NEW ORLEANS – The Archdiocese of New Orleans on Wednesday announced a sweeping post-Hurricane Katrina reorganization of parish life that essentially accepted the storm's permanent destruction of 17 church communities.
Archbishop Alfred Hughes announced a wide-ranging package of mergers, closures, downsizings and shared-pastor arrangements that reached far beyond the flood zone to touch Catholic parishioners in relatively undamaged areas.
Overall, the plan closed 33 parishes, reducing the archdiocese to 108 parishes, according to church figures. Some churches would be kept open as missions – essentially second churches in a single parish, where the sacraments would still be celebrated.
– Religion News Service
Group urges president to boycott ceremony
WASHINGTON – A federal religious freedom watchdog panel has urged President Bush to boycott the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics unless “there is substantial improvement” in China's treatment of Tibet.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said China must open “direct and concrete talks” with the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual and political leader of Tibetan Buddhism, before Bush attends the ceremonies.
If those talks do not occur, the nine-member commission has called on Bush to first visit the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, and urged him to request a meeting with Chinese political prisoners or dissidents during his visit.
The idea of boycotting the opening ceremonies has been floated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton. On Monday, White House spokesman Tony Fratto told reporters Bush still plans to attend.
– Religion News Service
Religious group's case will go to Supreme Court
SALT LAKE CITY – Inside a bronze-colored pyramid off Interstate 15, Corky Ra, the founder of the homegrown spiritual group Summum, is reportedly submerged in mummification fluids.
The man who was born Claude “Corky” Rex Nowell and raised in the Mormon faith died at the end of January, according to a Summum official. He was 63.
One of his followers, Su Menu, 57, choked up as she spoke about the “infectious” and “always playful” Ra and the religious community he created in 1975.
Summum, a Latin term meaning “the sum total of all creation,” is headed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The case involves Summum's aim to place its own monument beside the Ten Commandments in a park in Pleasant Grove, Utah, with Summum's seven guiding principles.
The Salt Lake City pyramid usually draws 10 to 15 adherents for Saturday meetings, which these days amount to readings from Ra's lectures, Menu said. The meetings are broadcast online.
– Religion News Service
Museum draws criticism with controversial exhibit
VIENNA – They knew it would be risky to exhibit a homoerotic version of Christ's Last Supper, but curators at museum of Vienna's Roman Catholic Cathedral weren't ready for a barrage of angry messages and calls to be shut down.
The source of the dispute, which Austrian media have dubbed Vienna's version of the Muhammad caricature row, is a retrospective honoring Austria's cherished artist Alfred Hrdlicka, 80.
But not everyone has been wishing Hrdlicka a happy birthday. And the Cathedral Museum's director and Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, the archbishop of Vienna, have both come under fire from some museum visitors and Catholic Web sites.
The church hastily removed the main picture, “a homosexual orgy” of the Apostles as Hrdlicka describes it.
The Cathedral Museum's director defends both Hrdlicka's work and his decision to host the artist's controversial versions of biblical imagery in a museum tied to the Catholic Church.
– Reuters
