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  Catholic Bishops Approve Proposals on Lay Workers

By Neela Banerjee
The New York Times [Washington DC]
November 16, 2005

- The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops approved a set of recommendations for lay workers in the church on Tuesday but did not publicly address a number of contentious issues at its meeting here this week.

Many church experts said they expected issues of personal morality and sexuality, of urgent concern, to be discussed by the bishops at closed-door sessions over the next two days.

Among the questions facing the church are these: Should Roman Catholic politicians who support abortion rights be given Communion? How will the Vatican rule on gay men in the priesthood? And how are the large financial settlements being paid to victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests affecting dioceses?

The conference, which meets twice yearly, does not reveal its agenda for private sessions. But the public session underscored some problems in the Catholic Church, including the chronic shortage of priests. On Tuesday, as the public session ended, the bishops approved a set of recommendations to guide dioceses in dealing with the rise of lay workers in the church. The lay people do much of what priests did a generation ago, like running youth ministries and organizing prayer services.

Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas of Tucson, chairman of the subcommittee on the lay ministry, said the increased involvement of lay people began after the Second Vatican Council in 1965. But church experts said the recommendations were a response to the dwindling number of priests in the United States. In fact, the report noted that the "number of paid lay parish ministers has increased 53 percent since 1990." Of them, 64 percent are women, it said.

"The dirty little secret that neither the Vatican or feminists have recognized is that women are already running the church," said the Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a visiting scholar at Santa Clara University in California. "They're the ones passing on the faith to the next generation, and that will have a profound impact."

The bishops also debated new translations of the liturgy from Latin to English. Many bishops said the new translations, which were ordered by the Vatican, were awkward. Some clergy members said the translations could further alienate parishioners after the sexual abuse scandals.

In a vote Monday on some sample passages, 57 percent of the bishops favored keeping the 1970 English translation and 43 percent backed the new proposals. A two-thirds vote is required for approval of the final version.

Church experts said they expected the bishops to discuss in private session the continuing impact of the abuse scandals. Dioceses have paid more than $1 billion in settlements.

The Vatican plans to issue a document, or instruction, on gay men in the priesthood in the coming weeks. Catholic conservatives have said the move would prevent potential pedophiles from entering the priesthood. But other Catholics have countered that celibacy, not sexual orientation, is the issue and that barring gay men could further shrink the clergy.

A delegation from the Vatican is now visiting the 229 seminaries in the United States and examining the education and vetting system for new priests, including questions about sexual orientation.