c. 1997 Religion News Service
House rejects criticism of Germany for its treatment of Scientology
(RNS) The House of Representatives defeated Sunday (Nov. 9) a resolution criticizing Germany for its treatment of Scientology.
The measure was rejected by a 318-101 vote after a brief debate.
The vote came one day after The New York Times reported that a U.S. immigration judge in Tampa, Fla., granted asylum to a German member of the controversial group because she said she would be subjected to religious persecution if she returned to her homeland.
Scientology and the German government have been involved in a long-running feud over the group’s status and activities in Germany. The government claims Scientology is primarily a money-making business and an extremist organization. Scientologists insist the group is a church.”Let’s stand for what we profess to believe and that is religious tolerance,”said Rep. Matt Solomon, R-Ariz., during the brief debate.
But Rep. Robert Wise, D-W.Va., said he opposed singling out Germany for criticism when other nations in Europe held similar views, the Associated Press reported.”Let’s not single out an ally with relatively unsubstantiated charges,”Wise said.”Vote it down and let’s fight discrimination everywhere.” Although it was unclear when the German Scientologist was granted asylum, a statement from the group said the hearing on the request took place in February.
Pope moves three a step closer to sainthood
(RNS) Pope John Paul II beatified three heroes of the church _ a Hungarian bishop, an Italian missionary and a Mexican nun _ moving them one step closer to sainthood Sunday (Nov. 9).
Beatification is the last formal step before canonization.”One can’t give thanks to God without undertaking Christian works, defending, at every social level, respect and solidarity for our brothers, especially the most defenseless and in need,”the pope said during the ceremony in St. Peter’s Square, the Associated Press reported.
Those beatified included Vilmos Apor, the bishop of Gyor when the Germans occupied Hungary in 1944. He worked with the Popular Democratic Catholic Party to lay the groundwork for resistance to the Nazis. He was shot to death by Soviet soldiers in 1945 while trying to save a group of women refugees hiding in his church from being raped.
John Paul also beatified Giovanni Battista Scalabrini, the founder of the Congregation of the Missionaries of St. Charles who died in 1905, and Sister Dorotea Chavez, who died in 1949 and who established communities of nuns at hospitals throughout the Guadalajara region of Mexico.
Dissident warns black Baptist denomination could split over leadership
(RNS) The Rev. Calvin Butts, pastor of the prestigious Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York’s Harlem, has warned that the National Baptist Convention USA could divide over the scandals surrounding the leadership of the Rev. Henry Lyons, the president of the nation’s largest black Baptist denomination.”The leadership is woefully inadequate, corrupt and untrustworthy,”Butts told Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news agency.”We hope that federal and state authorities will continue with their investigations, and maybe that will lead to indictments.” Butts was among the dissidents who earlier this summer sought to force Lyons resignation as head of the 8 million-member denomination. The calls for Lyons resignation came after his wife, Deborah L. Lyons, was arrested July 6 for setting fire to a house jointly owned by her husband and another woman in a St. Petersburg, Fla., suburb.
Since then, allegations of financial irregularities involving Lyons have surfaced.
Butts said if the continuing probe of Lyons by federal and state authorities did not result in indictments against the church leaders,”many of us will seek to establish something else.”
Supreme Court rejects bid by Davidians to bar Texas judge
(RNS) The U.S. Supreme Court, without comment, rejected Monday (Nov. 10) an appeal by members of the Branch Davidian religious sect to remove a Texas federal judge from hearing a lawsuit stemming from the 1993 standoff between the government and the Davidians.
More than 200 surviving Davidians, plus relatives of the 73 who died at the end of the violent confrontation, are seeking hundreds of millions in damages from the federal government, the Associated Press reported.
In Monday’s action, the justices rejected the Davidian argument that U.S. District Court Judge Walter S. Smith Jr. is biased against them.
The Davidian incident began Feb. 28, 1993, when a shootout erupted as federal agents tried to arrest the sect’s leader, David Koresh. Four federal agents and six Davidians were killed and 16 federal agents were wounded in the initial incident.
Fifty-one days later, Koresh and 78 followers died when a fire engulfed the compound outside Waco, Texas.
The lawsuit challenges the government’s conclusion that the Davidians themselves started the fire and that they shot first during the initial raid on the compound.
Quote of the day: Episcopal Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning
(RNS)”(English king) James I and his advisers would never in a million years have guessed that their descendents would be led by the gospel to pursue the radical equality of the human family.” Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning of the Episcopal Church at a service in Jamestown, Va., in which church officials and representatives of American Indian tribes signed a new covenant of faith and understanding that repudiates the colonial view of Indians as infidels and savages.
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