PEOPLE

The Revs. Raewynne Whiteley of Swedesboro, N.J., and Beth Maynard of Fairhaven, Mass., have just completed Get Up Off Your Knees, Preaching the U2 Catalog (Cowley Publications), a compilation of 25 sermons based on the music of Irish rock band U2. Contributors include Episcopal, Catholic, Presbyterian and United Church of Christ preachers. The publishers hope to release the book this fall. All royalties will go to The AIDS Support Organization, an AIDS charity in Uganda.

Haley Waldman, a New Jersey 8-year-old who suffers from a wheat gluten allergy, used a rice-based wafer for her first Communion in May, but now Bishop John Smith of Trenton has said the sacrament was “invalid.” The girl’s mother Elizabeth Pelly-Waldman, has petitioned the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to grant exceptions for her daughter. She rejected using low gluten wafers and wine, and the pastor of Haley’s church in Manasquan, N.J., said a gluten-free host was unacceptable. Another local priest, who was not identified, performed the ceremony using the rice-based wafer.

Msgr. Eugene Gomulka, a former U.S. Navy chaplain whose endorsement to continue as a military chaplain was revoked by the Archdiocese of Military Services in March without a hearing (NCR, Aug. 13), was married in Yale Divinity School Chapel Aug. 7. Gomulka had said he had no immediate plans to marry, but in a letter to NCR he said that after his endorsement was revoked, rumors about his already being married were widespread. Given those rumors, he wrote, the wedding date was moved forward. Gomulka said he had earlier been in contact with his bishop regarding applying for laicization, and he and the woman who is now his wife had been considering a May 2005 wedding.

Jesuit Fr. Robert F. Drinan, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and a former member of Congress, received the American Bar Association’s 2004 ABA Medal, the association’s highest honor, at the organization’s annual meeting in Atlanta. “He has demonstrated to lawyers what it means to be committed to public service and to countless law students what is embodied in the highest dedication to ethical, moral legal practice,” said ABA president Dennis Archer, who presented the award. Drinan is an NCR columnist.

National Catholic Reporter, August 27, 2004