First Links - 8.6.10

Pope snubbed by Scottish Catholics

Controversy has broken out over the Pope’s planned open-air Mass at Bellahouston Park, near Glasgow, with many parishes returning more than half of their allocated tickets for the event.

The organisers now reportedly fear that attendance will fall short of the 100,000 they expected to come to the Mass, which will cost £1.5m to stage. Each of Scotland’s 450 Catholic parishes received a pro-rata ticket allocation based on the size of its regular congregation, but the Herald reports that, in some cases, only one-sixth of the parishioners are planning to take up their places at the papal event.

The people of Kenya have voted in a referendum to approve a new constitution, according to early election returns. The constitution, backed by the United States, was opposed by Catholic and Protestant leaders because of its provision allowing for the legalization of abortion.

Mexico’s supreme court on Thursday upheld a landmark law that allows gay marriage in the capital city, bucking a challenge raised by the conservative government of President Felipe Calderon.

Local Jewish leaders are disturbed by the Archdiocese of St. Louis’s support for the Association of Hebrew Catholics, an organization that works to preserve the identity and heritage of Catholics of Jewish origin within the Church. The association was welcomed into the archdiocese by Archbishop Raymond Burke in 2006; Auxiliary Bishop Robert Hermann and the rector of the cathedral basilica will offer Mass at the group’s October conference.

Evangelical Christians convening in South Africa this October for the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelisation will adopt a new document following in the footsteps of the historic Lausanne Covenant that exhorted Christians to preach the good news to all mankind.

The document, entitled the Cape Town Commitment, will be “rooted in the centrality of the uniqueness of Christ, and on the authority of the Scriptures”, the Lausanne movement said.