c. 1996 Religion News Service

Lutheran, Episcopal churches ready vote for full communion

(RNS) A joint committee of leaders from the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America have readied the final text of an historic agreement that will bring the nearly 8 million members of the two denominations into full communion.”This committee accomplished a tremendous amount in responding to concerns from both churches,”said Episcopal Bishop Edward Jones of Indianapolis at the conclusion of a Nov. 1-3 meeting of the joint committee.”What we now present (in the final text) isn’t substantially altered, but the changes should address those concerns”expressed mostly by Lutheran bishops at a historic meeting of the ELCA’s Conference of Bishops and the Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops in early October.

Under the terms of the agreement, there would be an immediate mutual recognition and interchangeability of the ordained ministries of each denomination.

Lutherans would pledge that Lutheran and Episcopal bishops would be present at future consecrations of Lutheran bishops so that, over time, Lutherans would join Episcopalians in the”historic episcopate”_ the notion that there is an unbroken line of consecrated bishops back to the early church.

Episcopalians, for their part, would temporarily suspend a requirement that only priests ordained by bishops within the historic episcopate are permitted to preside at Holy Communion in Episcopal churches.

The two churches still maintain somewhat different ideas about the ordained ministries. The Episcopal church holds to a three-fold order of ministry _ deacon, priest and bishop _ while Lutherans hold there is only one ordained ministry. The two bodies also have different ideas about the office of bishop.

The revised concordat stresses that, despite the differences, there is agreement that”ordained ministries are given by God to be instruments of God’s grace”and it calls for further study of the office of deacon.

The revised text also makes a stronger connection between the proposal for full communion and the mission of the church, stating,”Our search for a fuller expression of visible unity is for the sake of living and sharing the gospel.” National conventions of the two bodies will vote on the agreement at separate meetings in July and August in Philadelphia.

Church agencies call on European body to attend to religious rights

(RNS) Three ecumenical agencies from Europe and North America have called on the 54-nation Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OSCE) to respect religious freedom and to take steps combat racism and xenophobia.

The OSCE links virtually all European nations, including those that belonged to the former Soviet Union, as well as the United States and Canada.

The appeal to the OSCE came from the Conference of European Churches, the National Council of Churches in the United States, and the Canadian Council of Churches, according to Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news agency.

In the appeal, timed to coincide with the Nov. 4 opening in Vienna of a three-week meeting of the OSCE, the church groups called on the OSCE to ensure”fair and equal treatment of minority faith communities and communities of non-believers”in situations where there is an established official or majority religion.

It stated OSCE governments should also”prohibit and prevent the use of religious feelings, thoughts, structures and symbols for nationalistic and war propaganda purposes.” Because a number of member nations, including the United States, are experiencing a rise in anti-immigrant sentiments, the three church agencies also urged the OSCE to promote”legislative measures”to bar”racial discrimination, nationalistic behavior and religious intolerance, and to enable victims to claim compensation.””Restrictive immigration policies, and negative polemics about these suffering human beings do not contribute to open attitudes on the part of societies which are to receive them,”the appeal stated.

Update: Oxfam calls Zaire refugee crisis”a human catastrophe” (RNS) Although a shaky cease-fire between the Zairean army and Tutsi rebels continues to hold in eastern Zaire, humanitarian and religious aid agencies say hundreds of thousands of people remain at risk of death and starvation.”A human catastrophe is unfolding in eastern Zaire where up to a million Rwandan and Burundian refugees and Zaireans have fled intensive fighting,”Oxfam International stated in a new position paper issued Monday (Nov. 4) just before the cease-fire went into effect.”These people are without protection, food, shelter or water, and may be joined soon by an even greater number if the war continues,”the paper stated.

The refugees, mostly members of the Hutu ethnic group from Rwanda, have fled the massive camps around Goma, Zaire, where they have lived for the past two years, and are now out in the open and inaccessible to regular supplies of food, water and medicine from humanitarian agencies.”We have absolutely no idea of the situation of approximately 400,000 refugees and displaced Zaireans,”Action by Churches Together, an umbrella organization of the relief arms of the World Council of Churches and the Lutheran World Federation, reported Wednesday (Nov. 6).

U.N. officials said Thursday (Nov. 7) that they were receiving reports from Rwandan refugees arriving at the Zairean town of Gisenyi that many of the fleeing refugees are dying from lack of water.”We have no means of taking care of them _ no food, no medicine. It’s a catastrophe,”Claude Olenga, administrator of the Roman Catholic charity Caritas, told Reuters.

ACT called the situation”precarious.””I’m afraid a lot of people are going to die in eastern Zaire over the next week, and there is very little, if anything, we can do about it,”Richard Oaten, ACT’s representative in Nairobi, Kenya, reported. Oaten is a member of the LWF staff responsible for coordinating refugee camps around Goma but was evacuated with 86 other international aid workers on Nov. 2.

The crisis has spawned calls for international military intervention but on Thursday (Nov. 7), a major British-based charity, the Save the Children Fund, rejected the idea.”Military intervention is not the answer in Zaire,”the group stated in a statement reported by Reuters.”It will take too long and, even if agreed, may well compound the problems in the region.” Save the Children called instead for”major and rapid repatriation”of Rwandan refugees back into Rwanda.

Save the Children’s call echoed those of other religious and humanitarian aid agencies that believe the only long-term solution to the crisis is the return of the refugees to Rwanda. Many of the refugees, however, are afraid to return home, fearing reprisals for the Hutu-led genocide of more than 500,000 Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994.

The Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response, a coalition of seven of the largest non-governmental agencies that respond to humanitarian disasters, including Care International, Caritas Internationalis, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, International Save the Children Alliance, the Lutheran World Federation, Oxfam and the World Council of Churches, said,”Much of the relief’s community’s essential humanitarian response is disrupted.” ACT is asking member churches for $1.8 million to help meet the crisis. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has pledged $100,000 toward the goal. Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, the aid arm of the Presbyterian Church (USA), has also committed $100,000 to the ACT aid effort.

Religious order in Canada charged with fraud

(RNS) A Maronite Catholic religious order centered near Montreal, Canada, has been charged with tax fraud in a scheme to issue more than $10 million in false tax receipts to more than 200 parishoners.

Two of the lay trustees of the order have also been charged, the Associated Press reported Thursday (Nov. 7).

The charges, filed Wednesday (Nov. 6), allege that the Antonian Order of Lebanese Maronites and two of its trustees carried out a scheme to help members of the parish church evade part of their federal income tax payments from 1989 through 1994.

An investigation of the order began after a former member tipped off authorities.

The former member told tax officials the order issued her a receipt for double the amount of her actual donations. She then used the inflated donation figure to reduce her income taxes.

The charges came at the end of a year-long probe by tax officials. Investigators raided the order’s monastery and church in November 1995, and in February, the Vatican sent a priest and a lawyer to investigate the parish and the Maronite diocese of Montreal. The Vatican action came after Bishop George Abi-Saber, 72, abruptly resigned and fled to Beirut.

Quote of the day: South African writer Nadine Gordimer

(RNS) South African writer Nadine Gordimer won the 1992 Nobel Prize for Literature and is known as a powerful novelist and eloquent opponent of the now-dismantled system of apartheid. Writing in the current issue of Choices, the magazine of the United Nations Development Program, Gordimer lauded the U.N. agency for its”year dedicated to the eradication of poverty,”but said concern needs to be addressed to a poverty of spirit as well:”Even beyond … material manifestations is another poverty. I want to speak of the deprivation of the intellect, of the world of ideas, from which millions suffer often without knowing it, condemned to plod through their lives at the lowest level of human consciousness. … The exploration of the truly human fullness of existence and of the ever-expanding limits of our consciousness with conceptual tools that rouse curiosity, wonderment at why we are here on Earth, what influences and forms our attitudes to one another, to other creatures … the mind that has no access to these, no access to music beyond pop jingles, literature beyond the bubble text of comics, beauty of form beyond the pose of cover girls, is in a state of poverty. First feed the belly, then talk aesthetics? Yes. But let us understand poverty as the sum of all its hungers, the conscious and unconscious one of its victims. Our responsibility is all-encompassing, this and every year.” KC END ANDERSON