NEWS NOTES: March 7, 2014

Here are some items you may find of interest:

1.  Oakland, California’s Bishop Michael Barber has removed two Paulist priests, Fr. Bernard Campbell and Father Bill Edens from the Newman Hall Campus ministry at the University of California, Berkeley.   The faith community has long been known as a center or progressive Catholicism and a gay-friendly parish.  Father Edens came out publicly as a gay priest a few weeks ago.  Read the full story, including a theory of why the bishop made the decision, on EastBayExpress.com.

2.  The  Trustees of Catholics for AIDS Prevention and Support, a United Kingdom organization,  issued a statement of support for LGBT people in Russia, Uganda, Nigeria, and all places where anti-gay laws and policies are being enacted.  The statement says, in part:

“Such legislation legitimises discrimination and violence, and fuels the HIV epidemic by making prevention, treatment, care and support more difficult. HIV educators and care workers in many countries have been violently targeted emboldened by such legislation.

“All forms of abuse whether verbal, physical, sexual, or structural, are denials of human dignity, and a grave offence before God, in whose image all people are made.”

You can read more about the statement on Independent Catholic News.

3.  Although the Minnesota Catholic Conference opposes that state’s Safe and Supportive Schools Bill, for fear that it would normalize same-sex relations, The Progressive Catholic Voice, an excellent Minnesota blog encourages Catholics to support the bill because it is in line with Catholic values of human dignity and non-discrimination.  The blog offers ways that Minnesota Catholics can support the proposed anti-bullying law.

4.  Catholic high school students in Seattle, Washington, have organized an online petition to get the Archdiocese of Seattle to reverse its decision to prohibit the establishment of gay-straight alliances in Catholic schools, reports Seattle Gay News.

5.  Bill Hudson, the former president of Totino-Grace, a Catholic high school in Minneapolis, who was ousted from his job because he was in a committed gay relationship, now has a new job as the head of Mounds Park Academy, a private school.  You can read the full story at Minnesota CBS Local. 

–Francis DeBernardo, New Ways Ministry