Scottish Anglicans Accept Women Bishops

INDEPENDENT CATHOLIC NEWS, June 13 — The Scottish Episcopal Church by a large majority voted at their general synod ending June 14 to accept the consecration of women as bishops, ending a tradition that dates back to the foundation of that Protestant body.

The Church of England has not yet decided to make this concession to feminist requests; this would make the Scots the first church in the United Kingdom to grant women the miter, according to Independent Catholic News.

Out of 153 votes cast by leading churchmen, 124 voted Yes, including all seven bishops. It was only in 1992 that the Church of England admitted women to its priesthood.

Now, the news site reported, one out of every five of its priests is a woman.

New Book Tells Tale of Catholic Activism

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, June 14 — In his new book, The Pope's Battalions, author Ross Fitzgerald recounts the heavy involvement of Catholics in the labor movement and Labor Party of Australia, noting with some disapproval that they attempted to infuse both with religious principles, according to a recent review in The Sydney Morning Herald.

The book examines the work of Archbishop Daniel Mannix of Melbourne and Labor Party leader B.A. Santamaria. It recounts how the Australian labor movement was split when secular activists objected to the Christian principles promoted by the two Irish émigrés.

Fitzgerald points to the work of a group of Melbourne Catholic lawyers who founded the city's Campion Society and published its edition of The Catholic Worker. The group fought hard in the wake of World War II to keep the unions free of communist domination and drew on the Church's assets in the hope of “completely transform[ing] the leadership of the labor movement” and “implement[ing] a Christian social program.”

In the long run, the effort failed, and the labor movement in Australia became secular and progressivist, much like its American counterpart, which was once infused with elements of Catholic social teaching.

Abuse of Language Threatens Sanctity of Life

FIDES, June 13 — Leading Catholic bishops in Europe met at a conference June 11-14 promoted by the Pontifical Council for the Family, opened by Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, the Vatican missionary news agency reported.

The cardinal called the position of family in Europe critical, noting how secularization threatened its very structure. The cardinal said legislation in some European countries could only be described as evil, showing no respect for the rights of the individual, the family or for life itself.

He explained that the abuse of language to obscure traditional moral distinctions regarding life issues was a major weapon used by enemies of the family and pointed to a countermeasure issued by the pontifical council: its lexicon of 78 ambiguous terms often employed to cloud the debate on issues such as abortion, contraception and euthanasia, a document that is now being translated from Italian.