Tidings

CATHOLIC DIVORCE?

Vatican observers think that Pope John Paul II may soon attempt a crackdown on U.S. marriage annulments, which a Roman Catholic must obtain to remarry and remain a church member in good standing. Annulments are now so widespread that they are sometimes called "Catholic divorce." In 1968 only 338 were granted in the U.S. In 1978 there were 27,670. The increase came because U.S. annulment procedure has been streamlined, and the grounds--once limited to such strict factors as force, fraud, bigamy or impotence--have been quietly loosened. Many diocesan court judges now accept evidence of serious psychological "immaturity" as ex post facto proof of a couple's inability to enter into a valid marriage. In a little-noticed speech two weeks ago to the Vatican's marriage tribunal, John Paul said that psychological theories pressed upon judges are "not always correct," and insisted that judges must reach a "moral certainty," not just a "probability," that a marriage was invalid. Continued relaxation, warned the Pope, would "allow divorce, under another name, to be tolerated"--a direct quote from a 1973 Vatican warning to the U.S. bishops.

KIDNEY MITZVAH

When Yeshiva Student Jesper Jehoshua Sloma, 23, was killed by an Arab sniper last month in Hebron on Israel's occupied West Bank, a three-doctor panel at Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital authorized the transplant of his kidneys to save two patients. Many Israelis were incensed that one of the recipients was a twelve-year-old Arab girl wearing a Palestine Liberation Organization bracelet, but the transplant particularly offended many Orthodox Jews. To them, religious law forbids tampering with corpses in any way, either by transplants or autopsies, and last week they pursued their campaign to outlaw autopsies. The hard-liners are also infuriated at Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren, who decreed that the kidney transplant was a mitzvah (worthy deed), because it was done to prevent a death. He adds: "We're not allowed to discriminate between Jews and non-Jews in the saving of a life."

POLISH TUNNEL

Each year 5 million or 6 million pilgrims visit the Jasna Gora monastery in Poland to see the revered painting of the Black Madonna. But dozens of visitors are injured while crossing the busy road that separates the grounds from the town of Czestochowa. In addition, the government has long wanted to widen the road into an expressway. The solution: a pedestrian tunnel. But the project became another test of wills between Polish church and state. Bishop Stefan Barela complained that the underpass was a plot to cut off the monastery from the town and to "strike a blow at the cult of the Madonna." The tunnel, 30 ft. wide, was far too narrow for the throngs, he insisted, and its 8-ft. ceiling was too low for pilgrims' banners. After months of public denunciations and private meetings, the government agreed to fill in the unfinished tunnel, install traffic lights for pedestrians, and reroute the expressway behind the monastery. Apparently chagrined by this church victory, the state's news agency instructed Communist Party and military newspapers not to print the announcement.

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