c. 1996 Religion News Service
New York assisted-suicide ruling criticized
(RNS)-Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston has called on the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the April 2 ruling of a federal appeals court that overturned New York state’s ban on assisted suicide for the terminally ill.”How horribly sad it is, in this season of new life (Easter), that our courts can think the only way to solve some people’s problems is to help them induce their death,”Law said.
Law’s comments came in reaction to a ruling by a three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan that said doctors could legally help terminally ill patients commit suicide in certain circumstances.
Under the decision, a doctor could prescribe drugs that would hasten the death of a terminally ill patient if the patient is mentally competent and requests such help.
It was the second federal court ruling in less than a month striking down a state law banning euthanasia. On March 6, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco overturned Washington state’s ban on doctor-assisted suicide. The ruling affects nine western states.
Law, who chairs the Committee for Pro-Life Activities of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the government”has no interest more reasonable or more compelling than that of protecting every person from deadly harm-especially persons who are weakest and most vulnerable.”While the court may wrap its decision in the trappings of compassion, its message that the sick and elderly have lives of no value can only increase suffering and despair for countless patients in the future,”Law said.
The ruling was also criticized by the Christian Medical and Dental Society, a Bristol, Tenn.-based association of evangelical doctors and dentists, and the Christian Legal Society, an evangelical advocacy group headquartered in Annandale, Va.
The two groups, in a joint statement, said the New York ruling”wrongly blurs the distinction between removing artificial life support and killing patients and jeopardizes over 2,000 years of medical, legal and moral protections.” The suit challenging the New York law was brought by three doctors and three patients who argued the ban deprived people of personal liberty without due process and denied them equal protection.
Religion coverage on television called”insignificant” (RNS)-Of the more than 18,000 stories on the nation’s four major television networks’ evening news programs in 1995, only 249 were about religion, a conservative watchdog group said Thursday (April 4).
Morning news programs, with 26,000 news segments, had even fewer stories about religion, with just 224, according to the study by the Media Research Center, an Alexandria, Va.-based group that monitors television programming.
The religion stories that were broadcast were dominated by news about the Roman Catholic Church, the study said. It said 71 percent of the morning items were about Catholicism and about half of the evening stories were about the church.
Television’s entertainment divisions dealt slightly more often with religion than did the news divisions, the report said.
It said the portrayals of religion in prime time went up slightly, from 253 in 1994 to 287 in 1995.”However, given that there were almost 1,800 hours of original shows, that means there was only one depiction for every seven hours of programming-about the same ratio as in 1994,”the report said.
But the report also said that more than half of the portrayals on the networks of devout laity or clergy were negative.
L. Brent Bozell III, chairman of the Media Research Center, found one bright spot-CBS’s program,”Touched by an Angel,”which he said is”not only arguably the most pro-faith show in television history, but also a bona fide hit”that proves the center’s contention that religiously positive programming can be successful.
But, Bozell added,”the rule remains: the more seriously a person takes his faith, the more negative the depiction is likely to be.”
Update: Newspaper will run Good Friday, not Easter”B.C.”comic strip
(RNS)-The Los Angeles Times will run cartoonist Johnny Hart’s”B.C.”comic strip on Good Friday (April 5) and Saturday (April 6) but not the strip drawn for Easter (April 7), according to a Times spokesman.
Last week, the Times pulled a religiously oriented”B.C”drawn for Palm Sunday (March 31), prompting criticism on religious broadcaster Pat Robertson’s”700 Club”and protests from the conservative Christian Coalition.
On Tuesday (April 2), the newspaper indicated that in addition to not running the Palm Sunday strip, it would also pull the three cartoons for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. On Wednesday, however, it said it would run the Friday and Saturday strips.
The Palm Sunday cartoon shows one of the strip’s regular characters, Wiley, writing a poem,”The Suffering Prince,”and making reference to a person being”cleansed by the blood of the lifeless knight.” The Good Friday strip, four panels of a blank sky gradually turning darker, is an apparent reference to the biblical account of the sky darkening at the crucifixion of Jesus found in Matthew 27. “I just saw four panels turning to black,”Los Angeles Times spokesman Mike Lang told The Washington Times in explaining why the paper will run the strip.
Ariel Remler, another Los Angeles Times spokesman, said the newspaper”rotates or omits comics on the basis of what we think is right for our audience. We have such a large, diverse audience.” But Hart, a self-described”reawakened Christian,”in an interview with The Washington Times, said the Los Angeles paper’s editors are”exposing their anti-Christian bias”in rejecting his strips.”Just as the L.A. Times has a right to edit, I have a right to be me,”he said.”My Christianity is a major part of me.”
Update: Homosexuality charges against Orthodox priest in Cyprus dropped
(RNS)-The (Greek Orthodox) Church of Cyprus has dropped charges of homosexuality and lifted a suspension imposed on a popular priest whose church trial last month sparked riots injuring more than 70 people.
The Holy Synod, a council made up of the bishops of the Cyprus church, said Thursday (April 4) it was forced to drop the charges against Archimandrite Pangratios Meraclis, 39, after witnesses who originally charged the priest with homosexuality changed their stories.
Meraclis, 39, is a popular priest and had been considered the favorite to be elected bishop in the northwest Morphou district.
However, Reuters reported that Meraclis will not be allowed to run for the vacant bishop post and that the Holy Synod has suspended elections in the Morphou district until further notice.
In mid-March, thousands of Meraclis’ supporters clashed twice with police outside the Archbishop’s Palace in Nicosia, Cyprus, site of the priest’s trial. Rock-throwing demonstrators were met with tear gas as they attempted to storm the palace.
World Bank, Congress, targeted in”Economic Way of the Cross” (RNS)-Religious activists, seeking to link the commemoration of Jesus’ suffering”with the enormous pain caused today by powerful national and international financial institutions,”will conduct a Good Friday”Economic Way of the Cross,”moving from the Capitol to the World Bank and other agencies in an effort to call attention to the plight of the world’s poor.
The traditional Christian”Way of the Cross”worship service marks Jesus’ journey to the crucifixion.
In Washington,”Economic Way of the Cross”worshipers will visit 14″stations of the cross”-federal and international agencies that have an impact on the lives of the world’s poor.
The service is sponsored by the Religious Working Group on the World Bank and the IMF, a Washington-based coalition of more than 30 Protestant agencies, Roman Catholic religious orders and faith-based groups seeking to change World Bank lending policies. The activists hold the World Bank’s lending policies responsible for the huge debt burden among Third World countries.”By enacting this Way of the Cross literally in front of these 14 institutions, the Religious Working Group hopes to lay responsibility for the injustice of the world economic order at their doorstep and change the conception of the global economy from one of a far-off, distant abstraction-over which no one has ethical or moral responsibility-into a set of tangible, concrete institutions that must be held to ethical and moral account,”the group said.”Stations”on the”Economic Way of the Cross”are: Congress; the Department of Labor; the Department of Justice; the InterAmerican Development Bank; Shell Oil’s Washington office; the Export-Import Bank; the Department of the Treasury; the White House; the Department of Defense; the office of the U.S. Trade Representative; the Federal Reserve; the International Finance Corp.; the World Bank; and the International Monetary Fund.
Quote of the day: President Bill Clinton on prayer and religious liberty
(RNS)-On Wednesday (April 3), President Clinton issued a proclamation designating May 2 the National Day of Prayer. In the proclamation, Clinton called on Americans to affirm the nation’s spiritual roots:”Today we cherish the liberties the first immigrants fought so hard to obtain, and we enjoy a degree of freedom and prosperity only dreamed of 200 years ago. And though our citizens come from every nation on Earth and observe an extraordinary variety of religious faith and traditions, prayer remains at the heart of the American spirit. We face many of the same challenges as our forebears-ensuring the survival of freedom and sustaining faith in an often hostile world-and we continue to pray, as they did, for the blessings of a just and benevolent God to guide our nation’s course. This occasion calls us to affirm our country’s spiritual roots and to humbly express our gratitude to the source of our abundant good fortune.”
MJP END RNS
