Bishops

A Catholic bishop detained numerous times for his ties to the Vatican has died in police custody, according to a religious news agency and a monitoring group. Han Dingxiang, 70, from Hebei province just south of Beijing, reportedly died Sunday of cancer. A few close relatives were called to the hospital, but contact with fellow church members had been cut off after his most recent detention in September 2005.

The Rev. Carolyn Tyler Guidry is used to setting precedent as the first woman to hold several high-ranking West Coast positions in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. After her election last week as the second female bishop in the history of the worldwide denomination, the 66-year-old Los Angeles resident is about to go further afield. Tyler Guidry will be one of 20 presiding bishops who hold the highest positions in the A.M.E. Church.

The Rt. Rev. Frederick Houk Borsch was ordained and consecrated the fifth Episcopal Bishop of Los Angeles on Saturday in colorful ceremonies witnessed by a frequently applauding crowd of 5,000 at the Memorial Sports Arena. "Make Frederick a bishop in your church," the assembled bishops prayed as they clustered around Borsch and laid their hands on his head in the solemn moment of dedication.

Southern Californians who were sexually abused by priests left in ministry by Bishop Michael P. Driscoll want him to resign or be fired. But in Idaho, where Driscoll now serves as bishop of Boise, Roman Catholic opinion appears far more divided after the release last week of internal church documents that detailed his past handling of clergy sexual abuse allegations in Orange County.

A reform-minded Roman Catholic bishop is caught in a compromising video with a young man. In a heavily Catholic country, that ought to be scandal enough. But in Argentina, a nation struggling to escape a demoralizing legacy of corruption, economic catastrophe and brutality, the mystery seems to be: Who orchestrated the filming of the bishop with his male consort, and why?

The bishop of the nation's largest Episcopal diocese was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police and church officials in Boston said. Bishop David E. Johnson, who had announced his retirement and was to begin a sabbatical next month, committed suicide in his home, apparently on Saturday, diocesan spokesman Jay Cormier confirmed. Diocesan officials said they had no idea why Johnson killed himself.

At a small Catholic church in Huntington Beach, the pressing moral question comes to this: Does kneeling at the wrong time during worship make you a sinner? Kneeling "is clearly rebellion, grave disobedience and mortal sin," Father Martin Tran, pastor at St. Mary's by the Sea, told his flock in a recent church bulletin. The Diocese of Orange backs Tran's anti-kneeling edict.

A 62-year-old priest born in Vietnam and schooled in the United States was appointed auxiliary bishop of Orange on Friday, placing the nation's first Vietnamese American Roman Catholic bishop at the center of the country's largest Vietnamese population. The appointment of Dominic Dinh Mai Luong by Pope John Paul II reflects the rapid, one-generation maturation of the Vietnamese American community within the Catholic Church since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.

Holding hands, sometimes shedding tears, a dozen members of Resurrection parish gather twice each month at the church that is at once the source of their sadness and their hope for solace. At their candle-lit support meetings, these devout Roman Catholics are discovering comfort and strength in newfound activism as they cope with revelations that some of the clergy they once idolized may be guilty of widespread sexual abuse and financial misconduct.

A contempt-of-court citation against the Roman Catholic bishop of Orange County has been dropped as part of a nearly $7-million sexual abuse settlement, attorneys said Wednesday. But the opposing sides disagreed over what led to the action. Lawyers for the four women allegedly molested by Catholic school and parish employees said the diocese forced them to drop their bid for the citation.

The spiritual leader of the global Anglican Communion issued an unusually sharp and swift rebuke Sunday to church leaders in the U.S. over the election of a lesbian bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. In a terse statement, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams delivered a warning to Episcopal bishops, clergy and lay representatives about the confirmation of the Rev. Canon Mary D. Glasspool, a lesbian who has been in a partnered relationship for two decades. "The election of Mary Glasspool by the Diocese of Los Angeles as suffragan bishop-elect raises very serious questions not just for the Episcopal Church and its place in the Anglican Communion, but for the Communion as a whole," Williams wrote.

The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles on Saturday elected the first openly gay bishop since the national church lifted a ban that kept gays out of its highest ordained ministry, a move that deepened divisions between liberals and conservatives in the faith. Clergy and lay leaders, meeting in Riverside for their annual convention, chose the Rev. Canon Mary D. Glasspool, 55, who has been in a committed relationship with another woman since 1988, from a field of six candidates. She is a canon, or senior assistant, to the Diocese of Maryland bishops.

The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles elected the first woman bishop in its 114-year history Friday but had yet to decide whether to select an openly gay priest for a second bishop opening. The diocese's clergy and lay leaders, meeting in Riverside for their annual convention, chose the Rev. Canon Diane M. Jardine Bruce, 53, an Orange County priest and former bank executive, for the first of two open suffragan bishop positions. Suffragan bishops assist a diocese's primary bishop.

Re "Bishops' role in health debate," Nov. 16 A congressional representative meeting with a Catholic bishop to craft an amendment would seem to be a direct violation of the separation of church and state. Why no outrage from those politicians who always trumpet adherence to the Constitution? H.R. Pollack Huntington Beach :: Why does a group of male bishops, representing a religion that I am not a member of, have more input on how I receive healthcare than I do?

Re "The holy war over Kathleen Sebelius," Opinion, April 25 Tim Rutten presents the unholy attempt by some clergy in the Catholic Church to force their doctrinal religious views on elected representatives. That bishops would forbid Catholic officeholders like Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius from taking Communion because of their political stands shows how far we have come. And not in the right direction. Millions of us supported John F. Kennedy, either because we didn't care what religion he was or because he assured us that his Catholicism would play no role in his presidency.

A former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican said she wouldn't accept the University of Notre Dame's top honor at commencement next month because the Roman Catholic school invited President Obama to speak to graduates. Harvard University law professor and antiabortion scholar Mary Ann Glendon said in a letter to the South Bend school's president that giving Obama an honorary degree violated the U.S. bishops' 2004 statement that Catholic institutions shouldn't honor people whose actions conflict with the church's moral principles.

Re "An age of change for Catholics?," April 5 The Times is extremely naive if it assumes that a new generation of Catholic bishops will breathe fresh air into a church governed by the current Vatican gerontocracy. The rules of popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI are rightfully characterized as restoration papacies -- a return to a medieval, authoritarian model of church governance. This has led to a reversal of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, which fostered dialogue, collegiality and creativity.

Pope Benedict XVI has made an unusual public acknowledgment of Vatican mistakes and turmoil in his church over an outreach to ultraconservatives that led to his lifting the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop. In an attempt to end one of the most serious crises of his papacy, he said in a letter that the Vatican must make greater use of the Internet to prevent other controversies.

Cotton swabs tucked between their jaws and cheeks, bishops from the nation's largest Lutheran denomination sat in silence for three minutes Thursday as they underwent testing for HIV. Those few minutes of silence would serve to break another kind of silence, one that the bishops say has kept the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America from compassionately addressing the global AIDS crisis and welcoming AIDS victims into the pews. "We in the U.S.

The Vatican stood firm Tuesday on a decision to rehabilitate a Holocaust-denying bishop, even as Jewish leaders warned that the move will set back decades of Roman Catholic overtures to mend strained relations between the two faiths. The Vatican joined Jews and fellow Catholics in condemning the British bishop's assertions that no Jews died in Nazi gas chambers.