c. 1998 Religion News Service

World Council of Churches opens `turning point’ assembly

(RNS) The World Council of Churches, marking the 50th anniversary, opened its Eighth Assembly on Thursday (Dec. 3) with Orthodox delegates from Russia and Greece boycotting the opening service, underscoring the major issue facing the global ecumenical body: what shape will the drive for Christian unity take in the next millennium.

In a speech opening the first plenary session of the global body, Catholicos Aram I of the Armenian Apostolic Church and moderator of the WCC’s central committee, described the assembly as”an important signpost for our common ecumenical journey and a turning point in the life of the WCC.” Some 5,000 people, including more than 900 official delegates from the 330 Orthodox and Protestant denominations that are members of the WCC, gathered in Harare, Zimbabwe, for the assembly.

While the top agenda item for the delegates is the question of what shape the church unity movement will take in the next century _ including the possible creation of a vehicle to include the Roman Catholic Church and Protestant Pentecostals more fully _ issues such as homosexuality may overshadow it.

At the same time, delegates also face the thorny issue of how to appease some of the Orthodox members _ especially the Russian church _ which object to the WCC’s western and Protestant orientation.

For much of the media, however, the most visible issue is the contentious issue of the role of homosexuals in the life of church and society _ an issue not on the official agenda but present on its edges given the government of Zimbabwe’s harsh denunciation of gays.

Earlier this week, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, in a visit to Rome, called homosexuality”an area of revulsion to us in Africa.” The boycott of the opening service by some Orthodox delegates was in keeping with a decision made last May at a gathering of officials from 15 Eastern Orthodox churches which recommended the Orthodox”express their concerns”about WCC by not joining in various aspects of the assembly, including worship services and common prayers.

But the Rev. Konrad Raiser predicted the Orthodox will make a positive contribution to the assembly.”They are asking to be heard and to have a possibility of truly influencing the agenda of the WCC,”Raiser said at a press conference preceding the opening worship service.

Indian Christians plan demonstrations to protest violence

(RNS) Christian human rights activists in India said Thursday (Dec. 3) millions of their fellow believers will take to the streets Friday to urge the government to curb the rising incidence of violence against their community.”Rallies and prayer meetings will be held all over on Friday _ in Haryana, Orissa, Karnaaataka, Delhi, Bombay,”John Dayal, convenor of the United Christian Forum for Human Rights told Reuters.

About 2.3 percent of India’s 960 million people are Christians.”It is not our responsibility to protect ourselves. It is the responsibility of the state and the government,”Dayal said.

The Christian human rights organization said it has recorded nearly 120 cases of nuns being raped, Bible-burning, assaults on priests and other forms of violence against Christians in the past year, up from 40 cases between 1964 and 1996.

The majority of the attacks were in the western state of Gujarat, where militant Hindu activists have attacked priests and terrorized Christians, arguing that the Christians are forcing people, especially the poor, to take up the religion.

The government, which is dominated by the militant Hindu Nationalist Party, says it will deal sternly with any forcible conversions or acts of violence.”The protest is not just to plea the case of the nuns who have been raped or the priests who have been attacked, it is to object to the denial of human rights,”Dayal said.

Lutheran bishops warn against millennial”wild prophecies” (RNS) The bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America have issued a pastoral letter dismissing”wild prophecies”that the world is about to end and declaring the third Christian millennium should be welcomed with hope.”The coming of the end of the second millennium fills some people in our society with fear,”stated the letter, dated to coincide with the Oct. 31 Festival of the Reformation.”The end of the millennium continues to spawn all kinds of wild prophecies about the end of the world. Many people, Christians included, often imagine `the end of the world’ in terms of the second coming of our Lord.” The bishops said that while there is”much about the future that could give us pause,”they were not afraid.”As Christians, we live each day as if it could the last, and embrace each new day as a gift of God,”they said.

The statement, issued over the name of H. George Anderson, the 5.2-million member denomination’s presiding bishop, is meant to counter”millennialist”theories for which it said there is no biblical basis.

The bishops hoped to counter what may be an uncertain time that evokes all manner of strange things, Anderson said, including”speculation and fear and sensational predictions …. We expect more craziness as we get closer to the event.”

Czech secret police officer gets sentence in 50-year-old killing

(RNS) A former Communist secret police officer has received a five-year prison sentence, nearly half a century after he tortured a Roman Catholic priest to death in a successful effort to get him to confess to faking a miracle.

Ladislav Macha, 75, is appealing the sentence, handed down Nov. 23 in a Prague district court, the Czech News Agency reported. He is only the second member of the STB, or secret police, convicted of politically motivated persecution, more than nine years after the fall of communism in the former Czechoslovakia.

In December 1949, parishioners in the small town of Cihost reported seeing an altar cross move several times while the Rev. Josef Toufar was saying Mass.

In January 1950, the police arrested Toufar and tried to force him to confess to faking the miracle. Under Macha’s supervision, STB officers locked Toufar in a freezing basement, starved him and woke him up every hour.

After nearly a month, Macha broke Toufar’s resistance by beating him severely with a club.

Toufar admitting faking the miracle in a government-produced film, even though he could barely stand, according to the Prague Post newspaper.”His face had to be washed every once in a while, because he bled from his mouth”during the filming, according to STB files. Filmmakers even specially built a sliding mechanism to demonstrate how Toufar supposedly carried out the fraud.

Toufar died of stomach perforation on Feb. 25, 1950.

Judge Nadezda Brcakova rejected claims by Macha’s lawyer that the statute of limitations should protect Macha from prosecution. She noted that the Communist government refused to prosecute Macha at any time except 1968, but that probe was aborted after the Soviet-led invasion terminated an era of liberalization.

Quote of day: pollster Daniel Yankelovich

(RNS)”The culture of affluence is fading now. It’s being replaced by a new interest in the spiritual side of life. It’s a yearning that has nothing to do with church and sectarianism, but with a search for why the so-called material good life does not bring happiness.” _ Pollster Daniel Yankelovich in an interview appearing in the Nov. 16 issue of Forbes magazine.

DEA END RNS