DAVENPORT, Iowa (CNS) — A gay student at Prince of Peace Catholic School in Clinton has been chosen to receive a scholarship from an Iowa organization that promotes tolerance, but controversy has erupted over presentation of the award.

Keaton Fuller, a senior at Prince of Peace, is one of eight recipients of a Matthew Shepard Scholarship from the Eychaner Foundation based in Des Moines. The scholarship honors the memory of Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old tortured and murdered in Wyoming in 1998 because he was gay. Scholarship recipients and their schools agreed in the application process to permit an Eychaner representative to present the award during graduation awards ceremonies.

While Keaton can receive the scholarship award during graduation ceremonies at Prince of Peace Church May 20, a school representative — not an Eychaner representative — will present it. That decision has generated national press attention and confusion about the award presentation.

Diocesan officials explained their decision in a May 7 press release: “The Diocese of Davenport congratulates Keaton Fuller on receiving the Matthew Shepard Scholarship. The diocese has a long-standing policy regarding guest speakers. This policy was explained to Keaton’s parents at their meeting with Bishop Martin Amos last week. It states: ‘We cannot allow anyone or any organization which promotes a position that is contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church to present at a diocesan institution.’ Bishop Amos also expressed his congratulations for Keaton’s reception of the award and recognized his hard work in achieving it.

“We are glad that Keaton and his family chose to pursue his education at Prince of Peace Catholic High School in Clinton, IA.,” the diocesan statement continued. “We hope that Keaton will benefit from the generous award and wish him well in his academic pursuits.”

Keaton expressed disappointment and frustration with the diocese’s decision in a May 7 letter addressed to the Prince of Peace student body and staff. But he had plenty of praise for his school.

“Being the lone openly gay student in a small, Catholic school has not always been easy. Upon first realizing I was gay, I suffered a lot of anxiety over wondering how everybody in this school would treat me if I were to tell people the truth about my sexual orientation,” he said. “When I did begin to tell people, I was pleasantly surprised and touched to find that nearly everybody treated me with the same acceptance and respect as they always had. I have always been very grateful to you for this.”

Learning that he had been awarded the foundation’s highest scholarship — the $40,000 Gold Matthew Shepard Scholarship — was one of the happiest moments in his life, he wrote. “When word got around about this achievement, I received a great deal of praise from many of you, for which I am extremely grateful.”

He said that he felt “invalidated and unaccepted” by the diocese’s decision and felt that he was being “made to feel that my accomplishments are less than everybody else’s.”

The award recipient concluded his letter by asking the student body and staff to “please help me by respectfully requesting that this decision be reversed. Share your thoughts about why all students deserve to be treated with respect and dignity at Prince of Peace.”

Rich Eychaner, who established the foundation that has granted 130 scholarships since 2000, also believes the diocese should reverse its decision.

“The mission of the Eychaner Foundation is to promote tolerance, understanding and anti-bullying policies. We help lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students survive and work to prevent teen suicide. We’re shocked that Bishop Amos and the Diocese of Davenport find these positions ‘contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church.'”

Deacon David Montgomery, diocesan communications director, said the diocese has an anti-bullying policy and is strongly committed to tolerance and respectful behavior toward all people.

The opening statement of the policy reads: “The Diocese of Davenport encourages programs that promote anti-bullying and anti-harassment for all students. The diocese has taken a strong stance against the bullying and/or harassment of any student including on the basis of sexual orientation.”

“While the diocese supports anti-bullying programs promoted by the Eychaner Foundation, its advocacy for same-sex marriage is contrary to Catholic social teaching,” Deacon Montgomery said.

Eychaner told The Catholic Messenger, Davenport diocesan newspaper, in response to a question, that the foundation supports equality in marriage for any two people committed to monogamy.

The Catholic Church opposes efforts to define marriage as anything other than the union of one man and one woman.

Eychaner also said Prince of Peace’s curriculum director had signed the application form which permits a foundation representative to make the presentation. Eychaner said the stipulation was added because three other Catholic schools in Iowa — Kuemper High School in Carroll, Don Bosco High School in Gilbertville and Gehlen Catholic High School in Le Mars — had previously prevented the foundation from making presentations to recipients at those schools.

Kuemper and Gehlen are in the Diocese of Sioux City and Don Bosco is in the Archdiocese of Dubuque.

“How can it be acceptable to have school staff present the award in the school, but not allow the sponsor of the award to make the presentation? How is the award itself acceptable to Catholic beliefs but not those who make it possible? Why would we allow others to present an award we make possible?” he asked.

“Policies are meant to serve people, so let’s create policies that promote human dignity and stand by them,” said Keaton’s mother, Patricia Fuller.

“The diocese is not rejecting the scholarship. We certainly recognize it’s a generous scholarship,” said Lee Morrison, diocesan schools superintendent, who received more than 1,700 emails on May 7 about this issue. “We congratulate Keaton on the award and it will be allowed to be presented by a school representative at graduation along with the awards that all of the other students receive.”

— By Barb Arland-Fye, Catholic News Service 

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (CNS) — With a heavy turnout at the polls, North Carolina voters approved a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman by a 3-to-2 margin.

In unofficial results calculated late May 8 by the North Carolina State Board of Elections, 1,303,952 people — 61.05 percent — voted for the amendment while 831,788 people — 38.95 percent — voted against it.

The amendment read, “Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state.” It enshrines the definition of traditional marriage in the state constitution, elevating it from what has been state law since 1996.

Bishop Peter J. Jugis of Charlotte and Bishop Michael F. Burbidge of Raleigh, who were at the Vatican May 8 for their “ad limina” visits, had both championed the amendment, which they said would prevent any arbitrary redefinition of marriage.

Marriage, they reminded Catholics, is based in natural law by God and instituted as a sacrament by Jesus Christ. It binds together a family, the fundamental building block of all societies, and provides the most stable and nurturing environment to raise children.

Bishop Jugis said May 8: “I am pleased that the people of North Carolina voted for marriage. The church consistently teaches that marriage is created by God as the faithful and exclusive union of one man and one woman, open to the gift of children.”

In a separate statement, Bishop Burbidge urged Catholics to pray “that whatever divisions may have occurred during this referendum process, may be healed by the grace of God and a mutual renewed commitment by all people of good will, so that we may together build a society reflective of the unity that is ours as members of God’s family.”

Bishop Jugis had mentioned the marriage amendment battle during a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI earlier that day. In his homily at Mass at the altar of the tomb of Blessed John XXIII in St. Peter’s Basilica May 8, Bishop Jugis said he and Bishop Burbidge had endured scorn for their efforts to uphold church teaching on marriage. It was a cross worth bearing, he said, “to be courageous in witnessing to the Gospel.”

“I shared with another bishop my sadness over this criticism of our support for something as beautiful and foundational to society as traditional marriage,” he said. The other bishop “encouraged me by saying, ‘Wear it as a badge of honor.'”

Ever since the amendment was put on the ballot by the Republican-led Legislature last fall, the bishops had urged Catholics to vote for it. They communicated with parishioners in print and online diocesan news media, TV and radio ads, parish bulletins and postcards, billboards and yard signs, and letters read from the pulpit during Masses the weekend before the vote.

The bishops had said the vote presented an opportunity to explain the importance and sanctity of traditional marriage in the church and in society.

In a joint letter read at all Masses May 5-6, the bishops wrote, “We are for marriage, as we believe it is a vocation in which God calls couples to faithfully and permanently embrace a fruitful union in a mutual self-giving bond of love, according to his purposes. It is not only the union itself that is essential to these purposes, but also the life to which spouses are called to be open, the gift of children.”

Their efforts ran parallel to the campaign by Vote For Marriage NC, a nonpartisan coalition of churches, groups and individuals that organized public support for the amendment, which even at the start of the campaign last fall was considered widely popular among North Carolina voters. Each diocese also donated $50,000 to the Vote for Marriage NC campaign for its advertising blitz and voter education efforts.

In a statement released on election night May 8, Tami Fitzgerald, chairwoman of Vote For Marriage NC, said, “We are thankful to God and to the people of North Carolina for joining together today to preserve marriage as the union between one man and one woman in our state constitution.

“North Carolinians have been waiting for nearly a decade to protect marriage — a sacred institution authored by God — from being redefined against the will of the people,” she added. “The marriage protection amendment ensures that it will always be the people of our state who determine what marriage is in North Carolina, not an activist judge or future politicians.”

North Carolina is the 31st state to define traditional marriage in its constitution, and the last among the Southern states to do so.

The amendment attracted large numbers of people to the polls, with 2.1 million (34 percent) of the state’s 6.3 million registered voters casting a ballot on the question, according to the state elections board results. Turnout was as high as 50 percent in some counties.

Meanwhile in Colorado, legislation that would have permitted civil unions in the state died without a vote May 8.

The Colorado Catholic Conference had opposed the legislation, saying it “creates an alternative parallel structure to marriage” and “contradicts the will of the people of Colorado,” who in 2006 approved a constitutional amendment that defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

— By Patricia L. Guilfoyle, Catholic News Service 

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — In an effort to boost recruitments through more modern methods of outreach, the Pontifical Swiss Guard has opened a page on Facebook.

Facebook.com/gsp1506 was launched May 4 “to open a window” and better inform young people about the “Guardia Svizzera Pontificia,” said the guard’s commander, Col. Daniel Anrig.

“We want to improve communication with young people who otherwise might not have an opportunity to find out what the Pontifical Swiss Guard really is,” he told journalists May 5, the day before 26 new guards were sworn in to service.

Currently, applications to serve are open only to Swiss male citizens who served in the Swiss Army and are Catholic, under 30 years of age, stand at least 5 feet 8 inches tall and boast an “irreproachable reputation.”

The colonel said he would love to allow female recruits, but such a move could be considered only “when the circumstances change,” specifically having more than one barracks to house the soldiers.

Guard officials have lamented a slump in applications over the years and have been looking to improve outreach, Col. Anrig said.

A former guard, Bernhard Messmer, has been hired to work on recruitment projects; he will be aided by nine other former guards who each will be in charge of a different region in Switzerland so the people “can be closer to the guards,” said the colonel.

The guard also has a video feed on YouTube at “The Corps of the Pontifical Swiss Guard.”

During an audience May 7 with Swiss Guards, new recruits and their families and friends, Pope Benedict XVI thanked the men for their service to protecting the pontiff and guarding the apostolic palace.

He said he “fervently appreciated” that young men today still choose to sacrifice a few years of their lives in complete service and dedication to the successor of Peter.

The hard work, long hours and “peculiar service” of the guard, he said, mean the soldiers have to possess unique characteristics, such as having a solid Catholic faith, loyalty and love toward the church and Jesus, “diligence and perseverance in small and big daily tasks, courage and humility, altruism and availability” to serve.

New soldiers are sworn in during a colorful ceremony at the Vatican every May 6 to commemorate the day that 150 Swiss Guards died saving Pope Clement VII’s life during the sack of Rome on that date in 1527.

Since its founding in 1506, the corps — currently numbering 110 guardsmen — performs honorary and ceremonial duties, as well as guarding the life of the pope and keeping watch over the papal palace.

Though they sport Medieval-era weaponry with their halberds and armor during colorful ceremonies, the guards are trained in the latest defense techniques, which range from the Monadnock Defensive Tactics System for controlling aggressors to martial arts and modern firearm use.

Guards who continue their service after two years qualify to train to become certified Swiss federal security experts.

— By Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service 

The World Church of the Power of God opened an L-shaped, one-story, corrugated metal megachurch on the outskirts of Sao Paulo on New Year’s Day, expecting around 100,000 people to attend.

Few were prepared for the more than 2 million people who actually showed up. The crowd clogged the highway between the city and international airport, causing a six-hour traffic jam. Hundreds of passengers ditched their taxis and cars and walked miles to catch their flights.

“Nobody expected that,” said the Rev. Luiz Medeiros, a senior pastor at the neo-Pentecostal church. “It shows how attracted people are to joining the church.”

The church has the capacity to hold 150,000 people, making it one of the largest religious gathering places in South America. Preachers regularly draw 30,000 people, Rev. Medeiros said.

What makes the church’s popularity remarkable is that it has swelled to such numbers 14 years after its establishment, and it did so in the world’s most-Catholic country, Brazil, which the Vatican says has 163 million Catholics.

Evangelical churches like the World Church Power of God have made inroads in Latin America and the Caribbean, long a Catholic stronghold.

Relatively obscure decades ago, evangelicals — including Pentecostals, Baptists and others — now count roughly 97.5 million followers in the region, according to data provided by a coalition of evangelical churches. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life’s 2011 report on Christianity around the world does not differentiate between mainline and evangelical Protestants, but found 94 million Protestants in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The growth of the evangelical movement in Latin America has come as the number of Catholics has fallen. While about 432 million people — 74 percent of Latin Americans — identify themselves as Catholic, countries that have long been church strongholds are seeing numbers decline.

“Clearly, the phenomenon of the growth of these sects is affecting us,” said Bishop Hector Lopez Hurtado of Girardot, Colombia. “In the last several years, you’ve seen it spread to all parts of Latin America.”

The growth of the movement has caused consternation within CELAM, the Latin American bishops’ council. A 2006 publication looking at the issue called the “new religious movements … one of the problems of greatest concern to those engaged in the process of evangelization in the Catholic Church.”

In Mexico, the world’s second-most-Catholic country, 96 percent of the population identified themselves as Catholic in 1970. Last year, the number had fallen to 82.7 percent.

Mexico’s southern neighbor, Guatemala, was 90 percent Catholic as of the mid-1950s. Today, it’s closer to 50 percent. More than one in three are evangelical Christians.

Well-financed churches in the U.S., where one in four adults are evangelicals, initially pushed Latin America’s evangelical movement. Today, however, Latin Americans raise money to build churches, and local ministers have risen to celebrity status.

The movement’s growth has left a trail of skyline-changing megachurches and humble prayer halls scarcely bigger than living rooms in Latin American cities and the countryside.

In the capital of predominantly Catholic Dominican Republic, Jose Marti attends a raucous service twice a week in a small church that sits atop a grocery store parking garage off a busy highway.

“I was raised Catholic and some of my family is still Catholic,” said Marti, 38. “I just don’t feel like the Catholic Church has kept up with the times. It is not exciting, like here.”

Inside, a set of drums sat on a small platform and upholstered bench seats lined the hall.

Evangelical “churches adopt less-rigid rules than the Catholic Church … they adapt to the customs and values seen today in our society, such as the importance of financial prosperity, importance of entrepreneurship to reach this prosperity, importance of discipline,” said Christina Vital, an anthropologist at the Institute of Studies of Religion in Rio de Janeiro. “There are today dance parties which are supported by evangelical churches and even held inside these churches.”

For Marti, the difference is simple: “I come here and I enjoy it,” he said. “I feel like I have my own relationship with Jesus.”

His sentiment touches a central theme in explaining the evangelical growth. Rather than having a priest interpret Scripture for them, evangelical Christians take an active role in forming their relationship with Jesus.

“They are able to meet in small groups with their neighbors and a pastor who is from the area and knows them,” said Maarit Forde, a professor at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad who studies the spread of evangelical Protestantism in the Caribbean. “That allows them to focus on some of the issues that are pressing for them, like poverty or domestic violence.”

More recently, evangelical groups have successfully employed the Internet to attract followers, said Fernando Altemeyer, professor of theology at the Catholic University of Sao Paulo.

“They adapted much faster (than the Catholic Church) to the new technologies, and were quickly on Twitter, Facebook, blogs and such,” he said.

That tactic has helped evangelical churches reach young Brazilians and swell the church ranks.

In the past decade, the Catholic Church lost 6 million followers in Brazil. Those Catholics did not all flock to the evangelical churches, however; the number of agnostics has grown, Altemeyer said.

Brazil is an example of the changes in the religious makeup of Latin America and of how the Catholic Church is adapting.

Pentecostal groups first arrived in the country in the early 1900s, but the movement surged in the 1970s. It was helped by an urbanization that sent poor Brazilians into cities to look for better jobs. They settled in the outskirts of large cities, where Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal churches had taken hold.

Today, roughly 40 million Brazilians identify themselves as evangelicals. That number is expected to grow to more than 109 million by 2020, according to the Servindo aos Pastores e Lideres, an evangelical group linked to One Challenge International, a missionary organization.

In Sao Paulo, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God is building a 10,000-seat replica of Solomon’s Temple for a reported $200 million. In Recife, new churches will have the capacity for up to 35,000 people.

In Sao Paulo, Catholics will open their own megachurch big enough for 100,000 people. The Mother of God Sanctuary will be a venue for a Father Marcelo Rossi, who sings, dances, appears in movies and fills soccer stadiums with his masses. Proceeds from his best-selling books are paying for most of the church’s construction.

The Catholic Church has focused on Latin America’s youth and on creating dialogue between Catholics and evangelical movements, said Father Jose Gregorio Melo Sanchez, director of CELAM’s Department of Ecclesial Communion and Dialogue.

“It’s important to remember that the church isn’t a reactionary church,” Father Melo said. “The approach in this case is to focus on pastoral lines and on interreligious dialogue.”

— By Ezra Fieser and Lise Alves, Catholic News Service 

ROME (CNS) — The Second Vatican Council’s teaching, particularly on Judaism and other religions, is rooted in traditional Christian theology and the Bible, and the Catholic Church should not offer concessions to those who do not accept its teaching, said an Israeli-born Franciscan who serves as a judge on a top Vatican court.

Msgr. David Jaeger, a judge at the Roman Rota, defined as worrying a tendency, “here and there in Catholicism, to look leniently upon stray groups that are marginal but well-publicized who denounce the doctrine of the council, including the declaration ‘Nostra Aetate'” on the relationship of the church to non-Christian religions.

Msgr. Jaeger, who grew up in a Jewish family, spoke about “Nostra Aetate” during a conference on the Second Vatican Council at Rome’s Opus Dei-run Holy Cross University May 3-4.

“While often presented as if it were absolutely new,” he said, the teaching of “Nostra Aetate” “perfectly corresponds to the most ancient intuitions of Christian theology” when it affirms “there can be, and in particular cases, are elements of truth and holiness” in other religions, he said. In addition, the document emphasized that Judaism has a special status, which “already was extensively explained by St. Paul, particularly in the Epistle to the Romans.”

The council’s document explained the church’s “doctrine on Judaism, the only religion which, while not knowing Christ, has its origins in biblical revelation, which is why the church does not regard it simply as a ‘non-Christian religion,’ but ascribes to it a unique status,” Msgr. Jaeger said.

While recognizing the unique and special relationship between God and the Jewish people, he said, the council did not say say that Judaism was a “parallel path to salvation” and it did not deny that somehow, in the end, all salvation would be accomplished through Christ.

Obviously motivated by the horrors of the Holocaust, but also by centuries of injustices and persecution of Jews “by those who called themselves Christians and believed they therefore could justify their brutality, the declaration took care to severely condemn such conduct and to highlight the complete illegitimacy of supporting it with any reference to Christianity,” he said.

“The proof of Nostra Aetate’s effectiveness is that it seems strange to have to say it today,” the monsignor said.

However, he said, “One must take this occasion to express the deep hope that leniency will be denied” to anyone who does not accept the council’s teaching and “that there will be no being content with fake, quasi-adhesions accompanied by evident verbal and mental reservations to the teaching of the Second Vatican Council in general and to ‘Nostra Aetate’ in particular.”

“In fact,” he said, “the extreme gravity of the counter-witness of those who have, for centuries, abused the name of Christ and the term Christian to persecute and oppress the Jews must never be forgotten or underestimated in any way.”

— By Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service 

ROME (CNS) — Celebrating Mass in Pope Benedict XVI’s cathedral, Rome’s Basilica of St. John Lateran, a group of U.S. bishops prayed for the pope and reflected on what they need to do to respond to his call for a new evangelization.

Bishop Michael J. Sheridan of Colorado Springs was the homilist and principal celebrant of an evening Mass May 3 during the “ad limina” visit of bishops from Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming.

On the eve of the bishops’ meeting with Pope Benedict, Bishop Sheridan led his fellow bishops in a reflection on the pope’s insistence that strengthening the faith of Catholics, reviving the faith of those who have fallen away and sharing the Gospel with others means they must preach that Jesus is the son of God and continues to live in the church and the Eucharist.

The bishop said Pope Benedict has noted how “Jesus is often reduced to the status of a wise man and his divinity is diminished, if not denied outright.” That type of attitude sets aside the radical novelty of Christianity and its message that God entered human history to save humanity, he said.

The pope “warned us of preaching a Jesus who was not alive in our midst, entering into some sort of nostalgia in which we lift up Jesus the wise man who lived long ago, but doesn’t seem to have any reality now — it’s his memory that we exalt,” the bishop said.

“Our proclamation must be the proclamation of the living Jesus; the one who died — yes — for our sins, but who was raised, who lives now never to die again, who is in our midst,” he said.

“Let’s pray today that the Lord will fire us up with his Holy Spirit so that we may join in this new evangelization in the most effective way,” Bishop Sheridan said.

The bishops’ visits are formally called “ad limina apostolorum,” which means “to the thresholds of the apostles” Peter and Paul, who were martyred in Rome. As well as concelebrating Masses at Rome’s four major basilicas, the bishops meet with Pope Benedict to report on the state of their dioceses, and with Vatican officials to discuss issues of common concern.

— By Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service