c. 1996 Religion News Service

Catholic leaders demand destruction of tape of inmate’s confession

(RNS)-Roman Catholic leaders are demanding that a recording of a confession made by an Oregon inmate to a priest be destroyed, saying it is a sacred exchange that should remain private.

The Rev. Timothy Mockaitis heard the Catholic confession from Conan Wayne Hale April 22 in the visiting area of Lane County Jail in Eugene, Ore., the Associated Press reported. The 20-year-old man has been charged with burglary and theft and is also a suspect in three 1995 slayings.

Officials have not disclosed the contents of the tape or whether Hale admitted to a crime. But District Attorney Doug Harcleroad has suggested that prosecutors may attempt to use the tape in court. A final decision has not yet been made.”We are trying to solve a triple homicide,”Harcleroad said Wednesday (May 8).”We will use all legal means to do that.” Hale’s trial on the burglary and theft charges is scheduled to begin in June.

Opinions differ about whether the conversation is privileged. Oregon law exempts religious advisers from being questioned by police about confidential conversations. But Harcleroad said the law permits the recording of conversations in jail and does not exempt Catholic confessions.”The only exemption is the attorney-client privilege,”Harcleroad said.

Roman Catholic leaders, on the other hand, are outraged.”It was beyond belief that it happened,”said Pat Reilly, business affairs director for the Archdiocese of Portland.

Reilly said the sacrament of reconciliation is considered private under all circumstances.”It’s important not to underestimate the seriousness of the matter,”said Reilly, adding that archdiocesan officials have not decided what they will do if prosecutors try to use the tape.

William Donohue, president of the New York-based Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, an unofficial organization that defends Catholic doctrine, said his group will sue to stop use of the tape if it is not destroyed.”It’s an outrage whenever you have abuse of an organized religion by the state,”Donohue said.”This sacrament cannot be sacrificed on the altar of the courtroom, no matter how important a matter it may be.”

Two Shiite Muslim men accused of copying Muhammad’s image get reprieve

(RNS)-The case of two Shiite Muslims accused of blasphemy and sentenced to death for photocopying an image of the prophet Muhammad have won a reprieve from an appeals court in Peshawar, Pakistan.

The Peshawar High Court reversed a lower court decision against two Afghan citizens, Barat Ali and Qambar Ali, the Associated Press reported.

The two men were accused of making photocopies of a drawing of Islam’s prophet Muhammad. It is considered blasphemous under strict Islamic law to display any image of the prophet, the founder of Islam.

But the court ruled Wednesday (May 8) that the lower court decision was based on”assumptions, presumptions and conjectures.” When the men ordered 10,000 photocopies of the drawing, a store clerk saw a reference to the prophet in a caption, assumed the picture was Muhammad’s image and alerted the police.

Local and international human rights organizations have labeled Pakistan’s blasphemy laws as vague and easily used to persecute members of minority religions in mostly Muslim Pakistan. Hardline religious parties have blocked leaders of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s government when they have tried to amend the laws.

The existing laws state that it is a crime punishable by death to insult Islam or the prophet Muhammad, but so far all death sentences handed out in such cases have been overturned by a higher court.

German state secretary says Nazi dictatorship was inhumane, lacked values

(RNS)-German state secretary Anton Pfeifer, speaking on plans for a Holocaust memorial, says the Nazi dictatorship’s inhumanity was based on a lack of moral norms and human values.”It is essential that the memorial in Berlin, by bundling our memories in a prominent and visible place, gives us occasion again and again to look at ourselves,”he said in a speech in parliament today (May 9).”The systematic inhumanity of the Nazi dictatorship had its decisive basis in the mockery of every human value system and the destruction of all moral norms.” A cornerstone ceremony for the planned memorial, currently stalled by a design dispute, is scheduled to take place near the Brandenburg Gate on Holocaust Day, Jan. 27, 1999, Reuters reported.

Pfeifer said the memorial should challenge Germans to ask how their nation permitted the Nazis’ slaughter of the Jews. He also emphasized that Germany had a special duty to keep alive the memory of the 6 million Jews who were victims of the Holocaust.”We owe this to the memory of the millions of Jewish men, women and children who fell victim to a mass murder driven by ideological fanaticism and executed with ice-cold technical perfection,”Pfeifer said.

Thousands of Burundi residents flee escalating violence

(RNS)-Thousands of Burundians are continuing to flood into Zaire, fleeing increasing violence in the northwestern part of their African country, a U.N. refugee official said Wednesday (May 8).”Some refugees are now arriving with bullet wounds and say the fighting is getting worse,”Paul Stromberg, spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency, told the Associated Press.”We are expecting more refugees. The flow does not show signs of stopping.” Stromberg said many of the 2,500 refugees on Tuesday and hundreds more on Wednesday appear to have been caught in the fighting.

A recently built refugee camp is full, and the agency is seeking a site for the expected new arrivals, he said.

The exodus of frightened village residents from Burundi increased with escalating violence between Zaire-based Hutu rebels and Burundi’s Tutsi-dominated army.

The fighting stems from the same ethnic hatred that caused bloody massacres in Rwanda in 1994. About 500,000 Rwandans died, mostly Tutsis killed by Hutus.

U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali has expressed concern about the rising violence, and he urged other member states of his organization to take the initiative in organizing an international force to intervene.

Quote of the Day: Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo, sociology professor at Brooklyn College

(RNS)-Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo, sociology professor at Brooklyn College and president of the Program for the Analysis of Religion Among Latinos, spoke recently to religion reporters at the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism at the University of Maryland in College Park, Md., on the benefits of”barrio religion”:”The Latino way of integrating religion as a home-centered, inclusive way of life … has many positive aspects, as does the Jewish experience. This mode of thinking is not a residue from a superstitious, unenlightened, traditionalist past that should be discarded. The qualities still possessed by Latino religion represent what others long to restore to Euro-American religion in the U.S.”

LJB END