Daily News Feed Column

By Dennis Coday
NCR staff writer

Australian Bishop Geoffery Robinson has said he is “disappointed” in his fellow bishops, who last week issued a statement saying they had found “doctrinal difficulties” with Robinson’s book on sex abuse and reform in the Catholic church.

Robinson is in the United States on a book tour for Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church: Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus, which was published last fall in Australia is now available in North American through Collegeville, Minn.-based Liturgical Press.

By Adelle M. Banks
Religion News Service

Texas megachurch pastor John Hagee, who endorsed presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and drew sharp criticism for comments critics called anti-Catholic, has written a letter expressing "deep regret" for causing any harm.

Hagee, who leads Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, was harshly criticized by Bill Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and Democratic National Committee officials.

By Daniel Burke
Religion News Service

The Catholic archbishop of Kansas City, Kan., said he hopes Gov. Kathleen Sebelius will abide by his request to stop receiving Communion before he has to take further punitive measures because she supports abortion rights.

"There are a number of pastoral alternatives open to me at this time" if Sebelius refuses, including barring the governor from Communion or excommunicating her from the church, Archbishop Joseph Naumann said in an interview late Monday (May 12).

By Francis X. Rocca
Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY -- Intelligent life may exist on other planets and has no need of redemption through Jesus Christ, the Vatican's top astronomer said.

Fr. Jose Gabriel Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory, was quoted in the Wednesday (May 14) edition of the official Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano.

By Catholic News Service

LEIEINTAN, Myanmar -- Pascal Than Hlaing is just one of many who are grieving in Leieintan, a village where only one house is left standing and the Baptist and Catholic churches had their roofs torn open.

Than Hlaing mourns the death of two of his three children.

"One of my sons was swept away when the water level was up to his neck," the 31-year-old Catholic father told the Asian church news agency UCA News May 9, referring to his 6-year-old boy. Cyclone Nargis hammered the Irrawaddy delta region early May 3 as it blew in from the Bay of Bengal, sending a wall of seawater inland for miles.

By Daniel Burke
Religion News Service

Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius should not receive Communion until she publicly repudiates her support for abortion rights and confesses her error, said Roman Catholic Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kan.

Naumann said he asked the governor to stop receiving Communion in a letter last August, but learned recently that Sebelius took the sacrament at a Kansas parish.

By Michelle Martin Catholic News Service

CHICAGO -- Mercy Sisters JoAnn Persch and Pat Murphy didn't know too much about the system faced by immigrants who are about to be deported when they started praying outside the Broadview detention center last year.

But their community, the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, had committed itself to stand in solidarity with immigrants. When the sisters asked what they could do to support immigrants, Elena Segura, director of the Catholic Campaign for Immigration Reform for the Archdiocese of Chicago, suggested they join the regular Friday morning prayer vigil in suburban Broadview. Friday is the day detainees leave the Broadview holding facility on their way to deportation.

By UCA News

BANGKOK -- A Catholic relief agency already working in Myanmar when Cyclone Nargis struck May 3 is grappling with travel restrictions as it tries to assess the situation and help survivors in the Irrawaddy River delta region.

Malteser International, formally the Order of Malta Worldwide Relief, has been working in Myanmar since 2001 on several humanitarian projects including health care and safe drinking water.

By Jeff Diamant
Religion News Service

NEWARK, N.J. -- A top U.S. archbishop, recently named to the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, said the panel of cardinals and bishops could help resolve a key issue in the clergy sex abuse scandal: how to remove priests from ministry who abused children decades ago.

Under the church's Code of Canon Law, the statute of limitation for clergy sex abuse of minors expires 10 years after the victim's 18th birthday. In older cases, a bishop can ask the Vatican to bypass that rule, but Archbishop John J. Myers of Newark, N.J., said he wants to explore ways for bishops to act in such matters without asking Rome.

By JONATHAN RUBIN
Religion News Service

WASHINGTON -- Israel turns 60 today (May 8). American's Jewish community looks at the Jewish homeland in a variety of ways, from celebration to caution, and through eyes both secular and religious.

Six prominent American Jews weigh in on Israel's milestone, and what the world's only Jewish state can expect in the 21st century. Answers have been edited for length and clarity.