Test-Drive Your Vocation

DULUTH NEWS TRIBUNE, Feb. 4 — To attract women to monastic life, the Benedictine Sisters of St. Scholastica Monastery will let them try sisterhood out for themselves, the Duluth, Minn., daily reported.

The monastery is inviting single women with no dependents to live in the monastery as part of their new Benedictine Associates program. Sister Freida Horak, the monastery's director of vocation ministry, said the program was an attempt to rebuild a “vocations culture.”

The associates will get free room and board, but no salary. They will share the monastery's life of community, prayer and service, for a period ranging from three months to a year. At the end of the year they may choose to renew their “trial run” for another year. They will work in areas like teaching, health care, liturgy, gardening and serving the elderly, infirm and poor.

Even as the U.S. Catholic population grows, there are only about 82,000 Catholic nuns, less than half the number in 1965.

Rabbi Honored by Miami Archdiocese

MIAMI HERALD, Feb. 2 — Irving Lehrman, an 89-year-old rabbi who has spent his life working with Catholic leaders, became the first Jew to receive the Pontifical Medal Benemerenti from the Archdiocese of Miami, on behalf of Pope John Paul II, the Miami daily reported.

In the early 1940s, Lehrman worked with Catholics to organize an “interfaith rally for decency” that drew 40,000 people to the Orange Bowl. He defended John F. Kennedy when Kennedy's Catholicism became an issue in his presidential campaign. He also worked closely with former Miami archbishops Coleman S. Carroll and Edward McCarthy, often bringing Jews and Catholics together to fight pornography and bigotry.

In 1987, the rabbi was among the Jewish leaders who received a papal audience; the Pope addressed Lehrman, “Shalom, my brother.”

Lehrman's wife Belle said that her husband has had a “love affair” with the Catholic Church. “In the '50s,” she said, “it was not so common as it is today for Catholics and Jews to work on a common agenda.”

Bishops and Biotech

THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS, Feb. 7 — Nearly 200 bishops met quietly in Las Colinas, Texas, to discuss the ethical implications of biotechnology, the Dallas daily reported.

For 18 years, the bishops have been gathering at a weeklong session organized by the National Catholic Bioethics Center and sponsored by the Knights of Columbus. This year, the conference's workshops included “Frozen Embryos: Theological, Pastoral and Ethical Issues,” and “Ethical Dilemmas Posed by the Genome Project.”

The workshops are led by experts in fields like biotechnology, embryology and theology. The conference does not allow media coverage, to ward off the protesters that dog and sometimes disrupt the bishops' meetings. But many bishops were willing to discuss the issues raised with the Morning News.

“If we could use an embryo, a stem cell, to cure Alzheimer's, should we do it?” asked Bishop Charles Grahmann of Dallas. “What about if it meant eliminating two or three human lives in the process?”

----- EXCERPT: