c. 1996 Religion News Service

U.S. Supreme Court leaves Washington’s assisted-suicide ban in place

(RNS)-The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday (June 10) that Washington state’s ban on doctor-assisted suicides can remain in effect while state officials prepare a challenge to a lower court ruling that the law is unconstitutional.

In its action, the Court took no position on Washington’s law barring assisted suicide nor on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling in March that said the law was unconstitutional.

But the action means that doctor-assisted suicide remains illegal in Washington and the eight other states (California, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Arizona, Alaska and Hawaii) covered by the 9th Circuit until state officials file a formal Supreme Court appeal and the justices say whether or not they will accept the case.

The decision on whether to accept the case is unlikely to come before the court’s next term, which begins in October, the Associated Press reported.

On March 6, an 11-member panel of the 9th Circuit, in the first ruling of its kind by a federal appeals court, ruled that Washington’s ban violated the constitutional right to die.”A competent, terminally ill adult, having lived nearly the full measure of his life, has a strong liberty interest in choosing a dignified and humane death rather than being reduced at the end of his existence to a childlike state of helplessness,”the ruling said.

In April, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, citing different grounds, struck down New York state’s laws against assisted suicide. It said such laws are discriminatory because they allow some people to end their lives by having their life-support systems disconnected but bar others from dying by taking prescribed drugs. New York officials have indicated they will appeal the ruling.

Update: Clinton defends late-term abortion veto to Baptist presidents

(RNS)-President Clinton, in a letter to Southern Baptist leaders released by the White House on Monday (June 10), strongly defended his veto of legislation banning a controversial late-term abortion procedure.

Clinton vetoed the Partial-birth Abortion Ban Act on April 10 because it would ban all use of the procedure except when necessary to save the life of the mother. Clinton told Congress he wanted the law to include an exception allowing its use to safeguard the health of the mother as well.

In a June 5 letter to Clinton, however, Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) President Jim Henry of Orlando, Fla., and 10 former SBC presidents called the procedure”inhumane and unconscionable”and said his request that Congress write an exception for the health of the mother is”a discredited, catch-all loophole which has been demonstrated to include any reason the mother so desires.” Clinton’s letter, dated June 7, rejected the Baptist leaders arguments.”… I cannot and will not countenance a ban on this procedure in those cases where it represents the best hope for a woman to avoid serious risks to her health,”said Clinton, who is a Southern Baptist.”Some may believe it morally superior to compel a woman to endure serious risks to her health-including the possible loss of her ability to bear children-in order to deliver a baby who is already dead or about to die,”he added.”But I am not among them.” Clinton said he rejected the views of critics such as the Baptist leaders who argue it is impossible to draft a bill”imposing real, stringent limits on the use of this procedure-a bill making crystal clear that the procedure may be used only in cases where a woman risks death or serious damage to her health, and in no other cases.”Congress ignored my proposal and did so, I am afraid, because too many there prefer creating a political issue to solving a human problem,”he said.

Henry, who is in New Orleans for the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, was not immediately available for comment.

Pope says lessons of Holocaust should be taught

(RNS)-Pope John Paul II, credited with forging improved ties among Catholics and Jews, said Monday (June 10) that the Roman Catholic Church should teach the lessons of human suffering of Jews killed at the Auschwitz concentration camp and other death camps.

The pontiff made his remarks in Polish to fellow Poles who presented him with a book containing the names of more than 1 million Jews and others who perished at the hands of the Nazis at Auschwitz.”The church is called upon to show its most profound sense of human suffering and to introduce this into the mystery of the divine mercy and in the new reality of eternal life,”he said at a Vatican ceremony where Jewish survivors presented him with”The Book of the Deceased of Auschwitz.” The brief ceremony came during the latest political skirmish in Poland over plans to build retail stores in the shadow of the camp, which is a shrine to those who were killed. For now, the Polish government has shelved the plans.

It also comes as the Vatican is preparing a document on the Holocaust and the church’s role in fostering anti-Semitism during World War II.

The pope has previously called on Catholics to repent for their sins during the war years of Pope Pius XII when some clerics turned against Jews who sought refuge from the persecution.

At the Monday event, the pontiff said,”The memory of human suffering should be for all times and a notice against the effects that are brought with the negation of the dignity of the human being as a person and of his fundamental rights.” He added,”accepting this book the church demonstrates again that it will not hesitate to return to this tragic chapter of history with the idea to show contemporary generations that life and dignity of human beings are great values.”

United Nations agency finds widespread child labor

(RNS)-The International Labor Organization (ILO), a Geneva-based agency of the United Nations, said Monday (June 10) that the number of child workers around the globe remains disturbingly high, with 73 million children between the ages of 10 and 14 now employed.”Today’s child worker will be tomorrow’s uneducated and untrained adult, forever trapped in grinding poverty,”said ILO Director-General Michel Hansenne.”No effort should be spared to break that vicious cycle.” According to the report, released in advance of a meeting of labor ministers from the ILO’s 173 member nations, the 73 million working children represent 13 percent of all children in that age group.

The report noted, however, that most of those children working were employed as unpaid family members.

The ILO estimated that nearly 41 million boys aged 10-14 are working, as are 32.5 million girls.

But the report also said that there are no reliable estimates for the number of children under 10 who are in the work force and no statistics available on the number of girls engaged in full-time domestic work.

Globally, although nine out of 10 employed children are engaged in agriculture or related activities, the report said child labor has been increasing steadily in the towns and cities of developing nations as a result of rapid urbanization in those nations.

In manufacturing industries, it said, children are most likely to be employed”when their labor is less expensive or less troublesome than that of adults, when other labor is scarce, and when they are considered irreplaceable by reason of their size or perceived dexterity.” The report said Mali in Africa had the largest percentage of its children between the ages of 10 and 14 in the work force- 54.5 percent. In Burkina Faso, also in Africa, the figure was put at 51 percent, and in Niger and Uganda 45 percent.

The report said that child slavery remains an”extremely serious problem”that is part of the overall exploitation of children.”A large number of child slaves are to be found in agriculture, domestic help, the sex industry, the carpet and textile industries, quarrying and brick making,”the ILO report said.

Missing money at issue in election of New England synod Lutheran bishop

(RNS)-Bishop Robert Isaksen, head of the New England synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), has been narrowly re-elected in a hotly contested election in which the central issue was $747,000 in missing church endowment money.

Isaksen won re-election to a third term Friday (June 7) by a 22-vote majority. He bested the Rev. William Moldwin of New Britain, Conn., 272 to 250.

Moldwin, 61, who moved to Connecticut from Michigan eight years ago, was little known within the synod. But he became the favorite candidate of delegates at the annual assembly who thought Isaksen should have been more vigilant in looking after church finances.

Isaksen, 59, who has led the synod for eight years, appeared certain of re-election before an independent audit at the end of May discovered that $747,000-the bulk of the synod’s $927,000 endowment fund-had disappeared.

The synod is one of 65 regional jurisdictions of the 5.2 million-member ELCA, the largest Lutheran denomination. The synod consists of about 77,000 members in 200 congregations in the six New England states and part of New York.

The synod’s former treasurer, George A. Patrick, 55, of Cheshire, Conn., is the central figure in an investigation by Connecticut authorities into the missing money. As of Monday (June 10), no arrests had been made nor charges filed.

Patrick, who resigned as treasurer in December in the midst of the audit, has not responded to inquiries from reporters.

Isaksen apologized to the delegates in an opening address for not being a better chief executive officer.”It is quite natural that confidence in our leaders and leadership is shaken,”he said.

David Allan Hubbard, evangelical leader, dies at 68

(RNS)-David Allan Hubbard, a prominent evangelical Old Testament scholar and former president of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., died at his home in Santa Barbara, Calif., on Friday (June 7) at the age of 68.

A statement from the seminary said the apparent cause of death was a heart attack.

Hubbard, an ordained minister of the American Baptist Churches of the USA, became president of Fuller Theological Seminary in 1963 at the age of 35 and during his 30-year tenure as president led Fuller to become one of the largest multidenominational seminaries in the world.

Under Hubbard, the seminary added a School of Psychology and a School of World Mission to the institution’s core School of Theology.”David Allan Hubbard was widely acknowledged as a person who took evangelical theological scholarship into a position of leadership in the larger world of higher education,”said Richard J. Mouw, who succeeded Hubbard as president of Fuller when Hubbard retired in 1993.

Hubbard published 36 books, including”Psalms for All Seasons”and”The Practice of Prayer.”He wrote four commentaries on the Old Testament and was serving as a general editor of the Word Biblical Commentary Series at the time of his death.

A native of California, Hubbard received his undergraduate degree from Westmont College in Santa Barbara. He was a member of the third graduating class at Fuller in 1952. He received his doctoral degree in Old Testament studies at St. Andrews University in Scotland in 1957.

Quote of the day: German Protestant theologian Reinhard Frieling on his vision of a future papacy.

(RNS)-The Rev. Reinhard Frieling, a Protestant theologian who is director of the Institute for Inter-Confessional Research in Bensheim, Germany, in a speech previewing Pope John Paul II’s visit to Germany scheduled to begin June 21, outlined his vision of a reformed papacy acceptable to Protestants:”My dream is of a (pope who is a) servant of unity who, perhaps as president of a council, recognizes a reconciled diversity of the churches, who promotes dialogue and reconciliation rather than giving audiences and reaching final decisions. I dream of a pope who allows open communion and tells Catholics that they have fulfilled their Sunday duty by taking part in a Protestant or ecumenical service.”

MJP END RNS