Auxiliary Bishop

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Roman Catholic bishops, at their semiannual meeting, are grappling with problems as worldly as the contemporary "culture of violence" and as seemingly insular as the revision of the wording of Mass prayers.For the bishops, the problems inside the church are only slightly less intractable than those outside, including abortion, the increase in street crime and the recently approved Oregon measure that legalizes physician-assisted suicide.The bishops today will debate a "Catholic response to violence," a sweeping statement that condemns what they say is increasing hostility shown by Americans toward each other and urges Catholic leaders to try harder to combat that hostility.

IF THE United States can help bring Sudan's civil war to an end, it should. In 18 years, the rebellion in the south and suppression by the north have taken 2 million lives and uprooted 4 million people. No end is in sight. The Clinton administration tried to isolate Sudan's Islamic regime for supporting international terrorism, which it may have stopped doing. The policy remains, with strong support, because the Khartoum government terrorizes people, oppresses Christians and allows bandits to kidnap children in the south for slavery and ransom.

The nation's 33 Catholic archbishops, long proponents o universally available health care, are to quietly convene a meeting in Chicago tomorrow amid fears that President Clinton's soon-to-be-announced health care plan will include abortion services -- making the plan unsupportable by the Catholic Church.The agenda for the meeting has been kept secret, but questions about the place of abortion, euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide in the still-undisclosed reform plan appear to have prompted the gathering.

Roman Catholic clergy in Baltimore have expressed concern over the city Health Department's recent decision to distribute birth control pills and condoms at seven public middle and high schools.The open letter sent Tuesday to Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke was signed by 28 clergymen and one nun, Sister Jane Doyle, the pastoral director of Corpus Christi parish in Bolton Hill. The signers were convened by Auxiliary Bishop John Ricard, urban vicar of Baltimore's Catholic Archdiocese.The signers wrote that the department's action "ignores the very personhood of our young people, by failing to recognize them as persons who must learn to make responsible moral decisions.

"Clearly, some people will be angry, some people will be upset. But the status quo is not possible."Those were the words of Auxiliary Bishop John H. Ricard three months ago as he anticipated the reaction to the Baltimore Roman Catholic archdiocese's downsizing of roughly a dozen city parishes. The long-awaited announcement by Cardinal William H. Keeler and Bishop Ricard finally came last Sunday: Our Lady of Lourdes in Ashburton will be closed Feb. 19 and 13 other churches will be merged or otherwise scaled back.

Keeler's life and times March 4, 1931: Keeler is born in San Antonio. 1952: He graduates with a bachelor's degree from St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, Overbrook, Pa. July 17, 1955: Then-Archbishop Luigi Traglia ordains him a priest at the Church of the Holy Apostles, Rome. 1956: Keeler graduates from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome with his licentiate in sacred theology. 1961: Keeler earns his doctorate in canon law at the Gregorian University. 1962-1965: He serves as special adviser during the Second Vatican Council.

Last week, the Scout Sunday Mass for the Archdiocese of Baltimore was celebrated at St. Philip Neri Roman Catholic Church. More than 300 Scouts and Scout leaders from the Baltimore area attended.St. Philip Neri Parish sponsors Cub Pack and Scout Troop 447, which serve more than 100 boys in the Linthicum area.The main celebrant was Baltimore Auxiliary Bishop William C. Newman. He was assisted by concelebrants Monsignor Francis X. Zorbach, pastor of St. Philip Neri, and the Rev. Thomas L. Phillips, who recently was appointed as archdiocesan Scouting chaplain by Cardinal William H. Keeler.

Monsignor James John Cronin, the retired Roman Catholic pastor of a Carney parish who spent nearly five decades in the Baltimore area, died of stroke complications Friday at Stella Maris Hospice. He was 88. Born in Glens Falls, N.Y., he received his seminary training at the old St. Mary's Seminary on Paca Street, where his older brother, the Rev. John Cronin, was a professor and later a speech writer for Vice President Richard M. Nixon. Another brother, Paul Cronin, also became a priest; his sister, Noelle, became a nun. Ordained in 1945, Father Cronin was sent to St. Ursula's Parish in Parkville, where he remained for 19 years.

A statement signed by more than 4,500 U.S. Roman Catholics protesting the Vatican's decision to bar a Baltimore priest and nun from their ministry to gays and lesbians will appear in today's editions of a national Catholic weekly newspaper. The statement, which will appear as an advertisement in the Nov. 19 issue of the National Catholic Reporter, calls on the nation's bishops to "exercise their collegial right and ask the Vatican to reconsider this decision" to end the ministry of the Rev. Robert Nugent and Sister Jeannine Gramick.

The weekly newspaper of Baltimore's Roman Catholic archdiocese recently took the unusual step of airing a difference of opinion between Archbishop William H. Keeler and Auxiliary Bishop P. Francis Murphy. The issue was women as priests.In the Sept. 23 Catholic Review, Archbishop Keeler backed the church's "unbroken tradition" of ordaining men only. Bishop Murphy, reiterating a view he had expressed in a piece for a national Catholic magazine, said women should be ordained as part of "a renewed priestly ministry."