c. 1998 Religion News Service

Good Friday, Passover beer ban muddles Boston Red Sox opener

(RNS) Citing the desire for a”family atmosphere,”the Boston Red Sox have instituted a one-time”beer ban”because their Opening Day game falls on Good Friday and the first night of Passover (April 10).

The policy requires heightened security, the Boston Herald reported Tuesday (April 7), because police fear baseball fans will get intoxicated at nearby pubs and then try to enter Fenway Park for the game.

In addition to the ban on alcohol, which applies to private boxes as well as to the rest of the stadium, team officials pushed back the start of the game to 3 p.m. and have dispensed with traditional Opening Day ceremonies.”We were trying to do things we thought would show our sensitivity to this double religious observance,”said Richard L. Bresciani, vice president of communications for the Red Sox.

However, even the new starting time poses problems for baseball fans among the city’s 2.2 million Roman Catholics and 300,000 Jews.

For Catholics, traditional Good Friday liturgies begins at 3 p.m., following a solemn observance between noon and 3.

Jews will either have to avoid the game or leave early in order to be at Passover Seders, which traditionally begin at sunset.

Bresciani said Red Sox CEO John Harrington made an unsuccessful attempt to change the day of the game.

Orthodox say police involved in occupation of Romanian cathedral

(RNS) The Romanian Orthodox Church has accused the police in the city of Cluj with complicity in the raucous occupation last month of the city’s cathedral by members of the Greek Catholic Church.

But Catholic leaders say Orthodox parishioners started the incident, charging them with refusing to obey a court order, reported Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news agency.

On March 13 violent clashes erupted after a court ordered the ownership of Cathedral of the Transfiguration from Orthodox control back to the minority Greek Catholic Church. Eyewitnesses say fist-fights broke out and bottles and icons were hurled after Orthodox worshippers refused to leave the church. Several people were arrested in the incident.”The aggressors forced the royal doors and got into the holy altar, desecrating it, turning everything on the holy table upside down,”Orthodox leaders said of the Catholics in an April 3 statement.”We have every reason to think the aggression was prepared and implemented under the supervision and with the complicity of the Cluj city police.” Greek Catholic leaders, however, denied the charge.”Greek Catholic believers stepped into their church to pray, in absolute conformity with Romanian judicial decisions,”said a statement issued by the Greek Catholic bishopric of Cluj-Gherla.”They did not desecrate the altar, they did not do any damage. Statements to the contrary, even if delivered by prominent church members, are completely untrue.” Tensions between the two churches have mounted since 1990, when the outlawed Greek Catholic Church regained legal status in Romania. In 1948, communists banned the denomination, which is loyal to Rome, and gave the majority Romanian Orthodox Church control over its nearly 2,000 buildings. Since 1990, fewer than 100 churches have returned to Catholic control.

In February, the Bucharest Court of Appeal confirmed the rights of the Greek Catholics to the Cluj cathedral. However, in a statement issued last month to the cathedral’s 50,000 Orthodox parishioners, Orthodox leaders said they would appeal the ruling, calling it”abusive and illegal.”

Vatican denies hindering investigation of pope shooting

(RNS) An Italian prosecutor has criticized the Vatican and France for allegedly hindering the investigation of the 1981 shooting of Pope John Paul II.

The Vatican denied the accusations Saturday (April 4), the Associated Press reported.”I must repeat what already has been affirmed in previous occasions, and that is that the Holy See has always communicated all the information that was in its possession to Italian justice,”said Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls.

Mehmet Ali Agca of Turkey was convicted and is serving a life sentence for the 1981 shooting in St. Peter’s Square that left the pope seriously wounded.

The prosecutor, Rosario Priore, released the charges against the Vatican and France in a 512-page decision that dismissed charges against 13 people linked to the Gray Wolves, a right-wing Turkish terrorist group.

Priore said the Vatican and France withheld information on the case, according to Italian media reports.”… For years (France) hindered the extradition of a person precious to the investigation, even hiding it,”said Priore, referring to Oral Celik, a Turk who lived in France and was a close associate of Agca. Celik was tried in absentia and found innocent.

Michigan tax credit supporters drop plans for ballot initiative

(RNS) A group seeking to have Michigan voters consider providing tax credits for parents who send their children to private schools, including religious ones, have dropped their effort to put the proposal on this year’s ballot.”It’s questionable whether there is time to make the plan clear to voters,”said Joseph Overton, one author of the plan.”And there are political concerns about how a school choice election would effect candidates”on the same ballot.

The proposal seeks to undo a 1970 state constitutional amendment that banned public funding for parochial education. It would provide tax credits for up to 80 percent of tuition at private or parochial schools.”It’s a little disappointing they backed off,”the Associated Press quoted Anita Nelam, a leader of the Detroit Partnership for Parental Choice. But she said the tax credit plan”didn’t go as far as we wanted it. We’d rather have vouchers than tax credits.” To have put the tax credit proposal on the ballot would have required 308,908 valid signatures by July 6. After this year’s Nov. 3 election, petition drives for election in 2000 can begin.

Quote of the day: ELCA Presiding Bishop H. George Anderson

(RNS)”To say that Jesus has risen from the dead means that he is not where we left him. Jesus has not been left back in Bible times. He is still with his followers to teach them and help them. Jesus is not the Jesus of our childhood anymore. He has new tasks and challenges for us as adults. Jesus is not even the Jesus we knew yesterday; he will reveal more of his nature and his power every day of our lives.” _ The Rev. H. George Anderson, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, in his Easter message to the denomination’s members.

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