Scotland: a week devoted to Catholic schoolsA week devoted to education to reaffirm the role of parents and school in teaching “life-long values”. The Catholic Church in Scotland will celebrate the success of its schools next January 27-February 2 focusing events on “the teaching of life-long values”. The “Scottish Catholic Education Service”, the Scottish Church distributed a book, a poster and a cd on the subject “Values for life” in schools and parishes. The 48-page volume offers advice on how to integrate Catholic values taken from the Gospel in school programs. The poster depicts the beatitudes and the cd has three presentations with music describing the role-model lives of people blessed with faith. In Scotland, as in the rest of the UK, Catholic schools are very popular and always rank first in the Government’s list of the best schools in the Country. The week of education will conclude on February 2 with a conference on the subject “Celebrating Catholic education: reflections on cooperation between schools and the State from 1918 up to present date and more”. The lecture will be delivered by Scottish Prime Minister Alex Salmond at the Glasgow University’s faculty of Religious Studies. The “Cardinal Winning Education Lecture” is a yearly event commemorating late Cardinal Thomas Winning, archbishop of Glasgow from 1974 to 2001.Germany: 80 Churches doomed to closeHildesheim’s diocese is planning to close 80 Churches starting from next year. However, the diocese deems the other 197 churches important for pastoral care, so it decided to invest in renovation work. The news was released on January 18 by the General Vicarage of the diocese. The project will be debated in deaconries by next 1st October. In 2003 Msgr. Josef Homeyer, at the time bishop of Hildesheim, had planned short and medium term reorganization for financial reasons. In fact, the diocese couldn’t afford to cover its real estate expenses. The 438 churches present have been classified following different criteria, the major one being pastoral care demand. Similar circumstances had compelled Hildesheim’s dioce to close 13 Churches in the year 2000. The Churches in question were torn down or employed for different purposes: kindergartens and lodgings, while some others were handed over to the Orthodox Church. A communiqué issued on January 19, on the occasion of the Plenary Assembly of the Council – representing the largest lay committee of the diocese – notified the decision. In the document, “the diocese council” declares that it is “aware of the painful reasons leading to the churches’ closure”. The council equally expressed its support and its appreciation for the diocese’s decision to undertake debates on the issue with parish congregations.England: ecumenism, without concealing divisions”It’s important that each tradition maintains its identity instead of putting on a show of unity which doesn’t correspond to reality”, declared Micheal Seed, Franciscan priest acquainted with the Blair family and popular in Great Britain for having followed in his capacity as ecumenism advisor to the Primate of England and Wales cardinal Murphy O’Connor, the duchess of Kent, first cousin of the Queen, in her conversion to the Catholic Church. Father Seed, who is a member of the “Redemption Society” – of which was a member also Father Paul Wattson, who inaugurated the first week for ecumenism one-hundred years ago – in an article for the Catholic weekly ‘Tablet’ declared that present good relations between the different Christian confessions are “an important result, although the full unity of the Church of Christ is still distant. There is no reason to conceal divisions. The truth of our dilemmas in the field of unity is that it’s a cumbersome topic which escapes our control. As our Orthodox brothers say, it’s a “mystery” which will be achieved according to God’s design. We must be aware of the gifts offered by each Church and community, at the same time evaluating the costs these entail within the framework of a spiritual economy founded on the well-being of the entire Church”.
