Bishops approve documents on contraception, communion, and gay ministry

By Daily News Feed
Created Nov 14 2006 - 17:01
Major 'Reorganization' of conference structures supported
By Joe Feuerherd
Baltimore

Get with the program. Please.
That was the polite but firm message sent by the U.S. bishops today to couples who use birth control methods condemned by the church, gay Catholics and those who minister to them, and politicians and others who receive communion despite disagreement with church teaching.
In the second-day of their four-day gathering in Baltimore, the bishops approved "Married Love and the Gift of Life," a document that will be produced as pamphlet for distribution to engaged couples participating in marriage preparation programs, to priests and seminarians, and to other "Catholic lay adults."
They also gave support to "Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination: Guidelines for Pastoral Care," a 22-page document designed to provide guidance to those ministering to Catholic gays.
The "Married Love and the Gift of Life" document will be a tough sell: Only four percent of Catholic couples of childbearing age practice NFP, the church's approved method of birth control, according to background material distributed with the proposed brochure. There was no discussion of the item at today's meeting prior to the overwhelming vote in favor of publishing the pamphlet.
For "Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination: Guidelines for Pastoral Care," the key debate focused on whether the document should laud the work of Courage, a controversial church-sanctioned ministry to gays, and its affiliated organization, Encourage, a support group for family members of gays. The bishops rejected an amendment offered by St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke that would have explicitly cited the two groups as exemplars of orthodox ministry to gays. Instead, the bishops agreed to include a footnote in the document praising the organizations.
They rejected amendments that would have removed the term "disordered inclination" from the document. Those words, prominently articulated by Pope Benedict when he headed the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, have been criticized by some as offensive to gays. The bishops took pains to clarify that language. "It is crucially important to understand that saying a person has a particular inclination that is disordered is not to say that the person as a whole is disordered," says the document. "Nor does it mean that one has been rejected by God or the Church."
Further, the bishops approved "Happy are Those who are Called to His Supper," a document they hope will prompt Catholics to consider their worthiness to receive the Eucharist before joining the communion line. The new statement grew out of the 2004 presidential election when a relative handful of bishops indicated they would deny communion to the Democrat nominee, Sen. John Kerry, because of his pro-choice views on abortion.
Amendments that would have explicitly referenced politicians who dissent from church teaching and those who use artificial contraception as particularly unsuited to present themselves for communion were rejected by the bishops.

Reorganization

The bishops were also likely to support an ambitious restructuring proposal for their Washington-based operations.
Under the plan, the "diocesan assessment" -- essentially a tax that each diocese pays to subsidize national conference operations -- would be reduced 16 percent. Though the assessment accounts for just 9 percent of the conference's $131 million annual budget, it is the organization's largest source of unrestricted revenue. Over the last several years, citing fiscal constraints in their home dioceses, the bishops have declined to increase the assessment. As a result, the conference has dipped into endowed reserves to fund operations.
The restructuring involves reducing the current 68 committees, subcommittees and task forces to 34.
Under the restructuring, offices dealing with Hispanic, African-American and other ethnic minorities would be merged into a department focused on "Cultural Diversity in the Church." A consolidated national collections department would be responsible for the fundraising aspects of special annual appeals (such as those for the church in Eastern Europe and the church in Africa), though the programmatic efforts funded by the collections would remain within the policy departments.
The bishops were debating the proposal as this story was posted to the Web.
The bishops met in largely public sessions Nov. 13-14. They are scheduled to meet in closed sessions Nov. 15-16.