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| June 4, 2004 |
Jesuit Fr Justo Lacunza, head of the Pontifical Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies in Rome, said that the reports of abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers could be expected to further upset many Iraqis about the ongoing military occupation of their country.
"Perhaps more now than before, I think Iraqis feel like telling the Americans: 'We're still poor, without schools, and without medicine, but we're not willing to suffer physical wounds and torture as well,'" he said.
Fr Lacunza said Bush's words of regret to Arab peoples did not go far enough. He said the president must take bigger steps to heal the wounds and diminish the hatred being caused by the war.
"It's time to recognize that the war is a failure," he said.
Iraqis who endured Saddam Hussein's mistreatment and torture "find themselves suffering the same treatment in the same prison by those who had come to bring democracy," he said.
"For Iraqis, this episode is a stab in the back," he said. [Source: CNS. Do not repost electronically]
St George's College, a Jesuit-run secondary school in Harare, Zimbabwe, was among 46 private schools unexpectedly ordered not to open for the start of the new term May 3 by education minister Aeneas Chigwedere. He accused the schools of raising fees without permission to "racist" levels to exclude black pupils. Police were posted at the schools to enforce the ruling.
Fees were raised "not for the schools to make a profit, but to keep them out of spiraling debt," Archbishop Pius Ncube of Bulawayo said, noting that many church schools already have enormous debt.
The southern African country has an inflation rate of 600 percent, but the government insisted that schools could only raise fees for the second quarter of the year by a maximum of 10 percent.
Brendan Tiernan, principal of St George's College, was one of at least three principals arrested and released in early May for "raising fees without permission."
Although the fees nominated by the education ministry are "grossly insufficient to maintain the schools," most schools signed a certificate of compliance with the government's ruling in order to be allowed to reopen, Tiernan said.
St George's reopened May 12 after making an urgent application to the High Court, where the judge "found that the Minister of Education's actions in closing schools were absolutely beyond the prescriptions of the Education Act," Tiernan said.
The school will negotiate with government authorities to have its fees approved, Tiernan said. If this fails, another court action may be instituted, he said. [Source: CNS. Do not repost electronically]
Pope John Paul II's recent statement regarding nutrition and hydration for patients in a persistent vegetative state should be interpreted strictly in relation to that condition, said Fr Myles Sheehan, a Jesuit priest and physician.
Fr Sheehan, senior associate dean at Loyola University's Stritch School of Medicine in Maywood, Ill, said the pope's statement meant Catholic institutions could not withdraw feeding tubes from people in a persistent vegetative state as long as the tubes served their purpose of maintaining life.
But when questions are raised about whether to use the tubes in other situations, he said, the answer is, "That depends."
Physicians should look at each patient individually and decide in each case what will be helpful to that person, he said.
Speaking March 20, the pope declared that a person in a "vegetative state" retains human dignity and never becomes a "vegetable."
Fr Sheehan pointed out that Pope John Paul made his comments to a conference on treatment of patients in a vegetative state and was speaking specifically about that topic.
But some people in the United States have "gone crazy" and made "wild extensions" to apply the papal remarks improperly to other cases, Fr Sheehan said.
Fr Sheehan said the vegetative state was extremely rare, so rare he himself had never treated a case, and was distinctive in that patients in the vegetative state were not dying, though their condition was irreversible.
He said some members of the right-to-life community, though well meaning, were unsophisticated and extremist, and put physicians under pressure to take steps that were not helpful. [Source: CNS. Do not repost electronically]
A letter written and signed by St Ignatius has been discovered in the Jesuit archives of the Church of the Immaculate Conception in London.
The document had been buried in a filing cabinet for more than 100 years until it was accidentally discovered in mid-May. The letter was written in Italian and dated February 16, 1555, just 18 months before Ignatius' death.
The Jesuits at the British province's mother church in London consider the letter to be "unique" because most surviving signatures of Ignatius are in Rome.
Fr David Smolira, the British Jesuit provincial, said that the letter was an "exciting discovery" and a "treasured possession of the British province.”
"It is remarkable that this letter has survived almost 450 years, considering how Jesuit libraries and universities across Europe were taken over at the time of the suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773," he said.
The letter was addressed to Quirino Garzonio, a good friend of the saint, and, according to the Jesuits, was probably dictated by Ignatius and written by his secretary, Fr Juan Polanco.
The signature was verified by Fr Peter Beckx, father general of the Jesuits between 1853 and 1887, who also confirmed in a note that the last two lines were written by Ignatius' own hand.
The contents of the letter deal with administrative matters, but the final sentence reveals an insight into the saint's theology--that all Christians are called to serve, praise, and revere God and that they must discern and fulfill his divine purpose for them.
"I thank you for your charitable remembrance and pray God Our Lord to grant us all the grace ever to know his most holy will and perfectly to fulfill it," Ignatius wrote. The letter is signed: "Your servant in Our Lord, Ignatius."
It is not known how the letter came to arrive in England since the only record is a note from 1891 that said it was kept in a sacristy in southwest London. The Jesuits said it is likely that the letter was transferred to the Jesuit headquarters on Mount Street in the 1960s when its novitiate program moved. [CNS. Do not repost electronically]
Speaking at a Santa Clara University conference titled "Sins Against the Innocents: Sexual Abuse by Priests and the Role of the Catholic Church," Fr Thomas Rausch SJ said the sexual abuse scandal has shown how little input lay people actually have in decision-making processes in the church.
While "the vast majority of Catholics" have remained loyal to the church, "many of them have sensed that something is seriously amiss," said Fr Rausch, who is a theology professor at Loyola Marymount University. "More lay people are becoming aware that there are no institutional checks and balances that allow them some say in how authority is exercised at all levels."
He said that there is "room for considerable change" in the way diocesan bishops are appointed.
"There are ways in which you can get input from the bottom, where the laity and clergy and bishops are solicited for suggestions and for an analysis of what kind of bishop is needed when a see becomes vacant," he said. "The way it's being done now is a bad system because it allows almost no [input] from local churches or even the hierarchy in the United States." [Source: CNS. Do not repost electronically]
Loyola Marymount University has launched a "Presidency 2004" website at http://presidency04.lmu.edu. Created by the Office of Communication and Public Affairs, the site is for journalists and scholars interested in issues related to the US presidency during the election year. The site is updated regularly and covers diverse topics such as the developing world's views of the US presidency, religious issues, and ethics and the media. [Source: Loyola Marymount University]
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