c. 1996 Religion News Service

United Church of Christ to enter the hotel business

(RNS) The United Church of Christ has unveiled plans to build a seven-story, 93-room commercial hotel in downtown Cleveland that it hopes will help the 1.5 million-member denomination not only save but make money.

“Having our own hotel could produce an annual savings of up to $130,000,” said the Rev. Thomas Dipko, executive vice president of the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries.

“At the same time, the return on the investment of constructing and leasing the hotel would at least equal the 5 percent return required by board policy from our investments in stocks and bonds,” he added.

The hotel plans were presented to a committee of Cleveland’s planning commission, which was scheduled to consider the proposal Friday (Oct. 18).

Dipko said the hotel would be a good way of containing the cost of church-related meetings because national boards and agencies of the denomination would get below-market room rates at the new hotel.

Cleveland is the headquarters of the denomination and 13 of its national agencies are based there. Denomination officials said the church uses an estimated 4,500 hotel room-nights per year for meetings in the city.

In addition, money generated by the commercial use of the hotel would help support the church’s annual budget for programs in such areas as racial and social justice, evangelism and local church development, officials said.

In order to build the hotel, the Board for Homeland Ministries would create a limited liability company that would, in turn, build and lease the hotel.

The proposed site of the hotel is on a church-owned parking lot behind the church’s headquarters.

Report: Indonesia arrests 40 in anti-Christian riots that left 5 dead

(RNS) Indonesian authorities have arrested 40 people for last week’s arson attacks in East Java in which at least five people were killed and as many as 25 Roman Catholic and Protestant churches set on fire or vandalized, the Jakarta Post said Thursday (Oct. 17).

The riot, which occurred Oct. 10, was apparently sparked after a court hearing into blasphemy charges against Mohamad Saleh, the leader of a Muslim group in the East Java town of Situbondo who was found guilty of blasphemy for contending the Prophet Muhammad was not God’s envoy to all humanity. Saleh was sentenced to five years in jail but more militant Muslims had called for his death. A crowd at the courthouse, angered by the sentence, set fire to the courthouse building. As the riot spread, so did rumors that Saleh had sought refuge in a nearby church, which was torched by the mob.

This was the latest in a series of incidents sparked by ongoing tensions between Christians and Muslims in Indonesia. In September, a Roman Catholic church near Jakarta was burned; in June, 10 churches in East Java were vandalized or burned.

Compass Direct, a Santa Ana, Calif., ministry that monitors persecution of Christians, said that the Situbundo rioters “traveling by motorcycle … torched seven churches in Situbondo, as well as two Christian schools and an orphanage, then fanned out to neighboring cities.

“By the time police restored order, a total of 25 places of worship had been burned in seven cities,” the group said.

A statement from the Communion of Churches in Indonesia said six people died and 25 churches were burned during the riot, Reuters reported.

Among the dead were Pentecostal pastor Ishak Christian, his wife, his daughter, a niece and a church worker, who died after they were trapped in one of the burned churches, Compass Direct reported.

“We regret that security officers moved in only after the riot had gone for quite a long time and had spread,” Roman Catholic Cardinal Julius Darmaatmaja, chairman of the Roman Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Indonesia said in a statement.

Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim nation. About 85 percent of its 200 million population is Muslim. There are about 22 million Christians.

While interfaith tensions sometimes run high in the nation, Indonesia’s major Islamic authority, the Muslim Council of Ulemas, condemned the rioting.

“The incident is really shocking and has disturbed our religious feelings as the Prophet Muhammad himself forbids Muslims and even soldiers in war to commit cruelties,” Hasan Basri, chairman of the council, told the official Antara news agency.

The rampage in East Java took place one day before the Nobel Peace Prize was awared to Roman Catholic Bishop Carlos Belo and Jose Ramos-Horta, leading defenders of human rights in East Timor, a former Portuguese colony annexed by Indonesia in 1976 that is largely Roman Catholic.

Priest pays for publication of axed Catholic columnist in secular paper

(RNS) A syndicated column by a liberal Catholic theologian axed by his hometown diocesan newspaper after 30 years is being carried as a paid advertisement in a major daily newspaper.

The column, “Essays in Theology,” by the Rev. Richard P. McBrien, is being sponsored in The Hartford Courant by the Rev. Edmund S. Nadolny, a pastor with a penchant for high-profile promotions.

The first column appeared on Oct. 12 and will continue weekly through Nov. 2, said Nadolny, pastor of St. Stanislaus Catholic Church in Meriden, Conn.

Whether the column will be carried beyond four weeks “depends on the kind of response we get,” Nadolny said. “Father McBrien will continue as long as the people tell me they want it and they will tell me by their contributions.” Nadolny said.

At first, the $1,200 weekly tab for the quarter-page ad “basically will come from my priestly salary and I hope to sell a few more Pierogi Priests,” he said.

Nadolny was referring to his brand name for the pierogies he sells to help out his parochial school. Sales of the Polish turnovers that are filled with such ingredients as potatoes, cheese, cabbage and mushrooms, have netted $40,000 for the school in the past two years, he said. But he said that Connecticut, with a population that is 40 percent Roman Catholic, has the potential to support continuing the column.

The Transcript, the archdiocesan newspaper, has carried McBrien’s column since 1966, but announced last month it was dropping the liberal priest because its priorities had changed as it switched from a weekly to a monthly publication.

McBrien, a priest of the Hartford archdiocese who teaches theology at the University of Notre Dame, disputes that explanation, saying his liberal views run counter to an increasingly conservative Catholic hierarchy.

Commenting on Nadolny’s sponsorship of McBrien’s column as an ad, the Rev. Christopher Tiano, editor of the Transcript, said, “Father Nadolny is certainly free to do anything he wants.”

McBrien said he is “very gratified that Father Nadolny would take this initiative, and I am somewhat in awe of his enterprising spirit and adventuresomeness.”

Lutherans will oppose euthanasia in brief to the Supreme Court

(RNS) The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will file a friend-of-the-court brief with the U.S. Supreme Court asking the justices to uphold state laws in New York and Washington barring physician-assisted suicide.

“The church has spoken on this issue, and we can do advocacy in this area,” said Ingrid Christiansen, chair of the board of the 5.2 million-member denomination’s Division for Church in Society.

“We are, as a church and in our documents, opposed to physician-assisted suicide,” she said.

On Oct. 1, the Supreme Court said it would hear arguments on two cases in which federal appeals courts found the Washington and New York state laws barring doctor-assisted suicide to be unconstitutional.

Christiansen said the board, meeting in Chicago Sept. 26-28, had voted 14-2, with two abstentions, to address the issue should the High Court accept the cases for review.

“We recognize that it is a complicated issue, and we certainly are not opposed to doctors and patients and families working out helpful and spiritual ways for people to come to the end of their lives,” Christiansen said.

The denomination’s position will be based on a 1992 statement on end-of-life decisions that drew a distinction between “allowing death” and “taking life.”

“We oppose the legalization of physician-assisted death, which will allow the private killing of one person by another,” the 1992 statement says.

Cardinal Bernardin ends chemotherapy treatments

(RNS) Roman Catholic Cardinal Joseph L. Bernardin of Chicago, diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given less than a year to live by his doctor, has stopped receiving chemotherapy treatments because they have not been able to retard the growth of his cancer and produced severe side effects.

“I was told in late August that I have a year or less,” Bernardin told an impromptu news conference in Chicago. “That’s still true, but I think it’s less. I think it’s six or seven months.”

The AP reported that Bernardin appeared relaxed and joked at times with reporters during the news conference.

“My friends are having a much tougher time than I am,” he said of his impending death.

Film on Southern Baptists a winner at Louisville festival

(RNS) A documentary that chronicles the conservative evolution of the Southern Baptist Convention has been chosen as the winner of two awards at an upcoming film festival in Louisville, Ky.

“Battle for the Minds,” will receive the “Director’s Choice Award” and the “Best Feature Film” award at the 7th Annual Louisville Film & Video Festival. The festival, from Nov. 6-10, will open and close with screenings of the film.

Filmmaker Steven Lipscomb decided to focus on the Southern Baptist Convention and its views on women pastors after hearing about his mother’s experiences as a student at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. The film includes interviews with people on both sides of the controversy, including Dixie Petrey, Lipscomb’s mother, a 1995 graduate of Southern Seminary. The film focuses on the debate over women’s roles in ministry as an example of the larger ideological battle between conservative and moderate Southern Baptists.

“My dream … was to go back and get a chance to screen it in Louisville for the Louisville community,” Lipscomb said in an interview. “To go back as the centerpiece of their annual festival is just incredible.”

The film had its world premiere Oct. 10 at the Vancouver, B.C., International Film Festival and its U.S. premiere Oct. 13 at the Mill Valley International Film Festival in California.

Church of England bishop ousted over same-sex marriage flap

(RNS) Retired Anglican Bishop Derek Rawcliffe, the Church of England’s only openly gay prelate, has effectively been ousted as an assistant bishop in the diocese of Ripon over his willingness to bless same-sex marriages.

“It is clear to me that my understanding of the episcopal role in this diocese and Bishop Derek’s understanding cannot be reconciled,” Bishop David Young of Ripon said Thursday (Oct. 17).

Young made his comments as he announced that Rawcliffe’s commission as assistant bishop in the diocese had been withdrawn.

Rawcliffe, who served as bishop of Glasgow and Galloway in the Scottish Episcopal Church until 1991, acknowledged in a BBC interview last year that he was gay.

His conflict with Young centered on his practice of conducting public prayers for the blessing of couples in same-sex relationships.

Quote of the day: James Gustave Speth, administrator of the United Nations Development Programme

(RNS) On Thursday (Oct. 17) the United Nations marked the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. United Nations Development Programme administrator James Gustave Speth noted that every day, 68,000 people join the ranks of the world’s poor _ families living on less than $1 a day _ and asked people to consider what the future might hold:

“Inequities breed joblessness, anger and despair _ and all too often violence and conflict. The world must make a place for everyone to share in its bounty. And the poor need more control over the forces shaping their lives. … Unless we address the problems of poverty now, none of the great goals the international community has set _ peace, stability, human rights for all, preservation of the environment _ are achievable in a world where one-half of the people find themselves shut out of opportunity and the benefits of a global society.”

JL END RNS