Toronto project, scheduled to be completed in 2013, will complete a trio of edifices in Canada, including the Ismaili Centre in British Columbia, and the Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat in Ottawa.

Priests’ mistresses petition for end to celibacy

By Fernando Alfonso III

(RNS) — Some 40 Italian women who claim to have had relationships with Roman Catholic priests have sent a letter to Pope Benedict XVI seeking an end to priestly celibacy.

The letter, posted on the website of the Times of London newspaper on Friday (May 28), says celibacy “has nothing to do either with the Scripture in general ... or with Jesus, who never spoke about it.”

The women are accustomed to living in anonymity, the letter said, but their voices “can no longer continue to be ignored.” A priest is a “painfully lonely being” who needs to fully experience love without “suffering the consequences of obligatory celibacy.”

The 1,578-word letter also cites passages from the German book “Kleriker: Psychogramm eines Ideals” by former Roman Catholic priest and theologian Eugen Drewermann. In the passage, Drewermann says that “the individual cleric looks like a bucket of water: it is necessary to fully empty its contents to fill it to the brim again with everything that seems desirable to ecclesiastical superiors.”

Fewer than one in three American Catholics believe mandatory celibacy for priests was a major factor in the sexual abuse crisis, according to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll. Twenty-eight per cent said it was a minor factor, and 35 per cent say it was not a factor at all, according to the poll.

Canadian, US archbishops to lead probe of Irish church abuse

By Richard Allen

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Pope Benedict XVI has tapped four top US and Canadian bishops to help lead a high-profile inquiry into child sex abuse in the Irish Catholic Church.

The announcement comes as the Vatican appears to be taking a tougher line on sexual abuse. At a special prayer service on May 29, the Vatican’s chief abuse investigator, Msgr. Charles Scicluna, quoted from Pope Gregory the Great, saying abusive priests would suffer “more terrible damnation” in hell.

The Apostolic Visitation, which had been promised in the pope’s March letter to Irish Catholics, will assign separate archdioceses to separate investigators. All nine members of the investigatory team, including two nuns, are of Irish descent.

Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley will oversee a probe of Dublin; Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins will oversee the Archdiocese of Cashel and Emly; Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast will oversee the Archdiocese of Tuam, and retired British Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor will oversee the Archdiocese of Armagh.

In addition, New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan will oversee a probe of Irish seminaries.

Since December, three Irish bishops have resigned after being criticized for mishandling cases of pedophile priests. The country’s top prelate, Cardinal Sean Brady, has so far resisted calls for his resignation.

The pope said the inquiry was a response to “the tragic cases of abuse perpetrated by priests and religious upon minors,” and was aimed at contributing to the country’s “desired spiritual and moral renewal.”
In a statement, O’Malley stressed the importance of responding “to the concerns of the Catholic community and the survivors in the manner that will promote the process of healing.”

But Barbara Dorris, outreach director for the Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), said the church should have appointed outside investigators, and pointed to O’Malley and Dolan’s “troubling track records on abuse” in US cases.

Meanwhile, Irish-born Archbishop Richard Burke of Benin City, Nigeria, became the latest prelate to resign after a Nova Scotia woman accused the 60-year-old prelate of a 20-year sexual relationship with her in Nigeria, starting when she was 14.

‘Father Oprah’ ordained an Episcopal priest in Miami

By Daniel Burke

(RNS) — Rev. Alberto Cutie, the Miami media star who converted from Catholicism to the Episcopal Church last year after his romantic life became public, has been formally accepted as an Episcopal priest.

Cutie, 41, pledged to conform to the “doctrine, discipline, and worship” of the Episcopal Church at a ceremony on Saturday (May 29) at Church of the Resurrection in Biscayne Park, Fla.

Once known as “Father Oprah” for the one-man media empire that made him a household name in Miami, Cutie was caught kissing his girlfriend in photos published last year. The handsome former Catholic priest married the woman, Ruhama Buni Canellis, last June and is expecting a child in six months, according to the Miami Herald.

“God is not all that interested in you falling down,” Cutie said on Saturday, according to the Herald. “God is interested in you getting up again.”

Cutie had been a lay pastor at Church of the Resurrection since May 2009, but severely curtailed his media presence, leaving behind his newspaper advice column, and television and radio shows when he left the Catholic Church.

Cutie continues to carry a picture of Pope Benedict XVI in his Bible, a friend told the Miami Herald, but says that Catholics “act as if I dropped dead, as if I don’t exist,” the paper reported.

Majority find homosexuality ‘morally acceptable’ for first time

By Fernando Alfonso III

WASHINGTON (RNS) — A slight majority of Americans view gay or lesbian relations as morally acceptable, a first since Gallup pollsters started asking about the issue in 2001.

In a recent survey of 16 different behaviours or social practices, pollsters

found that 52 per cent of Americans accept gay or lesbian relations, a steady increase since a form of the question was introduced nine years ago. The percentage of Americans who find it “morally wrong’’ dipped to its lowest point: 43 per cent.

Sixty per cent of Democrats and independents accept of gay or lesbian relations, compared to 35 per cent of Republicans.

Americans were tied, at 46 per cent, regarding the morality of doctor-assisted suicide — a stark contrast to the 77 per cent of Americans who believe suicide is morally wrong.

Americans are overwhelmingly agreed on admonishing cheating spouses, with only six per cent of respondents saying marital infidelity is morally acceptable.

The findings are based on telephone interviews with 1,029 U.S. adults, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.