Bishops call for expansion of abortion exemptions - Nation - United States Catholic Conference of Bishops - Brief Article

The nation's Catholic bishops have asked Congress to expand an exemption for health care workers who object to abortion to include hospitals and health care plans.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops criticized a nationwide "coordinated effort" to make Catholic hospitals provide abortion services even though the church views abortion as a grave sin.

"No one who provides health care should be forced to participate in abortion," said Cathy Cleaver, director of planning and information for the bishops' pro-life office.

Rep. Michael Bilirakis, R-Fla., has introduced the Abortion Non-Discrimination Act, which would expand the current exemption for doctors in the Public Health Service Act to include "other health professionals, a hospital, a provider-sponsored organization, a health maintenance organization, a health insurance plan, and any other kind of health care facility, organization or plan."

Current federal law protects "health care entities" that refuse to provide abortion services, but the bishops said that has been interpreted to cover only individual doctors.

What's the best way to celebrate the king holiday? King family and leaders call for a day of service - honoring the work of Martin Luther King Jr - Br

The hard work and dedication of politicians, civil rights leaders, grassroots activists and others created the first Martin Luther King Jr. national holiday on January 20, 1986. It was the first holiday recognizing a Black man and King was only the third person, along with Christopher Columbus and George Washington, to hold the distinction of a national holiday in his honor. In the beginning, Dr. King's widow, Coretta Scott King, and her family envisioned the holiday as a national day of unity and a time when people could study and discuss the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Over the 16 years the holiday has been recognized on the third Monday in January, Coretta King and the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change have refined the focus to include community service as a priority on Martin Luther King Day. The date of the 2002 holiday is January 21.

"We have called for people to remember to celebrate, and most importantly, to act," Coretta King says. "We like to say we celebrate the birthday and not memorialize it, as we do in April. Now we should ask people to really commemorate his life with some form of service and to give back to the community."

This is designed to convey the message and spirit of Dr. King far beyond April 4, 1968, when he was gunned down while assisting sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn. "Martin Luther King gave his life loving and serving others, and we think it's a very appropriate way to celebrate the day," Coretta King says. "People can come together in a spirit of cooperation, love and humanitarian service to help somebody else."

Coretta King's renewed emphasis on service for the holiday carries the flame that buoyed the Civil Rights Movement led by King in the 1950s and 1960s. One volunteer of that era, Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., answered the call of service as a college student. He joined the Freedom Riders, a group of mixed-race activists who tested new segregation laws at bus terminals in the South. Lewis was severely beaten by mobs for his actions as a Freedom Rider and as a participant in the Selma demonstration that started the Selma-to-Montgomery March. Yet he continued to serve in the movement through sit-ins and other demonstrations.

"The best way to celebrate the King [holiday] is with a day of service," says Lewis, who is the author of the best-selling book, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement. "Go out and do something to uplift someone in need. It can be working at a community center, doing something for the elderly, helping children, cleaning up a park or a neighborhood. That's what Dr. King was all about--service."

Lewis added: "We need to get more and more of our young people--all young people, Black, White, Hispanic Asian-American or Native American--to look at Dr. King as more than a leader and orator, but as someone who got out and did good. They can also be workers for good."

Community service promotes goodwill along with peace, another major tenet of Dr. King's message, says Martin Luther King III, son of Dr. King and head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. "A great tribute would be for us to have a day where there's no violence," King says.

His mother stressed the central importance of nonviolence.

"People need to realize that Martin Luther King embraced the philosophy of nonviolence," Coretta King says. "He lived it not only as a way of life, but also as a way of resolving problems and conflicts. Ultimately, any problems we face can be solved if we use the message that he left us. He left us a blueprint in his writings. If we could study Martin and use his words and philosophy more wisely, it could carry us a long way into the 21st century in terms of bringing about peace, justice, equality and prosperity."

In some modern circles, Dr. King's philosophy of nonviolence falls on deaf ears, Congressman Lewis says. "Some people think it is old hat or a bygone philosophy. He believed in it. He believed in love, in action, and we don't teach people to love each other. Dr. King said hate is too heavy a burden to bear. Whether it is the highest level of government, academic communities, business, media, sports or whatever, we need to get this message of love over. We need to respect human dignity and worth."

Celebrate the Call' conference examines role of lay ministry

We continue to live our way into the answers to the questions we have about our ministry," she said, noting that difficulties and confusion are not "an excuse to distance ourselves from the questions."

Kuzmochka, who is co-ordinator of Adult Faith Development and Leadership Formation for the Ottawa Archdiocese, told the audience of about 250 people about her first experience working as an assistant chaplain to a priest-chaplain on a university campus.

"The great obstacle was the priest didn't want to work with a woman," she said, despite her having the full support of the diocesan bishop. "The priest believed he should be on a pedestal," she said, recalling the relationship as troubled and turbulent.

"I realize as I look back that I moved naturally into a leadership position. I am joined by so many women and some men who are breaking new ground in parish pastoral leadership," she said.

Kuzmochka advocated a collaborative relationship among lay and ordained ministers rather than a hierarchical one, and said forgiveness was fundamental. She also said that many of the breakthroughs in lay ministry have happened as a result of priest shortages, instead of through the new life Vatican II breathed into the church.

"Lay ministry has its own identity and needs to be developed in its own right," she said.

Kuzmochka also pointed out that honouring Vatican II is not possible from a position of polarity.

"I worry about the polarization we always seem to see," she said. "Do you think we can learn to disagree without turning on each other?"

She also said that professional lay ministries must be careful "not to create new hierarchies. Parishes are not clubs and the baptized are not volunteers in them," she said.

Bishop Martin Veillette of Trois-Rivieres, Quebec, in his keynote address, told the audience about the Quebec experience of lay ministry, and pointed out that as a pastor in 1974-80, he was "one of the first priests to call upon a lay woman."

He asked a woman who was barely 20 to accept a position as a pastoral worker in a primary school.

"It was the beginning of a wonderful adventure for her," said Veillette, who is President of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishop's (CCCB) Commission for Social Communications French Sector. Veillette noted that 1975 was the tenth anniversary of the end of Vatican II and in those ten years the most visible change came in the liturgy.

"Not everything was renovated and not everything happened easily," he said, but noted that it became possible to "dare to make changes" and to "risk doing things never done before."

Those ten years also encompassed the Quiet Revolution.

"From a social perspective, not only the church was undergoing change, the entire society was in an upheaval," he said, describing those years as a "time of trial" and a "dark period," where the church was seriously challenged. Many once-committed priests and nuns left.

"It was very difficult for us to go through that time," he said. "We had to open the door to the arrival of the laity taking on tasks that had been done by priests and vicars and religious," he said. "In our baptism we are invited to take our responsibility," he said, and while the diminishing number of priests led to an increase in lay ministers, "we had been called by the Council to do this."

Since those years, the Church has been seeking to set a foundation for this new phenomenon of lay ministry.

"Co-responsibility became a focal point," he said.

Veillette said that lay ministries developed from service-to-leadership positions with remuneration to major responsibilities as permanent staff.

The third Celebrate the Call Conference also featured a panel with Winnipeg Archbishop James Weisgerber, who is co-treasurer of the CCCB; Jocelyne Hudon, pastoral agent in Chicoutimi, Que.; Blake Sittler, parish life director and ministry developer in Saskatoon, Sask.; and St. Jean Goulet, Congregation of the Holy Cross.

The Conference was jointly sponsored by the Centre for Ministry Formation at St. Paul University and the Celebrate the Call Project.