c. 1996 Religion News Service

Buchanan urges GOP plank opposing euthanasia and assisted suicide

(RNS) Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan, who challenged Bob Dole for the Republican presidential nomination this year, has urged inclusion in the GOP’s national platform of a plank condemning euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Linking euthanasia and assisted suicide with abortion, Buchanan said Wednesday (July 31) that Republicans should reject the”emergent culture of death in America (and) protect, not abandon, those in the dawn of life, those in the shadows of life, and those in the twilight of life.” Buchanan, who will go to the GOP convention in San Diego with 141 delegates still pledged to him, included the euthanasia and assisted-suicide language among a series of proposed platform planks he wants Republicans to consider.

Buchanan is Roman Catholic and his call for the euthanasia and assisted-suicide plank is in line with an earlier statement issued by the United States Catholic Conference (USCC) and sent to both the Republican and Democratic platform writing committees. The USCC, which is the American Catholic church’s public policy arm, said government should”never support the taking of human life, but rather ease the economic burdens on families whose seriously ill members need long-term care.” Speaking at a Washington news conference, Buchanan urged the GOP to recognize that”life is a gift from God”and that”all human life is sacred.””Calls”for increased legal acceptance of euthanasia and assisted suicide, he said, reflect a nation that”is not the America we grew up in (and) … is not the America we wish to leave our children.” Buchanan also repeated his opposition to any change in the Republican platform’s current anti-abortion language, including the call for a constitutional amendment that would ban virtually all abortions. In addition, he also urged the party to delete any specific reference to abortion from the so-called tolerance language that Dole wants added to the platform to satisfy moderate Republicans who favor abortion rights.

The platform will be finalized just prior to the San Diego convention, which begins Aug. 12.

British Catholic leader urges destruction of frozen embryos

(RNS) Roman Catholic Cardinal Basil Hume, Archbishop of Westminster, said Wednesday (July 31) that some 3,000 frozen human embryos being held at British fertility clinics and slated to be destroyed”are frozen human life”and present an”appalling dilemma.””I believe these frozen embryos are frozen human life, but I believe they should be … allowed to die and then disposed of in a dignified manner,”Hume, the top Roman Catholic prelate in England and Wales told BBC radio.

Hume’s suggestion differs significantly from proposals from one Vatican ethicist, writing recently in L’Osservatore Romano, who called for Catholic women to volunteer their wombs to bring the embryos to term.

Cardinal Tom Winning, Archbishop of Glasgow, Scotland, and chair of a joint bioethics committee of the English and Welsh, Scottish and Irish bishops’ conferences, called for legislation”banning both the creation and freezing of excess embryos.” In a letter to The Times of London, Winning said that the government agency that oversees the assisted contraception program”require that embryos no longer be created in greater numbers than are wanted for immediate implantation.” The approximately 3,000 embryos _ the product of in vitro fertilization _ are scheduled to be disposed of Thursday (Aug. 1) under a 1990 British law requiring that embryos must be destroyed after five years unless donors agree to have them frozen for another five years. The 3,000 embryos are from 900 couples who have lost touch with their clinics and could not be traced.

Generally, the embryos were produced as spares in case in vitro fertilization failed or for later use if a couple wanted more children.

World Council of Churches seeks land reform for Brazil

(RNS) A World Council of Churches-sponsored delegation that visited the site of a massacre of landless peasants in Brazil said Wednesday (July 31) that the violence is likely to continue until the country adopts stringent land reform measures.”If land reform fails it could be the beginning of even more violence,”said Andre Jacques, president of the Geneva-based International Service on Human Rights and leader of the WCC-sponsored team.”It (land reform) is the vital ingredient to establishing meaningful democracy in Brazil,”he added.”At the moment, not only does just 1 percent of the population own 44 percent of the land but much of that land is unused,”he said.

Jacques said that absentee landowners”resist any attempt to change the situation, and often hire mercenaries who harass, torture or kill peasants.” The WCC delegation went to Brazil at the invitation of the country’s churches and human rights organizations to gather facts about an April 17 massacre in the town of Eldorado do Caraja, in which military police killed 19 peasant demonstrators and wounded 50. The killings were among the worst in a spate of clashes between peasants and police.”The people were marching to protest the fact that although they had been promised legal title to unused land they had occupied two years ago, they had received nothing,”Jacques said.

The military claims its members fired in self-defense but the WCC delegation said in a statement released in Geneva that it believed the evidence it gathered in Brazil contradicts that claim.”Not only were many of those killed shot at close range or hacked to death with machetes, but others were found with bullet holes in the back of their neck, indicating they had been executed while on the ground,”Jacques said.

Jacques said the WCC would continue to provide humanitarian aid to the peasants. He said medicine, food, education and training of personnel were top priorities.

Bosnian Catholic bishop says international troops must stay

(RNS) Bishop Franjo Komarica of the Roman Catholic diocese of Banja Luka, Bosnia, has warned U.S. government and church leaders that if international peacekeeping troops are withdrawn too early, the Balkan nation could be plunged into another civil war.”If the Dayton Accords are to be a success and if we are to avoid a return to war and new ethnic cleansing, it is absolutely necessary that the international troops stay longer,”Komarica said Tuesday (July 30) in Washington.

He said the presence of U.S. and other troops had already saved many lives.

Komarica gained international fame by refusing to leave Banja Luka during the bloody war in the former Yugoslavia after the town came under the control of Serbs, most of whom are Orthodox Christians. The Serbs forcibly expelled more than 5,000 Roman Catholics from the city.

The Dayton Accords, signed Dec. 14 in Dayton, Ohio, brought an end to the war that had engulfed the former Yugoslavia since 1991. Under terms of the agreement, elections are to be held in Bosnia on Sept. 15. The 60,000 peacekeeping troops are to be withdrawn in 1997.

Komarica, during his second visit to the United States in two months, spent much of his time meeting with Clinton administration officials, members of Congress and top Catholic church officials.

In all of his meetings, Komarica sounded a single theme: Without a more concerted effort by the international community to enforce the Dayton Accords, the forthcoming elections in Bosnia will be a failure and risk of renewed warfare is high.”It is still possible to rebuild a democratic multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural Bosnia-Herzegovina that guarantees human rights for all people,”he said in a statement released by the U.S. Catholic Conference, which is co-sponsoring his visit.

Komarica warned that the September elections could give”political legitimacy to extreme nationalist parties and politicians, including many war criminals,”a reference to militant Bosnian Serb political parties and leaders.

On July 19, the United States said it had convinced the Bosnian Serbs’ top political chief and indicted war criminal, Radovan Karadzic, to give up political power. Many observers, including Komarica, believe most of those who would replace Karadzic as leader are equally unacceptable and resistant to building a democratic Bosnia.

Komarica said he asked U.S. officials to ensure freedom of movement and the right of refugees to return to their homes.”The vast majority of my faithful are now living as refugees,”he said.”again and again they ask me when they may return home. They cannot do so because local politicians _ the same people who forced them to leave in the first place _ will not permit them to return nor do they guarantee them safety.”This clear violation of the Dayton Accords must not be permitted to continue,”he said.

Bavarian parliament approves stiff anti-abortion law

(RNS) After a long and sometimes heated debate, the German state of Bavaria passed a restrictive abortion law Wednesday (July 31) that supporters of legal abortion said could rekindle a bitter national debate on the issue.

The new Bavarian law, which would apply only in the conservative, largely Roman Catholic heartland of Germany, requires that a woman give her doctor a reason for seeking the abortion. The law also makes it a crime for doctors to derive more than one-fourth of their income from performing abortions, Reuters reported.

In Bonn, federal lawmakers criticized the Bavarian parliament, arguing the new law was unconstitutional and warning that it would revive the debate they had tried to end last June by adopting a federal abortion law.

The federal law sought a middle ground between the former West Germany’s restrictive law and the former East Germany’s system of abortion on demand.

Under the federal law, abortion is illegal but not subject to punishment if undertaken in the first trimester. Mandatory counseling at centers licensed by the state must stress the sanctity of life. While the federal law encourages women to keep the fetus, it also asserts that the abortion decision ultimately rests with the woman. State funding of abortion if forbidden but exceptions are made for those with an income of less that $1,200.

In Bavaria, deputies of the arch-conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) said the federal law had failed to protect the unborn child, Reuters reported.”The state has a special duty to protect the unborn child,”said Alois Gluck, a leader of the Bavarian CSU.”Abortion is no different from killing, and yet it is is still not viewed as a criminal offense.”

Quote of the day: Gary Rosberg of CrossTrainer Ministries on the temptations men face.

(RNS) Gary Rosberg, president of CrossTrainer Ministries in West Des Moines, Iowa, and a speaker at a July 27 Promise Keepers men’s rally in Indianapolis, knelt before his wife, Barbara, and washed her feet as a demonstration of how men need to learn to love their wives. CrossTrainer Ministries is a men’s ministry that sponsors Bible-based programs encouraging men to have better relationships with their wives and children.”Just as we are ready to protect our families physically, we need to be ready to protect them emotionally. The enemy is most likely to get men, not in sexual temptation, passivity, or anger, but in the area of being distracted from our responsibilities to our families.”

MJP END RNS