The Star Online: World Updates
The Star Online: World Updates |
- Liberal U.S. Catholics say Church not listening
- Turkey's Erdogan gets 4 more years and counting
- Iran forces attack protesters - opposition website
| Liberal U.S. Catholics say Church not listening Posted: 12 Jun 2011 12:06 PM PDT DETROIT (Reuters) - Members of a liberal group of U.S. Catholics called on Sunday on Church leaders to open talks with their members on controversies ranging from the ordination of women to allowing priests to marry. Members of the American Catholic Council, meeting in Detroit, said they had grown concerned that the Church hierarchy was not listening to its members on issues such as the role of women, married clergy and the treatment of homosexuals. The meeting comes as the Roman Catholic Church in the United States is struggling with a sexual abuse crisis, loss of membership and a dwindling number of priests. "When in God's name are the conversations going to begin?" asked Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun who addressed the meeting of about 2,000 people -- part of a liberal wing that represents a minority in the 1.2 billion-member Church. She likened the structure, with bishops and archbishops answering to the pope in Rome, to "a medieval system that has now been abandoned by humanity everywhere, except by us." Detroit Archbishop Allen Vigneron had warned before the meeting that any members of the clergy who attended the group's mass would be at risk of being defrocked. "All of the invited keynote speakers have manifested dissent from Catholic teachings or support for dissenters," the archdiocese said in a posting on its website. Robert Wurm, a retired priest from Ferndale, Michigan, who officiated at the closing mass, said he was not worried the archbishop would take action against him. "He was careful about that. He said they could be defrocked, not that they would," Wurm told reporters. Under Church law, an archbishop has authority over all masses held in his area. A spokesman for the archdiocese declined further comment. 'ABSOLUTIST SYSTEM' The group's "Catholic Bill of Rights and Responsibilities" reads like a list of grievances against the conservative leadership of Pope Benedict, who has frustrated liberals by ruling out the possibility of women priests or a married clergy and putting pressure on dissenting theologians. "Few people realize how powerful the pope is," Swiss theologian Hans Kueng told the meeting through a video presentation. "We have to change an absolutist system." Some of the people attending the meeting said they were frustrated by local bishops' unwillingness to discuss their views on issues including the treatment of women. "They refuse to talk about married priests and the ordination of women," said Edward Ruetz, an 85-year-old retired priest who travelled to the meeting from Fort Wayne, Indiana. The question of who may be ordained has become a practical concern for many U.S. Catholics as the local Church has faced dwindling numbers of priests even as the Catholic population has expanded, thanks partly to Hispanic immigration. The country's number of priests stood a bit below 40,000 last year, down by one-third from the end of the reforming Second Vatican Council in 1965, while the Catholic population has risen 43 percent to 66 million over the same period. These liberals are a minority in the world Church now, but similar groups exist in some other countries, especially in Benedict's native Germany and neighboring Austria. "They have to listen to us, we want to have an open dialogue," said Henk Baas, 58, who traveled to the meeting from the Netherlands, part of a European delegation that included visitors from Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom. The Catholic Church in the United States and Europe has been rocked by revelations that large numbers of priests sexually abused minors and in some cases were protected by the Church hierarchy. A report commissioned by the Church and released in May found nearly 6,000 U.S. priests -- about 5 percent of the total -- were accused of sexual abuse in the past 50 years. The U.S. Catholic Church has paid out about $3 billion to settle sexual abuse lawsuits, resulting in the bankruptcies of some diocese, including San Diego; Wilmington, Delaware; and, early this year the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Reporting by Scott Malone, additional reporting by Tom Heneghan in Paris; Editing by Eric Beech) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. | ||
| Turkey's Erdogan gets 4 more years and counting Posted: 12 Jun 2011 12:06 PM PDT ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Having handed Tayyip Erdogan his third term as prime minister, the question for many Turks is whether his next stop will be the presidency.
For the past decade Erdogan has dominated the political landscape in Turkey, a largely Muslim nation of 74 million that he has led to the gates of the European Union by opening negotiations for membership in 2005. His priority is to write a new constitution to replace one written almost 30 years ago during a period of military rule. It is an open secret that he would favour a switch to a more presidential form of government, but given the likely reduced majority in parliament it may be harder for him to achieve than he had hoped. Many people suspect his aim is to become president himself, after already holding the posts of prime minister and mayor of Istanbul, putting him in charge perhaps even to 2023, the centenary of the republic soldier-statesman Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded after the Ottoman empire fell. In contrast to the raki-drinking Ataturk, non-drinking Erdogan's pedigree lies in political Islam and he is mistrusted by old secularist elites within the military and judiciary. They see the wearing of headscarves by the wives of Erdogan and his ally President Abdullah Gul as an affront to Ataturk's vision for a secular state. Abroad Erdogan's star shines brightest in the Middle East. He became regarded as a statesman in the Arab world in 2009 for his withering criticism of erstwhile ally Israel in the wake of its offensive of the Palestinian Gaza enclave. NATO partners see him as a complicated rather than compliant ally, however, and the West has looked askance at some of Erdogan's friendships, notably with Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. A recent survey by the Washington-based Pew Research Centre found that Egyptians, Jordanians, Lebanese and Palestinians all have confidence in Erdogan. But worryingly for Turkey's hope of EU entry, the majority of people in France, Germany and Spain feel the opposite. TURNING POINTS Back in Turkey, Erdogan's tension with the secularist old guard climaxed in 2008, when the Constitutional Court fined his AK Party for being a focal point of Islamist activity but stopped short of banning it. Since then, Erdogan has consolidated his power, with police detaining military officers suspected of planning a coup and the government passing constitutional amendments to take away old cliques' control over the selection of judges. Yet, Erdogan has demonstrated plenty of pragmatism and conformed with the official secularism of the state while staying true to his image as a pious Muslim and man of the people. The way the military forced his mentor, former prime minister Necmettin Erbakan, to give up power in 1997, and the subsequent banning of their party, served as an epiphany for Erdogan, who was briefly jailed on charges of sedition. Erdogan packed away old ideological baggage to form a new party that he cast along conservative, democratic lines. The birth of the Justice and Development Party, known as the AK, came as Turkey slid into a financial crisis in 2000/01. In the 2002 election angry Turks rejected the traditional parties, and the AK swept to power. Erdogan became prime minister in 2003, after Gul had kept the seat warm for him. Erdogan repaid the people's faith by leading them into a period unprecedented prosperity and giving them pride by re-establishing Turkey as a regional power. Plain-speaking and a powerful orator, the tall, moustachioed Erdogan is the kind of personality who appeals to many Turks. Gruff and intolerant of criticism, he can revert to rough colloquialisms that strike a chord with ordinary people. Those same traits are disliked among more privileged classes, who can regard him as rude and arrogant. The son of a poor sea captain, Erdogan was raised in a gritty Istanbul neighborhood by the Golden Horn inlet. He went to a religious school where, biographers say, he was imbued with both a sense of piety and business pragmatism. Before his political life took off, he worked for the city's bus company and played semi-professional soccer. While Erdogan's image has been framed by championing the underdog, his support for Fenerbahce, the Manchester United of Turkish soccer, demonstrates a desire to be on the winning side. (Editing by Sonya Hepinstall) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. | ||
| Iran forces attack protesters - opposition website Posted: 12 Jun 2011 12:06 PM PDT TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's opposition website Sahamnews said security forces attacked pro-reform demonstrators gathering in Tehran on Sunday to mark the anniversary of the 2009 disputed presidential election. Witnesses said thousands of security personnel were deployed in Tehran to prevent a revival of the mass anti-government rallies that erupted after the 2009 vote. "Security forces attacked the crowd with electric batons ... in the Vali-e Asr street to disperse the demonstrators," Sahamnews said. Another opposition website, Kaleme, said "hundreds of demonstrators" were arrested by the security forces. Opposition websites had called for a "silent rally" to mark the vote, which reformists say was rigged to secure the hardline president's win. Authorities say the election was the "healthiest" since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution. The Sahamnews website also said supporters of the opposition gathered in other parts of the city. "Shopkeepers were ordered to close down their shops ... hundreds of people have gathered in other areas of Tehran," the website said. Opposition leaders Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, who spearheaded protests against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re- election in 2009, had been placed under house arrest after calling for a rally on Feb. 14. Two people were shot dead at the Feb. 14 rally, during which thousands of the opposition supporters took to the streets in defiance of a heavy security presence to back uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, that toppled their leaders. Iran, which crushed its own anti-government protests in 2009, says uprisings in the Arab world were inspired by the country's 1979 Islamic Revolution but are worried about revival of anti-government unrest. Iranian leaders have portrayed the Arab Spring as an "Islamic awakening", while avoiding to support the popular uprising in Syria, its most important ally in the region. Tehran has strongly condemned military deployment by Saudi Arabia to quell unrest in Bahrain. Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are both allied to the West. (Editing by Matthew Jones) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. |
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