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Last Updated: Friday - 09/24/2010

Week of August 23, 1999

WCR News Highlights for August 23

UN group will protect confession confidentiality:

The Preparatory Commission for the International Criminal Court concluded its July 26-Aug. 13 session with a provision for the confidentiality of priest-penitent communication in its rules. As the commission began its session at UN headquarters in New York, inclusion of the provision seemed in doubt, even though Vatican officials thought recognition of the confidentiality of the confessional was secured in Rome last year. "It's back," Msgr. Vincent LaRocca, the principal negotiator for the Vatican, reported in an interview on the final day.

Nun unsure if she'll continue gay outreach:

In her first public comment since the Vatican ordered her to leave gay and lesbian ministry July 13, Sister Jeannine Gramick said she is torn between a commitment to the Church and a commitment to that ministry. "The censure from the Vatican presents a dilemma for me," Gramick said in a statement July 24. "I still feel called by God to lesbian and gay ministry," she said. "I also feel called to serve the people of God as a loyal member of the School Sisters of Notre Dame in the Catholic Church." In a notification published in Rome July 13, the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith permanently barred Gramick, 57, and Salvatorian Father Robert Nugent, 62, "from any pastoral work involving homosexual persons."

Sincere, healthy, faithful, but wrong:

Bishop Matthew Clark of Rochester, N.Y.,. says a local Catholic layman who claims he receives interior visions of Jesus, Mary and some saints has misjudged ordinary mental prayer for supernatural communication. For the past six years, John Leary, a retired Kodak chemist who lives in the Rochester suburb of Greece, has detailed the supposed messages in public talks and 13 published volumes. Leary says his locutions warn of the coming of the anti-Christ, a political leader who will forge an alliance with the next pope. In a July 7 statement released by the diocese, Clark said Leary's messages contain doctrinal errors that run counter to the Catholic faith.

Hell is self-imposed punishment:

Pope John Paul and a prominent Jesuit publication have come to the defence of the Catholic Church's traditional teaching on eternal damnation. During his July 28 general audience talk, the pope said that hell is the self-imposed punishment of those who choose to refuse God's love and mercy. Eternal damnation is never the initiative of God, the pope added. "God is the infinitely good and merciful Father. But man, called to respond freely to God, unfortunately can choose to refuse his love and pardon definitively, removing himself forever from joyful communion with God."

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