'Barney Miller' stars launch St. Charles scholarship honoring Ron Carey
NORTH HOLLYWOOD --- Actors Max Gail, Ron Glass and Steve Landesberg, three former stars of the Emmy-winning "Barney Miller" TV series, will be special guests at the Catholic Community Luncheon Feb. 7, 12:45-3 p.m., at St. Charles Borromeo Social Center in North Hollywood.

Benefits from the lunch will be used for a memorial scholarship honoring the late Catholic comedic actor Ron Carey, who portrayed Officer Levitt on "Barney Miller," for students of St. Charles Borromeo School. Carey, 71, died Jan. 16; a memorial service was celebrated Jan. 23 at Christ the King Church, Hollywood.

Guest speaker for the event is Father Bob Garon, associate pastor of St. Charles, who will speak on "The Eucharist, another way of saying 'Thank you.'" Chairperson Lisa Sulprizio said the February event is the start of luncheon fund-raising efforts.

"The fund-raising adds our Catholic action to our witness of faith in our luncheons," said Sulprizio. "We are happy and excited about this new dimension to our community service at the new parish social center. We are also pleased to honor Ron Carey, whose example as a Catholic as well as an entertainer will long be remembered." For reservations, contact Sulprizio at (323) 656-0955.

Black History Mass scheduled Feb. 24 at Cathedral
LOS ANGELES --- The African American Catholic Center for Evangelization is sponsoring the fifth Annual Archdiocese of Los Angeles Black History Mass on Feb. 24 at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angeles. Father Giles Conwill will serve as homilist. He is professor of history at Morehouse College in Atlanta. The cathedral is located at 555 W. Temple St. in Los Angeles.

Vatican newspaper denounces reporter who posed as penitent for expose
VATICAN CITY (CNS) --- The Vatican newspaper denounced an Italian journalist who posed as a penitent and confessed fake sins in order to write an expose on the sacrament of reconciliation. "Shame! There is no other word to express our distress toward an operation that was disgusting, worthless, disrespectful and particularly offensive," said L'Osservatore Romano, in a commentary condemning the cover story of L'Espresso magazine, one of the country's leading weeklies.

The commentary said the article had exploited the good faith of confessors and offended the religious sentiments of millions of people. "It was a sacrilege, because it violated the sacred space in which a self-recognized sinner asks intimately to receive God's merciful love," it said.

The reporter made his false confessions to 24 different priests in five Italian cities, including Rome. The magazine said the idea was to see how priests handle difficult pastoral situations and whether they followed the strict norms laid out by church teaching.

The reporter, for example, told two priests he was HIV-positive and wondered whether he should use a condom when having sexual relations with his girlfriend. One told him no, and the other said it was a question of conscience, the magazine reported. More than once, the magazine said, priests gave quite different advice on his supposed "sins," which included matters relating to homosexuality, divorce, stem-cell research, euthanasia and prostitution.

Pope discusses church defense of marriage, commitment to God's plan
VATICAN CITY (CNS) --- The Catholic Church defends marriage as the permanent bond of a man and a woman because matrimony corresponds to human nature and to God's divine plan, Pope Benedict XVI said. When a man and a woman enter into a Catholic marriage, their commitment to each other surpasses their feelings at the moment and becomes a commitment to maintaining the bond God has created between them, the pope said Jan. 27 in his annual meeting with members of the Tribunal of the Roman Rota, a Vatican court dealing mainly with marriage. Despite a society that often considers "marriage simply as a social formalization of affective ties" and a contract that should end if the affection weakens, the pope said the church continues to insist that matrimony is more than a public pronouncement that two people love each other at that moment. Pope Benedict told the Vatican court judges that their task was one of "service of the truth in justice," not only for the good of a couple seeking an annulment, but also for the defense of the sacrament of matrimony through which God ensures the good and fulfillment of each of the spouses.

Pope again decries rupture between faith and reason
VATICAN CITY (CNS) --- Returning to one of his favorite themes, Pope Benedict XVI said the rupture between faith and reason has produced a type of "schizophrenia" in modern culture. The pope made the remarks at a noon blessing Jan. 28, the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas, the philosopher and theologian known for articulating a harmonious vision of faith and reason more than 700 years ago. Today, the pope said, the faith-reason relationship looms as a serious challenge for the dominant Western culture. While the achievements of the modern sciences are undeniable, he said, this progress has been accompanied by a tendency to consider as true only that which can be experimentally proven. This represents a limit on human reason and "produces a terrible schizophrenia, now clearly recognized, in which rationalism and materialism live together, as do hyper-technology and unbridled instinct," he said. The pope said humanity urgently needs to rediscover the Christian vision of a rationality that is open to the divine, and in particular to the "perfect revelation" that is Jesus Christ.

Bishop bucks Vatican on phrasing about married deacons, priesthood
MEXICO CITY (CNS) --- A Mexican bishop is bucking Vatican orders to erase a phrase in his pastoral plan that notes the desire among his indigenous communities that married permanent deacons be ordained priests. The phrase is not fanning the hopes of a married priesthood, but simply reporting the feelings of many indigenous Catholics, said Bishop Felipe Arizmendi Esquivel of San Cristobal de Las Casas in Mexico's Chiapas state. The phrase remains in the pastoral plan "because the faithful have the right to be heard by their pastors. To listen is not the same as to approve," he said, in a Jan. 24 statement posted on the Web site of the Mexican bishops' conference. Bishop Arizmendi said he does not support a married priesthood. He issued the statement after several Mexican news organizations reported on a Sept. 26 Vatican letter complaining that the diocese still had not eliminated the phrase nor had it made changes in its program for training married men to be permanent deacons. The Vatican made the letter public in mid-January. It was signed by Cardinal Francis Arinze, head of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments.

Vatican secretary of state defends Pope Pius XII's wartime actions
ROME (CNS) --- Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state, strongly defended Pope Pius XII's wartime actions and said he had coordinated church efforts that saved the lives of many Jews. Cardinal Bertone spoke Jan. 24 at the presentation of the Italian translation of the book "The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust," by Martin Gilbert. The cardinal said the book illustrated how people of many faiths, including Christians and Muslims, had risked their lives to save Jews from Nazi persecution and death in concentration camps. He said the Catholic Church as an institution played a part in this effort, working under Pope Pius and following his directives. The church aided all during World War II, but specifically sought to defend and save persecuted Jews, he said.

British cardinal upset over same-sex rules for adoption agencies
LONDON (CNS) --- The president of the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales said he was "deeply disappointed" about the British government's refusal to exempt 13 Catholic adoption agencies from gay rights regulations. "It is clear from the prime minister's statement that he has listened to some of the concerns of the Catholic Church in regard to its adoption agencies," said Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor of Westminster, England. "We are, of course, deeply disappointed that no exemption will be granted to our agencies on the grounds of widely held religious conviction and conscience." The cardinal's Jan. 29 statement followed an announcement by British Prime Minister Tony Blair that adoption agencies would have until the end of 2008 to comply with the Sexual Orientation Regulations outlawing discrimination against homosexuals in services and facilities. Public funding --- approximately $200 million a year --- will be withdrawn if agencies refuse to place children with same-sex couples. Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor said the regulations would lead to the closure of Catholic adoption agencies which find homes for about 250 vulnerable children each year.