c. 1998 Religion News Service

Churches denounce Northern Ireland bombing

(RNS) Church leaders in Europe have denounced last weekend’s bombing in Omagh, Northern Ireland, which took the lives of 28 people, including seven children and 14 women.”That such an unspeakable crime should have been committed, in which so many innocent people have suffered death, injury and bereavement, has appalled people throughout Europe and other parts of the world who have the cause of peace in Northern Ireland in their hearts and in their prayers,”the World Council of Churches and the Conference of European Churches said in a joint statement Monday (Aug. 17).

The statement said the massacre”is a challenge to the democratically elected leaders in both islands to root out the sectarianism that has taken a heavy toll during the last three decades.” The statement, signed by the Rev. Konrad Raiser, general secretary of the WCC, and the Rev. Keith Clements, general secretary of the CEC, said the bombing may make the road to peace”now seem more still more difficult and perilous.” But they said they believe those who committed the crime”did so out of anger and frustration, realizing their aims and methods have been decisively rejected by the majority of people in Ireland, including the political leadership of all communities and allegiances.” Anglican Archbishop Robert Eames, primate of the Church of Ireland, echoed those sentiments saying the bombing must not be allowed to derail the peace process. He called on politicians to take steps to ensure hopes for peace do not die.”That hope has got to be protected from any diminishment,”he said.”I think this is the time when Northern Ireland needs to have proved to it by government, by politician, by anyone in a position of leadership … that when we put our trust in the Good Friday Agreement, we were not mislead, that when we trust the democratic process, we were not misled; and when we put our trust in politicians who say there is a better way (than violence), the people are not misled,”he said.

Pope John Paul II also warned that peace-loving people should not”be caught up by the trap of violence.” In Britain, Sir Fred Catherwood, president of the Evangelical Alliance UK, called the bombing”appalling”and called on churches across the country to pray that the bombing not undermine the political settlement”and that members of former and current paramilitary groups”that they will not retaliate but will instead to a peaceful future.”

Scottish Anglican primate puts off politics to fight on gay issue

(RNS) Bishop Richard Holloway of Edinburgh, Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, said Tuesday (Aug. 18) that he is putting aside plans to run for parliament and stay in the church to continue the fight for gay rights.

Holloway, one of the Anglican church’s most outspoken advocates for gay rights, said his decision to at least temporarily put aside his political aspirations was prompted by the recently concluded Lambeth Conference, the once-a-decade gathering of the world’s Anglican bishops.

At the conference, prelates adopted a resolution calling homosexual activity incompatible with Scripture and urging bishops around the world not to ordain active gays and lesbians.

Holloway had intended to stand for the Scottish Parliament to be elected next year. In June his name was put on the Labor list of candidates as one of those on what is known as the alternate list. In the Scottish Parliament system of proportional representation, members are elected both from a specific constituency and from an alternate party list to ensure a parliament that reflects the actual pattern of voting.”It would have been impossible to continue as Bishop of Edinburgh and Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church as well as being a Labor MSP,”Holloway said. If elected, he had intended resigning some time in 2000.”However,”Holloway said,”a hardening in church attitudes to certain groups in society, as well as a return to a type of theological conservatism that, I believe, has to be challenged if Christianity is to appeal to the best values in contemporary society, has caused me to rethink my plans.” As one of the Anglican Communion’s 37 primates, Holloway is well placed to resist conservative tendencies. Between meetings of the Lambeth Conference it is left to the primates and to the Anglican Consultative Council _ a kind of executive committee _ to speak for Anglicanism as a whole.

Holloway has compared the church’s treatment of gays and lesbians to its past support for slavery and its long resistance to the ordination of women.

At Lambeth he described Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey _ spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion _ as”pathetic”for backing the traditional view condemning any sexual activity outside monogamous heterosexual marriage.

Update: Polish government seeks to defuse Auschwitz cross dispute

(RNS) The Polish government will take legal control of a field beside the former site of the Nazi’s Auschwitz death camp in an effort to defuse a dispute between Jewish and Roman Catholic communities over the placement of crosses there.

Polish Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek told reporters the government would annul a 30-year lease on the land held by a group on the grounds that placing the disputed crosses violated the terms of the lease, according to wire reports from Warsaw.”This will make further actions possible,”Buzek said.

But he did not say specifically the government would move to remove the more than 100 crosses erected on the site during the last month.”Because this pertains to spiritual matters we have to move very carefully,”Buzek said.”It is very difficult.” The lease is held by a group known as the Association of War Victims and was made with an order of Carmelite nuns shortly before their convent was moved after an international outcry at its presence beside the death camp angered Jews worldwide.

The new dispute arose after it was announced that a huge cross erected for a Mass celebrated by Pope John Paul II in 1989 was to be removed. Conservative Catholics, backed by hardline priests, in response have mounted a campaign to to put up 152 smaller crosses to mark the execution of 152 Poles by German soldiers.

The leader of the cross campaign has pledged to oppose any effort to remove the crosses.”I think they will have to drag me out by force,”Kaszimierz Switon told Reuters.”I will not leave this place willingly until I am sure all the crosses are to stay.” Jewish groups object to any religious symbols being placed near the camp where some 1.5 million people, 90 percent of them Jews, were murdered during World War II.

The cross campaign has exacerbated Catholic-Jewish tensions in Poland, split the Catholic Church, embarrassed the government internationally and, if it acts to remove the crosses, left the government vulnerable to attack from rightists in its own ranks.

New president named for troubled Greek Orthodox college, seminary

(RNS) The Very Rev. Archimandrite Damaskinos Ganas has been named the new president of Hellenic College/Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline, Mass.

Ganas, a native of Greece, has served as a priest at Kimiss Theotokou Church in Brooklyn, N.Y., for the past 14 years.

A church statement said the election by the corporate board of the school was unanimous.

Hellenic College/Holy Cross has been a center of controversy for the past two years stemming from allegations of a cover-up and mishandling of a case involving sexual misconduct.

The situation at the school has become a lightning rod for critics within the church of the leadership of Archbishop Spyridon, the head of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.

Ganas took over his new duties Aug. 15 and will be officially installed as head of the school on Sept. 14.

Quote of the day: the Rev. Ishmael Noko of the Lutheran World Federation

(RNS)”We still have to seriously ask the question why over 800 million have to suffer from hunger in the world. The right to food is an acknowledged and inalienable right. This fundamental human right must find practical expression through our united efforts. … We have to address the political conditions that perpetuate poverty and hunger. And we have to expose the individuals, groups and systems that exploit human suffering for political or strategic purposes.” _ The Rev. Ishmael Noko, general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, in remarks Aug. 6 in Rome at the signing of a memorandum of cooperation between the LWF and the United Nation’s World Food Program.

DEA END RNS