RNS Digest
c. 2010 Religion News Service

Controversial Catholic group plans ordination without Vatican’s OK

By Niels Sorrells

BERLIN (RNS) — The controversial Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) has announced plans to consecrate three priests on June 26 in Germany, a move one Catholic official has called a “provocation” that could upend a tentative peace with the Vatican.
The conservative SSPX, which rejects many of the Catholic Church’s modernizing reforms, has long had a difficult relationship with the Vatican. A decision to consecrate four bishops against the orders of Pope John Paul II in 1988 led to the excommunication of all bishops involved, though the excommunication of four bishops was lifted in 2009.
The Vatican was deeply embarrassed after one of the rehabilitated SSPX bishops, Richard Williamson, turned out to be a vocal denier of the Holocaust. The Vatican claimed it did not know of his views when Pope Benedict XVI lifted his excommunication in a bid to reconcile the group with Rome.
The ordination ceremony for three deacons from Sweden, the Czech Republic and Italy was revealed in a circular released by the SSPX on May 31.
The KNA news agency quoted Regensburg Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, whose diocese includes the town of Zaitzkofen where the ordination is set to occur, as saying that the move was a “provocation” that could damage efforts to reintegrate the group into Catholic Church.
Until the group’s status is clarified, any such ceremonies should “only be attempted with clear direction and permission from the pope,” Mueller said.

Study: More teenage girls using the rhythm method

By Ankita Rao

WASHINGTON (RNS) — A new government health survey found that more teenage girls are using the calendar-based “rhythm method” of birth control while having sex.
The rhythm method involves avoiding sex on the more fertile days of the ovulation cycle — a practice sometimes dubbed periodic abstinence.
The report from the centres for Disease Control and Prevention found that 17 per cent of teenage girls said they had used the rhythm method in 2006-2008, up from 11 per cent reported in a 2002 survey.
Condoms, withdrawal and birth control pills surpassed the rhythm method in popular contraception practices, with 79 per cent of teens saying they used protection during their first encounter.
The figure raised concerns with some teen pregnancy experts.
“Periodic abstinence is like being a little bit pregnant,” said Elizabeth Schroeder, executive director of Answer, a national sexuality education organization at Rutgers University.
She said that while the rhythm method could be effective when used in conjunction with other practices, routine use did not successfully prevent pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases.
Attitudes toward teenage pregnancy have also changed, according to the CDC report. Fewer teenage boys (12 per cent) reported not having sex to avoid pregnancy, down from 25 per cent in 2002, and nearly two-thirds (64 per cent) said that it was OK for an unmarried female to have a baby, up from 50 per cent in 2002.
Teenagers in the survey who had abstained from sex cited “against religion and morals” as their most common reason — the same as the 2002 survey response.
Schroeder said the survey made a case for comprehensive sex education, since abstinence-only education favoured by many religious groups does not adequately discuss protection methods, or address the needs of teenage girls in relationships.
“If there’s a choice between having unprotected risky sex or losing their boyfriend, they chose having unprotected risky sex,” she said.


Head of Turkish bishops conference stabbed to death

By Stephen Brown

GENEVA (RNS/ENInews) The Italian-born president of the Catholic bishops’ conference in Turkey, Bishop Luigi Padovese, was found stabbed to death in the southern Turkish city of Iskenderun on June 3.
“This is horrible news that left us deeply shocked,” Vatican spokesperson Rev. Federico Lombardi said Thursday, one day before Pope Benedict XVI is scheduled to depart on a three-day trip to neighbouring Cyprus.
Lombardi said “political motivations” and “other motivations linked to socio-political tensions are to be excluded” in determining why Padovese was killed, according to Vatican Radio.
Christians have often complained of discrimination in Turkey, where about 99 per cent of the country’s 77 million people are Muslim. The Catholic Church there has just 32,000 members.
Vatican Radio said Turkish officials confirmed that police were holding a man of Kurdish origins, named only as “Murat A.,” as a suspect in the killing of the bishop.
Lombardi said the suspect had been employed as a driver and general handyman by the bishop.
The Anatolian Agency news service said a man had attacked Padovese in the garden of his summer house in Karajan, a seaside resort on the outskirts of Iskenderun.
Padovese, 63, was ordained in 1973, and became a bishop and apostolic vicar (papal representative) of Anatolia, Turkey, in 2004. He had been scheduled to travel to Cyprus for a meeting between the pope and Catholic bishops from the Middle East this weekend.
“Bishop Padovese was a person who gave his entire life to bring the gospel of love and peace to difficult situations, and therefore should be written among the witnesses of the gospel,” said Lombardi.
“This fact, coming as it does on the eve of a papal trip to the Middle East, lends an extraordinary intensity to the pope’s mission to encourage the Christian communities living in this region, helping us to profoundly understand the urgent need for the solidarity of the universal church to support these Christian communities,” Lombardi said.

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