NATION - current events in US Catholic Church

National Catholic Reporter, August 13, 1999 by Matt Kantz

Pax Christi bishops urgee aid for Serbia

Thirty-one U.S. Catholic bishops who are members of Pax Christi USA challenged President Clinton and other international leaders to include Serbia in reconstruction aid plans for the Balkans.

In a July 30 statement issued at Pax Christi headquarters in Erie, Pa., the bishops said, "As the international community seeks to hold the Yugoslav government accountable, it must not hold the Serbian population hostage."

Saying now is the time to stand with Kosovar Albanians "in rebuilding their lives," they added, "solidarity demands that we reach out to all those who suffer, even within the boundaries of those governments we oppose."

The same day, President Clinton and other leaders attending a 40-nation summit in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, said they would help rebuild and develop the Balkans region after a decade of conflict including NATO's recent 78-day air war against Yugoslavia. However, the leaders said there would be no reconstruction aid for Serbia, one of two republics in present-day Yugoslavia, as long as Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic remains in power.

Gramick criticizes Vatican investigation

In her first public statement since the Vatican banned her and Fr. Robert Nugent from ministry to homosexuals, Sr. Jeannine Gramick said that the Vatican's demand that she reveal her personal beliefs on church teachings was "both disrespectful and wrong."

Gramick, a School Sister of Notre Dame, said that the investigation began as an inquiry into her public statements on homosexuality "became, in the end, an interrogation about my inner personal beliefs on the subject."

The Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith imposed the ban on Gramick and Nugent last month. Nugent offered his assent to church teaching on the immorality of homosexual acts, but in wording the congregation found unacceptable. Gramick had refused to reveal her personal beliefs on the subject.

"I stand ready to proclaim my assent to all the core beliefs of our faith," Gramick said in her July 24 statement. "Beyond this, my status as a vowed religious and as a public pastoral minister should not deprive me of the right which every believer has to maintain the privacy of her internal conscience in matters which are not central to our faith. To intrude, uninvited, into the sanctuary of another's conscience is both disrespectful and wrong."

Gramick said that her role as a "bridge-builder" between the church and homosexual Catholics made it necessary "to keep my personal views on contentious issues as far as possible in the background."

In the statement, she also criticized the investigative process. "There is a conflict of interest when any agency fulfills the roles of prosecutor, jury and judge in the same case, as happened with the Vatican investigation of my ministry," she said.

Gramick said she still felt called to minister to gays and lesbians, and also felt called to serve as a School Sister of Notre Dame. She said that as of July 14 she was taking a month to "discern where God is calling me in the future."

Former newspaper editor indicted for theft in Texas

A former editor of the Texas Catholic Herald has been indicted on charges accusing her of causing the Galveston-Houston diocese to pay for $25,000 worth of computer and camera equipment she kept for herself.

Jacqueline Srouji, now a worker at the Amarillo diocese, was free on $5,000 bond after Harris County grand jurors indicted her July 30 on theft charges.

Prosecutor Terry Jennings said that Srouji, 54, engaged in a continuing scheme of theft between March 1998 and April 1999.

Diocese communications director Annette Gonzales Taylor said the diocese fired Srouji in April for buying an excessively expensive type of paper for the Texas Catholic Herald, but said that was only one of the reasons for her dismissal.

Srouji's attorney, Rusty Hardin, said his client denied the theft allegations.

Los Alamos activists denounce renewed testing

Peace activists from around the globe assembled in New Mexico for a trek to the Los Alamos National Laboratory in an effort to draw attention to renewed U.S. nuclear weapons development.

A three-day conference in Albuquerque was scheduled to culminate in demonstrations at the laboratory Aug. 9, marking the 54th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan.

Protesters were expected from Japan, the United Kingdom, France, India, Pakistan and the South Pacific.

"Los Alamos is getting back into the nuclear bomb-making business at a time when the world desperately needs to get back on the path to nuclear disarmament," said Bruce Hall, an organizer and member of Peace Action. He called the gathering "a much needed wake-up call to the lab and the government: The Cold War is over; it is time to abolish nuclear weapons."

The Department of Energy plans to produce up to 80 plutonium pits (the cores of nuclear warheads) a year at Los Alamos and will field the first -- a 475 kiloton warhead for use on the Trident submarine -- in 2001. Los Alamos will produce 20 warheads a year by 2007 and is striving to reach the capability to produce up to 80 warheads annually by a later date.